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Speaker 1: to one you feed dot net slash habits.
Speaker 3: Control can be a hungry ghost because you'll never have
Speaker 3: enough of it. It will never actually soothe the existential
Speaker 3: discomfort of whatever it is trying to be in relationship
Speaker 3: or trying to be in the world, trying to be
Speaker 3: in your career.
Speaker 4: Welcome to the one you feed Throughout time, great thinkers
Speaker 4: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have quotes
Speaker 4: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you
Speaker 4: think ring true. And yet for many of us, our
Speaker 4: thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 4: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 4: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 4: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 4: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 4: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 4: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 4: the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Thanks
Speaker 4: for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Jenny Blake,
Speaker 4: an author, podcaster, and founder of Pivot Method, a growth
Speaker 4: strategy company that helps forward thinking individuals and organizations map
Speaker 4: what's next. Her motto is, if change is the only constant,
Speaker 4: let's get better at it. Jenny is an international keynote
Speaker 4: speaker and the author of three books, including Life after
Speaker 4: College from twenty eleven, Pivot The Only Move That Matters
Speaker 4: is Your Next One from twenty sixteen, and her new
Speaker 4: book discussed here, Free Time, Lose the Busy, Work, Love
Speaker 4: your Business.
Speaker 1: Hi. Jenny welcome to the show.
Speaker 2: Hi, Eric, thank you for having me. I'm delighted to
Speaker 2: be here.
Speaker 1: Yes, you and I are in Gotham Production Studios in
Speaker 1: New York City. So we are here, Jenny and I
Speaker 1: for a week of in person interviews, which are always
Speaker 1: so joyous for me, and particularly being with you. It's
Speaker 1: really been fun to get to know you, and I'm
Speaker 1: glad you're here.
Speaker 3: Likewise, I know it's such a treat to meet for
Speaker 3: the first and just a hit record. So in a way,
Speaker 3: if you're listening to this, you're experiencing this connection and
Speaker 3: conversation in the exact same way that we are.
Speaker 2: So that's always.
Speaker 3: Has a little edge. Get a little nervous, but the
Speaker 3: good kind of nervous.
Speaker 4: Yep.
Speaker 1: We're going to be discussing your book called Free Time,
Speaker 1: but before we do, let's start like we always do
Speaker 1: with the Parable. In the Parable, there's a grandparent who's
Speaker 1: talking with their grandchild and they say, in life, there
Speaker 1: are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle.
Speaker 1: One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness
Speaker 1: and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf,
Speaker 1: which represents things like greed and hatred and fear, and
Speaker 1: the grandchild stops and they think about it for a
Speaker 1: second and they look at it their grandparent. They say, well,
Speaker 1: which one wins? And the grandparent 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.
Speaker 3: I share your love of this parable. I included it
Speaker 3: in my second book, Pivot. I hold it close to
Speaker 3: my heart, especially when I'm making decisions. A challenging heart
Speaker 3: of decision making is often saying no to something good,
Speaker 3: something that's working, or something that's perfect on paper. So
Speaker 3: the way that the wolf parable plays out most frequently
Speaker 3: in my life is am I making a decision based
Speaker 3: on fear, either fear of what is already happening or
Speaker 3: fear of what could happen in the future. Or am
Speaker 3: I feeding the wolf that's magnetic, that's about joy, that's
Speaker 3: about following my energy even if I'm uncertain and I
Speaker 3: don't know how something is going to turn out. Am
Speaker 3: I acting out of fear, out of avoiding fear? Or
Speaker 3: am I moving toward something that my intuition, my heart,
Speaker 3: my soul, my spirit is pulling me toward Yep.
Speaker 1: We've engaged a coach Jiny and I over the last
Speaker 1: few years that I know, you know well, Charlie Gilkey.
Speaker 1: He's been a guest on the show a couple times,
Speaker 1: and that has been a real orienting principle that I
Speaker 1: have needed. Is that looking away from fear, because you know,
Speaker 1: I left a pretty lucrative, full time software development world
Speaker 1: job to go out and kind of do this, and
Speaker 1: money was uncertain, and so, you know, fear was an
Speaker 1: element of it, and sometimes it's easy to get stuck
Speaker 1: in there. And so it's been really good for our
Speaker 1: work with Charlie for him to sort of remind me
Speaker 1: of that and guide me towards more joy, which has
Speaker 1: always been the orienting way. Like with the podcast, I've
Speaker 1: just always been like, I'm just going to follow my curiosity,
Speaker 1: Like if I do that with guest selection, with everything
Speaker 1: we do, I think it'll be okay, and it tends
Speaker 1: to work out fairly well.
Speaker 3: It's funny you mentioned that about Charlie. He's the one
Speaker 3: that twelve years ago when I was thinking of leaving Google,
Speaker 3: I said, am I crazy to do this? He and
Speaker 3: his friend, my friend who Pamela Slim, both looked at me, said, Jenny,
Speaker 3: you would be crazy not to. And I needed to
Speaker 3: hear it from them because sometimes all of this it's
Speaker 3: harder when even with podcasting, people say you can't make
Speaker 3: money podcasting, you can't make that your full time gig.
Speaker 3: And so sometimes I find those voices can be so
Speaker 3: loud that we need the Charlie Gilkeys of the world,
Speaker 3: somebody to say, I believe in you, you can do this,
Speaker 3: and in a way then they become an external version
Speaker 3: of the wolf that we want to feed, versus the
Speaker 3: loud chorus of the one saying stay safe because it's
Speaker 3: about survival and the other thing. I wanted to mention
Speaker 3: about this parable. I got into self help and even
Speaker 3: coach training when I was young. So I did coach
Speaker 3: training when I was twenty four, but was self helping
Speaker 3: myself before that, devouring everything I could find to soothe
Speaker 3: this deep anxiety and worry in neurosis. I joke that
Speaker 3: I have ten thousand hours of neurosis. That's what I
Speaker 3: became really good at in my teens and twenties. It
Speaker 3: never worked for me. I felt like all the literature
Speaker 3: for so long is like the ego is bad banish
Speaker 3: the ego, or your inner critic is vicious, like tame
Speaker 3: your grumlins, get rid of the inner critic, And that
Speaker 3: just never worked for me. Even these formulas like oh,
Speaker 3: you have to love yourself before anyone else can love you,
Speaker 3: I don't believe it. And so the only thing that
Speaker 3: has ever worked for me is welcoming these other voices.
Speaker 3: They're not going to go away. I don't need to
Speaker 3: banish them. They're here. I joke that my imposter monster
Speaker 3: is just like the big furry blue monster from Monsters, Inc.
Speaker 3: Sometimes it helps me to just personify them.
Speaker 2: Sure as like yeah, he's big, but or I'd.
Speaker 3: Call one of mine the furry rest monster who pulls
Speaker 3: me into the couch and I can't move. This is
Speaker 3: when I kind of burnt out at the end of
Speaker 3: the day. They're just trying to be helpful. So even
Speaker 3: in this parable, the wolf we're not supposed to feed,
Speaker 3: he's not really going anywhere, or they whichever gender of
Speaker 3: the wolf, they're not going to go anywhere, and it's okay.
Speaker 3: It's actually like petting a rabid dog, like oh, you
Speaker 3: just are neglected or you're afraid of things, and it's okay.
Speaker 3: You know, I used to say, instead of taming dragons
Speaker 3: domesticating dragons, that what if we didn't have such an
Speaker 3: adversarial relationship with this part of ourself that we think
Speaker 3: is so bad, even the bad wolf, ye could just
Speaker 3: bet them and they just need a belly rub and
Speaker 3: then they'll just quiet down. So it's not that we
Speaker 3: want to listen or let that one dominate, but it
Speaker 3: just doesn't work for me to imagine that it doesn't exist.
Speaker 2: That's right, that's wherever will stop existing.
Speaker 1: Yep. As you were talking there, it brought a quote
Speaker 1: to mind of a gentleman I'm going to interview you
Speaker 1: later this week, whose name is Andrew Solomon, and he's
Speaker 1: an amazing guy anyway, but he has a line in
Speaker 1: his book about depression. He says, basically, if you banish
Speaker 1: the dragons, you banish the heroes. And I love that
Speaker 1: as you brought up dragons. You know, these so called
Speaker 1: negatives are often the way we become the best version
Speaker 1: of ourselves.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it doesn't help because when I was operating
Speaker 3: under that paradigm that these voices are bad, it's bad
Speaker 3: that I have them, and it's also bad that I
Speaker 3: can't make them go away that my self helping isn't working.
Speaker 2: Even.
Speaker 3: Part of how I describe my podcast in my work
Speaker 3: is embracing fear, anxiety, and security uncertainty as the.
Speaker 2: Superpowers that they are.
Speaker 3: Yes, because I've been podcasting almost as long as you,
Speaker 3: not quite as long. You have the epic nine years in,
Speaker 3: I've been doing eight years. And I joked with you
Speaker 3: before we hit record, I still feel awkward every single
Speaker 3: time before I start, after I finish, when I listen.
Speaker 2: Back, it's all awkward.
Speaker 3: But if I let that awkwardness be bad, I wouldn't
Speaker 3: have a show at all. I wouldn't produce anything at all.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 3: That's sort of the way that I team the Perfectionist
Speaker 3: is just yeah, it is awkward, but I keep going anyway.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 1: So your book Free Time talks a lot about building
Speaker 1: what you call a heart based business, and it's oriented
Speaker 1: towards business owners, and you know, if you're trying to
Speaker 1: build your own business. I think it's an outstanding book.
Speaker 1: I'm going to take some of the things from it
Speaker 1: and just shift it a little bit more to the
Speaker 1: personal level, even though the entire book is personal, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's about building a business that supports you
Speaker 1: and who you are, not just a business that makes money,
Speaker 1: but just to give an orientation for kind where we're
Speaker 1: going to go. But you talk very early on and
Speaker 1: you say that stress is a system's problem, So just
Speaker 1: talk about that broadly.
Speaker 3: Sure, And yeah, I appreciate you shifting towards the person,
Speaker 3: because really we could say heart based anything. It just
Speaker 3: means that we're not letting external markers of success drive
Speaker 3: how we act, how we structure things. And when I
Speaker 3: say stress is a system's problem, even in the context
Speaker 3: of a household, if I noticed myself fighting with my
Speaker 3: husband about how tidy it is. He doesn't notice clutter
Speaker 3: at all, and it really bothers me. And when we
Speaker 3: have friction about that, that's really a systems problem. He's
Speaker 3: not bad or wrong, and neither am I. But the
Speaker 3: only way that we could address this is to create
Speaker 3: a system that will work for the whole triad, you know,
Speaker 3: for all of this, because if I become overly demanding,
Speaker 3: like that's going to wear away at his soul and
Speaker 3: his way of being. So long story short, stress is
Speaker 3: a systems problem is really an invitation to look at
Speaker 3: anywhere that we're experiencing stress or friction, and instead of
Speaker 3: trying to make one or the other wrong, it's almost
Speaker 3: elevating to another perspective of what steps, what system could
Speaker 3: we put in place that would alleviate this stress or friction.
Speaker 3: So in the household, it's a cleaner comes once a
Speaker 3: week on Fridays. Now sometimes my husband doesn't like having
Speaker 3: another person around too bad, Like you're not allowed to complain.
Speaker 2: We set up the system.
Speaker 3: Importantly, it's on a recurring basis, so I don't have
Speaker 3: the decision fatigue. I used to think it was bad
Speaker 3: to spend so much money on cleaning, and I also
Speaker 3: used to try to wait, is the house dirty enough yet?
Speaker 3: But even the constant wondering when should I call her,
Speaker 3: When should I schedule it.
Speaker 2: What day? It's tiring.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And then a person becomes resentful, the one who's
Speaker 3: managing all that or the one that cares about a
Speaker 3: clean house. And I got that from Byron Katie. It's like,
Speaker 3: if you're the one noticing the dishes and the saying,
Speaker 3: guess what you can do them because you're the one
Speaker 3: noticing it. So I often take my own little annoy
Speaker 3: dances or things in life, in business as Okay, I'm
Speaker 3: the one noticing it. So instead of demanding that everybody
Speaker 3: around me change, what could I set up that makes
Speaker 3: an even better scenario? And why I say system some
Speaker 3: people feel allergic to that word. Is that a good system?
Speaker 3: It's recurring, it's kind of set it and forget it.
Speaker 3: This is about setting your time free, yes, so that
Speaker 3: once you put in place, it is harder not to
Speaker 3: use it. Like we get pre made meals delivered once
Speaker 3: a week. It's not the only thing we eat, but
Speaker 3: it saves so many moments of friction or tension.
Speaker 2: Who's cooking?
Speaker 1: What?
Speaker 2: Where are the groceries? Yep.
Speaker 1: There's a couple things in there that I want to
Speaker 1: hit on. The first is, you know, when we say
Speaker 1: that a system's problem between people, one of the systems
Speaker 1: that is between people is the system of communication. Right,
Speaker 1: And so there's a lot of couple's therapy ideas around
Speaker 1: you focus on the dynamic of what the conversational system
Speaker 1: structure that has evolved between you is. Then it's not
Speaker 1: you versus the other person, it's you and the other
Speaker 1: person versus this dynamic, this conversational dynamic. And I've also
Speaker 1: heard people say, if you're having problems and arguing a
Speaker 1: lot focus on the process. Oh right. And then the
Speaker 1: second you mentioned is this decisional fatigue. And I love
Speaker 1: the idea of being able to decide things once and
Speaker 1: not have to keep deciding them, you know, being able
Speaker 1: to say, like, every Friday, I go rock climbing. Now,
Speaker 1: does that mean I climb every Friday? No, of course not.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it doesn't work, but I'm not having to figure out, like, well,
Speaker 1: what do I do on Friday? Or when am I
Speaker 1: going to rock climb this week? It's like, well, Friday, right.
Speaker 1: And then again there are exceptions to the rule, and
Speaker 1: I can handle those. But the more we can sort
Speaker 1: of decide that sort of stuff like this is what
Speaker 1: I do in the morning, it's always set that way,
Speaker 1: Separating that decision from the action is so valuable because,
Speaker 1: as you mentioned, how much time and energy goes into
Speaker 1: deciding or figuring something out let alone then taking the
Speaker 1: action right, So, how much time do you spend swirling
Speaker 1: in your mind about like you said, the cleaning lady.
Speaker 1: Calling the cleaning lady is not very hard, right, But
Speaker 1: for those of us who have minds that tend to
Speaker 1: get stuck in a groove, you know, can churn up
Speaker 1: a lot of energy.
Speaker 3: And it exacerbates the situation because if I'm booking on
Speaker 3: an ad hoc basis, well, now she's not available. Now
Speaker 3: we're going back and forth to ten messages for the
Speaker 3: next date. When it's recurring, it's set in and forget it. So,
Speaker 3: in your rock claiming example, if you don't block off
Speaker 3: your calendar with a recurring do not schedule block, then
Speaker 3: you might say, great, I'm going to go rock climbing.
Speaker 3: Oh no, my team has booked me for five podcasts.
Speaker 3: So you can in a calendar sense, and I encourage
Speaker 3: everybody to do this, grab some time, design your calendar
Speaker 3: first before anyone else has a crack at it, And
Speaker 3: so you could have a recurring Friday, and then you
Speaker 3: could even and I know you're big on connection and
Speaker 3: community and accountability, you could even always meet somebody at
Speaker 3: the rock climbing gym so you feel even more like
Speaker 3: drawn to go, or oh I don't feel like it today,
Speaker 3: Well I'm meeting my friend there. And so there are
Speaker 3: just all these ways that we can set up the
Speaker 3: system to be a little more ironclad. Part of the
Speaker 3: reason we're recording here at Gotham as you mentioned, and
Speaker 3: I record here a lot for solo episodes for the
Speaker 3: sole fact that when I show up, I don't want
Speaker 3: to burn my own money. So I have to produce,
Speaker 3: because if I try to record my solo episodes at home,
Speaker 3: it's like, Oh, I don't feel like it. I'm not
Speaker 3: in the right mood. Oh whatever's happening in the living
Speaker 3: room is more fun. I just fritter at the time away,
Speaker 3: but when I come here, it's like, no, you're paying
Speaker 3: for this, Make it happen.
Speaker 1: If there is a rock climber in Columbus, Ohio listening
Speaker 1: to this, who would like to meet me at the gym,
Speaker 1: let me know, because I do not have a climbing
Speaker 1: friend my son when he's in town. So you talk
Speaker 1: about not chasing what you call the four horsemen of
Speaker 1: the business ambition apocalypse, and again this applies whether you're
Speaker 1: talking about your own business, somebody you work for, any
Speaker 1: of that, but you call them the hungry ghosts of money, power,
Speaker 1: and control. Talk a little bit about those.
Speaker 3: Money, power, and fame are the ones that we most
Speaker 3: commonly hear as vices. And even one of my friends
Speaker 3: has a theory that each of us has a proclivity
Speaker 3: toward one of those three, even if it's not in
Speaker 3: an extreme or a nefarious sense. We might be a
Speaker 3: little more driven by money, by power, by fame. But
Speaker 3: the one that I think we don't talk enough about
Speaker 3: that I sort of added is control. And that whether
Speaker 3: it is as a business owner or in your own
Speaker 3: life or in your relationships, control can be a hungry
Speaker 3: ghost because you'll never have enough of it. It will
Speaker 3: never actually soothe the existential discomfort of whatever it is.
Speaker 3: Trying to be in relationship or trying to be in
Speaker 3: the world, trying to be in your career. We try
Speaker 3: to control things, or we think we somehow can control
Speaker 3: things and that that will make us feel better, and
Speaker 3: I just don't think it works. It ends up kind
Speaker 3: of suffocating the life out of most situations when control
Speaker 3: is taken to an extreme.
Speaker 1: So let's go a little deeper on that. Because a
Speaker 1: lot of your book is about creating systems that give
Speaker 1: your life more freedom, and that happens by imposing some
Speaker 1: degree of structure and repeatability. What's the difference between doing
Speaker 1: that wisely and chasing the hungry ghost of control.
Speaker 3: Part of it for me has been a lesson in
Speaker 3: choosing what to be a perfectionist about and then letting
Speaker 3: the rest go. So I'm very detail oriented when it
Speaker 3: comes to my books. No stone goes unturned. I went
Speaker 3: through the entire Free Time manuscript and made sure no
Speaker 3: hyphenated word was hanging off the right side of the page.
Speaker 3: Stuff like that drives everyone around me crazy. So sometimes
Speaker 3: I think you're right. Control can tie into structure, rigidity, boundaries,
Speaker 3: you know, these all have a dance, but in the
Speaker 3: free time sense. When I started the book launched a
Speaker 3: little over a year ago, and people would say it's
Speaker 3: a time management or productivity book. And I know I
Speaker 3: share this thought with Oliver Berkman, who wrote Four Thousand Weeks.
Speaker 2: I know you've had him on the show.
Speaker 3: He and I both share this philosophy that just trying
Speaker 3: to squeeze more out of the time we have feels terrible.
Speaker 3: So in a way, efficiency means, oh, can you do
Speaker 3: what you're doing, but more, better, faster. And then time
Speaker 3: management just the word management. It's like time is in
Speaker 3: a box slash prison cell. We're going to manage it
Speaker 3: and even micromanage it and control it until it produces
Speaker 3: exactly the peak performance output that we want, And there's
Speaker 3: so many podcasts about peak performance, and the phrase itself
Speaker 3: kind of drives me nuts because we're human beings, like
Speaker 3: sometimes we're at our peak and a lot of times
Speaker 3: we're not. So to me, the systems are actually a
Speaker 3: gentle way of putting things in place so that we
Speaker 3: relieve the burden off of our mind to have to
Speaker 3: think about that thing again. Even teaching team members. You know,
Speaker 3: if you ask me a question and it doesn't live
Speaker 3: in our documentation, please add it for the next time.
Speaker 3: That's a step that takes a little extra time now,
Speaker 3: but it's going to save us all time in the future.
Speaker 3: And so I think trying to control and this is
Speaker 3: why I don't advise like manual time tracking or putting
Speaker 3: your calendar fifteen minute increments. That does work for some people,
Speaker 3: but I find that imposing too much control feels quite
Speaker 3: constricting at the end of the day. I would rather
Speaker 3: create the loose boundaries, even though I don't take calls
Speaker 3: before eleven or after two. Then I can be really
Speaker 3: loose and free, and then the work is actually dropping
Speaker 3: the guilts.
Speaker 2: Oh I should be working. Who says who?
Speaker 3: Factory system doesn't work for most of us. The factory
Speaker 3: system was not at any point and even the way
Speaker 3: it manifests in today's corporate structure was not in any
Speaker 3: way designed for our physical and relational health and thriving.
Speaker 3: It was purely designed for productivity. And really the only
Speaker 3: person that it benefits to burn everybody out is the
Speaker 3: one at the top who benefits from reaping all that reward,
Speaker 3: and for the rest of us. Isn't just not a
Speaker 3: sustainable way to be?
Speaker 4: Yep?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it's always interesting the level of structure
Speaker 1: and CYSM system that gets put in place for anything,
Speaker 1: whether it be a business, our own life. You know,
Speaker 1: I was in software startups for a long time, and
Speaker 1: I just used to say, like, what we're looking for
Speaker 1: is enough structure that the train doesn't come off the tracks,
Speaker 1: but that it also doesn't get slowed down, you know,
Speaker 1: and you can use you can use that slowed down
Speaker 1: metaphor doesn't mean you have to go faster, right in
Speaker 1: the case of a train, you might want it to
Speaker 1: go faster, but what's the level of structure that sort
Speaker 1: of keeps things in place so I don't have to
Speaker 1: keep deciding keep thinking about them, but then also does
Speaker 1: allow me as much freedom around that.
Speaker 3: And I see what you're saying, because yes, there is
Speaker 3: a level of discipline. I think when people join my
Speaker 3: team they often say that they're learning a lot, which
Speaker 3: I think is another way of saying, oh, I'm very
Speaker 3: particular about how things are done.
Speaker 2: For me, the systems.
Speaker 3: As it would relate to even the word idea of control,
Speaker 3: it's actually a way to mitigate the chaos or the repetition,
Speaker 3: or the busy work or minutia that would result from
Speaker 3: just not having designed an intelligent, elegant, graceful, repeatable system
Speaker 3: in the first place. So I guess it's almost like
Speaker 3: without controlling how things are done in the sense of
Speaker 3: very intentionally saying how could this process flow more smoothly?
Speaker 3: And even your example of in relationships, how could these
Speaker 3: conversations when we're in intense disagreement, how can we move
Speaker 3: through this even when we don't agree? And if we
Speaker 3: can design that intentionally upfront. Yes, that might seem like
Speaker 3: a little more sort of structure or rigidity or control
Speaker 3: than people are used to, but I just think it
Speaker 3: saves so much chaos and wasted time and energy down
Speaker 3: the road.
Speaker 1: You talk about in a lot of businesses you know,
Speaker 1: there's a missing metric. And again I want to expand
Speaker 1: this more broadly to human things, right, because we all
Speaker 1: are measuring our lives in many different ways kind of
Speaker 1: all the time, you know, and so when we're unstructured
Speaker 1: about that, to me, then it's very easy to start
Speaker 1: chasing the hungry ghosts of money or fame, whether that
Speaker 1: fame be big time fame or just being well known
Speaker 1: on the school pta council.
Speaker 2: Right, how many likes the photo?
Speaker 1: Yeah, how many likes the photo? Gets? Right? And you
Speaker 1: introduce a new metric that I love, which I didn't
Speaker 1: have these words to use it, but has been again,
Speaker 1: with a lot of help from Charlie in particular, been
Speaker 1: something that we have really oriented around over the last
Speaker 1: couple of years, which is the time to revenue ratio, right,
Speaker 1: like how much time does it take me to earn
Speaker 1: x amount of money. It's a really interesting way to
Speaker 1: think about it because most of us think about, you know,
Speaker 1: how much money is being made without thinking as much
Speaker 1: about what's the cost to do so?
Speaker 3: Right, And in a way it makes sense who could
Speaker 3: blame any of us? Because money seems so fundamentally tied
Speaker 3: to survival, right, And you and I are both stateside.
Speaker 3: I know many listeners may not be, but here in
Speaker 3: America we're particularly obsessed with money. How much do we have?
Speaker 3: Do we need to make more? Because we don't have
Speaker 3: some of the broader social support structures that say the
Speaker 3: Norwegian countries have. So money is vital because if you
Speaker 3: don't have health insurance and anything happens to you, it
Speaker 3: could spiral you into bankruptcy or I mean, there are
Speaker 3: very serious money related concerns. Even the phrase from Benjamin
Speaker 3: Franklin time is money, but it's so much more than that,
Speaker 3: and so the missing metric is time. How much time
Speaker 3: did it take you to earn that revenue in your business?
Speaker 3: Or let's say you work for a company. Okay, you're
Speaker 3: making seven figures, but you're completely burning yourself out to
Speaker 3: the point where you might get very sick, then your
Speaker 3: time will really be cut short. I had friends who
Speaker 3: entered investment banking, and they were making more money than me,
Speaker 3: but they were sleeping at the office. They were sometimes
Speaker 3: getting three hours of sleep at night. And each person,
Speaker 3: I can't tell anyone what to think or what to do,
Speaker 3: but each person has to decide if I die tomorrow
Speaker 3: or if I die in a year, is this trade
Speaker 3: off worth it? The amount of time that is yielding
Speaker 3: a seven figure salary or a seven figure business, And
Speaker 3: to be really intentional, because sometimes what you hear from
Speaker 3: even those people that in free time, the way I
Speaker 3: put it is the way we bake is as important
Speaker 3: as what we make. I'm not convinced that if you
Speaker 3: burn yourself out, or you spend so much time to
Speaker 3: achieve the money at the expense of your health and
Speaker 3: the expensive relationships, that you'll be any happier when you
Speaker 3: get there, or they you'll even be able to change
Speaker 3: those habits once you get.
Speaker 2: There wherever there is.
Speaker 3: If you talk to wealthy people, a lot of them
Speaker 3: say they're just as miserable as the next, or then
Speaker 3: they become worried about losing that money, or then they
Speaker 3: escalate their lifestyle on the hedonic treadmill and never ends.
Speaker 3: So I just my curiosity is what if we could
Speaker 3: spend the time and specifically measure not just how much
Speaker 3: any of us is making, how much time did it
Speaker 3: take to get there, how much life force did that
Speaker 3: require from us? And you could have a really peaceful, joyful,
Speaker 3: easeful six figure job or business, or you could have
Speaker 3: one that's killing you slowly.
Speaker 1: Yep, and keep referencing Charlie. But it's been fundamental because
Speaker 1: it really became clear. Like I've coached a lot of
Speaker 1: people on this too over the years, which is like,
Speaker 1: if you're building a business, because you are saying that
Speaker 1: part of what you want is freedom, be careful, because
Speaker 1: you can build a business that will make you much
Speaker 1: less free than you were in your day job if
Speaker 1: you're not careful, you know. And so it's about being
Speaker 1: really intentional about what am I doing and why. And
Speaker 1: there are different times and places for different things, right
Speaker 1: like what I had to prioritize the first year or
Speaker 1: two as I left my corporate job to doing this
Speaker 1: full time. You know, there were certain priorities there given
Speaker 1: where we were, and we had to orient in a
Speaker 1: certain way. But over time, what I've seen happen is
Speaker 1: how easy it is to box yourself into a corner
Speaker 1: where you get what you think you wanted, and then,
Speaker 1: as you said, it doesn't make you happy either because
Speaker 1: the thing itself isn't what you thought it was, which
Speaker 1: is often the case. Okay, I've got my own, you know,
Speaker 1: seven figure business, but I can never be away, can
Speaker 1: never take a week off. I'm always working, I can
Speaker 1: never stop thinking about it. So it's you don't get
Speaker 1: what you thought you were going to get, or to
Speaker 1: your point, the mind state of you know, I'll be
Speaker 1: happy when is one of the most pernicious mind states.
Speaker 1: I'm sure it's a human thing because I think we're
Speaker 1: wired to always sort of want the next thing. It's
Speaker 1: part of the survival mechanism. But it's something to really
Speaker 1: watch for because if we get where we thought we
Speaker 1: wanted to be and we're incapable of enjoying it, because
Speaker 1: the goalpost just moves right And this is something we
Speaker 1: all know.
Speaker 3: And all we've done is deepen the grooves on those
Speaker 3: neural pathways. Yes, so we're even making even harder to
Speaker 3: break those habits yep down the road whenever we get
Speaker 3: there wherever they'rectly. I've also tried to be really intentional
Speaker 3: about decoupling the idea that if I work less time,
Speaker 3: I'll make less money. And just is that true?
Speaker 2: What if?
Speaker 3: What if I work half the time and earn twice
Speaker 3: as much?
Speaker 2: Who says so?
Speaker 3: I noticed myself I had these narratives that society is
Speaker 3: very happy to hand us that we assume a linear
Speaker 3: causal relationship.
Speaker 2: Yes, even maybe even subtly.
Speaker 3: As we're talking now, it's like, well, if I scale
Speaker 3: back my time or my energy, we'll earn less. But
Speaker 3: I'm okay with that and make it something it's assumed.
Speaker 2: Yes, and it says who. Yep, says who. So I'm
Speaker 2: always just questioning that says who.
Speaker 1: That is one in me that really takes effort to
Speaker 1: unwire because I don't know what it is. I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess there's there's a lot of it that's cultural.
Speaker 1: You know, it's around this work ethic idea which has
Speaker 1: served me very well in many different ways in my life.
Speaker 1: But it can get to the point that the point
Speaker 1: is how hard you're working, right, And so I've had
Speaker 1: to really work to unwind that. Like you said, says WHO.
Speaker 1: I might work less, does that mean I'm going to
Speaker 1: earn less? Maybe maybe not?
Speaker 3: And if you work less hard, does it mean the
Speaker 3: work quality will suffer the impact or output?
Speaker 2: Maybe not?
Speaker 1: But if aprove yet? What last summer I was able
Speaker 1: to take a month off. I've never had anything approaching
Speaker 1: that amount of time off in my life. I started
Speaker 1: working at a job when I was like fourteen, and
Speaker 1: before that I had paper routes and I never went
Speaker 1: to college. I don't think I'd ever been off more
Speaker 1: than maybe two weeks, and the two weeks I had
Speaker 1: been off might have happened the year before. Like, so,
Speaker 1: I've never had any time beyond a week, and I
Speaker 1: took a month off, which seemed gratuitous, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: it just seemed even saying it, there's a little part
Speaker 1: of me it's like, oh my god, everybody's gonna think spoiled.
Speaker 1: You know. It was probably one of the best business
Speaker 1: decisions I ever made, because in order to take that
Speaker 1: time off, we had to systematize a bunch of things.
Speaker 1: It was very hard to get to where I could
Speaker 1: take a month off. So all of a sudden I
Speaker 1: came back, and there were two things that were very different.
Speaker 1: One is my energy level and my interest in what
Speaker 1: I was doing had been restored, And the second was
Speaker 1: there was systems in place to handle a bunch of
Speaker 1: things that I now didn't have to do, so that
Speaker 1: I could then turn my attention towards what I actually
Speaker 1: quote unquote do, which is talking to people and building programs.
Speaker 1: Like all of a sudden, there was more energy and
Speaker 1: time for that, and it never would have happened if
Speaker 1: I hadn't done what I thought was a decision. I'm
Speaker 1: going to take a month off, and that's just going
Speaker 1: to be a hit to the business, but I'm willing
Speaker 1: to make that because I really want a month off. Afterwards,
Speaker 1: I went, oh, not only did I take a month off,
Speaker 1: I've now put it in place that I can do
Speaker 1: it again.
Speaker 2: That's so amazing, right.
Speaker 1: And it all speaks to these things you're talking about.
Speaker 1: But I had to question some fundamental assumptions that that
Speaker 1: was doable, possible, reasonable, acceptable, morally correct. I mean all
Speaker 1: those things. I know.
Speaker 3: I feel like there's a lot of talk about examining
Speaker 3: our money stories, and you know, in the book, I
Speaker 3: talk about our time, our energetic time blueprint is as
Speaker 3: powerful and sometimes pernicious as the money blueprint.
Speaker 4: Yep.
Speaker 3: So I think some of us know, oh, I need
Speaker 3: to confront my money stuff, and I need to. You know,
Speaker 3: I have some living beliefs around money, but we don't
Speaker 3: even question the ones around time.
Speaker 1: Say more about that energetic time living?
Speaker 3: Well, well, I just think we get imprinted. What time is,
Speaker 3: how to spend it, how to move through a day,
Speaker 3: how hard to work or not. From the time we're kids,
Speaker 3: we grow up in a household. We grow up in
Speaker 3: a context of our home, what we see in our parents,
Speaker 3: how schools are set up, how our first jobs are
Speaker 3: set up, how society is set up. And absolutely here
Speaker 3: in the States, we have this Protestant work ethic. Hard
Speaker 3: work equals good and virtuous. Yes, and more work is
Speaker 3: good and virtuous, more money is good and virtuous. And
Speaker 3: yet the story I share in the book is that
Speaker 3: as a kid, my mom worked full time, so I
Speaker 3: was a latchkey kid.
Speaker 2: But I used to go to.
Speaker 3: All these activities after school because then I didn't realize
Speaker 3: until as an adult that part of it was I
Speaker 3: needed to keep myself busy until she could pick me up. Essentially,
Speaker 3: so I would go to school, then do homework, then
Speaker 3: have a piano lesson, then do ballet, then do aerobics
Speaker 3: or acrobatics, then do gymnastics, and I would have this
Speaker 3: massive stack. So then, of course, as an adult working
Speaker 3: at a fast paced company like Google, my calendar was
Speaker 3: stacked in the exact same way. Then when I go
Speaker 3: out on my own in my business, my calendar was
Speaker 3: stacked the exact same way. No matter how much I
Speaker 3: said I wanted free time, I was always mapping my
Speaker 3: calendar to this time blueprint of cramming things to the gills,
Speaker 3: stuffing them to the gills, making exceptions for everyone else,
Speaker 3: not myself. I always felt this unnecessary and false pressure.
Speaker 3: Someone asks me for a meeting or asked me for
Speaker 3: my time, I better squeeze it in wherever I can.
Speaker 3: Or when I started coaching clients, whatever's good for them,
Speaker 3: you know, roll out the red carpet. But then I'm
Speaker 3: a disaster. So it got so refined talking about systems.
Speaker 3: It got so refined that I'm not taking one on
Speaker 3: one clients anymore. But when I was, I would have
Speaker 3: them every other week, so A and C weeks of
Speaker 3: the month, only on Thursdays and only between eleven and two.
Speaker 3: And that might have meant I could take four clients
Speaker 3: at a time, but my rates increased by that point.
Speaker 3: I also put the billing on monthly retainer good inntil canceled.
Speaker 3: I buil everyone on the first of the month because
Speaker 3: I was tired of knowing who's canceling. When who am
Speaker 3: I billing? When, oh, you're on a three month package.
Speaker 3: You're on a six month and I'm coaching every day
Speaker 3: of the week. There was no time to think yes, yes,
Speaker 3: So just consolidating and batching in a really what seems
Speaker 3: from the outside like really strict parameters set me free.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, one on one coaching is the way
Speaker 1: that I made the transition from me it's a day
Speaker 1: job to other things. And so yeah, I did a
Speaker 1: ton of it until I realized, like, this is all
Speaker 1: I'm doing, and it's chaos. I mean, I love it.
Speaker 1: I mean I love working with people. Like so question
Speaker 1: put to me is you know, well, are you going
Speaker 1: to give it up? And I'm like, I don't think
Speaker 1: I will entirely. I don't think i'll entirely give up
Speaker 1: working one on one with people because I love it.
Speaker 1: But I have scaled it way back, and like you said,
Speaker 1: you know, it happens in these windows of time, and
Speaker 1: it's just gotten much more refined, and so I enjoy
Speaker 1: it much more and I think it's just better for
Speaker 1: me and the clients.
Speaker 3: And even that's a more nuanced understanding of time, because
Speaker 3: sometimes contact switching is very jarring, Like if you had
Speaker 3: to go from an operational team meeting straight into a
Speaker 3: podcast interview straight into a coaching session. That would probably
Speaker 3: be a more taxing day than one where you have
Speaker 3: three podcast interviews.
Speaker 2: Back to back.
Speaker 3: Yeah, where you get in the zone and you stay there.
Speaker 3: And then what you just described is hearing you talk
Speaker 3: about coaching. It's clear though, that's life giving when you're
Speaker 3: in it, that that hour of a coaching session or
Speaker 3: a podcast interview, and they have a lot in.
Speaker 2: Common they do because they've.
Speaker 3: Listening curiosity, exploration that those hours are life giving and
Speaker 3: that those are those are the hours to figure out
Speaker 3: how to block them, how to structure the week so
Speaker 3: that you can get in the zone and stay there.
Speaker 3: But then knowing, oh, these energize me, these give me energy,
Speaker 3: give me joy. So that's also so much more important
Speaker 3: than just how much money.
Speaker 2: Yep, that hour delivers.
Speaker 1: Right right, And to a point. That's the other thing
Speaker 1: I sort of learned was like, I can love doing
Speaker 1: something until there's too much of it. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: And I'm such a big proponent of the middle way
Speaker 1: that any tends to be at the extremes we find
Speaker 1: ourselves in trouble. So loving doing something doesn't mean I
Speaker 1: want to do it sixty hours a week. You know,
Speaker 1: might mean that the optimal amount of time for me
Speaker 1: to do it is five hours a week or ten
Speaker 1: hours a week. You know, just everybody's different.
Speaker 3: And even to your one month that you took off,
Speaker 3: I mean, just hearing how much it energized you reminded
Speaker 3: me of Stefan Sagmeister. He has a ted talk explaining
Speaker 3: how he takes a year off of his business. Every
Speaker 3: seven years, he shuts down the whole company. There's no
Speaker 3: one even remaining behind in his design studio. He's a
Speaker 3: graphic designer, but so much more, and he says always
Speaker 3: the next evolution of his business their best work, their
Speaker 3: best art installations that he kind of does on the
Speaker 3: side to the design work always always always comes as
Speaker 3: a result of the year off.
Speaker 1: You talk about lower case hard work and uppercase hard work,
Speaker 1: So we were sort of talking about this idea that
Speaker 1: hard work is a virtue. But you're making a distinction
Speaker 1: between uppercase and lowercase.
Speaker 2: What do you mean by that?
Speaker 3: This is one of these lines of the book that
Speaker 3: I sometimes lose a little sleep at night or during
Speaker 3: the day of should I have said that? Is that
Speaker 3: the right thing? So I'll be curious to hear your take.
Speaker 3: My intention when I put this in the book is
Speaker 3: that uppercase hard work is this grind and it's almost
Speaker 3: like we're grinding ourselves, we're martyring ourselves so that we
Speaker 3: can do the hard work. And it's almost capital h
Speaker 3: hard work is at the expense of ourselves, but we
Speaker 3: think it's the right thing, or it's what we need
Speaker 3: to do.
Speaker 2: I need to do this and then it will pay
Speaker 2: off later. Lowercase hard work is of course.
Speaker 3: You're going to invest time, energy, money, resources into.
Speaker 2: Work or projects. That's what we love.
Speaker 3: Actually secretly even when a project, like a lot of
Speaker 3: people are intimidated to write a book, but they say
Speaker 3: they want to write a book someday. One study set
Speaker 3: as many as one in three people have dreams of
Speaker 3: writing a book. And I used to find myself complaining, oh,
Speaker 3: writing a book is so hard, and I stop saying that, like,
Speaker 3: writing a book is complex, it's meaty, it's challenging, but
Speaker 3: it's exciting. And so even myself talk to myself. I
Speaker 3: try to notice when I'm saying, oh, something is so
Speaker 3: hard and complaining about it versus challenge that I'm choosing,
Speaker 3: and also being mindful not to work hard just for
Speaker 3: the sake of working hard, because while that can sometimes
Speaker 3: be rewarded if you work within a company, when you're
Speaker 3: self employed, there's no reward. There is no correlation between
Speaker 3: hard work, martyring yourself for the business and any promise
Speaker 3: of success as a result of that. In fact, I
Speaker 3: think that energetically it kind of sends the wrong message.
Speaker 3: Can you imagine if you were constantly complaining on this
Speaker 3: show of how hard podcasting is, how hard it is
Speaker 3: to prepare for your guests, how hard it is to
Speaker 3: stay listening when they get on these tangents and they're
Speaker 3: so boring, and then how hard it is to grow
Speaker 3: the show. It's like it kind of sucks the joy out. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and who would want to listen to that? So it's
Speaker 3: either hard work in a really friction sort of way
Speaker 3: where you maybe you should stop doing that altogether, or
Speaker 3: it's lowercase hard. We accept that hard and we find
Speaker 3: the good.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think there's a couple things there. I think
Speaker 1: there's sort of knowing what work gives you more energy
Speaker 1: and you really like, and what sort of work wears
Speaker 1: you down and you don't like. And then there's even
Speaker 1: in that work that we do enjoy. As you were saying,
Speaker 1: we can get very serious about it, right or martyred
Speaker 1: about it, like I come by the martyrdom idea fairly naturally.
Speaker 1: I will not say from who, but family inheritance that
Speaker 1: I have to watch for and recognizing that it was
Speaker 1: happening this week a little bit. I have a bunch
Speaker 1: of interviews this week. I'm so excited in person with
Speaker 1: all these amazing people, and it's a lot because I'm
Speaker 1: a diligent preparer. But reminding myself, as our producer Nicole
Speaker 1: will do you did this to yourself first, right, but
Speaker 1: secondly reminding myself like, yeah, this is what I love
Speaker 1: to do. Yes, it's going to take a lot of effort,
Speaker 1: but don't turn it into a problem when it's not
Speaker 1: a problem. It's effort. It is hard work. So I
Speaker 1: do like this uppercase lowercase because if I remind myself,
Speaker 1: this is the work that you love. How fortunate to
Speaker 1: be able to come to New York and talk to
Speaker 1: people and have a podcast that supports you, like that
Speaker 1: is the dream. Yeah, you know, I remember being here.
Speaker 1: I don't know the number of years, six, maybe Ginny
Speaker 1: and I came to New York, and the reason we
Speaker 1: came was to attend course Jonathan offered called the Art
Speaker 1: of Becoming Known. I was still working my full time job,
Speaker 1: and I had a couple interviews while I was here also,
Speaker 1: and I remember this moment we were in a cab
Speaker 1: drive from one thing to the next, and I don't
Speaker 1: know if I said it out loud or I just
Speaker 1: thought it, but it was like, God, I just wish
Speaker 1: this was my life, Like I wish this wasn't going
Speaker 1: to end at the end of this week, and I
Speaker 1: was going to go back and go back to this job,
Speaker 1: which was actually a pretty good job in a lot
Speaker 1: of ways, but wasn't my thing. And I keep trying
Speaker 1: to remember that at that time, if you told me
Speaker 1: I would be here doing this, I would have said, yes, please,
Speaker 1: anything for that. And to remember that helps me move
Speaker 1: away from uppercase hard work to lowercase like, yes, we're
Speaker 1: putting in a lot of effort and it's doing something
Speaker 1: I love, And how fortunate is that? So reframing things
Speaker 1: is a choice is always enormously powerful.
Speaker 3: That reminds you of two things. The saying abundance is
Speaker 3: the overwhelm you've been asking for. Even this week, this
Speaker 3: abundance of interviews, Well, this is the dream that you
Speaker 3: asked for all those years, and then I forget where
Speaker 3: I heard this. But whenever you say, oh, I have
Speaker 3: to do a podcast today, or I get that way
Speaker 3: sometimes about solo episodes because it's just me. There's no
Speaker 3: accountability of another person across from me, and to just
Speaker 3: shift it to I get to do, And truly it
Speaker 3: actually works for me where I'll be grumpy with my
Speaker 3: coffee and then I'll go I get to record an
Speaker 3: episode today. That's a privilege, that's a treat. Or I
Speaker 3: talked about authors. Sometimes they're like, oh, launching a book
Speaker 3: is so hard, but it's like I get to launch
Speaker 3: a book like this is the ultimate champagne problem. Oh
Speaker 3: I don't know how to market it. It's like, well,
Speaker 3: you created this thing. I just did a solo on
Speaker 3: the glass half full or half empty, but you created
Speaker 3: a glass. I was evaluating the first year of the launch,
Speaker 3: how did it go? For free time? And sometimes I
Speaker 3: find myself getting down because again the hedonic treadmill of metrics.
Speaker 2: Yes, it's never enough.
Speaker 3: How many listeners, how many readers, how many downloads? It's
Speaker 3: never enough, never, and so I have to remind myself
Speaker 3: the glass isn't half full or half empty. I created
Speaker 3: a glass out of a figment of my imagination. That's
Speaker 3: the thing to celebrate, that's the thing to stay focused on.
Speaker 1: Well, and it's getting to that idea of a art
Speaker 1: based business and a missing metric is Yeah, what am
Speaker 1: I measuring? And why? You know? Because you're right. When
Speaker 1: we're looking at external metrics, the scale just keeps changing.
Speaker 1: You know, if you told me when I started the
Speaker 1: show that we would have the number of downloads we had,
Speaker 1: I would have a never believed you and be jumped
Speaker 1: for joy for a week. Right, But then you get
Speaker 1: there and you're like, well, yeah, that's good, but you
Speaker 1: know what we we kind of need the next level
Speaker 1: and the next level. So those external metrics they have
Speaker 1: a role. And I always have to sort of reorient
Speaker 1: back towards like, okay, but what about this is important?
Speaker 1: It's not just downloads, right.
Speaker 3: Look, my faceless, nameless listeners. You're a download now?
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like, what about this is important? You know? And
Speaker 1: I go back to why did I start the show?
Speaker 1: And I was like, well, I wanted to spend more
Speaker 1: time with Chris, my best friend, who's the audio guy.
Speaker 1: I knew it would be good for me, like good
Speaker 1: for me to have these conversations. Those are the two
Speaker 1: primary reasons. And I look back and I'm like, those
Speaker 1: have been fulfilled in spades and continue to you know.
Speaker 1: And then when it started helping people, it was like, oh,
Speaker 1: my goodness, you know, that's the extra bonus. And so yeah,
Speaker 1: the connections that I've made with guests and listeners, and
Speaker 1: there are so many things that if I'm just looking
Speaker 1: at the main metric of downloads, all that gets washed
Speaker 1: away and it's not enough because you're not Tim Ferriss
Speaker 1: or Joe Rogan or name your podcaster. Right, So all
Speaker 1: this stuff is just a really important reflection. I think
Speaker 1: for me, it kind of comes down to always coming
Speaker 1: back to like what really matters here, Yes, what's really important.
Speaker 3: And that is heart based anything Yes, which is that
Speaker 3: money isn't the only metric for me. Heart based is
Speaker 3: I'm not going to sacrifice my values or my integrity
Speaker 3: for the sake of growing the business or making more money.
Speaker 3: I in those cases will sometimes take the longer route
Speaker 3: or the scenic route because I don't want to put
Speaker 3: into something I don't believe in or just because everyone
Speaker 3: else is doing it. So there's a certain ginormous social
Speaker 3: media site that started as a way to rate women
Speaker 3: on their looks. I'm not going to give you my
Speaker 3: ad money. I don't care if ninety nine out of
Speaker 3: one hundred companies advertise there or say that's the only
Speaker 3: way to grow XYZ thing. It doesn't resonate for me.
Speaker 3: I'm not going to do it. I'm stubvern about that.
Speaker 3: But the other thing about heart based is a permission
Speaker 3: to follow your heart and follow your intuition. And sometimes
Speaker 3: people denigrate intuition as, oh, I'm a data person. What
Speaker 3: is intuition if not a thousand subconscious data points, if
Speaker 3: not a million that you've been collecting.
Speaker 2: Your whole life. So there is a place.
Speaker 3: For heart and soul and intuition in the decisions that
Speaker 3: we make and the ways that we operate. And I
Speaker 3: just feel so strongly about that. And my creative coach,
Speaker 3: Jay Aconzo, to your point about metrics, he had us
Speaker 3: do this great exercise of determining our even more meaningful metrics.
Speaker 3: So it's not that we won't measure the really straightforward
Speaker 3: stuff downloads, revenue, whatever, But what's even more meaningful.
Speaker 2: So one of his is CPP cackles per piece.
Speaker 3: How many times does he crack himself up when recording
Speaker 3: one of his unthinkable episodes or one of mine. Number
Speaker 3: of friends made through podcasting, Wow.
Speaker 1: That's a great metric.
Speaker 3: Holenf number of new friends, because I joke podcasting as
Speaker 3: like the introverts Guide.
Speaker 2: To making friends.
Speaker 3: You know, totally, So what if I measured number of
Speaker 3: new friends made over the.
Speaker 2: Last eight years. It's like, Oh, it's priceless.
Speaker 3: It's been priceless, even if no one's listening and zero
Speaker 3: dollars are earned.
Speaker 2: Yes, I have hundreds of new friends.
Speaker 1: Made, right, Yeah, it's that intrinsic motivation, Like, yeah, these shows,
Speaker 1: I do them because I love doing them and they're
Speaker 1: good for me. And but I have to remember that
Speaker 1: because I will turn anything into a job. I've talked
Speaker 1: about this a lot on the show. I will turn
Speaker 1: anything into something that has to be strived at and
Speaker 1: conquered and improved. I took up rock climbing. Why did
Speaker 1: I take it up? A my Sun does it? And
Speaker 1: I thought it'd be a great way for us to
Speaker 1: be able to do something together. And I wanted something
Speaker 1: new and interesting and challenging to do with my body.
Speaker 1: So I'm climbing, it's great, But within the second time
Speaker 1: i'm there, I'm like, oh, I'm gonna need a rock
Speaker 1: climbing coach and I'm gonna I'm just because that's the thing.
Speaker 1: It's like I've just had to consciously with that really
Speaker 1: work on, like, don't turn this into a job. And
Speaker 1: there is a natural joy in improving, right, and probably,
Speaker 1: so how do I balance that? So I wanted to
Speaker 1: come back to something you just mentioned, which is intuition.
Speaker 1: I find intuition fascinating, and what I find fascinating about
Speaker 1: it is how do we tell the difference between our
Speaker 1: intuition and to use a word that you used earlier,
Speaker 1: my neurosis, Because both feel very strong and feel very natural. Right,
Speaker 1: just because it feels real doesn't mean it is. So
Speaker 1: I'm just curious how you sort those two things out.
Speaker 1: Given that you said you've got ten thousand hours of neurosis,
Speaker 1: how do you separate that which is very natural to
Speaker 1: you at this point, and what is an actual intuition
Speaker 1: that's worth following.
Speaker 3: And specifically, my neurosies tend to manifest as people pleasing perfectionism, worry, anxiety.
Speaker 3: So those are my that's what I have a lot
Speaker 3: of practice in intuition. I love Penny Pierce's work. She
Speaker 3: wrote a book called The Intuitive Way, and thanks to
Speaker 3: the podcast, we did a whole series. She became a
Speaker 3: great friend. She actually gives a lot of practical ways
Speaker 3: to grow intuition. Because I know you've said behavior changes
Speaker 3: the skill, you can actually build the skill. Same thing
Speaker 3: with intuition. We all have it, and to answer your question,
Speaker 3: we can all improve how to discern the difference by
Speaker 3: growing the skill, paying closer attention, observing things, making a
Speaker 3: note of what we thought was intuition versus what was
Speaker 3: just fear or anxiety. Intuition comes to me, and I
Speaker 3: tend to get it's very quiet, come to me, kind
Speaker 3: of as a download, whereas anxiety and fear is a
Speaker 3: little louder, a little more panicky, a little more impulsive.
Speaker 3: So I try to pay attention. And I guess we
Speaker 3: can't always know as well, So sometimes I don't know.
Speaker 3: I mean, I know, of course you've talked so much
Speaker 3: about different mindfulness practices and those help, but I won't
Speaker 3: even just say, oh, meditation is the answer to everything.
Speaker 3: I just think it's learning how does your intuition speak
Speaker 3: to you? When has it spoken in the past. And
Speaker 3: something that I learned from Penny is that, well, a
Speaker 3: couple things. One, when we're at the level of like
Speaker 3: red flags, let's say in relationships, that's almost intuition in
Speaker 3: its lowest, loudest form.
Speaker 2: Or you get sick.
Speaker 3: That's where like you're not really listening, and so life
Speaker 3: events have to become increasingly dramatic for you to listen.
Speaker 3: Over time, it can become more nuanced. And so in
Speaker 3: our book Frequency, Penny talks about finding your home frequency.
Speaker 3: When are you or what self care practices lead you
Speaker 3: to be sort of like calm, peaceful, have that equanimity.
Speaker 3: That's when we can hear the more subtle intuitive clues.
Speaker 3: And then she says the highest form of home frequency
Speaker 3: is self entertainment, where we're entertained, we're delighted, we're curious.
Speaker 3: Even doing something you love is a form of self entertainment.
Speaker 3: Rock climbing self entertainment. And when we're in that playful spirit,
Speaker 3: we also can get more creative ideas. And I find
Speaker 3: that I get more creative ideas. The last thing I'll
Speaker 3: say here is I've just also learned to sit with
Speaker 3: my discomfort for longer and longer periods of time. The
Speaker 3: last few years the pandemic have been really tricky in
Speaker 3: my business because I used to earn a lot of
Speaker 3: income from keynot speaking, which all but dried up. I
Speaker 3: keep thinking every year we're going to turn the corner
Speaker 3: and then new chaos unfolds, and so just sitting with
Speaker 3: how uncomfortable it is not to have that income stream,
Speaker 3: or not to know when the next speaking gig will
Speaker 3: be booked, just letting it be and not rushing. I
Speaker 3: call that when the financial tides received, not just rushing
Speaker 3: to chase after those receding tides, but what has washed
Speaker 3: ou up on the shore? What's the new insider opportunity here?
Speaker 3: If I don't rush to chase after what was?
Speaker 1: That? Takes courage?
Speaker 3: Yeah, but that's a skill too. I don't have courage.
Speaker 3: I don't have some innate courageous gene, and I never
Speaker 3: had an innate confidence gene. It's like I just allow
Speaker 3: myself to not feel courageous, or not feel confident, or
Speaker 3: as we said earlier, to feel awkward. Like all the
Speaker 3: things that we would make wrong. I just keep taking
Speaker 3: the small steps. A while ago, I had postcards made
Speaker 3: for my business. They said, build first, courage second. Just
Speaker 3: courage follows action, it's not the other way around.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, yes, I mean that is such a truism, you
Speaker 1: know that if we wait to do certain things so
Speaker 1: we're not afraid of doing them, we will never do them.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And there are just some things that are for certain
Speaker 1: types of people always going to produce some fear, you know,
Speaker 1: Like I'm never going to have a difficult conversation with
Speaker 1: somebody where I have to bring up something that they're
Speaker 1: doing that I'm not happy with that I would like
Speaker 1: to be different or the at least discussed. Maybe I'm
Speaker 1: selling myself short, but I think it's pretty unlikely that
Speaker 1: I'm ever going to go into one of those without
Speaker 1: a great deal of trepetition. It's just there. I just
Speaker 1: know it's there. It seems that the more I do
Speaker 1: it it gets a little bit easier. I'm not saying
Speaker 1: it doesn't get better, but I'm still like, I don't
Speaker 1: like doing it. It makes me anxious, makes me nervous,
Speaker 1: and if I wait until the right time, I'll never
Speaker 1: do it.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And I feel like something else that we don't really
Speaker 3: discuss enough. In the realm of career and business are
Speaker 3: different personality types, like the more empathic you are or
Speaker 3: the more sensitive you are. And I find that for me,
Speaker 3: being a highly sensitive person and empad I get overwhelmed
Speaker 3: very easily. And just like you, if it's going to
Speaker 3: involve a tough conversation, it's very easy to get overwhelmed.
Speaker 3: That's very different than if I'm taking advice from practically
Speaker 3: like the sociopath CEO next.
Speaker 2: Door who just doesn't care at all.
Speaker 3: Right, some people are just building a way that they
Speaker 3: don't care. They're not bothered. Yeah, now it doesn't you
Speaker 3: don't have to be a social but that's giving an
Speaker 3: extreme example. I cannot compare what I find challenging or overwhelming.
Speaker 3: I mean even often I kind of used to beat
Speaker 3: myself upbout networking, Like I get so overwhelmed that big
Speaker 3: events or parties or I don't want to be on
Speaker 3: the phone with anyone, yeah let alone, like running around
Speaker 3: trying to build my network just doesn't work for me
Speaker 3: the way that I know other people are so good
Speaker 3: at it because it energizes them. And I've told myself, oh,
Speaker 3: if you were better at if you had more patience
Speaker 3: for like connecting with people. But I love being with
Speaker 3: my dog at the park, just like ye listening to
Speaker 3: podcasts nonverbal you know. And so anyway, I think we
Speaker 3: need to give ourselves some grace to anything. In this
Speaker 3: self development world, spiritual world. It's almost like everything is
Speaker 3: a paradox, so everything has two sides of the coin.
Speaker 3: And also these neurosis or the sensitivities, they're superpowers and
Speaker 3: they mean that I'm overwhelmed more easily than some next
Speaker 3: person or someone that wrote a book where it makes
Speaker 3: it sound so easy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's so important because if you're an
Speaker 1: empathetic person, it's going to make certain things harder, but
Speaker 1: it's going to make other things easier and better. And
Speaker 1: trying to be somebody where not is really problematic. Like
Speaker 1: I used to think I should be able to just
Speaker 1: have that conversation and not have it worry me, but
Speaker 1: that would make me not me because part of the
Speaker 1: reason it's hard is because I actually do care and
Speaker 1: I am compassionate and I am sensitive to not wanting
Speaker 1: to make someone else feel bad. But that is also,
Speaker 1: as you said, sort of a superpower. So I have
Speaker 1: to balance those things out we are running out of time,
Speaker 1: but I want to hit one last thing, which is
Speaker 1: you've actually made an acronym out of something I've said
Speaker 1: to coaching clients for years, A little bit of something
Speaker 1: is better than a lot of nothing. And you have
Speaker 1: a phrase better than nothing, and you actually call it BTN.
Speaker 1: So talk to me about better than nothing.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: BTN can work both ways, as in it can be
Speaker 3: positive and I think sometimes it can be negative. Where
Speaker 3: I originated this a brieve BTN was actually in relationships
Speaker 3: where sometimes I was finding myself in bad relationships dating wise,
Speaker 3: because I would say to myself, well, it's better than nothing,
Speaker 3: and I would kind of be settling. I also at
Speaker 3: that time we call it like cookie crumbs from someone
Speaker 3: who's just tossing out a few crumbs, and I'm like, oh,
Speaker 3: thank you for these crumbs, and somehow operating on a
Speaker 3: paradigm that well, this is better than nothing, having no one.
Speaker 2: That's not true.
Speaker 3: So anyone or anything that's draining you that you dread
Speaker 3: that is just any manner of making you feel worse
Speaker 3: after an interaction than better. That's not better than nothing.
Speaker 3: They are actually taking your.
Speaker 2: Life for us.
Speaker 3: Yes, I'm sure you've talked about that many times. However,
Speaker 3: on the positive side of better than nothing, it's like, again,
Speaker 3: if either of us were perfectionists about our podcasts, we
Speaker 3: wouldn't have one at all, because no episode is perfect.
Speaker 2: They have to go out.
Speaker 3: Every week, no matter their imperfections, no matter the misspeaks
Speaker 3: or the filler words or the awkwardinate moments. Sure some
Speaker 3: of it gets fixed in editing, but then some of
Speaker 3: it doesn't. Some conversations are better than others, and sometimes
Speaker 3: I feel so bad, like, oh no, but if I've
Speaker 3: produced something that's not the best there is, people stop listening,
Speaker 3: and the whole cascade of future tripping, worry, of catastrophizing
Speaker 3: what's going to go wrong? But the better than nothing
Speaker 3: is something is better than nothing. And if you put
Speaker 3: something out and you do it again, it's really a
Speaker 3: thousand tiny iterations over time that are what you see
Speaker 3: from anybody producing anything. I guarantee that none of us
Speaker 3: goes home at the end of the day. Well, don't
Speaker 3: let me speak for everyone else, but saying oh that
Speaker 3: was so perfect, right, It's just that I did it, yep,
Speaker 3: and that was rewarding and it's imperfect. And actually, now
Speaker 3: with all these chatgypt and AI and Deep Big Video.
Speaker 3: They're so uncanny and horrible, Like if you hear a podcast.
Speaker 3: I don't really like the shows where it's clear they're
Speaker 3: just reading off of a script. It's too perfect, right,
Speaker 3: it takes some of the humanity out.
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 3: So secretly I think, even though we are hard on
Speaker 3: ourselves and we think that oh, perfect or nothing better
Speaker 3: than nothing, is actually the life giving mantra, done is
Speaker 3: better than perfect. And in the book I say it's
Speaker 3: like cookie is just as good as the baked cookies sometimes,
Speaker 3: so look for the cookie dough in your life or
Speaker 3: your business, where unfinished, imperfect is sometimes even tastier than
Speaker 3: the finished product.
Speaker 1: Well, I think that is a beautiful place for us
Speaker 1: to wrap up. Thank you so much for coming on.
Speaker 1: It's been such a pleasure. And my new friends from
Speaker 1: podcast Metric it is increased by one today.
Speaker 2: Oh I love that. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1: Eric.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And like any love notes from listeners, it's like
Speaker 3: if one person, if this helps your day improve, we've
Speaker 3: done our job. So thank you so much for having me,
Speaker 3: and big thanks to everybody who's here listening.
Speaker 1: Bye. Everyone.
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