Speaker 1: Yes.
Speaker 2: Now this is going to be very confusing because we
Speaker 2: are all based in Melbourne.
Speaker 3: Well, you two in Melbourne.
Speaker 2: I'm down in the Mornington Peninsula. But anybody listens to
Speaker 2: this is going they're not natives. So just give us
Speaker 2: a bit of both of your background, kind of where
Speaker 2: you're from and your cold kind of educational professional background.
Speaker 3: We'll go ladies first. Why not?
Speaker 1: Thanks? So I am originally from Miami, Florida. I have
Speaker 1: been in Australia for fifteen years. I make the joke
Speaker 1: that I identify as Australian and my pronouns are yeah,
Speaker 1: nah and yeah. The reason the reason I came to
Speaker 1: Australia was because I won an all expenses paid trip
Speaker 1: to Tasmania in a video competition. So I drove in
Speaker 1: a bright orange Camebra van around Tasmania for six weeks
Speaker 1: filming and capturing all of our our kind of excursions
Speaker 1: and things like that. This was back before YouTube was
Speaker 1: sort of a thing. It was in twenty ten, two
Speaker 1: thousand and nine. So yeah, I came to Tazzy. I
Speaker 1: did a working holiday visa for a year in Melbourne
Speaker 1: and then figured out a sneaky way to get myself
Speaker 1: here for good.
Speaker 3: So did that involve marrying a local.
Speaker 1: No, I am here on my own accord.
Speaker 3: Yes, unlike me exactly.
Speaker 1: Most people there their ticket is someone else me. I
Speaker 1: snuck in there and figured out how to get sponsored
Speaker 1: through my work. So yeah, I have a PR and
Speaker 1: marketing background originally, but I've always been very obsessed with
Speaker 1: human behavior and just the way the mind kind of works,
Speaker 1: and our own levels of consciousness and self awareness. And
Speaker 1: so when I did come to Australia at the ripe
Speaker 1: page of twenty five, I was thinking to myself, what
Speaker 1: am I doing here? Who am I? And I ended
Speaker 1: up having a coach who I did some great work with,
Speaker 1: just kind of landing and who I wanted to be
Speaker 1: in this new space. And he one day said to me,
Speaker 1: you should be a coach. You really, you really get
Speaker 1: this stuff. And I said, okay, sure. I was kind
Speaker 1: of done with I was kind of done with PR
Speaker 1: and marketing, so I went and got my coaching certification.
Speaker 1: I set up a successful coaching business. I worked outside
Speaker 1: of different wellness centers, and then I just was getting
Speaker 1: this itch of the one on one thing for me.
Speaker 1: I'm super extroverted and I always wanted to be an
Speaker 1: actress when I was a kid. So I was like,
Speaker 1: this is this work is rewarding, but I want to
Speaker 1: like reach more people. I want to kind of have
Speaker 1: a little bit of a stage. So I started crafting
Speaker 1: workshops that were about mental health and well being. But
Speaker 1: I would bring a character in or I would dress
Speaker 1: up as like, you know, how to tame I would
Speaker 1: do how to Tame your inner critic, and I would
Speaker 1: dress up as a lion tamer just to create a
Speaker 1: little bit more kind of levity and lightness around heavier topics.
Speaker 1: And then yeah, I started to just kind of delve
Speaker 1: more into more in this idea of play, and I
Speaker 1: tried to run Australia's first ever adult summer camp, which
Speaker 1: was unfortunately the first of my business and quite a flop.
Speaker 1: I had, I think three people three people book. But
Speaker 1: then I really was trying to get to my core.
Speaker 1: I was doing my Simon sink Why and I was like,
Speaker 1: all right, I really want to connect adults to their playfulness.
Speaker 1: And I had a friend say, oh, why don't you
Speaker 1: look at doing it from a personal sorry from a
Speaker 1: professional perspective then personal, So I kind of pivoted from
Speaker 1: play for personal into play for professional did a real
Speaker 1: big deep dive around what was happening in Silicon Valley
Speaker 1: and things like that, and then started iterating on that,
Speaker 1: and that was This year is my tenth year in
Speaker 1: really diving into this world of play at work and
Speaker 1: all of the benefits that it creates around innovation, creativity,
Speaker 1: psychological safety. I mean, the list goes on and on
Speaker 1: from mental health and well being. For me, play is
Speaker 1: such this incredible conduit with which we can enter into
Speaker 1: our full potential as human beings. And I think, you know,
Speaker 1: we can talk more about that in a bit. I
Speaker 1: want to give Tana a chance to give his origin story,
Speaker 1: But yeah, I think you know, play is a real
Speaker 1: opportunity to unlock so much of our own internal b allions,
Speaker 1: which is very much buried under achievement, success, mortgages, responsibility, conformity, risk, aversion.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I think there's a lot to be said
Speaker 1: about how do we sort of excavate that part of
Speaker 1: ourselves to arrive in this kind of crazy time of
Speaker 1: technological change and disruption.
Speaker 2: That is very cool, And you know what, I've got
Speaker 2: a big takeaway from this already. I think I'm going
Speaker 2: to use your iMX Military. I'm a corporate speaker X military.
Speaker 2: I love fancy dress. I'm going to start dressing up
Speaker 2: on stage. I'm going to try and find a way
Speaker 2: to weave in being a smurf, for sure. I've been
Speaker 2: a smurf so many times. You would not believe it,
Speaker 2: could you not?
Speaker 3: But anyway, that's a different.
Speaker 2: Podcast where I probably need to lie down on the
Speaker 2: couch tane over to you. Let's talk about you. You
Speaker 2: bet you better be good after that one.
Speaker 4: So I'm originally from rural New Mexico, on the border
Speaker 4: between the US and Mexico. I like cats and dogs equally,
Speaker 4: long walks on the beach, and I am an all
Speaker 4: round nerd. So I really had a love affair with
Speaker 4: biology and the way the world works for as long
Speaker 4: as I can remember. But I'm also an intense adrenaline drunkie.
Speaker 4: So my way to get in touch with biology was
Speaker 4: to get out into nature through mountain biking. And my
Speaker 4: first real job was professional mountain biker, cross country mountain biker.
Speaker 3: In the US. Wow.
Speaker 4: And that was going smoothly until I broke my back.
Speaker 4: Didn't yeah until it finally got the better of my body.
Speaker 3: But I focused back.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so, but when one door closes, many more open.
Speaker 4: So I refocused on academics and finished my undergrad in
Speaker 4: bio kem and then decided to have an opportunity to
Speaker 4: go sailing with my Kiwi father and Tasmanian mother, and
Speaker 4: so we sailed across the South Pacific to New Zealand.
Speaker 4: And on that journey I actually came across a whale
Speaker 4: dissection a Cuvier beaked weal, which is the deepest diving
Speaker 4: mammal and the really interesting and I can't smell, so
Speaker 4: I'm in anosmiac so good. I'm a good partner to have.
Speaker 4: You can fight around me and not shower and I
Speaker 4: am unaware. But on this whale dissection, I really love
Speaker 4: marine biology and I wanted to be a marine biologist.
Speaker 4: And this woman from Harvard Medical School, Darling Kenton, who
Speaker 4: was leading the dissection which I got to help with,
Speaker 4: told me this marine biology is a saturated field, but
Speaker 4: if you can understand the code of life itself DNA,
Speaker 4: you can apply it to any field within biology. So
Speaker 4: that's out with me for a while. And landed in
Speaker 4: New Zealand and first started house painting because I was
Speaker 4: broke as and then got a job doing how hospitalities
Speaker 4: founded up, managing wineries and making wine on Wayhiki and
Speaker 4: New Zealand. And then my brain was atrophying, and because
Speaker 4: I'm a nerd, I went back to academia and I
Speaker 4: went to the University of Melbourne for bioinformatics, basically using
Speaker 4: AI machine learning to read DNA and figure out what
Speaker 4: genetic changes are causing cancer and working with clinicians to
Speaker 4: improve patient outcomes. So my PhD research was at Peter
Speaker 4: McCollum Cancer Center and during this time I love science,
Speaker 4: I love technology, but I think it lacks good communication.
Speaker 4: So formed a company called future Crunch, which is science
Speaker 4: communication explores the frontiers of science and technology and really
Speaker 4: seeks out stories of human progress, stories of incredible people
Speaker 4: around the world doing great stuff to make the world
Speaker 4: a better place, because I think one people really suffer
Speaker 4: from is negative information, a torrent of negative news, and
Speaker 4: that doesn't lead to pathways forward and a belief that
Speaker 4: lotions are available. So that for the last thirteen years
Speaker 4: have been working with organizations and individuals to help foster
Speaker 4: intelligent optimism with the Reverend Humor and fancy colorful jackets
Speaker 4: on stage, so that's pretty much me and ended up
Speaker 4: in Melbourne, Love Australia and ran across Darra and a
Speaker 4: plain nerd and a science tech nerd collided and we
Speaker 4: now work together in a more I would say human
Speaker 4: holistic approach. So we're both nerds from different angles.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, Wow, fascinating backgrounds. And are you still in
Speaker 2: academia tany or are you just in the company now
Speaker 2: doing stuff with organizations.
Speaker 4: Future corunch has become a full time thing. But I
Speaker 4: call myself a recovering academic. I like the Ivory Towers,
Speaker 4: but comes with its problems, and so I like getting
Speaker 4: research out and science and tech innovations to the general public.
Speaker 4: We have all, I believe we have most of the
Speaker 4: tools in our tool build to get out of the
Speaker 4: mess we've created. It's just about inspiring and educating people
Speaker 4: to get out.
Speaker 3: There and do it. Yeah. Cool, quite similar.
Speaker 2: I call myself a procademic, so I like to read
Speaker 2: all the geeky academic research and go how does this
Speaker 2: apply and then talk to talk to people about how
Speaker 2: they can use it to improve their lives. So, now,
Speaker 2: in that that intro from both of you, obviously we're
Speaker 2: we're pointing towards and your book as well, is that
Speaker 2: today we're.
Speaker 3: Really not doing very well.
Speaker 2: You know, we are, as I often say, we are
Speaker 2: the most overweight, most depressed, most medicated, and most addictive
Speaker 2: cohort of adults that there's ever been. Yet life has
Speaker 2: never being so good, right, we got it easier than
Speaker 2: all of our ancestors. Yet we are struggling physically and mentally,
Speaker 2: and often that manifests in burnout, and and your your
Speaker 2: book is is kind of what we can do about this.
Speaker 2: But but let's just let's just talk about burnout. I mean,
Speaker 2: what what what are you guys seeing out there? I mean,
Speaker 2: you're you're at the cold face, you're interrupted and interacting
Speaker 2: with with companies.
Speaker 3: I mean I can come at it from an academic.
Speaker 2: Perspective, but what do you what are you actually seeing
Speaker 2: in the organizations that you're working with.
Speaker 1: I think what we kind of general theme is just
Speaker 1: this blanket of exhaustion, this blanket of overwhelm, this intensity
Speaker 1: around uncertainty around job security. Obviously, like the conversation around AI,
Speaker 1: you know, AI and jobs is I think creating so
Speaker 1: much fear within people. I think for both of us,
Speaker 1: we've been entrepreneurs for over a decade, and it was
Speaker 1: always that uncertainty around when's the next paycheck going to come?
Speaker 1: But now even with that, with a full time job
Speaker 1: with a company, you have no job security. The amount
Speaker 1: of redundancies and transformations and restructuring that are happening is
Speaker 1: just causing people so much distress. And so I think,
Speaker 1: you know, one thing that isn't necessarily explicit in the book,
Speaker 1: but what is basically the general gist of what we're
Speaker 1: trying to talk about is really looking at conditions. Because
Speaker 1: I think when we explore burnout from a systemic perspective,
Speaker 1: it feels very big. And so when we talk about
Speaker 1: how burnout costs businesses trillions of dollars, how does a
Speaker 1: leader actually really see themselves in those numbers, and how
Speaker 1: do we kind of bring it down to a more
Speaker 1: granular level for what they can relate to and see
Speaker 1: in their people and what's happening. And so when you
Speaker 1: think about the conditions, it's actually, you know, a smaller
Speaker 1: subset of what the systemic issue is around work. I mean,
Speaker 1: when you think about the industrial revolution and even the
Speaker 1: in work ethic around play being sorry by work being
Speaker 1: salvation and things like that, that's like five hundred years
Speaker 1: of unprogramming that we need to do around how we
Speaker 1: identify it with work and success and achievement. Right, But
Speaker 1: that's so big, and when we try and approach something
Speaker 1: that's so big, we become paralyzed and we do nothing.
Speaker 1: So for us, especially with the way that we've written
Speaker 1: the book, is really about creating sort of micropractices and
Speaker 1: micro moments around changing the conditions both in the environments
Speaker 1: that we have control over in our own lives and
Speaker 1: also giving leaders the opportunity to think about changing the
Speaker 1: conditions within their realm of and sphere of influence.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 1: And so when we think about burnout, like burnout is
Speaker 1: kind of the holy grail of exhaustion, right, it's like
Speaker 1: when you've actually reached your end where you are having
Speaker 1: a mental and physical or you know, mental or physical breakdown.
Speaker 1: Basically you might become hospitalized, you know, whatever it is.
Speaker 1: But what we discovered in researching what kind of is
Speaker 1: like the presupposition of burnout is something called achievement syndrome,
Speaker 1: which comes from an amazing researcher based in the States
Speaker 1: called Michael Simmons, which is really the slow and steady
Speaker 1: kind of slide towards burnout. And it really happens from
Speaker 1: the moment when we're children and we start to achieve,
Speaker 1: So we get ribbons and trophies and report cards and
Speaker 1: stars and stickers, and you know, we're really awarded for Yeah,
Speaker 1: exactly correct, and so that starts to feel good and
Speaker 1: we really like that, and then that takes us into
Speaker 1: our kind of identity fusion where we're starting to connect
Speaker 1: to success as like who we are, you know, it's
Speaker 1: like I am my achievements, and so we start to
Speaker 1: lose our sense of self and really the kind of
Speaker 1: passion that started us off when we were younger and
Speaker 1: really hungry to learn and grow starts to diminish because
Speaker 1: we become so engulfed in this concept of promotion and
Speaker 1: recognition and validation and all those sorts of things. Then
Speaker 1: we kind of get into this optimization.
Speaker 2: Shara, Sorry, I need to just stop because I've just
Speaker 2: had a pop up which I've never seen before, okay,
Speaker 2: which is saying Dara is not being recorded, Okay, stop
Speaker 2: being recorded because of low browser story.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so my my computer is like to the max loaded,
Speaker 1: and so can I Yeah, you know, I have to
Speaker 1: I have eight I have ADHD and my ability to
Speaker 1: keep my computer in check is non existent.
Speaker 2: So let me so it's saying, ask them to free
Speaker 2: up space and then rejoin.
Speaker 1: Yes, okay, I'm going to offer. I'm going to do
Speaker 1: my best to delete a few things here.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Cool, And why do you do that?
Speaker 2: We're just going to keep rolling actually because this is funny,
Speaker 2: because because as you might said, her computer is suffering
Speaker 2: from Bernard overwhelmed syndrome.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: So I don't know how how much people caught of
Speaker 2: Dara before her computer shot the bed, but so there's
Speaker 2: this started to mention there, Danny, and maybe you pick
Speaker 2: up on this Tanney side that essentially what she's alluding
Speaker 2: to is this modern world is becoming more and more vooka.
Speaker 2: This is a term from the military from my kind
Speaker 2: of background, a word of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity.
Speaker 3: Right, And how all of that.
Speaker 2: Uncertainty that's now being brought in by tech and actually
Speaker 2: amplifies the stress that people feel of So I kind
Speaker 2: of want to do a bit of a dive on this.
Speaker 3: I mean, I've been an entrepreneur.
Speaker 2: I understand what Dara was was was talking about with
Speaker 2: you know, words, the next paycheck, all of that that uncertainty,
Speaker 2: that stress of being a startup person. Normally people with
Speaker 2: a normal job don't have that.
Speaker 3: Now they have this uncertainty. But can you you.
Speaker 2: Wave that in with achievement syndrome and just how those
Speaker 2: words are actually colliding to push people kind of over
Speaker 2: the edge and that constant information load that we are
Speaker 2: getting and the inembility to switch off.
Speaker 3: Really yes, So to.
Speaker 4: Pick up where there was with achievement syndrome. She was
Speaker 4: talking about early programming, where you know, love and your
Speaker 4: identity becomes sort of conditional on performance, your gold stars,
Speaker 4: your report cards, you're be impressive and you belong. And
Speaker 4: as we grow and move into the workplace, we really
Speaker 4: get this identity fusion where we become our output performance
Speaker 4: in our person It becomes indistinguishable, which leads us into this,
Speaker 4: especially with AI as a layer over everything in the
Speaker 4: world in which we live, work and play, we sort
Speaker 4: of have to enjoy. We get to this thing where
Speaker 4: we start scheduling joy morning routines get hacked. We look
Speaker 4: at a bunch of productivity poor and so every moment
Speaker 4: is optimized.
Speaker 3: We kind of.
Speaker 4: Forget how to care without producing something and that's a
Speaker 4: diminishing curve which leads to burnout. It's like the more
Speaker 4: success you get, the less satisfaction relationships a road, your
Speaker 4: sleep starts to suffer, winds sort of begin to feel
Speaker 4: hollow and you don't take as much pride in them,
Speaker 4: and then you lead to the break The calendar doesn't
Speaker 4: didn't schedule the breakdown, of course, but we reach this
Speaker 4: threshold and keep hustling unless we sort of get out
Speaker 4: of this achievement syndrome. Because this achievement syndrome, it doesn't
Speaker 4: just hijack our thinking. At hijacks are breathing. We have
Speaker 4: shallow breathing. It activates our nervous system. We sort of
Speaker 4: lose present moment awareness. Cortisol is flooding our system. Our
Speaker 4: jaws locked shoulders live in permanent tension. Our head feels
Speaker 4: like a balloon on a string. And yeah, and I
Speaker 4: think with your information overload as well, going back to
Speaker 4: what darre was talking about with conditions, conditions are really
Speaker 4: the soil, and I think that's where a lot of
Speaker 4: our apathy, fear, and burnout comes from and our disconnection.
Speaker 4: So think of conditions like it's a relationship ecosystem with
Speaker 4: our family, friends, and our organizational culture. It's our information
Speaker 4: diet where we have a torrent of fake news. You
Speaker 4: need to do more of course, with negativity, bias and
Speaker 4: the media system that's predicated on fear and interrational perception
Speaker 4: of risk to get our attention. Nervous systems really overload
Speaker 4: and which reduces We have a triple C conditions, capacity
Speaker 4: and capability. But this reduces our capacity, which is essentially
Speaker 4: the bandwidth and what's growing from the conditions, the conditional
Speaker 4: soil and our base, our foundations, and so capacity is
Speaker 4: not necessarily a skill that your bandwidth. It's the underlying
Speaker 4: resource that makes really everything else possible, and it's dynamic, contextual,
Speaker 4: and it's deeply conditionally dependent. And then what we have
Speaker 4: is called capability, and those are skills that we can develop, exercise,
Speaker 4: and it's what happens when latent human capacity gets enough
Speaker 4: of the right conditions, the enough practice to become to thrive,
Speaker 4: become reliable and accessible under pressure. And once you form
Speaker 4: strong capabilities, they feedback into your capacity. Your bandwidth and
Speaker 4: capacity increases. For example, a person who develops curiosity is
Speaker 4: a capacity. Our capability and their capacity increase. They start
Speaker 4: treating novelty new things as novelty and exciting rather than threatening.
Speaker 4: The energization increases and it increases their capacity. A person
Speaker 4: who's developed hope, for example, strategic cope as a capability,
Speaker 4: finds obstacles that used to be difficult to navigate and
Speaker 4: depleteting are far easier to get around and deal with,
Speaker 4: and developed capacity starts to change fundamentally the conditions around them. So,
Speaker 4: for example, good leaders, once they build capacity and good capability,
Speaker 4: they actually start creating better conditions around them for their ecosystem.
Speaker 4: And that's one that's our three c's that really get
Speaker 4: to the point of if any of these go offline,
Speaker 4: you lead to burnout, achievement syndrome, and chronic stress because
Speaker 4: in the modern day workforce, it's always high stakes. There's
Speaker 4: always you know, fear of failure and risk aversion. And
Speaker 4: I think that's a lot of what we're suffering despite
Speaker 4: AI coming to steal your jobs and the information overload.
Speaker 3: I think it's really interesting.
Speaker 2: I like these three season I want to do a
Speaker 2: little bit of a deeper dive just so that that
Speaker 2: people understand the impact of conditions on their capacity and
Speaker 2: maybe even their their capability because when we are are
Speaker 2: overwhelmed or overloaded, right, So we're as you guys have
Speaker 2: both said, we're busy, busy, busy at work, right, even
Speaker 2: if AI is coming and we're using AI. The research
Speaker 2: is saying that people are just having to do more, right,
Speaker 2: and so it's actually not really a useful tone.
Speaker 3: You're just expected to do more.
Speaker 2: But I think that the pandemic has had a big
Speaker 2: impact on this, and particularly in Melbourne.
Speaker 3: Were you guys here, You were here during the lockdowns, right.
Speaker 4: The lockdown capital of the world.
Speaker 2: Yes, as we as we we well know, the three
Speaker 2: of us. But that I think, and we're starting to
Speaker 2: see the impact of that more on kids, but I
Speaker 2: think on adults.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: You know, the recent data is that the nearly fifty
Speaker 2: percent of Australians are are feeling constantly stressed and on
Speaker 2: the verge of burnout.
Speaker 3: And I think for people.
Speaker 2: To understand, particularly going through that intense period of lockdown,
Speaker 2: and that amplifies any of the burnout that they were feeling,
Speaker 2: that drives it towards clinical burnout where they get a
Speaker 2: large dmygdala, the frontal lobes are shrinking all of a sudden.
Speaker 2: Now I have a negativity bias. I'm starting to scan
Speaker 2: the environment non consciously for bad shit, right, which is
Speaker 2: a brilliant adaptive response if you're living in a dangerous world.
Speaker 2: But if we don't live in a danger world, it's maladaptive.
Speaker 2: Then my frontal lobes aren't working so well. I can't
Speaker 2: regulate my emotions as well. I can't also my self
Speaker 2: controlled hearts of the bri in become diminished, so I'm
Speaker 2: more likely to eat ship food drink alcohol to soothe
Speaker 2: my stress.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: So these are the conditions starting to amplify, and they
Speaker 2: and HI work conditions interact with personal conditions and choices
Speaker 2: that then destroy your capacity and further eroad your capabilities.
Speaker 3: Right, So it's almost like modern life.
Speaker 2: And then throw in lockdown on that, and then throw
Speaker 2: in AI over the top. It's like a perfect storm
Speaker 2: for driving people into burnout. And the one last thing
Speaker 2: I'd say before I throw it over to you is
Speaker 2: that then we come home and we feel fucking hell
Speaker 2: about a hard day. I need to relax, right, And
Speaker 2: people often do that sitting with their feed up with
Speaker 2: a bottle of wine, watching Netflix.
Speaker 3: Right, having maladaptive behaviors.
Speaker 2: And I always say relaxation is very different to recovery,
Speaker 2: and then you're affecting your sleep, which then sends you
Speaker 2: on a fucking horrible negative spiral.
Speaker 3: So it's all joy, isn't it really? So what are
Speaker 3: some of the things where do we start? I guess
Speaker 3: maybe I'll throw it to you.
Speaker 2: Is there a starting point with those three c's typically.
Speaker 3: That you do or does that.
Speaker 2: Vary from individual to individual, from organization the organization, as
Speaker 2: it different from organizations to individuals as well well.
Speaker 1: I think when we start with conditions, which is the
Speaker 1: foundational piece with either organizations or personally. Right, So obviously
Speaker 1: we have the most control over our own personal conditions,
Speaker 1: and we don't necessarily have that much control over our
Speaker 1: work conditions unless we decide to leave and make that
Speaker 1: choice to go elsewhere, whether it's to go out on
Speaker 1: our own or find a different company, so that we're
Speaker 1: not necessarily rendered choiceless. But again not trying to be
Speaker 1: a Pollyanna like we are. You know, interest rates are
Speaker 1: up again, like you know, the cost of living is insane,
Speaker 1: So it doesn't doesn't we don't necessarily have this opportunity
Speaker 1: to go I don't like my job, I'm just going
Speaker 1: to find a new one, Like the job market is
Speaker 1: just so volatile at the moment. So I think what
Speaker 1: we can start to understand and recognize in creating agency
Speaker 1: for ourselves is what are the conditions we are creating
Speaker 1: for our personal life relationally? What are our conditions? Are
Speaker 1: we seeking out connection? Are we are we catching up
Speaker 1: with friends? Are we seeing a therapist?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 1: What are we actually doing in order to create better
Speaker 1: conditions for ourselves? From from a connection perspective, which you
Speaker 1: said recently, you've thrown in connection as one of your
Speaker 1: one of your sees, everyone has a good and so
Speaker 1: you know, connection is as vital to our mental health
Speaker 1: and well being as food, water, shelter. You know, it's
Speaker 1: like vitamin C, vitamin connect. There's plenty of data. There's
Speaker 1: plenty of data out there around blue zones and things
Speaker 1: like that around you know, how do people centennials live
Speaker 1: past one hundred because of their community?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 1: So that's one thing that we can be looking at.
Speaker 1: How much are we interacting with other people? Are we
Speaker 1: you know, building community? Are we spending time with family
Speaker 1: with quality?
Speaker 3: And now we're doing it face to face rather than online?
Speaker 1: Correct? Correct? Because obviously social media creates this fallacy of connection.
Speaker 1: It is not actual physical energetic connection that you receive
Speaker 1: from a human being when you are mirroring each other
Speaker 1: and you know, in a physical space. So from a
Speaker 1: conditions perspective, there's relational. Then from a condition's perspective, you
Speaker 1: have your information diet, which I will hand all that
Speaker 1: over to Tana to explain, and then I might have
Speaker 1: him ping pong back to me because information diet is
Speaker 1: his jam. But from again conditions perspective, what is the
Speaker 1: information that we are ingesting over to utane?
Speaker 4: Yeah, the conditions of the information and knowledge that you
Speaker 4: are receiving has an effect on your capabilities and your capacity.
Speaker 4: So we call it information diet in the same way
Speaker 4: that we think of a culinary diet weed, healthy foods,
Speaker 4: leafy greens, fiber, you know, low saturated fat, et cetera,
Speaker 4: to make us healthier, and of course add some exercise
Speaker 4: in there. We don't think of our information intake in
Speaker 4: the same way. I think people forget that we should
Speaker 4: be like taking in information that actually nourishes you. So
Speaker 4: choose your narrative nash that really is evidence based. It
Speaker 4: gives you an active view on the world around you.
Speaker 4: It's not toxic positivity. And I think it leads to
Speaker 4: something that we call intelligent optimism, which is it's evident spaceed,
Speaker 4: it's an accurate positive projection. It's a difference between cynical
Speaker 4: people like what's wrong with this people in this process,
Speaker 4: and an accurate assessment where are the people actually doing
Speaker 4: something different providing solutions. And I think if people really
Speaker 4: did an audit of their information diet and properly curate it,
Speaker 4: they would find out that there are lots of solutions.
Speaker 4: There's power reduction, clean energy trajectories, better ways of doing
Speaker 4: stuff in the twenty first century that we can all
Speaker 4: get involved with as opposed to just netflixing and chilling
Speaker 4: or going down a YouTube rabbit hole watching cat videos.
Speaker 2: And also I think something that Donna may be mentioned
Speaker 2: at the start, like like the news negativity sales, right.
Speaker 3: Yes, I mean we know that, and you know, do
Speaker 3: you know what It actually pisses me off.
Speaker 2: The amount of time that I hear the word crisis
Speaker 2: mentioned in this country.
Speaker 3: This country is not in a fucking crisis. You know,
Speaker 3: Sudan is in a crisis.
Speaker 2: It's just but it's that negativity that just gets eyeballs
Speaker 2: and then when people already have a hyper sensitive amygdala
Speaker 2: because of all the shit that's been going on, it's
Speaker 2: just then that negativity just draws us in, doesn't it.
Speaker 3: And I think it just combines everything.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And from an evolutionary perspective, we're hardwired to react
Speaker 4: to the dramatic and negative. I mean, we've got negativity bias.
Speaker 4: And you know, like if it bleeds, it leads. Is
Speaker 4: not some colloquialism coined by a cutthroat tabloid editor. It's
Speaker 4: a potent evolutionary truth at the modern day medium machine.
Speaker 4: And we're not We're also not equipped to deal with
Speaker 4: the worst stuff happening all over the planet all at
Speaker 4: the same time.
Speaker 3: It's overwhelming. Yeah. Yeah, we were never designed.
Speaker 2: Our brains weren't designed to know all of the wars
Speaker 2: that are happening and all of the injustices that are
Speaker 2: happening all around the friggin world.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and we have confirmation bias. So once we started
Speaker 4: in ingesting all this negative news and all the worst
Speaker 4: stuff going on around the world, and we think the
Speaker 4: world is a horrible place and declining, we go out
Speaker 4: for more information that confirms those pre existing notions. So
Speaker 4: we become this echo chamber of our own design, and
Speaker 4: I think a lot of people fall into that.
Speaker 3: And so what do we do? What do we do
Speaker 3: about it?
Speaker 2: I mean, you hinted at it when you mentioned some
Speaker 2: of the positive things that are happening in the world.
Speaker 2: I mean, is this about being very careful about what
Speaker 2: you expose yourself to any information and starting to look
Speaker 2: for more positive things?
Speaker 4: Yeah, And it's not positive just to you know, fireman
Speaker 4: saves cap from trees or you know, you hear about
Speaker 4: those kind of good feel stories. It's about actively thinking
Speaker 4: about what information is going to serve you, and especially
Speaker 4: when it comes to negative news. A lot of people
Speaker 4: and you know, look at well we're from Darren and
Speaker 4: I from the US. If you look at US politics,
Speaker 4: everyone's freaking out about it. But what are people actually
Speaker 4: doing about it?
Speaker 3: Nothing?
Speaker 4: So they get all the negative chemicals and they rewire
Speaker 4: their brain to start looking for more negative stuff.
Speaker 3: And I mean the the.
Speaker 4: US politics, it's the greatest reality TV show ever and
Speaker 4: everyone's eyes are glued to it, but they're not doing
Speaker 4: anything about it. So think about if you're thinking about
Speaker 4: a problem or information that is dealing with the problem,
Speaker 4: is it something that you can solve and with that problem,
Speaker 4: seeking solutions rather than just defining the problem. The problems
Speaker 4: are pretty well defined. So it's about auditing your information diet.
Speaker 4: We're not saying ignore what's truly going on, but balancing
Speaker 4: the negativity with solution based thinking and information. Really checking
Speaker 4: your facts and understanding if you're getting a piece of information,
Speaker 4: where's it coming from and what was the intention of
Speaker 4: that information in the first place.
Speaker 2: And probably I think a nice little strategy I think
Speaker 2: I mentioned it in my book is to look at
Speaker 2: all the news headlines. Don't click on them, just look
Speaker 2: at the headlines and go, is this something that I
Speaker 2: could do something about? Acting like yeah, right, because you know,
Speaker 2: if it's not, then it's just worry, worry, worry, worry.
Speaker 3: What what role?
Speaker 2: I don't know if you cover this in your book
Speaker 2: at all, So it just might be throwing throwing this
Speaker 2: just just on the spot. What role do you think
Speaker 2: reading philosophy, for example, I'm a big fan of reading philosophy,
Speaker 2: particularly Stoicism, but there's lots.
Speaker 3: Of different philosophies, whatever it.
Speaker 2: May be, that that can actually give you a really
Speaker 2: good sense of perspective. And I think the Stoics in particular,
Speaker 2: were very very good at helping people to just align
Speaker 2: their thinking and understanding that it's not what happens, but
Speaker 2: it's about my judgments about that and my actions and
Speaker 2: focusing on what I can control. Do you think there's
Speaker 2: a role here in that information diet that it should
Speaker 2: include a bit of philosophy.
Speaker 1: I'd like to answer this, please go go. I think
Speaker 1: that what's beautiful about philosop is that it is unanswerable.
Speaker 1: And I think in our day and age, we are
Speaker 1: so glued to the need for certainty and for answers
Speaker 1: that it diminishes our capacity for curiosity. And when we
Speaker 1: lose our ability to be curious and to ask our
Speaker 1: own questions and to seek out our own answers, then
Speaker 1: we are really missing out on this ability to like
Speaker 1: stretch ourselves and become uncomfortable and just like have that
Speaker 1: sense of wonder and awe and and and playfulness with
Speaker 1: the world. And you know, to be to be or
Speaker 1: not to be? That is the question, right because it
Speaker 1: because it's not answerable. And I think when we like
Speaker 1: we're so in need of certainty in this uncertain world
Speaker 1: that being able to incorporate some philosophy into your life
Speaker 1: or even pontificating, you know, existentially on your on your
Speaker 1: own life of you know, what does it all mean?
Speaker 1: Not from a doomsday perspective, but just from like a
Speaker 1: you know, what can I get out of this experience?
Speaker 1: I'm here, I'm only here for a short time. What
Speaker 1: am I going to do with this life? And and
Speaker 1: how am I gonna feel joy and feel connection and
Speaker 1: have gratitude and and be thankful? And a lot of
Speaker 1: that stems from curiosity. And there's a really amazing thinker
Speaker 1: that we interviewed in our book, David Pearl, who is
Speaker 1: very much a curiosity expert. And there's this real interesting
Speaker 1: delineation between interest and curiosity because interest has this sense
Speaker 1: of I'm trying to find something out or I'm kind
Speaker 1: of judging it a little bit. What is it? What
Speaker 1: is it? You know, how does it relate to what
Speaker 1: I need or or what my thinking is, whereas curiosity
Speaker 1: is is this exploration. There is no sort of ego involved,
Speaker 1: there's no judgment involved. It's just curiosity for curiosity's sake.
Speaker 1: And so, you know, you could go to a party
Speaker 1: and be chatting to a bunch of random people and
Speaker 1: you're like, oh, no, none of these people are very interesting,
Speaker 1: and it's like, well, you can be curious about uninterest.
Speaker 1: You can be curious about uninteresting things, just you can.
Speaker 2: Be curious about pricks andhads.
Speaker 1: So I think philosoph if he breeds curiosity, it is
Speaker 1: like the essence of what it is. It's it's about
Speaker 1: pondering things that are you know, are not necessarily answerable.
Speaker 1: And how do we as human beings be okay with
Speaker 1: that ambiguity? Do you know what I mean? Because because
Speaker 1: right now we live in uncertain times and there is
Speaker 1: so much ambiguity and is AI going to save us
Speaker 1: or is it going to kill us? Who the hell knows,
Speaker 1: But just being able to be in that space of
Speaker 1: kind of holding two truths at once and having that
Speaker 1: dialectical thinking and being able to say, like going back
Speaker 1: to what tan I was saying about intelligent optimism, like yes,
Speaker 1: things are fucked and they're getting better, and there's there's
Speaker 1: there's possible solutions out there that people are doing and
Speaker 1: then are getting their their hands dirty. So I think
Speaker 1: philosophy has a has a great place and helping us
Speaker 1: expand our minds and our thinking and our perspection, perception.
Speaker 3: And I love that you.
Speaker 2: Sorry China, right the topic just I love that you
Speaker 2: three in awe and gratitude there I actually write about
Speaker 2: three of them in my in my book, like curiosity
Speaker 2: all and gratitude, like wait, when is the last time
Speaker 2: for the listeners that you just sat out and looked
Speaker 2: up at the stars.
Speaker 3: And went fuck wow like Jesus Christ.
Speaker 2: And you know a start that I like to throw out,
Speaker 2: whether it's correct or not, but scientists estimate that our
Speaker 2: chances of ever having been born are about one in
Speaker 2: four hundred trillion.
Speaker 3: You know, we've all won the greatest ever lottery.
Speaker 2: How about we start fucking acting like it rather than
Speaker 2: just complaining about shit? Right, there's so much amazing shit
Speaker 2: for me. A lot of this comes down to attention
Speaker 2: and what you choose to place your attention on. So
Speaker 2: to Tannag's point, with the information diet, you can choose
Speaker 2: where you're placing your attention.
Speaker 3: And I think that's the biggest thing that we.
Speaker 2: Have under our control is our just being very rigorous
Speaker 2: about that flashlid of your attention.
Speaker 3: Because when we pay attention to.
Speaker 1: You, I want to do I want to do you
Speaker 1: one better. I think it's about dopamine.
Speaker 3: So our attention, we're opening here.
Speaker 1: But I think, yes, there's like attention and dopamine are
Speaker 1: so highly connected, right, So it's that it's that motivation
Speaker 1: of seeking out the thing, right. And so I've been
Speaker 1: fascinated because I have ADHD and I've been so fascinated
Speaker 1: with this concept of this pain pleasure continuum that our
Speaker 1: body exists in. And I don't think a lot of people.
Speaker 1: I read Dopamine Nation recently, which talks about this continuum
Speaker 1: that has existed within us. And so when we seek
Speaker 1: out pleasure all the time, there is an inevitability that
Speaker 1: we will feel pain, we will crush, we will one
Speaker 1: hundred because our body needs to maintain homeostasis, and because
Speaker 1: pain and pleasure are on the same tract within our
Speaker 1: biology and our neurology. And so that's why things like
Speaker 1: high intensity interval training or trying something you've never tried
Speaker 1: before that's hard, or doing ice baths or its cold
Speaker 1: showers or whatever, you're forcing our body into a pain
Speaker 1: state to then be able to tip you into a
Speaker 1: pleasure state. And so when we're constantly dopamine seeking this
Speaker 1: short pleasure that we feel and again, it's we are
Speaker 1: victims of our conditions because we know so much about
Speaker 1: the way that our brain works. Now, so there's marketers
Speaker 1: and neuroscientists and behavioral experts that are just playing on
Speaker 1: our that are just playing on our biology and our
Speaker 1: wiring to maximize their capacity to sell to us and
Speaker 1: to influence us. And so it's grabbing our attention because
Speaker 1: it is there is the perfect equation has been unleashed
Speaker 1: around how do we get people to do the shit
Speaker 1: we want them to do through X, Y and Z.
Speaker 1: And so I think when people understand more about dopamine
Speaker 1: and pain and pleasure and how much we need to
Speaker 1: find balance in our lives between those two things, because,
Speaker 1: like you said before, this level of comfortability that we're
Speaker 1: feeling is essentially killing us. It is this intense paradox
Speaker 1: that we exist in as human beings where we are
Speaker 1: the most comfortable and most uncomfortable that we have ever been.
Speaker 1: And that is also that's philosophy. Right to be comfortable
Speaker 1: or to not to be comfortable? That is the question.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm laughing because my first book was called
Speaker 2: death by Comfort.
Speaker 3: Yes, life is killing us.
Speaker 2: But I just wrote a LinkedIn article about three days
Speaker 2: ago about the neurobiology of doing hard things and how
Speaker 2: the dopamine that you get from easy shit like scrolling
Speaker 2: and food and drugs and alcohol causes the crash, whereas
Speaker 2: when you do hard stuff, your body rewards you with
Speaker 2: a more sustained pit of dopamine but without the crash,
Speaker 2: because it's evolutionary biology. Because Tana, when he's fucking hungry,
Speaker 2: has to go out and hunt, and it's hard and
Speaker 2: he's knackered, and he's got to continue to do that.
Speaker 2: So that's why his brain gives them the reward are
Speaker 2: doing hard stuff, because it's like, you need to do
Speaker 2: this shit again otherwise we're going to die.
Speaker 3: And let's let's let's not talk about because.
Speaker 2: You you you guys talk about play right and and
Speaker 2: and actually before we get to that, let's just just
Speaker 2: finish off. Whoever wants to take this one a bite,
Speaker 2: how our modern work environment keeps our nervous systems stuck
Speaker 2: in threat mode, Right, Tanny, do you want to take
Speaker 2: that one? Or Darry you're nodding your head. Whoever, I
Speaker 2: don't mind who takes that.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think we could both probably contribute. But
Speaker 1: just a quick thing to think about and something that
Speaker 1: Tana and I have been sort of uncovering. It's it's amazing.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you have this because you've written
Speaker 1: quite a few books. It's like, after you write your book,
Speaker 1: then there's like all of these aha moments and like
Speaker 1: all of these connections and patterns and thinking that just
Speaker 1: can continue happening even past finishing the manuscript. And so
Speaker 1: what we're realizing, going back to this conversation around conditions,
Speaker 1: capacity and capability, You are higher in an organization because
Speaker 1: of your capability, because you have the skills, the mindsets,
Speaker 1: the behaviors that are qualify you for a particular role. Right,
Speaker 1: then we enter these environments or these conditions that do
Speaker 1: not sort of elevate or or or grow this or amplify. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so then we're basically suppressing, right where if you imagine
Speaker 1: capacity as a cup, right, and your cup starts quite big,
Speaker 1: ready to go, You've got your new job, it's awesome.
Speaker 1: But then as things chip away, everything is high stakes.
Speaker 1: That's another thing that we talk about, is like everything
Speaker 1: is a high stakes environment. Everything is so important, everything
Speaker 1: is urgent, and again that's how that's how your nervous
Speaker 1: system responds you. You are in fight or flight mode.
Speaker 1: You have amygdala hijack. You're constantly in stress. When we're stressed,
Speaker 1: we can't be curious, we can't have all, we can't
Speaker 1: have wonder, we can't be playful. It just doesn't Our
Speaker 1: brain is not great. And because we've created this false
Speaker 1: sense of safety with an organization where safety feels like risk,
Speaker 1: aversion and conformity and certainty, right like, that's like what
Speaker 1: we sort of secretly identify is safe within an organization.
Speaker 1: Let's not do the crazy thing where we're thinking of
Speaker 1: a million ideas and you know, we need there's there's compliance,
Speaker 1: and all these things that are supposed to keep things tidy,
Speaker 1: you know, are the very things that are depleting everyone's
Speaker 1: capacity and therefore their capability. So then we create these
Speaker 1: conditions which are suppressing everyone's capability, right because the capabilities
Speaker 1: don't disappear, they don't just like evaporate, they're just suppressed, constrained, suppressed,
Speaker 1: put like. And so then we spend shitloads of money
Speaker 1: on training so that we can bring people's capability back,
Speaker 1: but we don't actually change the conditions, so we're not
Speaker 1: only suppressing capability. Then we're wasting a shit ton of
Speaker 1: money trying to re reskill them and something they are
Speaker 1: likely already probably very good at, but it doesn't exist
Speaker 1: at the moment because it's so suppressed. It becomes this
Speaker 1: gross self fulfilling prophecy and a total waste of time
Speaker 1: and money. It's like, forget about trying to you know,
Speaker 1: upskill people. Just you hired them for a reason. Give
Speaker 1: them the conditions enable them, like let the human potential
Speaker 1: be seen and felt and not just going, oh, like,
Speaker 1: this is a people problem. People are disengaged and they're
Speaker 1: burnt out, and what do we have to teach them
Speaker 1: how to? I sat on my volume controller, so I
Speaker 1: was like, what's going on? Sorry about that? But yeah,
Speaker 1: so then you know, we need to give them resilience training,
Speaker 1: and we need to give them mental health training. And
Speaker 1: it's just like, wait a minute, pause, what are the
Speaker 1: conditions that you are creating? And that again is very
Speaker 1: much on the onus of a leader around how do
Speaker 1: you regulate your own nervous system, right, because as soon
Speaker 1: as you enter a room, people are going to be
Speaker 1: mirroring and feeling whatever you are bringing in. So from
Speaker 1: your coming in and from a sympathetic perspective. People are
Speaker 1: going to be catch picking up on that, and that
Speaker 1: doesn't breed safety. So it's like, let's stop trying to
Speaker 1: throw a million dollars of money down the toilet, are
Speaker 1: on training and actually think about what are the conditions
Speaker 1: we are creating for people to be able to thrive
Speaker 1: within a business context.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so, Tanny, let's let's let's not jump into solution mode.
Speaker 3: Right, So what are some of.
Speaker 5: The things that either leaders and our individuals can do
Speaker 5: around improving conditions capacity capability?
Speaker 4: Well, I think they could take one from the military here, Paul.
Speaker 4: You might know this. The best special forces training. In
Speaker 4: military training is designed to stress sholders. It's designed to
Speaker 4: break you, but it deliberately has the conditions built in
Speaker 4: for recovery and build capacity along time alongside the stress
Speaker 4: to build tolerance. Most corporate environments basically do the first.
Speaker 4: They break you and they call it development, but they
Speaker 4: don't really build anything back or change the conditions. So
Speaker 4: I think that's one way to start thinking about it.
Speaker 4: I think we talk about serious play, radical curiosity, strategic hope,
Speaker 4: intelligent optimism, and embedded adaptability. Is capabilities depending on your
Speaker 4: capacity that really can help you thrive and play in
Speaker 4: curiosity are some of the most basic, the easiest capabilities
Speaker 4: to come back online. You can set the conditions for play,
Speaker 4: especially in a work to place environment, quite easily. It's
Speaker 4: low stakes risk experiments without any you're playing around, and
Speaker 4: you can do this in a serious way because play
Speaker 4: is not a child just left over. Its fundamental part
Speaker 4: of our emotional system, and it's in pretty much all
Speaker 4: mammals as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'd like that, Can I jump in here because
Speaker 1: this is this is my expertise, sure, sure, so yeah,
Speaker 1: I think like what I said before around high stakes,
Speaker 1: like when we create low stakes environments, we're building people's confidence,
Speaker 1: right and because again, when we were constantly feeling like
Speaker 1: everything is high stakes, we're not creating those conditions for practice.
Speaker 1: Like when you think about aviation, for example, pilots are
Speaker 1: constantly using VR and simulation to learn how to fly
Speaker 1: a plane because you don't just throw them into a
Speaker 1: high stakes environment and put them in a plane with
Speaker 1: people on it. Jump.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And so I fluy helicopters in pretty sharm force
Speaker 2: and every single with training was all about progressive overload, right,
Speaker 2: So you do the most basic flighter member our first
Speaker 2: ever flight anti submaring war. For you do it in
Speaker 2: the simulator, then you go out and then it's a
Speaker 2: submarine on the fucking surface traveling straight right, and we
Speaker 2: then had to drop down and ping and try and
Speaker 2: track the submarine, and then it's just got more and
Speaker 2: more complex. But before every flight, we had simulator flights
Speaker 2: where the instructor would throw in little curveballs for you
Speaker 2: to deal with and then stop it and talk you
Speaker 2: through it, so that you learned in the simulator and
Speaker 2: you develop that capacity that you could then use in
Speaker 2: the real world. Right, Sorry, I just wanted to throw
Speaker 2: that in because that is a fundamental part of that training,
Speaker 2: is that progressive overload to the simulation, make mistakes in
Speaker 2: the simulator so that you then increase your capacity in
Speaker 2: the real world.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. And so you know when we talk about
Speaker 1: low stakes environment, that is just another word for play.
Speaker 1: It's another word for experimentation. It's it's just giving opportunities
Speaker 1: to practice. So that way, when shit does hit the fan,
Speaker 1: people do have the feeling that they can do it.
Speaker 1: But we just throw people in the deep end and
Speaker 1: immediately and expect them to sort of swim instead of sink,
Speaker 1: and it just it's a feedback loop, that is, so
Speaker 1: it's a negative feedback loop. It's like I try, I
Speaker 1: just try to do this thing and it didn't work
Speaker 1: and I'm incompetent, and then it just this this is
Speaker 1: self perpetuating thing. And so, you know, from a play perspective,
Speaker 1: like I've been bringing play into workplaces for the last
Speaker 1: ten years, and there's so much education that's required because
Speaker 1: we've learned that play is childish, that it's frivolous, that
Speaker 1: it's a distraction, that it's a ping pong table in
Speaker 1: the corner, or a beanbag or two next to a whiteboard,
Speaker 1: when that's not creating conditions like when we when when
Speaker 1: we think about it, it's it's a it's a permission piece. Right,
Speaker 1: So not only do we as individuals have to give
Speaker 1: ourselves permission to play and see it not as as
Speaker 1: a frivolity in our lives, because again, when we talk
Speaker 1: about burnout and achievement syndrome, so much of that is
Speaker 1: I have so much to do all the time, I
Speaker 1: couldn't possibly do something fun. I just don't have time
Speaker 1: for it, you know what I mean. And so we
Speaker 1: have to find that capacity for permission in ourselves to
Speaker 1: be able to play. But then from a leadership perspective
Speaker 1: and a culture perspective, there needs to be this opening
Speaker 1: of like, yes, you can test something, and you can
Speaker 1: try something, and you can and you can fail because
Speaker 1: there's a different aspects of failure. There's intelligent failure where
Speaker 1: it's actually moving towards innovation, moving towards trying new things.
Speaker 1: And so when we don't allow this this kind of
Speaker 1: play space in an organization, which is very much a mindset,
Speaker 1: it's not necessarily like again bean bags and slippant like
Speaker 1: slides in the lobby or whatever it is. It's it's
Speaker 1: cultivating this sense of you can ask card questions and
Speaker 1: you can test this thing, and you can try something
Speaker 1: and not get it automatically, and creating these kind of
Speaker 1: micropractices within organizations where then like a muscle, it's built.
Speaker 1: And like you were talking about before with the way
Speaker 1: you were flying helicopters, it's like we grow this level
Speaker 1: of confidence and competence by having those low stakes opportunities.
Speaker 1: That way, when things are big, we know we can
Speaker 1: do it. And so I think this concept of play
Speaker 1: is so fundamental to the way that we learn, it
Speaker 1: creates new neural pathways in our brain. It releases dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin,
Speaker 1: and endorphins. So when it comes to hijacked amygdala's when
Speaker 1: it comes to overwhelmed, when it comes to fight or flight,
Speaker 1: the fastest way to bring our nervous system back online
Speaker 1: is through some sort of playful intervention. And that might
Speaker 1: just be having a lighthearted conversation. It might be listening
Speaker 1: to a song. It might be sometimes I talk about
Speaker 1: even just making a fart noise with your mouth, like
Speaker 1: as a way to just break this, just break your state,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. It's just like just a
Speaker 1: way to just stop the noise. And so like thinking
Speaker 1: back to what brought you joy as a child and
Speaker 1: using that as a kind of compass to find things
Speaker 1: for you to connect within your adult life. And obviously
Speaker 1: the way we engage in play is different as children,
Speaker 1: as we do as adults, but as also as adults,
Speaker 1: we become these passive consumers of play. It's like I
Speaker 1: want to sit back and be entertained, and there's no
Speaker 1: sense of involvement or participation or engagement.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, yeah totally.
Speaker 2: And look at this place into hardiness, right, one of
Speaker 2: hardiness commitment. One of the big things is being fully
Speaker 2: engaged in life, right, not a freaking passive consumer of
Speaker 2: life that lots of people are tony.
Speaker 3: You mentioned that, you know, the fart noise that.
Speaker 2: But one thing that I do with corporate is we've
Speaker 2: all been in meetings where somebody who just loves the
Speaker 2: sound of their own voice, right, and also tends to
Speaker 2: be extroverts like me and you, Dana, who tends to
Speaker 2: talk while we're thinking, Dara, Dara. Extroverts often talk while
Speaker 2: they're thinking, right, and so they overtalk. But one thing
Speaker 2: I do with teams is just if somebody's going to
Speaker 2: have a word like jelly fish, we just go jellyfish
Speaker 2: and then it's like, yeah, you're talking, but it's a
Speaker 2: nice way of going, Hey, can we just bring this
Speaker 2: back on to the topic, right, So throwing in some
Speaker 2: of those little things, Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1: I'll say jellyfish, latonic and talk now I just play
Speaker 1: play is my jam? So I had to I had
Speaker 1: to swoop.
Speaker 4: In my if we're just come quote cop quote excellent.
Speaker 2: So so, so, what what have you got to add
Speaker 2: to this to what to what Dara was talking about?
Speaker 4: There about playing curiosity.
Speaker 2: Yeah, or or about the you mentioned playing curiosity, And
Speaker 2: I think there was another couple that I didn't get
Speaker 2: to write down.
Speaker 4: H Yes, strategic hope, intelligent optimism, and then embedded embedded adaptability.
Speaker 4: And I think from an evolutionary neuroscientific perspective, playing curiosity
Speaker 4: or and adaptability or sort of more ancient. Whereas hope
Speaker 4: and intelligent optimism are cognitively expensive, they're more sort of
Speaker 4: recently evolved, and they require the prefrontal cortex to be online,
Speaker 4: and current conditions and stress and high stakes environments take
Speaker 4: the prefrontal cortex offline. And so hope is a really
Speaker 4: interesting one. I like Charles Snyder Hope's theory. So really
Speaker 4: to develop hope, it's not naive hope and just be like, oh,
Speaker 4: I believe.
Speaker 3: That you know.
Speaker 4: Aunky dory. It's about choosing goals and milestones that you
Speaker 4: can accomplish in actually understanding that working hard towards a
Speaker 4: goal and succeeding can build and foster hope. And it
Speaker 4: really has two components. One is agency, it's a belief
Speaker 4: that you can actually influence outcomes by your actions, and
Speaker 4: the other layers what they call pathways thinking. It's the
Speaker 4: ability to generate routes, goals, and ways forward that are
Speaker 4: accessible learned. Helplessness really demonstrates that repeated experiences of uncontrollability
Speaker 4: Welcome to the world in twenty twenty six can really
Speaker 4: permanently suppress both of those. So it's a nervous system
Speaker 4: that we really need to get back online. We call
Speaker 4: hope as a verb, not a hashtag. Hope is built,
Speaker 4: it's not found. And I think intelligent optimism is another one.
Speaker 4: It's the most counter evolutionary capability of the five. Our
Speaker 4: default wiring really runs against it. We got negativity bias
Speaker 4: which really kept our ancestors alive. I mean, the Savannah
Speaker 4: didn't reward optimists. It ate so cultivating intelligent optimism, it's
Speaker 4: not returning to a natural state. It's really a cognitive
Speaker 4: achievement that runs against evolved defaults, and I think it
Speaker 4: can really help the right conditions and back to I
Speaker 4: think in a way to tune your infermation diet to
Speaker 4: foster your own intelligent optimism. I think long form reading
Speaker 4: that sustained dopamine hits as opposed to the most information
Speaker 4: out there is junk food. The equivalent of corn syrup
Speaker 4: and jelly babies, because it's that short spike and the
Speaker 4: quick crash. So we need solid, wholesome logallycemic index, information
Speaker 4: and knowledge and solutions that really can feed us and
Speaker 4: keep that those good chemicals flowing. Yeah, because I think
Speaker 4: we need hope and intelligent optimism to really break out
Speaker 4: of this overwhelmed, burnt out and high stakes environment.
Speaker 3: That's what I would say about that.
Speaker 2: It's interesting that you mentioned those because hope and optimism
Speaker 2: are two critical components of hardiness, right, but they a
Speaker 2: people who regularly practice gratitude have got more whole and optimism.
Speaker 3: The research is pretty clear on this. And and and
Speaker 3: also I'll throw it to you.
Speaker 2: That I think you're going to like it if you
Speaker 2: haven't already heard of it is the stock Deal paradox
Speaker 2: that that you know came out of the Hanoi Hilton
Speaker 2: in Vietnam, and and Jim stock Deal's whole idea that
Speaker 2: you need to retain the faith that you will prevail
Speaker 2: in the end, regardless of your circumstances, and at the
Speaker 2: same time you have to confront the most brutal aspects
Speaker 2: of your reality, whatever they.
Speaker 1: Might be, so you know's the messarch for meaning.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally, totally, and and and the whole the whole
Speaker 2: thing is that negative thinking is clearly not helpful under stress.
Speaker 2: But neither is that polyanna optimism, right, we need that
Speaker 2: realistic optimism.
Speaker 3: I think you use a different chart intelligent.
Speaker 2: Optimism that that that kind of has the balance of
Speaker 2: those things, but again comes into your your skills, like
Speaker 2: regularly practicing gratitude can increase hope and optimism. And I'm
Speaker 2: sure there's there's there's other things, you know, like cognitive
Speaker 2: reframing techniques, looking for the silver lining, right rather than.
Speaker 3: Lamenting on the bad shit. I think there's there's a
Speaker 3: heape of things that.
Speaker 2: People can do to retrain their brain really well we
Speaker 2: talked about Sorry.
Speaker 4: Oh that's back to your point on philosophy. I think
Speaker 4: philosophy has its place because it's thinking about your thinking,
Speaker 4: and that brings about metacognition, and it shows you the
Speaker 4: way it allows you to let thoughts pass you by
Speaker 4: and actually, do you understand you're, for lack of a
Speaker 4: better way, your operating system and your neural architecture and
Speaker 4: your thoughts. So I think that that's a way that's
Speaker 4: a fundamental metacognitive way to get out of a lot
Speaker 4: of the clusterfuck that we find ourselves in. So philosophy
Speaker 4: has its place. But my one of my favorite teachers,
Speaker 4: the philosophy teacher, said, you studied philosophy for twenty years
Speaker 4: and the only thing you learned to do was just.
Speaker 3: Stop.
Speaker 4: So I don't not too much philosophy.
Speaker 3: Now, you just cut out there, China.
Speaker 2: For me, you study philosophy for twenty years and the
Speaker 2: only thing you learned was.
Speaker 4: What, oh to stop? I think you're steadly looking at
Speaker 4: philosophy and you're thinking about your own thinking all the time.
Speaker 3: Too much masturbation to master. Gee, you guys have got
Speaker 3: some cracking turning free.
Speaker 2: For me, it's about applied philosophy right, which I think
Speaker 2: his stoics were very big on, is how how do
Speaker 2: you actually bring it into.
Speaker 3: The real world rather than you know, just pontificating about shit.
Speaker 1: So just can I we make a quick comment about
Speaker 1: going back to the kind of the idea like gratitude
Speaker 1: and philosophizing, we have something called playful assumption awareness, and
Speaker 1: so how much are we actually challenging our assumptions that
Speaker 1: we're making about ourselves in the world and when we
Speaker 1: can kind of approach our assumptions in a way where
Speaker 1: and again that goes back into bias and our kind
Speaker 1: of evolutionary hangovers. That is something that we deep dive
Speaker 1: into the book or from a science communication perspective, under
Speaker 1: standing the way that our brain works. We make a
Speaker 1: joke like have brunch with your brain, take your take
Speaker 1: your mind out for a meal. Like, the more we
Speaker 1: can understand the way our brain like is actually wired,
Speaker 1: the more we can work with it instead of against it.
Speaker 1: And so you know, this playful assumption awareness is like
Speaker 1: have a play with what you're assuming, you know. And
Speaker 1: and again, cultivating that sense of curiosity means that you're
Speaker 1: kind of questioning things of the things that you believe.
Speaker 1: And it's like that early programming piece that we talked
Speaker 1: about in achievement syndrome. It's like, are the things that
Speaker 1: I believe in actually mine? Do I?
Speaker 4: Do?
Speaker 1: You know? Are they programmed from my childhood, from my parents,
Speaker 1: from my culture, from whatever it is? And just you know,
Speaker 1: when when we feel like kind of in this stuckness
Speaker 1: in our lives, we can start to excavate a little
Speaker 1: bit more into our own you know, our own kind
Speaker 1: of maze of our minds and and and and start
Speaker 1: to say and and be again that difference between interest
Speaker 1: and judgment versus genuine curiosity, like you know, I'm doing
Speaker 1: this thing, is this actually helping me? And and what
Speaker 1: else can I be doing? And kind of taking those
Speaker 1: that kind of playful assumption awareness and then flipping it
Speaker 1: on its head and saying, well, what if this assumption
Speaker 1: wasn't true? What would be different for me?
Speaker 2: And I think that's hugely important, and you should challenge.
Speaker 2: The assumptions that you hold the most dearly are the
Speaker 2: ones that you should poke the strongest stright, because often
Speaker 2: these things come from our childooes. But if you've had
Speaker 2: adverse childhood experiences, you have assumptions, beliefs, patterns, behaviors that
Speaker 2: may have served you well as a caged to protect you,
Speaker 2: that are now fucking your life up.
Speaker 3: And we've got to do an examination.
Speaker 1: I mean, we talk about the Immunity to Change Framework,
Speaker 1: which is amazing framework from Harvard University based on Robert
Speaker 1: Keegan and Lisa Lahe around thirty years of adult development research,
Speaker 1: and it really looks at this psychological tension that exists
Speaker 1: within us around I don't want to die, but I
Speaker 1: also want to grow, and just constantly having that internal
Speaker 1: tension of like this risk aversion is I don't want
Speaker 1: to look silly or fail or do the wrong thing
Speaker 1: or looking competent, but I also want to like learn
Speaker 1: things and grow and evolve. And so when we have
Speaker 1: this internal tension, and that's why change is so difficult,
Speaker 1: because it really pushes up against our identity. It pushes
Speaker 1: up against this internal framing of I need to be
Speaker 1: safe and this change like it's uncertain and I don't
Speaker 1: know what to do, but I also really want to grow.
Speaker 1: And so it's not laziness when we try and change
Speaker 1: something about ourselves. It's just because we're actually trying to
Speaker 1: put our foot on the gas and the break at
Speaker 1: the same time, and that doesn't work. And that's where
Speaker 1: this kind of assumption piece comes in. It's like, what
Speaker 1: are the behaviors that I'm doing or not doing that
Speaker 1: are stopping me from being this kind of better version
Speaker 1: of myself or more aware version of myself. What are
Speaker 1: my fears and worries that sit below those behaviors, and
Speaker 1: then what am I assuming about everything around that? And
Speaker 1: like we talked about before flipping it on its head
Speaker 1: and just saying like, what if this wasn't true, what
Speaker 1: would I be doing differently? And again having and then
Speaker 1: setting yourself a small experiment. All right, well, if this
Speaker 1: wasn't true, I can go and give it a little ten,
Speaker 1: get that positive feedback, and then start to make those
Speaker 1: little micro changes. And that's how I think we can
Speaker 1: create a better way forward for ourselves, instead of going,
Speaker 1: I need to change everything. My information diet is shit
Speaker 1: based on what Tane said, and I'm not, you know,
Speaker 1: like I'm not doing this enough and I'm doing that
Speaker 1: and just like berating ourselves instead of going just all right,
Speaker 1: let's get curious. Let's be a detective. What's going on here?
Speaker 2: I like to say, be your own scientist, right, just
Speaker 2: freaking run experiments, just just test hypothesis.
Speaker 3: You've got to do that.
Speaker 2: So guys, sorry, we are out of time because you've
Speaker 2: got to go and I've got to go.
Speaker 3: And this has been awesome. I love the conversation.
Speaker 2: There's so much cool shit in there, and some of
Speaker 2: your turns to free is are brilliant, absolutely brilliant work.
Speaker 3: Can people go?
Speaker 2: So the book is called Full Stack Human Work, and
Speaker 2: they obviously available Amazon and everywhere, but website resources. How
Speaker 2: do they book you guys if they somebody's listening to
Speaker 2: this and think, fucking hell, my business needs an overhaul
Speaker 2: from these guys, or where can they do it?
Speaker 3: Where do they go?
Speaker 4: The book's website is full stackhumanbook dot com. You can
Speaker 4: read me and dere to book at future Crunch, which
Speaker 4: is the organization that I founded and run and also
Speaker 4: my business to I was just I was just as
Speaker 4: I was saying, Culture Hero as you pointed it out,
Speaker 4: but culture here is amazing learning design. There is Australia's
Speaker 4: leading playwork specialists. So you can check us out at
Speaker 4: culture Hero, future Crunch and full Stack humanbook dot com.
Speaker 1: And if you're in Melbourne on the twenty seventh of March,
Speaker 1: we're hosting our book launch event which is going to
Speaker 1: be nothing like any book launch you've ever been to.
Speaker 1: So you can also find us both on LinkedIn and
Speaker 1: if you want to jump on and come and celebrate
Speaker 1: what it means to be a full stack human at
Speaker 1: our book launch on the twenty seventh of March in Melbourne.
Speaker 1: We would love to share the details with that for that.
Speaker 2: Shit you get it my diary, What time should that
Speaker 2: it's thirty.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it starts at five thirty. We're having a pre
Speaker 1: stack event at a burger joint because Tana and I
Speaker 1: love burgers in their stacks. And then it kicks off
Speaker 1: at six thirty. It's in Fitzroy.
Speaker 3: Cold might actually I'm I'm flying back from Hamilton.
Speaker 2: Did you say cott is a fancy dress.
Speaker 4: Yes, you can. We'll have costume changes, live music and
Speaker 4: we'll run some little micro experiences.
Speaker 3: Very cold, very cool.
Speaker 2: So guys, if you're in Melbourne twenty seven to March
Speaker 2: in Fitzroy, whereabouts do you know you at the venue.
Speaker 1: Or to be Yeah, it's a five easy street, but
Speaker 1: it is. It is ticketed because it is going to
Speaker 1: be amazing and everyone. You can produce a book there
Speaker 1: or bring your book for us to sign. But yeah,
Speaker 1: you can jump on either of our LinkedIn's or our
Speaker 1: website and you'll be able to find the details there.
Speaker 3: Awesome, very cool, guys. This has been it's been great.
Speaker 2: It's been very educational and amusing at the same time.
Speaker 2: And I've got a few nice little turns to prize.
Speaker 2: I'm going to steal that I identify as an Australia and
Speaker 2: my program. So yeah, nah, pretty absolutely like you stole it.
Speaker 3: Guys.
Speaker 2: It'd be great, thank you very much, and I look
Speaker 2: forward to doing a deep dive into the book and
Speaker 2: I'm going to see if i can get along to.
Speaker 3: The book launch.
Speaker 1: Amazing.
Speaker 3: Thank you in the background, it's me, Yes.
Speaker 4: That would be amazing. I would be very grateful for that.
Speaker 1: I would love you to be a smurf please.
Speaker 3: All right, thanks guys, thank you, thank you. If you
Speaker 3: can so as