Speaker 1: A teacher is a leader, a mother is a leader.
Speaker 1: A child as a leader because they're leading themselves. And
Speaker 1: so how do you teach people how to be a
Speaker 1: great leader of themselves so that they can lead other people?
Speaker 1: Welcome to the one you feed Throughout time, great thinkers
Speaker 1: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have quotes
Speaker 1: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you
Speaker 1: think ring true. And yet for many of us, our
Speaker 1: thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 1: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 1: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 1: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 1: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 1: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 1: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 1: the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Thanks
Speaker 1: for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Michael
Speaker 1: Brodie Waite. Michael is a recovering addict, acclaimed speaker, entrepreneur,
Speaker 1: award winning three times CEO leadership coach and author. Today,
Speaker 1: Michael and Eric discuss his book Great Leaders Think Like
Speaker 1: Drug Addicts, How to Lead Like Your Life depends on It. Him, Michael,
Speaker 1: Welcome to the show. Thanks for having me Man, it's
Speaker 1: a pleasure to have you on. We're going to discuss
Speaker 1: your book, Great Leaders Live Like Drug Addicts, How to
Speaker 1: Lead Like Your Life depends on It. And I'm excited
Speaker 1: to talk about that because you're in eyes background and stories.
Speaker 1: There's a lot in common between us. But before we
Speaker 1: get into the book, we'll start like we always do,
Speaker 1: with the parable. There's a grandfather who's talking with his
Speaker 1: granddaughter and he says, in life, there are two wolves
Speaker 1: inside of us that are always at battle. One is
Speaker 1: a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery
Speaker 1: and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which
Speaker 1: represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the
Speaker 1: granddaughter stops. She thinks about it for a second. She
Speaker 1: looks up at her grandfather and she says, well, grandfather,
Speaker 1: which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed.
Speaker 1: So I'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 1: that parable means to you in your life and in
Speaker 1: the work that you do. So, first of all, what
Speaker 1: it means to me is that me being on here
Speaker 1: right now is meant to be because I used that
Speaker 1: parable and my first keynote that I ever delivered as
Speaker 1: a paid gig to carry my message before I ever
Speaker 1: wrote the book. And I always think about when I
Speaker 1: think about that parable as a recovering out of the
Speaker 1: difference between the disease of addiction and recovery from addiction.
Speaker 1: Every day I have the opportunity to feed my disease,
Speaker 1: the thing that kept me using, and every day I
Speaker 1: get the opportunity to feed my recovery. And that may
Speaker 1: not be totally new to folks that are familiar with
Speaker 1: recovery and addiction, but it also reminds me of the
Speaker 1: environment that I found in the corporate world and in
Speaker 1: the startup world, where my observation was people were almost
Speaker 1: addicted to hiding their true selves and they were addicted
Speaker 1: to managing other people's perceptions. And so when I ended
Speaker 1: up in the working world, I was being told that
Speaker 1: I had to literally stop feeding my addiction. And so
Speaker 1: it became meaningful to me both in my personal life
Speaker 1: and my professional life, where I was being told in
Speaker 1: a twelve step meeting, take your mass up, be your
Speaker 1: true self or whatever, and then I'm going to a
Speaker 1: corporate world, and it almost wants to reinforce what the
Speaker 1: disease of addiction did. And so even though I would
Speaker 1: go to my meeting and I would feed the good
Speaker 1: wolf for one hour out of a day, I would
Speaker 1: go to work and I would spend eight to ten
Speaker 1: hours in an environment that wanted to feed the bad wolf.
Speaker 1: And so every day I had to be really intentional
Speaker 1: in which one that I fed, because I did not
Speaker 1: want the bad wolf to live. Yeah, I love that.
Speaker 1: I figured the parable would be one that you know well,
Speaker 1: because that's of course where I heard it in recovery.
Speaker 1: I can't pinpoint the meeting or the time, but I
Speaker 1: know when I heard it, I was like, oh my god, right,
Speaker 1: because I heard it in my first year, I'm sure
Speaker 1: in my first probably six months of recovery, and as
Speaker 1: I often jokingly say on this show, like I wasn't
Speaker 1: even feeding the bad wolf anymore. He was eating me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a great way to say. It was just a
Speaker 1: very clear message to me about what you just said,
Speaker 1: either I'm getting better or I'm getting worse, you know.
Speaker 1: And the choices that I make about what I do
Speaker 1: with my time, my energy, my thoughts are going to dictate,
Speaker 1: you know, do I recover or not. There was a
Speaker 1: clarity to that that I found really helpful. I think
Speaker 1: there's also an interesting element where we always think, at
Speaker 1: least I do about all these decisions and moments in
Speaker 1: our lives as he's like big movie moments. And so
Speaker 1: when I thought about like calling my sponsor, for example,
Speaker 1: I thought of, you know, the desperate moment where I'm
Speaker 1: about to use and suddenly I call him and he
Speaker 1: says the day. And the thing that he explained to
Speaker 1: me was the only way that call happens is if
Speaker 1: I call him every single day when nothing's happening for
Speaker 1: like three weeks, because I have to have the muscle memory.
Speaker 1: So that way, when the crap does hit the van
Speaker 1: and I don't know what to do, it's a default
Speaker 1: behavior and that gives me the ability right to surprise
Speaker 1: myself in the really big moment. But it's all these
Speaker 1: little moments and and same thing actually, if you really
Speaker 1: want to get out around nutrition, right, like you know
Speaker 1: that people think about working out the physical fitness, you know,
Speaker 1: lifting a lot of weight, a lot of physical fitnesses
Speaker 1: around what you eat, and so the little things that
Speaker 1: you eat. It's not like the big fast and so
Speaker 1: there's just so many applications for this parable that I
Speaker 1: just I love and I just love this platform as
Speaker 1: a result of it. Yeah, I can't remember why or
Speaker 1: where I was telling this story, but I was talking
Speaker 1: about that if you looked at the movie version of
Speaker 1: my life, you'd see these big moments, like the moment
Speaker 1: that I was in in detox and they said you
Speaker 1: need to go to long term treatment and I said no,
Speaker 1: And then I went back to my room and I
Speaker 1: had a moment of clarity and I thought, I'm going
Speaker 1: to die if I go out there, and so I
Speaker 1: changed my mind. That would show up in the movie. Right,
Speaker 1: But that moment is not really any more important than
Speaker 1: the thousands of other completely unremarkable moments where I made
Speaker 1: the small decisions that kept me on my road to recovery.
Speaker 1: It's just we pull out these certain moments, we go
Speaker 1: this moment is really important, this moment is really special,
Speaker 1: But all those moments together are what equal recovery. It's
Speaker 1: the really boring, ordinary moments. I think the other saying
Speaker 1: in show business too, right, Like uh, an overnight sensation
Speaker 1: only took ten years to build Yeah, yep, same yep,
Speaker 1: same thing in the startup world, right, yes, very much
Speaker 1: so yep. So before we get too much further in
Speaker 1: the book, the book is titled, as I said, great
Speaker 1: leaders Live like drug addicts. I love the parallel you've
Speaker 1: made there. But what I want to do first is
Speaker 1: not everybody listening to this show thinks of themselves as
Speaker 1: a leader. So I want to bring leadership to everybody's
Speaker 1: level before we go further, so that everybody can kind
Speaker 1: of relate with this conversation, whether they're in corporate America
Speaker 1: or not. So let's talk about the ways in which
Speaker 1: we're all leaders. So I think everybody is respond school
Speaker 1: for leading somebody, even if it's just leading yourself. And
Speaker 1: I think we're almost always wrong in the level of
Speaker 1: importance that we have. We either always assume that we're
Speaker 1: too important or not important enough. But when you look
Speaker 1: at it through the lens of who's watching, there's always
Speaker 1: somebody in your world that's watching you looking for a
Speaker 1: queue on how to behave and how to do the
Speaker 1: right thing and not do the wrong thing, and so
Speaker 1: on and so forth, and so for me, I think
Speaker 1: early on the best example of a leader that I
Speaker 1: was ever given was a sponsor in the twelve step program,
Speaker 1: And as I became a leadership coach and all these things,
Speaker 1: I started to really appreciate the difference because when we
Speaker 1: think of leaders, I think we think of these command
Speaker 1: and control style leaders, the general on the battlefield, the
Speaker 1: corporate CEO that knows everything and doesn't do anything wrong,
Speaker 1: and where we just think about somebody is responsible for
Speaker 1: leading other people, period. But like a teacher is a leader,
Speaker 1: a mother is a leader. A child as a leader
Speaker 1: because they're leading themselves. And so how do you teach
Speaker 1: people how to be a great leader of themselves so
Speaker 1: that they can lead other people? And what I love
Speaker 1: about a sponsor is unlike a coach or an expert
Speaker 1: or even a mentor, the way that they lead you
Speaker 1: is by showing you how they lead themselves. They don't
Speaker 1: tell you I have it all, figure it out. They
Speaker 1: literally share their experience, and they share their vulnerability, and
Speaker 1: they share their challenges and they just say this is
Speaker 1: what I did, and they do not try to manage
Speaker 1: your perception in any way. And by talking about how
Speaker 1: they lead themselves through X situation, like I'll never forget
Speaker 1: my sponsor telling me about the first six months he
Speaker 1: had in recovery, had a sponsor that at month six
Speaker 1: killed himself and he was rudderless, and so I thought
Speaker 1: immediately in my head, I would relapse and I would
Speaker 1: go back out because my sponsor was trying to help
Speaker 1: keep me clean. And then he killed himself and turned
Speaker 1: out he'd been drinking the whole time. I'd say, this
Speaker 1: whole thing is screwed. But what Chuck did was he said,
Speaker 1: I went back into the meeting and I found another sponsor.
Speaker 1: And so he's not telling me a pretty scenario, right,
Speaker 1: He's telling me an ugly scenario. But in that I
Speaker 1: take a cueue for what do I do and then
Speaker 1: believe it or not. Six years later, he's no longer
Speaker 1: my sponsor, and I'm sponsorless, and I need to get
Speaker 1: a sponsor, and I don't go out, I don't do
Speaker 1: all this other stuff. I go into a meeting and
Speaker 1: I asked for one because he shared his experience. He
Speaker 1: showed me how he let himself so that I can
Speaker 1: more effectively lead myself. And I think in that vein
Speaker 1: every parent, every teacher, every volunteer, whether you're in the boardroom,
Speaker 1: the mail room, the classroom or the living room. You
Speaker 1: are leading someone, even if it's just the person in
Speaker 1: the mirror and the book. You say, the problem is
Speaker 1: we've become so focused on leading others, we've fundamentally lost
Speaker 1: the ability to lead ourselves. Yeah, I forgot that line.
Speaker 1: You just said it better. So is it weird or
Speaker 1: awkward that I'm complimenting you for reciting my line? Well?
Speaker 1: Just it just is. So we all have a role
Speaker 1: to lead people or lead ourselves. So let's talk about
Speaker 1: this fundamental thing that you see here that you're you're
Speaker 1: in recovery and you see some of the things we
Speaker 1: do in recovery, and then you go into your corporate
Speaker 1: world and you see people doing that thing and you
Speaker 1: refer to that as what you're seeing that all these
Speaker 1: other people are doing is they're wearing masks. Say a
Speaker 1: little bit more about that. Yeah, So, when I was
Speaker 1: in rehab, one of the first things they did, and
Speaker 1: this is well before a pandemic and anything else, they
Speaker 1: slapped two cardboard masks down on the table and they said,
Speaker 1: we want you to doctor one up to look like
Speaker 1: the person that you portray to the world, and we
Speaker 1: want you to make the other one look like the
Speaker 1: person that you think you are. And so of course,
Speaker 1: like the one I show the world has like George Clooney,
Speaker 1: I'm probably dating myself by saying George Clooney but has
Speaker 1: celebrities and BMW's and all this like great stuff and
Speaker 1: don't abs and you know whatever it is that you want.
Speaker 1: And then the bad mask is me trying to reimagine
Speaker 1: that advertisement where it shows someone running and says no
Speaker 1: one ever says I want to be a junkie when
Speaker 1: I grow up, and and that's that's who I actually
Speaker 1: think I am. And so that really helped me because
Speaker 1: it gave me a very physical context where I could
Speaker 1: think about when I'm hiding my true self and how
Speaker 1: addiction to drugs is a way of hiding my true self.
Speaker 1: So one of the parallels that I draw is when
Speaker 1: I was an active addiction, there were three things that
Speaker 1: I did on a regular basis. The first thing was
Speaker 1: I said yes when I should say no. I said
Speaker 1: yes to the drugs. The second thing I did was
Speaker 1: I hid my weakness, my addiction, and as a result,
Speaker 1: I starred myself with the solutions to help me get better.
Speaker 1: And the third thing that I did was I avoid
Speaker 1: difficult conversations. I think that was going to lead to
Speaker 1: a reconciliation of my addiction. I was going to avoid.
Speaker 1: And so when I went into the corporate world, being
Speaker 1: armed with a twelve step program, a sponsor, and trying
Speaker 1: to learn these behaviors, my observation was, and I've since
Speaker 1: confirmed it with a lot of research, is that all
Speaker 1: the people around me were doing the exact same things
Speaker 1: that I did in active addiction. So I said yes
Speaker 1: to drugs. They were saying yes to meetings, They were
Speaker 1: saying yes to emails. They were saying yes to projects
Speaker 1: that they all thought was unnecessary. Like thirty one hours
Speaker 1: a month right now are spent by employees on what
Speaker 1: they believe are unnecessary meetings. If the definition of addiction
Speaker 1: is doing something over and over again despite a negative consequence,
Speaker 1: that to me is the picture of addiction. And so
Speaker 1: another example is hiding a weakness. So I was hiding
Speaker 1: my addiction. Well, I remember once when I was at
Speaker 1: working in a Fortune fifty company, I spent twenty two
Speaker 1: hours trying to figure out how to use a Microsoft
Speaker 1: Excel pivot table, when I could have spent ten minutes
Speaker 1: asking someone and admitting that I didn't know how to
Speaker 1: do it, and that's leading yourself, right. I could have
Speaker 1: up my skill level to be more productive, and I
Speaker 1: was wasting so much time trying to say face in
Speaker 1: a corporate environment. And at night, I'm going to a
Speaker 1: twelve step meeting where the coolest kid in the room
Speaker 1: is a person that shares their biggest challenge and then
Speaker 1: they get a ton of help. And so it just
Speaker 1: didn't jive. And so then the third thing is avoiding
Speaker 1: difficult conversations. Man, you want to talk about learning how
Speaker 1: to do that works some twelve steps, like learn how
Speaker 1: to do amends right, Like, those types of things are
Speaker 1: really hard and for people that don't understand that, that's
Speaker 1: like when we go and we actually own all of
Speaker 1: our bad stuff that we did. And so when I
Speaker 1: was in corporate America, they would talk around issues and
Speaker 1: a team meeting, everybody would be just managing politics. And
Speaker 1: I found a stat that seventy percent of employees right
Speaker 1: now are avoiding a difficl conversation with their boss, coworker
Speaker 1: or a direct report. And that's before we start talking
Speaker 1: about customers or whatever. So at night, I'm going to
Speaker 1: a twelve step meeting and they're saying, basically, you have
Speaker 1: to be your true self or you're gonna die. I'm
Speaker 1: going into the corporate world where everybody's teaching me hide
Speaker 1: your true self in order to be successful. And I
Speaker 1: felt very, very alone. And it was not because I
Speaker 1: was in Nashville, Tennessee, and I had long hair and
Speaker 1: said dud a lot and was from California and had
Speaker 1: flipbops and hoop earrings in my ear. It was because
Speaker 1: I was saying note of things. I was having the
Speaker 1: difficult conversations and I aggressively shared my weaknesses and it's
Speaker 1: scared people, and it made me feel alone, and it
Speaker 1: made me feel different and also got me promoted like
Speaker 1: eight times and eight years. Yeah, it's interesting because I
Speaker 1: have some similar experiences. When I got sober, I got
Speaker 1: sort of into the corporate slash startup world. You know,
Speaker 1: I had always worked in restaurants before, and I think
Speaker 1: I got some of the opportunities and had some of
Speaker 1: the successes I had for some of the very reasons
Speaker 1: you're describing. You know, I just was kind of who
Speaker 1: I was. I just showed up and I just would say,
Speaker 1: I don't have any idea how to do this. Which
Speaker 1: you have to do to survive, right, But but so
Speaker 1: many people that's like the hardest thing for them to do,
Speaker 1: period totally. Yeah. So I think as you name those
Speaker 1: three things, I'm like, yeah, I think I kind of
Speaker 1: did those things. You know. I noticed over the years,
Speaker 1: I've I've talked about this on the show many times.
Speaker 1: I don't think I've talked about it recently, but I
Speaker 1: talked about how authenticity is sort of a buzzword these days.
Speaker 1: But the more I was myself at work, and I
Speaker 1: went through periods of being very radically who I was,
Speaker 1: and then I would sort of go through periods of like, well,
Speaker 1: I'm going to try and cover it up, and I'm,
Speaker 1: you know, sort of like you said, I'm I'm getting
Speaker 1: a lot of reinforcement to not be that way. But
Speaker 1: I think even through it all, I managed to remain
Speaker 1: somewhat who I was. And what I realized was the
Speaker 1: more I did that, the more I took those chances
Speaker 1: to be who I was actually at work, the better
Speaker 1: I always was at my job. And the thing is
Speaker 1: that these are like people would call soft skills, but
Speaker 1: they have hard outcomes and impacts. So Harvard Business Review
Speaker 1: says that the number one resource that's poorly managed inside
Speaker 1: of organizations. Today's time. And I've assessed over two thousand
Speaker 1: leaders at companies like Google and Dell and and startups
Speaker 1: and nonprofits, and of them report wasting ten hours a
Speaker 1: week saying yes when they could say no, hiding a weakness,
Speaker 1: or avoiding difficult conversations. And so you can sit there
Speaker 1: and say I need an MBA to be more successful,
Speaker 1: But my experience was I don't have a college degree,
Speaker 1: and I'm not I'm not diminishing the value of one.
Speaker 1: But you could also go into a twelve step meeting
Speaker 1: and for a crappy cup of coffee and a one
Speaker 1: hour of your time, you could actually learn a skill
Speaker 1: that wins you back your time, that can make you
Speaker 1: a lot more productive. But the problem is, and this
Speaker 1: is just like what I say in my book, is
Speaker 1: I think we've misdiagnosed the problem. I think it's not
Speaker 1: hard to bump into books on how to say no
Speaker 1: and how to be vulnerable and how to have difficult conversations,
Speaker 1: but we keep treating the symptoms. The real problem is
Speaker 1: is that professionals and leaders are addicted to these behaviors.
Speaker 1: And the reason I'm so passionate about the professional space.
Speaker 1: Is what I found in recovery was we talked about
Speaker 1: how this will help you personally. I think learning how
Speaker 1: to not do these three things, learning how to overcome
Speaker 1: addiction becomes a professional superpower that is not well advertised
Speaker 1: to the added community. And so most people go, oh, well,
Speaker 1: you've got to overcome addiction in order to be successful.
Speaker 1: And I'm like, well, I'm successful because of my addiction.
Speaker 1: I'm successful because of my recovery, and it's because it
Speaker 1: actually treated the problem. I'm addicted to hiding my true
Speaker 1: self first with the drugs and then my saying yes
Speaker 1: and all the other kind of stuff. By leveraging my
Speaker 1: recovery in the professional setting, I was able to be
Speaker 1: more successful because I was more efficient all that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff. And so now what I do is I
Speaker 1: literally help leaders get to the source of the problem.
Speaker 1: And I say, the reason that you took that workshop
Speaker 1: on how to say no and you're still saying yes,
Speaker 1: the reason you saw that Ted talk got all inspired
Speaker 1: and you're still avoiding difficult conversations is because your actual
Speaker 1: problem is you're addicted to wearing a mask. You are
Speaker 1: addicted to hiding yourself. And what I know about addicts
Speaker 1: is you can tell us all the information in the world.
Speaker 1: How did the DARE program work out? It didn't work
Speaker 1: out real well for me. They told me not to
Speaker 1: use drugs, They told me drugs are bad, and I
Speaker 1: still ended up in an addic Knowledge is not power.
Speaker 1: Action is power, and recovery from addiction teaches you how
Speaker 1: to turn that knowledge into action. Let's start with a
Speaker 1: story that you have that is very similar to a
Speaker 1: story I have, and you describe your relatively newly sober.
Speaker 1: You go into a halfway house and they're like, you
Speaker 1: have to go get a job. So you get an
Speaker 1: interview for a job. But the problem is, like anybody
Speaker 1: who's been in recovery for a while, you've got some
Speaker 1: big gaps in your resume, or anybody who's been, you know,
Speaker 1: in active addiction, your resume doesn't look real good. So
Speaker 1: you walk into the meeting. You've got a choice about
Speaker 1: what you're going to say. Tell us a little more
Speaker 1: about that. Yeah, So when I got into the halfway house,
Speaker 1: you know they're really serious about making sure you're you're
Speaker 1: serious about recovery. So they gave you five business days
Speaker 1: to get a job or you get kicked out. I
Speaker 1: didn't even know what a business date was. Someone had
Speaker 1: to let me know because they're an addict that that's
Speaker 1: not like that. I did not understand business culture. And
Speaker 1: if you'd ask me what a p M L is,
Speaker 1: I would have no idea what that is. So they
Speaker 1: said five business days to get a job. I've got
Speaker 1: this huge gap in my resume, and I'm not being
Speaker 1: honest because what I would say is, for the last
Speaker 1: three years, all I did was get high, and I
Speaker 1: don't think that that's going to get me a job. So, uh,
Speaker 1: I call around. I interviewed all these places and I
Speaker 1: get no job interviews, and then one place calls me
Speaker 1: for an interview on day four and it's this place
Speaker 1: called Sam Goodie. And I always say, like, if you're
Speaker 1: older than me, you know that as a record store.
Speaker 1: If you're my age, you know it's as a CD store.
Speaker 1: And if you listen three years old, you have no
Speaker 1: idea what I'm talking about Spotify, right, So I call
Speaker 1: my sponsor before the interview and I'm like, okay, so
Speaker 1: what do I tell them when they asked me about
Speaker 1: my job history? Because I have a huge gap it's
Speaker 1: not going to qualify me for the job. And I
Speaker 1: expect him to tell me a way to kind of
Speaker 1: like dance around it and you know, be able to
Speaker 1: convince them that I'm worthy of the job. And he says, Mike,
Speaker 1: just telling the truth. And you know, one of the
Speaker 1: things I've done is I've distilled down what I learned
Speaker 1: and recovering the three principles. And so the first one
Speaker 1: is practice rigorous authenticity, not just be authentic in a
Speaker 1: buzzy way all the time. So he was like, no
Speaker 1: matter how big the stakes, no matter how small the stakes,
Speaker 1: you tell them the truth. And I was like, okay, well, Chuck,
Speaker 1: if I tell them the truth, I'm not going to
Speaker 1: get the job. This job manages the cash register, I'm
Speaker 1: pretty sure. Saying that I used all day and I
Speaker 1: just got to rehab isn't gonna qual find me for that.
Speaker 1: And then I'm going to be out on the street
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna end up using again and I'm going
Speaker 1: to die. What do I actually say? And he said, well,
Speaker 1: so then you have to learn how to surrender the outcome.
Speaker 1: So it's like principle too, certainly the outcome. He literally
Speaker 1: he said this isn't about the job. This isn't about
Speaker 1: the halfway house. This is about whether you willing to
Speaker 1: practice these principles and all your affairs. And so I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: so then what do I actually do? And so it
Speaker 1: gets the third principle that I teach, do uncomfortable work,
Speaker 1: do what nobody else would do. Go in there and
Speaker 1: tell him the truth. I was scared to death, and
Speaker 1: the only reason that I followed his suggestion was because
Speaker 1: the only thing I was scared of more than not
Speaker 1: getting that job was relapse. And so I walked in.
Speaker 1: We're in the job interview. I'm starting to sweat. My
Speaker 1: heart's racing because I'm scared. We're gonna get to the
Speaker 1: work history thing. I'm still got like the devil's on
Speaker 1: my shoulder and the angel on the other side. What
Speaker 1: do you say? And I start doing what addicts do,
Speaker 1: and I start thinking about how I can calm him. Oh,
Speaker 1: I can tell him that I was, like, you know,
Speaker 1: writing a book. I could tell him that I was
Speaker 1: helping needy children, and right, I could tell him all
Speaker 1: these things about this work history. And then I just
Speaker 1: think about those three principles. Practice, rigorous authenticity, surrender, the outcome,
Speaker 1: do uncomfortable work. And I did something that I've never
Speaker 1: done before, and I did the uncomfortable work, and I
Speaker 1: told him exactly the truth. I said, I just got
Speaker 1: out of rehab. I've been using for the last three years,
Speaker 1: and I'm in a halfway house, and if I don't
Speaker 1: get this job, I'll be out on the street. And
Speaker 1: at the end of the job interview, he looked at
Speaker 1: me and he smiled and he said, when can you start?
Speaker 1: And I still get emotional when I think about that story,
Speaker 1: because I really think my whole life would have been
Speaker 1: different if you had said you don't get the job
Speaker 1: and you're out on the street, because it would have
Speaker 1: given me a conflict that I had to reconcile. But
Speaker 1: I feel like it was just so perfect because not
Speaker 1: only did I see that my recovery could be prioritized
Speaker 1: and I could surrender an outcome and still be successful.
Speaker 1: But for my luck, it was the first battleground for
Speaker 1: my program and it isn't a professional setting, which I
Speaker 1: think really set the tone for everything I've been doing
Speaker 1: since I never would have known the interviewing for a
Speaker 1: job at sam Good he would have meant so much
Speaker 1: to me, I'd still be telling this story at a
Speaker 1: time when nobody knows who Sam good he is. But
Speaker 1: I was fortunate enough to have a sponsor that said,
Speaker 1: what's true in God's world anywhere, It's true everywhere and
Speaker 1: regardless of your definition of God. It was something that
Speaker 1: really helped me um and I was an atheist at
Speaker 1: the time, and I learned to surrender the outcome and
Speaker 1: it really it changed my life. Yeah, that's an amazing story.
Speaker 1: I have one that's almost identical. I was just out
Speaker 1: of a halfway house as and I had gotten out
Speaker 1: of one. It was one that you didn't work in,
Speaker 1: so it was maybe some like a three quarterhouse or something.
Speaker 1: I don't know, but I had identified This job I
Speaker 1: wanted was with a company called compy Serve. Copy Serve
Speaker 1: is one of the first online companies. I had no
Speaker 1: idea what I was getting into. I just knew like
Speaker 1: they paid really well and there was a gym I
Speaker 1: could do and it wasn't a restaurant, and I was
Speaker 1: desperate to not go back into the restaurant business just
Speaker 1: because that was so tied to my partying and same thing.
Speaker 1: Get in there and they're like, well, what's with your
Speaker 1: job history and why are you qualified for this job?
Speaker 1: And I just was like, well, i just got out
Speaker 1: of a halfway house. I'm a I'm a heroin addict,
Speaker 1: but I'm working this program or recovery, and I'm willing
Speaker 1: to work really, really hard for you. You know, I
Speaker 1: just told him the truth and got hired, and that
Speaker 1: launched my entire technology career. You and I, we know
Speaker 1: tons of people that have a story like this, Right,
Speaker 1: I've got a friend that applied to four different graduate
Speaker 1: programs and in the first application he lied about his
Speaker 1: recovery story and and his gap and why he got
Speaker 1: kicked out of college when he was younger. And then
Speaker 1: he talked to his sponsor and he was honest on
Speaker 1: the other three. Guess which one he didn't get into,
Speaker 1: and guests which once he got into he got into
Speaker 1: all the ones where he was honest about it. So
Speaker 1: the reason I'm so passionate about, like the message in
Speaker 1: my book, the message I carry in general, is not
Speaker 1: everybody's an addict, but everybody can relate to being in
Speaker 1: that job interview and not wanting to volunteer the worst
Speaker 1: thing about them, right, everybody can relate to that struggle
Speaker 1: and I don't mean just like, hey, you're not that
Speaker 1: great at Microsoft Excel. I mean the worst thing about you,
Speaker 1: I'm a freaking drug addict, dude, Like that's the worst thing.
Speaker 1: And So if everybody can relate to that pitt in
Speaker 1: their stomach, of of that up in the resume that
Speaker 1: the weakness, whatever the personal limitations they have, I want
Speaker 1: them to know that we you and I and others
Speaker 1: like us are collecting thousands, if not millions of stories
Speaker 1: of people that go in there and prove that you
Speaker 1: can take the mask off, that you can be yourself
Speaker 1: and you can still be successful because of a drug
Speaker 1: addic can own their story and a job interview and
Speaker 1: be successful. There's nothing that anyone else that has something
Speaker 1: that's holding them back can't do. We just happen to
Speaker 1: have a more catchy story and more dramatic example. But
Speaker 1: everybody can relate to that pit in the stomach that
Speaker 1: I had in that interview. But most people don't have
Speaker 1: the same incentive that I had. I, like you, I
Speaker 1: was walking around with a loaded gun pointed in my
Speaker 1: head that said, you have to practice these principles and
Speaker 1: all your affairs or you die. And like I heard
Speaker 1: on one of your other podcasts, and the things that
Speaker 1: you talk about, I had other people that believed in
Speaker 1: these principles you talk in your ted talk about um
Speaker 1: if you have six people that are committed to the
Speaker 1: same thing, greater chance of success. When you into a
Speaker 1: twelve step meeting and you hang out with a bunch
Speaker 1: of the other recovering outicts that value living by surrendering
Speaker 1: the outcome, suddenly you can be the different person that
Speaker 1: goes into a job interview and you're really real. And
Speaker 1: I will tell you, since I've become an employer, since
Speaker 1: I became a CEO and run multiple companies, in my
Speaker 1: job interviews, I have developed tactics to try to get
Speaker 1: to a place where I can find out if you
Speaker 1: have the capacity to do what I did, because I'm
Speaker 1: more likely to want an employee that can be honest
Speaker 1: about their weaknesses and their challenges and their failures, because
Speaker 1: then I trust that they'll be able to grow the
Speaker 1: same way that I did. And if they try to
Speaker 1: like front and wear that mask in the interview, I
Speaker 1: don't trust them no matter how good they are. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: So let's talk about the program in a little bit
Speaker 1: more detail. You've sort of mentioned the three. I don't
Speaker 1: know if you call them pillars or steps, but practice
Speaker 1: rigorous authenticity, surrender the outcome, and do the uncomfortable work.
Speaker 1: But first, before we go into each of those in
Speaker 1: a little more detail, let's talk about the different types
Speaker 1: of masks that people wear. You've identified for common one,
Speaker 1: and you sort of touched on them here a little bit,
Speaker 1: but but let's sort of call them out. These are
Speaker 1: the four common masks that people wear. Yeah, when I
Speaker 1: developed the mask assessment, I started off with like fifty
Speaker 1: of them. With my hypothesis true addict I was it
Speaker 1: was a back or white. It was gonna be none
Speaker 1: or a lot. And as I administered it and I
Speaker 1: started to get feedback and see the trends in the data,
Speaker 1: I started to see that they all had a common trend.
Speaker 1: And so the four masks are saying yes when you
Speaker 1: could say no, hiding a weakness, avoiding difficult conversations, and
Speaker 1: holding back your unique perspective. And so all four of
Speaker 1: these masks have a different cost for you as an
Speaker 1: individual and different costs for an organization, but they're all
Speaker 1: driven by essentially the fear of what other people think.
Speaker 1: And it's all driven by the inability to surrender the outcome.
Speaker 1: So when you want to say no to the meeting
Speaker 1: or the project or the task or whatever, you're worried
Speaker 1: what your boss will think, your team will think. It's
Speaker 1: hard to surrender the outcome. How to overcome that fear,
Speaker 1: And that's what an addict is taught to do working
Speaker 1: until step program. When you think, just like I did that.
Speaker 1: If you get found out for not knowing how to
Speaker 1: do something, you say, I don't know, people are gonna
Speaker 1: think less of you, they'll trust you less, all that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. See, you hide weaknesses. I think difficult
Speaker 1: conversations are really hard because I mean, you can get
Speaker 1: kicked out of the tribe. And so as a result
Speaker 1: of the two most common forms of this that we
Speaker 1: see is performance management people not giving people constructive criticism
Speaker 1: that can help them grow, and then customer negotiations and
Speaker 1: then holding back your unique perspective. Is is kind of
Speaker 1: like the cherry on top because that's where all innovation
Speaker 1: happens and all blind spots get checked. And we see
Speaker 1: with organizations that you'll have like fifty people in the
Speaker 1: room and the executive assistant might be able to identify
Speaker 1: a blind spot or identify an opportunity for innovation, but
Speaker 1: you don't get access to it because they only want
Speaker 1: to hear the CEO and they're scared of what they're
Speaker 1: gonna say, so they hide their mass. In my company,
Speaker 1: I had fifty people. We had this thing called the
Speaker 1: idea graveyard, and all the bad ideas that lived in
Speaker 1: that graveyard were mine. And that was a way to
Speaker 1: be symbolic to create psychological safety for all my team, Like,
Speaker 1: I want your ideas, truly, I want your unique perspective. Truly,
Speaker 1: I want fifty unique perspectives, not one or two or three.
Speaker 1: And I think that right now, professionals not only I mean,
Speaker 1: we see people that are wearing these masks in their
Speaker 1: personal life and the professional life, as managers, as CEOs,
Speaker 1: as direct reports. And like I said, it cost him
Speaker 1: about five hours a year. It's more pervasive than addiction
Speaker 1: to alcohol, drugs, sex, and gambling combined. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: certainly think even years of recovery, these things are really hard.
Speaker 1: I think I end up finding them harder in certain
Speaker 1: personal situations than in work situations. But but even within
Speaker 1: work situations, as I'm as I'm hearing you talk and
Speaker 1: I'm I'm reviewing my history. I'd like to think why, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I I always had my mask off. No I didn't,
Speaker 1: you know, No, I mean there are plenty of times
Speaker 1: that I did this, Like I think about like avoiding
Speaker 1: difficult conversations, Like my hardest difficult conversations were with people
Speaker 1: I managed, yeah, and having the courage to tell them
Speaker 1: they were doing well. Yeah, that was my achilles heel.
Speaker 1: And it took me a while because for a while
Speaker 1: I thought, well, I just don't want to do it,
Speaker 1: because I don't want to be mean. I want to
Speaker 1: be nice. Until I finally realized, like, I'm not being kind,
Speaker 1: I'm being scared. It's not helping them, it's hurting them
Speaker 1: in the long run. I mean, that was one that
Speaker 1: took me a lot of my career to really get
Speaker 1: better at, and I still feel like it was probably
Speaker 1: the area I was weakest. So what we do with
Speaker 1: the Master programs we take the power of the twelve
Speaker 1: Steps and how it helps you address addiction, and we
Speaker 1: turn it into these really simple things that we call
Speaker 1: an action card that allows anyone addict or not to
Speaker 1: really apply the power of the Towell Steps to specific
Speaker 1: practical situations. Like what you just talked about. So, for example,
Speaker 1: we have in our program a dude that it is
Speaker 1: going to be a new father, and he wanted to
Speaker 1: take three months of paternity leave in a company that
Speaker 1: doesn't necessarily respect that. And so he knows he's going
Speaker 1: to be tempted to say yes when he could say
Speaker 1: no on paternity leave. Right, he knows people are gonna
Speaker 1: ask him for help, they're gonna want to check in
Speaker 1: on the plan, They're gonna I do all these kind
Speaker 1: of things. It's already happened, and so he had to
Speaker 1: apply these principles. Practicing res Authenticity means identifying the mass
Speaker 1: that he wants to wear. He wants to say yes
Speaker 1: when he could say no, But what he really wants
Speaker 1: to be is present with his new daughter and his wife.
Speaker 1: That's what he really wants to be. So surrender the outcome.
Speaker 1: He has to surrender the fear of what everybody's gonna
Speaker 1: think and what's gonna happen to his job if he
Speaker 1: prioritizes his family, And then the uncomfortable work is he
Speaker 1: had to actually create a paternity plan that declared I
Speaker 1: will be zero available, not I might be available a
Speaker 1: little bit here there, I'll be zero available and then
Speaker 1: go over it with his manager, fearful of what his
Speaker 1: manager would say. Right. And so we've got stories of this,
Speaker 1: like what you just said. A CEO that was good
Speaker 1: at giving performance feedback to his direct reports, but terrible
Speaker 1: at their direct reports because it was awkward because they
Speaker 1: weren't directly managed by him. But he wanted to give
Speaker 1: him constructive criticism, and so he said that literally his
Speaker 1: stress level was at an eight and he was carrying
Speaker 1: their work and it would be at a three if
Speaker 1: he could just get over that fear. And this is
Speaker 1: the CEO of a sixty million dollar company, right. We
Speaker 1: have a new employee that started a job and didn't
Speaker 1: want to say I don't know, and they were inhibiting
Speaker 1: their ramps. So they used one of these action cards
Speaker 1: on the mask of hiding a weakness, and they were
Speaker 1: able to declare I don't know, I don't know, I
Speaker 1: don't know, and they were able to be more successful.
Speaker 1: We got someone that was a corporate executive that quit
Speaker 1: to become an entrepreneur and she had to work the
Speaker 1: mask of my unique perspective because she was on the
Speaker 1: corporate track to be successful, and she decided to do
Speaker 1: her own thing. But then we also had an entrepreneur
Speaker 1: that quit their business venture and joined a corporate job
Speaker 1: because they were hiding a weakness that they were not
Speaker 1: a successful entrepreneur. The point is that everybody's like hiding
Speaker 1: themselves behind one of these masks on a regular basis.
Speaker 1: And what we try to do is take kind of
Speaker 1: the self help, personal help, even professional development that's fuzzy,
Speaker 1: and apply to these really concrete situations that everybody can
Speaker 1: relate to where you have this tremendous fear and empower
Speaker 1: them to overcome that fear and do the uncomfortable work
Speaker 1: as if their life depended on it, the same way
Speaker 1: that we learned and recovery. W Let's just take difficult conversations.
Speaker 1: So I'm avoiding a difficult conversation, whether it be with
Speaker 1: an employee works for me that is not doing a
Speaker 1: great job, or why I was in a marriage for
Speaker 1: years where I avoided nearly every cord. I avoided a
Speaker 1: lot of difficult conversations, you know. And what I was
Speaker 1: doing by that was, as you've eloquently laid out, I
Speaker 1: was trying to control the outcome completely. I've worked with
Speaker 1: a lot of people in a coaching program. I'm sure
Speaker 1: that the hands and the audience are shooting up right now,
Speaker 1: going that's me. I'm avoiding difficult conversations. So what are
Speaker 1: some practical ways we can work through that. The first
Speaker 1: thing is is getting really clear on who you're avoiding them.
Speaker 1: A lot of times people will generalize, but it's the
Speaker 1: fear of what another person thinks that puts the mask
Speaker 1: on our face. That fear is the glue, and so
Speaker 1: you have to be really clear on who you're scared of.
Speaker 1: We're avoiding different conversations everywhere, but the one that really
Speaker 1: gives you the z in the stomach, the one that
Speaker 1: gives you the most cost is, let's just say, for example,
Speaker 1: it is the wife. Let's just say that, since you
Speaker 1: brought that up, right, I actually had a CEO of
Speaker 1: a company that was avoiding different conversations with his wife
Speaker 1: and they were estranged and it was costing him his marriage. Right,
Speaker 1: And so the first thing that we do is we say, okay,
Speaker 1: so the way that you practice for your authenticity is
Speaker 1: you get really real about, Hey, I'm avoiding a different conversation,
Speaker 1: here'sho it with, and here's what's costing me so traditional,
Speaker 1: just like inventory stuff. So surrendering the outcome is where
Speaker 1: everybody gets messed up. And so this is the pivotal principle.
Speaker 1: So really practical tool for anyone listening right now is
Speaker 1: take out a piece of paper and just literally draw
Speaker 1: a line down the middle and put can't control on
Speaker 1: the top left and can't control on the top right.
Speaker 1: And so when we surrender the outcome, most people intellect
Speaker 1: stually understand, yeah, I need to let that go. I
Speaker 1: can't control of the customer buys. I can't control of
Speaker 1: the wife loves me. I can't control she stays. We
Speaker 1: intellectually get this. Up until twenty five years ago, knowledge
Speaker 1: was power. We're an information overload. Knowledge is no longer power.
Speaker 1: Action is in recovery, we say action over insight. And
Speaker 1: so the problem is how do you take that knowing
Speaker 1: and actually turn it into action. And so the way
Speaker 1: that we teach people is really simple, and you have
Speaker 1: to engage literally your body in doing this work. You
Speaker 1: take that piece of paper and then they can't control column.
Speaker 1: You write down three things that you can't control related
Speaker 1: to this person. I can't control the wife, how she
Speaker 1: responds to what I say. I can't control what she
Speaker 1: does next, and I can't control that I feel a
Speaker 1: way that she may not like. Right, you write those
Speaker 1: things down. I can't control these things then, and they
Speaker 1: can't control column You say, what can I control? And
Speaker 1: here's a tip that can't control columns all about the
Speaker 1: other person, that can't control columns all about you. So
Speaker 1: I can control whether or not I'm honest with my wife.
Speaker 1: I can control how I communicate with her. So there
Speaker 1: are ways that I can communicate that are gonna be
Speaker 1: more effective. And I can control when I communicate with her,
Speaker 1: like if she's really piste off about something, maybe that's
Speaker 1: not the right time to bring up a difficult conversation. Right,
Speaker 1: So there are all these things you can control. And
Speaker 1: so people when they start going this exercise and go,
Speaker 1: wait a second, I've just like a pair of binocular
Speaker 1: has gotten a little bit more clear and what the
Speaker 1: variables are here. But then we're not done. I say,
Speaker 1: go through that piece of paper, and now what I
Speaker 1: want you to do is I want you to stare
Speaker 1: it each can't control, and then exit out and literally
Speaker 1: with a pen, you have to engage your body to
Speaker 1: do it. Exit out, and you do that for all
Speaker 1: three can't controls, and as you do that, you will
Speaker 1: start to all of a sudden release the outcome a
Speaker 1: little bit. And then you go down the can't control
Speaker 1: column and you circle each one, and as you do that,
Speaker 1: you're literally engaging your body and getting your brain to
Speaker 1: unclenched on the outcome, redirect all that energy the things
Speaker 1: that you can't control, and double down on the things
Speaker 1: that you can. And when they're done with this piece
Speaker 1: of paper and they step back, I say, look at
Speaker 1: all the can't controls. If you let one of these go,
Speaker 1: which one will give you the most emotional freedom? And
Speaker 1: it's usually not the one they think is. Their brain
Speaker 1: will answer, but I'm like, no, which won't give you
Speaker 1: the most emotional freedom. So maybe it's like, oh, I
Speaker 1: can't control what she thinks is like the intellectual answer
Speaker 1: the emotional answers. I can't control how she responds because
Speaker 1: I'm scared of her response. Put a star by that one,
Speaker 1: and then in they can't control which one of these
Speaker 1: is going to objectively make you more successful? And it's
Speaker 1: like how I communicate with her will make me more successful?
Speaker 1: Put a star next to that one, and then I
Speaker 1: have them write down again, can't control this, can't control this.
Speaker 1: So just the ones they picked, and I tell them
Speaker 1: to read it one minute a day, and after twenty days,
Speaker 1: they've rewired their fight or flight response. They've rewired their
Speaker 1: natural inclination to focus on what they can't control and
Speaker 1: redirect that energy to what they can control, and it
Speaker 1: actually allows them to go do this thing called uncom
Speaker 1: will work. And so in that scenario, would you say
Speaker 1: wait twenty days to have that conversation or would that
Speaker 1: depend It would be arrogant for me to offer absolute
Speaker 1: advice because I'm not God. But and you know that, um,
Speaker 1: but I have to do that disclaimer to feel better
Speaker 1: about myself. People when they start doing this work, they
Speaker 1: get a sense of urgency and they feel like, I
Speaker 1: gotta do this right now, I gotta do this right now.
Speaker 1: Depending on how important it is, I would wait, yeah,
Speaker 1: I would wait now. At the same time reading this
Speaker 1: little statement every day, it's not to say this isn't
Speaker 1: black and white, right, So it's not to say that
Speaker 1: on day fifteen, if a difficult conversation comes up that
Speaker 1: you don't like, lean into it and have it. But
Speaker 1: what we're really trying to do is when when those
Speaker 1: things come up, when fire flight gets triggered, adrenaline pumps
Speaker 1: through our body, our field of vision narrows, and we
Speaker 1: become our lesser selves. And so if you can reprogram
Speaker 1: yourself to start to have that reflex of Okay, I
Speaker 1: can't control that, I can't control this. My wife always
Speaker 1: tells me, you underestimate everything that you learn as an addict.
Speaker 1: Literally everything is that you learn how to go from
Speaker 1: what you can't control to what you can faster than
Speaker 1: everybody else. And so if fifteen days of reading that
Speaker 1: card would be enough, I think, but you know, the
Speaker 1: more the better. We say, after twenty eight days, we
Speaker 1: want you to do a new card with a with
Speaker 1: a new thing that you're working on. But it depends
Speaker 1: on the situation. But generally speaking, I would say, um,
Speaker 1: you'd want to wait fifteen and twenty days if you could.
Speaker 1: And I guess the risk or the thing to watch
Speaker 1: for there is waiting until we're not afraid to do it,
Speaker 1: because that they may never come right. So that's why
Speaker 1: you lead into the next step, which is you're doing
Speaker 1: this uncomfortable work. You know, I know what I used
Speaker 1: to get into is sort of a variation on your exercise.
Speaker 1: I couldn't have put it into those terms exactly, but
Speaker 1: I would have had the gist of it in my mind.
Speaker 1: Control can't control. I think it would have been really
Speaker 1: helpful to walk through that process. But then there's a
Speaker 1: sense that, like, I need to figure out how to
Speaker 1: not be afraid of this in order to do it.
Speaker 1: And my experience is, yes, managing the fear is good,
Speaker 1: and then there still is a time that I'm uncomfortable
Speaker 1: and I need to move forward. Yeah, that's why we
Speaker 1: don't call it comfortable work. And so like people be like, well,
Speaker 1: how do I get to a place where I'm fearless,
Speaker 1: I'm like, dude, I'm a public speaker for a living,
Speaker 1: and I'm scared every time. The key is not to
Speaker 1: be fearless. The key is to know how to walk
Speaker 1: through the fear. And one of the things that helps
Speaker 1: is this canon can't control the surrendering the outcome. And
Speaker 1: you're You're absolutely right. It's not waiting for when you
Speaker 1: don't have the fear of the pain. It's learning how
Speaker 1: to be comfortable with the discomfort. In my experience, though,
Speaker 1: going back to the thing that you said in your
Speaker 1: TED talk, The reason that my book calls out building
Speaker 1: this whole masterie program that has a bunch of other
Speaker 1: people that are doing the same thing is because if
Speaker 1: you have other people that value doing uncomfortable work demonstrating
Speaker 1: how they're doing it, and you all share on a
Speaker 1: monthly basis, Hey here's where I did my uncomfortable work,
Speaker 1: you literally inverse the stigma that you have around the
Speaker 1: mask in the first place. You inverse the reward center
Speaker 1: where like so like one of the things I told
Speaker 1: people when they're scared of like public speaking, is I say,
Speaker 1: collect detractors. Your job is to get five or tend detractors.
Speaker 1: Like I was doing social media posting. Someone on one
Speaker 1: of my videos called me a sociopath, and I normally
Speaker 1: would have been like wanting to argue with them and
Speaker 1: be like and at the same time be like, well,
Speaker 1: I guess one a sociopath. I probably wouldn't think that
Speaker 1: I am one. So I don't really know if this
Speaker 1: is true. But I literally went back to my group
Speaker 1: that values doing uncomfortable work and I said, hey, I
Speaker 1: got my hater. And so if you're around other people
Speaker 1: that are doing this process, which is the real magic
Speaker 1: of recovery. It's not just a process that you do
Speaker 1: by learning through a book or through a course or whatever.
Speaker 1: It's by doing it with other people in the exact
Speaker 1: same process and journey. Suddenly you get people that prize
Speaker 1: doing uncomfortable work. And then when you go into those moments,
Speaker 1: Like chapter six in my book, I talked about how
Speaker 1: I went into a bar. I had a year and
Speaker 1: a half clean and it was an off site for
Speaker 1: my team, and everybody was drinking, and I wanted to drink.
Speaker 1: If I hadn't had a society full of people that
Speaker 1: were committed to not drinking that I had called before
Speaker 1: that I was texting during that, I knew I would
Speaker 1: be able to call after and go to a meeting
Speaker 1: and see them later and be able to share this story.
Speaker 1: I would have wanted to be part of that group,
Speaker 1: and I would take in their value system. So your
Speaker 1: ability to do this uncomfortable work is is not conditioned
Speaker 1: on you not having the fear. It's using both this
Speaker 1: process and other people engaged in this process to be
Speaker 1: able to walk through that fear. And what we do
Speaker 1: in our mastery program is every month professionals meet, they
Speaker 1: build a little card on the biggest challenge in their life,
Speaker 1: for the biggest growth opportunity, whatever mask is holding them back.
Speaker 1: They identify specific uncomfortable work, they go read the card,
Speaker 1: they go do the uncomfortable work. They come back, report
Speaker 1: and do it again, and we're seeing massive breakthroughs. We're
Speaker 1: just modeling the same thing added to do in twelve
Speaker 1: step recovery, right, And I love that idea of yeah,
Speaker 1: we need to find people to do this work with
Speaker 1: whatever that challenges. You know, it's one of the most
Speaker 1: valuable things about recovery is learning to ask for help.
Speaker 1: It is. And you know, one thing though that I
Speaker 1: learned is an entrepreneur. I found an organization called EO
Speaker 1: Entrepreneurs organization for entrepreneurs running business a million dollars in
Speaker 1: revenue and more. And I thought it would be twelve
Speaker 1: step for CEOs, and so I went in there and
Speaker 1: we were all on the same challenge. We were all
Speaker 1: committed to meeting and sharing stuff. But what I found
Speaker 1: was everybody was using a different system for how they
Speaker 1: lead themselves. Everybody had a different framework somewhere using the
Speaker 1: integram personally. Others we're using, you know, the entrepreneur operating
Speaker 1: system professionally, everybody was using a slightly different language, and
Speaker 1: it's like going to a restaurant restaurant industry guy um
Speaker 1: at the beginning, and it's like trying to order something
Speaker 1: and everybody in the supply chain speaking in different language.
Speaker 1: It's extremely inefficient. But I could go to downtown Columbus
Speaker 1: actually true story, and be the only white guy in
Speaker 1: a meeting in the middle of the projects and feel
Speaker 1: like different and be able to feel loved and the same.
Speaker 1: And going to that meeting, say I might I'm an addict.
Speaker 1: I'm struggling with step two and fifty. People know exactly,
Speaker 1: like not generally, they know exactly what I'm struggling with.
Speaker 1: Their experience is tuned exactly to what I need to hear.
Speaker 1: I felt more loved in that meeting than I did
Speaker 1: in Corporate America. Right. And so there's the efficiency of
Speaker 1: if you're with other people that are working the same
Speaker 1: system for how you lead yourself, there's an efficiency that
Speaker 1: is the same efficient. And see when we're all speaking
Speaker 1: English or we're all speaking a different you know, a
Speaker 1: different language, I want to be just projected English. But
Speaker 1: there's an efficiency there that just allows us to be
Speaker 1: so much more successful and realize our potential. Yeah, I agree,
Speaker 1: and I think that's a really interesting idea. Got this
Speaker 1: program called Spiritual Habits. We ran a group course last
Speaker 1: I don't know, maybe last summer spring. I don't know
Speaker 1: when it was. I think it was summer. And what
Speaker 1: we did is we took the big group in the
Speaker 1: big group separated into small groups. So we'd meet once
Speaker 1: a week is a big group, and I'd sort of
Speaker 1: give the teachings, and then the small groups would meet
Speaker 1: once a week. And those groups are still meeting. And
Speaker 1: what's so interesting about it is kind of what you
Speaker 1: just said, there's this framework for talking about all right,
Speaker 1: we're talking about this spiritual habit. We all know what
Speaker 1: we mean by it. You know. I found that I
Speaker 1: had that experience in recovery, and I also have had it.
Speaker 1: I've been a pretty serious Zen practitioner for several years.
Speaker 1: It's been really interesting because it's just you keep coming
Speaker 1: back to the same stories, the same language. Now, what
Speaker 1: I find interesting about that is that, at least for me,
Speaker 1: urinized path diverged a little bit in that I'm not
Speaker 1: real active in twelve step recovery anymore. I've sort of
Speaker 1: moved away from it, and I have mixed feelings about that.
Speaker 1: I have moments I think, well, that's a mistake. But
Speaker 1: at a certain point there were certain limitations to the
Speaker 1: language I felt that felt like I kept getting sort
Speaker 1: of slotted into the same things. So while I think
Speaker 1: there's a real benefit in that commonality, there's also the
Speaker 1: question of does that at a certain point perhaps become limiting.
Speaker 1: I don't know, but I think it's an interesting question.
Speaker 1: I think in order to have something of value, you
Speaker 1: need to give something up. Yeah, so there are trade
Speaker 1: offs and everything. I love that, and so the more
Speaker 1: framework creates clarity you're going to sacrifice application and value
Speaker 1: in other ways that that is worth it. And so
Speaker 1: I'm still really active in tool step. But I also
Speaker 1: perceived a limitation, right. I had enough sponsors that would
Speaker 1: call me and be like, hey man, what do I
Speaker 1: do with this work situation. I'd be like, just practice
Speaker 1: as principles and all the affairs, Dude, did you not
Speaker 1: read the twelve step? And they'd be like, okay, Mike,
Speaker 1: that's great, but this is like a job and my
Speaker 1: boss doesn't work the program, So like, I can't be
Speaker 1: honest about my you know, vulnerability or my challenge with them, like, actually,
Speaker 1: you can and it will make you more successful, but
Speaker 1: you have to trust that. And what I learned was,
Speaker 1: at least for me, I was ignoring the fact that
Speaker 1: the twelve step language and framework wasn't exactly very professionally fluent,
Speaker 1: and so as much as I tried to apply the
Speaker 1: twelve Step to professional situations, I lost a lot in
Speaker 1: the translation. Without being really intentional about making a real translation.
Speaker 1: I kept using a blunt tool for something that was
Speaker 1: very nuanced, right, Like, I mean, you know, talking about
Speaker 1: a power point presentation. The twelve Steps does not contemplate
Speaker 1: a power point presentation or Microsoftict'll pivot tables for that matter.
Speaker 1: It doesn't contemplate negotiating a raise with your boss. It
Speaker 1: doesn't contemplate the same goodie story that I told. So
Speaker 1: what I learned was, Hey, there is a limitation here,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to take how I took this relatively
Speaker 1: blunt tool for this particular area, and I'm going to
Speaker 1: make a very direct translation, and it's a supplement that
Speaker 1: enhances someone's ability people in my program, recovering addicts or not.
Speaker 1: I love the fact that you saw a limitation and
Speaker 1: you decided not only to pursue higher levels of spiritual
Speaker 1: enlightenment for yourself, but also turn around and help others.
Speaker 1: And you and I both know that the that sometimes
Speaker 1: an addic can get lost doing that. And as long
Speaker 1: as you don't get lost, which I can already tell
Speaker 1: just talking to you, you are not um as long
Speaker 1: as you're not one of the people that get untethered.
Speaker 1: It is arrogance to think that, for example, the twelve
Speaker 1: step is the only way that someone can get clean
Speaker 1: and stay clean. Like I learned that early on when
Speaker 1: I had a sponsor that left our program for another
Speaker 1: spiritual program. I called my sponsor and I said, he's
Speaker 1: gonna relapse. It's the end of the world. What am
Speaker 1: I gonna do? Oh my god, he's an idiot. And
Speaker 1: and he's like, uh, do you know this thing called humility?
Speaker 1: And I'm like what It's like, it's pretty arrogant for
Speaker 1: you to think that you know what he needs in
Speaker 1: order to keep his program going. There's a lot more
Speaker 1: to what we do that works for other people. So
Speaker 1: you're just gonna have to humble yourself and trust that
Speaker 1: there's a bigger plan. There's more than one way. And
Speaker 1: maybe he's going to get exactly what he needs. And
Speaker 1: I got humbled and I learned, and so unfortunately, as
Speaker 1: a human is an addict. I want the world to
Speaker 1: be binary and clean and neat, and it's very very great.
Speaker 1: It is very very gray. Well, you and I are
Speaker 1: out of time, but we're going to continue talking about this.
Speaker 1: I'd like to explore this idea of working in or
Speaker 1: out of a twelve step program and some of the
Speaker 1: pros and cons. And I also want to talk about
Speaker 1: a couple other ideas that you bring up in the book,
Speaker 1: and one of them is really about how hard it
Speaker 1: is to spot our own self deception, how hard it
Speaker 1: is to see ourselves. So we're gonna talk about that
Speaker 1: in a couple of other things. We'll do that in
Speaker 1: the post show conversation. Listeners, if you'd like access to
Speaker 1: the post show conversation to other great things like ad
Speaker 1: free episodes, a special episode I do each week called
Speaker 1: Teaching Song and a poem. And you want the pleasure
Speaker 1: of supporting the show, you can go to one you feed,
Speaker 1: dot net, slash join and become a member. So thank
Speaker 1: you so much, Michael. I have really enjoyed this conversation.
Speaker 1: It's been fun. Thanks man. If what you just heard
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