Speaker 1: When people in my life are going through a hard thing,
Speaker 1: I just listen. I don't try to say, oh, you
Speaker 1: must be feeling X, or oh it'll be fine.
Speaker 2: I try to listen first.
Speaker 3: Welcome to the one you feed throughout time. Great thinkers
Speaker 3: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes
Speaker 3: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think,
Speaker 3: ring true. And yet for many of us, our thoughts
Speaker 3: don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,
Speaker 3: or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
Speaker 3: what we do. We think things that hold us back
Speaker 3: and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.
Speaker 3: Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort
Speaker 3: to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
Speaker 3: how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,
Speaker 3: how they feed their good wolf.
Speaker 4: Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is
Speaker 4: Jowey Shaw, an award winning podcast host, producer, and self
Speaker 4: proclaimed emotional investigative journalist. She's the host of Proxy, a
Speaker 4: show about niche emotional questions answered through conversations with strangers
Speaker 4: who have shared experience. In her previous Life. She spent
Speaker 4: many years making NPR's Invisibilia podcast, first as a producer,
Speaker 4: then as a co host and editorial lead. Her work
Speaker 4: has also been featured in places like This American Life
Speaker 4: and pop up magazine.
Speaker 5: Hi Joe, welcome to the show.
Speaker 2: Thank you for having me. What an honor.
Speaker 5: Yeah, well, it's an honor for me to talk to you.
Speaker 5: You were involved in one of the great podcasts of
Speaker 5: our age, Invisibilia, So I've known your work for a while,
Speaker 5: as do many people who listen to NPR and follow
Speaker 5: MPR podcasts. And we'll get into your time in Invisibilia
Speaker 5: and then what kind of came after that getting laid off.
Speaker 5: But before we get into all that, let's start like
Speaker 5: we always do with the Parable. And in the Parable,
Speaker 5: there's a grandparent who's talking with their grandchild and they say,
Speaker 5: in life, there are two wolves inside of us that
Speaker 5: are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which
Speaker 5: represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the
Speaker 5: other's a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and
Speaker 5: hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops and thinks about
Speaker 5: it for a second, looks up at their grandparents, says, well,
Speaker 5: which one wins, and the grandparent says the one you feed.
Speaker 5: So I'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 5: that parable means to you in your life and in
Speaker 5: the work that you do.
Speaker 2: I love this parable.
Speaker 1: I love thinking about it because I feel like it's
Speaker 1: actually what drives my work.
Speaker 2: What power is it? Like, I'm really drawn.
Speaker 1: To that emotional noise between the good wolf and the
Speaker 1: bad wolf. You know, we all have the good wolf
Speaker 1: and bad wolf constantly chattering. There's always that struggle about
Speaker 1: countless different issues every day, and I am really drawn
Speaker 1: to examining those battles that we feel like we can't
Speaker 1: settle on our own, that we have trouble settling, and
Speaker 1: I like trying to make sense of it. And so
Speaker 1: this is sort of like why I am now calling
Speaker 1: myself a little bit tongue in cheek an emotional investigative journalist,
Speaker 1: because I want to investigate those battles and then try
Speaker 1: to report on it. Like that's sort of how I
Speaker 1: deal with my feelings in general. I've been a reporter
Speaker 1: now for fifteen years, which is most of my adult life,
Speaker 1: and like that's sort of how I deal with those
Speaker 1: battles between the good wolf and the bad wolf when
Speaker 1: I can't figure it out through the or for like
Speaker 1: by meditation or talking about it with friends. And so
Speaker 1: I found that like when you report on your feelings,
Speaker 1: when you talk to experts who can help contextualize that battle,
Speaker 1: like what systems and ideas and histories have led to
Speaker 1: you having this particular battle of voices, How can maybe
Speaker 1: you think about it differently in a way that's more
Speaker 1: helpful to you. And then getting to talk to strangers
Speaker 1: who have shared experience who can tell you how they've
Speaker 1: dealt with that battle themselves. I found that really helpful.
Speaker 1: And so yeah, I feel like that's sort of like
Speaker 1: what I like to do in general, for myself and
Speaker 1: for other people.
Speaker 5: Wow, that's really powerful. Now I'd like to turn this
Speaker 5: to our listeners. What part of that message struck a
Speaker 5: chord with you as you think about nourishing your good wolf?
Speaker 5: What specific ideas or actions come to mind for me
Speaker 5: this month? It's relationships. Relationships are the cornerstone of our
Speaker 5: well being. When they thrive, we flourish, and when they struggle,
Speaker 5: we suffer. Many of us face relationship challenges, feeling lost
Speaker 5: and frustrated, but there is hope. Strong relationships aren't just
Speaker 5: about fate. They're built on learnable skills. By developing these abilities,
Speaker 5: you can transform your connections and in turn, your life.
Speaker 5: So relationships are this month's theme and our weekly Bite
Speaker 5: of Wisdom for a Wiser, Happier You newsletter, and I'd
Speaker 5: love to send them your way. Each week we send
Speaker 5: a menu of a few small exercises you can put
Speaker 5: in practice to feed your good Wolf, along with a
Speaker 5: reflection and a related podcast episode on the topic. At
Speaker 5: the end of this episode, I will be giving you
Speaker 5: a tip from this week's newsletter, But in the meantime,
Speaker 5: if you'd like to join thousands of others who are
Speaker 5: already benefiting from these tips, go to Goodwolf dot me
Speaker 5: slash relationships. That's good Wolf dot me slash relationships. I
Speaker 5: love that title. An emotional investigative journalist. That's great and
Speaker 5: one of the things that many psychologists in different schools
Speaker 5: of psychology will talk about is this idea of getting
Speaker 5: distance from our thoughts and emotions right being able to
Speaker 5: sort of separate from them. And that's exactly what you're
Speaker 5: describing and why it's helpful for you. It's by reporting
Speaker 5: on it and asking about it and looking at it
Speaker 5: from different angles. It's a way of disentangling. It's a
Speaker 5: way of creating that distance in the healthy sense of
Speaker 5: the word, not distance in the unhealthy sense of the word,
Speaker 5: but in the sense of disentangling. Or the founders of
Speaker 5: acceptance and commitment therapy would call it diffusion, not being
Speaker 5: fused with those thoughts and emotions. They call it cognitive diffusion.
Speaker 5: So I think that's kind of what you're describing there,
Speaker 5: and it's a well known way of working with thoughts
Speaker 5: and emotions skillfully.
Speaker 2: Well, I have a lot of questions for you. I
Speaker 2: did not know about this. I'm going to ask you
Speaker 2: for some book wrecks after this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I feel like you know now that you're saying
Speaker 1: this is like an actual technique, you know that has
Speaker 1: been studied for how to deal with your emotions and
Speaker 1: move through them. I think that, Yeah, Like reporting on
Speaker 1: my feelings is like one way I've been able to
Speaker 1: do that through work for myself and for other people.
Speaker 1: But I've also found that like creating a ritual through
Speaker 1: like a kind of absurd art project has also.
Speaker 2: Been really working for me lately. And what do I
Speaker 2: mean by that?
Speaker 1: Okay, So, recently, I got laid off and felt really
Speaker 1: bad and I felt a lot of shame. And one
Speaker 1: of the things that happened afterwards was like I knew
Speaker 1: that I needed to be around my people, like the
Speaker 1: people who loved me, and yet I wanted to get
Speaker 1: away from them. I didn't want anyone to look at
Speaker 1: me like I felt so so much shame that I
Speaker 1: didn't want anyone like other people's gaze, like it was
Speaker 1: like daggers, you know, it was like hurting me. And
Speaker 1: so after I got laid off, I was like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I know I'm having this issue. And you could like
Speaker 1: frame it in terms of the parable like the good
Speaker 1: wolf is like, you know, you need to be around
Speaker 1: your people who love you. These people love you, they're
Speaker 1: not thinking about you differently. They want to support you.
Speaker 1: Then the bad wolf is like, no, everybody hates.
Speaker 2: You, nobody wants to be associated with you anymore. You're
Speaker 2: such a burden, Like, get over it already.
Speaker 1: And so what I did was I tricked out my
Speaker 1: basement to be a massage parlor.
Speaker 2: I like massage, I like dabble.
Speaker 1: I love getting massages, and I dabble in the bit
Speaker 1: of body work for other people as a form of care,
Speaker 1: and so I created Yowi Shpa, which was like, I
Speaker 1: got a massage table.
Speaker 2: The theme was pink.
Speaker 1: I got some fake plants, I got a hot towel steamer.
Speaker 1: I just like tricked it out and then I sent
Speaker 1: around a signup sheet to my friends and was like,
Speaker 1: yoweish open for business. And basically I ended up massaging
Speaker 1: a friend a week for the entire summer after I
Speaker 1: got laid off, And like, I think that was my way,
Speaker 1: like just creating a fun, weird ritual to try to
Speaker 1: deal with the bad wolf voice in me.
Speaker 5: I love that and in the hot towel steamer, that's
Speaker 5: going for it. Now here's a dream I've long had,
Speaker 5: and maybe you, as a fellow lover of massage and
Speaker 5: a reporter, maybe I've met the person who can help
Speaker 5: me bring this to life, which is that I feel
Speaker 5: like there should be massage review services. Like you go
Speaker 5: to get a massage and you don't really know where
Speaker 5: to go. There's so many different choices, and so I thought, like,
Speaker 5: would that not be the dream job, like to be
Speaker 5: a massage reviewer, Like that would be brilliant.
Speaker 1: Yes, for every local paper you know, Now you have
Speaker 1: like the restaurant critic. You need like a bodywork critic
Speaker 1: to me, like an alternative health bodywork whatever for accutructure,
Speaker 1: for massage for like, I don't know. There's so many
Speaker 1: different services these days.
Speaker 2: I love that. Now I'm going to try to manifest
Speaker 2: that as my new job for both of us. You're
Speaker 2: in New York, right, I'm in Philadelphia.
Speaker 5: Oh, Philadelphia? Okay, all right, I thought you were in
Speaker 5: New York. I have my city's mixed. Well, Philadelphia is
Speaker 5: a big enough city. You could probably pull that off.
Speaker 5: I'm not sure.
Speaker 2: In Chris, plenty of places to review who need our services.
Speaker 5: Yeah, a reviewers there is. Yeah, I would read a
Speaker 5: massage reviewer for sure before I went anyway. That and
Speaker 5: this is strange. My other dream career that I think
Speaker 5: about maybe someday when I retire, is similar. I want
Speaker 5: to be a dog messuse.
Speaker 2: Wait a minute, do you have a dog?
Speaker 5: I do, yes?
Speaker 2: And do you already dabble in dog massage?
Speaker 5: Oh? Yes, yes, yes, Wow. I might like to massage
Speaker 5: her more than she likes to be massage, and I'm
Speaker 5: not entirely sure. Sometimes she really.
Speaker 2: Seems to like spread out your services.
Speaker 5: And every once in a while, She's like, get off
Speaker 5: of me. Yeah, exactly, leave me alone. So, yes, it
Speaker 5: just seems like that would be a lovely career.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now, I have another thing I'm going to ask you
Speaker 1: about after this is I want to learn how to
Speaker 1: be cat massage my two cats.
Speaker 5: Okay, well I'm going to assume it's similar. I'm not
Speaker 5: qualified for this job, but there is such a thing
Speaker 5: and they do offer training in it. Anyway, Okay, that's
Speaker 5: not what we're here to talk about. But apparently we
Speaker 5: both could talk about massage for a long time. But
Speaker 5: what we're going to talk about is led to you
Speaker 5: creating the yo a spa that I say it right,
Speaker 5: a spa.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 5: What led to you creating that, which was you getting
Speaker 5: laid off. So you worked your way up to being
Speaker 5: a co host of a popular show called Invisibilia, which
Speaker 5: was a great show. You'd been a reporter for it,
Speaker 5: you became a co host, and then you were laid off.
Speaker 5: Talk to me about that experience, maybe how it happened
Speaker 5: and how you felt.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Okay, so at MPR we had an unusual layoff,
Speaker 1: which is because MPR told us gave us like a
Speaker 1: huge heads up that they were going through budget trouble
Speaker 1: and they needed to lay ten percent of us off
Speaker 1: and we'd find out who in a month. And so
Speaker 1: I had a whole month with the rest of my
Speaker 1: colleagues to sort of have panic attacks, sweat it out,
Speaker 1: have sleepless nights, do a lot of teeth grinding, and
Speaker 1: then the day came where we'd find out who got
Speaker 1: the email, you know, to let us know that you
Speaker 1: needed to have a meeting with HR.
Speaker 2: And I ended up getting.
Speaker 1: The email, And yeah, I have to say that in
Speaker 1: the beginning, I was I was numb. I think that
Speaker 1: like that whole month leading up to the actual layoff
Speaker 1: kind of functioned like a form of exposure therapy, Like
Speaker 1: I was just getting used to the idea that I
Speaker 1: might lose my job for an entire month. And so
Speaker 1: in some ways I was not surprised, because like I
Speaker 1: knew it could happen, But on the other hand, it
Speaker 1: still felt like a shock, like I still was so
Speaker 1: completely thrown and it was very confusing to me because
Speaker 1: you know, getting laid off in journalism these days, I
Speaker 1: mean that's practically a rite of passage at this point,
Speaker 1: you know, Like I knew that was the deal. Going
Speaker 1: into this profession, NBR had literally told me and my
Speaker 1: colleagues that I might get laid off, and yet I
Speaker 1: was still so shaken to my core. I felt like
Speaker 1: my operating system was glitching. And yeah, basically, for the
Speaker 1: next several months after that, I went through this roller
Speaker 1: coaster ride of feelings.
Speaker 2: There was a lot of shame. There was a lot
Speaker 2: of spiraling about.
Speaker 1: What could I have done differently, you know, was it
Speaker 1: this mistake or was it that mistake? There was a
Speaker 1: lot of paranoia about interacting with other people and potential employers.
Speaker 1: I went to like a journalism conference last summer for
Speaker 1: Asian American Journalists Association, and I just remember just being
Speaker 1: so paranoid. Like anytime anyone asked me like how are you, like,
Speaker 1: I would be this close to just like bursting into tears,
Speaker 1: or like, you know, have you found another job yet?
Speaker 1: Just really benign questions would throw me for a loop.
Speaker 1: And yeah, I basically like I knew I had about
Speaker 1: as good of a layoff as it gets, truly, Like
Speaker 1: we had a very good union contract at MPR, so
Speaker 1: I got severance. There were healthcare for like a few
Speaker 1: months after I had savings I'm married, I have a
Speaker 1: husband who can support me. I don't have kids, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean. Like I had a lot going
Speaker 1: for me materially to like help soften the landing here,
Speaker 1: and yet emotionally I was just completely a mess. And
Speaker 1: that disconnect between like my material reac and my emotional
Speaker 1: reality was really you know, like I said before, like
Speaker 1: whenever I have an emotional problem like this that I
Speaker 1: can't figure out, I start to report on it.
Speaker 2: And so that's what I did.
Speaker 1: And yeah, I ended up reporting the series trying to
Speaker 1: understand like why do layoffs mess us up so badly?
Speaker 1: And I just want to say, you know, this is
Speaker 1: just my experience. I have friends who got laid off
Speaker 1: from the same company and did not experience it this way.
Speaker 1: But I do think a significant portion of Americans do
Speaker 1: experience it this way, and that's what I was interested
Speaker 1: in figuring out.
Speaker 5: So you've alluded to some of the emotional difficulty that
Speaker 5: was there. You've alluded to shame. I assumed there was
Speaker 5: fear in their embarrassment, which sounds like shame. What were
Speaker 5: the primary sort of emotions that you were going through?
Speaker 5: Are there others that I've missed?
Speaker 1: Hmm, fear, shame, embarrassed. There's other ones too, Let's take
Speaker 1: them one by one. So, yeah, so we already covered shame,
Speaker 1: which was really confusing to me.
Speaker 2: Why I would.
Speaker 1: Feel like the company told me it's not my fault. Right,
Speaker 1: that's the definition of a layoff. It's a no fault termination.
Speaker 1: You're getting laid off because of something that has to
Speaker 1: do with the company, not because of you, right, And
Speaker 1: they generally always tell you it's not you, it's not
Speaker 1: about your performance. This is just a business decision. And
Speaker 1: yet why was I taking it so personally? Why did
Speaker 1: I feel like this was an indictment about me? Why
Speaker 1: did it feel like MPR was rejecting everything about me?
Speaker 2: You know? Why did I feel deficient? You know?
Speaker 1: So that was a big one. And then yeah, fear,
Speaker 1: thank you for mentioning that one. Yes, even though you
Speaker 1: know I am relatively privileged, I was still really scared,
Speaker 1: like I'm the prime breadwinner for my family. I was
Speaker 1: like afraid about kind of running through all the scenarios
Speaker 1: that might happen. You know, well, if I don't get
Speaker 1: a job for these many months, Okay, well then what
Speaker 1: will happen if you know, we lose the house, and
Speaker 1: like where will we move? And da da da da da,
Speaker 1: how will we feed the cats? You know, just like
Speaker 1: kind of spiraling in those material ways. And then there
Speaker 1: was also fear around getting another job. And this was
Speaker 1: also I mean, the podcast industry is not doing great
Speaker 1: at the moment, especially the narrative podcast industry sort of
Speaker 1: you know, the bottom has.
Speaker 2: Fallen out of it.
Speaker 1: So yeah, there is some point to that fear, some
Speaker 1: justification around maybe I won't be able to find another.
Speaker 2: Job, but also I have fifteen years.
Speaker 1: Of experience, like I am a pretty seasoned podcast person,
Speaker 1: Like it didn't totally make sense how afraid I was
Speaker 1: compared to like my circumstances.
Speaker 2: And then I was like, oh have I peaked? Like
Speaker 2: is this it?
Speaker 1: Is this like the pinnacle of what I'll be able
Speaker 1: to do in podcast journalism and trying to think what
Speaker 1: are all the other emotions?
Speaker 2: I think?
Speaker 1: Also the thing that really stuck with me was like,
Speaker 1: why do I feel like people are looking at me differently?
Speaker 1: Is this just in my head? Or are they looking
Speaker 1: at me differently? It felt like a kind of microaggression,
Speaker 1: you know, when people would say things to me like
Speaker 1: have you found another job yet, Are you gonna be
Speaker 1: changing switching industries?
Speaker 2: Are you?
Speaker 1: You know, just just like little things that became so
Speaker 1: much bigger when your entire body is a scuffed me,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 2: And so I really.
Speaker 1: Wanted to understand just like, why is this just me
Speaker 1: being a drama queen? Or is there something to like
Speaker 1: what I'm feeling? Are there cistims and dynamics contributing to
Speaker 1: the way I feel?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 5: And so what did you find out as you began
Speaker 5: to investigate this? What did you find out about what
Speaker 5: happens to people during layoffs and why it impacts again,
Speaker 5: not everyone, but some of the people so strongly.
Speaker 1: Yes, Okay, so the first thing I learned, I mean,
Speaker 1: the history on layoffs is pretty wild. It's very interesting,
Speaker 1: Like before the nineteen seventies, you know, companies pretty much
Speaker 1: avoided white collar layoffs, Like this is a pretty recent phenomenon.
Speaker 1: If a company were to experience layoffs, that would be
Speaker 1: an indictment of the company, right, you know, like the
Speaker 1: company needs to feel shame, and now it's slipped. So
Speaker 1: now we sort of accept layoffs as just like that's just.
Speaker 2: What business has to do these days.
Speaker 1: But it wasn't always like that, and so that was
Speaker 1: the first kind of like data point of like, oh okay,
Speaker 1: so like it wasn't always like this, you know, like
Speaker 1: there are these structural things that are happening that are
Speaker 1: leading to this situation in the first place. And then
Speaker 1: I've talked to the sociologist over Sharon, who has done
Speaker 1: a lot of really interesting work on stigma and laid
Speaker 1: off workers and unemployed workers. I went to therapy during
Speaker 1: this whole period, and like, honestly, talking to him was
Speaker 1: more enlightening and revelatory than any therapy session I had
Speaker 1: at this time, because he could just everything I was
Speaker 1: telling him about what I was feeling.
Speaker 2: He would he would be like, yep, there's a reason
Speaker 2: for that. Yep.
Speaker 1: All these people that I talk to you feel exactly
Speaker 1: like that, yep. And some of the things he told
Speaker 1: me were that the stigma that I'm feeling this kind
Speaker 1: of paranoia around are people.
Speaker 2: Looking at me differently? Are people looking a differently?
Speaker 1: Like that's not just in my head, Like people probably
Speaker 1: are looking at me differently. And that was like a
Speaker 1: huge relief to sort of just be like, okay, I
Speaker 1: can call it like it is these feelings that I'm
Speaker 1: feeling this intuition, like I'm not wrong, and yeah, there's
Speaker 1: just a lot of stigma around not just laid off workers,
Speaker 1: but unemployment in general. When you grow up in school,
Speaker 1: your teachers are asking you, you know, what do you
Speaker 1: want to be when you grow up? You don't really,
Speaker 1: I don't even know if the word unemployment has I
Speaker 1: don't think it was mentioned to me during my schooling years.
Speaker 1: We don't have much familiarity with it, even though it's
Speaker 1: a fact of this economy. And he said that the
Speaker 1: stigma really comes down to this myth of meritocracy that
Speaker 1: we have in this country, basically the idea that your
Speaker 1: actions and hard work equal your position in life in society.
Speaker 1: And even though you know the myth of meritocracy exists
Speaker 1: in a lot of countries, there have been research studies
Speaker 1: that find that in the US we believe it the
Speaker 1: most and the hardest and the deepest.
Speaker 2: What that means is if you get laid off, well,
Speaker 2: then it's your fault.
Speaker 1: You know, Like that's the emotional story that I think
Speaker 1: I was telling myself, even though intellectually I know that's
Speaker 1: not how it works. And so he helped me kind
Speaker 1: of solve this puzzle that I was feeling, whereas like,
Speaker 1: I know it's.
Speaker 2: Not my fault.
Speaker 1: I know I shouldn't feel like this, and yet I
Speaker 1: feel like it's my fault.
Speaker 2: I feel like this is about me.
Speaker 1: And he talked about like interviewing a union organizer whose
Speaker 1: job it is to explain to workers how our economy works,
Speaker 1: and even like a union organizer would feel like it's
Speaker 1: her fault, right, you know, even though intellectually she knows
Speaker 1: it's not. And so, yeah, so talking to him about that,
Speaker 1: talking to him about hiring discrimination that unemployed workers and
Speaker 1: laid off workers face, that it's twice as hard to
Speaker 1: get a job interview than someone who has the same credentials.
Speaker 1: That was also disheartening, but also helpful in that it's
Speaker 1: like it's like that whole kind of like system versus
Speaker 1: the individual thing of like is it me?
Speaker 2: Is it just me? Or am I part of a pattern?
Speaker 1: And I feel like there's a moment where it just
Speaker 1: clicked for me, like, oh, I'm part of a pattern,
Speaker 1: these feelings I'm feeling.
Speaker 2: I'm not an alien.
Speaker 1: There are reasons why I feel this way, and that
Speaker 1: helped make sense of it.
Speaker 5: There's so many things in there I would like to
Speaker 5: go back and touch on, but the question that just
Speaker 5: came to mind is you're a journalist working in a
Speaker 5: podcast industry, doing something that clearly really matters to you.
Speaker 5: Do you think it's harder in that circumstance than when
Speaker 5: you're laid off from a job that maybe you are
Speaker 5: less personally invested in.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think absolutely absolutely, And yet part of me
Speaker 1: also I have my hackles up when I get asked
Speaker 1: this question because I think like there's this whole movement
Speaker 1: right now around like work shouldn't be your identity and
Speaker 1: like we know better than to, like, you know, care
Speaker 1: so much about our jobs, and life is about so
Speaker 1: much more than work. And I guess as somebody who's
Speaker 1: very very into her work, and like it is a
Speaker 1: huge part of my identity. But I also I'm like,
Speaker 1: how can it not matter your job?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 1: I feel like in that movement there's a little bit
Speaker 1: of like, you spend so many hours of your life
Speaker 1: doing this thing, you have social networks around this occupation.
Speaker 1: To not have it part of your identity seems unrealistic,
Speaker 1: you know, Like I think that's one response I have
Speaker 1: to that question. And then of course absolutely yes, if
Speaker 1: I didn't care so much it would hurt a lot less.
Speaker 5: Absolutely, Yeah, yeah, I certainly didn't mean it in any
Speaker 5: sense that the ideal thing would be to care less. Actually,
Speaker 5: I think all in all, to have a job that
Speaker 5: you care about deeply and provides you meaning is the
Speaker 5: better situation than to have one where you simply go
Speaker 5: through the motions. Right. I mean, that's just my personal opinion,
Speaker 5: but I do think in general, right, the more you
Speaker 5: care about something when you lose it, the harder it
Speaker 5: is to lose it. It's sort of one of life's
Speaker 5: equations that it's just true. When I think about things
Speaker 5: that I've lost that really really hurt, usually the consolation
Speaker 5: I find is, oh, but I really really cared, so
Speaker 5: that's good, right, Like I had something I loved enough
Speaker 5: to lose it. And I think to your point, though,
Speaker 5: there are aspects of what we're talking about that probably
Speaker 5: happen at all different levels, because yes, we are invested
Speaker 5: in our work, most people take some degree of meaning
Speaker 5: from it, and our relationships are there. I find it
Speaker 5: so interesting this idea of the myth of meritocracy. And
Speaker 5: as I was listening to your podcast called Proxy, and
Speaker 5: I think it's a three episode arc that's about this process.
Speaker 5: And as I was listening to that and you start
Speaker 5: talking about the myth of meritocracy. As somebody who probably
Speaker 5: has bought into the myth of meritocracy to some degree
Speaker 5: over my lifetime, I don't buy into it into the
Speaker 5: same degree that I used to. I had a little
Speaker 5: bit of like, but it kind of is true, sort of.
Speaker 5: I think what's interesting about it is that it's one
Speaker 5: of those things that's true and not true at the
Speaker 5: same time. And what I mean is that it is
Speaker 5: true that how much effort you put in and how
Speaker 5: hard you work and all that is an element in
Speaker 5: what goes into being successful or not successful. But it's
Speaker 5: far from the only element. As we can see, right,
Speaker 5: we know people who are very talented who the world
Speaker 5: just does not treat fair for a thousand different reasons.
Speaker 5: So it's one of those things that like, on the
Speaker 5: one hand, I'm like, well, but you can't totally throw
Speaker 5: it out, and yet on the other hand, it's not true.
Speaker 5: I mean I suffered a layoff. I told you about
Speaker 5: it a little bit. It was a long time ago,
Speaker 5: but I mean I was working as hard as you
Speaker 5: could possibly work at the time.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 5: It was just that an early online company got bought
Speaker 5: by another company and the layoff occurred. And so I
Speaker 5: can see in all different cases that the myth of
Speaker 5: meritocracy is just that. The other thing I thought was
Speaker 5: interesting as we're talking about the stigma, and I found
Speaker 5: this idea that people who are unemployed have a far
Speaker 5: harder time getting job than someone employed. Right, there's an
Speaker 5: old saying which is the best time to look for
Speaker 5: a job as well you have a job, right, And
Speaker 5: it's just based on that very at least in my mind,
Speaker 5: I always heard that phrase to mean exactly that, right,
Speaker 5: that for whatever reason, you look like a better candidate
Speaker 5: when you have a job versus when you don't have one.
Speaker 5: But it was amazing to hear as you did this
Speaker 5: investigative reporting how open recruiters really were about this fact
Speaker 5: about just pretty much straight out saying like, yes, we
Speaker 5: get a lot of applicants, you know, it's hard to
Speaker 5: sort them out. So one way that we do so
Speaker 5: is if you have a job, we rank you higher
Speaker 5: than if you don't.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was wild to hear what recruiters would say.
Speaker 1: And basically, it's discrimination when you think about it, when
Speaker 1: it's like a characteristic about you that you cannot help
Speaker 1: you know, that you cannot change necessarily. It's like it's
Speaker 1: a form of bias and discrimination that is just openly
Speaker 1: accepted in our employment system. And that's yeah, that's wild
Speaker 1: that we were just like, yep, that's just the way
Speaker 1: it is.
Speaker 5: Well, it's based on that same sort of half true
Speaker 5: thing about the myth of meritocracy, right, because you're assuming
Speaker 5: that if somebody doesn't have work, it's because something they
Speaker 5: have done.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 5: And while in certain cases, right, like some people who
Speaker 5: would come to you to look for work and they
Speaker 5: don't have a job is because they're not very good,
Speaker 5: you know what I mean, Like, there are those people,
Speaker 5: but it's certainly not everybody with layoffs, and I think
Speaker 5: these part true things. It's easier to throw something out
Speaker 5: that's completely always falls.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And you know, these recruiters also talked about how,
Speaker 1: you know, even the ones who didn't really buy into
Speaker 1: that way of thinking, they're like they don't see you know,
Speaker 1: a resume and see, oh you've been laid off. That
Speaker 1: means you are a worse performer. You know, there are
Speaker 1: recruiters who talk to the sociologists who are like maybe
Speaker 1: that's true, maybe it's not true. It's getting out what
Speaker 1: you're saying. This half truth, this partly true assumption for
Speaker 1: these recruiters because they just have a huge pile of
Speaker 1: resumes to get through, and also they don't want to
Speaker 1: get in trouble with, you know, with the manager the
Speaker 1: team that they're hiring for, Like what if it is
Speaker 1: true and they end up letting somebody in that isn't
Speaker 1: going to do a good job, And so they just
Speaker 1: are conservative and sort of air on the side of, well,
Speaker 1: let's talk to the people who already have a job.
Speaker 1: Let's just air on the side of, you know, we
Speaker 1: just want to be safe.
Speaker 5: It reminds me of another saying. I was in the
Speaker 5: software business for a long time before I became a podcaster,
Speaker 5: and so there was an old saying that, like, nobody
Speaker 5: ever got fired for hiring IBM, And what they mean was,
Speaker 5: it's the safe choice, right, It's just the safe choice,
Speaker 5: Like it may not be the best choice, it may
Speaker 5: not be the right choice, but it's the choice that
Speaker 5: everybody would at the end of the day go, well,
Speaker 5: that sort of makes sense. So I can't penalle lot,
Speaker 5: you know what I mean, It's that same sort of
Speaker 5: thing now as somebody who you know, sort of made
Speaker 5: my way through the startup business without a college degree
Speaker 5: and all that. Like, I sort of was like, well,
Speaker 5: you know, I didn't like that phrase. You know, you
Speaker 5: want to hire somebody like me, the punk rock weirdo
Speaker 5: that showed up at your door today is your best choice.
Speaker 5: So all these things are true. So the other thing
Speaker 5: that I thought was really interesting is that one of
Speaker 5: the things that I think is obvious and you heard,
Speaker 5: is that if you show up for an interview, so
Speaker 5: you've been laid off and now you're back out and
Speaker 5: you're looking for a job, if you have a sense
Speaker 5: of a desperation or be of negativity about what happened,
Speaker 5: or negativity or feelings of doubt about your own ability,
Speaker 5: that's not good for getting a job. You don't want
Speaker 5: to show up with that. So we would seem the
Speaker 5: ignoring what we've just been talking about, not knowing that
Speaker 5: to be true, might be better, because if I know
Speaker 5: that you're going to discriminate against me, then I'm going
Speaker 5: to be more doubtful, I'm going to be more afraid.
Speaker 5: But it seems like that the research that this gentleman
Speaker 5: that you were mentioning, did shows that that's actually not true,
Speaker 5: That there is a way of both recognizing the stigma,
Speaker 5: recognizing the difficulty allowing the negative emotions to be there,
Speaker 5: and then also not projecting them as you go into
Speaker 5: trying to find other work. How does that happen?
Speaker 1: This is something that I was experiencing myself as I
Speaker 1: was reporting the story on layof's. I was reading all
Speaker 1: these depressing statistics about how layoffs, you know, are linked
Speaker 1: with higher risk of divorce, higher risk of decreased earnings,
Speaker 1: you know, higher risk of hospital just like all these
Speaker 1: bad things that layoffs are linked to. And I was
Speaker 1: starting to get in my head like, oh no, Like
Speaker 1: am I going to end up as one of these statistics?
Speaker 1: Like I got to get another job?
Speaker 2: Like ah?
Speaker 1: And I asked over Sharon the sociologist, this question of
Speaker 1: like it seems like it would be counterintuitive, Like it
Speaker 1: would not be helpful. It seems like it would not
Speaker 1: be helpful to learn about all these depressing statistics, right,
Speaker 1: And what he said was he said that yes, it hurts,
Speaker 1: but also it helps you see that.
Speaker 2: It's not your fault if you do have trouble.
Speaker 1: It's that deep personalization thing that we were talking about earlier.
Speaker 1: So over Sharon the sociologist, he did this study where
Speaker 1: he got all these volunteer career coaches and all these
Speaker 1: people in Boston who were out of work looking for
Speaker 1: a job, long term unemployed. He had the coaches try
Speaker 1: a different approach called sociologically informed support, which to me,
Speaker 1: I love that term. It's so nerdy, it's so funny.
Speaker 1: To me, it's hard to say sociologically informed support. So
Speaker 1: basically what happened was, at the beginning of the day,
Speaker 1: Offer would go up in front of everyone and be like,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry to tell you, folks, but here's what it is,
Speaker 1: and which is like go through all the odds that
Speaker 1: are stacked against them, and then he would say, I
Speaker 1: know this hurts, I know this sucks to hear this,
Speaker 1: but I want you to know this so that you
Speaker 1: don't blame yourself for having a hard time getting another job.
Speaker 1: There's a reason, a concrete reason why you are having
Speaker 1: a hard time. Because if you blame yourself, if you
Speaker 1: internalize all those you know, failed job interviews, all those rejections,
Speaker 1: all that silence from employers, then it'll make it harder
Speaker 1: for you to get a job, because you will be
Speaker 1: even more negative, you will be even more insecure, you know,
Speaker 1: you'll just leak more negativity, which will then make it
Speaker 1: harder to get a job, which will make you feel
Speaker 1: even worse about yourself. And then you just start to
Speaker 1: like get into this vicious cycle of negativity. You know,
Speaker 1: like it's harder for you to get a job that
Speaker 1: makes you feel worse about yourself, that makes it then
Speaker 1: harder to get a job when you go show up for.
Speaker 2: An interview, and then you just end up in this
Speaker 2: really toxic, hard loop.
Speaker 1: And so what the sociologist recommends is important to know
Speaker 1: what you're dealing with, What are the odds that are
Speaker 1: stacked against you, How hard is it for you to
Speaker 1: get another job? And then get up and sort of
Speaker 1: shake it off, and then you need to get to
Speaker 1: work looking for that job. You need to like go
Speaker 1: ask colleagues for a recommendation. That's like the best way
Speaker 1: to sort of overcome that bias against unemployed workers or
Speaker 1: laid off workers is a recommendation from somebody inside the company.
Speaker 1: And you basically need to prepare yourself for a marathon,
Speaker 1: not a sprint, and you need to protect your mental health.
Speaker 1: You need to prioritize it. You need to understand that
Speaker 1: there are all these negative feedback loops that could be
Speaker 1: coming from maybe a spouse who's maybe blaming you for
Speaker 1: not finding worker, for getting laid off, maybe your friends
Speaker 1: who maybe don't understand or have distanced themselves, who knows
Speaker 1: there are a number of negative feedback loops that you
Speaker 1: could be dealing with. And so you sort of need
Speaker 1: to like map out all the negative feedback loops that
Speaker 1: you might be dealing with and then find your safe people,
Speaker 1: find the people that you can vent about your negative
Speaker 1: feelings and they won't judge you. They won't say, oh, well,
Speaker 1: that's your bad attitude. That's why you're not getting another job, right,
Speaker 1: You know, people you can be safe with, and then
Speaker 1: just keep trucking along in until you get that chance.
Speaker 1: Because the longer you are unemployed, the harder it is
Speaker 1: to get a job. And the best way to deal
Speaker 1: with all those negative consequences that come with unemployment and
Speaker 1: laid off is getting another job. It's just like this
Speaker 1: mental jiu jitsu you have to do with yourself. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that I find very interesting and really goes against what
Speaker 1: the dominant approach is with career coaches and career centers,
Speaker 1: which is very like pull yourself up.
Speaker 2: By the bootstraps. You can do it.
Speaker 1: You just need the right attitude, You just need the
Speaker 1: right resume, You just need the right outfit, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean.
Speaker 2: And all that matters. All that stuff matters.
Speaker 1: Is not to say that like you shouldn't learn how
Speaker 1: to interview better, or you shouldn't polish your resume.
Speaker 2: All that stuff matters. But also it is harder for
Speaker 2: you to get a job.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's a little bit like recognizing the effects of
Speaker 5: what trauma can do in your life, because on one hand,
Speaker 5: it's frightening to hear things like, for example, there's something
Speaker 5: called the Adverse Childhood Effects Survey. If you get a
Speaker 5: high score on that, meaning you had a bunch of
Speaker 5: adverse things happened to you as a child. The list
Speaker 5: of consequences of things that can happen to you is long, right,
Speaker 5: I mean, it goes from addiction to heart disease to depression.
Speaker 5: I mean, it's just not a happy story. So on
Speaker 5: one hand, it would be kind of good to not
Speaker 5: know that, and yet of course you're having impacts from
Speaker 5: it that are actually happening like you said, it's this
Speaker 5: jiu jitsu a little bit of like, Okay, I know
Speaker 5: that that's all true. I know that that is all
Speaker 5: having an impact on me, and at the same time,
Speaker 5: I'm determined not to let that be the whole story.
Speaker 5: And I think that's we're talking about something similar here. Yes,
Speaker 5: as a person who's lost your job, there's stigma against
Speaker 5: you getting rehired. It's harder to get it right. There
Speaker 5: are these negative things that can occur. You're dealing with
Speaker 5: negative feedback loop of people who don't understand, people who
Speaker 5: think the fact you don't have a job is your fault.
Speaker 5: You've got all that happening. To pretend it's not happening
Speaker 5: makes you feel insane. Right to pretend it's not is
Speaker 5: to sort of feel crazy. Same thing if somebody has
Speaker 5: a bunch of adverse childhood effects, to pretend that stuff's
Speaker 5: not having an effect makes you feel crazy because you're like, well,
Speaker 5: something isn't right. And yet you can't let it be
Speaker 5: the whole story either, otherwise it becomes self fulfilling prophecies.
Speaker 5: At the same time, and I think people who are
Speaker 5: dealing with difficulties, systematic difficulties of any sorts run up
Speaker 5: against this, which is, yes, the system is not fair,
Speaker 5: and yet you still have to find a way within
Speaker 5: that not to let that be the thing that defines you.
Speaker 5: And I don't know exactly how people do that. I mean,
Speaker 5: I think we all all wrestle with it. But it's
Speaker 5: one of those sort of true half true things we
Speaker 5: talked about before, where if you end up only accepting
Speaker 5: one side of that, your reality is not whole. I
Speaker 5: guess does that make sense?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it really makes sense. It makes me think about So.
Speaker 1: One of the things that this sociologist found was most
Speaker 1: helpful in doing this mental jiu jitsu of trying to
Speaker 1: like hold the bad statistics in one place and also
Speaker 1: stay hopeful and like prepare yourself for the marathon ahead
Speaker 1: so that you don't end up becoming a statistic.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 1: One of the things he found that was most helpful
Speaker 1: for participants was the solidarity. How important it was to
Speaker 1: talk about it with people who understand and won't judge you,
Speaker 1: who won't blame you for having a bad attitude.
Speaker 2: You know, it's the support group model.
Speaker 1: He said that like in these career centers, usually when
Speaker 1: somebody raises their hand and says I'm having a hard time.
Speaker 2: They're told, sh don't talk about it. You don't have
Speaker 2: the right attitude.
Speaker 1: You know, that's not encouraged in these places most of
Speaker 1: the time. And so where does all that negativity go,
Speaker 1: You know, you internalize it or you know, comes.
Speaker 2: Down in weird places.
Speaker 1: And so that's one lesson that I think is like
Speaker 1: kind of common sense but also really important to remember
Speaker 1: for all kinds.
Speaker 2: Of problems that you face.
Speaker 1: Is like the importance of being able to share and
Speaker 1: vent in a safe space.
Speaker 5: I interviewed a woman recently. She wrote a book about
Speaker 5: dark moods and their benefit. In it, she described an
Speaker 5: experience she had of reading a book that's gonna take
Speaker 5: me a second of set up, but I think it's
Speaker 5: actually going to be worth it. If not crystal cut
Speaker 5: it all out. But she's described, you know, a woman
Speaker 5: who is getting back into the job market after having
Speaker 5: been a parent, right and so kids are going off
Speaker 5: to school. She's been out of the job market for
Speaker 5: twenty years. She's older, and she's expressing to her husband
Speaker 5: and son her concerns that her skills aren't really up
Speaker 5: to date. And she knows that you know, older women
Speaker 5: it's harder for them to get hired and all of this, right,
Speaker 5: And her husband and son just are saying to her, No, no,
Speaker 5: you're wonderful, you're great, You're going to be just fine, right,
Speaker 5: And the psychologist who was writing the book was describing
Speaker 5: how they were right, and she had what the psychologist
Speaker 5: was calling a negative explanatory style. The woman writing this
Speaker 5: book had a big problem with this, right. She was like, well,
Speaker 5: but of course there's discrimination against women of a certain age,
Speaker 5: and you don't have you like, of course, she's right,
Speaker 5: And I'm reading it thinking, well, they're both actually right
Speaker 5: in a way, right, And this is exactly what we're
Speaker 5: talking about. If she complain lely internalizes that attitude, then yes,
Speaker 5: she's going to have a hard time finding a job.
Speaker 5: And yet if she doesn't, if nobody recognizes those factors,
Speaker 5: she's going to think that she's all the problem. And
Speaker 5: the answer turned out to be relatively simple, right, which
Speaker 5: was that what she needed was her husband to just say, yeah,
Speaker 5: I understand, you know that's frightening, that's hard. Of course, yes,
Speaker 5: I bet it. You know it's going to be harder
Speaker 5: for you than it might be, say for me, if
Speaker 5: I was to go look for a job, like that's
Speaker 5: all true, and then she's heard. Because when we're not
Speaker 5: heard on stuff like that, what my experience is is
Speaker 5: we end up arguing for our own limitations. We end
Speaker 5: up trying to convince everybody that we're right, that it
Speaker 5: really is that bad and that hard. Whereas most people,
Speaker 5: if that difficulty is acknowledged, then we can move on
Speaker 5: to solution. But if nobody will acknowledge that difficulty, we
Speaker 5: end up arguing for or instead of them being able
Speaker 5: to move into this piece you talked about, which is like, Okay,
Speaker 5: how do I prepare for the marathon not the sprint?
Speaker 2: That's really interesting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it reminds me of this experience that I would
Speaker 1: have again and again after my layoff, where with friends
Speaker 1: and family, people you know, who love me and want
Speaker 1: the best for me, When I would talk about my
Speaker 1: feelings of shame, despair, you know, and maybe being a
Speaker 1: little melodramatic whatever, people would sort of cheerlead me sometimes
Speaker 1: and sort of be like no, no, no, like you
Speaker 1: got this, like you'll be fine.
Speaker 2: Look at how much experience you have. Da da da
Speaker 2: da da. And it always bugged me.
Speaker 1: Like it always made me so it's just like no, no, no,
Speaker 1: like yeah, I know, and also like these are my
Speaker 1: feelings right now, and I'm allowed to feel these negative
Speaker 1: feelings right and like I know you want it to
Speaker 1: be okay, you want to put a band aid on it,
Speaker 1: but like we don't know if that's gonna happen, like
Speaker 1: if I will come out of this. It's almost like
Speaker 1: you want some acknowledgment of your reality, your emotional and
Speaker 1: material reality, so that you don't feel insane, yes, so
Speaker 1: that you don't feel like people are trying to crowd.
Speaker 2: Out your feelings.
Speaker 1: This whole experience with my layoff has really taught me
Speaker 1: that when people in my life are going through a
Speaker 1: hard thing, I just listen. I don't try to say, oh,
Speaker 1: you must be feeling X or oh it'll be fine.
Speaker 1: I try to listen first to what they're saying, you know,
Speaker 1: because I think we're uncomfortable with like those kinds of
Speaker 1: hard feelings, because we want the people in our life
Speaker 1: to be okay.
Speaker 5: Of course. Yeah.
Speaker 1: One other thing I'm thinking about to go back to
Speaker 1: this myth of meritocracy is there's been some interesting research.
Speaker 1: It's very preliminary, there's some research that suggests that when
Speaker 1: people don't expect to be laid off, they are more
Speaker 1: emotionally wrecked than people who are aware of the possibility.
Speaker 1: And I think this gets at the same kind of
Speaker 1: thing we're talking about, where it's like just knowing, having
Speaker 1: a kind of realistic view on like what could happen,
Speaker 1: helps prepare you more for the possibility, so you're not
Speaker 1: totally destabilized if it happens. And I think, like, yes,
Speaker 1: you know the myth and meritocracy, it's half true, it's
Speaker 1: half not true. And also it's a comforting story to
Speaker 1: tell yourself because then if you have control if you
Speaker 1: work hard, if you're telling yourself that if you work hard,
Speaker 1: you will be safe, if you do a good job,
Speaker 1: you will be safe, then you can have control in
Speaker 1: this volatile, scary economy where people can be laid off
Speaker 1: and fired because we have at will employment right. That
Speaker 1: was like one of the biggest lessons for me from
Speaker 1: all of this reporting was like, oh, Okay, it could
Speaker 1: be not motivating to think, oh, if I do a
Speaker 1: good job, I still might be laid off. I was
Speaker 1: afraid that I might kind of go in that direction
Speaker 1: of like oh, like, well, then what's the point and
Speaker 1: kind of throw my hands up in the air, and
Speaker 1: I found that that's not where I am right now.
Speaker 1: Like I don't have a salary job right now, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm doing my own thing, shooting my shot with this
Speaker 1: new podcast. But I just I think that reality, even
Speaker 1: if it hurts, it is generally always more helpful than
Speaker 1: the like false story.
Speaker 2: That's comforting.
Speaker 5: I tend to agree. I think what's interesting about that is,
Speaker 5: like many things we're talking about, is this balance, right,
Speaker 5: Because if we were really grasp and spend a lot
Speaker 5: of time thinking about how truly out of control we
Speaker 5: are in this world, it would be paralyzing and we
Speaker 5: would never get out of bed, right. I mean, because,
Speaker 5: as a poet Mark Nepo calls it, the terrible knowledge
Speaker 5: that anything can happen to anyone any time is true.
Speaker 5: You can't live in that constant recognition of that fact,
Speaker 5: or you'd be a basket case. And yet there's some
Speaker 5: amount of recognition of that that's really useful, right, to
Speaker 5: really realize, Like, yeah, like life is a frightening and
Speaker 5: scary place, and terrible things happen to really good people
Speaker 5: all the time, and good things happened to bad people,
Speaker 5: and average things happen to average people, like it just
Speaker 5: all happens, and so it's interesting. I think getting laid
Speaker 5: off at the age that I did, I was twenty eight,
Speaker 5: my wife was six months pregnant with my son. I mean,
Speaker 5: it was a terrifying experience. I think that there was
Speaker 5: something about that that just I from that moment on
Speaker 5: did not believe that my safety came from a company.
Speaker 5: And I remember, I mean, I worked in software startup companies,
Speaker 5: so I guess for a while you do that, you
Speaker 5: just kind of know, like, well, the odds are pretty good,
Speaker 5: this thing is not going to make it. I went
Speaker 5: on to do consulting for these really big big companies,
Speaker 5: Fortune one hundred, Fortune five hundred companies, and my mom
Speaker 5: would be like, I wish they would hire you. And
Speaker 5: I'd be like, they actually offered to hire me, and
Speaker 5: I said no, and she's like, you're crazy. And I
Speaker 5: was like, Mom, do you think that working for this
Speaker 5: company is like safe? Do you actually think that, like
Speaker 5: the fact that they hired me as an employee is safety.
Speaker 5: It's not anymore. I understand in your day and age
Speaker 5: perhaps it was, but it's not anymore, you know. And
Speaker 5: I felt like the fact that I was a consultant
Speaker 5: and knew that I was going to need to prove
Speaker 5: to somebody else anywhere from three months to six months
Speaker 5: to a year from now that I was worth hiring
Speaker 5: was more safety. Again, there's no complete safety, but it
Speaker 5: was more safety because I just assumed that sooner or
Speaker 5: later they're going to be done with me and I'm
Speaker 5: going to have to go convince somebody else, And so
Speaker 5: I just always felt like the fact that I knew
Speaker 5: that made me stay a little bit more on top
Speaker 5: of certain things. It's not that any of its safety,
Speaker 5: but I think there was a I'm not counting on
Speaker 5: a company to take care of me, because I don't
Speaker 5: think that's a safe bet anymore in today's world. I'm
Speaker 5: not demonizing companies. I'm just saying that, like, as we know,
Speaker 5: if they need to cut costs, they're going to cut costs,
Speaker 5: and if you happen to be part of that, you're
Speaker 5: going to be gone.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I'm curious if your relationship with risk changed after that moment,
Speaker 1: because my relationship with risk has changed as a result
Speaker 1: of my layoff. Like I would say that I am
Speaker 1: a pretty risk averse person generally speaking, you know, maybe
Speaker 1: it's like being the daughter of immigrants, who are the
Speaker 1: children of refugees.
Speaker 2: Like it's just like I want to be safe.
Speaker 1: We need to have we need to have savings, we
Speaker 1: need to security very important to like my operating system.
Speaker 1: After like kind of the quote unquote worst thing professionally happened.
Speaker 1: I know it's not the worst thing, but like it's
Speaker 1: one of the worst things. Just losing your job kind
Speaker 1: of liberated me from this kind of grasping need to
Speaker 1: control and be safe. This new thing that I'm doing,
Speaker 1: which is starting a podcast. I mean, it's not a
Speaker 1: good time to start podcast. I really might fail. I
Speaker 1: probably will fail, but I'm having fun doing it. I'm
Speaker 1: learning a lot, and it's okay if I fail.
Speaker 2: Like I think it has.
Speaker 1: Really rewired my relationship with failure and just like my
Speaker 1: tolerance for it and my tolerance for risk.
Speaker 2: I'm grateful for that.
Speaker 5: Actually, yeah, it's hard for me to know what recalibrated
Speaker 5: my relationship with risk. I was a homeless HEROD at
Speaker 5: twenty five, so I clearly wasn't playing anything safe to
Speaker 5: begin with. But this job was my first attempt to
Speaker 5: try and be safe. And it was interesting because when
Speaker 5: I got laid off. I actually did gamble a little
Speaker 5: bit because it was given severance, and I applied for unemployment,
Speaker 5: and I recognized also that there was job retraining money available,
Speaker 5: and so I took some of the severance and some
Speaker 5: of that money, and I invested in a series of
Speaker 5: software related courses, thinking like I might be able to
Speaker 5: actually come out of this even better off, which it
Speaker 5: turned out to be the case. And so I think
Speaker 5: I was taking a risk then and then working in
Speaker 5: software startup companies. Like I said, after that, I think
Speaker 5: I just you do that long enough, your relationship to
Speaker 5: it is just very different.
Speaker 2: It's like the water you swim in, Yeah.
Speaker 5: It is. It is the water you swim into a
Speaker 5: certain degree. And so I think I just over the
Speaker 5: years built more and more of a tolerance for it.
Speaker 5: Although it's interesting as I get older, I'm finding my
Speaker 5: risk tolerance becoming a little bit more like, well, hold
Speaker 5: on a second, like, do you realize like the chance
Speaker 5: that you know this is you know, I mean running
Speaker 5: a podcast, right, Like we're in a pretty good position
Speaker 5: as a podcast, and yet it is hard out there.
Speaker 5: It is harder than it's ever been out there, and
Speaker 5: there's risk you know there's there's risk I am aware
Speaker 5: of very regularly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1: It's like has really made me want to shoot my
Speaker 1: shot more in general, Like I feel like it has
Speaker 1: kind of unleashed. It's kind of like aggressive, but like
Speaker 1: not in a bad way. I hope we'll see, but
Speaker 1: just like just kind of this version of me that's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: like I'm gonna go for it, and it's okay if
Speaker 1: I fail, Like I have already failed on my face
Speaker 1: in a very public way, So why not shoot my shot?
Speaker 1: Why not try? And yeah, I just feel less afraid Now.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think that's good. I think that's good. I
Speaker 5: think that's ideally the way to move to the best
Speaker 5: of our ability. We're about out a time, but I
Speaker 5: would be remiss if I did not at least ask
Speaker 5: you about one of the things that you did as
Speaker 5: part of this project is you decided to create a
Speaker 5: layoff song. This sounds a little bit like the YOEI Spa.
Speaker 5: But you decided to create a layoff song.
Speaker 1: It's exactly like the Yo A Shpa. I have discovered
Speaker 1: that I'm really into inventing weird rituals as a way
Speaker 1: of healing. So basically what happened was I was laid off,
Speaker 1: feeling bad, trying all kinds of things to try to
Speaker 1: feel better, reporting a series about it, doing this yoa
Speaker 1: SHPA and massaging my friends, like doing a lot to
Speaker 1: try to feel better. And I have to say, like
Speaker 1: six months after the layoff, I was still.
Speaker 2: Feeling really really bad.
Speaker 1: I'd really it was not much further than I was
Speaker 1: at the very beginning, and that kind of bummed me out.
Speaker 1: And then I had this recital coming up. So like
Speaker 1: one of my hobbies is I pole dance. I'm not good,
Speaker 1: it's just for fun. My studio has this like very cute,
Speaker 1: kind of nerdy seasonal recital where you can do like
Speaker 1: a solo or a group dance or whatever. And so
Speaker 1: I had a recital coming up, and I had signed
Speaker 1: up to do like a solo thing and you have
Speaker 1: to choreograph your own thing, and I'd never done it before,
Speaker 1: and I was like.
Speaker 2: What am I gonna do? What am I gonna do?
Speaker 2: Which song am I gonna choose? And I was like,
Speaker 2: I know what I'll do.
Speaker 1: I need to do like an interpretive layoff dance because
Speaker 1: that sounds fun to me, and I'll dress up in
Speaker 1: a clean xbox, and it'll just be this ridiculous kind
Speaker 1: of joyous reclamation of this whole situation. And so then
Speaker 1: I started looking for layoff songs to dance too. Maybe
Speaker 1: not surprisingly, there are not that many layoff songs out there.
Speaker 2: It is not a well developed genre as yet.
Speaker 5: Well the depths of country music. You sure, there's not
Speaker 5: more out there.
Speaker 1: I know what I should have, but you know what
Speaker 1: I was saying, I sure, but also I'm not sure
Speaker 1: that would match the vibe of my fourreography. So anyways,
Speaker 1: I was like, why not just make my own layoff song,
Speaker 1: Like we're already here, why not go all the way.
Speaker 1: And I'm very lucky to have a music producer as
Speaker 1: a husband who can make it so, and so he
Speaker 1: helped me out and we made this ridiculous song called
Speaker 1: gold Star. And the reason why it's titled gold Star
Speaker 1: is because after I got laid off, I remember like
Speaker 1: people would do all kinds of nice things for me.
Speaker 1: Send me fried chicken. I love fried chicken. People would like,
Speaker 1: get me a massage. I love massage, just like all
Speaker 1: these nice things, but like what I really wanted, if
Speaker 1: I'm being honest, was a trophy.
Speaker 5: Okay, I just wanted.
Speaker 1: Like a trophy to my self esteem, like something to
Speaker 1: combat the like negative voices in my head. It like, basically,
Speaker 1: I want a gold star to sort of combat what
Speaker 1: I'm feeling. And so this is like I'm hoping it
Speaker 1: finds laid off folks. You know, this is sort of
Speaker 1: a gold star, Like I'm soothing myself and hopefully you know,
Speaker 1: this can be a gold star for you. And then
Speaker 1: I made this ridiculous pull dancing video that is available
Speaker 1: online right now, though it might not be forever because
Speaker 1: I might come to my senses. I decided to pull
Speaker 1: it from the internet.
Speaker 5: If it's still out there when this episode releases, we'll
Speaker 5: put a link in the show notes. I've heard the song,
Speaker 5: I have not yet watched the video. The thing that
Speaker 5: made me laugh the most during that process, though, I
Speaker 5: mean every part of it is great and funny, was
Speaker 5: your husband introducing you to auto tune, which is a
Speaker 5: way of, you know, trying to make those of us
Speaker 5: who don't sing very well sound coherent. And it's so
Speaker 5: funny because he was like, I've never seen my computer
Speaker 5: have to work this hard. And it's funny because this
Speaker 5: is quite some time ago. It probably at least fifteen
Speaker 5: years ago. I went to a friend's house in Tennessee
Speaker 5: and I used to be a songwriter, and so I
Speaker 5: had some songs and I was trying to sing, and
Speaker 5: we got what must have been a very early version
Speaker 5: of auto tune.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 5: It was a box. You didn't plug it into your computer.
Speaker 5: And the running joke basically after that was that like
Speaker 5: anytime it tried to process me, the box would start smoking.
Speaker 5: It had to work so hard. So when he said
Speaker 5: I've never seen this machine work this hard, I had
Speaker 5: a good laugh. I was like, I've been there.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh.
Speaker 1: Yeah, auto tune is my friend. Thank God for autotune. Yes,
Speaker 1: there's no way I would have the courage to have
Speaker 1: sung that song or put it on the Internet without
Speaker 1: the help of a lot of autotune.
Speaker 5: As we wrap up, I'm curious, out of all the
Speaker 5: valuable ideas we've explored today, what's the single most impactful
Speaker 5: insight that resonates with you listener. For me, it's about relationships.
Speaker 5: Many of us grapple with relationship issues in silence, uncertain
Speaker 5: how to mend the cracks, the reality cultivating a fulfilling
Speaker 5: relationship isn't solely about compatibility or fate. It's about developing
Speaker 5: crucial interpersonal abilities. How's that for a fancy phrase? Basically
Speaker 5: means we can improve our relationships. And here's a quick
Speaker 5: tip for you. Focus on active listening. Make a conscious
Speaker 5: effort to listen more than you speak in your next conversation,
Speaker 5: focusing entirely on understanding the other person's perspective. Being a
Speaker 5: good listener goes a long way in making our relationships better.
Speaker 5: This month's newsletter focuses on relationships. Get practical exercises, reflections,
Speaker 5: and podcast links to nurture your connections. Sign up at
Speaker 5: goodwolf dot me slash relationships. Thousands are already benefiting from
Speaker 5: these tips. Join us in fostering stronger relationships at goodwolf
Speaker 5: dot me slash relationships. All right, well we are going
Speaker 5: to wrap up now in the post show conversation. We're
Speaker 5: going to talk a little bit longer because I want
Speaker 5: to talk about You've launched this new podcast to report
Speaker 5: on this, but there was an interim step in there
Speaker 5: along the way that ended up I think being the
Speaker 5: hardest maybe emotional moment for you of this whole journey,
Speaker 5: and i'd like to talk about that a little bit
Speaker 5: in the post show conversation listeners as always, if you
Speaker 5: would like access to that, if you would like access
Speaker 5: to add free episodes, a special episode I do each
Speaker 5: week called a teaching song and a poem. And to
Speaker 5: be part of our community, we have community meetings once
Speaker 5: a month. We'd love to have you be part of
Speaker 5: the community. You can do that by going to oneufeed
Speaker 5: dot net slash join yowai. Thank you so much. This
Speaker 5: has been really enjoyable from top to bottom.
Speaker 2: Thank you for having me. This was so fun. Thank
Speaker 2: you for listening to my song and not judging me
Speaker 2: too harshly.
Speaker 5: No, it's a good pop song.
Speaker 3: If what you just heard was helpful to you, please
Speaker 3: consider making a monthly donation to support the One You
Speaker 3: Feed podcast. When you join our membership community with this
Speaker 3: monthly pledge, you get lots of exclusive members only benefits.
Speaker 3: It's our way of saying thank you for your support.
Speaker 5: Now.
Speaker 3: We are so grateful for the members of our community.
Speaker 3: We wouldn't be able to do what we do without
Speaker 3: their support, and we don't take a single dollar for granted.
Speaker 3: To learn more, make a donation at any level and
Speaker 3: become a member of the one you Feed community. Go
Speaker 3: to oneufeed dot net slash join The One You Feed
Speaker 3: podcast would like to sincerely thank our sponsors for supporting
Speaker 3: the show