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Jun 29
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583: Dispelling the Motivation Myths of Passion and Willpower with Jeff Haden

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Jeff Haden says: "You can create all the motivation you need."

Jeff Haden discusses what we often get wrong about motivation—and what really works.

You’ll Learn:

  1. The one thing that makes any goal feel motivating 
  2. The subtle shift in phrasing that makes goals more motivating 
  3. A surprising way to boost your willpower

About Jeff

Jeff Haden is Inc.com’s most popular columnist and one of LinkedIn’s most widely-followed Influencers. His work has also appeared on Time, The Huffington Post, Fast Company, Business Insider, Entrepreneur, Yahoo! Small Business, MSNBC, and CNBC.

Resources mentioned in the show:

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Jeff Haden Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Jeff, thanks for joining us here on the How to be Awesome at Your Job podcast.

Jeff Haden
Thanks, Pete. I am delighted to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I’m delighted to be here as well. We’re going to be talking about motivation so I thought I might start with asking, Jeff, what motivates you?

Jeff Haden
Oh, great. That is a fun question since I talk about motivation a lot. Probably the biggest motivator for me is seeing some type of improvement no matter what it is that I do. I learned a long time ago that you can have even the silliest or least meaningful goal possible, but if you set it and then you’re making some amount of improvement towards it, it feels good, and you end up liking whatever it is that you were doing. So that whole idea that you have to find your passion first before you can set off to do something, I think it’s kind of…well, I think it’s helpful but I don’t think it’s necessary.

So, if I can tell a really quick story. I decided a few years ago when I was writing my book, I kind of took a page from the Tim Ferriss playbook and decided it would be good to have a couple of cute hooks for me for people to latch onto, so I decided I was going to do 100,000 pushups in a year. So, it works out to 347 a day. I rounded it up to 400 just in case I had a bad day.

The goal was meaningless. I didn’t care. There’s nothing from it. I wasn’t getting paid. It was just something I decided to do, and I didn’t particularly enjoy it at first, but within a month, I liked pushups, I thought of myself as the Pushup Guy. I had fun trying to be able to do more per set or get the whole thing done quicker or all that other kind of stuff. And I actually came to like it and it is because I got fairly good at it.

So, I think if you’re willing to put the effort in, you can find that you will enjoy doing things that you never thought you would as long as you improve and get better at it, and some day get to be good at it. So, I’m convinced that we like the things that we are good at, you just have to give yourself a chance and the time to get good at it.

Pete Mockaitis
You know, that completely resonates. I remember I was in high school when a speaker, he’s still rocking, Fran Kick is his name, he spoke to our marching band, and he made this little diagram about…he was in the context of practicing a musical instrument and talked about work, fun, good. As you work, you get good. And as you’re good, it’s more fun. And then you’re more likely to want to work. And I was like, “That makes so much sense.” I remember this diagram, wow, nearly 20 years later because it resonates as really true, whether it’s something silly like, I think, games do this on purpose in terms of like, “Ooh, hey, you’re getting better, Jack. Keep playing us. Keep tapping away.”

Jeff Haden
Yup. And I think that’s really important for people because, like, say, in your job. You get a new job, you find that it doesn’t turn out to be what you hoped it would be, which is almost always the case. There are parts of it that you don’t like, and so people automatically think, “Oh, man, I don’t really like this. I need to find something different.” But if you can put the effort into trying to get better at the things that you don’t like, you may find that you really like them and you enjoy them. And it may not be the most fulfilling thing you’ve ever done in your life, but it always feels good to be good at something. And then when you are good at that, people ask you for advice, people ask you for help, people look up to you as a mentor. That feels good, too, so you get this really cool circle of fun from just having put in the time to get better at something.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so your book is called The Motivation Myth. What exactly is the myth that we’re busting here?

Jeff Haden
Well, I think I’ve alluded to it already, so since it’s fun to drop names, I’ll drop a name or two. So, I was talking to Venus Williams, and I said, “You’re you so this must’ve been your passion your whole life long.” She said, “No, no.” “Really?” “Dad started us out playing tennis. I thought, ‘Man, it would be fun to get better at this.’ I just kept trying to get better. And as I got better, it felt good and I just kept trying to get better.”

And so, I kind of added that up with I’m lucky enough that I get to talk to lots of really successful people in a variety of fields, and I’ve never found one of them that had that lightning bolt of inspiration somewhere along the way that’s like, “Oh, my gosh, I found my passion and I’m set for life, and I’ve got all the motivation I ever need.” They all just found something they were interested in, decided to try it, and then put in the time and effort to get better and create this little feedback loop, like you described, of effort equals success, equals happiness, equals more effort.

So, I contrasted that with a lot of the people that write to me, saying, “Hey, I’m not achieving my goals. I’m not getting anywhere. Do you have any advice for me?” And every one of them was saying, “I haven’t found my passion.” And so, the myth to me is that you have to find your passion first. When, really, what it is, is you have to just decide, “Hey, I want to try this. I have a goal. I’m going to figure out a process to get me there,” and we can talk about that, “And I will get all the motivation I need from my effort as opposed to receiving this motivation from some external source or this lightning bolt,” that carries you along your way.

So, the big takeaway is that you can create all the motivation you need if you know how.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, that sounds exciting, and I want to definitely get into the process and how that’s done. Now, first, let’s talk a little bit more about what not to do. And I noticed a couple of your reviews, I stalk my guests, in your book on Amazon, some of the reviews and some of your sales copy has some jabs at Tony Robbins. So, a fun fact, when I was a teenager, Tony Robbins was my hero and I wanted to be just like him. I’ve since adopted new role models although I still have learned very valuable things from Tony Robbins.

Jeff Haden
Absolutely.

Pete Mockaitis
So, what’s your hot take here?

Jeff Haden
Well, first of all, I did take a few shots at Tony. Tony is aware of the shots I took at him. Tony doesn’t mind and, in fact, we’ve collaborated on a few things since then, so I would never consider him a friend. I would never be so presumptuous as to say he’s a friend. But I know him and we get along fine, and I like him, and we just had a difference of opinion.

So, my shot at Tony was one of the things that they at least used to do, I don’t know if they still do, but they had the firewalk.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I’m a firewalker, Jeff.

Jeff Haden
You did? Okay.

Pete Mockaitis
I’ve walked it.

Jeff Haden
All right, then this is perfect. So, you’ve got the hot coals, and somehow, like that scene from The Office.

Pete Mockaitis
Right.

Jeff Haden
By walking across them, that shows you that you can do anything, and that sends you off on your way ready to conquer the world. There’s a little bit of truth to that, and I’m sure that that works. But the problem is that’s a very momentary thing and it’s not something you really put a lot of effort into. All you had to do was try to say, “Aargh,” you almost had to freeze your brain for a second and just go, which, that’s an important ability to have but that doesn’t help you when you’ve been working at something for six months or nine months or a year, and it’s hard, and you’re struggling, and you’re hitting roadblocks. How do you find the perseverance to work through that stuff? That’s a whole different kind of a play.

So, my shot at Tony was basically that if you want that momentary one-off, “Yes, I finally bungee jumped,” “Yes, I finally jumped out of a plane,” “Yeah, I walked across the hot coals,” not to downplay your experience. I’m sure it was awesome. But that’s not the thing that is going to get you a long-term dose of motivation that you need. It does prove to you that you can do things that you didn’t think you could do, and that is really important. But those are very kind of one-off momentary things. That’s not a long-term solution to a motivation problem.

Pete Mockaitis
I agree.

Jeff Haden
So, that was my shot at Tony.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Jeff Haden
So, it’s really not that bad of a shot if you think about it.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, certainly. I mean, you could say worse about any of us. You know what’s funny, my firewalking wasn’t that much of a challenge because it was raining the day of, and my feet were actually pretty cold on the asphalt parking lot of the hotel, it’s like, “Dude, my feet are cold. I want to get on those coals just to warm them up a little bit.”

Jeff Haden
How hot was it?

Pete Mockaitis
I don’t know the precise temperature but…

Jeff Haden
No, I mean, how hot did it feel?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, my experience was it was like, “Ooh, that’s kind of toasty.” And, now, if I were starting from a normal foot temperature, I don’t know. But it was fine, it was fun, and I learned some things, and, yeah, I think. Every thought leader has things that are more or less applicable to everyone, and that’s why we get a lot of voices. So, Let’s hear now. So, how do we get it going? So, we’ve got that sort of virtuous cycle. If I want to have more motivation, what are my first steps?

Jeff Haden
The first thing is the easiest place to start is with something that you’ve always wanted to do but haven’t. So, let’s just make something up. Let’s say your bucket list is not just to walk on hot coals from a tepid fire or parking lot, but you want to run a marathon. Let’s use that. So, you’ve always wanted to do so but you’re not even a runner. So, the first thing you do is you pick your goal, and then you say, “Okay, I’m going to forget the fact that…” if you harken back to the Monty Python movie Life of Brian, where the guy says, you know, “We’re all individuals,” and then one guy says, “I’m not.” Think that you’re not an individual and realize that there are perfectly good processes out there waiting for you to follow that are almost guaranteed for you to succeed if you put in the work.

Pete Mockaitis
I’m thinking of Hal Higdon’s program right there. Bam!

Jeff Haden
But what ends up happening is that people say, “Okay, I’m unique, I’m special, I need a bespoke process. There are things that I’m willing to do. There are things I’m not willing to do.” And by the time you’re done, you’ve boxed yourself into this thin little slice of effort and program that it’s not going to work for you. So, the first thing you do is say, “I’m willing to do what it takes to get there.” And if you’re not, then don’t even start because you’ve picked a hard goal. And the best way to find that process to work, that will work, is to forget about the idea of finding somebody to “coach” you. And I just used Dr. Evil air quotes. That instead of coaching you, the key is to find a pro. And by a pro, I mean someone who has done what it is you say you want to do.

So, if it’s a marathon, it’s a guy that you know or that you can connect with, and through social media you can connect with anybody you want at this point, and just say, “Hey, I admire you, I respect what you’ve done. I would like to run a marathon. Here’s where I’m starting from. If you were me, what would you do?” And what you’re going to get from someone like that, if they are truly someone who has done what you want to do, you’re going to get a hard process. You’re going to get the clear-eyed, cold, hard truth of, “Here’s what it takes to go and do that.”

And then, instead of whining about it, instead of saying, “Oh, but that’s not going to work for me, and I’m special and I’m unique,” or whatever. You say, “Okay, that is what I’m going to do,” and you give yourself two weeks, and you say, “For two weeks, I will follow this exactly. I’m not going to pop my head up and think about changing. I’m not going to worry about modifying. I’m not going to adapt. I’m going to do this.”

The reason for that is you don’t know enough about what it is you’re trying to do to be able to make smart revisions early on because you have no clue. And why would you? And if you revise, you’re probably going to revise to easier, which means you’re going to be less successful and make less progress. So, if you keep your head down for two weeks, invariably, you will pop up at the end of the two, and you will have gotten a little better, a little stronger, a little faster, a little smarter, whatever it is you’re trying to do. You will have seen improvement and you will realize that, “This works.” And by knowing that your effort paid off, we’re back to your band speech of, “Hey, I put in the effort, I’ve seen some success, that feels good, that makes me happy, that makes me get up tomorrow and do whatever it is I’m supposed to do tomorrow.”

And that’s the real key, is to forget about the distance between here, which is wherever you’re starting, and there, which is this long path that takes you to this goal that you want to achieve, and just focus on what you have to do today. And if you focus on today, and you do what’s on your list for today, you get to feel good about yourself at the end of the day because you’ve done what you set out to do, that’s motivating in itself, and that will keep you making progress. And then you get this endless source of motivation because every day you get to tap into it.

I know that was a long answer.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, no, I love it.

Jeff Haden
But it’s a simple way to approach it, and you can do almost anything that you want to do if you’re willing to follow that kind of process.

Pete Mockaitis
And I think it’s intriguing, like when you go through those steps of you talk to the pro, and then you follow it to a T for two weeks, and you observe some levels of improvement, you might say, “You know what, I actually am not that charged up about being able to run a little bit more now than I was before, about what’s happening to my body and my energy levels. As it turns out, running a marathon was cool in theory, but I don’t actually care about it and I can let go of it with peace.”

Jeff Haden
Yup. And that’s an awesome side effect because you do find out, “Is this really something I will enjoy doing?” Because the end result, you only get to enjoy that for a little bit. Actually, completing the marathon and getting your medal and having your picture taken, and all that other stuff, that’s a very small slice. If you don’t enjoy the day-to-day, then, to me, you’re kind of wasting your time because that’s a lot of effort to put into this momentary slice of, “Wow, I get to feel really good about myself.”

So, if you find at the end of two weeks that, “Yeah, this really isn’t for me, not because it’s too hard but because it really isn’t that fun and rewarding,” then you’ve done yourself a great service because you haven’t wasted six months kind of trying, kind of running, kind of feeling bad about yourself all the time whenever you don’t. And having that in the back of your mind, “Wow, that’s something I really want to accomplish,” saying no to your goals is as important as choosing the ones that you want to go after. It’s a cliché but it’s true. People have tons of goals but they don’t really know whether they want to do them or not, or they like the process. So, if you find ways to sift through that, then you’ll settle on the stuff that you really do like and you really do find enjoyable, and maybe you become a runner for the rest of your life or maybe you don’t.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’d love to get your take on I think a lot of goals fit very neatly with that, and maybe I’m just a quantifiable kind of a guy. I like quantification and so I’m thinking, “Hey, running. Hey, I’ve ran farther than I did before. I feel great about that accomplishment.” I’m thinking maybe sales, “Hey, I’ve made these sales calls.” Maybe writing, “I’ve cranked out these blogposts or these pages or this word count.” And so, I’m wondering about what if things are a little fuzzy? Like, let’s say I want to learn a skill. I have a goal, let’s say, to be a great presenter. I want to be confident and dynamic and inspiring. I guess that’s a little fuzzier in terms of, “Oh, how do I measure my speaking quality?” I guess I’d get a panel of judges in recurring intervals. What do I do?

Jeff Haden
It’s a good question, but I think you can still quantify that to some degree because the outcome, first of all, your goal is a little fuzzy, which is why that seems to be hard. Maybe your goal is instead of it being, “I want to be a great confident speaker,” maybe your goal is, “I want to do a TEDx,” for instance. All right, that’s a little more quantifiable but it carries with it the same qualities that you’re looking for if you just want to be a better speaker.

So, maybe you shift your goal into something that is more quantifiable. But then the rest of it, you can make it kind of numbers-based. You can say, “Okay, I’m going to create five different presentations. I’m going to rehearse them X number of times.” And you build a process that makes you better, that helps you gain the confidence, or you say, “I’m going to work my way up through the ranks of any local organization that will have me,” to, “Hey, I finally got a paid gig,” or whatever. So, you have to find some kind of quantifiable measures of success.

That’s like people that say, “I want to get in better shape.” What does that mean? That’s an admirable goal but it doesn’t mean anything. How do you figure out when you’ve gotten there and what it means to you? And so, therefore, how do you create a process that gets you there when you don’t even know what it means. Or, “I’d like to lose a little weight.” Well, okay, “I’d like to lose 10 pounds” is a little easier to work at because you have a process that you can create to get there.

So, I’ve gone all the way around the barn with my answer but, first of all, your goal needs to be sharper and a little more quantifiable, and then you can create a process and have milestones that actually tell you whether you’re getting there.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s handy. And so, some of those milestones can just be a matter of output, like, “Hey, I did these things. I said these are the five books, and I read the five books. I did 12 reps of different speeches, videotaping and reviewing of them, and I did the videotape and the review of them.” So, someone is just like, “I did the work and I feel great about that.” Or maybe you could say, “Hey, boss, this is something I’m working on. Can we get some video of before and after? And I’d like for you to tell me this is night and day better for these five reasons,” and that’s success.

Jeff Haden
And here’s another example. Like, say your goal is to be a better leader. All right. Well, that’s a pretty fuzzy one, too, but you can quantify that in different ways. You can say, “Okay, I want to be the leader that gets the most people promoted out of everyone else at my level.” That means you’re a good developer, that you’re putting people in great spots, you’re showing that they succeed, you’re giving them praise and recognition, you’re doing all those things. Or it could be numbers-based in terms of productivity or quality or whatever else it might be. So, you can find anything that seems fuzzy and you could put some quantifiable stuff around it. And then that gives you a structure where you’re actually working at the things that will make you that better leader.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah, and I dig that. And I guess I was being a little facetious earlier when I talked about, “Convene a panel of judges.” But I remember back when I was doing more keynotes on college campuses, I would have everyone fill out a little bit of an accountability form, like, “Hey, Pete, hold me accountable to doing this one thing.” So, I’d give them a follow-up email. And it’s like, “Hey, by the way, score me zero to five in how effective this was.” And I could actually see, hey, what percentage gave me the five. And then I’d also use similar language to, I guess I’m a little competitive, to what an organization that had many speakers to college students was using for their program evaluations, it’s like, “Oh, I could see what dozens of speakers got,” and I’m using the same question so I could compare against them, and then over time. And, sure enough, it was motivating.

Jeff Haden
I’ve done the same thing. Like, if I’m speaking at conferences, and I think this is a cute little tip that applies to just about anything. I can’t be the best speaker in the world, I don’t believe. But, going into a conference, I can try to be the best speaker that was there. I can be the one that people remember the most, or they got the most out of my presentation. Whatever it may be, I can try to “win” that event.

And so, if you approach it that way, now you have a goal. You can look at what other people are doing, you can decide how you’re going to stand out, you can make sure that you actually are speaking to what the audience needs and will benefit from. You could do all that kind of stuff. And you can apply that to your job. You can say, “All right. I’m not CEO yet but I can be the best supervisor in my department, and I can stand out there. And then when I get promoted, okay, now I’m going to be the best at this.” And it doesn’t make you competitive in a bad way. It just makes you evaluate yourself against other people and see where you fall short and see where you can do better. And that gives you something to tangibly do in order to improve your performance.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I think we’re spending a lot of time here but it’s time well-spent because just the feeling…

Jeff Haden
I’m long-winded. I’m sorry.

Pete Mockaitis
No, no, I’m saying I feel the difference as I’m imagining these goals in their fuzzy form versus their precise form, like get in better shape, or run more, is a lot different than, “Complete 26.2 miles.” And, likewise, “I want to give a great speech” is different than, “I want to receive the highest evaluations at this event or the highest ever evaluations I personally received are higher than I did last year at the event,” like kind of whatever. Like, it gets real sharp and clear, it’s like, “Oh, shoot. Well, then if I want to pull that off, well, then I’d better get a really clear understanding of this audience and their needs. Just doing something off the shelf probably ain’t going to cut it.”

Jeff Haden
And it allows you to make the most important comparison of all which is not to other people but to yourself and what you were doing yesterday, and how you can be today and tomorrow, because it brings that focus back to, “What do I need to do in order to get to this place that I want to be?” as opposed to, “Well, I’m doing better than he is so I must be winning.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Okay. Well, so I have so many things I wrote down so it might be a little bit jumpy.

Jeff Haden
That’s all right.

Pete Mockaitis
But here we’re going to go. You say there is a question that provides nearly every answer. What is this question, Jeff?

Jeff Haden
There can be one question that you ask yourself that will answer most of your questions, or that will help you make most decisions. It comes from Herb Kelleher, the passed-away CEO of Southwest Airlines. So, he framed every question that employees ask him because he’s thinking about the amount of decisions he had to make in a day. It was probably a zillion. So, he framed it with, “Will this make Southwest Airlines the lowest-cost provider?” If it would, great. It’s something worth exploring. If it wouldn’t, even if it was a seemingly great idea that might be fun, it would take them off in some other direction that didn’t drive towards whatever it is they were trying to achieve, and he could say no.

So, you can make your own one question for whatever it might be. If you want to be a better leader and you see an interpersonal issue between two of your employees, you ask yourself one question, “Would a great leader ignore this? Nah, you would probably step in.” So, you can frame everything you do as a boss through, “Would a great leader allow this? Would a great leader do this?” So, you can do that with anything. If you’re trying to lose weight, “Does a person trying to lose 10 pounds have two pieces of cake after dinner? Yeah, probably not.” “Does a person who wants to be better in band not put in the effort in order to play better?” That’s a dumb example but I was trying to harken back to you.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, sure.

Jeff Haden
But you can create your one question and it allows you to make a whole lot of decisions based on, “That’s my goal.” So, if you know your goal then you can allow that to inform the decisions you make, and then you don’t have to have this negotiation with yourself, like, “Oh, but I could have that piece of cake because tomorrow I’ll work out twice as long and I’ll burn the calories off.” Well, you never do. We never win those negotiations. But if you just say, “Hey, that’s not what I do, that’s not my goal, that’s not part of my thing,” it’s an easy decision to make. And in fact, it isn’t a choice at all, because it’s who you are, not what you have decided in that moment. If you can adapt to the identity, then everything is easy.

Do you have kids?

Pete Mockaitis
I do.

Jeff Haden
Okay. Do you wake up every day and think, “Hmm, I really need to be a good parent today”? No, you don’t. That’s not a decision. You’re a good parent. You try to be a good parent. That is who you are. You don’t have to make that decision. I know sometimes it’s hard. I’ve got four kids, I understand. But that’s part of your identity.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, you know, that is intriguing is that I put forth plenty of effort towards that end, and I have never asked myself that question. I’ve had self-doubt, like, “Am I really a good dad?”

Jeff Haden
Oh, absolutely.

Pete Mockaitis
“What do I need to do differently?”

Jeff Haden
And that’s a tough one so let’s use that differently. Let’s say that I know there’s a moment. We used the marathon example. For a while, if you’re training for a marathon and you haven’t run before, you see yourself as a person who has to go out and run. But, at some point, if you do it long enough and it becomes part of your daily routine and what you do, you see yourself as a runner. And when that’s part of your identity, no longer is it hard to go out for your run because that’s just what you do. It’s not hard for you to take care of your kids because that’s just what you do. It’s not a decision you have to make every time.

If you’ve worked at doing the right things as a leader, you don’t have to sit there and ask yourself a question about, “What is the right thing to do in this situation?” because you’re a leader, and you’re going to do what you need to do because that’s who you are. So, if you stick with something long enough, and it becomes part of your identity, it’s a really easy path to follow.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, while we talk about identity, I’m curious about where do you come out in the world of discipline, willpower, habits? What do you think about that stuff?

Jeff Haden
I think you can develop greater willpower. I think you can develop greater discipline. I think habits are easy to lose and really hard to create, and once you’ve fallen off of a habit wagon, it’s really hard to get back on. But I think the better approach is to find ways so that willpower is not required. So, like to start my day, I work from home and always have, or I have for about 20 years, so I get up, I brush my teeth. This is more information than you need. But I get up, I brush my teeth, I go downstairs, I sit down, I’ve already laid all my stuff for whatever the most important thing is I have to do that day. I did that last night. I have a bottle of water and a protein bar sitting there, and I start work. And I start work on whatever is the hardest or the most important thing.

That’s just what I do, and I’ve greased the skids, so to speak, so that it is easy as possible for me to sit down and get started, so I really don’t have to have any willpower because I’m not making any decisions. I’m just walking down, sitting down, opening up, eat while I go, it’s all good. If I eased into my day, checked some email, looked around some news, did a couple of goofy things, at some point I have to make that decision to flip the switch, and then I need some willpower in order to get going.

But if you do some kind of environmental architecture, so to speak, then you don’t need willpower. If you’re trying to drink less soda and more water, if you keep three or four bottles of water on your desk, and the soda is two rooms away, what are you going to drink? You don’t have to make a choice because the water is there and you reach for it. So, I think you can develop more willpower but it’s a lot easier if you find ways to make it so that the willpower isn’t required in the first place. And that is not as hard as it sounds like it should be.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly, yeah. Those simple environmental shifts will go a long way. Cool. I got you.

Jeff Haden
What’s that cheesy thing about if you eat on smaller plates, you’d think you’ve eaten more food? It does work.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah. Well, I think that some portion control…

Jeff Haden
There’s all kinds of stuff like that.

Pete Mockaitis
Totally. Like, if I’m drinking wine, talk about drinking, if I’m drinking wine directly out of the bottle…

Jeff Haden
Oh, yeah, you’re hammering.

Pete Mockaitis
It goes way faster than if I pour it into a glass first.

Jeff Haden
Yup. And if you do short pours every time, you’ll probably drink less. Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, certainly.

Jeff Haden
Yeah. That’s not really on topic, but still.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so I think, I mean, you can talk about your portion in any number of ways, whether it’s what’s on your to-do list or your food and drink, that’s either that you’re trying to eat more of or less of, that’s great.

Jeff Haden
But I do have one tip, if you don’t mind, about increasing your willpower. We all have these limits that we’ve created for ourselves, and it’s mostly out of habit where if you’re used to working eight hours, then into that ninth hour feels hard. So, an easy way to kind of reset your limits is not to try to go, “All right. Today, I’m going to do eight and a half.” But do something wildly past whatever your normal limit is, and it will allow you to reset.

So, I like to ride bikes, and so if I’m averaging 30-mile bike rides, if I, one day, just say, “You know what, I’m going to do a double. I’ll go 60,” then when you ride a 30 the next time, it seems really easy because, in your mind, you’ve done the 60 recently. So, a cool way to develop more willpower is to go way over the top of whatever it is you’re doing. You don’t want to do it every time because you’ll burn out pretty quickly. But that will reset what you think your internal limit is and it will take you a little farther. And maybe that’s doing something faster, not necessarily longer. It could be all kinds of shifts.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah, and that’s actually kind of exciting too when you’re in the midst of it. I remember one, there were a couple of times I did 10, 11 hours of coaching sessions in a day. That’s been a while since I’ve done that.

Jeff Haden
Ooh, that’s a long time.

Pete Mockaitis
And, sure enough, it made it seem easy when there’s a moderate four, five, six, seven hours of coaching in a day. And so, it’s been a while since I’ve done that, such that now it would seem very hard. But I remember, on those days it was exciting because it’s sort of like, “Oh, boy, we’re breaking a record.” It’s like, “Ooh, can I do it? Can I do it? Play the inspiring music. Do a little energizer dance.” It’s sort of like I had to dig deeper to just figure out how the heck to stay sane and focused and present and energized.

Jeff Haden
And the other funny thing about that was probably the first six or seven hours didn’t seem long at all because, in your mind, you knew you had a long way to go so you forgot about the whole, “Ooh, I’m already two-thirds away through my day. I can’t wait for the eight hours to be over,” or whatever it is. You’re just in it. You’ve settled in, you’ve found your Zen place kind of, and you’re just in it.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, you’ve got a term, an extreme productivity day, EPD. Is this sort of what we’re talking about? Is that a different concept for you?

Jeff Haden
No, it’s kind of the same thing where you say, “All right. I’ve got this task and it’s going to take me longer than some block of time I would usually associate with it but I really want to get it done.” So, let’s say you think it will take you 12 hours, and you just say, “You know what, I’m going to give it everything towards that, and that is going to be my day, whatever day it is,” and you prep yourself for it, and you set some things in place, and you let people know you can’t be disturbed, and there’s a lot of tips that I have with that.

But, basically, what you’re doing is you’re saying, “For this one day, I am going to knock this thing out,” and you create little breaks for yourself, and you make sure you’re hydrated, and you make sure you get snacks along the way, and all those other things. But the idea is that every once in a while, you take something that has been kind of nagging at you, you haven’t been able to get done, and you just say, “For this day, that’s what I’m going to finish.” And it feels awesome when you’re done, and that also ratchets up your productivity expectations because you realize that if you put your mind to it, you can, which sound like a little Tony Robbins, yes, it will, but that’s okay.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. And it just has all sorts of follow-on effects in terms of you feel great about just your self-confidence and ability to rock and roll. Well, awesome. Jeff, tell me, anything else you want to make sure to mention about motivation before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Jeff Haden
No, let’s go. Let’s do some quick ones.

Pete Mockaitis
Let’s hear about your favorite quote.

Jeff Haden
So, my favorite is from Jimmy Spithill. He was America’s Cup-winning skipper some years ago, Team Oracle, I believe it was. And his quote is, “Rarely have I seen a situation where doing less than the other guy is a good strategy.” And I like that because I’m not as smart as most people, I’m not as talented as most people, I’m not as connected, all those other things, but if I want a competitive advantage, I can always try to outwork you.

Pete Mockaitis
What I also like is that it’s rarely, it’s like occasionally in workaholic burnout situations that is the better move. But rarely.

Jeff Haden
Yup, exactly. So, that’s the quote I like.

Pete Mockaitis
And how about a favorite study, or experiment, or bit of research?

Jeff Haden
One of my favorites is, it’s kind of hard to describe, but if I was going to sum it up, it’s that if you talk about your intention, let’s say you’ve decided you’re going to do something, and you talk about it to other people, you are significantly less likely to actually accomplish what it is you say that you are going to do. And I have a quote that I wrote down, it’s from this researcher, “When other people take notice of an individual’s identity-related behavioral intention,” it sounds like a researcher wrote it, “this gives the individual a premature sense of possessing the aspired-to identity.” So, if I say that I’m going to run a marathon, and you and I are talking about it…

Pete Mockaitis
Good for you, Jeff. You’re amazing. Wow.

Jeff Haden
I know.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s so great, Jeff.

Jeff Haden
Inside, I feel like I have already done it. And so, therefore, I’ve gotten some of the mental kick out of it, and I’m much less likely to do it. So, if you feel like you need some people to hold you accountable, like you need an accountability buddy, or you want the peer pressure to keep you on your task, don’t talk about the goal other than just very briefly. Talk about the process you’re going to follow and have them hold you to that. So, instead of, “Hey, how’s it going towards your marathon?” It should be, “Hey, you said you were going to run three times this week. Did you?” And hold me accountable to my process because process is going to get you there. Goal isn’t going to get you there.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Thank you. And how about a favorite book?

Jeff Haden
I’m going to go with two. One is So Good They Can’t Ignore You by Cal Newport. It’s about probably six or eight years old but I really like it, and if, for no other reason, then it kind of helped inform some of the stuff that I wrote about where it’s all about process and identity and you can learn to find passions through doing things as opposed to having to discover them. And the other one is The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle. Do you watch Billions, the Showtime show?

Pete Mockaitis
You know, not yet. It keeps coming up more and more. I’m going to have to take a peek.

Jeff Haden
You should. I don’t love this season as much but the first three especially are really good. But, anyway, one of the characters on there actually was reading that book last night, and I emailed Daniel, and said, “Hey, did you know that was coming?” And he said, “No, but it’s really cool.”

Pete Mockaitis
It reminds me, we had Kim Scott who wrote Radical Candor on the show, and then I was watching Silicon Valley, and they kept referencing it, it’s like, “Ah, what’s Kim have to say?” And so, I went on Twitter, so that’s a fun moment.

Jeff Haden
Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
When us semi-famous people have moments of TV-style fame.

Jeff Haden
Yup, it is always fun to see. It is always fun to see people you know, or have talked to, or somehow have some sort of small relationship with, out there somewhere, and you go, “Oh, that’s really cool.” I don’t know. It’s like you lived through them a little bit.

Pete Mockaitis
And how about a favorite habit?

Jeff Haden
I already talked about that. That’s to start my day with the most important thing that I need to do and prep for it the night before because all the decisions are gone. And the cool thing about that is when you get it done, instead of saying, “Wow, I’m finished,” and you’ve lost motivation. You’ve actually gained it because you knocked off that tough thing and it creates momentum that takes you into the rest of your stuff.

Pete Mockaitis
Right on. And is there a particular nugget you share that you’re known for, people quote it back to you frequently?

Jeff Haden
Quoted back to me? No, but I have something that I just read recently that I really like. It’s called The Ben Franklin Effect. And so, the idea is that if you think someone doesn’t like you particularly well, and you’d like to kind of bridge that relationship or make it better, ask them to do you a favor. And, typically, they will find that they like you better, which sounds totally counterintuitive. Psychologists say it’s because there’s cognitive dissonance involved which means that you couldn’t have done me a favor if you didn’t like me, so somehow you reconciled that in your mind.

I think it’s because when you help someone, and they appreciate it, you feel better, and you like that. We always like to help people and be appreciated, and that makes us like people more. But either way, if you have somebody you don’t think you’re getting along with very well, oddly enough, ask them to do you a favor, then thank them profusely and they will probably end up liking you better.
So, that means if you ask me for a favor, then I’ll know that there’s a problem with our relationship.

Pete Mockaitis
No. Well, I feel like it’s a favor that you’re on the show, and maybe you feel like I’m doing you a favor because exposure and platform…

Jeff Haden
Maybe it’s mutually beneficial.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, there we go. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Jeff Haden
Oh, I write for Inc. Magazine, so if you go to Inc.com I’ve got several thousand articles there. Probably I’m a LinkedIn influencer, which is the only time I’ll ever be on a list with Richard Branson and Bill Gates and those folks. And so, I do accept connection requests. I wouldn’t appreciate it if you say you want to connect, and then the very next thing you say to me is, “Would you buy this from me?” then that’s not really my favorite thing.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I agree.

Jeff Haden
That’s not my favorite thing but, nonetheless, I do connect with people, and I will certainly talk to them there.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool. All right. Well, tell me, any final challenges or calls to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Jeff Haden
I guess I would go back to what I said earlier where whatever you are doing, try to find some slice of that that you can be the best at. Say you’re going to a meeting, you don’t necessarily have to “win the meeting,” but maybe you can be the most prepared, or maybe you can be the one with the most research to your disposal, or maybe you can be the one that helps kind of keep the conversation on track or whatever it is. Find some way to be the best person at something at whatever it is you are doing and that habit will lead you to a lot of success.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I like that a lot. And sometimes you can just be the person who seems the most engaged and listening in a meeting, like that gives a great energy in terms of you’re not checked out on your phone

Jeff Haden
It also makes you feel better about yourself. I ride bikes a lot and I have people that I’ll ride with sometimes that are professional cyclists, which means that I’m in a world of hurt for the whole time and sometimes can’t keep up, and so I know that I can’t do the most pulls from the front. There’s a lot of stuff I can’t do, but I can be the guy who always has a couple of spare tubes, a couple of CO2 cartridges in case somebody has a flat. I’ve got a couple extra bottles of water, so I can be the little Sherpa of sorts on the group ride, and I can do that. And that makes me feel better about the fact I’m there. It gives me a little sense of belonging in that way and actually makes it a little bit more fun, so I get to be that guy. So, I’m winning that one small thing, but when you do that, you feel a little better about yourself. And ain’t that what we’re all looking for?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, absolutely, and it’s great for your own confidence. Once again, I’m going back to the college keynoting stuff. It’s like, maybe this event has a lot of topnotch speakers or super famous heads of state, whatever, speak at that school, and I think, “I might not be the greatest speaker that you see this year, the most famous or inspiring. But, by golly, I am the most equipped to resolve tech headaches. I got every adapter you could conceive of, and some cables, and some transmit…”

Jeff Haden
I’m going to be the AV guy’s best friend.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s right, the AV guys are like, “Do you have the adapter?” “I got every adapter.”

Jeff Haden
Yeah, and I look at that, sometimes I’ll be invited to things or…and I just say, “You know what, I’m going to be the lowest maintenance person they have ever worked with. I’m going to be the least needy, the least babysat, the least whatever, the most accommodating, that’s going to be me. And even if I’m not perfect at everything else, that I can do.”

Pete Mockaitis
That’s great. So, it’s affirmative somewhere, gets you the confidence and the feel good and momentum. Love it.

Jeff Haden
Awesome.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Jeff, this has been a treat. I wish you much luck and motivation in all your adventures.

Jeff Haden
Thank you, sir. I appreciate it. I really enjoyed it. Thank you for doing it. Thanks for your prep. It was really fun.

Jun 14
0

578: How to Stay Calm and Productive Amid Uncertainty with David Lebel

By | Podcasts | No Comments

 

 

David Lebel says: "Fear can be adaptive."

Professor David Lebel shares tactics for overcoming the fear of the uncertain and building the courage to speak up.

You’ll Learn:

  1. Simple, but powerful ways to ease your anxiety
  2. The surprising cost of leaving things unsaid
  3. A handy script for when you need to disagree

About David

David Lebel is an award-winning teacher and researcher, currently serving as Assistant Professor of Business Administration at the Joseph M. Katz Graduate School of Business at the University of Pittsburgh. Dave has received multiple teaching awards and was the highest rated professor at the Katz school during the 2017-2018 academic year. His research focuses on proactive behaviors at work including voice/speaking up, innovation, and taking initiative.

Dave received a BS in Economics, an MS in Management, and a PhD in Organizational Behavior, all from the Wharton School of Business, University of Pennsylvania. Prior to pursuing a PhD, he was a management consultant with Deloitte, providing strategy and operations expertise to public sector clients, and an analyst for a large $15 billion privately held supply chain organization.

He lives with his family in Pittsburgh, PA.

Resources mentioned in the show:

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David Lebel Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Dave, thanks so much for joining us here on the How to be Awesome at Your Job podcast.

David Lebel
Thanks. I really appreciate being here. Looking forward to talking with you this afternoon.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m looking forward to it as well and I think we’ll have a lot of good chats about being proactive, and facing fear, and speaking up, and initiative, and all that. But I understand your initial entrée into the world of work was not quite as illustrious. Can you tell us a bit about that?

David Lebel
Yeah. So, right after graduating from business school, I got my first job with a large wholesale grocer, and it was a relatively typical job in the sense that it was like a business analyst. I was going to be an internal consultant, helping them solve problems. But I remember going on my first day of work, having like an orientation, having a good day. At the end, they said, “We have a present for you.” And I said, “Whoa.” And then we opened it up and there was a box of steel-toed boots, and we were like, “What is this for?” And they said, “You’re going to be working in the warehouse for three weeks.”

And we had some inkling that we were going to be doing some stuff in the warehouse but we didn’t know we’d be working in the warehouse, like on the shop floor. So, we actually worked the night shift for three weeks, and it was 9:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m. because that’s when you do most of the distribution for groceries, and it was a large wholesale grocer. It did most of the distribution for New England, in Pennsylvania, and grocery stores, so most of those trucks go out in the middle of the night, so we were working night shifts and we had to pick cases.

So, you’re in this gigantic warehouse and you had to go up and down the aisles, riding on these scooter things, and picking cases of cereal and snacks, and putting them on a pallet, and then getting them ready to go on the truck. And I remember getting made fun of. The workers, they would say, like computer hands, I would get callouses all over.

And so, it impressed my girlfriend, and now wife, at the time. I guess it was a little bit blue collar, like this tough guy. And it was a very interesting time because I remember me and my roommate and colleague at the time, we’d finish our shift about 6:30-7:00 o’clock in the morning, and we’d get dinner at the all-you-can-eat-buffet at the hotel. We’d watch the opening of the stock market at like 8:00-8:30 and we’d go to bed, and then repeat.

So, I was this hotshot business school graduate ready to solve problems, and here I was, we’re working on the shop floor for three weeks, but it taught me so much about the entire business. And then when I worked in procurement months later, I could talk to the warehouse guys much easier and totally understand what they were, what their perspectives, and like jointly solve problems that way. So, it actually ended up being a great way for me to see the entire organization, and then proactively come up with ideas. Because in procurement, I could say, “Hey, look, we could do this but that’s going to be an issue for the warehouse guys. Maybe we should do it this way where we both can gain.” And so, just seeing the whole organization, it actually ended up being a great first job for many ways.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that is cool and I really dig sort of forward-thinking organizations that go there as well as humble people who are like, “Excuse me, I have a fancy business school degree.” So, that’s cool. Now, you’ve got a number of areas of expertise, and I’m really interested in talking a bit about fear, and speaking up, and having a touch of coronavirus influence when it comes to fear and workers in the mix. So, can you orient us in terms of what are you known for? What are you the expert in?

David Lebel
Yeah. So, I did my dissertation on different types of fear at work, especially in relation to speaking up. And we actually know quite a bit about this and it’s very, very pervasive leading people to remain silent. And you just see it now in the news. You speak up and someone gets fired. You see that at a very high level. And there’s a lot of research on this, and it really almost comes from our parents, from little kids, like you’re taught not to ask too many questions.

And so, there’s some good research on showing that this type of fear gets started when we’re very, very young, a fear of authority, so we don’t want to challenge them even when we’re older. There are other concerns like material concerns, just, “I don’t want to lose my job. Like, if I speak up, maybe my boss might demote me or even fire me.” And so, those are pretty heavy-rooted fears, and those are very difficult to overcome.

I also did some research on external fears. This is in a work setting so fears of economic downturn impacting the organization. That would be very relevant now. Like, let’s say if you’re working in a startup restaurant that might be fighting for survival. You’re just looking out at all these external problems going on, loss of consumers, and you might actually speak up with ideas to help go about that.

Now, that’s what my dissertation was on, and I found that when leaders really were supportive or when employees really identified with the organization, meaning they kind of saw the organization, themselves as one with the organization, they spoke up more even despite those external fears, those fears of losing business. And that was kind of the novel contribution because we know that fear often just really shuts down voice. And so, I was looking for some instances when a certain type of fear, employees might overcome and still be able to speak up.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s intriguing. So, then it’s the notion that when you identify with the business, or the organization, the employer workplace, then you’re more likely to experience those butterflies or tingles or manifestations of fear, and say that, “It’s worth it. I’m going to speak up because…” It’s kind of like, I guess I’m speculating, you fill me in. It’s sort of like, “This is a part of me. Like, the performance of this organization, what we’re doing, what we’re up to is something that I genuinely care about. And so, thusly, I am willing to make a bit of a risk or a sacrifice to support it.” Is that kind of the mechanism there? Or how would you articulate it?

David Lebel
Yeah, no, I think that’s a good way of articulating it. And kind of what I thought about in my dissertation was more about protecting the organization, right? And so, fear, when we feel fear, we’re protecting something, mostly ourselves. And what that identity was doing was making it more outward, protecting the organization.

And same thing with supportive supervisors. They were helping the employees, at least I was speculating that those supportive supervision helped the employees take that fear, channel it, move it away from an internal focus, and think about ways to channel the fear towards protecting the larger entity, it could be a team or the organization.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah, so let’s maybe zoom out and talk about the experience of fear for workers more broadly in terms of kind of what’s behind it, so we’re looking to protect something, often ourselves. And then if we’re feeling fear, and let’s talk about the coronavirus context, like you think, “Uh-oh, I don’t know if I’m  going to be stricken with an illness, or if someone I love and care about will be stricken, or if my job is still going to be there, or if I’m going to get the government support, or I’m not going to get the government support, or I’m going to starve but it’s going to dry up.” So, in a world of high fear and uncertainty, how do we deal?

David Lebel
It’s really tough because a lot of our first reactions with protection are kind of very rigid, kind of the opposite of what you want during these times to be able to adapt. I mean, that’s a natural thing. When we get fearful, we constrict our focus, we narrow our focus of attention. And sometimes it’s very good if you already have an existing habit or routine to deal with a situation, but in this case, it’s not happening because we all have to develop completely new routines, right? We’re working from home, we have kids at home during work, and so your routine is completely disrupted so this makes it really, really difficult.

And I think, for me, even just starting at a basic level, simple things, like even articulating, “I’m afraid. I’m afraid of something.” I’m afraid of what is it? Losing my job? Is it coming down with the virus, of being depressed? It could even be, “I’m afraid of not seeing my coworkers, friends, family for a period of time.” And they think it may seem like such a small step, but articulating it, there are different protective measures that you need for each of those different types of fear.

And so, fear can be adaptive when you start to think about what it is and what’s appropriate for the situation, how you might be able to protect yourself. Or, in some ways, if you turn it outwards again, and I think I’ll use that a lot today, if you’re thinking about, “Maybe I don’t have to focus on my work. Maybe I can focus on protecting my kids, just making sure that they’re safe and that they’re happy.” And I think that’s something to do.

And if you’re alone working at home, I think if it’s work-focused, just develop some sense of efficacy. That’s another way to overcome fear. And so, take something that you’re very good at, start off with one goal a day and accomplish it. And, again, it might seem very small, but just that small act of accomplishing something, feeling like I did something today, recognizing that you are good at something, I think that can help, at least temporarily, distract you from those fears. And it’s like small wins, like goal-setting, small wins, do a little bit each day and kind of build the pile.

And I got to admit, and especially for your listeners, and I teach this stuff, in this situation, I thought it very hard, and I’m literally now on my desk, kind of lists of just start small, small wins, one thing a day, and then kind of check that off, and it feels good to check it off. And then I start to work earlier today, and then by 8:30, I was basically done with that task, and I felt really good about that. And so, I think, well, maybe I’ll add to my routine, like start work a little bit earlier, and then go help the kids with their lessons for a little bit.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, there’s a lot of powerful actionable stuff right off the bat there in terms of so the fear bubbles up when there’s something sort of at risk, like a loss may occur, lost of job, loss of income, loss of health, loss of fun times, seeing friends, family, and sort of that is kind of what’s behind fear. And, thusly, we want to respond via protection, taking a protective action, and so one tool is to just kind of shift the focus on who and what we’re protecting. Another tool is to just identify, articulate it clearly, “I’m afraid of this,” sort of unmasked, and then you can look at it straight on. And another one is efficacy, just get something done and feel good about what you’re capable of and how you work it.

So, those are some great tools right off the bat. And then, in the particular context of speaking up, it’s like are there extra considerations there in terms, or is it all just sort of the same guidelines apply?

David Lebel
So, overcoming fears of speaking up?

Pete Mockaitis
Right. So, you have an idea, you think, “Hmm, you know, this is going to maybe be upsetting to someone. It’s a different perspective. It can make me seem out there, or dumb, or offensive to the big boss who has the opposite point of view.” How do we manage that?

David Lebel
Yeah. So, I’ll start with what I think is the most intriguing way to overcome your fears of speaking up, and then I’ll kind of back into some of the more, what I figured are the more smaller steps. But the first one I think is another negative emotion, actually anger, one. And so, I’m picking it outside the context of coronavirus here, I’m talking about work settings here.

Pete Mockaitis
Sure.

David Lebel
A lot of times, in anger, maybe out of injustice or mistreatment is something that can really fuel overcoming fear and put it almost completely aside. But, again, there, it almost ties to something bigger, like almost some sense of injustice or mistreatment, and that is something that could often overcome that, can overcome the fears of speaking up. The caution there, of course, is if the impetus is a negative emotion, you may not communicate your idea very well, especially in a work setting. So, there, “Am I going to blow up about this in a meeting?” And kind of the better way might be to regulate the emotion in the sense of you recognize that you have it, table it completely but think about a better channel or a better time, especially maybe one on one as opposed to a meeting.

And so, it’s not easy to do with anger. It could often provide the fuel, and it’s really effective if the person has some control over that emotion. So, there’s always a caveat there. So, that’s one thing, is when you see things, and I encourage people. When they see things at work that they know aren’t right I mean, use that, recognize that, again, label it, and so that might help you…because you’re probably going to be wearing, “Well, will the boss get mad at me?” But use the anger as an indicator that there’s probably something strong here and worth speaking up about, maybe not right now in the moment, but maybe shortly thereafter, or maybe with the help of someone else, maybe form a coalition or something like that. But use that anger kind of productively as an indicator emotion that there’s something wrong that needs to be addressed.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s great. Well, hey, there’s one. Keep it coming. Lay it on us.

David Lebel
There are some other ones. I mean, there are some people who can just, again, develop an ability for this. I find myself either, if I know it’s going to be a contentious issue and I’m afraid about it, it’s almost like giving a speech. It’s not the length of the speech but it’s just for two minutes kind of hearing the idea play out even for myself. I mean, I’ll use my wife, trusted coworkers, just to hear it so it’s not all inside your head, because if it’s all inside your head, that’s usually how anxiety gets there.

So, just hearing yourself kind of articulate what you want to say can be really helpful because when you get in the meeting, and it may not be even like a big issue, but when you’re in the meeting and you start to say, “Well, maybe…oh, now is not a good time. I’m too nervous.” If you’ve already practiced it, the likelihood is much greater that you actually follow through on it. So, just hearing yourself speak that morning, the night before, on your commute to work, will greatly increase the likelihood you have the courage to speak up when the time comes.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I like that. Boy, we jumped right to the how because I got so excited. Well, maybe I should take a step back and establish the why. You know, being afraid isn’t so pleasant. But could you really paint a picture in terms of what is the cost of this fear in terms of lost productivity, or great ideas that are not shared, or dissenting opinions that could preempt very bad decisions from being made but weren’t made. I mean, I’m sure it’s staggering even though, how you would begin to estimate that. But what’s your sense of what’s at stake here with regard to fear and not speaking up, and what’s it’s costing all of us?

David Lebel
When you go down so many examples in history, like recently coronavirus, the healthcare row a couple of years ago, examples of war where soldiers weren’t listened to about issues, and there’s some really, really important stuff. And then at work, I think this is one of the most important things, lost productivity, things like mistreatment at work go unaddressed, just people aren’t willing to speak up. And I understand, having been an employee for many years myself, having been in academia where I find myself many times saying, “I’m not going to speak up until I get tenure or until I have a protection.”

So, I’m very well aware of all these things but I think the organization really suffers, and a lot of times I end up speaking up because I realize that I’m suffering. Even if somebody else is being affected, I just don’t want to see somebody else treated that way. And I think you find, again, for me, again, just turning it outwards to realize it’s not just about me, it’s about something bigger. And I think people, I plead with people out there to have the courage to speak up, or at least share the idea with others to maybe hear others tell you that, yeah, you really need to speak up about this, or maybe they’re willing to speak up on your behalf, so go through channels.

So, there’s a caution here. Go to your peers for feedback. A lot of times that can lead to just kind of complaining about it, so there’s some good studies that just going to your peers leads to very low-quality voice. So, I think go to your peers for advice and say, “Hey, I really want to get your input on this. You’re a trusted confidante or an expert on this area,” and keep it about the idea because, otherwise, a lot of times going to your peers can lead to just more complaining about the situation, right? And then you’re just kind of bitching about it for 20 minutes and then no one gets anywhere.

But I think if you go to other people and get advice first, they may say, “Yeah, I’m facing the same thing,” and then it becomes more powerful and even more important to speak up, or you realize that there’s strength in numbers, so don’t keep it inside your head again. But I think the anxiety will just get much greater if it just stays inside your head. The rationale calculus of, “Is it worth me speaking up?” versus the benefits for others, if you stay inside your head, I’m going to guess that the fear and anxiety is going to overweigh that calculus most of the time. So, I think just articulating it to other people and asking them about it can go a long way.

Pete Mockaitis
Excellent. And I would love to hear some success stories in terms of folks who were fearful or not speaking up in the organization and their own careers for being held back, but then they did something and made it happen. Could you regale us with a tale or two of victory?

David Lebel
Yeah, so I think a lot of good examples, and I’ll stick to some generic ones, but a lot of people find they start off in their careers and they spoke up a lot, and then they get penalized in some way, and so they kind of go cold turkey and stop the other way. And there’s this great book Tempered Radicals which kind of talks about striking the balance there. It’s an organization, there are norms, and you can’t just always completely challenge things.

And so, what people learn is kind of how to dissent but within the intricacies of the system. And I think the ways to do that are, again, thinking about the organization, thinking about why you’re being affected, why you want to speak out. First, start there but also think about, “Well, is this my boss’ idea? Is it in line with the organization’s values or goals or metrics? How can I sell this issue a little bit better in line with the organization?” And that’s really where the success comes from.

So, I think if you say, even if it’s a really big issue about turnover, about benefits, or mistreatment, if you start off by saying, “Look, you know, I really care about the organization, or I care about this team, and we’re a high-performing team but we’re really suffering lately because of this. And I’m seeing these issues, and here are some suggestions that I have.” I think it’s hard for most reasonable bosses and supervisors to argue with that and argue against that.

And so, one thing, and this is advice for speaking up and being proactive, if you realize that it might be a challenging issue, well, one, always certainly raise problems but come up with suggestions too. Like, you have to do both. Articulate the problem and present a suggestion, but also think about the perspective of the other side, how they may react, and what’s something that might be of interest to them. Your interest might be other-focused but you might lean on their self-interest, right, in pitching the idea by sticking to the bottom line, or talking about the benefit to financial metrics.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I think those are some great principles. Can you bring them to life by hearing about someone who used it and saw something happen?

David Lebel
Yeah, I think some good examples where I’ve always done this is where when I was a consultant. I always start off by saying, “This is something that the client is facing.” I almost put it through the eyes of the other person, right? Tell the story about the customer and the client. I almost always had good responses from bosses and supervisors. And even a crazy story about someone who got dragged…it was sort of a disagreement, and somebody said, “Hey, that’s not right,” it was an advisor, a mentor, actually, who got dragged out by the ear into the other office, but in the office they said, “Look, this was about my colleagues. It’s not about me.”

And that ended up having a good resolution because it ended up being a crazy situation where speaking up led to anger on both sides, and someone getting dragged into an office. But in the end, this focus on other people ended up leading to a solution afterwards. And, eventually, after the boss, crazy boss kind of calmed down, led to some success there.

Pete Mockaitis
Great. And so, you mentioned some particular approaches and practices and principles in terms of thinking about their interests and such. I’d love it, are there any particular words, phrases, scripts, fits of verbiage that you found just tend to be very helpful again and gain as you’re playing this game?

David Lebel
Yeah, I mean, I think the catchphrase, and these maybe very stock phrases, you know, things by saying, “This just might be me,” or, “This might come out of left field,” or, “Maybe I’m not the expert here.” I think what you find is that, especially in interdependent contexts where, “We’re all working together, and the actions I take impact the other members of the team,” what you find is that people who hedge just a little bit. By hedging, I mean like disclaimers. Use intonation when you speak for questions at the end as opposed to making declarative statements. Kind of hedge a little bit by taking the edge off at the end.

You can use uhm’s, maybe’s, stuff like that. And people in business tend to think, “I have to be powerful all the time.” But sometimes with these types of issues that could raise conflict, it’s good to use a little bit of hedges and qualifiers in your speech because that can kind of take the edge off and not create as much conflict with others.

Pete Mockaitis
And if we are in more of a leadership-influencer role, how can we encourage folks to have less fears in speaking up and speak up more often so we get the info we need to make great choices?

David Lebel
Yeah, one thing is just asking questions. If leaders sit down, if you’re a manager and you’re a leader, and we’re used to saying things, being assertive, trying to get our way, I mean, if you take a few minutes before a meeting and think about some questions you want to ask, I think most people, especially in the United States where we’ve very assertive and aggressive, it’s actually not that easy to ask good questions. It actually takes a lot more thought. And so, it takes some planning to think about, “What kind of information do I want to draw out? What kind of perspectives? What data do I need?” And just doing that, and I find this with myself even when I’m teaching that I’m often asserting rather than asking questions, and it always is the case that when I ask good questions, the conversation is much, much richer.

And so, I think as leaders, taking the time just to write a few questions rather than, you know, we’re all used to, “What’s the agenda for today? Here’s what I want accomplished in this meeting.” Adding some questions if you do in every meeting, you’re going to naturally get more communication, more feedback from people, so that would naturally spur voice.

Then, number two, I think is, and I see this in parenting all the time, how you react to other’s opinions and minor mistakes, and I see this with kids. But you see with employees because the minute the boss kind of even has a little bit of a blowup with a minor mistake, or someone else’s opinion, even if you built up a norm or a culture or kind of a climate within a team, that’s one of speaking up, one misstep like that from the leader can really create the cascade of fear not just among the person you’re dealing with but with the whole team.

So, you have to be really careful about that and how you respond because that’s really a cue of psychological safety. If the boss just blew up over this minor thing, how is he or she going to handle an even a bigger issue, right? And that will really flatten voice because they might think, “If I spoke about some little thing, and I’m getting a negative reaction, no way am I going to speak up about something that I think might be of more consequence.”

Pete Mockaitis
Right. And I think that How to be Awesome at Your Job listeners are so cool, and kind, and generous, and compassionate. I mean, I genuinely like all of you, which is cool. Some audiences are really weird, no offense, but ours is awesome. Anywho. So, I think that most of us are, you know, got things under control so we’re not going to start screaming or name-calling or swearing. I imagine there’s also a lot of more subtle ways that we can put the kabash on psychological safety and foment some more fear of speaking up. Can you highlight a couple things that maybe we don’t even know that we’re doing that we should cut out?

David Lebel
Yeah, and I think even from my own experience, especially early on, it’s actually not these over-the-top reactions, these extreme cases. It’s really the more everyday mundane examples. And so, I would speak up in that first job as a business analyst, I have a lot of ideas for procedures, better technology, and my boss wasn’t negative about it, but the boss, she was just like, “Okay, go ahead and just do it.” And I was very quizzical, like, “I don’t have a budget. Most of my coworkers are much older than I am. How do I have status with them? How am I going to convince them?”

So, it was that minor reaction that led me to stop speaking up because it wasn’t that they were like yelling at me or getting angry, there was no penalty, but they weren’t really considering it. They were like, “Just go and do it.” And I said, “No, I kind of need your help with this.” So, the issue was responsiveness to it. So, I think in a meeting, the boss may not even realize it, you cut off someone’s opinion. And so, when you might reflect later on about that meeting, if you think like, “Maybe I didn’t respond to that.” The boss or the supervisor should say, “Maybe I should follow up with that person just to make sure,” afterwards and take that extra step to say, “You know, you were talking about this and maybe I didn’t hear you. Let’s hear a little bit more about that idea.”

And I think if it’s a lot more subtle than that, and I think a lot of times even if you’re not going to take action, following up on it. And so, a lot of times you have lots of reasons and good reasons not to pursue an idea because you, as a leader, have a wider perspective. And so, just communicate that because I think employees, a lot of times, don’t hear that, and they think that their idea just got thrown in the waste basket. And I think they just want to hear that it was at least considered, and that goes a very, very long way.

Pete Mockaitis
You know, that’s a great point, and I think that might be counterintuitive to some leaders who think, “Oh, I don’t want to dump on him like, ‘Dave, let me tell you six reasons why that idea is not going to work.’” Yeah, of course, there’s better ways you could do that, like, “Hey, Dave, I really appreciate you bringing that up. I think that really would be effective in driving these particular results. At this time, we’re not going to move forward with it because of these other concerns, A, B, and C. Please keep it coming.”

And then I think that benefits you as well because you now have a greater context or an understanding of the broader situation, and so it’s like, “Huh, okay, I didn’t know that was the thing. Well, now, that I do, that’s going to sharpen my subsequent ideas and considerations moving forward.”

David Lebel
And most employees just want to have good process, so a lot of times employees are much more motivated, they’re much more satisfied just by hearing that you thought about their idea. A lot of times they understand that not everything can be implemented and changed, and so employees often, when they’re asked, actually don’t always care about the end results, sometimes they do, but a lot of times it’s just being heard, that’s enough for them, not the end change. So, bosses can gain, and supervisors, leaders can gain a lot of traction just by really taking extra time to communicate that you’ve listened, that you’ve heard, but also maybe give a reason you’re not able to implement something. And that really helps keep up employee motivation, not just to speak up again but their overall satisfaction at work.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, tell me, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

David Lebel
No, I think, well, one thing I want to say was for employees to be thinking about in these times. You know, if they want to be proactive, there’s generally three types of performance, adaptive, and core tasks performance. And so, I think in these times where we’re facing so many challenges, focus on, and I‘m just going to assume this, your core tasks. Get those done first. But there are two other types of performance. The proactivity part which is a speaking up part, and the adaptivity part.

And I think people are saying, “Should I still be proactive and doing all these things?” I’m not so sure. It requires a lot of energy to do these things, focus on the core tasks, and also focus on that adaptation part, especially during these times, and then maybe kind of look out into the future about what comes next. And so, I think people nowadays, I’m still hearing when I’m talking to some coworkers and others, even students, like, “Should I be looking out into the future and being proactive?” I’m not so sure in these current times. Normally, I say yes, but under these circumstances, we might not have the energy.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s a great point. Like, you may not have the energy, yeah. If one of my colleagues said, “Pete, I got 10 great ideas. We got to optimize this podcast.” I’d say, “That’s cool. Maybe give me your favorite or maybe begin evaluating those on your own,” because it is, it’s kind of hard to just, you know, nail the basics right now.

David Lebel
Yeah, exactly. You might want to refrain some of that more group-oriented proactivity now. Focus on the self. If you’re going to do something proactive, make it skill development, like Zoom training or something else like that, or learning some new technology. There I’d make it for the self. But I think some of these other behaviors that really help organizations and teams function, I think now just getting the baseline setup first, and then making sure you get your core tasks and adaptive, especially for people who may be worried about job insecurity or something like that. I think that’s the best thing they can focus on. Think about those three different compartments of your job and focus on what’s most important on a day-to-day basis.

Pete Mockaitis
Excellent. Well, now, could you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

David Lebel
Yes, my favorite quote is “Have a mind that is open to everything but attached to nothing.” And Wayne Dyer use that a lot, and I think it comes from an ancient monk, but I really liked that because I think you see leaders get attached to something or always feel the need to defend. And I see that in myself a lot, and I often reflect on, “How can I be more open-minded about things?” And I think for the challenges that we face in most industries, regardless of the present times, just with changing technology and increased competition, we need more open-minded thinkers.

Pete Mockaitis
And how about a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

David Lebel
Yeah, my favorite stuff before I even went into grad school was on psychological safety within teams. Amy Edmondson’s work at Harvard, and she did stuff with nurses, and really important stuff that found that when nurses had high levels of psychological safety, they were more likely to report errors within hospital wards and units. And that research also kind of looked at how teams functioned a lot better and could adapt and learn a lot better when they had psychological safety within teams. And so, that kind of spurred my interest into speaking up, and the topics of fear and how we might address those things.

Pete Mockaitis
And how about a favorite book?

David Lebel
Probably something that you’ve heard on the podcast but definitely Switch. I mean, there’s always so many good things about how to change, again how to adapt, how to lead change. A book by the Heath brothers, I assign it, and I’m almost re-reading it, and re-highlighting things. And, also, the book Deep Work, which is especially important now I have it on my shelf to re-read to get focus to get a lot of good habits for dealing with distraction, especially with social media, online, internet.

Now, being at home, it seems even harder to get away from some of these, from social media distractions, and also to find like half-hour, an hour of concentrated time. So, Deep Work is another good book for tips on how to do that.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And how about a favorite tool, something you use to be awesome at your job?

David Lebel
One thing that I found over the years, and I’m a big person in terms of data, and I really like to be tracking things. So, I have like a writing goal every day. And, really, what it is, it’s like a goal-setting chart. I remember over the last four to five years, it’s actually not that easy to set a daily goal. You start to realize they’re very broad at first. And five years later, I think I’m finally good at setting very specific smart goals every day that are very actionable and concrete. And I have a bunch of different columns I put in Excel spreadsheet, and track that daily.

And at the end of the year, I always kind of analyze it, and it’s really, really, helpful to both on a daily basis and at the end of the year reflect on some of that data because I can really, really uncover some personal trends about when I’m most productive, when I’m not, what’s working, and what’s not. So, at the end of each year, I’m able to come away with two or three things that have very boosted my productivity but also hindered it. Then that goes on my list of things to focus on for the next year. And it kind of creates a virtuous cycle.

Pete Mockaitis
Whew! Boy, you know, Dave, I could talk to you for an hour plus about goal-setting spreadsheet so I’m going to restrain myself, but got to get just a couple more details. So, all right, so what’s the row, what’s the column, what’s the units? How does it unfold?

David Lebel
So, the rows are just days by months because I’m teaching in certain terms and been doing research.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, each row of that.

David Lebel
Yeah. And then the columns are really, you know, I have a setting for what’s the goal for the day. And, for me, it’s how many words. The main metric is how many words I wrote. Going back to grad school, when I was struggling to complete the program and my dissertation, and I realized, “What do I need to be doing more?” And I was like, “Oh, I need to write a dissertation.” And when I started to track it, I realized how little I was writing. So, that’s been a major metric.

And it really helped me to realize it doesn’t have to be good writing. It just needs to be writing. And so, over the years, I’ve seen just a very strong increase in the amount of words I write per day, and it showed over the last four years and how much I wrote in terms of book chapters, and articles published. It’s a really good leading indicator of future performance, at least in my job.

And then other things I’ve started to track, things that might be hindering that, and so I got a Monday. Yeah, Monday is just lower and I’ve always…I’ve tried to institute routines on Sunday night to get better performance on Monday so I start writing better. I found that if I forced myself to focus on two different projects and write about two things, obviously I’m writing more. It seems like a simple thing but now I try to build in…I don’t do that every day because I’ll get burned out but most days, two to three days out of a week, I try to say, “Okay, I need to be writing about two things.”

And then other aspects of my job, I found that when I’m doing certain types of projects that are very particular to academia, but I realized that those are increasing or decreasing my productivity so I’ve tried to shift some of the load so I can do more of those things that boost, and kind of put my hand down and not sign up for those other things that might detract from that productivity.

Pete Mockaitis
And how about a favorite habit?

David Lebel
Well, that’s one of them. The other thing for me now is actually just mindfulness. I use the Headspace app every day, even at work. I’m not afraid to admit that I take five to 10 minutes to do a mindfulness exercise, clear my head, do some breathing, because I found I’m in knowledge work, and I need the brain to be a little calm, quiet, and so I set a routine for that every day even at work.

Pete Mockaitis
And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

David Lebel
To my LinkedIn profile or you can just look me at the Katz School of Business at the University of Pittsburgh, my email is on there. And, really, I’m always happy to talk about these things.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

David Lebel
Kind of what we talked about today. And I find this when I’m talking to my students, is have the courage to speak about these things. Oftentimes, if you are feeling the fear or some anger, they are very important to bring up whatever that topic might be. And so, find the courage yourself. And it may not be you, it may not have to be you to speak up. It could be finding someone else who can hold the reins for you, somebody within your team, or somebody with more status, or something like that. But I think we need that in these knowledge-intensive industries that most of us work in now, and the challenges that we face. We need to have a wider array of ideas and also dissent. It’s okay to have dissent. We’re not always going to agree about things so I challenge people to speak up more.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Dave, this has been fun. I wish you lots of luck in all of your adventures in speaking up and courage and more.

David Lebel
Thanks, Pete. I really appreciate this. Thanks for the opportunity.

Jun 04
0

576: How to Defeat Distraction and Build Greater Mental Resilience through Mindfulness with Rasmus Hougaard

By | Podcasts | No Comments

 

 

Rasmus Hougaard says: "We need to learn to manage our mind."

Rasmus Hougaard discusses how to manage your attention by practicing mindfulness.

You’ll Learn:

  1. Why we get distracted by the news—and how to curb that impulse
  2. The quantifiable benefits of mindfulness
  3. The small habits that build great resilience

 

About Rasmus

Rasmus Hougaard is the Founder and CEO of Potential Project – the global leader in building mindful leaders and organizations by enhancing performance, innovation and resilience through mindfulness. He is the author of One Second Ahead as well as The Mind of the Leader, a bestseller published by Harvard Business Review. In addition, he writes for Harvard Business Review and Forbes and lectures at the world’s leading business and executive education schools.

Resources mentioned in the show:

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Rasmus Hougaard Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Rasmus, thanks for joining us here on the How to be Awesome at Your Job podcast.

Rasmus Hougaard
Pete, thank you very much. It’s my pleasure to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m intrigued. So, right in your bio, you live in both Copenhagen and New York. Can you tell me how do these nations contrast, well, these two cities? The cities and the nations, the cultures contrast.

Rasmus Hougaard
Yes. Well, I have very fast rowing boat so I’m just going across the Atlantic every Wednesday. No, that’s not true, of course. And just a disclaimer, this was before the whole COVID because like the last – what is it now – two and a half months or so, I’ve been based in Copenhagen. But, yes, I have a house in New York and a house in Copenhagen. But I’m, honest, spending most of my time everywhere else so I travel a lot of the time.

Pete Mockaitis
So, in the US versus Denmark, what would you say are some of the key cultural differences?

Rasmus Hougaard
Anywhere you go in the US, people are smiling and being really happy and like kind, open. Denmark, and with all respect for my own nation, people look at their feet when you meet them for the first time. It’ll take like two years before they say hi to you, so probably that’s one of the bigger differences.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, it’s a good thing that you’re an expert on mindfulness and resilience so that doesn’t get you down and, I guess, you’re just accustomed to it. So, I was reading your recent piece in the Harvard Business Review, and there’s so much good stuff in there, I want to dig into some more details. So, can you tell us the science behind how constant bad news puts our mind in a natural place where we get distracted? Like, what’s that mechanism or link?

Rasmus Hougaard
Yeah, that’s a great question and something that probably most people experience right now. So, when we come under stress, when we basically become anxious, because of like a crisis that we’re experiencing now with both our health and our financial situation under risk or under attack, the fight-flight part of the brain, which is a very old part of the brain, kicks in, and we basically start to look for all the threats, we start to look for all the changes in the environment, and that in itself makes us incredibly distracted. So, that’s why we check the news more often, that’s why we’re bingeing on social media. Yeah, that’s how the brain works.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah, I love that’s pretty simple and succinct there in terms of, I guess, I before got how, yeah, okay, fight or flight, you get kind of nervous, and there’s cortisol, and you see a threat and you’re amped up. But then, naturally, to scan for threats in modern times means we check the news, check the social media, check the texts, like, “What’s the new thing that’s going to…I have to be aware about and defend myself from?” So, that’s very clear. Thank you.

So, then, your study, you said that recently you saw that 58% of employees reported an inability to regulate their attention at work. Tell us, how did you conduct this research and when did it happen and what’s the story?

Rasmus Hougaard
So, we have around 600 global companies we work with and we do a lot of research on their employees and their leaders. This specific study, we were out and using technology through the phone to basically measure where is their mind at random points during the day. And what people then have to say is, “Oh, I was on task,” “I was off task,” and what we see is just that most of the time, we’re just not on task. As you said, it’s more than half of our time we’re really not paying attention to what we’re doing whether we’re in a meeting, or reading a report, or trying to do an email. We’re not there.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, now, so not to like dig super deep into your details but I’m going to a little bit. So, we say on task, I think sometimes the task at hand is resting, like, “I am deliberately daydreaming, taking a walk around the block, getting a cup of coffee.” How do we account for that?

Rasmus Hougaard
Right. That’s a good question. If, as you said, you’re deliberate about letting your mind wander, then you’re on task.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, good.

Rasmus Hougaard
If you’re going for a walk and you are actually present with going for a walk, you’re on task. If you’re going for a walk, wanting to go for a walk, and just rest, and you just can’t help ruminating over the latest, let’s say, plummeting stock market news, then you are off task.

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Rasmus Hougaard
Does it make sense?

Pete Mockaitis
Very clear. Well, so then that 58%, so the majority of us are off task the majority of the time? Is that fair to say?

Rasmus Hougaard
Unfortunately, yes.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And this has been the case prior to the coronavirus and it’s gotten worser, or do we have a comparative situation?

Rasmus Hougaard
This was prior to the coronavirus and it has certainly gotten worse since then. We don’t have the data yet. We will be getting that in a few weeks but the preliminary studies that we’ve done is staggering, first of all, that people and, specifically, leaders just have such a hard time being focused. And the second thing is that distractions that they have are 89% of them are negative. So, just imagine you’re distracted most of the time, and 89% of your distractions are bringing you to a negative emotional state.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s awful.

Rasmus Hougaard
I mean, we are moving directly to a major, major mental health crisis right now.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, so then I’m not going to pin you down on a precise figure, but with these preliminary studies, like kind of ballpark, how much worse are we talking about?

Rasmus Hougaard
I think it’s probably from the 58 that you talked about and probably around 65 to 75.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s percent of people or percent of the time?

Rasmus Hougaard
That’s percent of time for people in general.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. All right. Wow! All right. Well, so there we go, we’ve framed up the situation. Thank you. Very starkly.

Rasmus Hougaard
You’re welcome.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. So, what do we do about it? What do you recommend? Here we are, what should we do?

Rasmus Hougaard
Yeah, I think there are few things that we need to do. First of all, we need to learn to manage our mind. If we can’t manage our mind, we really can’t manage where it’s spending time. We can’t take a walk when we’re taking a walk, and we can’t be focused in a meeting when we need to be focused in a meeting. So, that’s the first thing. And that is obviously done by mindfulness training because that’s the training of basically rewiring our brain to be present with what we do. So, that is the first and most fundamental step, in general, and especially in a crisis.

Secondly, we need to look, like carefully look at how we’re living our lives. Like, do we need to check the phone when we get up in the morning? Do we need to bring our technology into meeting rooms? Do we need to have all of our notifications turned on at our phone and our computers? So, do everything we can to be able to be more present with what we’re doing.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. So, the second piece here, some basic kind of practices, habits, environmental situations, like, “Hey, maybe I’m just going to put the phone elsewhere.” So, then the first part, learning about how to manage the mind via mindfulness practices. I tell you what, Rasmus, I have been up and down in my mindfulness practices. I find it really is genuinely beneficial and I see good things on the day of and the weeks that follow when I’m consistent with it. And it is just amazing how much I don’t want to do it. It is just striking.

Just yesterday I was trying to talk myself into it again, it’s like, “You know, Pete, in a way, that’s one of the benefits, is to get good at doing things you don’t want to do, or starting them is massively valuable.” And this is me trying to talk myself into it. It’s, like, it’s probably one of the safest, lowest energy-demanding ways that you can train at. I don’t need to get tasered repeatedly, “I don’t want to do that,” and I don’t need to do a ton of taxes at work, which I don’t want to do, which drains me.

And so, here I am trying to talk myself into it. So, I’m going to let you do it for me. Can you lay it on us, some of the most just hard-hitting, quantifiable, mind-blowing benefits that professionals who want to be awesome at their job should know about to help them get through their resistance to doing mindfulness practice?

Rasmus Hougaard
Yeah, I think the first one, as you also alluded to, like, knowing what are we getting out of it.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah.

Rasmus Hougaard
Because having that carrot is helpful. And the quantifiable benefits, I mean, they’re way too many for me to mention them all now, but I’ll just rift off a few. You will have better sleep quality. You will have more happiness. You’ll have better work-life balance. You’ll be more focused. You’ll be more effective. You’ll be more prioritized. And then there’s all kinds of physiological things, like your heart rate will be more healthy. Your skin will be more healthy. Your eyesight will be better. And I could just keep on going. I’m not going to go further down that thing.

The most striking and fascinating thing, I think, is that, what researchers have found, that if we’re doing mindfulness practice 10 minutes a day for eight weeks in a row, they can actually measure that a part of your brain called the prefrontal cortex, which is just behind your forehead, is actually growing thicker, so it is exactly the same as going to the gym and training your muscles. That’s what’s happening in mindfulness training.

And then you might wonder, “Well, what’s the benefit of having a little bit thicker behind your forehead brain?” The big benefit is that that part of the brain is what is controlling or what is managing what we call executive function, meaning our ability to moment-to-moment monitor, “What am I thinking right now? What am I saying and what am I doing?” So, it basically puts us back into control of our life. And that, I think, is the most important benefit coming from the practice. So, that was the first answer, is know the benefits because that motivates a lot of people.

But then there are a few tips on like how to institute the practice because sometimes just knowing the benefits is not going to be enough. So, we can talk a little bit about that if you want to.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yes, please. Well, yeah, I want to hit the tips and if we could just get a little bit. All right. So, can you give me some particulars about better sleep and more effectiveness? Because what I find compelling about those, I’m just such a numbers dork, it’s just like, “All right, Pete, this is like ROI stuff. It’s like if I gained more minutes, then I invest, then I am just a fool for not putting on those minutes because it’s like getting free resources, like someone dumping a bag of money into my lap.” So, can I hear about the sleep and the effectiveness?

Rasmus Hougaard
Absolutely. So, I can give you a few different numbers here. First of all, I’ll talk about the work that we do ourselves just because that’s what I’m most familiar with and where we do a pretty thorough research. On average, there are people that we work with, and we’ve worked with around 300,000 people so far from different companies. On average, they get a sleep quality that is in their own experience 36% better. That means they fall faster asleep, they wake up fewer times, and they get into deeper sleep. So, that’s pretty significant.

In terms of effectiveness, depending on how you define effectiveness, there are a few factors of that that is the ability to stay focused on task, their ability of prioritizing the right thing, and then there’s the ability of having the awareness of re-prioritizing when you need to. And out of those factors, again, our clients have an average increase of 40% so it’s pretty significant. Then you may think, “Oh, Rasmus is just touting his own horn and all that,” but other studies done by Harvard and Stanford are coming to more or less the same numbers, so this is quite impressive.

Pete Mockaitis
Ooh, now you’re getting me there. So, when it comes to prioritizing, a 40% increase in your ability to prioritize. Well, I’m a huge believer in the 80/20 Rule and how, indeed, certain things are 16 times as important as others. So, if that can be doing those things 40% more often, well, then that’s just massive. So, okay, thank you. I will be returning to your words frequently when I am resisting. So, yeah, now let’s get into the how-to. If we want to start training the mind, how do we get that going?

Rasmus Hougaard
Yeah, very good. So, a few things that you can do if you want to actually adopt the practice is, first of all, like the hygiene stuff. Make sure you have a place that you do it, make sure you decide for yourself what time of day, and make sure you decide how long time you want to do it. And a few tips that works best for most people is 10 minutes a day in the morning. And the place, whatever place in your house that is most conducive, so most quiet, and there are no perfect places. That’s like the hygiene factors. When you have that, you create a habit of coming back to the same place, and it gets a little bit easier.

Then the second thing is to just puncture the biggest illusion that people have around mindfulness practice, which is the illusion that, “I’m going to practice mindfulness so that my mind will be calm and serene and beautiful, and I will never, ever be distracted or unhappy again.” That is more or less the unconscious idea that many of us have around this practice, and that is such a mistake because the human brain is wired for distraction. It is basically, through evolution, made to look out for movements and changes in environment to save us from that saber-tooth tiger that’s about to attack us. So, that means we are distracted all the time.

If we see that as a failure, because we believe that we should be serene and clear and calm, we’re going to feel so discouraged because we’re going to feel like we’re failures. So, first of all, just letting go of that illusion. It is called mindfulness practice, not mindfulness perfect, because a practice is something we do again and again and again, and then we become a little bit better but we never get the serene mind.

Bring some joy and pleasure into the practice. Many people find it, or think that, “Now, I’m sitting and I have to focus,” and like their eyebrows go together, and their face is frowning a little bit because, “It’s serious business now, I have to focus.” Let go of all of that. I mean, seriously, the rest of the day, people are busy and running around and attention all over, these are the 10 minutes you give yourself every day, so give yourself a break and just enjoy it. Just enjoy sitting with that breathing, how wonderful it is to sit and breathe. So, invite a sense of joy into the practice.

And the last one, really short, it is not a failure to drop off one day. It is only a failure if you don’t do it the second day. So, it’s okay not to do it every day, but if you decide you want to do it like 14 days in a row, if you drop off one day, no problem. Don’t judge yourself. Just remember the next day, get back on the horse again.

Pete Mockaitis
So, after two days we should judge ourselves?

Rasmus Hougaard
Maybe.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, I guess, I’m curious, is that the underlying thought for that recommendation about sort of the research on habit acquisition and maintenance or kind of what’s behind the one-day versus two-day guideline?

Rasmus Hougaard
Yeah, that is a whole research called Atomic Habits that is behind that.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Lovely. All right. Well, so then…and we’ve hit this from a few different angles from a few different people in terms of what are we actually doing there. So, you take 10 minutes in the quiet place in the morning, and you’re acknowledging that your mind is not going to be calm, serene, and beautiful, and you’re focusing on the breath. Like, what are you doing? You’re sitting there thinking about the breath. Kind of what…lay it out for us.

Rasmus Hougaard
Yes. It’s actually quite simple. Having said that, it never feels so simple when we get started on the practice. But, first of all, it’s important to relax. So, relax your body and allow your mind to calm down a little bit, because when we relax the body and we relax the mind a little bit, it’s much easier to stay focused. When we’re tense, which all of us are, then it’s harder. So, spend a few minutes, the first two minutes, just relaxing, especially as you breathe out, just releasing and letting go.

Then start to bring your attention to the breath and let the breath become the anchor or the weight that you’re lifting in this practice. Just like you go in a gym, you take a weight and you lift it up, and you let go, and you lift it up, and you let it go, that’s what you do with the breath. You’re basically holding your attention on the breath as you are breathing in and breathing out, and breathing in and breathing out, and just keep doing that. And then, at some point, you’ll realize, “Hey, now I’m thinking about what to cook for supper tonight.” And that is a success.

I mean, that’s the moment where people feel they failed because, “Oh, no, I got distracted again.” But that moment is actually not where people got distracted because the distraction has been going on for a while. When they become aware, that is the moment that they’re actually mindful again, “Hey, I’m distracted.” So, that’s a moment of celebration. We should be grateful to distractions because they’re basically telling us, “Hey, pal, you are off track. Get back to the breath again.”

So, we’re sitting, focusing on the breath, then we realize we’re distracted, then we’ll just gently guide our attention back to the breath again. That is, in essence, what we’re doing in mindfulness practice. And then you may wonder, “Why should I do this? Yeah, I get it, I get a little bit better sleep and all that stuff.” But the key here is the rest of the day in our lives, our attention is our most scarce resource, so many things are calling for our attention. And by training our focus, we are more able to pay attention to what we need to. And then when in daily life, we’re sitting in a meeting, or doing an email, and we’re getting distracted by notifications, or people talking, or just our own ruminating mind, we have the awareness that we also train in mindfulness that helps us to come back again.

So, this skill of training focus and awareness helps us basically to be more effective at work, to be higher-performing, to spend less time on doing more work. That’s, in essence, what it is.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, so well-said. Thank you. I’m digging it. So, then we’ve talked about the mindfulness practice and then the benefits and how that is quite worthwhile, and then what you actually do. I’m curious, are there additional practices, when it comes to building resilience and our ability to cope with these difficult times, beyond sitting and breathing that you’d recommend?

Rasmus Hougaard
There are definitely a few things that are helpful, and some of them are obvious. Just to cover out the basics, sleep is, by far, the most important for our wellbeing, so make sure you get enough sleep, but that’s just…we all know that. Getting a little bit of movement is helpful, and get good food is helpful, but we all know that. One thing that not everybody knows is if we want to have a little happier mind, feel a little bit more present, feel a little bit more balanced, multitasking is the enemy of all of that. So, stopping to multitask, and that’s a whole chapter in itself that we can talk about. But multitasking is the mother to all evil when it comes to performance, wellbeing, connections with others, and you name it.

Pete Mockaitis
Mother of all evil.

Rasmus Hougaard
Yes.

Pete Mockaitis
That might be all your quote, Rasmus. That might be. Well, so sleep, movement, food. I often hear hydration mentioned in that same sort of a sentence. Do you have any thoughts on water consumption?

Rasmus Hougaard
That’s very important. Of course, that’s very important, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, sure.

Rasmus Hougaard
That’s a short answer.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I guess some people say, “You know, I want to drink water when I’m thirsty, and that’s all. Do I have to think about this any more than that?” And some people say, “Absolutely, you do. If you’re thirsty it’s too late.” So, yeah, where do you come out on hydration?

Rasmus Hougaard
Yeah, I mean, it’s definitely true. When you’re thirsty then it’s a little bit too late. Most people are probably better at drinking enough than they are at eating the right stuff, especially those of us that are working in offices and working long days have the tendency of, like, after lunch and we have a dip in energy to stuff up with sugar, which brings us to the blood sugar rollercoaster which is very unhelpful for our brain’s ability to function very well. So, at least with the thousands of clients we work with, what we eat is more important than what we drink, unless if people are bingeing on energy drink, which is also not a good thing.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Understood. And then I’d also love to get your view, if we go right into the heat of battle in terms of, “All right. So, here I am, I’m trying to get some work done, and I think, ‘Huh, I haven’t checked the news yet. I wonder what’s on there.’ I’m prepping for my Rasmus interview. It’s like, ‘Oh, man, this guy is very impressive. Very accomplished. Oh, wait, what’s in the Wall Street Journal? I don’t know yet.” So, there I am, I’m there, I’m tempted, what do I do?

Rasmus Hougaard
Yeah, what do you do? I think, in that moment, it might actually be too late. We need to train ourselves a little bit before we get into battle. That’s how all warriors or experts become good at what they do. It’s not happening overnight. So, again, it comes back to training the executive function in our brain so that we are more in control of what do when we are in the heat of the moment. So, my first answer would be practice mindfulness because that’s going to help.

Then, now comes your situation. You are in that moment and you are tempted to go and check the news. Adopting a mantra of trying to have more space than more clutter is a really helpful one because we all tend to fill clutter into our mind. And then you may ask, “Why is it that we want to clutter our mind?” And let me tell you a story about one of the most fascinating research projects that I have ever come across, and I’m a researcher myself so I know a lot of research.

Pete Mockaitis
You have my attention.

Rasmus Hougaard
So, imagine this, you have a room, in that room there’s a chair, there’s a table, there’s a little machine with a button on it, and then there’s a wire from that button that goes to a wristband that is put around your wrist. Then, researchers put people into that room one by one. They put this wristband around their wrists, and they say, “Now, try to press the button.” And then they basically get an electric shock on their wrists, and they are asked, “Is this painful?” And people are like shouting and screaming, and saying, “Yes, it is very painful.” And they’re asked, “So, how much would you pay to not have that pain again?” And the people that have been through this research, and that’s many hundreds, are saying that, on average, they would give $47 to not have that electric shock again.

Researchers say, “Fine. That’s good. We understand. Now, what we’ll do is we’ll leave you in this room just with yourself. Between 14 and 7 minutes, you’ll be sitting in here. Are you okay with that?” People say, “Yes, I’m okay with that. Sure, why not?” And so, people are sitting in a room where there’s no TV, there’s no phone, there’s nothing they can do, nothing to look at. There are no windows, just left to their own devices, and a button whereby they can give themselves an electric shock that they would pay $47 not to have. What do you think they do? No, what do we think we’d do, because this is us?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’ve heard references to this, but the $47 is new to me. I think a, surprisingly, large proportion of us, just to escape boredom or whatever, choose to self-inflict, right? Now, what’s the figure?

Rasmus Hougaard
Yeah, so the figure for women is 46%, so that’s a lot, like almost half of women. For men, it’s 76. And even one of the guys in the experiment, he did it 117 times. So, basically, the pain of being left to our own mind can be so horrible and scary for most of us that we would rather bring electric shock to ourselves than just be in our own mind.

And so, coming back to your example of you’re going to do an interview and then, “Oh, should I just check the news?” Our mind wants to check the news because our mind does not want space, our mind wants clutter, because when we have clutter, we don’t need to think about the bigger existential questions like, “Who am I? And why does life sometimes is so painful?” No, we’d rather drink a beer, or we’d rather have a piece of chocolate, or what’s the news, or do anything that avoids us thinking. So, that’s the answer.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, that’s powerful stuff. Thank you. Rasmus, tell me, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we hear about some of your favorite things?

Rasmus Hougaard
I would say in the crisis that we’re in right now, and this is just a heartfelt recommendation to people, is to really give themselves time and space, and avoid just cluttering the mind, because we need it more than anything else. We really need space to recalibrate to the new reality and not to get so anxious as most of us are. So, give yourself space and a mindfulness practice is really going to help. So, that would be it.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Thank you. Well, now, could you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Rasmus Hougaard
A favorite quote would be Mark Twain saying, “I have experienced many terrible things in my life. A few of them actually came true.”

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you.

Rasmus Hougaard
And the point of it is, obviously, that our mind is creating our reality, and we are creating so many catastrophic scenarios in our head that never happen, but we experience them. And, especially in a crisis like now, the crisis is not half as bad as our minds are making it.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And how about a favorite book?

Rasmus Hougaard
William James wrote a book that is the big quote in there is “What you attempt in this moment becomes your reality.” So, this idea that our mind is like a torchlight. What we point our attention to is what becomes our reality, and we don’t see everything else. And if that’s really true, which I think it is, that means if we point our attention to the right things, we can actually create our reality by pointing our attention to the right things. We can create a really beautiful world and a really great life if we can manage our attention.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Thank you. And how about a favorite tool, something you use to be awesome at your job?

Rasmus Hougaard
I think OneNote. OneNote really helps me to structure everything so I don’t need to have it in my head.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And is there a particular nugget you share that you’re known for, people quote it back to you often?

Rasmus Hougaard
I am known for, I guess, a few things. All of my colleagues have a favorite joke about me. When I started the company about 14 years ago, bringing mindfulness to corporations back then was just so far out. Like, nobody was interested in that. That’s very different nowadays. Back then, so few people actually wanted it that I had to go dumpster diving with my kids to actually have food on the table at home.

Pete Mockaitis
No kidding.

Rasmus Hougaard
That’s something my colleagues like to talk about.

Pete Mockaitis
Wow. Oh, that is commitment.

Rasmus Hougaard
Those were great times.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I had moments of being broke as an entrepreneur in my early days, but that is significantly more dramatic. Wow! Well, I’m glad you stuck with it. Thank you.

Rasmus Hougaard
I think my learning from that was, which I would share with anybody, like, being at the very low point, I mean, in terms of finances, teaches you that you can live on nothing. And when my wife and I and our kids would look back at that time, we were incredibly happy. Life was so simple and it was so beautiful. And while, now, life is very different, we have everything we need and much more than that. I don’t have the same contentment and ease as back then so I wouldn’t be sad to go back to that. I probably wouldn’t want to dumpster dive but just having a little bit more food back then. So, I wouldn’t worry about it.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Thank you. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Rasmus Hougaard
Go to our website. I think PotentialProject.com is probably the best place.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Rasmus Hougaard
I mean, given the topic of what we discussed, it should be to take up the challenge of doing two weeks of mindfulness practice. we have developed a free app that people can use. And if you go to PotentialProject.app you can download the app for free. And there, you’ll be basically launched into a full program. Try it for two weeks. The worst thing that can happen is that you’re losing 140 minutes of your life, but, best case, and that’s going to happen for the majority, and we have worked with hundreds of thousands of people so I know. Best case is you will feel more balanced, you’ll feel more joy, you’ll sleep better. There’s so much to gain, so little to lose. So, adopt a daily mindfulness practice.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Rasmus, this has been very eye-opening and enjoyable. I wish you all the best in unlocking additional potential for you and your clients and all you encounter.

Rasmus Hougaard
Thank you so much, Pete. And the same to you and to everybody out there.

May 18
0

571: How to Crush Self-Doubt and Build Self-Confidence with Dr. Ivan Joseph

By | Podcasts | No Comments

 

 

Dr. Ivan Joseph discusses the critical practices that build unshakeable self-confidence.

You’ll Learn:

  1. The fundamental building block of self-confidence
  2. How to control the negative tape in your head
  3. A powerful trick for overcoming impostor syndrome

About Ivan

Dr. Ivan Joseph an award-winning Performance Coach, Sports Psychologist, author and recognized educator and mentor. His TEDx talk on self-confidence – with over 18 million views to date – has been selected by Forbes magazine as one of the 10 Best TED Talks about the Meaning of Life. 

Dr. Joseph travels extensively around the world to speak to organizations and teams about the power of self-confidence in leadership, career, sports and life – and how to build high-performing teams that exceed expectations. 

Resources mentioned in the show:

Ivan Joseph Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Ivan, thanks so much for joining us here on the How to be Awesome at Your Job podcast.

Ivan Joseph
Thanks for having me, Pete. Appreciate it. Looking forward to this conversation.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I’m looking forward to this conversation as well. And I have to chuckle a little bit. So, your book is called You Got This: Mastering the Skill of Self-Confidence and I couldn’t resist sharing that my mother really hates the phrase “you got this.” And I want to hear if you’ve heard that before.

Ivan Joseph
Yes, indeed. In fact, I’m looking behind you in your bookshelf to see if you have it. I don’t see it back there, so, clearly, your mother has won the day.

Pete Mockaitis
I’ve clicked in depth on your virtual version, so. So, yeah, tell me, what’s…I’ll tell you my mom’s take, but what are you hearing in terms of the pushback on the title?

Ivan Joseph
You know, there’s two things. People say it’s really catchy, and they love it. It’s easy and it’s a good affirmation for themselves. And then some folks say, “Oh, man, I wish it wasn’t so contemporary and so pop culture-ish.”

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, pop culture-ish. Well, I kind of like it. I think the first time I heard the phrase was in a movie or something, I was like, “Ooh, yeah, that resonates.” But I think my mom, it’s the specific context in which someone’s on social media, they’re sharing like a real challenge, like someone has cancer or something, and then people comment, “You got this.” And my mom is like, “That is so inadequate. What they’re going through deserves so much more than a flippant…” That’s kind of her thing.

Ivan Joseph
When we were writing the book, we were vacillating back between You Got This, and The Skill of Self-Confidence. If I had to do it again, I’d probably stick with The Skill of Self-Confidence.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, that is your area of expertise. I’m really excited to dig into it. So, self-confidence sounds like a good thing. We’d all love to have it. Could you maybe share some research that reveals how more self-confidence can really translate into actual results for professionals, particularly if you’ve got those examples, as opposed to just feeling good?

Ivan Joseph
Absolutely.

Pete Mockaitis
I mean, it’d be nice to feel confident, but what does it mean in terms of results and victory?

Ivan Joseph
Well, I think the first thing you have to recognize is let’s start with the definition of self-confidence. So, everybody’s playing and starting at the same place. And so, the definition I use in the research is this genuine belief in your ability to accomplish the task at hand – self-confidence. And I want everybody to know it’s not this magic pill that you just take and you can swallow, and you can just, “Oh, I’m, all of a sudden, self-confident.”

But the research that started looking at this goes way back to some foundational work that talks about optimism and happiness. But the big one that I started that got me in this venue was looking and reading about Angela Duckworth and Grit. And she was studying grit, which is the belief in your ability to accomplish tasks despite setbacks, and she was looking at how people, what they’ve told themselves, how they believed in themselves, how that really influenced their ability to move forward.

And she studied a bunch of military personnel. It was Beast Barracks week during West Point Military Academy. And, you know, the Military Academy, they’re really interested in, “How do people decide that we should make it through candidate training school?” because it’s hell. They don’t get to sleep, they don’t get to eat, there’s noise pollution, all these things, because they’re testing those candidates to make them ready.

And so, they did aptitude tests, they did physical testing, they did all these leadership scores, they did a battery of tests. And when they looked at these tests, they were somewhat predictive of who would be successful. But when Angela Duckworth came to these 13 items to predict grit and resilience, she found those 13 items more reliable than those hundreds of questions combined.

And when I read that, I’m like, “Whoa! Grit is a reliable predictor of performance and your ability to succeed?” And when I started really looking into grit, I studied just the first half of it which was this genuine belief in your ability to accomplish the task at hand. And then there was further research that went into how affirmations played a role in that, which is another word for self-talk, how focus played a role in that, how repetition played a role in that. The research is out there and it’s all saying the same thing. you can’t start with talent. You have to start with this belief in your ability, and only then will the talent get a moment to shine.

Pete Mockaitis
it’s intriguing. You talked about a given task at hand in terms of self-confidence. Then I imagine you may very well have self-confidence in one domain and not at all in another because those are very different tasks, and some you think you’ve got totally covered, and others you feel woefully unprepared for. Is that accurate?

Ivan Joseph
This is really accurate, your concept about, “Is it global?” I want you to think about the first time you had your first job, right? You’ve got it, you’ve mastered that skill, and, all of a sudden, your boss comes in and says, “Here’s your promotion and you’re ready to roll.” And imagine the doubt and the fear. We all hear about impostor syndrome, that now starts to creep in. You are master of your domain, you had it taken care of, you were the queen of your ship, or the king of your castle, whatever it is, the term you want to use, and, all of a sudden now, you’ve got to manage people, or you’ve got to lead this presentation.

And because these tasks are typically novel to you, and you haven’t had the affirmations and the feedback that says, “You got this,” to coin a phrase from the book, then that whole self-spiraling doubt and negativity starts to spiral into you, which affects your performance.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. Well, so then if we find ourselves in a space where we’re not so self-confident, and we would like to be, what do we do?

Ivan Joseph
That’s a great question. And I always tell people this story, you heard me earlier in the podcast talk about this magic bullet. When I give a speech about this topic, I say it’s not like you’re at the Las Vegas, and Celine Dion is on stage, and I’m Canadian so I’m going to pick Celine Dion, and she gets food poisoning. And, all of a sudden, the manager comes in and says, “Ladies and gentlemen, we can no longer close out the show. Celine Dion can’t sing her amazing closing song because she’s sick.” And you stand up, Pete, you say, “Yeah, I got this. I’ve watched Titanic a hundred times.” That’s not really confidence. That’s somewhere on the edge of delusional, I’ll say.

When I talk about confidence, the task can’t be novel to you. So, there’s a series of steps to really move towards confidence, and the first one is repetition, repetition, repetition. Gladwell talks about it, there’s a 10,000-hour rule, whatever it is for you to have confidence and genuine belief in your ability. And so, I want you to think about it. For some folks and some listeners out there, about the first time you drove stick shift. You drive stick, Pete?

Pete Mockaitis
I tried a couple of times then I stopped. It didn’t go very well.

Ivan Joseph
Right. The first time you drive stick on a hill with a car behind you, oh, my God, your heart is racing 100 miles an hour. By the time you’ve driven stick for a year later, a year and a half, whatever it is, that skill is so automatic. And so, the number one thing is, like, find a way to get to your practice, to your repetition.

And if you’re a leader and you’re getting ready to present, present in front of the mirror, present in front of your partner, present in a small group of friends, get the feedback, so by the time you got onto that big stage, you’re no longer scared. So, that would be the first step.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly.

Ivan Joseph
After you get to repetition, for me, the next thing to do is to really control that negative tape that plays in your head. You know that tape, “I wish I was this. I hate myself in this look. Oh, I can’t do this job.” As a sports psychologist and a performance enhancement consultant, I work with a lot of athletes. I’ve been lucky enough to work with Olympians and NBA athletes and the national team of basketball for Canada, and we do a lot of what we call centering or thought-stopping.

The next time you’re watching a professional athlete, watch the different physical cues that they’ll use: pointing, clapping, finger-snapping. Whenever they make a mistake, they don’t dwell on the mistake. The phrase we use is “Live in the moment,” or, “Be in the presence,” right? And what that is about is about being in the moment, meaning forget about the mistake. Stop that negative talk, whatever that negative doubt is. Use a physical cue to bring you to the present and replace it with a positive talk, whatever that might be, “You got this,” “I got the next one,” “I’m ready.” The power of affirmation is really critical.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s intriguing. So, are you telling us that frequently, when we observe such physical snaps, claps, etc., from athletes, this is exactly what they’re doing?

Ivan Joseph
Oh, 100%. I guarantee it. I remember one time, the first time I noticed it many years ago into my dissertation, there’s a famous soccer player by the name of Thierry Henry, and this is a guy making millions of pounds a year. And he missed a wide-open goal, right? And all he did was point back to the person that passed him the ball, and said, “Nice job. I got the next one.” And you could read it on his lips and see it on TV. You don’t get to be excellent by focusing on all the mistakes and all the inadequacies that you have.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, excellent. Well, so then I like that notion of the physical gesture to kind of just make it really clear, “Hey, we’re stopping that now and we’re transitioning to something else.” So, snaps, claps. What are some other good ones?

Ivan Joseph
You’ll see some athletes that will take a little rubber band and move it from one wrist to the other, sometimes they’ll snap it. You’ll see some folks that will jingle some coins. Watch the next time you’ll see an athlete just take a deep breath in, and that reminds them, “Okay, I got this.” I remember the one time, the very first time I was doing a big speech, and I’d spoken before, but you get paid in a bottle of wine or like a coffee mug. But the very first time I was on stage and it was 4,000 people, and then the night before Maya Angelou was on stage, and this was like the big deal. I was about to be big time, at least as big as C-level celebrities are, or maybe E, or G, or whatever the number is. But I was so nervous. Behind the stage, I had to clap, clap, clap, “You got this. You got this. You got this.” I had to physically remind myself that I was good at what I do, and that was really critical for me to be able to get on stage and speak in front of 4,000 people.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Excellent. So, well then what’s next? So, we got the physical indicator or anchor, and then shifting gears from the negative to the positive talk. What’s the next step?

Ivan Joseph
Well, I want to remind folks that the affirmations must be really simple and bite-sized, right? Mine is, “I got this,” “Nobody outworks me,” and, “I can learn anything.” And you asked me about research before, I want to turn your readers to a study from Harvard that talked about how three affirmations a day, if you’re in the problem-solving world, increased your efficiency to solve that problem, something like 26%.

Pete Mockaitis
No kidding?

Ivan Joseph
And if you’re in the sales marketing world, your revenue went up 30 some odd percent by using three affirmations a day. And that’s that. What you tell yourself you start to believe and how it translated directly to the output of your work, your production, your ability to solve complex problems. And so, that affirmation and that self-talk moves right into that next thing which is reminding yourself of how good you are.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yes. Well, this affirmation stuff, that’s juicy. I love a good study with some numbers behind it. So, we had Hal Elrod who talked about the six morning habits of high performers. He wrote the The Miracle Morning and such on the show earlier. And he gave some great distinctions associated with what makes an affirmation good versus delusional and problematic. So, I’d love to hear your take. So, from the research, what are some of the ingredients or do’s and don’ts for a positive affirmation? What I’m recalling, I think Hal used the example of, “Money flows effortlessly to me. I am a magnet for wealth,” is not so helpful because your brain goes, “No, it doesn’t. I’ve got to hustle and bend over backwards to make things happen.” And so, can you give us some pro tips on making those affirmations effective?

Ivan Joseph
I think it’s a great question. And one of the things I recognized early on is in order to have an affirmation be meaningful and have genuine belief, you have to have genuine control over it. And so, that locus of control for an affirmation is really important and critical. “Nobody outworks me,” so I can control that. “I can learn anything,” I can control that too, right? And so, when you listen to those things, are they within your circle of influence? “I’m the wealthiest guy in the world,” I mean, maybe if I was reading The Secret and I wanted to put that out there, and I wanted to start putting it out there. But the magic, for me, as a sports psychologist, is to always give agency to the people to control their affirmation. So, it has to be something that you can master and you can own.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Lovely. Well, then proceed. So, that’s the affirmation side of things. What’s next?

Ivan Joseph
So, then from there, I talk about a letter to yourself. And I think this is a really important piece. We all will feel self-doubt, or it will creep into us when we get a promotion, when we get a new opportunity, or when somebody will criticize us, or be really hard on us, and you have to be able to pull out a letter that you’ve written to yourself at good times.

I remember when I became the Director of Athletics at Ryerson University, it was a university of 40,000 people. I came from Iowa, a university of a thousand people. Oh, my goodness, I’m in charge of millions of dollars, I have to manage people, and I remember that whole impostor syndrome kicking in, and I read this letter to myself.

And my letter goes something like this, “Dear Ivan, thanks for choosing the right person to marry. Nice job on accomplishing your Ph.D. before you hit 40. You’ve launched a business with an amazing partner.” All these things I wanted to brag to myself. It was my own personal brag sheet to remind myself, when I was going in the dumps and going this way, “No, no, no. Let’s remember all these things and all these challenges that you’ve had.” And I pull it out and I needed to read that day in, day out, day in, day out.

Now, a lot of folks out there will say, “Well, a brag sheet, that’s ego, man.” And I want people to recognize this is not a letter to others. That is arrogance, right? This is a letter that you’re writing to yourself. And so, people are like, “Well, how do you define confidence over arrogance and ego?” That’s it. Confidence is what you tell yourself. Arrogance and ego is about what you’re telling others about yourself. And so, it’s important to take this letter, look at yourself in the mirror, take your quiet spot, and engage in this personal reminder of all the amazing things you’ve done.

Pete Mockaitis
You know, I really like that. You had it in a letter, I have it on my shelf. There is a black Mead spiral notebook. I haven’t looked at it lately, which might be good or I don’t know if it’s good or bad. I haven’t needed it or felt the need.

Ivan Joseph
Well, that’s it, Pete, right? When you get to that next space, wherever your career or your life will take you when you’ll need it, you know where to get it. You found it.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s true. And it really is so handy. And I think I borrowed this from maybe Tony Robbins who talked about if you have a belief, I still see this diagram in my head. I read this when I was a teenager. It’s like if you have a belief, you need to have some supporting legs, like a table, for your brain to be like, “Yeah, okay, that’s true.”

And so, I think this was in college, I was feeling kind of like a loser because in high school I was just like, I don’t know, I was kind of the man, if you will, in terms of, “Oh, I’m valedictorian and homecoming king,” and I was getting lots of praises and affirmations in all kinds of directions, and then in college, I was like rejected from the sketch comedy team, and the business consulting group, and the other business club, and then the other…and I was like, “What is wrong?” And so, I was feeling pretty down about my capabilities.

And then I just sort of thought, “Well, hey, maybe I’ll just make a list of reasons why the belief that I’m capable of rocking and rolling is true.” And I was like, “Holy smokes, this is a pretty long list. Okay, I guess I’ve just had a bad luck streak, and I’m going to keep trying.” And, sure enough, I found some clubs that would take me and a good college career.

Ivan Joseph
I love what you’re saying because you’re doing what we call as self-confident people interpret feedback differently. And what you’re able to do right now is, “I guess I had a bad streak.” After using some skills, instead of like, “My God, I’m a loser. I’ll never do any good.” And then you start to dig yourself what we call, “Lord, the snake’s belly and a wagon rut,” right? You interpreted those failures differently. That is so key. How we interpret setbacks really sets us apart.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, well, thank you. And it’s funny, and it wasn’t immediate. I’d say there’s definitely, I don’t know what the time period was, some weeks or so of just like, “Ooh, I suck.” But, eventually, that turned around. So, now, let’s talk about, Ivan, right now, as we’re recording, the coronavirus is a hot topic everywhere on the news, etc. and I’ve been chatting with a few people who have admitted to really experiencing a healthy dose of depression, anxiety, mental health challenges, that is not so typical for them under normal circumstances but, hey, not getting out, not seeing people, not as easy to get to the gym, or all these sorts of rituals habits, routines, healthy good things they got going on are disrupted, and they’re now kind of reaping what they’ve had to. So, hey, help us here. If listeners are experiencing this right now, how might we apply some of these tools to help shorten the time and the funk?

Ivan Joseph
Well, it’s a great question again, right? And so, one of the things you recognize is that we know that thoughts influence our beliefs which influence our actions. And so, when you’re in a funky space, you know that’s you’re thinking, and then it’s influencing your beliefs, and then how you get to the action part.

And so, one of the things that’s really important is in this whole world that we’re using the term social distancing, and the psychologist in me says, “I don’t know if that’s the right term that we should be thinking about. I think the term should be physical distancing, and we should be engaging with the people that are important to us, who add value to us.”

A lot of times when I talk about the lens of confidence, I talk about getting away from the people who will tear you down, which is the negative people, the people who are giving you negative feedback versus critical feedback. But I think the opposite is also true, which means get close to the people who will build you up.

And so, you know who are you and who those people are, and you can know and you can see what are the tells that are telling you, and you’re going off into a place. And you need to pay attention to your physical tells that say you’re getting to a point of stress, and then you need to put yourself in a place where you can connect with those people. And, in today’s world, it’s going to have to be virtual, but with Zoom, with Microsoft Teams, with FaceTime, with Google Hangouts, there’s a way to infuse yourself and your relationships with positivity to help build you up and to help pass you through these troubling times.

When we say we’re all in this together, nobody does it alone. And sometimes we’re so proud and we’re so afraid to share our vulnerabilities, that’s not what confidence or high-performance life is all about. It’s about recognizing that we are in this together.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. That’s good. Now, you mentioned physical stress tells. Please, flag them right up front. So, some listeners might be like, “Huh, that’s been going on.”

Ivan Joseph
You think about it, right? We don’t recognize we need to always talk about stress. There’s two types of stress. There’s distress and there’s eustress. Eustress is the positive pieces that raise our levels and help us perform better. And distress is the one that overwhelms us, how we react to that stress overwhelms us.

I remember when I was first leading, a stressor for me that I was not ready, the skin on my hand started to peel. I started to get like serious, like bad cotton ball mouth. But there’s also a point where I need to be at the right level of performance anxiety in order to get the best out of me. When the butterflies are in your stomach, when you’re feeling your heart start to raise, I know I’m ready. I’m at my peak game.

Have you ever had a client or a guest on your show where you are like, “Man, I was on. I brought my A-game to this guy,” and thought about how you felt just before that moment?

Pete Mockaitis
Yes. Well, you know, it’s funny, just before we spoke, I was feeling a little bit like, “Meh,” my energy level was sort of lower and, yeah, I was just sort thinking, “Well, how would I prefer to feel?” I was like, “Well, I’d like to be fascinated and powerful and curious.” So, yeah, I guess that’s how I feel before a great interview.

Ivan Joseph
Right. I think it’s really important about how we connect with those around us, and not just the energy we give but the energy we draw from those people.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. Thank you. Well, let’s see, so in your book you mentioned five skills, and it sounds like we’ve hit a few of them: positive thought, team building, grit, higher expectations, and focus. Are there any of these that you think we’ve covered too shallowly and we got to give a little bit more love to before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Ivan Joseph
Well, I think the one that we haven’t touched is this ‘higher expectations’ one, and I think this is really key about we talk about it from the Pygmalion Effect is what we call it in the world of leadership or sport in which people will rise through a minimum level of expectations. And I think this is really important for leaders that are out in the field. It’s about, “How do you lead people to be excellent and confident? And how can you influence them?” And one of the ways is about catching them when they’re good because they’ll raise your minimum level of expectations.

And what I mean by that is we know that if you are critical, if you give negative feedback, “Hey, I need this presentation to look like this. Hey, this chart didn’t have what I needed on it. Hey, I need you to do this, this, and this,” that we know that we’ll get the behavior we want. But, typically, it erodes the relationship. Typically, it creates conflict.

If we can, instead, forget about that, the negative things that people are doing, and instead focus on the team member that might be doing it right, meaning, you’re in a meeting, “Hey, folks, thanks for coming on time to this meeting. It helps us get started.” Or somebody presented a report, “Hey, I love how this report was. Notice the font size is the way I want it. I love that the logo is here on the bottom left.” Instead, what happens is you catch people when they’re good. And what we’ve known and what we’ve seen in the research is that improvement exponentially improves over when we catch them when they’re bad.

In the world of psych, we call this the social learning theory, is that people learn through observation. If we can focus on the excellence, now, what happens is instead of us tearing down a player over here who was really sour or bitter or angry because of our feedback, we built up somebody else, and they feel great and aligned to you and really increase their loyalty and their willingness to follow you, and we’ve said somebody else over here is like, “Oh, I better pay attention. I want that same feedback.” And the whole organization rises because you catch them when they’re good.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, it’s excellent. Thank you. Well, tell me, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Ivan Joseph
Well, I think the last piece is just to remind people that this is a skill. The skill of self-confidence isn’t about just sitting here and, “Okay, I’ve tried. I wrote this letter, I read it once, it didn’t work.” “Oh, I said my affirmation today, and it didn’t happen.” “Well, I tried praise and it still hasn’t happened.” We have to be willing to persist just like the master of any task in the workplace, and give it an opportunity to grab hold.

And so, for the listeners that are out there, be patient with yourselves, and be patient with the people that you’re leading, because good things will happen if you give it an opportunity to shine, and you will see a cultural shift in the people, and, most importantly, or just as importantly, a cultural shift in yourself in how you approach leading.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, beautiful. Thank you. Well, now, could you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Ivan Joseph
Well, one of my favorites is an old Apple commercial. I always attribute it to Steve Jobs but I know it’s somebody different, but it was after Steve Jobs had been kicked out of his company and he came back, and they launched this commercial in the Super Bowl, and it was called “Here’s to the crazy ones.” I don’t know if you know. It’s really a poem. “Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo.” And I’ll fast-forward to the last line, “Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.” I love it because it speaks to a higher purpose.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you. And how about a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Ivan Joseph
Oh, gosh, being a psychologist, I have a whole bunch. But one of them is a study by Jacobson and Rosenthal. Jacobson and Rosenthal studied the Pygmalion Effect in a New York high school, and what they did was they brought some teachers, and then they said to these teachers, “Hey, we developed this late-blooming acquisition test. It’s an amazing test. It will tell of all your students who the best late bloomers are.”

And so, of course, the teachers said, “Yeah,” and so they administered the test. And these students in the back of the class, the very back, the ones you would think would be the dumbest, most bonehead, because that’s what they sit. At least, that’s where I’ve sat but don’t tell anybody. They said, “These students here scored the highest on the late-blooming acquisition test. We’re going to come back at the end of the year and see how our test works.”

So, Jacobson and Rosenthal show up, and sure enough, at the end of the year, the teachers were excited, “Ah, your late-blooming acquisition, this was amazing, it worked. It did everything what it’s supposed to do.” But, as you can imagine, the magic of it was there was no such thing as a late-blooming acquisition test. It was a confederate. It was a ploy. In fact, what happened was the teachers, because they expected more from these students, they called on them more. They didn’t ask, they didn’t take the dog-ate-my-homework as an excuse. They didn’t say, “I don’t know good enough.” They didn’t say, “Okay, you know how you avoid eye contact when you don’t know the answer?”

By those teachers interacting differently with those students, those students exceeded their own expectations and rose to the expectations of the teachers. And this has been a key tool in my leadership toolbox.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you. And how about a favorite book?

Ivan Joseph
Oh, well, one of my favorite books, and don’t tell anybody because it’s one of those things. It was Awaken the Giant Within by Tony Robbins.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, hey, we have some more Tony Robbins references here, yeah.

Ivan Joseph
Right. Have you read that one?

Pete Mockaitis
I believe it is on my shelf, yeah. When I was a teenager, Tony Robbins was who I wanted to be. Fun fact, I was a weird kid. But, yeah, what’s something useful from that book that was impactful for you?

Ivan Joseph
You know, at the time I read that book I’d flunked out of school and I hadn’t told my parents. And, for me, what I liked about it was it gave you the ownership and the control. It was about awakening the giant within. Stop blaming everybody else outside, external reasons for why you’re not succeeding. It’s time for you to really take ownership, and you have the ability to control your destiny, where you want to be, who you want to be, and what you want to do. And I remember taking that to heart and really just taking my life right by the scruff of the collar and just deciding I was going to drive where I wanted to be.

Pete Mockaitis
And how about a favorite tool, something you use to be awesome at your job?

Ivan Joseph
Well, I’m a big believer in surrounding myself with the right talent. And so, for me, that tool is I’m really careful about who I choose, and I really pay particular attention about who I hire and how I hire. And you always talk about it, it’s like fire fast, hire slow. I don’t think people think enough about building culture, and these other things that when you’re asking the questions around the workplace or in the interview process that will get at, “Who do you want and do they fit?” because that fit is so important. That values alignment is mission critical.

Pete Mockaitis
And how about a favorite habit?

Ivan Joseph
I’m a morning person and I found this out by accident. But one of my favorite habits is getting up early to make sure I align my day up right. That time before anybody gets up is so productive. I’m not part of Sharma’s, 5 AM Club. I’m not that, but I’m probably a 5:30-5:45 club. But the ability to set your day out to really think about what those three big buckets, or four big bucket things are, that’s the way you move your needle.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And tell me, is there a particular nugget that you share and you’re known for, people quote it back to you often?

Ivan Joseph
I think it’s about getting away from the people who will tear you down. I think that’s really important because you will start to believe them. And if you can’t be really careful and mindful of who those people are, then you’re setting yourself up for failure, and they will undo all the good work you’re doing for yourself.

Pete Mockaitis
And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Ivan Joseph
Well, I would point them to You Got This launching soon as an Amazon website, or an Amazon book but I’d also point them to my website Dr. Ivan Joseph coming soon, so stay tuned. You can find me on Twitter, I guess, @DrIvanJoseph.

Pete Mockaitis
And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks seeking to be awesome at their jobs?

Ivan Joseph
I think one of the things that I want to remind people is that you’ve got to remember that if you don’t think you can or if you don’t believe in yourself, nobody will. And I want to remind them that they’ve already achieved success, if they’re in a position right now where they’ve done a really nice job, or they’ve been promoted, and so we already know that you’re capable and competent. Just remind yourselves of that and keep reminding of yourselves of that when you go out into that next-level job and opportunity.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Ivan, thanks so much for taking this time. And I wish you lots of luck in all your adventures.

Ivan Joseph
My pleasure. Thanks for having me, Pete. I really appreciate it.

May 04
0

567: Achieve More While Criticizing Yourself Less: The Power of Self-Compassion with Kristin Neff

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Kristin Neff says: "The drive to achieve doesn't come from the self-criticism... it comes from the fact that we want to do our best."

Professor and author Kristin Neff shares how self-compassion yields bigger results with less unpleasant self-talk… and how it can help manage anxiety during a crisis.

You’ll Learn:

  1. Why self-compassion is a better motivator than criticism 
  2. How to turn your compassion for others inward 
  3. The value of tone and touch in self-compassion 

About Kristin

Kristin Neff is a pioneer in the field of self-compassion research, creating a scale to measure the construct over fifteen years ago. She is author of the book Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself. In conjunction with her colleague Dr. Chris Germer, she has developed an empirically supported training program called Mindful Self-Compassion, which is taught by thousands of teachers worldwide. 

Kristin received her doctorate from the University of California at Berkeley, studying moral development. She is currently an Associate Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin. 

Resources mentioned in the show:

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Kristin Neff Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Kristin, thanks for joining us here on the How to be Awesome at Your Job podcast.

Kristin Neff
Oh, thanks, Pete. Glad to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, we’ve got a lot of fun stuff to dig into. But one unique thing we learned about you in research is that you were featured in a documentary called “The Horse Boy.” What is this story all about?

Kristin Neff
Yeah. So, it was a crazy adventure my family took with my son. So, my son is autistic, and when he was very young, my ex-husband, his father, he had done a lot of work, Human Rights work, with various indigenous people. And so, we met some people like the bushmen from the Kalahari, and we noticed that my son kind of seemed to get better when he was around shamans, and they kind of worked on him, and he really seem to have an improvement in symptoms, and then my son also learned to talk on horseback, on the back of a horse.

“Okay, where in the world combines horses with shamanism?” And, of course, the answer was Mongolia because if that’s where the horse comes from and shamanism is in that region, so he got this crazy idea, “Why don’t we go to Mongolia and ride through, out of Mongolia, visiting shamans on horseback and see what it does for our son?”

And so, he talked me into it, and it was an amazing adventure. He actually did have a lot of improvements. Now, I don’t know why, maybe it’s just the family adventure and really new contacts that led to the improvements, but the whole idea was, “Can autism be an adventure as opposed to a death sentence?” And it really was an adventure.

And I have to say, you know, my son now, he’s 18, it’s just me and him now with us closed down in the pandemic, he’s the most amazing kid. He never complains. He’s so sweet. He’s so positive. He says things like, “Well, who knows, it may get better tomorrow.” He cleans up after me in the kitchen. He’s just such a wonderful soul. And part of me wonders, “Is that because when he was growing up, we never made his autism a pathology? We always just considered it a gift.” And, yeah, he’s truly amazing.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that’s good to hear.

Kristin Neff
That’s my other life.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well, so, that’s really cool, and thanks for sharing that. And a good perspective, I think, here, when your other life is as an expert on self-compassion. You sort of own that phrase or hyphenated word combo. So, what does that mean exactly and how is that helpful?

Kristin Neff
So, self-compassion is really just using the experience we have all the time of compassion for others, especially people we care about, doing a little U-turn, so we give ourselves compassion. So, it’s just treating yourself with kindness, support, care, concern, just like you would naturally do for others.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, that sounds like a good thing to do. Tell us, what is that in contrast to? If people were not self-compassionate, what are we?

Kristin Neff
Yeah. So, a lot of people are confused about self-compassion. They think it’s self-pity, or that it’s the same as self-esteem, or that it’s self-indulgent. It’s really none of those things, and there’s actually research to show that. It’s just simply a way of relating to yourself with kindness, care, and support. Now, most people actually, we show in my research, tend to be pretty self-critical, right? Most people, if you ask them, “Who are you more compassionate to, others or yourself?” a vast majority are more compassionate to others than themselves. So, really, self-compassion is a way of correcting that imbalance.

Instead of shaming ourselves because we aren’t perfect, or just feeling so isolated because our life isn’t going the way we want it to as if life is supposed to go exactly the way we want it to, we just kind of embrace our imperfection, we realize this is part of the shared human experience, and we support ourselves through.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, can you give us some maybe real-world examples in terms of when we’re speaking to ourselves in a self-critical way versus a self-compassionate way? Well, we’ll start with that, and I’ve got much more to dig into there.

Kristin Neff
Yeah. So, motivation is a really good context to see the difference between self-criticism and self-compassion because most people very naturally think that self-criticism is an effective motivator. And the thing is it kind of is, it’s kind of like a steam engine that burns coal. It’ll get you up the hill but it spits out a lot of smoke, right? So, self-criticism, although it can motivate us, it has unintended effects like we develop performance anxiety, “Because if I don’t do as well as I’d like to, I’m going to beat myself up.” We often develop fear of failure which can lead to things like procrastination, right? Oftentimes, when we fail, we just give up because we can’t handle risking, our sense of self again by trying.

So, self-compassion, on the other hand, it’s also very strong leaning to motivation, and more effective motivation than self-criticism. So, we try not because we’re unacceptable as we are, it’s simply because we care about ourselves. We want to achieve our best. And so, with that sense of unconditional safety, in other words, the bottom line is if you fail, you’re still going to be okay, “I will still love myself but I will try again because I care and I want to do better.”

And so, people are less likely to procrastinate, they’re less likely to develop anxiety, they actually perform better for that reason, and they don’t give up as easily, they have more grit. So, again, there’s a ton of research on this showing that it’s a better motivator than self-criticism.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, now, those are some nice benefits. So, more motivation, less procrastination, more grit, I think you said less anxiety, or maybe I just inferred that.

Kristin Neff
Yes. No, absolutely less anxiety, less depression.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, could you share, I love recent research and some data and some numbers, what is perhaps one of the most striking in terms of, “Ooh, those are really impressive results and numbers there” kind of study or research do you think folks who want to be awesome at their jobs would be impressed to hear about?

Kristin Neff
Yeah. Well, so here’s something pretty remarkable. Some people think that self-compassion is weak. Self-compassion, when the going gets tough, is remarkable source of resilience. So, I’ll just give you an example of the study looking at combat veterans who had come back from Iraq or Afghanistan. And so, they measured their self-compassion levels, these veterans, and they followed the veterans up for nine months. And they found that self-compassion, those soldiers with higher self-compassion, were much less likely to develop post-traumatic stress disorder.

But here’s the kicker. Self-compassion level was even a stronger predictor of how much action they had seen. So, in other words, in terms of how traumatized you are, more important than like how much action you saw, how much gore or violence you experienced, more important than that in terms of how traumatized you are, it’s, “How did you relate to yourself in the midst of that trauma. Were you an ally? Did you have your own back? Did you support yourself? Were you kind? Or do you tear yourself down?”

For instance, if you have shame, a lot of veterans, combat soldiers, have a lot of feelings of shame, like maybe what they’re doing is wrong, and they tear themselves down and they criticize themselves, and there’s a huge problem with attempted suicide among the veterans, but not those who have self-compassion. If you teach vets to have self-compassion, they’re much less likely to try to commit suicide. So, those are the types of really strong findings we get, really showing how strong it makes you. It makes you very strong.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that’s excellent. So, then with motivation, can you share one of those studies?

Kristin Neff
Yeah, I can. Okay. So, there’s a great study by a woman named, two of them, at UC Berkeley, my alma mater in California. And so, what they did is they had a group of undergraduates in their study, and they gave them a very hard vocabulary test that everyone failed. And so, they split these subjects, these undergraduates into three groups.

One group they told, they helped to be self-compassionate, “No, don’t beat yourself up about it. Everyone fails. It’s okay. We’re only human, right? So, just be kind to yourself.” Another group they didn’t say anything, they were just the neutral control. But the third group they said, “Hey, don’t worry about it. You must be smart. You got into Berkeley for goodness’ sakes,” so self-esteem boost condition.

And then the next step of the study was they gave the students a second test, and they said, “Okay. Well, here’s a second test. You can study as long as you want for this second vocabulary test.” And what they found was that the students who were told to be self-compassionate, they studied more, they studied longer, and they actually performed better on the test.

So, this kind of shows you, we talk so much about self-esteem, about self-confidence, it’s actually much more important just to be kind and supportive to yourself.

Pete Mockaitis
So, let’s zoom right into that example in terms of, okay, here I am, I took the test and it didn’t go awesomely. And I’ve got an opportunity to take another, and I am following self-compassion approaches. What would I say and/or do to myself?

Kristin Neff
Well, so first of all, what self-compassion does is it makes it okay to fail. And, more than that, it helps us recognize that we learn from failure, right? So, self-compassion allows us to have what they call learning goals as oppose to performance goals, “I want to do well so I can learn and grow,” as oppose to, “Because I need other people to like me.” Because when you have self-compassion, you don’t need other people to like you. Your sense of self-worth is a contingent another people approving of you, or you’re getting the grade you want, or the job performance evaluations you want, right?

And so, people might think, “Well, if I don’t care about my job performance evaluations, then why should I even keep trying?” The thing is you do still care about getting positive evaluations but your self-worth isn’t contingent on it. So, if you get a poor evaluation, or you fail a test, the idea is you can say to yourself, “Oh, first of all, hey, that hurt.” Kind of validating the fact that it hurts, “That hurt. But it’s okay. Everyone fails and everyone is imperfect. What can I learn from this situation? How can I grow from this?”

And then that orientation towards learning and growth because you want to do better, not because you have to be better to be a good enough person, but just because you want to do better because you care. That’s actually the engine that drives you to do better, and it’s more sustainable and it’s more effective.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Excellent. Well, so now, I don’t want to make this all about the coronavirus, but it’s top of mind for a lot of folks.

Kristin Neff
Sure, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
And I think that’s kind of part of the context of why we thought your stuff would be just right for us right now. So, it was funny, just today as I was prepping, I read this Onion headline which just cracks me up, the parody newspaper there. It says, “Man Not Sure Why He Thought Most Psychologically Taxing Situation Of His Life Would Be The Thing To Make Him Productive.”

Kristin Neff
Right, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
And then toward the end, it says, “I thought I’ll have all this energy and space to focus on my creative side, but I guess living with ever-present, crushing uncertainty and the knowledge that people all around me are dying wasn’t the stimulus I needed after all.”

And so, we had another guest, Liz Fosslien who shared a lovely graphic on LinkedIn about productivity, like, “Hey, how productive am I normally? How productive am I during an unprecedented global pandemic?” the bar chart is way shorter, it could fit. And so, I think that this is a common experience, I’m feeling it and others are as well, that, “Huh, here I have, in some ways, fewer obligations upon me,” this varies wildly person to person, but some people like, you know when plans get cancelled, you’re like, “Oh, hey, I guess I’m freed up well and away.” A lot of things have been cancelled, yet even those of us who are healthy and not attending to someone in a tough spot, physically, medically…

Kristin Neff
Or parents watching their kids.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly, yeah, can find ourselves with a malaise, a reduction of energy, productivity, etc., and can be hard on themselves as a result, like, “Come on, man. Where’s the juice? Where’s all the stuff you were crushing before? It’s uncrushed.” Can you comment on how do we deal with this in a self-compassionate way and what results might flow from that?

Kristin Neff
Yeah. So, it’s really important, I’ve actually, again, several programs helping people use self-compassion to deal with the anxiety about the pandemic. So, self-compassion actually has three main components. The first is mindfulness. In other words, we have to be willing to check in with ourselves, “How am I feeling?” I think what’s happening for a lot of people is they’re making sure they have enough groceries, they’re kind of getting through each day, they’re making sure they’re wearing their masks.

They’re really focused on keeping themselves safe but they haven’t paused to say, “Hey, this is really hard. I’m really fearful. Maybe I’m grieving, or I feel really stressed, or I feel lonely,” whatever it is you’re feeling. We kind of don’t do that U-turn to say, “Wow, I’m having a really hard time right now.” And you actually need to be mindful first in order to give yourself compassion.

And then, maybe toward their friends, they’re being supportive, or maybe to your elderly parents you’re being supportive, but often we forget to be supportive with ourselves. If ever there was a time when we need emotional support, where we need kindness, it’s right now. So, again, and that may be in the form of warm language with ourselves, a warm tone of voice, kind of reminding ourselves that we have our own backs, we can depend on ourselves, that we’re here. And that’s especially important because most of us feel really isolated, right?

One of the real benefits of self-compassion, again, is it connects to other people, it connects to humanity. So, the difference between self-pity and self-compassion, self-pity is, “Woe is me,” self-compassion is, “Yeah, life is hard for everyone. Everyone is imperfect. Everyone struggles,” right? It’s a much more balanced state of mind.

And so, sometimes we’re feeling lonely because we’re all alone in our house perhaps, but then it’s very easy nowadays to remember, “Hey, it’s not just me. There’s actually about 2 billion other people, or maybe 3 billion at this point, who are also struggling with the same situation.” So, even though physically we may be alone, emotionally, as long as we remember this, “Not just me,” we can actually feel more connected.

And so, just going through these three little steps: be mindful of your pain, being kind to yourself because it’s hard, and just remembering that you aren’t alone, this is bigger than you.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. That is great. And I love it when you sort of talk of the internal mental self-talk stuff. Are there any really just like go-to, I don’t know, mantras, scripts, phrases that you love or you found to be work with love in terms of like breaking the pattern of, “You’re so stupid. Why did you do that? Aargh!” to quickly kind of regain control and put it on a better path?

Kristin Neff
Yes. So, everyone uses different language, and really the easiest way to find the language that works for you is to think, “What if I had a really loved close friend who was going through the exact same situation I’m going through?” And, actually, in this case, you probably do. “How would I talk to them?” So, me, I tend to be a little more, I don’t know, mushy, I guess you would call it, so I call myself sweetheart and darling, and my tone of voice is almost like a mother. I also have an autistic child so I’m very used to using that warm motherly tone.

But, for many people, that tone would make them gag, right? Some people maybe, “Hey, buck up. It’s going to be okay.” But there’s a difference between “Buck up. It’s going to be okay,” which is like, “You should be better,” and, “Hey, buck up. It’s going to be okay.” You know what it means?

Pete Mockaitis
So, the tone of voice of the voice inside your head matters.

Kristin Neff
It matters a lot.

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Kristin Neff
And not only tone of voice but touch. So, the first two years of life we don’t have language, right? We can’t really communicate with our parents, so the two main ways we communicate with parents, that they communicate care to us is touch and tone of voice. And so, what we know is that warm tone of voice and soothing or supportive touch actually activates the parasympathetic nervous system, which means it calms us down, it makes us feel supported, it makes us feel safe.

So, you can put your hands on your heart, or on your stomach, or on your face as long as you wash your hands, or hug, or something like that, some sort of physical gesture that makes you feel safe and supported. And even if it seems a little odd at first and, I’ll admit it, it does seem odd at first, your body doesn’t really know the difference, right? So, it’s not that your body doesn’t know the difference between self and others, but your body reacts the same way when you give yourself supportive touch as when you give it to others, right?

And then, again, if you use a warm tone, that’s another way that your body just kind of naturally says, “Oh, okay. Relax, it’s safe.” So, really, just say, “What would I say to a dear friend?” and try that out, and that’s probably your best bet for language.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah, and it’s funny, there are some different kinds of touch. I don’t know, in some of these interviews, I often go to humor, like The Onion. Now I’m thinking about a Key & Peele sketch where there’s a football player is really into patting people’s butts, but that might be it for you if you have that…

Kristin Neff
Maybe.

Pete Mockaitis
…career, or I’ve got one of those little headscratcher thingies, you know, these wires.

Kristin Neff
All right, yeah. That could be.

Pete Mockaitis
I think those feel awesome in terms of like, “Hmm.”

Kristin Neff
Headscratchers, or kind of fist bump on the chest, or something like that. Absolutely.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. Okay. Well, so I want to make sure we also hit the notion of, you know, for the gunners, the achievers who are all about having high standards, high expectations, demanding excellence. How do these things square and work together?

Kristin Neff
Yeah, so the research shows that self-compassionate people, their standards are just as high as everyone else’s because high standards comes from wanting to reach your full potential, wanting to be happy, wanting to do your best. The huge difference is what happens when you don’t meet your standards? Because we’re human beings, sometimes we reach our standards, sometimes we don’t.

And so, if you’re very self-critical when you fall short of your standards, you might be like, “That’s not acceptable. You have to do better or else.” The threat is kind of like, “Or else I won’t love you, or else I’ll say mean things to you, or else I’ll hate you.” We say these to ourselves. And, again, that actually undermines our ability to do our best because it creates a sense of anxiety, right?

So, in other words, the drive to achieve doesn’t come from the self-criticism. The drive to achieve comes from the fact that we want to do our best. And so, when we stumble, which, by the way, I’m sure you’ve had a ton of people on the show saying, “Of course, we learn from our failures. That’s the best way we learn.” So, when we’re kind and supportive to ourselves, we remember that. And when we fail, we pick ourselves up and try again.

Now, having said this, sometimes the right response is to give up. Sometimes we’re barking up the wrong tree. Sometimes it’s good to change careers, for instance, if it’s just not really working out for you. That’s a matter of wisdom. You don’t want to be stupid with this, and say, “I’ve got to achieve every single goal I set out for myself.” We need wisdom to say, “Hey, that’s an achievable goal.” Or maybe another goal would be better for you. And so, with wisdom and kindness and encouragement it works.

So, I’ll give you an example. My son, he was actually homeschooled for most of his life, and I finally put him into public school, and his testing was kind of like treasure hunts. It wasn’t standard testing. So, the first test he had, World Geography test, he came home, he got an F. I mean, just like flat F. And so, I couldn’t try to motivate him with the way we often motivate ourselves, which is, “You stupid loser. You’ll never amount to anything.”

If you think about this, what would the effect of that be on him? It’s not like making him say, “Yes, I can do it.” Of course not. That’s going to make him feel shame and want to give up. And the same thing with ourselves. Often, really harsh language makes us feel shamed, and shame is not exactly a “get up and go” mind state.

So, what I did was, first of all, I gave him a hug, “Hey, it’s okay. Everyone fails. It’s just part of the learning process.” But did I leave it there? Of course not. I care about my son. I don’t want him to fail in his class. So, I called all his teachers, and I figured out what was going on. We realized there were some study methods that weren’t working for him so we changed his study methods. We also changed the way he took his tests and now he’s doing great.

And so, that’s what compassion gives you. It’s like bottom line, “It’s okay to fail. I still love myself. It’s unconditional. And, yet, because I care, I want to do my best so I’m going to use my wisdom to figure out how to do my best.” It’s not like, “I have to do my best or else.” It’s, “I really want you to do your best. How could I help?” And that supportive attitude is actually much more effective.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Excellent. And so, I think I’m picking up what you’re putting down there, and I think the tone is really interesting in terms of to just really…even though the voice inside your head is not audible, it has a tone.

Kristin Neff
Like, the self-critic does, doesn’t it? Some people say, “Oh, it seems so strange to talk to myself,” but it doesn’t seem strange when you beat yourself up, does it? It’s just that we’re used to that voice so we don’t even notice it, what’s going on in our head all the time. So, we’re just learning to have a second voice.

And, by the way, the self-critic does not want to get rid of that. Often, our self-critical thoughts point out places where we’re going wrong. It’s just ways that we’re trying to actually help ourselves to do better. It’s just not effective. So, we can say to our inner critic, “Oh, thank you for trying to help me. Got it. I hear you. And, now, how am I going to go about achieving that goal in a way that’s actually a little more conducive to success?”

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Kristin, tell me, anything else you want to make sure to mention regarding self-compassion and related subjects for those wanting to be awesome at their jobs?

Kristin Neff
Right. So, just, for instance, one of the things we know is that self-compassion enhances creativity. So, if you want to be awesome at your job, it’s important that you’re creative. But if you beat yourself up all the time, what we know is that negative mind state actually gets in the way of being creative and thinking out of the box. But, again, when the bottom line is, “I’m safe. I care about myself. And if I were to fail, it’s okay,” that sense of safety gives you more freedom to think out of the box and think creatively. So, it’s really useful in all sorts of ways, on the job, off the job. Really, any time you might experience challenge.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Lovely. Well, now, can you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Kristin Neff
Okay. Well, there’s a quote from Helen Keller that I love, and she says, “When one door of happiness closes, another usually opens. But we usually spend so long staring at the closed door, we don’t even see the one that has been opened for us.”

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you.

Kristin Neff
And so, self-compassion, that’s when we’re optimistic because we don’t just stare at the closed door, we kind of feel safe and then we can look around and say, “Oh, well, what other opportunities are here for me?”

Pete Mockaitis
And I think that’s excellent in the coronavirus context because, it’s true, some doors are closed and it sucks.

Kristin Neff
Exactly. It does suck.

Pete Mockaitis
And, yet, some other doors have opened. And so, you got to make sure you’re being fully aware and honest and making some prudent calls about where you’re pointing that attention, so thank you.

Kristin Neff
That’s right. On the other hand, it’s important also to give yourself compassion for the fact that it does suck. We don’t have to be chipper and positive. We can just take some time and say, “This is just really, really hard. This sucks. Oh.” And then that will actually help us get through it.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, thank you. And how about a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Kristin Neff
So, a favorite study, experiment, or a bit of research. So, here’s one, very simple in terms of the fact that you really can change your self-compassion level. So, one study had people write a self-compassionate letter to themselves, which is just basically using mindfulness and kindness, and reminding themselves of their humanity. A letter for seven days straight. And they found that just that simple act of writing yourself a compassionate letter decreased depression for three months and increased happiness for six months. So, it had really long-term effects, a very simple practice like this.

So, this is something you can fold into your everyday life. You don’t actually have to write a letter. Just remembering these three components, just remembering mindfulness, common humanity, and kindness can make a huge difference in your life.

Pete Mockaitis
And how about a favorite book?

Kristin Neff
A favorite book. Well, I’m going to pick a book called “Radical Acceptance” by Tara Brach. She’s one of my favorite teachers. She’s actually a Buddhist meditation teacher. It’s just a beautiful book talking about, yeah, what happens, the transformation that happens when we just radically accept ourselves.

Pete Mockaitis
And how about a favorite tool, something you use to be awesome at your job?

Kristin Neff
SPSS.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, great.

Kristin Neff
Which is a statistical program.

Pete Mockaitis
I’ve used it before. Oh, man, memories. Select cases. All right.

Kristin Neff
That’s right, yeah. So, you can calculate your P values. And P value doesn’t mean your enemy is like probability values, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
I was always terrified if I clicked one setting a little bit off it would ruin everything.

Kristin Neff
Yeah, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
And how about a favorite habit, something you do that helps you be awesome at your job?

Kristin Neff
Well, I do yoga. I do Ashtanga yoga. So, I do that three times a week. And I find when I do that, it just really helps my energy out in more productive way and keeps me flexible. And so, I think that helps me, even though I sit in my chair all day for my job, I think it helps that I get out of the chair at least three times a week to do some Ashtanga yoga.

Pete Mockaitis
You know, we had a previous guest say Ashtanga yoga was amazing for making bodily pain disappear. Has that been your experience?

Kristin Neff
Well, it’s funny. I mean, I’m 53 and my body is in pretty good shape, and I don’t have a lot of chronic pain so I don’t know if that’s just good genes or what. But it’s worked out for me. It also makes you strong which is nice.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool.

Kristin Neff
Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
And is there a particular nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate and get repeated back to you frequently?

Kristin Neff
Yeah. So, one of the nuggets I like to share, actually, along with my colleague Chris Germer, we developed something called The Mindful Self-Compassion Program. But the nugget is the goal of practice, whatever practice, meditation practice or just life practice, the goal of practice is simply to become a compassionate mess. If you make sure that’s your goal, that you don’t have to not be a mess, your goal is just to be a compassionate mess. Well, that’s an achievable goal, right? And so, if you start framing things that way, you realize, “Okay. Well, maybe my goal should be more about compassion than about getting everything perfect or right.”

Pete Mockaitis
And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Kristin Neff
Well, just Google self-compassion. Like I say, I got in early so if you Google self-compassion, you can spell it any way you want to, you’ll find my website. And I have research on there, hundreds of articles. You can test your own self-compassion level with my scale I developed. You can practice exercises, there’s videos, so it’s really a one-stop shopping resource for self-compassion, and it’s all free.

Pete Mockaitis
And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Kristin Neff
Yes. So, really, I think it is around motivation. So, the next time you have a big work task, a big work challenge, just really pause and say, “How can I encourage and support myself to get this done?” especially if your habitual way of encouraging yourself is using the whip approach. See if you can change from the whip to support. Try it out and just see what happens.

Pete Mockaitis
That is lovely. And could you give us just a couple examples? Like, how can I support and challenge myself? Part of me, what I’m thinking, is I will decide a celebration after this is done, or I will break this task into a dozen tiny tasks so they feel more manageable, and I’m just like, “Okay, I can pull up that email. I can identify the three deliverables, and so forth.” So, anyway, those are my examples. What else do you see works?

Kristin Neff
Yeah. So, a lot of strategies are kind of more concrete strategies which are really great and really important in terms of actually how to do your work more effectively. But don’t underestimate your emotional state of mind and how that affects your ability to do your best, right? So, if you’re really tense, and you’re kind of like, “Oh, I’ve got to get this right.” That tension, that anxiety is actually going to undermine your ability to do your best.

But if your attitude is, “Hey, I got your back. I know you can do it. But, you know, if you make a mistake, that’s okay. That’s how you’re going to learn.” And that’s really the kind of self-compassionate mind state, “How can I learn from my mistakes?” And then if you try that, it actually will help you be less anxious, and you’ll actually be less likely to make mistakes. But if you do, you’ll be more likely to pick yourself up and try again. So, it’s really more how you relate to what you’re doing as opposed to what you’re doing.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Well, Kristin, thank you. This has been a treat. I wish you lots of luck in all your adventures and much kindness to yourself.

Kristin Neff
Ah, thank you, Pete. Be well and be safe.