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Oct 10
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1001: Transforming Relationships by Overcoming Self-Deception with The Arbinger Institute’s Mitch Warner

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Mitch Warner reveals how we end up sabotaging ourselves and how you can overcome these obstacles to strengthen relationships and your leadership as a whole.

You’ll Learn

  1. How “the box” limits your perspective and opportunities 
  2. The tell-tale signs self-deception 
  3. How to make people feel safe to share their perspectives 

About Mitch

Mitch Warner is a bestselling author and Arbinger managing partner with a background in healthcare and organizational turnaround. Mitch is the co-author of Arbinger’s latest bestseller, The Outward Mindset. He writes frequently on the practical effects of mindset at the individual and organizational levels as well as the role of leadership in transforming organizational culture and results. He is an expert on mindset and culture change, leadership, strategy, performance management, organizational turnaround, and conflict resolution.

Mitch is a sought-after speaker to organizations across a range of industries, bringing his practical experience to bear for leaders of corporations, governments, and organizations across the globe. Specific clients include NASA, Citrix, Aflac, the U.S. Army and Air Force, the Treasury Executive Institute, and Intermountain Healthcare. Mitch carries his first-hand perspective as a proven leader into his speeches and facilitation, dynamically bringing Arbinger’s concepts and tools to life through his powerful stories and hands-on experience. His audiences leave inspired to improve and equipped with a practical roadmap to effect immediate change.

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Mitch Warner Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Mitch, welcome.

Mitch Warner
Thanks so much, Pete. Great to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I am so excited to be chatting with you today because Leadership and Self-Deception is one of my favorite books of all time, and I didn’t know who I could talk to on the show about it because the author is just The Arbinger Institute. And so, I was like, “Who? I don’t know, I guess.” And then you show up in my inbox, that it’s like, “This is the coolest thing ever.” So, thank you and welcome.

Mitch Warner
Thank you. Yeah, I’m excited for our conversation.

Pete Mockaitis
Super. Well, maybe just to back it up a smidge, what is The Arbinger Institute? And how does a whole organization write a book?

Mitch Warner
Oh, great question. The Arbinger Institute is an organization that helps other organizations transform their culture. And the way we help people transform their culture is by helping people transform their people, specifically, at the level of mindset. A lot of people think about transforming a culture or transforming people in terms of behavior, “Okay, well, here’s what people are doing. Let’s fix that. Let’s get people doing something different than they’re doing today, and then we’ll get a better result.”

And our work illuminates the fact that every behavior that people are engaging in is driven by how they see. It’s driven by their mindset. And so, our work is to help organizations transform at the level of mindset. And then when that happens, people start behaving differently and they get better results. And so, the books that we write, including Leadership and Self-Deception, as well as the other books, are all deeply informed by the work that we’re doing with clients.

And that’s not one person. That’s a whole team of people that are going in to help organizations do the work of transforming their results. So those stories are coming through our team from our clients, and they inform everything that we do. And so, while we have teams of people that actually write those books to share those ideas more broadly in the world, we write them as an institute because we are an institute, and it’s really fun.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. And the book doesn’t read as though a piece of writing by committee. It is riveting and lovely, and transformation. That’s something we’re all about here. So, could you kick us off perhaps with a really phenomenal story of folks being transformed by some of these principles? Could you walk us through a person and what went down with regard to what they were thinking and doing and the new ideas that got in their head, and the new things they did, and what happened?

Mitch Warner
One that comes to mind is a leader named Louise Francesconi. She ran a 17,000-person division of a very large organization, and she decided that she was going to own the cultural transformation that she knew had to happen inside of the organization. And it was actually an organization that, when we started working with them, had been newly acquired, and she was put in charge of this division.

So, you got these two different groups of people, and these two groups of people are trying to come together, and they realize that they have to cut a significant amount of money. In fact, $100 million was the task of this newly combined leadership team. We’ve got to cut a $100 million dollars from the business, and we’ve got to grow the business at the same time.

Well, they’ve been involved in the work of cultural transformation that Louise wanted to own inside of this division, and so they just called and they said, “Hey, how would we leverage these ideas that we’ve been working with to tackle a really complex problem like that?” And we said, “Well, we’ll come and we’ll be on site as you do that.” And they came together in the typical way, “All right, let’s cut $100 million,” and Louise set it up in what she thought was the right way to set it up, “All right, everybody come, you’ll all present what you’re going to do to contribute to this big goal.”

And we all know how people show up like that. People are territorial, they don’t want anything to be cut from their area of the business, they kind of present something that’s perfunctory, but you just know you’re never going to get there in this way. Everybody is really just thinking about themselves. They’re coming to that with what we call an inward mindset, “I’m not malicious, but I’m definitely not focused on my impact on other people. I’m focused, really, on how this is going to impact me.”

And they got to a point about halfway through the day where they just realized, “You’re not going to make this happen.” And so, my colleague at Arbinger’s took Louise aside, and said, “Hey, would you mind if I just help shape this meeting?” And she said, “Sure, be my guest.” And he said, “Okay, we’re going to take two hours.”

Now, out of an eight-hour day, that’s a lot of time. But he said, “We’re going to take two hours. And I just want you to pair up with someone else in this room, and you’re going to spend the first hour just explaining to your counterpart all the things that you’re working on, all the things that you’re wrestling with, the things that you’re struggling with. And we’re going to do that for an hour, and then you’re going to spend the next hour just coming up with any way that you could help the other person that you’ve been learning about save their money, not cut their money, just save their money.”

And it was like magic. You had people who were now alive to the people around them for the very first time, really, and going, “Oh, my word. I didn’t realize that what you were trying to do in this organization was so important and how hard that is, but how critical it is, too. Here’s ways I think I could help you save that, that critical piece of the business.”

And it got everybody so far outside of themselves that they started to come up with, on their own, ways that they could help the other people in the business save their money. And as a result, they found redundancies and ways that they were costing themselves, the business, more than they needed to so that they got to cutting a $100 million dollars by the end of the day, and not one person had to lose their job in the process. It was stunning.

And I think about that experience often because it just illustrates what happens when people get outside of themselves, when they just start thinking about, “Hey, who are the people around me? What are they trying to accomplish? What could I do, given the resources that I have, in order to help people be more successful?” And you don’t have to be a leader to work that way. You can be anyone in an organization.

And I’d say that the people in organizations that are most valuable to the organization, doesn’t matter what role you sit in, whether you supervise people or not, are the people that think that way. They just figure out how to get outside of themselves and go, “How do I help other people accomplish their objectives given what I can do?” They’re the magic in an organization.

Pete Mockaitis
That sounds cool. And I’m not going to try to lean into my Bain strategy consulting background, but I’m so curious about these initiatives that saved a hundred million without losing any heads and people feel good about. So, could you give us just one example of an initiative that someone came up with, like, “Hey, this would help you save money,” and someone receives that and says, “Why, thank you,” as opposed to, “Back off, pal”?

Mitch Warner
Well, the first thing that happened in that room is one of the people stood up and said, “Based on what I’m learning from the person that I’ve just been meeting with,” in a serendipitous way. It wasn’t, you know, “Okay, you meet with you, you meet with you.” It wasn’t like that. “It was just the things that I’m learning about this person, I actually think that I should be reporting to that person.”

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, cool.

Mitch Warner
That was the first move that happened in that room. And, look, that doesn’t happen in organizations. It doesn’t happen in meetings like this. No one raises their hand and says, “You know what? I think I should go down a rung in the ladder in our org chart.” That doesn’t happen, but it does when a person says, “You know what? We could succeed if all of the things that I’m doing, which in, a Venn diagram, really overlap with this other organization, if all those things were consolidated.”

And what they saw is that there were facilities, there was equipment, there were processes that had significant redundancy to this other department. And so, from the perspective of this person, they couldn’t say, “Well, I think you should report to me.” They just said, “You know what, for the good of this organization, I could report to you. And if we did that, if we consolidated into one unit instead of two different departments, we could get rid of all of those redundancies, work our teams in the same facilities, on the same equipment, with the same process.” That got them to their first seven million.

But, more importantly than that, it put in motion a domino effect in that room where people realized, “Hey, being part of this company means I don’t have to protect myself. In fact, I can figure out things that I could do that are so innovative because they’re no longer filtered through the lens of self-protection or self-advancement.” When it gets to that point, oh, my word, you can accomplish anything.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, it really is beautiful. You said that doesn’t happen, it does sound almost like miraculous or spiritual, and they’re like wisdom traditions that are speaking of these matters associated with putting others, being in service of others, and kind of losing your ego and these kinds of things. So, I want to talk about the particulars of the individual mindset at length. But, first, I want to hear, in an organizational setting, how do we start to get the memo that, “It is, in fact, safe to do this, and I am not going to get my head chopped off if I lower the defenses”?

Mitch Warner
That’s a really good question, and that’s a question that is easier, I think, if you’re a leader to say, “How do I send that message?” If you’re not though, then it will feel risky. Let’s just be honest, it will feel risky to say, “You know what? I’m going to step out and I’m going to do the kinds of things that I feel would have the highest and best impact on the people around me. And it might mean that I forget some things about the past that I’ve used as justifications for why I haven’t done that to date. It might feel risky. because of where we’ve been.”

But the funny thing is, what I’ve experienced is, that people that take what feels risky, that step, discover that that’s the thing that actually propels their own success. You can’t do it. Here’s the irony about it. You can’t do it to improve your chances of succeeding as an individual. It’s just that I’ve seen that that is the natural outcome. It’s the byproduct.

When people step out and say, “You know what? Let me take a risk and just let me see this person as a person. What are they trying to accomplish? Let me adjust something.” Everybody is going, “That’s what we need in the organization. Those are the kind of leaders we need.” It’s just what I see.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I think that is really beautiful. And I’m thinking about it even, I’ve witnessed this, even in, like, super transactional situations, like there’s a sales meeting that’s occurring, there’s a person that wants to sell something and a person that might want to buy that something. And I’ve seen this a few times when on, as the seller and the prospective buyer, when the seller says, “You know what? Given what you’re describing, or what I’m seeing here, what I have to offer isn’t right for you right now.

Like for a roof, “First, you’ve got to handle that masonry situation, or the roof I’m going to put on there isn’t actually going to keep the water from leaking. So, I don’t do masonry, so you’ve got to handle that first, and then maybe I could help you out afterwards.” Or, it was a digital marketing agency that said, “Hmm, you know, what we’re really good at is promoting this other kind of a result, and we don’t actually have the experience to get a bunch of email addresses associated with this consumer base, and so we’d really be just rolling the dice. And I don’t feel really comfortable putting your money at risk that way.”

And then that same person said, “Pete, I think you should absolutely hire this company.” And we did. Because that builds such tremendous trust that, putting your own self-interest aside, your short-term, immediate self-interest aside, built such trust and good recommendations and vibes, and I think they got more out of it as opposed to trying to grab the deal in front of them.

Mitch Warner
You see that all the time. I mean, is there any role in your life where you’re not more successful if you’re trusted as an advisor by the people that you’re trying to help or serve? I mean, whether you’re a leader, and the people that you need to be seen as a trusted advisor by are the people you lead, or you’re a salesperson and you’re trying to get people to buy, or you’re a parent and you’re trying to help younger people develop into better people. I mean, it doesn’t matter what your role is. And you see that all the time.

And sometimes it looks exactly like you’re saying, “You know, I don’t have the solution for you but I think I know who does. Let me help you get connected with that person.” I remember a dear friend of mine was a leader in a sales organization, but said, “You know, I was in the middle of this transaction. It was the end of the year.”

“I had my quota, and I knew that I had to get this deal over the line in order to meet my quota, and so I pressured this client that I had to get this deal over the line and it wasn’t in their best interest because I was trying to get them to buy in bulk something that they should really have amortized over multiple years when they actually would use this product.”

And the client actually called him on it, and said, “Hey, just so I’m clear, are you doing this for you, or are you doing this for me?” And it was so convicting that, all of a sudden, he realized, “Yeah.” And in that moment, he had this choice, and the choice was, “Am I going to be honest and be just human with this other human being, or am I not?” And he made the choice to just do what he felt was risky, and he said, “To be honest, I’m doing this for me, and I’m so sorry.”

And the interesting thing is that, while he adjusted the deal and he missed his quota, that client was a client for years, far longer than that contract would have been, whatever he was trying to sell. I mean, we got to be honest, sometimes we do take short-term hits by doing the right thing, but ultimately that’s where our success really lies. Those clients, they stay with you forever. There are so many examples of that.

And it can even be as small as, you know, a friend of mine, a colleague, was delivering an Arbinger workshop. And in the middle of this workshop with a client realized that they were bugged with some of the people in the room that were kind of resistant.

Mitch Warner
They were frustrated, they were annoyed with these people in the room, and they realized, “Oh, my word, I have got to make a decision. Do I keep going knowing that I’ve been irritated or do I own that fact, given that it’s a reality?” And they came into the room, they took a break, came back to the room, and they said, “I have to take ownership. I’ve gotten annoyed with some of you that are resistant, and it’s kept me from getting curious about what are you so resistant to. Can I just…?”

And, all of a sudden, the room changed and people said, “Well, this is what we’re resistant about.” And for the first time, that person could facilitate the workshop that they were there to facilitate because now they’re working with actual people. It felt risky, but the truth is it unlocked the very thing that they were there to do. And I think that’s the irony that you and I are talking about. Whatever feels risky, turns out will unlock the very thing that gets us the result that we’re there to accomplish in the first place.

Pete Mockaitis
Mitch, I love this stuff because it grabs the heart in terms of what is being a human about and, like, we got jobs, and we do them, but sometimes it could feel like they are just, like, “Follow the processes. I am a robot executing value-creation activities,” right? But when you speak about this stuff, and I read Leadership and Self-Deception, it comes alive in terms of we are human beings who have values and feelings about stuff.

And, sure enough, it does work out often, not always, that when you step up and are courageous, you take a risk and call a spade a spade, say what’s really going on, and compassionately listen to another person’s point of view, cool stuff happens. I remember, this is the weirdest example, but I was in high school and there was a girl, and we were kind of dating, kind of not, we need to DTR to find the relationship better, I guess.

Anyway, and so it was the weirdest situation, a fun bunch of friends, and we got in this weird little argument and it’s like we were litigating, like, who did who wrong in the course of this semi-romantic relationship. And so, we were sort of arguing in front of the jury. And we weren’t really getting anywhere, and then they left. It was just the two of us, I said, “Hey, yeah, I actually didn’t know you felt that way about this thing. I’m really sorry. And I wasn’t trying to do this. Tell me more about that.”

And it was amazing how it just totally shifted the view, it’s like, “Are we litigating or are we trying to understand, like, the other person and where we come from?” And it’s a totally different energy, and it might be, “soft” or “touchy feely,” but it is effective in terms of, “Okay, this relationship is restored, there’s trust, and we’re off to the races, moving and making things happen.”

Mitch Warner
Somebody once, who experienced this work, said, “Oh, this is soft like a brick.” It hits you and it’s at the core of our relationship. So, to the degree that we believe that relationships actually are what’s driving results, whether it’s in a personal relationship with a partner or it’s in an organization. If you believe that relationships drive results, then what unlocks those relationships is critically important.

And what you said, I think, is so interesting, this litigating who’s right and who’s wrong. In the book, in Leadership and Self-Deception, this whole idea of self-deception that gets in the way, we say sometimes there’s a risk of calling a spade a spade. Usually, the risk is calling myself a spade, when I am a spade, when I’m not seeing clearly. It usually never helps to call someone else a spade. Let them find out the truth about them. But, for me, in a situation where I feel a need to litigate, to justify, it means that something is off. It means that something is wrong and I know it.

I know it at such a deep and professional level that I’m really good at hiding it from myself. I mean, imagine that you and I work together, and I come across a piece of information and I think, “Oh, my word, this would be super helpful for Pete.” The straightforward thing to do would be to just share it with you. But if I betray my own sense of what would be helpful to you as a person, who has needs and challenges and objectives, who’s real to me, just a person that I’m working with, if I go against that sense, if I betray my own sense, then all of a sudden, I need to feel justified for that betrayal.

And how do I do that? I create a world where it’s okay for me to have treated you as less than a person. And so, I might see you as competition, I see you as a threat. Only one of us could get the promotion after all. Or I see you as lazy because, if you didn’t come across this information on your own, that means that you’re probably not doing your job. Or I see you as incompetent, or I see you as stupid, or whatever the case might be, and I see myself as all the opposite of those things.

And now, there’s this whole narrative in my head. You’re not even aware of this Pete, but I’ve got this narrative in my head of why it’s okay for me to be the way I am with you. And why do I need that? It’s because I’m actually not okay with the way I’ve chosen to see you. And I’ll invite you to be exactly what I say I don’t like. I’ll invite you to be all of those things, because if you are, then I’m justified in how I chose to see you. You’ve got this whole human dynamic that came about and I’m litigating that in my own head, but it all stemmed from me.

And I think the hopeful thing about that is, given the fact that I’ve deceived myself, I can also reclaim the truth, just like you did with that girl you were dating in high school. In the moment, at any time, we can go, “Wait a minute. That’s been my impact? I’m seeing you now again? I’m so sorry.” If I can let go of all of those falsehoods, then we can just be truthful together again. We can be human together again. That’s, I think, the hope of it. It’s both how scary it is, the way this snow-balls, but how easy it is to reclaim the relationship that we can have at any moment if we choose to.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Mitch, you’re saying so much good, wise stuff. And in the book, there’s an expression they use a lot, and I hear it in my own voice, in the voice of the Audible narrator, when I’m doing it, it’s like, “You’re in the box!” So, Mitch, tell us, what does it mean to be in the box versus out of the box, metaphorically?

Mitch Warner
The box is this metaphor for that distorted way that I’ve come to see the world that gives me justification for my own self-betrayals, the way I’ve chosen to see other people falsely. So now, I’ve got this distorted view of you and me. It’s two-sided. I can’t see you in a less-than way without seeing myself as superior, or vice versa if I get justification that way.

You can imagine a version like that, right, “Oh, my word, I don’t have any privileges here, and I’m new to the team, and Pete is so connected, and he’s so much smarter than I am, he’s so much more gifted than I am. He probably came across this information years ago. If I could go to him now and share this.” So, now I’m worse than, you’re better than. It doesn’t matter which form that takes, it’ll look different depending on how I get justification in any relationship.

But that distorted view, it’s like living in a box. I no longer see reality. I’ll only see the things about you or me that reinforce that false self-image and that false image of you that gets me justification. Because more than I want you to change, more than I want the relationship to be healed, more than I want to work productively to save our family, or our company, or our community, I want justification. And I won’t just carry that distorted, I won’t just live in that distortion of a box with you. I’ll carry that around in a new situation.

I’ll walk into a meeting, and you’re not even there now, but I’m so invested in this view of myself that, “I’m so smart and capable and noble, because the worst thing that you can do when you work with someone like Pete is spoon-feed them information. So, I’m doing the very best that I can, that I’m smart, I’m capable, I’m more capable.” I walk into a meeting and people are presenting ideas. I’m carrying this box, this distorted view of myself into that meeting.

If you were to ask me, walking in then, “Hey, Mitch, what kind of leader are you? What kind of contributor are you? What kind of team member are you? Are you the person that needs to have all the best ideas?” I say, “No way. I’m the kind of person that likes ideas no matter where they come from.” But if I’ve got a view of myself that I’m really smart and capable or whatever that case might be, and then I share an idea and it gets shut down, somebody says, “Oh, you know what, Mitch? I’ve tried that in some other organization. It didn’t work very well. I think we could do this though.”

If I didn’t have this box, if I wasn’t living in this distorted reality, I’d go, “Oh, awesome! I’m glad you’ve tried that. All right, how do we do what you’re suggesting we do? Let’s mobilize around that.” But if I’m living in this box, if I’m carrying this distorted view of myself and others around, all of a sudden, that idea that might save our team, that’s a threat. It’s a threat to my self-image. I experience this all the time at work, but also at home.

You know, I’ve got this image that I deserve to be listened to or whatever. All of a sudden, I walk into situations with my kids. I’m not seeing them. I’m not even seeing myself. I’m just in this distortion field because I need to feel justified for that distorted way that I’ve chosen to see them and me, and now I’m not interacting with what they say. I’m interacting with threats to this self-view that I’ve got that’s so important to me, because at least if that distorted view of myself and others is correct, I’m justified in not seeing the people around me. Does that make sense?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, absolutely, it does. And this idea is so big and powerful and transformative when you get your arms around it. And so, I mean, I’ve read the book, and if folks haven’t, I just want to make sure they’re not like, “What are they smoking? This is some trippy stuff.” Could you give us some super common examples, like we see all the time in terms of how folks find themselves, deceiving themselves, and then getting into trouble, like the top one or two or three things that occur perhaps nearly universally to humans interacting with other humans?

Mitch Warner
Well, look, there’s a thousand examples of how self-deception shows up in my life, but I won’t see them because self-deception, by definition, is a lie I’m telling to myself. So, what’s odd about that is I can’t see the lie even though I’m the liar because I’m so invested in believing that it’s the truth. In fact, my own emotions will tell me that this is the truth.

So, one of the easiest ways to see it, where self-deception is showing up, and self-deception, let’s just be clear, it’s just the problem of people having problems and not knowing that they have that problem, which would be easy to fix if we’re like, “Hey, Mitch, by the way, the way you’re talking to your kids right there, that’s going to alienate your kids. Is that what you want?”

Or, “Hey, Mitch, the way that you’re showing up in this meeting is actually going to have people resisting your idea instead of embracing it.” Or, “Hey, Mitch, the way that you’re avoiding this conversation with this employee over there, you’re talking to everybody about them instead of talking to them, your team member, that actually will exacerbate the problem. It’s going to keep going rather than get better.”

I mean, it’s like the most basic things that we can see if we’re not the person in the middle of it. And this would be easy to fix if you could tell me, “Hey, Mitch, by the way, the way that you’re talking to your kid is probably going to alienate them.” It’s not just that in self-deception I can’t see it. It’s that I resist that possibility, “Well, do you see how they’re talking to me? How else am I going to get through?” or, “Do you see what this employee is doing? They never listen to other people.” Whatever the case might be, but we don’t see it.

And you can look anywhere in your life where people are creating problems for themselves and they don’t notice it. They can’t tell. So how do I discern it? How do I know where this is happening in my own life? I have to look for the red flags of this box. And the red flags are, “Are there people that I’m blaming for my situation, for my experience? Am I horrible-lizing any people in my life? Am I seeking allies? Am I talking to people about other people? What might that signal?”

You said I litigate. I do that in my own head, Pete. I lawyer up. I find myself driving home from work and I tell myself this story. It’s like I’m playing out this courtroom scene, and I’m creating this case for why I’m right. Even the feeling that I’m right might be an indication that I could be telling myself a story here and it may not be the full truth. I could be self-deceived.

Those telltale signs, it might be that I exaggerate values, “Well, you know what? This is fair.” I wasn’t thinking about fairness when I was just working with someone else. It’s when I betray my own sense of what other people need, and now I’m in this distorted box where I’m looking for justification. Actually, that word itself, wherever I feel justified or I’m looking for justification by talking to others and gathering allies for me, that’s a pretty big red flag that there’s a reason I’m trying to feel justified, and it’s because things aren’t right as they are.

So, I just say look for those instances. Look for those instances where I’m experiencing any of those red flags, and then ask myself, “Is it possible that this isn’t fully the truth?”

Pete Mockaitis
Now, Mitch, if I could put you on the spot, hardcore, could you share with us one recent instance in which you caught yourself caught up in this?

Mitch Warner
Oh, absolutely. I found myself with a team member here at Arbinger, one of the senior leaders, and I realized that I had had conversations with this person repeatedly, where I saw problems around what was happening inside of their team. And when they would ask me, “How are things going?” I would kind of dance around it, and I was talking to other people pretty straightforwardly about the problems that this person was creating for me and what I thought was for the company.

And then, finally, one person said to me, “Hey, what do you think it’s like for that person when you have conversations that aren’t really straightforward?” And in the moment, I realized I’m actually sabotaging this person’s success because I think I might want them to fail. Otherwise, why would I not tell them what I’m seeing if this could cost them their success?

And the reality is, I wanted to be justified. As long as they were behaving in these ways, then I was okay talking about them as a problem, seeing them as a problem. What you do with that, that’s where it can feel risky, but I always finish those conversations where I then step forward and say, “Hey, you know what, I haven’t been telling you the truth about what I’m seeing that’s problematic on your team or in you.” And it was an incredibly healing experience.

And what I saw in that conversation was all the ways that I had been creating problems for this person. So, yeah, it happens. I’ll be honest, Pete, those discoveries happen at least weekly, sometimes daily, where I realize I’m not real with other people, and I need to be in order to do my job.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Mitch, I appreciate that vulnerability and sharing a lot, and I think that’s powerful context right there in terms of if you catch yourself doing this, that doesn’t mean you’re very bad and very wrong and “Shame! Shame!” It means, “Hooray, you’re engaging the stuff correctly.” And in so doing, you’ve illuminated a pathway to improving your relationships and your results, and even, I’d say, your very character and the rewarding-ness of life itself, if I may be so bold. And that’s awesome. And so, it’s encouraging to hear you, the almighty managing director of The Arbinger Institute.

Mitch Warner
Oh, no, no, no.

Pete Mockaitis
That you, you too, realize you have these discoveries frequently, and I think that’s just a good message for anyone who starts going down this road, and is like, “Geez, I am a real jerk.” It’s like, “Well, we all kind of are. And it’s nice that you’re identifying specific opportunities for improvement, and you’re going to be on a nice little upward character trajectory with better relationships and results to go with it.”

Mitch Warner
Look, the only thing that qualifies any of us at Arbinger to do the work that we’re engaging is that we see it all the time in our life. It’s just constant. I’ll just say one thing about this process. There’s two ways to go about trying to improve myself. One is a project that’s really about me improving, “I want to be free of the box. I want to be a person who’s not self-deceived.” That’s great, but I just find in my own life that that never actually gets me where I want to be in the relationships that matter to me.

The other way I get there is I just go, “Man, what’s life like for this other person having to live and work with me when I’m like this? What are they trying to accomplish? What are they trying to achieve? What are their needs and challenges and objectives? What’s life like for them?” And then when I focus on that, all of a sudden, I can see clearly, more clearly than I can when it’s just a self-improvement project, the ways that I’ve been getting in other people’s way, and then I just respond. When I do that, things get better, faster than when it’s a self-improvement kind of project. You know what I mean?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, absolutely. Yeah, that sense of conviction and what’s life like. And I think that’s a superpower question right there because, to even face that question soberly and honestly, it takes courage. Like, just the thoughts you’re willing to entertain in your own head, it takes some courage, like, “You might not want to do this when driving because the temptation is immediate.”

Like, “Well, they’re wrong!” It’s like, “They deserve it!” It’s almost like there’s a little monster that’s just, like, trying to run. Like, “No, no, no! Don’t look here, don’t look here!” when that is exactly the place that needs to be looked. It’s like, “What’s life like? Oh, it probably kind of sucks. It probably feels very unsettling to be on the receiving end of this day after day after day.”

And then to just internalize what you hath wrought, the pain and destruction that you have brought on to others hurts. But I think that’s a great sign that you’re growing in self-awareness and compassion, and it’s kind of like the immediate precursor to breakthrough.

Mitch Warner
Absolutely. And if you get there, if you find yourself able to begin to see, “Oh, my word, this is what I’ve wrought. This is what life, I think, is like, having to live or work with me.” Go share that with the person. Go tell them. We call this at Arbinger, “Meet to give.” So often we meet to get, “What would it look like if I just met to give?” And I say, not, “Hey, here’s some changes I think I can make.” You should share that. But, first, tell the person what you’re seeing that you weren’t seeing before when you started to think about what life has been like for.

And I’d just be that clear, I’d say, “Hey, you know what? I wonder if we could have a conversation, because I’ve been thinking about what life has probably been like for you having to live or work with me. And, look, I don’t know if this encapsulates all of it. I’m actually curious about what exactly it’s been like from your perspective. But just sitting there, trying to think about what it likely it’s like, I think it’s like this.”

“And as I think about your objectives, I think your objectives are this. I think this is what you’re trying to accomplish. And here’s how I think I’ve been making that harder, and I just got to own that. I am so sorry. But I’m actually curious. Is that right? Are those the challenges? Are those your objectives? Or what would you add?”

Going to someone, and saying, “Hey, tell me how I’ve been a problem for you,” don’t expect anything from that conversation. Don’t expect someone who you’ve had friction with to be like, “Oh, well, great. Actually, this…” They won’t tell you. You haven’t created a safe enough space. You haven’t demonstrated enough interest in figuring out that, and being willing to own it. But when you do that, even if you don’t have it completely right, all of a sudden, they say, “Oh, actually, yeah,” or, “Well, kind of, but it’s actually a little bit more like this.”

And all of a sudden, you start learning and you get curious, and you say, “Okay, tell me more about that.” That process of just owning it, showing that you’ve been doing some thinking, showing that you’re curious about what your impact has been, that does more to change a relationship than probably anything else you can do. I would say that nothing changes in an organization, nothing, until the relationships between the people that have to work together, transform.

And nothing moves the needle more in transforming those relationships than people doing the work to think about their impact, and then going and honestly sharing that and owning it, and then getting curious about how they might have been wrong around that, and finding ways to help. You offer, “Hey, so, well, given all that, I think I could do this. Would that be helpful?” And they’ll say, “Oh, actually, yeah,” or, “Well, it’s a little bit different.”

It’s no different than the conversation you should be having with family members, with siblings, or a partner, or your kids if you’ve got kids. It’s exactly the same. Just try it. Go meet to give with the people in your life and do the work in advance, and then own it honestly. You’ll be amazed at the transformation that that will begin to put in motion.

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely. Being on the receiving end of that is, like, it could be like startling. It’s like the end of “A Christmas Carol,” like, “What happened to Scrooge? This is amazing! A Christmas miracle!” Beautiful stuff. Mitch, tell me anything else you want to make sure to mention before we hear about some of your favorite things?

Mitch Warner
No, I just say don’t think that this is some theoretical thing. This isn’t. This is the way that we work when we’re at our very best selves. We’re just honest. We see each other as people. We’re outward. We take responsibility. And to the degree that you can uncover the places where you haven’t been telling the truth about how you’ve been creating challenges you haven’t seen, that move will do more to set you free to do the kinds of things that you want to see in your life that will propel your success in any relationship than, in my experience, any other work that you could do. So, just jump in, take the next step.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Awesome. Well, now, Mitch, can you share a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Mitch Warner
There’s many, but one of the ones that I personally love comes from Abraham Lincoln, when he said, “I don’t like that man. I should probably get to know him better.” I mean, it’s not terribly profound, except it is. If there’s people in my life that I’m resisting or struggling with, what would it mean if I just got to know them better? What would it mean if I just went and met to learn with that person?

I keep that in mind every time I think, “Man, I don’t like that person. I’m bugged,” or, sorry, irritated. “I’m experiencing friction. Maybe I really need to get to know this person better.” And the truth is every time, that’s unlocked something new for me.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Mitch Warner
Oh, great question. There was a study that was done by McKinsey a couple years ago. It was this longitudinal study over many organizations that found something that I have found in our work with organizations. What they found is that organizations that identify and address mindset at the outset are four times more likely to succeed at changing whatever they’re trying to change in the organization than are organizations that just bypass mindset change and go directly to behavior change.

When I saw that study, I thought, “Oh, my word, here is independent research that just validates the work that we’re doing every day.” You’ve got to begin with mindset. Going to behavior won’t work because every behavior is an outgrowth of mindset. So, if you can master that, you can change anything.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite book?

Mitch Warner
Two that I keep coming back to, one is Insanely Simple. It’s a really powerful view into the work at Apple to get to simplicity, and what that can mean in your organization or in your own work as an individual. What would it look like to get to real simplicity? And the other one is called Creativity, Inc. It’s the Pixar story, and how that team of people was able to unleash creativity by really overcoming ego and seeing each other and their customers as people. We use the Adobe suite constantly.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And is there a key nugget you or The Arbinger Institute shares that really seems to connect and resonate with folks that gets quoted back to you often?

Mitch Warner
When you think about a job, whatever your job is, with an outward mindset, there’s a particular pattern. Sometimes when we think about a job, we think, “Well, here’s all of my tasks, here’s my objectives,” the kind of things you could put on a job description. But when you’re really outward, you don’t start with what you do. You start with what other people need to do, who depend on you in the way you go about your work.

My manager, my customers, my co-workers, my direct reports if I’m a leader, if you start there and just see people, what are they trying to accomplish, then you will find the most innovative, powerful ways to adjust what you’re doing every day to be more helpful to them. And the truth is, there’s nothing that anyone does in an organization that’s not intended or designed to help someone else.

So, when you unlock that, that, “My job is to help other people accomplish their job better, so it’s in my power to figure out the innovative ways to change what I do moment-to-moment to be more helpful,” and then measure that impact. Go check in and say, “Hey, I changed this? Was that helpful? I’m thinking of adjusting this. Would that be helpful?”

You can remember that with the acronym SAM, see others, adjust efforts, measure impact. Employees that do that are the most valuable employees in the company. And so, I’d say that’s the thing people walk away, remembering day to day. The way to stay outward, the way to not get bogged down in self-deception or lies I’m telling myself, is to just orient my work every day, what I’m doing moment-to-moment in an outward way. See others first, then adjust my efforts and measure impact.

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

Mitch Warner
Just come to our website, Arbinger.com. We’d love to have a conversation with you, figure out what are your challenges, what are you trying to accomplish. There are tons of resources there that can help you get started on this journey to living and working with an outward mindset. Or, go online and buy our books. You can go to Amazon. You can go to any other retailer. Pick up Leadership and Self-Deception and see what that unlocks for you in your own work. Wherever you are, whatever you’re trying to accomplish, pick up the book, we’d love to hear from you about it.

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

Mitch Warner
I’d say, going back to what we were talking about, Pete, go and meet to give with the people that you have friction with. Just do that work. If there are people in your life that you’d actually just like to improve the relationship but there hasn’t been friction, I’d say go meet to learn. Just get curious. No other agenda. You could do this today.

Pick someone in your life. It could be someone in your family, it could be someone that you work with every day, and just say, “Hey, I’d love to just learn more about what your needs and your challenges and your objectives are. Would you be willing to just let me get curious about those for a minute? I’d love to learn more.” You’d be amazed at what that would unlock. Meet to give, if there’s been friction. If there are people in your life you just love to have a different relationship with, go and meet to learn.

Pete Mockaitis
Mitch, this is powerful stuff. Thank you. I wish you many, many happy days and minimal self-deception.

Mitch Warner
Thanks so much, Pete. It’s been great to be with you.

Sep 26
0

997: How to Push Past Self-Doubt and Find the Confidence to Pursue Big Things with Pat Flynn and Matt Gartland

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Pat Flynn and Matt Gartland share insights on impostor syndrome–and more–from their community of thousands of developing entrepreneurs.

You’ll Learn

  1. The mindset shift that stops self-doubt
  2. The three daily questions that build confidence
  3. Why to seek more uncomfortable situations

About Pat and Matt

Pat Flynn is a popular podcaster, author, and founder of several successful websites, including SmartPassiveIncome.com, where he helps people build thriving online businesses. He has been featured in Forbes and in the New York Times for his work. He calls himself “The Crash Test Dummy of Online Business” because he loves to put himself on the line and experiment with various business strategies so that he can report his findings publicly to his audience.

He is also the author of Let Go and Wall Street Journal bestseller Will It Fly?. He speaks on the topics of product validation, audience engagement, and personal branding. Pat is also an advisor to Pencils of Promise, a nonprofit organization dedicated to building schools in the developing world. Pat lives in San Diego with his wife April and their two children.

Matt Gartland is an entrepreneur, startup advisor, investor and the co-founder and CEO of SPI Media, where they help everyday people become experienced entrepreneurs through community-powered learning, connection, and support. He’s also the co-founder of Fusebox, as well as an advisor at several startups. He’s an expert when it comes to operations, finance, pricing, product development, and customer experience as well as empowering marketing and sales.

Resources Mentioned

Pat Flynn and Matt Gartland Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Pat and Matt, welcome.

Matt Gartland
It’s a thrill to be here.

Pat Flynn
What’s up, Pete? Great to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I’m thrilled to have you. I have been such a huge fan of Smart Passive Income for well over a decade. It’s surprising I haven’t tried to rope you in more often.

Pat Flynn
Well, maybe this will be the start of several roping-ins.

Pete Mockaitis
Be careful. Be careful what you promise, Pat. But why don’t you, why don’t we just kick it off? Can you orient us for those who are not as familiar, what is Smart Passive Income, your whole brand, website, channel, thing you got going on?

Pat Flynn
Yeah, I’ll start because it kind of began with me in 2008. I had gotten laid off from my dream job as an architect, and that was the only plan I had was to be an architect, and I got let go in 2008 with the Great Recession, didn’t know what I was going to do. And then through the interwebs, I discovered a podcast that taught me the idea of, “Well, I could start my own online business.” And I was like, “This is insane. Like, I didn’t go to business school. I don’t know how to do any of this stuff, but I had to survive somehow.”

So, I ended up building a website to help architects pass an exam called the LEED exam, a very niched, green building, sustainable design sort of exam, and it did really, really well. In about a year, it had generated over $238,000 in that first year, which was mind boggling. I didn’t even think that was possible, number one. But, number two, I thought at any moment in time, the SWAT team was going at me because it just didn’t feel like it was possible, like, I just I had no idea what was happening.

Pete Mockaitis
You’re making money too easily, “You’re under arrest for easy money.”

Pat Flynn
I was, like, I went to school for architecture, and I’ve spent all this money for schooling, and then here I was just, like, learning as I was going, and doing much better. It just didn’t make sense. Now when that happened, a lot of people were like, “Pat, tell us what happened. How did you do this?” I’m like, “I don’t know. I’m just to share what I did,” and that’s what I did.

I started a website called Smart Passive Income And then along the way, in 2013, I wrote my first book, and that’s where Matt and I crossed paths the first time because he was helping me edit that book, and I had just such a wonderful experience working with Matt then that we started working a little bit more closely together on projects.

I started to speak a lot more on stages, build more of a brand reputation in the personal brand space here. And then Matt and I tied the knot, if you want to call it that, in the late 20 teens, and have been working together ever since, and it’s just been fascinating. So, now we teach people, no matter what level they’re at, how to start a business online. So that’s the quick story from my end.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Pat and Matt, you have built an amazing thing, and I do know firsthand I am a longtime customer and fan, and so I recommend we’ll be linking it in the show notes and whatnot all your goodies. But this is not a podcast so much about creating cool online courses or building a dope YouTube channel, even though you’ve accomplished that.

But I want to talk to you, specifically, about the zone of confidence, imposter syndrome, because that comes up a lot for my listeners, and I know it also comes up a lot for your students, and they wonder, “Well, who am I? Who would ever want to pay money for my course? Or who might want to listen to me on a podcast, or watch me in a YouTube, or pay me hundreds, thousands of dollars for what I know in some sort of a package?”

And so, you’ve helped many people think about this, I think, pretty well and clearly. Not like, “No, you’re brilliant! No matter what you do, it will work and you’ll prosper and get rich!” Nor it’s like, “No, forget it! There’s no chance for you. Forget it! Who are you to say it?” Like, you really do a wise job, I think, of navigating this territory between under- and overconfidence, so I want to hear all about how we do that.

Pat Flynn
Yeah, this is a really important topic. I mean, whether you are going to become an entrepreneur or not, becoming entrepreneurial in the way that you think, in the way that you solve problems, in the way that you feel about yourself is really, really key. Obviously, if you are an entrepreneur and you don’t believe in what you have to offer, you’re not going to do a good job of selling it. Nobody’s going to believe you. And when it comes to the workforce, in your professional career, if you don’t believe in yourself, you’re not going to go anywhere either.

There is selling involved in who you are and the value that you have to offer your higher-ups in which you could provide the company, and those are all important things to understand. Yet, like an entrepreneur, we always get in our own way.

We are often, and this is where my story really began as an entrepreneur, is I had to let go of who I thought I was supposed to be in order to become who I was supposed to become. I had been trained to have everything be perfect. As an architect, especially, it’s like if you don’t build the building well, it could crush people, so you kind of need it to be perfect in the way you design things.

But when it came to being an entrepreneur, you can’t. You have to be imperfect. That’s the only way to progress is through failure and mistakes and learning as you go and figuring things out. And if I had to design my career, like I designed a building, I would still be designing it and not taking any action. But what I learned, and maybe this is where we start, is through all of this, relationships have been so, so key.

Knowing people and understanding what value means to them has been the most important thing to help me get to where I’m at today and will continue to help me as I move forward. It’s all about relationships. So, if you try to go through life and your career all on your own, it’s going to be very, very difficult. But when you start to understand the people part of this, it begins to unravel into a clearer path because, really, it’s about serving others.

And that includes in your work, your clients, obviously, but also your manager or your boss, and understanding what’s important to them and seeing how you might be able to position yourself as indispensable or providing some sort of value that only you can do because, either maybe that’s your expertise, or that’s what you train to do, or you figured something out, that without you, the company wouldn’t run in its optimal format.

So, there’s a lot to unpack here, I’m sure, but for any entrepreneur who knows what they’re doing, it’s about serving others first. And I think it’s the same thing when it comes to building your career. How can you be of service to others? Your value, your salary is often proportional to that.

Pete Mockaitis
I love that so much. And starting right there with that imperfect, I think that is probably a killer of starting quite often from the get-go. It’s like, “I don’t know how this is going to work. I don’t know if it is going to work. It might be kind of shoddy.” Take us into the right mindset for starting imperfectly. Like, what’s the wrong way to think about it, that’s going to kill any idea or momentum before it starts? And what’s the prudent ideal way to think about imperfection?

Pat Flynn
The idea of imperfection and failure has been ingrained to many of our heads since growing up, “If you don’t get an A, you’re doing it wrong,” or on your tests. It’s, “You have to be perfect or else.” And that’s a very tough position to be in. How could you possibly even learn to explore or try new things if that is the mindset you have going into something new?

You have to have the mindset of failing fast means learning faster. And I think that that is a huge thing to understand. The idea that as long as you understand that there is learning to be had, true failure is giving up, but worrying so much about what the result will be often stops people in their tracks. I make the success my actions, not the result of those actions, because I can’t always control the results. But I can control the actions I take.

And so, if there’s learning on those results, that means even if I fail, I am making progress, and sometimes, yes, you’ll have to communicate this with other people who are around you and other involved parties. But, mentally, introspection-wise, personally, I use to account all of my success on the results that the work that I did do, and that’s a very tough position to be in. Imagine doing the action, and then an algorithm or YouTube or somebody else says, “No, that’s incorrect,” or, “You did it wrong,” even though you know that you prepared yourself to do things correctly.

And so, it’s a very tough mental position to be in to consider your success, the results of what you do, versus, “I did the work. I showed up. I did my best, and I’m learning from my mistakes.” That is a win even if the result isn’t where you wanted it to be because you can’t necessarily always control the result, but you can always control your actions that you take now. The actions that you take today, turn into the story that you tell about yourself tomorrow.

Pete Mockaitis
Tweet that, Pat. That’s good.

Pat Flynn
Yeah, I’ll engrave that one in a wood plaque at some point. But, Matt, I’m curious your thoughts on this too, because you deal directly with a lot of students who are at that level, where they just are getting in their own way and they’re telling themselves stories about why this is not going to work. How do you coach people? You’ve coached several people in our community directly on those kinds of things.

Matt Gartland
I like how Pat kind of phrased it around entrepreneurial and how do we just kind of reframe sort of our headspace and then, therefore, our approach to relationships.

And it’s similar, but maybe a different way of teeing it up, which is not to expect an immediate reward, not to expect like, “Hey, I’m going to do a thing. I’m going to deliver value into a relationship,” especially a new relationship, and instantly expect, like, closing a sale, or getting a yes, or some sort of immediate gratification.

If we can lean into new relationships and be okay with the imperfection of like, “I’m not getting something immediately back,” and being okay with that, and I’m not saying that that’s easy, but just like the reps of practicing that, that is healthy relationship-building.

Like, just invest into them, deliver value, help them in some way, start to earn that trust. That works in any career. That works in a corporate environment, whether it’s with your supervisor or a cross-functional manager or partner or an executive in your company, if you work in retail. All of these different career pursuits and job types can, I think, improve if we initially detach the pursuit of, like, some sort of instant gratification or reward for my actions, and invest more into their success and just value delivery, I think is one of those really healthy, important kind of reframes on building relationships and getting more comfortable and, therefore, less maybe trapped in our own insecurities or imperfections, that headspace is not helpful.

Pete Mockaitis
Ooh, there’s so much there in terms of I like that headspace is when you are focused on serving and delivering value to the others, by definition, we’re no longer self-centered. “You lose yourself,” to quote Eminem, the best pump-up song ever, before entering a situation. So, you lose yourself and you’re not self-centered, you’re other-focused, giving value, and then a lot of the nervousness disappears. I’d love to hear a bit more about the success comes from the actions, not from the results.

We had B.J. Fogg on the show, talking about Tiny Habits, and he’s awesome. He told me that I was a natural celebrator. And I’m curious, if we find ourselves maybe getting a little bit hung up on the external results, the wins, the validations, the atta-boys, are there any methods or approaches you use to celebrate your actions or to bring your head back into the zone of, “No, no, this was a win, this was victory because I took the action here”?

Matt Gartland
I think that this is a part of the richer story of, like, finding jobs that speak to satisfaction and bring joy to our work

Just like doing good work with good people, trying to help in whatever sort of way that that makes sense in your own definition of an ideal job, I think, is a really kind of motivating force and can help us overcome mistakes and pitfalls and whatnot that will be true anywhere if we’re not doing those things. And, I think Pat said it earlier, like we’re not maybe trying hard enough or leaning into the opportunity to serve people and collaborate with others.

Pat Flynn
Also, I think it’s important, and you’d mentioned this briefly, Matt is the idea of the team and doing great work together with others. And part of a leader’s role, and I think everybody should, and it’s very entrepreneurial to be a leader, to see others who are there who might need your help or guidance, to also recognize the good work that they do. And I think it’s important in a communal situation, especially in a workplace, to recognize those who are doing work that may also often just be overlooked.

I remember when I was working in architecture, there was one person, Adrian was his name, he would always recognize the small things that I did that were good, and that reinforced me to want to do those things and other things even better, and those are things that the project managers would often sort of overlook. And that made sense because they weren’t directly working with me. Adrian was the job captain who was in charge of sort of my work and overseeing my stuff.

But recognizing things that were a little bit challenging, and even if I didn’t do them correctly, the fact that I tried and made progress on those things was good. It helped me want to make sure those things were even better the next time, and that’s really key. And we practice that inside of Team SPI as well, and we try to recognize those in our community at the same time and the good work that they do. Even those small things matter quite a bit.

It’s human nature to want to feel like you’re a part of something, and I think in the workforce that sometimes gets forgotten because there’s a job to do, but it’s still people talking with other people and connecting with other people, and the people sort of component of this is really key. And if you can set yourself up as a leader, which means a few things, being a leader means seeing and recognizing the work that other people do, like I just said.

But it’s also owning up to what your weaknesses are and what your mistakes are, and then seeing how others can fill in that gap, and you all working together toward a greater good or a common goal, or also working on those things that are weaker and just not pretending like you know everything, I think, is important, too. The good leader is the one who’s in the trenches with the community, not the one at the top of the mountain just yelling and telling everybody what to do, in my opinion.

And I think that energy inside of that workforce and that workspace is really important to just to understand. There’s no necessarily a barometer that measures the energy in the room. But there is a feeling, and I think it’s important to keep that as high as possible, the energy in the group.

Pete Mockaitis
I dig that a lot, and so props to Adrian. Thanks, Adrian. You’re awesome.

Pat Flynn
Yeah, thank you, Adrian.

Pete Mockaitis
If we’re lacking an Adrian in our workplaces, an unfortunate place to be, do you have any self-talk approaches or strategies? If we may, could we zoom into the conversations that you’re having with yourselves that you find helpful for persisting in the midst of these sorts of situations?

Pat Flynn
I’m reminded of a journal that I used to write in every single day, I did for three years until I moved on to a different system, but it’s called “The 5-Minute Journal.” And “The 5-Minute Journal” is an incredible sort of journal. Journaling is great. That’s a great way to be introspective and to learn and to kind of unpack things that may be happening throughout the day, but I always found that just like blank page journaling was very hard. I’m like, “Okay. Dear, Pat, here’s what your day was,” and then, like, I don’t know where to go.

But “The 5-Minute Journal” is nice because it breaks things down for you. When you start your day, you open this book, there’s already prompts, “What are three things that you’re grateful for today?” And I love starting the day with thinking about gratefulness because, no matter what happens, I know there’s something I can be grateful for, and it changes every day. I might be grateful for the food I have, or the fact that I get to drop off my kids at school every day. Whatever it might be, it changes.

But what’s really nice is at the end of the day, I can look back before I go to bed and I can write three things that I’m proud of myself for actually accomplishing. No matter big or small, I know I made some sort of progress, and it could be as small as the fact that I made my bed in the morning, to the fact that we just finished this million-dollar project and the client loved it. Just to have that documented and to kind of put it on paper allows us to process these things.

And the additional component of “The 5-Minute Journal,” Also asks you, “What are three things that you could have improved on today that you’re going to hopefully improve in the future?” And it might be, “Oh, you know, I was a little bit of a jerk to my coworker today. I’m going to work on that tomorrow. Cool.” “I didn’t work on my health and fitness today. I just ate McDonald’s all day, so I’m going to try to work on that.”

And, again, it becomes a place to document these things, and it’s really amazing to go back into time and read these things, and it kind of helps you remember that, (a) you have all these amazing things to be grateful for, no matter what’s happening, and (b) you are always looking to see how you might be able to incrementally improve tiny habits, just like you said, over time, and that’s one device that I would recommend people check out if you’re into that thing.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, very good. I think we had a psychologist, Dr. Ellen Reed, saying these exact sorts of prompts so they’re good, they are science-approved that they really do get you into an awesome, what’s the word, it’s like a nice virtuous cycle in terms of, “Okay, we got some gratitude, we got some pride, we got some improvement, and up and up and up and up, and self-confidence rises,” and it’s a beautiful thing.

Matt Gartland
I’ll add, if I can, two additional thoughts on that, I think that’s great. One is to preemptively surround yourself with people when you need them, whether that takes the form of a mastermind group, at least as we think about those in online communities, whether that is a collection of your neighbors in your local community. I’m privileged to have some really awesome neighbors that we’ve gotten close and we hang out a good bit these days.

Or, even a variety of different small kind of addressable groups, because we’re all going to have bad days or bad weeks, and these things are not always, per se, work-driven, or career-driven, like, life of course intersects us all the time.

So, if you can build into those relationships, which kind of, of course now, kind of folds back on the power of relationships and intentionality with which we’re investing value into relationships, then lean on them when you have a low moment and you need some re-encouragement, if it’s a super bad day, because you know that it’s going to come back around. One of those friends and colleagues or partners is going to need that of you.

And then you go through that cycle enough times, you’ll learn one of the most obvious truths ever, which is we’re all going to have hard moments at any scale of success, no matter what number is in your bank account or what size house you live in or all these other maybe, like, attributes of success or claims of success. Like, we all struggle with stuff, and people are people. So, if you can build it with the right people, and if you’re surrounding yourself with people that share your kind of a common set of values, and you nurture into that, that safety net is there when you need it.

Pete Mockaitis
That is huge. I’ve got a podcast mastermind group and a church men’s group and, of course, just friends and neighbors, and it’s huge. So great reminder. All right. Beautiful. So, let’s say we’ve got these foundations in place. We’re going to start imperfect. That’s cool. We’re going to do some journaling and thoughtfulness associated with celebrating the daily successes. We got supportive relationships. Cool, cool, cool.

Well, let’s say, yeah, we’re going to embark upon this thing that we found kind of scary. Maybe it’s a big new project. We’re not sure if folks are going to embrace it at work or it’s maybe our own side hustle, our own project. What are some of your pro tips on taking the first real steps in the exterior world that are likely to be prudent and not too risky, not too un-risky?

Matt Gartland
Especially through the entrepreneurial lens but I think this works in so many other contexts, is to develop a range of skills borne of a range of diverse perspectives, which is in contrast to just being too narrow and maybe even almost too hyper-specialized with one discrete skill or focal point.

With small business, especially if you’re working for yourself and you’re not a venture-backed tech company, then you’re probably doing a lot of this stuff. You’re trying to think about your marketing and positioning. You’re trying to design the product or service. You’re doing fulfillment, like the actual delivery of that work or build that thing. You’re maybe even doing a little bit of sales, business development, building relationships, maybe some partnerships.

And if you lean into that with joy, if you lean into that with like an adventurous sort of mindset, like, “Look, like that’s actually a good thing. If I can develop a broader range of skills that gives me more confidence…” to go back to the theme of confidence, “…and, like, being able to do the thing, whether, again, it’s a side hustle or a small business on my own, or even just a big project at work.”

And there’s a great book that kind of encapsulates a lot of the thinking by David Epstein called Range, and he pulls from a crazy amount of industry and science, and even athletes, professional athletes, to kind of make the case and tell these stories, which is, like, if you can have more range of ability, you can think faster, make sharper decisions, your instincts are improved, you’ll enjoy the process more, you’ll probably have outsized performance as a result, and, therefore, set yourself up for a higher degree of probability for success.

Pete Mockaitis
We had David Epstein on the show talking Range, and it’s good. We’ll link to it in the show notes.That’s beautiful. That confidence often comes from, “Yeah, sure enough, I’ve done this before in a lot of different contexts, and, boom, we got this under control.”

Pat Flynn
From my perspective, I love the idea of what I like to call a voluntary force function. A force function is something that kind of forces you to do something, and a voluntary one is you put yourself in that situation on purpose. And I have a perfect story to share about when I was still in architecture, where I, in fact, got a promotion and a raise as a result of putting myself in a situation that was slightly higher pressure than I would just be otherwise because I voluntarily put myself into that situation.

So, thankfully, I was with Adrian out in Orlando. We were meeting with the Hilton regional director for all Hilton hotels on the East Coast, so he was like a bigwig in the world of hotels. The division in the architecture firm I was at was hospitality. So, we built hotels, restaurants, that sort of thing, and I was just like the grunt in the room. I was just there to take notes and to follow along. I was sort of almost like intern status even though I was getting paid. It was very early on in my career.

There was a point in the middle of this conversation where they wanted to redesign a lot of the hotel rooms and kind of make them a little bit more modern, and there was a tool that had just come out called V-Ray that was a 3D modeling tool that allowed you to have photorealistic versions. This was early 2000s, by the way, so it was like before all the neat fancy easy-to-use computer-related programs came out. This was like early, early when it came to that stuff.

And the regional director said, “Hey, does anybody know how to use V-Ray in the room? I want to see what these rooms are going to look like before we make these final decisions,” and the room was completely silent. Nobody raised their hand. I had heard of V-Ray before. So, I don’t know what it was in me, I put my hand up and I said, “I can make this 3D renderings for you.” He’s like, “Son, you were in the back quiet the whole time. Who are you?” “Well, I’m Pat Flynn. I’m just a drafter here at MBH Architects.” “Cool. I look forward to seeing those renderings in about a month.”

And Adrian looks at me, he’s like, “Are you kidding me? You don’t know how to do that?” And I said, “I’m going to figure it out.” And I did. I had enough. Like, that was all I could think about because I had so much pressure on me to figure it out that, guess what, not only did I figure it out, I became the example for so many other people in the office on how to use this program. I even taught workshops on how to use this program. I wasn’t an expert, but I knew enough to do what I needed to do to get those drawings out there.

And just last year, I went into my dad’s storage unit because he wanted me to get some stuff out there from the past, and I found those renderings and it just brought back all these memories of the heightened pressure I was in, yes, but just how great it was to accomplish something that I didn’t even think was possible, because I put myself in that little bit of a higher-pressure situation. It’s almost like if you want to learn a language, what’s the best way to learn a new language? You literally buy a plane ticket and spend a month in that country. You’re going to figure it out because you have to kind of thing.

And I think a lot of us often will try to sit in complacency when it comes to our work and our life. Comfort is great, but comfort doesn’t help us grow. All the best and most awesome things happen outside of that comfort zone. So, there might be something in your audience’s head right now that they might be thinking, “Well, what if I were to put myself in that position?” Well, what if? What would happen? And also, what’s the worst-case scenario? Probably not as bad as the best thing that can happen if you take action and you are compelled to do it.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s really well said. As I suppose the worst-case scenario is you fire up V-Ray, and you go, “Oh, shoot, this was vastly more difficult than I expected.” But on the flip side, I imagine you’d say, “Hey, I’ve learned new software packages and platforms before, and I am an architect. Though I don’t know it yet, how brutally challenging can it really be?” especially if you’ve got, you don’t need it tomorrow, you’ve got some time on your hands.

Pat Flynn
And it’s not impossible. That’s the other thing. A lot of times we assume things are impossible, or, “I would never be able to do that,” but that’s just a story we’re telling ourselves based on past experiences. But when you break it down to first principles, like Elon Musk does with things, you can eventually build a rocket that can go into space and land itself, which nobody thought was possible.

But you start to strip things down to the absolute truths and realize that, “Well, maybe it is possible and maybe I can do this. And if somebody else has done it before, then it’s absolutely true that it’s possible. I just need to figure it out and talk to the right people, make the right calls, do all these actions that I wouldn’t have normally taken because I wasn’t in this slightly higher-pressure situation.”

And that helped me account for a raise, a promotion. Like, it led all the way to where I am now, the butterfly effect, so.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I love that story so much. And, Pat, if we are not so fortunate as to be in a meeting with a bigwig who asks a question that’s just floating in the air waiting for us to grab, any pro tips or fun ideas for how we can bring the forcing situation upon ourselves?

Pat Flynn
It reminds me of Noah Kagan from OkDork. He was number, I don’t know, nine at Facebook or something and then he got fired. But then he wanted to work for Mint.com, and he applied for a marketing position there and he didn’t get it. So, he said, “No, I know I can help this company. I’m just going to come up with a marketing plan and make it on my own. I’m going to write a 10-page report on the way that I would market Mint if I was here. Even though I didn’t get hired, I’m just going to give them my plan because I know it’s that good.”

And he did that. He didn’t have to, but he did, he volunteered to do it, and then they hired him because it just showed that he really, truly knew exactly what he was talking about. So, in a way, it’s an understanding of, “Okay, what is of value to said company, said person, whoever it might be that the decision-maker is, and then giving them that value, like, go and do the thing?”

So, if I didn’t have a bigwig, if I was proactive in thinking about what would be valuable to Hilton or this company or my work at the time, I might have already had that idea to make a V-Ray version of this even if I wasn’t prompted to because it matched that level of “What is value to who is the decision-maker right now?” So, exploring and going out there, and asking and understanding what it means to, you know, a lot of us when we’re working somewhere, we don’t really know how the work we do affects everything else that it leads to.

I think the more you can begin to understand your role in what it is that you do and why it matters, then you can lean into those things that you then bring to the company more than if you’d kind of just did the bullet-point list on your job description.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, Pat, I love that so much with the Noah Kagan story. It reminds me, also we had Ramit Sethi on the show talk about the briefcase technique. Like, in an interview, he was like, “Oh, let me show you. I went ahead and did the thing.”

So, what’s cool about that is you combine those elements of, “Okay, but think about a person and what’s of value to them. And, hey, here’s a date in which I’m going to be speaking with that person. Well, hey, it looks like I’ve now got some pressure in terms of a deadline. I should go ahead and make the thing before I meet with that person.”

And, Matt, I wanted to follow up with your perspective. You’ve got some views when it comes to people, relationships, being of value. How do you think about that in a way that’s just been really transformational for you?

Matt Gartland
Well, even in Pat’s examples, like the power of story infused with doing of the thing, I think if you can do both in the right context, that’s a positive double whammy. So, yeah, do the thing, take initiative, but then add a story layer to it. Communicate your thought process. How and why did you come up with, maybe with the Noah example, why did you come up with the type of marketing plan that he did? It’s not just the fact that he did one, but it’s he created a specific one borne of his own creative thinking, his own imagination, his own story.

So, if you can, in your own situation, think about the “what.” The “what” is the thing to do, but also then, like, the “why” in the story, and it kind of brings your own personality into it. That’s how you get sticky. That’s how, like, “Oh, like, Matt Gartland or Pat Flynn,” or, like, your name gets associated with the thing more than just, like, “Oh, this is a nice plan. I’m going to go implement the plan. I kind of forget who actually did it.”

So I’d figure out like what that story wrapper is around the thing.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I’d love that concept of the story wrapper around the thing, it enhances it. I’m thinking back in the day when I was consulting, I had plans to leave consulting and start my own business, and so I had created this savings spreadsheet, just like personal savings of money, like, “Okay, how can I make it so dirt simple to know how much money I should be saving?” And so, I thought, “Okay, just input your base expenses and then see how much do you want to save, by what time. And then here’s how much you have left to play around with.” And so, that’s all I got to know.

It’s like, “Okay, spend less than $80 a day on random fun things, like tacos or whatever, and we’re good.” So, I shared that with a few of my colleagues, and they thought it was cool because they’re consultants and they like spreadsheets. But you’re right, when you added the story around it, it became legendary.

And when I left, and folks were talking about, “Oh, Pete, bye. We’re going to miss you, and your legendary savings spreadsheet will live on,” because there was a story like, “Oh, yeah, I want to leave this consulting and go be a speaker, author, something. I love developing people skills stuff and I’m going to figure that out, and I’m going to need some savings because I don’t know what I’m doing yet.”

Matt Gartland
Yeah, I think that’s exactly it.

Pat Flynn
So good.

Matt Gartland
And maybe as another intersection that’s adjacent to the thought is, “Can you do something that maybe the other person,” or if it is a bigwig, “they don’t want to do or it’s not their cup of tea?” So, like the classic maybe phrasing of one person’s garbage is another man’s treasure, kind of adapting of the metaphor here, but at least in the entrepreneurial world is maybe a better example.

There’s a lot of energy about being a visionary and coming up with ideas and being the idea person, and that’s really important work, to be clear. But, especially, then down the line, though, there’s need for operations and integrations and systems and finances, and all of these other things that come around.

And, at least, if you look at it on paper, if you read a book, maybe like Gino Wickman’s book, Rocket Fuel, as one reference point, there’s a whole other set of value in responsibilities and work to do that. Maybe, like, in this context, a visionary doesn’t want to do, and especially if you are maybe naturally wired to be that person, can you feel out those opportunities to do the other side of the coin, add value in this other way, create an opportunity by taking on an initiative, or lean into an opportunity and create that opportunity for yourself by doing so that kind compliments the other side, compliments the other person or the other team in an organization?

I wouldn’t say force yourself into something that you don’t want to do. That’s not what I’m trying to articulate, but rather it’s, like, if you are naturally gifted and can lean into an opportunity that someone else maybe doesn’t want to do, I mean, there’s an opening right there, and then add together, kind of stack these ideas, find that opening, take initiative to create a thing, put a story wrapper around it. Gosh, I think if you did those three things in combination, that’s a massive winning advantage.

Pete Mockaitis
I love that so much. And now I’m thinking about my colleague, Anne, at my other company, Cashflow Podcasting, and it’s funny, there’s been a couple of times where I’ve just “vision-arily,” I guess, just thrown out an idea, and then she comes back with such beautifully detailed spreadsheets. I was like, “Hey, I think our website could really be improved here, here, here.”

And then she’s like, “Okay, so here is an in-depth creative brief about all of the strengths and weaknesses associated with our competitors’ page in which they are doing the job better than we are doing, and how I’d like to adapt this and that.” And I was like, “Oh, wow.” It’s, like, I didn’t want to do all that. I just wanted the page to be beautiful and more effective. But then she just did the hustle, the legwork of the detailed bit-by-bit, “This is what excellence can look like,” and it was oh so delightful to me.

Matt Gartland
Yeah, that’s an amazing example. I think that’s spot on.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Pat and Matt, tell me, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we hear about a few of your favorite things?

Pat Flynn
One thing comes to mind when it comes to entrepreneurship, I think it’s important, especially when you want to be a leader, when you want to be a teacher, there’s so much information out there now. Information is now not the valuable thing anymore.

So, we have to think beyond the information or beyond the work that you do, and it’s the brand that you create around the work that you do. That involves how you interact with people, but also that involves what you stand for. What are your beliefs and your values that you bring here that support the company that you work for? Because those are the things that become the people-to-people connection.

We connect with other people, and I think that the more you can show up as a human, and that means taking a position on something, that means taking a stand for something you believe in, that also supports the company’s values, and really kind of not just doing the work that, eventually, and it’s a scary time right now with like AI. AI is going to take a lot of jobs and it’s going to do a lot of work that is just kind of commoditized, and everybody’s doing the same thing.

So, it is the human-to-human interaction that is going to be the differentiator. So, it’s important to work on who you are and how you then can mold into the business that you’re in and to the company that you’re in, in a way that’s beyond just, “Here’s what I was hired to do. Here is the value beyond that that I can bring to the company, the relationships, the energy, the positioning that we have, and the mission that we’re on together.”

And I think it was Zig Ziglar who said, “You can have anything in life that you want so long as you help other people get what they want.” And so, I’ll finish there because that’s one of my favorite quotes and I try to live by that.

Matt Gartland
For me, it’s the notion of letting go, which is kind of ironically, and it’s fun to say, like the first project Pat and I worked on, which is the title of his memoir book. Like, if you want to keep growing, pursuing new opportunities, you’re going to have to let go of the thing that got you there. Like, maybe it’s the job in pursuit of a different job, maybe that requires a small leap of faith.

Whether it’s maybe going out and starting your own business. I mean, any sort of reference point to get to the next thing, and the next thing that is maybe a little more meaningful. It’s not maybe an incremental point of growth. It’s maybe a little more towards exponential. It’s going to take some of that, again, courage, overcoming some imperfection tendencies, and some of the other things that we’ve discussed today, to let go of that thing, even if it’s been awesome and successful, and it’s even a big part of your identity up until this point, especially from a career standpoint, to do something new and exciting, maybe a little bit bold.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Thank you. Well, now in rapid-fire, could you share a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Pat Flynn
“Whether you think you can or you can’t, you’re right.” Ford.

Matt Gartland
All right. I’ll use “Give to Grow,” which is the title of a friend’s new book that’s coming out all about investing in people, and we’ve hit on some of those themes today. So, give to grow, and good things will happen.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite book?

Pat Flynn
Right now, Dark Matter. It’s the latest one that I read, and I don’t read a ton of fiction, and I really loved it. And it’s now, I guess, an episodic series on Apple.

Matt Gartland
All right. I’m a proud father of two little girls, so it’s a parenting book, but The Anxious Generation is just a masterful read for me.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, Jonathan Haidt.

Matt Gartland
He’s a parent. Yes, exactly. And I think there’s just a lot of crossovers into society and how we think about just the intersection of work and life, and mobile devices being at the center of a lot of that. So, it’s a fantastic read on a lot of levels.

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

Matt Gartland
Notecards.

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Matt Gartland
It’s just such a great tool. Simple. You can have multiple versions. Carry them with you everywhere. Get ideas down, plot out a plan. So, notecards.

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Pat Flynn
For me, kind of similar, Post-it notes. I use it to plan everything, like literally everything. Our brains do a good job of coming up with ideas but not necessarily organized or in the correct order. So, I like to get everything out there using Post-it notes, one idea per note, and then that’s where I rearrange things. I use that to write my books, create courses, outline my YouTube videos, podcast episodes. So, it’s like a notecard except there’s a little sticky edge on it. So, me and Matt are pretty similar in that.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite habit?

Pat Flynn
I think about a few things that I’m grateful for the moment I wake up.

Matt Gartland
Sleep habit is mine. Just when I go to bed and try to get into a healthy circadian rhythm so that I’m waking up as refreshed and as energized as I can be, because if I have that, everything works better throughout the day.

Pete Mockaitis
And is there a key nugget you share that you’re known for, a Matt or Pat original quotation?

Pat Flynn
“You got to be cringe before they binge.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that sounds accurate.

Matt Gartland
That’s pretty good.

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

Matt Gartland
So SmartPassiveIncome.com is just our site at large, but as we’ve kind of shared, or at least at the top, the community is the center point of everything that we invest into and care about the most because we know it works. We see it every day. So, you can go to SmartPassiveIncome.com/all-access to check out our All-Access Pass, which is just a perfect kind of on-ramp to all of our work.

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

Pat Flynn
I challenge you to get a little uncomfortable. If you’ve been complacent, but you’ve been looking to grow, where might that next level be in that realm of a little bit of discomfort, one sort of step outside of that comfort zone? I think, typically, when I run this exercise with students, they already know what that is because they’ve been wanting to do it, they’ve just been scared.

And this is just a call to action to go and make that happen because, here’s another quote to finish off that relates to this, that is a Pat Flynn original, “I would rather live a life full of ‘Oh, wells’ than a life full of ‘What ifs’.” Those regrets are going to haunt you, so you might as well take action and see what happens.

Matt Gartland
And I would say, go say hello or introduce yourself to one person that you know that you should know as a part of your network, as a part of maybe even your inner circle, and you haven’t because of XYZ mental figment of your imagination. So, it takes some more courage to do that, but, yeah, go say hello to that person.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Matt and Pat, this has been delightful. Keep on doing the great stuff you’re doing.

Matt Gartland
You as well, Pete.

Pat Flynn
Thanks so much, Pete. You, too.

Matt Gartland
Thanks a ton. This was great.

Sep 19
0

995: Going From Overwhelmed to Unstoppable by Resetting your Mindset with Penny Zenker

By | Podcasts | No Comments

 

Penny Zenker shares her secret for enhanced productivity, peak performance, and unstoppable focus: the Reset Moment.

You’ll Learn

  1. How distractions lead to burnout
  2. The sneaky secret behind your zapped energy levels 
  3. Why productivity shouldn’t be your focus 

About Penny

Penny Zenker (AKA “The Focusologist”) is a sought-after speaker, bestselling author, and former C-Suite executive of a global top-five research company. Over the past three decades, she has built and sold multiple multimillion-dollar companies—including an award-winning tech firm she founded. 

Today, Penny helps leaders prioritize what’s most important, so they can achieve seemingly impossible goals -even in times of rapid change and growth. Penny has shared her expertise with industry giants like Deloitte, Pfizer, SAP, Samsung, and NASA, and been featured by NBC News, ESPN, FORBES, INC., and many more. 

She has written two best-selling books: The Reset Mindset and The Productivity Zone to help people stop their tug of war with time. Her popular TEDx talk, The Energy of Thought has surpassed one-million views worldwide. And her podcast, Take Back Time, ranks in the top 2% worldwide, reflecting her commitment to helping others regain control of their focus and achieve peak performance. 

Resources Mentioned

Penny Zenker Interview Transcript

Penny Zenker
It’s so good to be here. I’m excited.

Pete Mockaitis
I’m excited as well. I think you’re the first Focusologist that we’ve had on the show.

Penny Zenker
I can guarantee it since I made it up.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s like, “Yeah, the lawyers would have pursued them rigorously if anyone else came…” Well, that’s a really cool title. Tell us, where does that come from?

Penny Zenker
Well, it comes from, it’s as much for me as it is for everyone else, so, firstly, it comes from reminding me that the practice of controlling and directing our focus towards more meaningful results is a daily practice. An ologist is someone who practices and goes deep into the practice. So, it’s for me and my health and well-being, as well as for my success, but I realize we are in a focus crisis, so I really have it as well as a mission to help others to also make that a daily practice.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, we’re going to dig into some of these practices, absolutely, because focusing better is a key thing listeners have asked for, and, yeah, there’s a real need for that, certainly. Could you share with us, what is the state of this crisis you mentioned?

Penny Zenker
Well, I think most people would agree. I’ve done a lot of research of my own, but there’s also a multitude of statistics out there, like, we tap, touch, swipe, and scroll on our phones 3,000 times a day. That’s incredible. And people go to bed with their phones. They go to the bathroom with their phones. And what my research has shown me, as I’ve done a lot of research to kind of give people a distraction profile, and the highest level is a time zombie. And I’m happy to share that link. It’s a free quiz that people can take just to get some perspective.

And we’re finding that people are just two rungs below a time zombie. If there’s six different possible profiles, people are at the second and the third to the highest is what we’re looking.

Pete Mockaitis
So, you mean, like, that’s the average or median level of…?

Penny Zenker
Yeah, that most people define themselves after they go through this as squirrels, meaning that they’re distracted by this, that, and everything, that they’re having a really hard time staying attentive and focusing on what matters most. And it’s not just our phones. It’s also all of the fast pace of we’ve got to be, stay up with AI and we’ve got so many different things going on, challenges in the workplace with toxicity or burnout, too much being given to us at any one time, or just the state of social affairs in the world.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, well, can you tell us then, what is the possibility, if we’ve truly mastered our focus, and what are we missing out on? If this is just sort of our normal, like this is water, this is air, this is just sort of what is, what’s really possible for us in a world where we have gained true mastery of this?

Penny Zenker
Well, I think the first thing is not to accept this distraction as our new normal, is we have to take back control of the things that we actually can control, and that’s what I’m on a mission to do for myself. But what’s possible is this distraction is causing a lot of mental health issues. They’re showing links to the level of distraction that we have with the level of anxiety, with the loneliness epidemic that they talk about, and other mental health issues.

So, we would see a lift in our mental health, we’d be able to have deeper, more meaningful relationships, we’d be able to experience more joy in the work that we do, and in the time that we spend because we’d be spending it more on the things that matter most and things that give us energy, versus things that take our energy away, or splinter our energy into lots of different directions. So, we would just be happier and be more fulfilled if we would take back our focus.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, can you share with us, Penny, just how harmful is this distractedness, smartphone stuff? Is it a boogeyman? Is it just sort of a minor point? Or is it transformational?

Penny Zenker

Well, I think it’s transformational, and I think it’s also, if we look at a particular study that was done in 2018 from the Journal of Behavioral Science, at that point in time, and that was a long time ago, they said that people who use their smartphones for more than five hours a day are twice as likely to experience symptoms of anxiety and depression compared to those who use it more frequently. And I can tell you that if we were to look at how many hours per day, if we’d looked up that study, we would see a very significant number of people using their phones more than five hours a day.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. Yeah, this reminds me, I think it was a South Park episode about this, where people think the answer is more smartphone and it’s exactly the opposite that gets the job done. So, that’s a comedy show, but so we got some hard science there. And then tell us, what have you seen in terms of clients who have instituted some good practices and constraints around this stuff? What do they pull off in terms of being more awesome at their jobs?

Penny Zenker

Well, when they start to schedule themselves more effectively, well, let me put it this way first. The first thing that I have people do, and this kind of ties into some of the things I have in my new book, The Reset Mindset is I have them take reset moments, because stress is shown to compound, and so this stops stress from compounding, and stress can also come from distraction.

So, when people take these reset moments, they’re able to reflect more clearly on what’s working and what’s not working. They’re able to take time to schedule their day out so that their day is focused on the things that matter most. So, when they’re making time for these reset moments, and including what they’re going to do and how they’re going to use their phones, and when they’re going to block out those distractions, they’re finding, not just within themselves, that they’re more productive.

I have one CEO that I’ve worked with who said that he’s easily two times more productive because he now has these blocks where he’s not distracted because he has these practices of what I call gatekeepers, that he puts away his phone, and he directs and protects his time, and so, therefore, he’s able to get so much more done, and so much more of the right things because he’s really more intentional about it.

And not only that, but he says that his team is showing that they’re much more effective. They’re able to resolve problems quicker than they were in the past, and they’re able to be more creative in the solutions that they come up with, and so he’s really, really happy. Every time we meet, he says, “I’ve had yet another month that’s the best recorded month of revenue and profitability that we’ve ever experienced.” So, he’s been really seeing that in the bottom line.

Pete Mockaitis

Fantastic. Okay. So that sounds handy and wise. I’m curious, as you put together your book, The Reset Mindset and the revised edition here, any particularly surprising discoveries that made you go, “Wow, I didn’t expect to find that”?

Penny Zenker

I mean, I think that it’s the surprises that I’m hearing are about how I didn’t expect the language to be as sticky for people as it is, and really simplify their access to it. So, these words of reset moments is something that people are saying that now they’ve become sort of these professional noticers.

And they’re seeing these opportunities everywhere to take these reset moments, which I didn’t expect it to be as sticky and as impactful in the way that it is on a day-to-day basis and how people are putting it into practice, talking about it with each other, using it as a language within the organization. So those are some things that I didn’t expect.

And I think also what’s interesting is I didn’t expect this to be the book. I actually started writing a different book, and I started writing the book that was Living the 80/20 Rule, because, for me, that was one of the ways that we can block out those distractors and those things that are less important and focus on what really matters, is asking ourselves, “What’s the 20% that gives us 80% of the difference?”

And in every area, “How do I approach this conversation so that I’m focused on the most important thing? I don’t fight to be right. I remember that the most important thing is the relationship, so how can I interact with it?” So how could we sort of implement this 80/20 Rule in every area of our life? And as I started to dig in and write more about it, I realized that that’s just one of many practices that help us to reset, to rethink, to redirect our focus and reprioritize, to recharge ourselves, to help us to let go of the things that are less important.

And so, it became, “Oh, that’s a reset practice. So, what does that enable us to do? What is the overarching thinking practice that happens, the way of thinking?” And that’s where this reset practice was born in these reset moments. So that was a big surprise for me as well.

Pete Mockaitis

Yes. Well, I love the 80/20 Rule so much, and we had Perry Marshall on the show once talking about it, and I have found that often in the case in my own work and initiatives, like, sure enough, some things truly are 16 times as impactful as other things on a per hour basis of effort, so that’s huge. So, then your surprising discovery was that the reset moments are what enable folks to better deploy their energies into that vital few 20% of goodness? Is that right?

Penny Zenker

Yes, yes, exactly. Well said. Well said.

It also was an interesting discovery that that reset moment can be as little as 60 seconds to reset our brain that enables us to stop that compounding stress as well.

Pete Mockaitis

Well, this is exciting juicy stuff then. So, let’s kind of unpack the mechanism a little bit. So, we have compounding stress, and that is diminishing us. Can you maybe paint a picture of how that unfolds in practice perhaps over the course of a day?

Penny Zenker

Well, I think as much as I can go through an example, I think everybody can relate to that when they look at their own day. So, you start your day and the first diminishment happens when you hit the snooze button because you thought you were going to get up and you had plans to go to the gym, or to do something that was important, but you stayed up a little bit late and you feel tired, and so, therefore, you hit the snooze button.

There’s a small diminish that starts right there because we let go of something that we set the night before that was important to us, that now we’re putting, we’re procrastinating, or we’re going to say, “We’re not going to go to the gym today.” So, it’s all these times that we say we’re going to do something and then we don’t, that diminishes us in some ways, and it creates stress because we kind of, internally, it affects us when we say, “I’m going to do something,” and then we don’t follow through. It affects our confidence and our ability to follow through with things on a consistent basis.

And then we get a call that the meeting that we were supposed to have tomorrow was moved up to today, and now we need to prepare for that meeting because we don’t have that presentation prepared yet. So now everything gets thrown to the wind about what you might have planned for the day, and so these stresses, they build up as things change. We’re not as flexible or adaptable as we’d like to be, and so those stresses can come in a lot of different forms.

Pete Mockaitis

Well, so I get your point in terms of, like, the unexpected curveballs or disruptions, like sudden abrupt shifts of stuff are all forms of stressors, as is what you said is just not following through on our intentions creates a stress within us. And that’s really an intriguing perspective because, in some ways, it’s like we feel stressed and in need of additional rest in that world of, “I woke up and I hit the snooze button because I want to rest more.” You’re suggesting that extra rest is not going to diminish our stress as much as being true to our prior intention will bust stress. Is that accurate?

Penny Zenker

Yeah, I mean, sleep is important, and if you feel like you’re not getting enough sleep then you should decide the night before that you’re going to have a regular bedtime, for instance, and follow that so that you get enough sleep. But if you set an intention to do something, it’s kind of like how people, they set a New Year’s resolution, and the first couple of days they go to the gym and they feel good about it, but then they fall off and they don’t end up going, and they stop going. They feel bad about that. They feel bad that they set an intention and a goal and it affects people emotionally, even when you don’t realize it.

I think they call it cognitive dissidence when you’re failing to follow through on your commitments. It can create that. It’s sort of like this internal mental discomfort that we experience. It can impact our self-esteem. These impacts are like, they might not make sense to you. You might say, “Well, why should that do that?” It’s just that we’re emotional beings, and it does, right?

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. Well, so then let’s hear about this mechanism a bit more. So, we had a number of disruptions. Maybe we didn’t follow through with an intention, something got shifted around on us, some unexpected stuff, some disappointments, some bad news. Okay, so we’ve got a number of things, stuff went down that is contributing to our stress, and it’s compounded over the course of a day.

So then, tell us if, that’s the state, does that mean we are then less able to, I don’t know, 3:00 p.m., 4:00 p.m. able to tackle a bit of vital few 80/20, a big work as a result of having been zapped by this compounded stress? Can you expand upon that principle?

Penny Zenker

Yeah, think about also the decision fatigue by the time you’re at 4:00 p.m., you’ve had all these competing priorities and things that had to change, and decisions that needed to be made. So, it’s kind of like, by the time the afternoon gets around, if you’ve done nothing to address the stressors that have been around for the day, you had to work through lunch.

All of these decisions that you made that weren’t supporting your energy, it’s like having a cup that’s full of water, like a Dixie Cup, but then you take it and you poke holes in it, you continue to poke holes in it with each time that you’re experiencing some stress, or a decision that needs to be made, or can’t follow through with something, all of these different things, they cause leaks in our energy and in our ability to forge forward and make good decisions.

And so, that’s why we need to take these little resets. It might even be just a difficult discussion that took place. Maybe a customer called and was dissatisfied in how I dealt with that, but I might’ve felt a little bit attacked and taken that personally. It’s those little moments, when you can take those reset moments throughout the day that can make all the difference to revitalize you.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. So, then if I am not revitalized – unvitalized, what’s the opposite of it – so, if I’m drained, zapped from that stuff, and I said, “Okay, 3:00 or 4:00 p.m. that’s the time I had scheduled to work on this super critical initiative. I even put it on my calendar, like, Pete’s guest said I’m supposed to but I’ve got that stress buildup,” when the moment comes to execute, I am less able to do so, is what I’m gathering from what you’ve shared here.

Penny Zenker

Well, even if you push it off, because if it’s not urgent, but it’s the 20% because it’s moving and creating impact, but maybe it’s really not critical that you do it today so you push it off and you push it off, and you get caught up in these false urgencies, or just in this state of overwhelm. So, the first thing that I would say is, is you always place the most important things first thing in the morning, and do those 20% items first, and then everything else can follow. Then you know that you’ve done the thing that has the greatest impact and you’ve done that first. You don’t wait until the end of the day because the likelihood is you’re not going to do it.

Pete Mockaitis

Yeah.

Penny Zenker

You’re smiling. Why are you smiling? Has that happened to you?

Pete Mockaitis

Well, I’m smiling because it’s funny, you’re catching me in a good groove because I’ve observed the same phenomenon, Penny. And so, lately, I’ve had a nice little streak of within seconds of being aware that I am awake, I tell my phone, I’ve got a shortcut, I say “Marky Mark” and then it launches the Hallow app and Mark Wahlberg is praying the Rosary with me within seconds of waking up.

Now I’m not fully there with it yet, right, but it happens, and I like that it’s happening with perfect consistency. And so, I’m smiling because I am witnessing this principle in real time at the extreme. It’s, like, in the first seconds of consciousness, I trigger this, and, sure enough, it works with perfect consistency, and it’s like you’re gambling. The later something is scheduled in the day, the higher the probability of it, oopsie, accidentally, somehow perhaps not happening, even with the greatest of intentions and the most motivated and pure.

It’s like, “It’s on my calendar. This is really important to me. I really mean it. This is for real-sies, serious, no take-sies-back-sies,” and yet somehow, it’s like the forces of our environment and people and relationships somehow can manage to shove that off of there. In a way, it’s humbling in terms of our agency as humans, it’s like, “Shouldn’t I just be able to have the self-control or discipline to really hold firm to this 3:00 p.m. whatever appointment?”

And I’m learning “Kind of” is the answer, it’s like our capability here is somewhat limited, unless we’re just, like, brutal, like, “No, honey, I’m sorry that you feel sick and are vomiting everywhere, and are in no condition to take care of the kids, but I have an appointment with myself at 3:00 p.m. to think of some big-picture new product and services that I’m going to launch, so deal with it,” right? Like, I just can’t do that, and maybe that’s for the best as a human in the world with relationships that matter to me.

Penny Zenker

Well, absolutely. I mean, I think everybody is the same if their significant other needs them, they’re going to push it. But it’s not even just for that, that we’re pushing it. We’re pushing it for everything else. So, first, if you have a practice that you put into your calendar space to think, you’re already ahead of 90% of the people who don’t, who don’t plan that strategic thinking time. So, right there, that’s a reset moment to schedule in those moments to rethink and reconnect to what’s most important.

But if you do have the time, the best time to do it is in the morning. And there are some studies that also, and I don’t have the specifics in front of me, but I remember that you’re going to have fewer distractions in the morning because you’re just getting up, but they talk about some new science around flow. The best time of flow, because of the hormones that are activated from sleep that is in the morning, so you have the best concentration and you haven’t started to put holes in that cup, so your energy is full and you’re able to give better quality concentration in the morning.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. So, these mindset resets, we’ve got some, a few of them are popping up already in terms of try to do it in the morning, really schedule it in, that time to think. And then lay out on us, some additional ones. You said some can be done in just one minute to diffuse some of the effect of compounding stress that’s showing up for us.

Penny Zenker

So, Thrive Global, for instance, is working with different types of companies to embed these reset moments into the workflow. For instance, Synchrony is a company that handles credit cards, and so they work with their support team, who typically, when somebody’s picking up the phone and answering these support calls, are people calling to tell you how great you are? No. They’re calling to complain and say, “This is happening and this is happening.”

So, these people, you talked about “How does our energy, how do we get drained?” It’s they’re constantly listening to people who are unhappy, and they’re taking it in. So, this reset practice was brought into them and embedded into their workflow, that in between each call, there’s a 60-second app that’s launched with a breathing, simple breathing exercise that’s done, that walks them through that, and then will launch the next call.

And so, what they found through this is that the people who are the agents who are answering the phone, they’re much calmer in the next call because they’re not stacking those calls, and that negativity, they’re able to release it in that 60 seconds. So, they’re able to be more attentive. They’re able to handle the calls much quicker, and they, themselves, are happier. They feel happier and do a better job in bringing their best self. They’re more creative in their solutions.

And so, that’s the impact that it can have when you’re taking these reset moments, whether it’s to energize, or whether it’s to rethink things so that you’re working on the right thing. It just helps you to do your best work and be happier. And who doesn’t want that?

Pete Mockaitis

Oh, I love that. So, one minute of breathing. Well, Penny, you’re talking to a guy who pays for the Breathwrk app, so I’m going to ask you for the details. I imagine any number of slow, deep diaphragmatic breathing done for one minute will be great. But is there some magic prescription or formula you recommend for what goes down in that one minute of breathing?

Penny Zenker

No, I mean, their app is just a simple guided breathing app. So, “Take a deep breath in. Hold it.” You could do, the military uses the box breathing, which is four in, hold, four out, hold. So, you could do something like that. You could do, like, there’s a – I forget what they call it – like through your one nostril at a time, breathing in and out. Any type of focus on your breathing in that way will be incredibly grounding. So, I think if you’re not doing it to doing it, pick any one of the methods that are out there, find an app. I don’t know, what do you use? Do you use Wim Hof or any of those types of breathing?

Pete Mockaitis

Well, I’ve played with a lot of them, and Wim Hof is fun, although that’ll get you fired up. I mean, I don’t know if you want to do that in between customer service calls, maybe before battle.

Penny Zenker

Or holding your breath, that’s one part of his method is to hold your breath or to breathe in and out very quickly, so through your nose. When we breathe out through our nose, it’s activating the parasympathetic, which is helping us to calm the nervous system.

Pete Mockaitis

Certainly. So, okay, so simple breathing. That’s great. What else do you recommend for these resets?

Penny Zenker

Also, in that 60 seconds, our senses are our fastest way to our nervous system. So, it could also be just to get some essential oils, and maybe have a lemon, for instance, because that is energizing, or maybe lavender that is relaxing. And you can just take 60 seconds, taking a breath in of that scent; lighting a candle. It could also be something like taking a picture, and maybe it’s your favorite place to go.

Maybe you’re a beach person, it’s taking 60 seconds to just imagine yourself sitting on the beach and relaxing for that moment, putting yourself somewhere else. So, there’s lots of little techniques that you can use and that’s, if you have more time, great. But you can also do this in 60 seconds. Take off your shoes and feel your feet grounded on the floor.

Pete Mockaitis

That’s right. Or some decadent carpet.

Penny Zenker

Yeah, right? Feeling that fuzzy, nice carpet through your toes.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. So, 60 seconds of sensory stuff, deep breathing, that’s super. What are some other resets?

Penny Zenker

Well, some other resets are changing the types of questions that we ask. So, if we get caught, a totally different type of reset. Maybe we’re caught in self-doubt or getting lost in sort of a negative story that we might be telling ourselves after maybe an interaction with somebody, or maybe we made a mistake, or we didn’t get the result that we wanted, we didn’t get the job that we wanted, and we have this loop of “Why me?” or, “You’re so stupid” or whatever we may tell ourselves in our stories that are hurting us more than helping us.

We can also take a quick reset practice to change the question, is to say, “Okay, if I…” I use and I talk about in my book a question that I used to ask, like, when my father died in an accident, you know, “Why me? Why him?” And that just takes you down a terrible rabbit hole. And so, I realized over time that I shifted that question, since “Why?” was getting me nowhere, I shifted it to “What does this mean? And what else could this mean?” so that now I’m taking control of the meaning that I’m giving any interaction and choosing the best possible meaning for me to use because that’s going to influence everything.

It’s going to influence my attitude, my expectations, and my priorities, whatever meaning or perspective I choose to take. So just changing our questions, “What else could this mean? How else could I approach this? Who else could I contact?” Those types of things, they open up perspective and can, like I said, can just change and shift our mindset in the moment.

Pete Mockaitis

Absolutely. And it’s a tricky path when you have charged-up emotion, like in tragedy or extreme stress or difficulty, and then you add an unhelpful question onto that, and that can just start you down a trajectory into some places that are not so good for anybody. And so, a few of those questions certainly, right from the get-go, can start pointing you on to different pathways. So that’s really, really solid. Okay. So, we’ve got a number of these resets. Tell me, Penny, what are the other top practices we should utilize in order to focus truly on what matters most?

Penny Zenker

So, when you say top practices, what kind of context? Let’s get it so that somebody can see where and how they can apply it.

Pete Mockaitis

Let’s say someone is in their career, they want to advance and make a huge impact, and they want to get things fired up in a cool direction, such that they are generating a lot of cool results, folks are taking notice, and their career is energized and off to the races.

Penny Zenker

Okay, awesome. Great context. So, the first thing that I like to do is, “Are they clear of how they want to advance?” so that they know, like, the reset in itself is saying, “Okay, let me step back and make sure that I connect with the goal that I’m looking to achieve. And why do I have that goal?” Like, “I want to rise to the C-suite of this organization.” Okay, awesome. Why do you want that?

Like, get clear on what’s going to be different for you when you get there, so that you’re setting realistic expectations, and then you’re also able to connect to the fuel, because maybe you want to be there because you’re going to be able to really impact a great number of people and improve the leadership in the company, and take the company to new levels, and that company is supporting other individuals. So, whatever gives you the juice and the leverage is going to be really helpful.

And then when you’re stepping back to get some perspective on, “Okay. Well, who could help you to get there? Who are influencers in the organization that could speak for you when you’re not in the room?” You might also look at “What’s holding you back?” and these are all like, when I say, ways of thinking about things, these are resets in the way that you’re asking yourself those questions to challenge yourself to really rethink, a reset is to rethink, and maybe the approach that you’re currently taking to get ahead isn’t structured enough.

Maybe you’re not thinking of those people who could support you or what might be in your way. Have you had a discussion with your boss to find out what might be helpful? Like, what do they see as the next steps for you in getting to that next position? So, there’s conversations that can be had, there’s alliances that can be made, and seeing if there’s anything, like any limiting belief that you have about getting there. Like, do you see yourself as someone in that role? You could even visualize yourself as in that role.

And when you do that and visualize yourself, you might come ask yourself in that moment, when you see yourself four years, five years, three years down the road in that position, and just like really feel yourself in there, sitting in your office, having a conversation. And then ask yourself “What were the three things that made it even easier to get there?”

So, we have a lot of internal wisdom that we often don’t tap into, especially if we feel stressed or pressured, then we’re less intentional. And so, if we can really set up those things ahead of time, then we can be more intentional about how we go about getting to the next level.

Penny Zenker

So, one of the things that I also often talk about that is a lesson that I’ve learned over time, is that productivity isn’t the point. We spend so much time and effort trying to be more productive that sometimes what we don’t realize is that we’re being productive for productive sake. So, in a way, we’re just being busy.

I liken the quote from Confucius, that, “A person who chases two rabbits catches none,” and I changed that quote because I think, inherently, it may give us the wrong message because, when we chase the rabbits, and we get better at chasing the rabbits, we’re actually not accomplishing the goal, which is what? To catch the rabbit, right?

We can get better at the chase, but it doesn’t make us any more likely to catch one rabbit, let alone two. So, if we want to catch the rabbits, then we need to change that quote a little bit and say, “A person who chases rabbits catches none.”

Pete Mockaitis

Oh, yes. So, I’m hearing the emphasis. A person who chases rabbits catches none.

Penny Zenker

Not a person who chases two rabbits catches none, but a person who chases rabbits. So, the point isn’t what you might think, which is to chase only one rabbit and not two, and that way you’re more likely to catch it because you’re focused on one rabbit. But, actually, don’t chase at all because that’s not the point. The point is to catch the rabbits. So, build a trap.

But the point is that very often in work, this is what we do, is we get so focused on the task that we miss the entire point. If we’re more adaptable in recognizing and really connecting to what it is we’re looking to achieve, then we may find that spending more time doing that task is not productive, and that maybe we need to revamp the whole process. We have to be thinking about what we’re doing and how it connects to the big picture instead of just focused on the tasks.

Pete Mockaitis

But, yeah, it is easy to get caught up in it because it’s sort of fun. It’s like, “Oh, man, I am running way faster than I used to chasing these rabbits. Like, whew, that one evaded me by much less distance and time than before,” and it can be kind of seductive. Like, “I am cranking through more and more and more outputs over the course of a day. Go, me. I am such a winner. I feel productive.”

And yet, we may not actually be accomplishing the results that we’re after, but rather just getting seduced by the thrill of the chasing instead of just the maybe what sometimes is very simple, easy, boring catching. 

Penny Zenker

And look at it from also what we measure. So, we’re measuring that we get more productive in this chase. We talked earlier about call centers and help desks and things like that. So, if we take a call center and they’re tracking and measuring the amount of time that it takes to go through a call, then that’s what people are going to be focused on, and they’re going to be so focused on making sure that that call is as short as possible, that that’s going to be their focus, and they’re going to improve that and improve that, but they’re not really getting to the root cause of the problem.

And maybe that same problem comes up a hundred times, that if they just solved it at its root the first time and fixed it like that, then they wouldn’t have a hundred more calls. So, we have to be thinking about also what we’re setting as measures for people so that we’re driving the right focus as well.

Pete Mockaitis

Yeah, from a broader holistic perspective, your goal is advance a prospect as far as you can, whenever you have the opportunity is the main thing you’re after, as opposed to handle those calls fast.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. Thank you. Well, Penny, tell me any other critical things we should know before hearing about some of your favorite things?

Penny Zenker

So, the critical thing that, I think, is important for people to know is that this concept is incredibly simple, but also incredibly effective. We talked about the 80/20 Rule before and its compounding impact, and also the ability for reset moments to reduce stress from compounding, but at the same time, it has a positive compounding effect of us getting to our goals faster and more effectively.

The more that we get perspective and focus on the right things, focus on that 20%, we’re leveraging off of that 80/20 Rule and compounding each time we choose and stay in that direction. So, I think that’s really important. And today, with how fast things are changing, that having what I call this reset mindset it’s built one reset moment at a time as it compounds.

It makes us ready for change or challenge or uncertainty. It changes our relationship with how we approach the uncertainty that we might face in the future or the changes or the challenges. So, it’s that, that we just need to be more comfortable, and happy to engage and embrace change as a catalyst and not a constraint.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. Cool. Well, now could you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Penny Zenker

I recently came across this quote from Richard Branson because, as I’m looking for different types of resets and successful people who embody this reset mindset, I love his quote that I recently came across, which is that, “Every success story is a tale of constant adaptation, revision, and change.” 

Pete Mockaitis

And how about a favorite book?

Penny Zenker

Well, I think one of the ones that really influenced my way of thinking is The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. And a favorite tool, something you use to be awesome at your job?

Penny Zenker

One of the things that I love and I use every day is a tool called TextExpander.

Pete Mockaitis

Yes, our first sponsor.

Penny Zenker

I’m sorry?

Pete Mockaitis

They were our first sponsor, and I use them every day, yeah.

Penny Zenker

Oh, there you go. I love TextExpander. So, I use it all the time. So, it’s basically a way to have little templates and little snippets of text that I can just say #gig, and then a whole proposal will come up that I normally send out, or different types of links that I’m looking to get. If somebody wants my social posts, I just say #social and all my posts are there.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. And is there a key nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with readers and listeners; they quote it back to you often?

Penny Zenker

I think it’s just in my make more reset moments that I hear people saying that back, or what other people have said that they say in the organization, like after I come in and do a talk, that they’re encouraging each other to reset and make more reset moments.

Pete Mockaitis

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

Penny Zenker

They can go to TheResetMindset.net or PennysKeynote.com, and, of course, all the regular social channels. They can just look me up by name, Penny Zenker.

Pete Mockaitis

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

Penny Zenker

I think the final thing that I’d like to bring is one of the principles that I talk about in The Reset Mindset and that’s assume positive intent, something my mom taught me when I was a teenager. And I would say that I think, because relationships are one of the key things that makes us happy in our workplace, and it makes us better leaders. So, I would say that, really, with every interaction, just assume positive intent and really look for the bigger picture of looking for what you’re trying to serve.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. Penny, thank you. I wish you much fun and focus.

Penny Zenker

Thank you so much for having me, Pete.

Sep 16
0

994: How to Embrace Uncertainty, Discover Opportunity, and Shape the Future with Frederik Pferdt

By | Podcasts | No Comments

 

Google Innovation Lab founder Frederik Pferdt discusses how to nurture the qualities that make you future ready.

You’ll Learn

  1. What matters more for your future than tech 
  2. Why to say “Fantastic!” when things don’t work out 
  3. A handy trick to inspire better followthrough 

About Frederik

As Google’s first Chief Innovation Evangelist, Dr. Frederik G. Pferdt helped shape one of the most fabled creative cultures in the world. He founded Google’s Innovation Lab, where he trained tens of thousands of Googlers to develop and experiment with cutting-edge ideas and taught ground-breaking classes on innovation and creativity at Stanford University for more than a decade.

He has also worked with dozens of international government agencies, organizations, and businesses ranging from the United Nations to NASA to the NBA. His work has been highlighted in Fast Company, Harvard Business Manager, Der Spiegel, and BBC news, among many other media outlets. Born in Germany, he lives with his family in Santa Cruz, California.

Resources Mentioned

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Frederik Pferdt Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Frederik, welcome!

Frederik Pferdt
Thank you so much for having me, Pete.

Pete Mockaitis
I’m excited to have you. I could tell that you are a big thinker, and you think about things a little bit differently, so no pressure, but I have a feeling we’re going to get into lots of fun, fresh perspectives from you.

Frederik Pferdt
Wonderful, yeah. But, you’re right, I hope to think differently about many things, and that gives many people, hopefully, a different perspective.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, could you kick us off with maybe an extra fascinating and surprising discovery you’ve made as you were researching and putting together your book, What’s Next is Now?

Frederik Pferdt
The one thing that I really took away is that the future is not something that happens to us, but the future is something that we create. And so, actually, the starting point of my book was that I left probably one of the best jobs that you can have in a very fascinating company and organization, to really dive into the unexpected and to the unknown.

And so, I wanted to actually practice myself, really, how to live future-ready and that whatever comes next is actually mostly in your control, and that you can choose what you’re going to engage in moving forward. And so, that was, for me, something I really try to focus on and that led me to some interesting discoveries.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s very intriguing. Let’s dig in. That’s kind of a provocative assertion there in terms of we have much control over what our future is. And so, some might say, “Well, hey, Frederick, I have no control over whether AI, robots, go and are marching in the streets and doing all kinds of activities, or whether we interact with 3D hologram future things instead of a platform like a Zoom or whatever right now.” So, what do you mean exactly in terms of we shape the future?

Frederik Pferdt
So, you’re absolutely right. All the things you just mentioned might happen or might not happen, but that’s a future that you just imagined. That has a lot to do with robots and AI and technology, and probably most of these things being out of your control. But what’s in your control is how you are going to be in that future. Are you going to be a Pete that is more curious, more kind, more open, more empathetic, more loving?

And we can go on using specific qualities that you probably want to see happening in your future, and that’s totally in your control. I can show up tomorrow, in my future, being more kind. I can show up the next year with my partner, my family, my community, my colleagues, whatever it is, be more open, more curious. And I think that’s what I feel is also the future, and it’s mostly your future. So, again, what I want to do is help people to move away from these descriptions of the future which is mostly the outside world.

That is trends or it’s events or it’s technologies, whatever that is, and moving towards the future that is inside us, which is the qualities that we actually want to see happening in our lives. Because there’s also one interesting thing is that, whenever our life will end, what will others remember about you, about the Pete they got to know? And it’s mostly probably these qualities that you’ve built over the years, over your life, and how you showed up every time with other people. So that’s the future I want to talk about.

Pete Mockaitis
And is it fair to say, with regard to these interior qualities and experiences, that in some ways, we will have and experience those things regardless of what technologies do or don’t proliferate in our midst?

Frederik Pferdt
Absolutely. So, if you show up more open and more curious and like to experiment tomorrow in regards to, let’s say, AI or a technology, then what I can guarantee is that you’re going to see more opportunities. You’re going to see an opportunity to find something out, to learn something, to grow in some form or some way. So that’s what I think is in your control. You’re not controlling the AI or the technology, right, that is built by a company or by a team of people or by someone else. That technology is, again, what I consider the outer world, and that is something you can respond to.

But you can respond in a way to these, let’s say, technologies, where you show up being curious, ask questions about it. You can show up and experiment with it, give it a try and see what you can learn from it, and that’s totally in your control. And I think that’s something where I want to help people to shift their focus on and think maybe differently about.

Pete Mockaitis
That sounds lovely. Well, tell us, is that how you would articulate the main idea or core thesis of your book What’s Next Is Now or is that but one facet of it?

Frederik Pferdt
It’s one facet of it, yes. And the general idea about What’s Next Is Now is that the future is not something that happens to us, it’s something we make happen. Where I want to argue that when we embrace qualities like optimism, openness, curiosity, experimentation, empathy, which are, for me, dimensions of a what I call a future-ready mind state, when we embrace these qualities, we can navigate uncertainty and turn it into an opportunity.

What it means that when we try to really approach the future in a way that we don’t ask “What will the future bring?” and have a passive stance, but have a more active stance and say, like, “What is the future that I want to create?” we can embrace those deeply human qualities, show up more optimistic, more open, more curious, and so forth, to really see more opportunities in the future as well. And what it does is it gives you more opportunities. And who doesn’t like more opportunities? And the second thing, what it gives you, a little bit more control over your future.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, let’s run through this lineup here, this mindset – optimistic, open, curious. What else composes this future-ready mindset?

Frederik Pferdt
The first thing is that it’s not a mindset, it’s a mind state, which is maybe for some, small, but for me it’s a big distinction. I love the work that has been done around mindsets. I think it’s a very important message that Carol Dweck and her team put out into the world around a fixed mindset and a growth mindset. I think we are mostly familiar with that. 

What’s interesting is that people refer to a mindset as something that is based on their belief system, on their values, on their past experiences, and it’s something deeply ingrained in us. But how often, to be honest, Pete, if I would ask you, “Hey, change your mindset to an entrepreneurial mindset, a success mindset, a future mindset,” whatever it is, how often could you actually change that mindset? It’s probably not that often because it’s really hard to change.

And so, I wanted to help people to have access to something that is more short-term, that is actually something they have control over, and that is more dynamic. That’s a mind state for me. So, it’s the moment-to-moment perception that you have around how you experience the present. And that is something that you totally can control and change and shift from time to time.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Understood. So, a mind state is maybe more analogous to a mood or groove or headspace zone that you’re in in a given moment.

Frederik Pferdt
I like the words that you’re using to describe that, yes.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, within the mind state, what were those ingredients that you suggest are future-ready?

Frederik Pferdt
So, the dimensions that help you to see more opportunities in your future are optimism, openness, curiosity, experimentation, and empathy, and there’s a sixth dimension which is called dimension X. So, it’s not a framework and it’s not like a theory where you have to either apply those to your life one by one throughout the day. It’s more, like, what I want to help people to realize is that the good news is that we all have these deeply human qualities.

We are sometimes open, we are sometimes curious and ask questions, and, yeah, sometimes even we like to experiment with something new. What I want to help people to understand is, like, as soon as we dial those up, that we are radically optimistic, unreserved open, compulsive curious, that means that we actually see more opportunities, and we are able to, again, control that. We can train our minds to do those things more often, and that is something very powerful that really leads to what I would consider a better future for you.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, and that adds up and it really feels so right in terms of my own experience. Like, there are times and days and moments where I am all of those things. And there are times when I’m the opposite, and it’s like, “It’s all bull crap!” And it’s like, “What’s the use?” is just kind of the opposite of that mind state. And, sure enough, being in the former state is more conducive to identifying opportunities than being in the latter state.

So, tell us then, if that sounds nice, we would like to have more of these things. I mean, they just feel better anyway, it’s just a more enjoyable place to be, to have these things going on internally, how might we do a shift if we’re having one of those days where we’re not too curious, and we’re not too empathetic, we’re not too optimistic? How do we conjure or drum that up or get to that spot?

Frederik Pferdt
First of all, I like that you label them as being nice. It’s a nice to have.

Pete Mockaitis
It feels great, yeah.

Frederik Pferdt
And that they feel great. I think it’s more than that. It’s essential. It’s something that, really, when you are in that state and saying, like, you wake up and you feel like the future is out of your control, and you feel negative, and you even have fear or anxiety that sometimes show up because, again, our minds tend to dislike uncertainty, and the future by definition is uncertain.

So, our minds try to protect us and go towards finding all the reasons why you should not get out of bed in the first place, why you probably should make a plan, or be negative about something, or not pursue an opportunity or open a door to something new that you haven’t explored, or ask a question. All of those things are usually not what your mind recommends you.

But I think we can overcome that, and we can trick our mind to say, “Hey, what about if I’m now curious and just ask a question to my co-worker, my colleague, my CEO, whoever that might be, or even my partner or my children? And I follow that curiosity maybe with a practice around asking five whys to go to the root cause of something that I want to find out.” That also immediately opens up opportunities for you.

And there’s many more practices that we can do that really helps you to overcome this first initial reaction that we usually have to new situations or towards the future, which is being a little bit more negative, being a little bit more closed, not being curious, and definitely not experimenting with anything new. And then empathy, we’re just going to throw out of the window because we want to focus on ourselves first.

So, what I want to help people to do is overcome these to really, as you said, see more opportunities. And who doesn’t like to see more opportunities in their future so that we move away from this relationship that most people have now with a future that is, or it’s going to be decided by someone else, it’s not going to be great, and “I don’t have any control over it and I have fear or anxiety about the future”?

Which is, when you ask most people why they actually want to stay with the status quo or even bring the past back, and that is something fascinating that I had in so many conversations where people said like, “Yeah, Frederik, you’re talking just about the future, never about the past.” And I said, “Yeah, because the past is something you can’t change, it already happened. And I think, and I have a deep belief that the future is going to be better. And why not then focus purely on the future and trying to discover what you can actually control about it?”

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’d love to dig into some of the particulars of these practices, like the five whys. But maybe, first, could you share with us a story of someone who was able to make some of these shifts, they were feeling not so optimistic, open, curious, experiment-y, empathetic, and then they took some actions and saw something of a transformation?

Frederik Pferdt
Yes, there’s many stories. I actually feature 14 people in the book, I call them future-readies. It’s people I’ve been able to coach, train, and work with at Google over the years, and those people have just built some remarkable futures for themselves, not in terms of materialistic. Most people think like, “Oh, it’s the billionaire,” or whatever it is. No, it’s people who live a happy life, who have impact in what they’re doing, who feel that they contribute to society in a very meaningful way. And I think those are things that we all can achieve.

So, I share stories about those people and how they show up more optimistic again and they live a very open life. For example, Adam Leonard, a wonderful human being, who practices something in his life that I think we can all draw some inspiration from. And he does what he calls improv hiking trips, and it’s inspired by improv theater. Improv theater is something where you basically, you know, you open up, and whatever is going to be thrown at you, you’re trying to accept and build on.

So, he goes on extended hiking trips, like three or four months without any plan, without any set schedule, any journey where he wants to go, he basically just starts, he starts somewhere. And what he reports back all the time is that, by being open and purely open, where he doesn’t have a plan, no reservations, just his pure curiosity and openness to whatever the journey brings, he comes back with wonderful stories and things that not just happened to him but, also, he could have made happen.

And I think that’s an approach that we all can use, not just in our life but in our work, in how we do vacations, and so forth. And inspired by that, I’m actually taking my family all the time on road trips where we don’t have a plan. There is only one rule that we couldn’t go back to the same place twice, and it’s really hard in the beginning to convince the family members to go on that trip because you don’t know where you’re going to end up. So, it’s really hard to sell.

But whenever we do it, whenever we come back, everybody is super happy and super satisfied because everybody discovered something new. Everybody was growing in a beautiful way. So that’s just one of the stories of a future-ready that I’d like to share.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. And so then, thinking about being awesome at your job, I mean, that sounds fun. We go on trips just to see what happens, and what do you know? We have some surprising, delightful things that unfolded as a result. Can you draw the link, the connection, from that to “And now we are flourishing in our careers as well”?

Frederik Pferdt
Absolutely. I think that’s an approach that you can also take into your work, being a little bit more open around perspectives other people are having or ideas that are presented to you. Instead of going with a clear no in the first place, and saying, like, “Whatever idea is going to be shared with me, I’m just going to say no because that’s the safest thing to do. I don’t have to get engaged. I don’t have to do something with that idea,” and so forth.

Try to go with a “Yes” or even a “Yes, and.” That helps you to engage in an idea or a perspective and helps you to build on it and make it bigger, better, faster, whatever it is, and give it a try and then see what happens. And most of the time what happens is that there’s a new opportunity actually arising in your work or in a project or in your job.

And so, to give you an example, when you consider how most organizations probably operate, is that there is a manager or a boss in some form or some way, who maybe sits in an office, and then the team or the employees, they sometimes have ideas, great ideas that they want to share with their boss or their manager to ask for permission to pursue this idea.

And then most of the time what happens immediately is that the manager’s brain starts to generate all these reasons why we should not pursue this idea, “It’s too expensive,” “We don’t have time,” “We don’t have the resources for it,” “We don’t know if it’s going to work out, if it’s going to get to the results that we want to see happening,” and so forth.

So, the manager will actually share as many reasons as possible to not pursue this idea, the safest thing to do, because then you don’t take any risk. What happens with the employee is that they are a little bit disappointed maybe, they leave the office, and what they do is they tell everybody else, like, “Don’t go into this office because your idea is going to be crushed. There’s going to be only arguments why your idea would not work.”

So, what you could do instead is try a “Yes” approach, a “Yes, and” approach. As a manager, whatever idea you’re listening to, accept it, build on it, make it bigger, better, and faster, and say like, “Fantastic! I like your idea. Here are some reasons why we should do it. Here are 30 days you have, some resources in terms of like another team member that might work with you on this idea. Go try it out.”

And what happens then is the employee leaves very happy, the office, tells everyone like, “In this office, the ideas will grow,” and, at the same time, they will try this idea and try to make it work to then maybe come back after 30 days with two options. The first one is they will report back and say, “Sorry, didn’t work out. Total failure.” Or they come back and say like, “Yeah, it worked out. We have a new technology, new process, new customer base,” whatever it is.

And the managers respond, should be in both scenarios, to say, “Fantastic! Thank you. What did you learn?” Because what just happened now is that they helped to learn something new, that the individual, the employee grew, the organization grew by these learnings and so forth. And I think that’s one of the examples where you can apply this principle of being open, saying yes, trying to build on other people’s ideas that really will drive towards more opportunities and to better results as well.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I like that perspective a lot. And I think that takes a little bit of a practice and discipline because our default reaction is, “Oh, no! What happened? Why? Ahh.” It’s not the most natural, intuitive response to say “Fantastic!” when the result is not that which you had hoped for.

Frederik Pferdt
Exactly, because the only result that we want to see is that people are learning and growing because that leads to whatever success you want to see happening, and it leads to progress. And so, it’s just a simple shift that you need to make from “No, but” to “Yes, and” from “Oh, no, this project screwed up,” or, “You screwed up the project,” to “Fantastic! What did you learn?” to that curiosity that really leads to understand what actually happened, and what others can learn from that, too.

And these are small shifts that everybody can, I think, apply and use not just in their work but also in their lives. And just imagine if you say yes to more ideas that are presented to you in your life, I think you’re going to see more and more opportunities that are happening.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, we got the “Yes, and,” we’ve got the taking trips with no plan, seeing what happens, the “Fantastic! What did you learn?” response. Any other top practices that you think make a world of difference in becoming future-ready?

Frederik Pferdt
One of the biggest one for me, I think, is reframing. And reframing is such a powerful way to live your life. Where, to give you an example, like when the pandemic hit, I was tasked to lead a project called Project Reimagine for Google, where we try to reimagine how we work as an organization. And I gathered about 26 leaders for about six weeks, and what we tried to do is to reframe. How can we reframe, for example, that employees said that they now have to work from home, towards “I can work from home”?

That is a simple reframe that, for a lot of people, did something magical, because then they felt like, “Oh, I’m not forced because of the pandemic to work from home, but I see this as an opportunity now. I see this as an opportunity to be able to work from home.” And that slight reframe helps you to, again, see more opportunities in maybe working from home. And you can go beyond that where you say, like, “I can work from home, but I also can work from anywhere.”

This is another reframe that helps you to open up towards the possibilities that a pandemic might actually bring to you. Where in the first place, you only see the negative, you only see the constraints, you only see the things that you’re not able to do anymore, but with a reframe you turn towards the opportunities. And reframing is such a powerful way that, again, you can do with a reframe from a “No, but” to a “Yes, and”, but you also can do from a “I cannot” or “I have to work from home” towards “I can work from home,” which is a reframe around your work.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that is lovely because you see where that opens up for people. Some folks said, “Well, hey, guess what? Now I am doing my work on a boat and the family is on a boat. That’s what we’re doing.” Or, “Now we are in a little RV and we are camping all over the United States. Woo-hoo!” And it seems almost wild, like, “What?” It’s almost like it didn’t even occur to us that that was possible or allowed to do that. It’s like, “Oh, I guess we could all do that. Huh, how about it?”

Frederik Pferdt
Absolutely, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
I see. Okay, reframing. All right, keep them coming. Frederik, what else we got?

Frederik Pferdt
Let’s consider empathy, right, as something where we always thought like empathy is something that drains me. I have to put myself into other people’s shoes and really understand what they need, and sometimes that’s hard, absolutely. But what I’m arguing for is expansive empathy. For example, that you also can have empathy towards your future self, which for me is a fascinating concept.

If we imagine ourselves in the future, most of us would go to that picture of having a nicer car, a bigger house, a better relationship, being successful at work, whatever it is. But for me, empathizing with your future self means, first, that you’re trying to imagine how you want to be in the future, and then we’re coming back to these qualities around “Hey, I want to be more kind, for example, in the future.”

And if I am imagining myself being more kind in the workplace, in my family, with my friends and so forth, and you’re picturing that future, and you’re trying to make that visual really vivid and come alive every day, you’re guaranteed to actually move towards that future. And there’s some fascinating research going on at Stanford University where they actually showed some students pictures of their older versions of themselves.

So, they put VR headsets on the students, they projected their older versions of themselves, let’s say, like in 20 or 30 years from today, and they helped them to really empathize with their future selves, to really understand, “Hey, how do I feel in this future? How do I look? Who am I going to be surrounded by?” and so forth. And the more that people empathized with their future selves, the more they change their behavior in the right here and right now.

Which meant that most students reported back that they will actually put twice the amount into their retirement funds right now, plus they will start to live a more healthier lifestyle right now. Which means that, as soon as you create a clear vision of your future self, you actually change your behavior in the right here and right now. And, for me, that’s something very powerful when we think about empathy, not just about empathy for others, but empathy for our future selves.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well, now you said the word “interact” and VR headsets, so I mean I’ve seen how you can sort of age, progress a photo. It’s like, “Oh, that’s what I might look like when I’m 70. Okay.” But when you say “interact” in VR headset, so it’s like is the age itself speaking back to me?

Frederik Pferdt
The beautiful thing is that we don’t need any technology for that. We have a mind that is capable of imagining, and if we’re using it in a way that we imagine our future selves, not just, again, in these ways that we’d say like, “Oh, I want to be more successful,” or, “I want to have more money or a bigger house,” whatever it is, but imagining your future selves as with these deeper human qualities, then doing that more often is a practice. It’s something we can train ourselves in.

And the research is very clear. The better we get at it, the more changes we will make to our life and lifestyle right here, right now. And I think that’s very compelling, because everybody wants probably to live a healthier lifestyle. They want to probably live a better life in the future and so forth. But don’t start with the materialistic things or the things that are out of your control. Start with what’s in your control, which is the deeply human qualities that you want to develop and grow towards.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s powerful. I’m also thinking about Peter Attia’s book, Outlive, in this context in which he says, “I’m training for the centenarian decathlon,” which is a lot of syllables, but just the notion of, “When I’m a hundred years old, or in the last years of my life, what would I like to still be able to do? And, oh, if that is what I want to still be able to do, then I better build some strength right now, knowing that some of it will fade in my final years.”

So, it’s intriguing. So just as imagining that leads to, “Oh, I better do some more retirement saving, okay” it may also lead to, “Oh, I better do some more exercising.” And then any number of positive things that need to unfold starting now for then.

Frederik Pferdt
Absolutely. So, what would be something for you, Pete?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well, it’s funny, I’m thinking about, well, I was thinking about exercise in particular. And so, just thinking about, as I have some family who’s aging and experiencing some health things. It’s clear that this comes for all of us. And so, to the extent we want to have truly good mobility and functionality, like there’s just some physical stuff to be done in terms of strength and cardio stuff.

And so, that’s just very, in a way that’s a little bit shallow, it’s like, “Yep, that’s just biological reality, true.” But when you talk about kindness, you know, that’s intriguing because there’s not as clear or well-researched a path and protocol that I’m aware of that is like, “This is the tried-and-true means of getting kindness gains the way there is muscle gains.”

And so, we could do a loving-kindness meditation, we could engage in prayer and spiritual practices and connecting with a source of eternal, infinite love. That sounds like a winning move, but in some ways, it’s a big question that I was like, “How does one, in fact, cultivate these traits we would like our future selves to have?” And there’s many, many potential options, and perhaps less of a prescriptive “This is known science knowledge base to draw from.” Or maybe I’m underestimating what’s already available in the research base. Frederik, lay it on me.

Frederik Pferdt
Yes, I think there’s many things that we can learn from, and it could be simpler things around kindness practices that are not just leaving you on a path, or leading you on a path towards maybe happiness. But it’s also interesting that if you show up more kind to other people, you’re building your community of friends.

And there’s fascinating research now from Harvard around the longest study of happiness and longevity, which basically just tells you that the more friends and the better friends you have, the longer and the more happier life you have. So that means the quantity and the quality of your connections really matters.

And so, for me, it comes down to the question, “How do you build more relationships and better relationships?” And kindness is probably a great way to start. If you start with anger and, like, hatred, I’m not sure if that’s going to increase your friendships and if it’s going to be making your friendships even stronger. I think it’s the opposite.

So, starting with a couple of kind things that you can do to your friends or to strangers will actually increase your community. And so, the more friends you have and the better these relationships are, the longer you live and the happier life you live. And I think that’s very compelling research that is building on something you said, which is like we can physically train ourselves for the future to be physically fit, but we can also mentally train ourselves to be mentally fit for the future.

And then we can also train ourselves to be what’s probably like more towards the heart and spirit around the future. And I think all three are very important, but we sometimes just neglect all of those, and we are focusing on the futures that we think are going to be dictated by robots and technology and other things that are shared in the news, and mostly with dystopian future images that are shared around globally and widely.

And it’s fascinating for me that our brains just love to see those dystopian futures, again, like to protect us, and say like, “Oh, I don’t want to have that future happening.” I think it’s going to be a wonderful future. It’s going to be a better future if you’re going to engage in training your mind, training your body, but also training your soul for the future.

And there’s very easy things that we can all do moment by moment on a daily basis that really come back to these notions of being more optimistic, more open, more curious, experiment a little bit more with different approaches but also show empathy, not just for others but of ourselves as well.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, beautiful. Thank you, Frederik. Now tell me about some of your favorite things. Could you give us a favorite quote?

Frederik Pferdt
One I really find profound for myself that really influenced my thinking is from Anais Nin, who said, “We don’t see the world as it is. We see the world as we are.”

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

Frederik Pferdt
I don’t know if it’s a tool, but I found that meditation, for me, is a practice that is so fascinating because just experimenting with it and giving it a try has a profound impact on my life and who I am, and so I want that others explore that too.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And is there a particular nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks?

Frederik Pferdt
The future is something that you create, and it starts with your choices, and it starts in your mind. So that’s one of the core principles that I want to help people to understand, that the future is not decided by something else or someone else.

It’s created by you in every moment, and it starts with the choices you make, and it starts in your mind. And you have influence over your choices and you have influence over your mind. And so, I think the powerful message here is that everybody has the ability to really shape the future they want to see happening.

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

Frederik Pferdt
Yeah, you can find me anywhere on your favorite platforms. I also have what I call a NextLetter that helps you to engage in experiments, and I share stories of individuals that live future-ready, and it comes every second Friday. It’s for free and you can sign up. You can find it with my name and NextLetter. Feel free to join that community.

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

Frederik Pferdt
The next time you feel like a “No” or a “Yes, but” to something that is an idea or perspective of someone, try to reframe that towards a “Yes” or a “Yes, and” and see what it does to you. 

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Frederik, thank you. This has been fun. I wish you much good stuff next.

Frederik Pferdt
Thank you so much, Pete. Yes, see you in the future.

Sep 05
0

992: How to Break Free from Cynicism and Reclaim Hope with Jamil Zaki

By | Podcasts | No Comments

 

Jamil Zaki shows you that there’s much reason to hope–even for the most hardened cynics.

You’ll Learn

  1. Why hope equals success
  2. Why to be skeptical of your own cynicism 
  3. How your gut instincts can lead you astray 

About Jamil

Dr. Jamil Zaki is a professor of psychology at Stanford University and the Director of the Stanford Social Neuroscience Lab. He trained at Columbia and Harvard, studying empathy and kindness in the human brain. He is interested in how we can learn to connect better.

Resources Mentioned

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Jamil Zaki Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Jamil, welcome.

Jamil Zaki
Thanks so much for having me.

Pete Mockaitis
I’m so excited to dig into your wisdom here. Could you kick us off by sharing one of the most fascinating, surprising, and counterintuitive discoveries you’ve made about us humans and hope and cynicism?

Jamil Zaki
Sure. One of the, I think, counterintuitive discoveries is that when we think of hope, believing that the future can be better, thinking about how it could turn out well, what we want, we often imagine that that frame of mind is naive, like putting on a pair of rose-colored glasses. But it turns out that probably most of us are wearing a pair of mud-colored glasses already. We actually tend not to focus on the best things that could happen or the best parts of human nature.

We’re hyper-focused on the worst things that people do and all the untrustworthy and harmful events that we read about in the news. So, if anything, we’re biased away from hope, and being hopeful is not a matter of being naïve or sticking our head in the sand, or putting on glasses. It’s a matter of taking off those mud-colored glasses and seeing the world more clearly.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, Jamil, I love it. Right from the get-go, we’re getting meta and your perspectives on hope are hopeful in and of themselves right away. So, tell us, if we’re skeptical, like, “Hmm, I’m not so sure that’s true, Jamil,” is there evidence, is there proof that, in fact, hope is more of an accurate, realistic view of what is and what is likely to be than our default mode?

Jamil Zaki
Yeah, first I want to jump on this great term that you just used, “skeptical,” and a lot of people think that being skeptical and being cynical are the same thing. They’re not. So, cynicism is this blanket assumption about people, that, overall, we are selfish, greedy, and dishonest. Skepticism is, instead, a more scientific way of thinking where you kind of don’t have blanket assumptions about everybody. Instead, you let the evidence guide you. You let people show you who they are and you learn from your experiences.

And it turns out that being skeptical is terrific. I mean, in no way am I saying that being hopeful should mean trusting everybody or ignoring all the people out there who really are cheating or doing harm in some other way. But, to your point, there’s lots of evidence that, when we become skeptical, cynicism actually falls apart.

So, for instance, people in study after study underestimate how trustworthy, generous, open-minded, and friendly other people are. That’s not to say that there aren’t jerks out there. Of course, there are, but the average person underestimates the average person. I’ll give you one example, Pete. So, in Toronto, there was a social experiment where researchers dropped wallets all over the city, and these wallets had money in them, and they had an ID card so that if the person who found them wanted to be a good Samaritan, they could return the wallet.

And the question that was asked of lots of people in Toronto was, “What percentage of these wallets do you think will come back?” And I wonder what you would guess. I know you’ve probably read the answer, but what you would have guessed before knowing?

Pete Mockaitis
Percent of the wallets? That’s so funny. Jamil, I’m a sucker for hypothetical scenarios because it’s like I’m solving a case study. I want all the details. So, there are some cash and some goodies in this wallet?

Jamil Zaki
There’s cash and there’s an ID card, so you can run away with it and make some money, or you can give it back to the person who clearly lost it.

Pete Mockaitis
Toronto. So, because I’ve heard that this could really vary by city, and Canadians are very polite and friendly, just a blanket stereotype. I guess you could do that if it’s good. So, I’m going to, say in Canada, let’s go with 55% return it.

Jamil Zaki
Yeah, 55, pretty bullish. I love it. You’re more optimistic than Canadians themselves. So, people in Toronto expected the return rate would be 25%. In fact, it was 80%.

Pete Mockaitis
Ooh, okay, even better.

Jamil Zaki
Yeah, and this experiment has been repeated all around the world, and the general trend is that most wallets are returned, and return rates reach 80% in several different countries. And also, that we don’t know that, that if you ask people for their forecasts, their expectations, they’re way bleaker than that. And this is true, again, all over the scientific landscape. It’s not just hypothetical situations. Real people underestimate what real people are like, in part because we are so captured by hyper-negative and, I suppose, yeah, hyper-negative and troubling portrayals of people in the media.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah, this reminds me, and I’ve shared this story a couple times on the show, but I remember one day, I got a random LinkedIn message from someone who said they wanted to talk to me about careers in consulting. I said, “Okay, I mean, sure.” I didn’t have that much to do at the time, and he was local. I could just meet him at a coffee shop, a short walk from my apartment. And so, we chatted, and I had no connection to him. We were in a LinkedIn group that had many thousands of people in it.

And so, we chatted, and I noticed he had this notebook of all the people that he talked to, and I was like, “Wow, looks like you’ve talked to a lot of people. Are you just reaching out totally cold to total strangers like me?” And he said, “Yeah.” And I said, “Well, how often do people actually talk to you?”

And so, he had these detailed records in his notebook, and it was about 28% of total strangers, more than one in four, said, “You know, sure. I’ll take some time to chat with you about some career stuff.” And I thought that was exceptional because that’s a decent chunk of time for someone you don’t know at all, and again and again and again, folks were doing it. It was awesome.

Jamil Zaki
I love this story, and it rings so true. There’s a bunch of research where people are asked to predict, “If you try to talk with a stranger, or even deepen a conversation with an acquaintance, open up about something you’re going through, ask for a favor, try to provide support, how will it go?” And people inevitably think it will be awful, they’re like, “Oh, my gosh, this is going to be so cringe. People will put on their headphones and try to ignore me. There’ll be awkward silence.”

We think about the worst possible outcome of trying to connect with somebody because we don’t really have enough faith in each other. And it turns out that if these same experimenters ask people to go ahead and try that conversation with the stranger, try connecting deeper with a friend, it goes extremely well, far better than we think. So, our cynicism isn’t just clouding our judgment about what people are like, it’s directly standing in the way of opportunities to build new connections and deepen old ones.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s powerful. And then just that experience, experiencing that directly, I think probably packs a much bigger punch, Jamil, is my guess, than us sharing these cool studies, and trust us, humans are actually pretty good. And I recall that there’s some therapists, they’ll do homework, in which they’ll assign them, it’s like, “Hey, go ask women.”

I recall this from the Feeling Good Podcast. This therapist gave some homework, “Go ask women if any of them would ever be interested in dating a person who has once checked into an in-patient psychiatric facility for depression,” because he thought, “No one would ever want to be with me.” And when he did, what he heard most often back was, “Well, is he rich?”

And so, it was eye-opening, like, “Huh, okay, so this is not an immediate disqualify or deal-breaker for me. Aha!” So, we’ve got some evidence, and if you go out and do it for yourself, you’ll see even more potently and feel that. That’s cool.

Jamil Zaki
Yeah, this is a great poll and a really important connection because I think depression is a story that we tell about ourselves often, “I’m worthless. Nobody likes me,” and that story can become its own kind of prison because you don’t then collect the data. You don’t then reach out and have those conversations that could disprove the very story that you’re living with, so you end up in this situation where your depressive stories become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

And cynicism is kind of like that, except it’s not about ourselves. It’s stories about other people, about humanity. So, if you think that most people are only out for themselves, well, then you start to treat people that way. You start to kind of micromanage them, and monitor them, and even threaten them to make sure that they don’t run away with your money or betray you. You start to just act in an untrusting manner.

And guess what? That brings out the worst in other people. People reciprocate our kindness, generosity, and trust, and they retaliate against our selfishness, callousness, and mistrust. So, cynics, because they believe so little in people, treat people poorly, end up getting treated poorly in response, and then decide, “Aha, I was right all along.”

So, the way to break that cycle is exactly like you’re saying, this therapist’s homework from the Feeling Good Podcast, is to instead treat your life a little bit more like an experiment, to give yourself homework, to get out of your comfort zone, and try something new, whether it’s talking to a stranger or trusting somebody in your life in a new way, and don’t just do it.

As you do it, try to mark down, like this person did with his networking opportunities, mark down, “How did it go?” I call this encounter counting. Count and really record how these conversations go because, if you’re like most people, there will be pleasant surprises everywhere. And the goal is not to be surprised all the time, but rather, to learn from those surprises until we can update our expectations to be both more hopeful and more accurate.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that’s so good. Well, Jamil, it feels like we’ve already got our money’s worth for this in terms of this is powerful, enriching stuff. I already feel good and more hopeful myself. So, thank you for that treat. So, I’m curious then, could you share with us one of your favorite stories of someone who made the leap from a lot of cynicism to some more hope and saw some cool results? And if I could really put you on the spot, let’s have that be in the workplace.

Jamil Zaki
Oh, sure. I want to make it a type of workplace that’s a little bit unusual. So, this is the principal of a middle school. So, this is this great person, LaJuan White, she was a principal in schools around Brooklyn, and then decided she wanted to move out of the city. And when you’re in this public school system, you can’t decide the school that you go to.

And so, she was assigned this place called Lincoln Middle School in Syracuse, New York. York. She looked it up and it seemed terrifying. It was on a list of persistently dangerous schools, meaning that there was more than one violent incident per 100 kids per year. It was one of the least resourced schools in the state, and it had spit out four principals in the previous six years. So, this was not a workplace that you necessarily wanted to be in. She was being tapped to act as its leader.

And so, she showed up there, and immediately realized that it wasn’t that the kids at this school were awful people. It’s that the culture around them was bringing out their worst. So, teachers, for instance, were really quick to punish kids, to suspend them, even expel them if they did anything wrong, and they had this hair trigger to see the worst in the kids at the school. And White realized, “Wait a minute, we’re not putting any faith in these kids, so it’s no wonder that they’re retaliating.”

As I said earlier, people become the folks we expect them to be. And so, what White did was, she said, “We’re going to replace this punishment culture with one where we try to treat these kids like the children that we hope they are.” So instead of focusing on punishment, they focused on opportunities and incentives for kids who did the right thing, who made good decisions.

And, over time, and not much time, by the way, we’re talking the course of one academic year, this school was pulled up. The kids started to relate more with each other and with their teachers, suspension rates fell, and the school ended up off of the dangerous list for good. White managed to reform this culture by focusing on trust, even and especially when things were difficult.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I love that. Thank you. I was going to put you on the spot in terms of, “Okay, what are we looking at for crime, what are we looking for data in terms of performance?” So, we got the crime reduction, we got the suspension rates improvement. Beautiful. And could you zoom way in, in terms of what would be some examples of practices or ways of treating, interacting students, that speak to the low trust versus some of the new enhanced better ways teachers were interacting with students every day?

Jamil Zaki
White talks about two models of justice. One is punitive justice, where the idea is the person who’s done something wrong is the enemy, and my goal as a teacher is to protect the rest of the classroom from that negative element. So, that is exclusionary. Basically, if a kid does something wrong, you try to get them out of there, you try to send them to detention, suspension, or expulsion.

White replaced that with restorative justice, where the idea is, if a kid does something wrong, yes, they should be punished, but there should also be curiosity and compassion. We want to know why they did that. We want to treat them as a member of our community who we want to keep in our community. So, we want to ask more about what’s happening with them. We want to be curious.

White visited the homes of many troubled students and found out what a harsh and difficult home life they had. So, she had much more context to understand that a lot of these kids were acting out because they were struggling. And also, instead of just kicking kids out of the classroom, teachers were equipped with this new set of restorative justice practices, where when a kid acted out, they tried to pull them aside for conversations, “What’s going on with you? What do you need right now?”

This is still in the context of protecting other kids, and kids would still have to face consequences, but it was much more empathic. And it turns out that, especially when things are difficult, it matters how you take on that situation, how you treat somebody. And so, even in the context of a kid acting out, treating that kid kindly, treating them like they still deserve your respect, is a huge part of the change that they made within, at the micro level in the classroom.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s beautiful. All right, Jamil, so thinking about the workplace, hope, one, just feels good. Two, it helps other folks step up and live out their best selves and rise to expectations in a good way. Are there any other key benefits or results we might see in terms of work and being awesome at your job when we have less cynicism and more hope?

Jamil Zaki
A hundred percent. So, let’s focus first on individual contributors. I talk with a lot of people who tell me, “Yeah, you know, cynicism, it doesn’t feel good, but I need it to survive and to succeed because, guess what, it’s a dog-eat-dog world out there, and we got to compete. We got to duke it out. If you want to succeed, you need to step over or on your colleagues.” And it turns out that that’s a terrible strategy for success in most places.

So, there’s research from tens of thousands of people that finds that over a 10-year span, cynics earn less money than non-cynics, even if they start out at the same point. Now, why would that be? Well, cynics try to win at work to be awesome at their job by dominating other people. They try to outperform and outshine folks because they think in zero-sum terms. They think that “Anything you get, I lose, and anything you lose, I get.” But it turns out that that dominant attitude to work isn’t really how most people get ahead.

Most people get ahead by collaborating, by working together, doing things that none of them could do alone. And cynics, because they’re trapped in this sort of zero-sum mindset, don’t take advantage of those really important ways of succeeding. And this is where hope and trust and connection matter. In workplaces, yeah, all of those qualities feel good. People, when they feel connected and trusting toward their colleagues, they have greater mental health and resilience, but they also do better.

They’re more willing to take creative risks with their work because they know that their colleagues have their back. They’re more willing to share information, knowledge, and perspective, which aligns people and allows them to, again, collaborate more creatively and they’re more productive. So, it’s not an either/or. It’s not that you have to choose between hope or success. Actually, they go hand in hand.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, as I think about this study, I know how we measure earnings. That’s pretty straightforward. How do I measure whether or not someone qualifies as a “cynical person” versus a “non-cynical person”?

Jamil Zaki
Yeah, there’s a big questionnaire, a very famous one. I can give you just a couple of questions from it. So, I’m going to ask, I’m going to give you a couple of statements, and you tell me whether you agree in general or not, okay? Here’s one, “Most people can be trusted.”

Pete Mockaitis
Mostly agree.

Jamil Zaki
Okay. “People are honest chiefly through fear of getting caught.”

Pete Mockaitis
Mostly disagree.

Jamil Zaki
Okay. And “People generally don’t like helping one another.”

Pete Mockaitis
Disagree.

Jamil Zaki
Well, you’ve scored very anti-cynical on this test. That’s 0 for three, right? And there’s 50 questions like this, and you can score yourself if you want. There are cynicism tests online. This is called the Cook-Medley Cynical Hostility Scale for those folks who want to try it out themselves.

Pete Mockaitis
I’m just imagining, it’s like, “Oh, hey, how was your podcast, honey?” “Well, I just took a score. I took a test and it proved that I’m a cynic.” Like, “I already knew that.” I’m just imagining how that unfolds in people’s relationships and work. Well, so that’s handy. All right. Well, then, so let us know. So, let’s say we do have that, we got a heaping pile of cynicism, and we recognize, “Huh, I’d rather not have that. It doesn’t feel so good. Jamil is making a case that I’ve got benefits associated with ditching that. But personality transplants are not available at the local hospital,” so what’s a person to do?

Jamil Zaki
You brought up something that I think is a great starting point, which is the way that therapists operate, the way that they challenge people with depression or anxiety. I think that personality transplants are not available, as you said, but we are all works in progress. People’s personalities do change over the course of their lives. Events in our life can change our personality and we can change ourselves on purpose, therapy being the primary way that most people do this.

But I’m, personally, a recovering cynic. I deal with this all the time, and I’ve used tools from cognitive therapy on myself. I call it being skeptical of my cynicism. So, when I find myself suspicious of a person that I’ve never met, or over-generalizing and saying, “This politician did something corrupt, therefore, all politicians are fundamentally corrupt,” I ask myself, “Okay, Zaki, wait a minute. What evidence do you have for that claim?”

I’m a scientist. I can challenge myself to defend a position from a scientific perspective. And, oftentimes, I find myself saying, “Wait a minute, that’s not something that I have evidence for. That’s just my bias. That’s just my intuition.” And I don’t have to believe my intuition all the time. In fact, oftentimes our intuitions are dead wrong. So, I think that’s the first step, is to audit your inner experiences, to ask yourself whether you’re jumping to conclusions or whether you have enough evidence.

If you have enough evidence, great. Go for it. You’re not being cynical, you’re being skeptical. If you don’t have enough evidence, try to do an experiment. Try to take a leap of faith on somebody. Now, I’m not saying you have to share your bank information with a prince who’s going to wire you $14 million or anything like that, but try to take small, growing, calculated risks on other people.

Now, that doesn’t just help you learn about them, “Who can I trust and who can’t I trust?” based on evidence. It also changes other people for the better. Economists call this “earned trust.” When we put faith in other people, they’re more likely to step up and meet our expectations because they’re honored that we believe in them. So, that’s something really powerful that we can do to restructure our own thinking and also to bring out the best in the people around us.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, any other potential approaches or fun ways to get started right away?

Jamil Zaki
Yeah, I think that there’s two things that I could add to this, which are ways that we communicate with other people. One is, if you decide to trust somebody, don’t be quiet about it. I do something called trusting loudly, and I think this is especially important for supervisors, managers, leaders of any type, because we often put our faith in somebody. We give them a new responsibility, for instance, at work because we think they’re capable of it, but we don’t tell them, “Hey, I’m doing this because I believe in you.”

And it turns out that that simple message, just being upfront and clear. about the trust that we put in other people can intensify that act of earned trust. It can make that – the power of our trust, the gift of our trust – more clear and more impactful. The second thing that I would add when it comes to sharing or communicating differently is what I would call positive gossip. A lot of us are not just cynical in what we think, we’re cynical in what we say. We go around giving one-star Yelp reviews to life and everybody in it, and we can choose to do the opposite.

One thing that I try to do with my kids is share with them something kind that I saw somebody do each day, and, A, that helps me fight cynicism in them and help them stay attuned to the goodness of others, but it also changes how I think. Because if you are getting ready to tell somebody something, you’ve got to notice it. If I want to tell my kids about somebody who’s been helpful, I have an antenna up in my mind to spot helpers who are super easy to find when you’re looking. So, a habit of speech in this case, can become a habit of mind.

Pete Mockaitis
I like that a lot. Anything you recommend we stop doing right away?

Jamil Zaki
Oh, interesting. I would say we can stop jumping to conclusions, first of all, and trusting our instincts. This is one thing that people tell me a lot. It’s like, “I don’t know, man. I’ve just got this gut instinct that this person is not trustworthy, and I trust my gut.” And it’s like, “Well, okay, but your gut also tells you all sorts of other things that are probably wrong.”

Our gut instincts include, for instance, focusing on the negative over the positive, trusting people who look like us more than people who don’t, bias around race and gender and identity. Our gut instincts include being meaner when we’re hungry than when we’re full, being hangry. I mean, we don’t trust those instincts because they’re not right. They’re a poor match for the data. So, I would say one thing to stop doing is to credulously, naively trust our gut instincts because those gut instincts are very biased.

Another thing that I think we should stop doing is thinking of trust only in terms of the risk that we’re putting in. I think, again, a lot of leaders and managers lead like they’re trying not to lose, like they expect other people to shirk and try to take advantage of them, and their job is to police that, to stop people from doing something wrong. Well, if you treat people that way and show them how little you trust them, they’re going to actually act in ways that are less trustworthy.

There’s one story from the Boston Fire Department that I share in the book where the Boston Fire Chief, a new chief, actually, came in around the year 2000, and he realized that more sick days were being taken by firefighters on Fridays than any other day of the week. Now until then, firefighters had had unlimited sick days and been treated in a pretty trusting fashion because of their role. But this new chief said, “Nah, I don’t think so. These people are cheaters, and I’m going to make sure that they don’t do it anymore on my watch.”

So, he capped the number of sick days that firefighters could take at 15 a year. You had to get a doctor’s note if you went above that, you would get your pay docked. There’s all sorts of draconian policies where he was just trying to stop people from taking advantage of him and the city. Now, I wonder, Pete, whether you have a guess as to what the effects of that untrusting policy might have been.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, it’s funny, I feel my own internal, I don’t know what I want to call it, the big word is pusillanimous, small-hearted, like, “Well, oh, so it’s going to be like that, then. Oh, well, I got a doctor buddy who’s going to write all kinds of notes.” So, it’s like, “It’s going to be like that? All right, then. I’m going to…” It stokes the lower part of me that I don’t aspire to be, and, hopefully, I will be able to breathe and think through and say, “Okay, hey, you know what, I’m going to be as honest as possible and be sick when I’m sick, but my immediate desire is to stick it to them.”

Jamil Zaki
It’s beautifully put, and that’s exactly the desire that firefighters felt. So, the overall number of sick days taken by the entire city’s fire department in the year after that policy was rolled out was more than twice as high as it was before. And the number of firefighters who took exactly 15 sick days increased by 1,000%, ten times.

And it’s exactly as you said, that when you treat people cynically, when you choose to not trust them, you’re trying to cover your own butt. But actually, what you’re doing is you’re bringing out the worst side of these people. You’re appealing to their smallness, their pusillanimous side, where you’re saying, “I think you’re a cheater,” and people say, “Oh, you think I’m a cheater? I’ll show you a cheater.” And it turns out that this occurs all over our lives, and so people, in an attempt to protect themselves, harm each other and relationships, and then harm themselves as a result.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, well, I think we’re really getting into it in terms of decisions, policies, systems, processes, the stuff that you’re doing, in terms of how you’re running your team and your organization. In some ways, I’m feeling this tension because there are those who take advantage, and yet you want to extend trust to encourage the goodness in folks, and I guess to trust them loudly. That’s a good turn of a phrase.

So, help us out, what would be the optimal way? Let’s go with the same fire chief example. So okay, I’ve got firefighters. It looks like there’s a level, there may be, we don’t know, it could be statistically just happened that way. We suspect there’s a bit of abuse, that many Friday-sick days are not so much sick, so much as early weekend starts.

So, that’s what we suspect. We’d like to curb that, getting all bean counter-y in terms of, “This is how many days you get in the policies, and don’t you dare violate them.” It’s counterproductive. So, what’s your take, knowing all you know, what might be an optimal approach to address that matter?

Jamil Zaki
So, a mindset in general, that I recommend and sort of champion in the book, is being a hopeful skeptic. That is, paying very close attention to the data, being really evidence-based, but also the hopeful piece is understanding that our defaults, our factory settings as human beings, are probably too negative. So, basically saying, “Okay, let me be as scientific as I can in my interactions, but also let me curb and understand and audit my knee-jerk negativity.”

So, the fire chief here, he saw the statistic and his knee-jerk negativity took over. He said, “I’m going to take it out on my entire staff.” Well, probably if he had looked more closely at the data, he would find that maybe, I don’t know, 5% of firefighters were overrepresented in these Friday sick days. So, instead of making a blanket assumption about his entire team, his entire department, he could have asked, “Well, what’s up with these 5% of people?” and ask them some more questions, say, “Hey, I noticed that you’ve taken four Fridays off and no Tuesdays off. Are you getting sick in an unusual way? Can you tell me more about this?”

And sometimes just a little bit of curiosity, showing that, “Hey, I’m paying attention to this,” could probably curb that behavior. And the 5% statistic, by the way, I’m just hypothesizing here, but he could have also looked at the 95% of his staff who were not taking extra sick days on Friday, and said, “Wow, we’ve got such an honorable group of people here. You’ve got unlimited sick days and yet you’re only taking a pretty reasonable amount in a pretty reasonable way. This speaks to the spirit and the values that you all have as firefighters to protect your community.”

This is the thing that, I think, we do way too often as leaders is we focus on the 5%, 10%, 2% of people in our organization who we’re scared of, or who we feel like are threatening the organization, and not on the 90% or 92% or 98% of people who are upholding our values and probably all want the same thing. So, I would say, if I was in the fire chief’s seat, I would focus on the supermajority and try to develop policies and practices for them, and also extol their positive values as opposed to hyper-focusing on the two or five percent of folks who are not playing by the rules.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I love that and I think that’s just a great practice, in general, in organizations to celebrate the cool stuff that’s happening that you’re noticing, that you’re doing. I’m in a team and we have in the meetings a one minute of awesome in which we folks share, “Hey, this is a cool thing that happened,” and it speaks to the values and remind us, “Oh, yeah, this is why we do this. This is cool. All right. Good deal.”

So, yeah, and to trust loudly when you’re seeing cool things, to speak to it, as opposed to I get this sense and, huh, boy, this is a whole another conversation maybe, good doctor, that as humans, it seems like when good things happen regularly, we just become habituated to them and expect them, and that’s the baseline. Even though it’s amazing, it’s a blessing, it’s so good, we’re so lucky, it’s so privileged and delightful, we just get accustomed to it, take it for granted. That’s what normal is.

And then if we suddenly don’t have that, then, “Oh, this is an injustice, and it’s bad, and my expectations are being violated, and I’m cranky about it,” as opposed to realizing, “Hey, well, you know what? I’ve had it pretty good. I’ve been pretty lucky for a really long time. I guess I could just appreciate how, in this absence, how so often I am blessed with this thing,” usually isn’t how we respond to these deprivations. Is that just how we’re wired, neuroscience doctor? Can anything be done about this?

Jamil Zaki
Yes, and yes. So, what you’re describing is called hedonic adaptation, sometimes also known as the hedonic treadmill, which is that we get used to whatever is going on in our lives. We have a set point that’s related to our personal baseline. So, my baseline and your baseline in terms of what we’re used to in life might be totally different.

If we switched places, we would feel intensely the differences between how we live, but we don’t feel those differences now. The same way that when you put on clothes in the morning, you feel them for about five seconds and then you kind of forget that they’re there and you stop feeling them. We get used to stuff and that’s good. That is a form of adaptation, but it also means, as you’re saying, we get used to all the good stuff and forget how lucky we are, forget how good we have it.

Is there anything we can do about it? Yeah, there is. There’s a great practice called savoring. I think gratitude practice is really well known. You think about all the good things that have happened to you today or in your life in general. Savoring is much more physical and palpable. It’s about enjoying the good stuff as it happens.

Kurt Vonnegut has a terrific quote that I love, the novelist Kurt Vonnegut, where he says, “Sometimes you got to stop and say, ‘If this isn’t good, I don’t know what is.’” And savoring is in essence that. It’s pausing and noticing what’s happening, and especially noticing the things that you are happy about right now in the moment.

I think that one version of this that we don’t do enough is what I would call social savoring. That is stopping to notice the good in other people and the wonderful things that they do for each other, for us, for everybody, for the world all the time. And I mean constantly millions of people are doing good things every minute of every day, and we have grown adapted to that the same way that we’ve adapted to all the other good things in our lives.

But when we notice, there’s so much to be gained. My friend, Dacher Keltner, studies the emotion of awe, the idea of something that is vast and makes us feel small in a good way, like we’re part of something greater than ourselves. And when I think of awe, I think about, I don’t know, seeing the Milky Way, or the Aurora Borealis, or a grove of redwood trees, and those things all produce awe. But in a study of tens of thousands of people, Dacher asked them, “What made you feel awe today?”

And the most common response, the most common thing that made people feel awe, this beautiful experience, was what he calls “moral beauty.” That is the everyday acts of goodness, kindness, generosity, and compassion that people around us are performing all the time. So, when you start to notice that and savor the goodness of others, you have access to really, I mean, I know I’m sounding hyperbolic and maybe a little bit warm and fuzzy, but I mean it. I really do think that people do beautiful things. And to open ourselves to that beauty is a really powerful way to stop hedonic adaptation, to get off the treadmill and actually enjoy our lives.

Pete Mockaitis
I love it. I love it. Can you tell us what are some things you savor?

Jamil Zaki
Oh, well, I savor my children first and foremost. I feel wonder and awe at their new developments and hobbies and interests, and just the way they treat people all the time. I savor the work of people who fight through adversity. A special type of person to me is what I would call the wounded healer, the person who struggles mightily with something, and then turns around and helps other people.

So, this is veterans who help other veterans with PTSD, survivors of assault who become assault counselors, people who have suffered addiction who then join the recovery community and become sponsors. That’s a type of beauty to me that it never gets old. I find that those folks to be incredible. inspiring as well. How about you?

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you. You know, it’s funny, when you say savor, the first thing that comes to mind, well, two things, is washing my hands, just enjoying that warm water and my favorite soap.

Jamil Zaki
Nice.

Pete Mockaitis
And then, in my back porch, I’ve got these sliding wood cedar doors, which just look really cool and kind of unique. We just lucked out, the house had it. And I like to, whenever I open or close those doors, to take just a good whiff of that cedar smell and appreciate the home and the setting that I’m in. So, that’s what I savor.

Jamil Zaki
I love that. I love that. Those are beautiful everyday experiences, right? And I think that that’s the thing is, you could have gotten used to those things. Washing your hands, the smell of cedar, these are easy things to fall into the background of our minds, to relegate to the landfill of lost memories, but you’ve chosen to keep your attention open, to keep your mind open to those experiences. And I think that’s really the good fight. That’s what I think we need to do to retain a hopeful and skeptical mindset.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, Jamil, tell me, anything else we should cover before we hear about your favorite things?

Jamil Zaki
No, I think this has been great. I hope that all this is useful to your listeners.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’d say I’m feeling good, so I hope they are, too. How about a favorite quote?

Jamil Zaki
Okay, I got to go Vonnegut again. Kurt Vonnegut said, “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be.” And to me, that speaks to everything that we’ve been talking about. Our beliefs about the world are self-fulfilling prophecies. We create the version of the world that we live in, and that, in turn, shapes the type of life that we go through. So, it’s, to me, critical to mind our minds because they’re so powerful in structuring who we become.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And could you share a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Jamil Zaki
I’ll share one again that speaks to workplaces and how they shape us. Unusual workplaces for most of us, there are two fishing villages in southeastern Brazil, separated by about 40 miles, similar in economic status, religion, and so forth, but one of them sits on the ocean. And it turns out that if you’re going to fish on the ocean, you need big boats, heavy equipment. You need to work together. You can’t do it alone.

The other village is on a lake. So, fishermen strike out on small boats alone, and the only time they see each other is when they’re competing. Economists went to these villages about 10 years ago and had these people play a series of social games to assess how trustworthy and how generous they were. And it turns out that when you started out in your career in one of these fishing villages, you’re not different from each other. People on the ocean and people on the lake equally trusting, equally trustworthy, equally generous.

But over time, working in a co-operative setting made people more trusting and more generous. I mean, we’re talking over the course of decades, and over the course of decades working in a competitive cutthroat environment made people less trusting and less generous. So, choose your workplaces carefully because they shape you into the version of yourself you will become.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite book?

Jamil Zaki
I just finished Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber, which I found absolutely fascinating, an account of why so many of us do work for most of our waking hours that we don’t think creates any good in the world, so that’s one. But here’s a more hopeful one, A Paradise Built in Hell by Rebecca Solnit is a book about disasters over the course of the last century or so. So, the earthquakes here in San Francisco in 1906 and 1989, the bombing of London in World War II, 9/11, Hurricane Katrina.

And in all of these, Solnit asks the question, “What do disasters teach us about ourselves?” And there’s a stereotype that when disaster strikes, people show their true colors, which is that we are selfish and awful and social order falls apart. By looking at the history, Solnit finds that the exact opposite is true, that when disaster strikes, people band together, they help one another, and they find solidarity. So, there’s a lot more goodness in even the hardest times than most of us realize.

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

Jamil Zaki
Yes, I use, well, a bunch of tools that I love, but one is a type of notebook, and I’m of course now blanking on the brand name, but I use it when I interview people for journalistic parts of my writing. And it’s this pen that has a recording device in it, and the paper has sort of sensors on it. So, as you write, it records what time it is that you were writing, and you can then later press down on any note that you took, and it will play back the recording from the pen of that moment that you were writing that particular note. It’s incredibly useful for interviews and for recording stuff.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool, yeah. And a favorite habit?

Jamil Zaki
Savoring, the one that we just talked about.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And is there a particular nugget you share that folks really connect and resonate with, and quote back to you often?

Jamil Zaki
From this book, not yet because it’s not out yet, but I think that, oftentimes, I think people are simply happy and relieved and surprised to learn the statistics on helping and kindness. I think that people really are fundamentally underestimating one another. And the freedom to stop doing that is enlivening for folks.

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

Jamil Zaki
Well, Hope for Cynics: The Surprising Science of Human Goodness is available wherever books are sold. And my lab, the Stanford Social Neuroscience Lab, is at ssnl.stanford.edu.

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

Jamil Zaki
Yeah, take a leap of faith on somebody today or tomorrow, this week at the latest, and write down what you think will happen, and then write down what actually happens. And if your predictions are different from reality, try to remember that and ask yourself why the difference is there.

Pete Mockaitis
Jamil, this has been a real treat. Thank you. I wish you much hope and joy.

Jamil Zaki
Thank you so much. This has been delightful.