Speaker 1: The problem with holding a grudge is your hands are
Speaker 1: too full to hug somebody. And what I found is
Speaker 1: that carrying around a narrative of insufficiency or anger or
Speaker 1: revenge doesn't hurt the other person, it hurts us.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the one you feed. Throughout time, great thinkers
Speaker 2: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have, quotes
Speaker 2: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think,
Speaker 2: ring true. And yet for many of us, our thoughts
Speaker 2: don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,
Speaker 2: or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
Speaker 2: what we do. We think things that hold us back
Speaker 2: and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.
Speaker 2: Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort
Speaker 2: to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
Speaker 2: how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,
Speaker 2: how they feed their good wolf. Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 2: Our guest on this episode is Seth Godin, the author
Speaker 2: of twenty one international bestsellers that have changed the way
Speaker 2: people think about work and art. They've been translated into
Speaker 2: thirty eight languages. His breakthrough books include unleashing the idea virus,
Speaker 2: permission marketing, Purple Cow Tribes, the dip Lynchpin, the practice,
Speaker 2: and this is Marketing. He writes one of the most
Speaker 2: popular daily blogs in the world and has given five
Speaker 2: TED Talks. Seth is also the founder of the pioneering
Speaker 2: online startup Yogodine. Today, Eric and Seth discuss his new book,
Speaker 2: This Is Strategy, Make Better Plans, and Don't Forget. The
Speaker 2: one Feed podcast is now on YouTube, so you can
Speaker 2: also watch interviews at the one You Feed pod on YouTube.
Speaker 3: Hi Seth, welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Well, thank you for having me. It's really a pleasure.
Speaker 3: We are going to be discussing your latest book, which
Speaker 3: is called This Is Strategy, Make Better Plans. But before
Speaker 3: we do that, we'll start like we always do with
Speaker 3: the parable. In the parable, there's a grandparent who's talking
Speaker 3: to their grandchild and they say, in life, there are
Speaker 3: two wolves inside of us that are always at battle.
Speaker 3: One is a good wolf, which represents kindness, bravery, and love,
Speaker 3: and the other's a bad wolf, which represents things like
Speaker 3: greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops and
Speaker 3: think about it for a second. They look up at
Speaker 3: their grandparent and they say, well, which one wins, and
Speaker 3: the grandparent says, the one you feed. So I'd like
Speaker 3: to start off by asking you what that parable means
Speaker 3: to you in your life and in the work that
Speaker 3: you do.
Speaker 1: Well. Of course, it reminds me of zig Ziggler, and
Speaker 1: Zig showed up in my life with that story just
Speaker 1: in time to change it when I was in my
Speaker 1: early twenties, and he expanded it by talking about the
Speaker 1: bank and if you're constantly making deposits into your savings account,
Speaker 1: it's going to grow. And we don't think it's odd
Speaker 1: that someone takes a shower every day or eats lunch
Speaker 1: every day. Why don't we feed our good wolf every day?
Speaker 1: And I have found through the years that every time
Speaker 1: I focus my attention and offer sustenance to the good wolf,
Speaker 1: it makes my life better. It's not something I have
Speaker 1: to do, it's something I want to do, and I'm
Speaker 1: glad to do it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it really is this sense. Oftentimes with things like this,
Speaker 3: we think we're going to do something that's going to
Speaker 3: be the last thing we have to do towards our
Speaker 3: well being. And again we recognize it with things like
Speaker 3: showers or exercise like that's preposterous, Like you're not going
Speaker 3: to take one shower that's going to last forever. But
Speaker 3: when it comes to our inner lives, we often believe
Speaker 3: in some end state that we arrive at.
Speaker 1: And the Buddhist seven done as any favors by talking
Speaker 1: about achieving nirvana. The problem with holding a grudge is
Speaker 1: your hands are too full to hug somebody. And what
Speaker 1: I found is that carrying around a narrative of insufficiency
Speaker 1: or anger or revenge doesn't hurt the other person, it
Speaker 1: hurts us. And so you know, Zig took it really far.
Speaker 1: He refused to call that thing at the traffic intersection
Speaker 1: of stoplight say its only purpose is to keep the
Speaker 1: traffic go, So it's goalie. But the absurdity of that is.
Speaker 1: Part of it is that if we find ourselves constantly
Speaker 1: adopting hygiene about who we want to become, it happens.
Speaker 3: So let's talk about your new book. This is Strategy,
Speaker 3: Make Better Plans. I said to you before we started,
Speaker 3: we're not generally a business podcast, but your book makes
Speaker 3: pretty clear that strategies aren't just for business. They are
Speaker 3: for us. They are for our families. Talk a little
Speaker 3: little bit about the role strategy plays in our personal
Speaker 3: lives or our family lives.
Speaker 1: Well, isn't that where it begins. I mean, most of
Speaker 1: us don't spend all of our days thinking about business.
Speaker 1: We spend thinking about the change we seek to make,
Speaker 1: who we seek to become, the influence we want to
Speaker 1: have on other people. And so you need a strategy
Speaker 1: to talk your way out of a parking ticket, You
Speaker 1: need a strategy to figure out how to have a
Speaker 1: family life that sustains you. You need a strategy for
Speaker 1: how you're going to use your limited resources to build
Speaker 1: the life that you want to have. All of these
Speaker 1: things are simply what choices do we make today to
Speaker 1: build the assets that lead to tomorrow being what we
Speaker 1: hope for. And they should not be reserved for Microsoft
Speaker 1: or some other giant corporation there for anyone who has
Speaker 1: to deal with anybody else or anything else in the world.
Speaker 1: If you're stranded on a desert island, you're still going
Speaker 1: to need a strategy to survive.
Speaker 3: So how do we start to go about thinking about
Speaker 3: strategy on these smaller levels? What are the main components
Speaker 3: of a strategy?
Speaker 1: So, for something that we talk about all the time,
Speaker 1: we hardly ever talk about it. And what I found
Speaker 1: is there are almost no good books about strategy, which
Speaker 1: attracted me to writing one. And I am arguing that
Speaker 1: there are four components systems, games, empathy, and time. So
Speaker 1: let's start with time. Nobody says I need to have
Speaker 1: a full grown apple tree in my backyard today. What
Speaker 1: they do is they plant seeds, they water them, they
Speaker 1: fertilize them. It's understood that trees grow over time. Well,
Speaker 1: we have a strategy of going through the educational system.
Speaker 1: We have a strategy for developing lifestyle over time. So
Speaker 1: the first question I ask is why will this be
Speaker 1: better tomorrow if you do something today. That's the first part.
Speaker 1: The second one is empathy, which is when we deal
Speaker 1: with anything in the outside world, that thing, that person
Speaker 1: has power. They can make choices. Why will they choose
Speaker 1: to do what we need them to do? Why will
Speaker 1: they choose to hire us as a freelancer instead of
Speaker 1: going on five or and paying half as much. Why
Speaker 1: will they choose to come to our dinner party instead
Speaker 1: of You get the idea. When we have the empathy
Speaker 1: to grant people power, we don't get disappointed and surprised
Speaker 1: when they make a choice. Third one is games. Not
Speaker 1: board games, because most board games aren't very good, but
Speaker 1: the concept of games which have rules, boundaries, and outcomes.
Speaker 1: And if you view what you're doing as a game,
Speaker 1: it's much easier to not take yourself so seriously and
Speaker 1: to realize it's not personal. They're making moves, you're making
Speaker 1: moves or does that get us? And the last one,
Speaker 1: which we can talk about for seventeen hours is systems.
Speaker 1: You know, there are lakes in there are rivers, and
Speaker 1: I live near the Hudson. The Hudson River looks a
Speaker 1: little bit like a lake, but it's not because it
Speaker 1: has a current. And currents are the invisible or not
Speaker 1: invisible forces that push us in a given direction. Fighting
Speaker 1: a current, fighting a system might be worthwhile, but you
Speaker 1: better do it on purpose. So a lot of the
Speaker 1: things we're going to talk about today are, yeah, but
Speaker 1: what system are you in and how is the system
Speaker 1: pushing you to act in a way you don't want
Speaker 1: to act.
Speaker 3: So let's talk about you said we could use strategy
Speaker 3: for improving our family. Using that as the example, let's
Speaker 3: talk through those four components.
Speaker 1: So time, okay, So if we're going to focus on family,
Speaker 1: let's say you have a seven year old kid. Your
Speaker 1: seven year old kid is going to be eight next year.
Speaker 1: The effort that you're putting into developing your relationship and
Speaker 1: this person is not so that they will be the
Speaker 1: perfect seven year old. It's so that they will go
Speaker 1: on a path to become an adult who is self sustained, satisfied, confident,
Speaker 1: et cetera. When we think about this seven year old,
Speaker 1: what do they want? Well, empathy teaches us that what
Speaker 1: they want is status, affiliation, and the freedom from fear.
Speaker 1: Those are the three things everybody wants. So what do
Speaker 1: they mean? Well, if a seven year old is being
Speaker 1: oppositional and you say time to go to bed and
Speaker 1: they say no, they might be tired, but they're saying
Speaker 1: no because their status goes up if they defeat you. Right,
Speaker 1: and affiliation is people's desire to be connected, to fit in,
Speaker 1: to be part of something. So when we alienate someone
Speaker 1: in our family because we want to get something right now,
Speaker 1: we have sacrificed our connection, our affiliation. And the last
Speaker 1: one is freedom from fear. So if a kid's at
Speaker 1: summer camp and I helped drun a summer camp for
Speaker 1: forty three years, is homesick. Homesickness isn't a real thing.
Speaker 1: It is fear of a real thing. Right that a
Speaker 1: kid is safe surrounded by friendly kids, but they're homesick
Speaker 1: because they're afraid of what might happen. We don't deny
Speaker 1: the fear. We acknowledge the fear, We name the fear,
Speaker 1: We talk through the fear, and then offer affiliation, and
Speaker 1: then over time that person can get to where they
Speaker 1: hope to go. So all of these things, they're not manipulations.
Speaker 1: They're the empathy of having a strategy to intentionally make
Speaker 1: relationships and people better. And as soon as you do
Speaker 1: that and depersonalize it and realize it's a game. When
Speaker 1: your seven year old swears that you, you don't take
Speaker 1: it personally and you don't yell back because you see
Speaker 1: what they're doing and you understand it with empathy.
Speaker 3: What are the systems at play in a family?
Speaker 1: So there are a therapists suit are trained in this
Speaker 1: and I am not, But let me tell you some
Speaker 1: of the systems that are going on. First of all,
Speaker 1: that seven year old wants a smartphone why because their
Speaker 1: peers have a smartphone. Because the smartphone has a network effect.
Speaker 1: Because if they don't have one, their status is going
Speaker 1: to go down, their affiliation will be broken, and the
Speaker 1: system just keeps reinforcing that. We have to push against
Speaker 1: that if we're going to have a different outcome. There
Speaker 1: is the system within families of people wanting to fit
Speaker 1: in all the way but stand out, wanting to be
Speaker 1: part of something but separate from something. There is the
Speaker 1: college industrial complex, which is a huge, powerful system that
Speaker 1: pushes people from a very early age to think that
Speaker 1: they have to go to a famous college, and that
Speaker 1: has created the conditions for parents to think they are
Speaker 1: failures if their kids don't get into a famous college
Speaker 1: and to go into quarter million dollars into debt. These
Speaker 1: are systems. So you know, I coached a kid down
Speaker 1: the street who just went to college, and the application
Speaker 1: process feels like you're being judged. You're not being judged.
Speaker 1: Your application is being judged. You're playing a game. Once
Speaker 1: you see the system, once you realize that fifty percent
Speaker 1: of the people who get into Harvard get in because
Speaker 1: of sports, et cetera, et ceteras, and play a different
Speaker 1: game and not take it so personally and end up
Speaker 1: achieving what you want to achieve by helping them achieve
Speaker 1: what they want to achieve. So there are games within games,
Speaker 1: systems within systems. None of us are doing this all
Speaker 1: by ourselves.
Speaker 3: You talk about there being a couple of myths with systems.
Speaker 3: One is that we have unlimited power, which is basically
Speaker 3: to ignore that systems are at work right right, more
Speaker 3: or less, like I could just do whatever I want,
Speaker 3: you know, it's all up to me. And then the
Speaker 3: other myth is that we have no power when you
Speaker 3: say that the power lies somewhere between infinity and zero.
Speaker 3: And I think that question of understanding what things we
Speaker 3: can change and what things we cannot change is a
Speaker 3: really difficult one. We often set up straw men to
Speaker 3: make it seem easy. You can't change the weather, but
Speaker 3: you can't change your clothes, you know, something dumb like that.
Speaker 3: But this is really hard. And when you start talking
Speaker 3: about complex systems, it gets even harder.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, this is brilliant. I guess right back to
Speaker 1: which wolf are you feeding? Because left to our own devices,
Speaker 1: none of us would feed the bad wolf. It's systems
Speaker 1: and pressure and fear that causes us to do that.
Speaker 1: And the easiest thing to do is become a victim.
Speaker 1: I'm just doing my job. I just got to feed
Speaker 1: the family. I just got to pay the bills. And
Speaker 1: the next thing we know, we've been working for a
Speaker 1: cigarette company for ten years and we have a drinking
Speaker 1: problem because we let the system win. But the alternative
Speaker 1: is to believe that the system doesn't affect us whatsoever
Speaker 1: and that we can just do exactly what we want
Speaker 1: to do. So the dance in between them acknowledging our
Speaker 1: privilege but also acknowledging that we don't have complete control
Speaker 1: forces us to do the adult thing, which is to
Speaker 1: see the system, name the system, and pick our shots.
Speaker 1: You know, as a parent, you got to think really
Speaker 1: hard about are you going to tell the school system
Speaker 1: I'm not participating. Are you going to tell the school
Speaker 1: system I'm participating, but my kid's going to say whatever
Speaker 1: they feel like saying, and we don't care about grades.
Speaker 1: Are you going to tell the school system? I will
Speaker 1: do exactly what you say all the time. Right. Clearly,
Speaker 1: there's something in between those that makes you a great parent.
Speaker 1: And there's no map, there's no easy checklist. There's just
Speaker 1: a compass. And the compass is, can I define describe
Speaker 1: what this kid is going to be like when they're
Speaker 1: twenty two. Can I tell you the stories that they're
Speaker 1: going to tell about their childhood? Now? How do I
Speaker 1: create the conditions for that appen?
Speaker 3: And so, you know, I think on one level, it's
Speaker 3: easy to distinguish strategy from tactics. Strategy being the overall plan,
Speaker 3: the tactics being what do I do next? I think
Speaker 3: you say somewhere that a strategy is just like all
Speaker 3: the tactics after each other, and yet you can't define
Speaker 3: all that completely in advance. So how do we think
Speaker 3: about strategy changing over time? I guess these are generalized
Speaker 3: questions and I'm trying to maybe anchor us on something
Speaker 3: a little bit more specific. Yeah, but how do we
Speaker 3: think about when our strategy is either we had the
Speaker 3: wrong goal or we've got the wrong plan to get there.
Speaker 1: Right, So, strategies are hard to come up with and
Speaker 1: worth sticking with. Tactics change all the time. You can
Speaker 1: have secret tactics, but you shouldn't have a secret strategy.
Speaker 1: So if we can keep talking about this child hearing thing,
Speaker 1: if your vision of the twenty two year old is
Speaker 1: that they are going to be self assured and independent,
Speaker 1: that's a strategy you can stick with. For a very
Speaker 1: long time. What might be a tactic. A tactic might
Speaker 1: be that when they're seven they build a website to
Speaker 1: post their poetry on, not because it's a sign, but
Speaker 1: because they can. When they're eight, you encourage them to
Speaker 1: run a lemonade stand to raise money for charity. You
Speaker 1: have them do prize, not just get an a. You
Speaker 1: create the conditions for them to be able to point
Speaker 1: to things they did that weren't just complying. Now some
Speaker 1: of them, you're going to discover. My kid's terrible at
Speaker 1: that they hate that there's too much fear. So your
Speaker 1: tactics change, but your compass is still the same. I
Speaker 1: want to raise an independent, confident kid. That's strategy, and
Speaker 1: you can ask for help on which tactics. But if
Speaker 1: someone says no, don't do that. Raise a kid who
Speaker 1: is compliant, obedient, and afraid. You're going to say no,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to do that, not allowed, I'm not
Speaker 1: changing my strategy.
Speaker 3: I wanted to Paul for a quick good Wolf reminder.
Speaker 3: This one's about a habit change and a mistake I
Speaker 3: see people making. And that's really that we don't think
Speaker 3: about these new habits that we want to add in
Speaker 3: the context of our entire life. Right, Habits don't happen
Speaker 3: in a vacuum. They have to fit in the life
Speaker 3: that we have. So when we just keep adding I
Speaker 3: should do this, I should do that, I should do this,
Speaker 3: we get discouraged because we haven't really thought about what
Speaker 3: we're not going to do in order to make that happen.
Speaker 3: So it's really helpful for you to think about where
Speaker 3: is this going to fit and what in my life
Speaker 3: might I need to remove. If you want to step
Speaker 3: by step guide for how you can easily build new
Speaker 3: habits that feed your good Wolf, go to good Wolf
Speaker 3: dot me, slash change and join the free masterclass. I
Speaker 3: want to raise a confident, self assured child is a strategy,
Speaker 3: but it's sort of a goal, right. The strategy is
Speaker 3: going to be more than that. Yes, So there's something
Speaker 3: between stating a goal and stating a tactic that you're
Speaker 3: pointing at here, right.
Speaker 1: The strategy in that case would be I will create
Speaker 1: the conditions for them to encounter a parent risk, and
Speaker 1: when they survive things that have a parent risk, they
Speaker 1: will realize that their narrative about risk can be expanded.
Speaker 1: I will create the conditions where there isn't a lot
Speaker 1: of reassurance, but there is the ability for them to succeed,
Speaker 1: not by pandering to them, but by building scaffolding so
Speaker 1: that they can get better at what they do. That
Speaker 1: is a strategy with meat on it. So, for example,
Speaker 1: there's a school called the act in Academy. I don't
Speaker 1: know if you've talked about it on the show. So
Speaker 1: it's one hundred and twenty kids in one building and
Speaker 1: there's only two adults. One adult is the custodian, whose
Speaker 1: job is to keep things clean and to keep the
Speaker 1: other adult from doing anything. That's it. So these kids,
Speaker 1: starting from the time they're five, every week they have
Speaker 1: to announce what they want to learn. They get a
Speaker 1: report card twice a week, and they can learn anything
Speaker 1: they want and they learn it from each other or
Speaker 1: by doing research. And they do that for twelve years,
Speaker 1: and when they're done, these kids outperform on every metric
Speaker 1: of mental health and performance because they're enrolled in the journey. Now,
Speaker 1: if your strategy is I need to show I'm a
Speaker 1: good parent by fitting in to the dominant system, you
Speaker 1: will never send your kid to an active academy. It's
Speaker 1: bad tactic for your strategy, because you have to explain
Speaker 1: over and over again to your peers what crazy thing
Speaker 1: you're doing. On the other hand, if your strategy is
Speaker 1: the one we just described, you're going to think seriously
Speaker 1: about this because it's a tactic that aligns with your strategy.
Speaker 1: So that's a big global thing, but the smaller things
Speaker 1: are the ones that matter. So I produced the fourth
Speaker 1: grade musical years ago at a local school. It was
Speaker 1: The Wizard of Oz, and my strategy was, these sixty
Speaker 1: kids are going to grow as a result of this
Speaker 1: event by me creating the conditions for growth. My strategy
Speaker 1: was not I will look good by putting on the
Speaker 1: best performance of the Wizard of Oz that anyone has
Speaker 1: ever seen, because that's what most directors seek to do.
Speaker 1: So for example, we had four doroth, these four ten men,
Speaker 1: four whatever, and we kept swapping them in and out
Speaker 1: as the play went on. So sixteen kids got to
Speaker 1: be the star, not four. And we spent the first
Speaker 1: two weeks of rehearsals with no script whatsoever, just teaching
Speaker 1: kids to be loud, just teaching them to stand up
Speaker 1: and speak loud, and on and on all of these tactics.
Speaker 1: So that fifteen years later, kids would say to me,
Speaker 1: I still remember being in the Wizard of Oz when
Speaker 1: I was ten years old, And that's a choice. That's
Speaker 1: a strategy of what we seek to do, the change
Speaker 1: we seek to make.
Speaker 3: So that's a great example. So let's explore systems through
Speaker 3: that lens. What were the systems in that case that
Speaker 3: you were interacting with?
Speaker 1: Okay, So the biggest system, for sure was the parent
Speaker 1: industrial complex. So for example, I had been a soccer
Speaker 1: coach when the kids were much younger. I got kicked
Speaker 1: out of coaching because my team didn't win one game,
Speaker 1: and the parents acted like there was a trophy shortage.
Speaker 1: These kids were six. There isn't a trophy shortage. There
Speaker 1: is a confidence shortage. There's a competence shortage. So every
Speaker 1: single kid got to play, and I taught them the
Speaker 1: things they needed to learn, as opposed to figure out
Speaker 1: how to beat other six year olds at soccer, which
Speaker 1: isn't the point. So I knew when I was doing
Speaker 1: this musical that parents were going to say, but it's
Speaker 1: not a good version of the Wizard of Oz. I
Speaker 1: prepared for that early and often. And there was also
Speaker 1: the system of the school because they're giving me the
Speaker 1: space and blah blah blah. So how do I make
Speaker 1: it so that the principles status with the community goes
Speaker 1: up when she lets me do this. How do I
Speaker 1: give her stories to tell, ideas and pictures to share
Speaker 1: so that parents say to her, you're doing a good
Speaker 1: job because there's a system in place. I'm not by myself.
Speaker 1: And if I got the parents on my team and
Speaker 1: the principle on my team, then I can pull it off.
Speaker 1: But first I had to acknowledge the dominant system.
Speaker 3: And you brought empathy in thinking about how to make
Speaker 3: what the principle's challenges were. And I assume you also
Speaker 3: did the same with the parents, right, you had empathy
Speaker 3: for what Thereafter.
Speaker 1: I got to say to sixteen sets of parents, your
Speaker 1: kid's the star of the show. Right. That was a
Speaker 1: huge win. That gave me like a month of cover
Speaker 1: because the last thing that we did was we had
Speaker 1: six stress rehearsals and one performance because I wanted the
Speaker 1: kids to feel like it was showtime without the hassle
Speaker 1: of parents putting pressure on them, so that by the
Speaker 1: time we got to the last one, they were totally grooved.
Speaker 1: They were like, fine, we didn't make drama around the
Speaker 1: last one for the kids, because the dress rehearsals in
Speaker 1: private was what made them excited. So by the time
Speaker 1: there was the one and only performance, it didn't matter
Speaker 1: that it wasn't a great version of the Wizard of Oz.
Speaker 1: What mattered was they saw their kids light up beaming,
Speaker 1: and there was no time to then come back to
Speaker 1: me with notes about how to make the Wizard of
Speaker 1: Oz better.
Speaker 3: Just how bad was it? The end? I'm really curious
Speaker 3: to have seen it now.
Speaker 1: Well, okay, so here's one of the things that you
Speaker 1: can do if you have some spare time. Go on
Speaker 1: YouTube and look up bad performances of middle school orchestras,
Speaker 1: because they're really, really bad, really bad. And the reason
Speaker 1: they're bad is that the people who are conducting the
Speaker 1: orchestras care very much about repertoire and music, and they
Speaker 1: give kids music that's just a little too difficult for them,
Speaker 1: and so they're desire for status is associated with the
Speaker 1: canon that they're approaching. What they should do is play
Speaker 1: the same three songs every year, because they don't need
Speaker 1: to do new songs, and they should pick the songs
Speaker 1: that are totally in the realm of delight. For kids.
Speaker 1: That would sound good to the kids. But again, when
Speaker 1: the status and the systems collide, we end up with
Speaker 1: stuff that we don't like. So my answer is it
Speaker 1: was fantastic, but Judy Garland was.
Speaker 3: Not in it yet. Well, Interestingly, I saw a middle
Speaker 3: school choir concert sometime in the last six months and
Speaker 3: it was really bad. But I think, hearing you talk now,
Speaker 3: I think part of what made it really bad was
Speaker 3: how good the music teachers wanted it to be. They
Speaker 3: were very serious people. I could tell that they're very
Speaker 3: serious people, And what made it so bad was just
Speaker 3: how dad it was. It would be hard pressed to
Speaker 3: get a bunch of middle schoolers have less energy than
Speaker 3: this thing had, right exactly.
Speaker 1: So I think what we've been covered here is that
Speaker 1: strategy is misunderstood, and strategy is everywhere. It's not just
Speaker 1: how do I get people to buy more of my
Speaker 1: whatever item it is. And the thing that we haven't
Speaker 1: talked about is how we change systems. Systems that we
Speaker 1: care about, systems of oppression, systems that are getting in
Speaker 1: the way. And the thing is that a lot of
Speaker 1: self motivation is internal, but systems change is always external,
Speaker 1: and that comes from community action. When we find the
Speaker 1: others when we feed their better wolves, then the system
Speaker 1: begins to change. So the opportunity we have is to
Speaker 1: build circles, circles of people that reinforce choices because we're
Speaker 1: going together. And when that happens, when you're standing next
Speaker 1: to the others, you end up with more resilience because
Speaker 1: they're feeding your wolf and you're feeding theirs.
Speaker 3: You mentioned self improvement is an internal thing, right, But
Speaker 3: even in that case, sort of an internal thing, right.
Speaker 3: You reference the famous marshmallow test, which is a measure
Speaker 3: of self control. It was a Stanford experiment where you
Speaker 3: gave kids one marshmallow and said, if you don't eat
Speaker 3: this one marshmallow, I'll come back in a while and
Speaker 3: give you two. And it appeared that this was all
Speaker 3: about kids self control and that it predicted future outcomes,
Speaker 3: but it was more complicated than that because it was
Speaker 3: part of a system.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so this experiment, the data is fascinating. They've covered
Speaker 1: these people for more than twenty years, and we're talking
Speaker 1: about kids who are three and four years old. The
Speaker 1: experimenter leaves the room with a three year old and
Speaker 1: a marshmallow and comes back and if the kid hasn't
Speaker 1: eaten the marshmallow, that kid's going to get into a
Speaker 1: more famous college, that kid's going to make more money,
Speaker 1: that kid's going to report more happiness, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 1: So the takeaway, as you said, is grit and self
Speaker 1: control is the key to thriving in Western civilization. And
Speaker 1: my argument is it's not controlled because poor kids, kids
Speaker 1: from broken homes, kids who haven't had privilege, are used
Speaker 1: to people breaking their promises, adults breaking their promises, adults
Speaker 1: saying they'll be dinner and there is no dinner. And
Speaker 1: if that's the way you grow up, when an adult says,
Speaker 1: don't eat the marshmallow and you'll get a bonus, you're like, hey,
Speaker 1: you know what, I need to eat the marshmallow because
Speaker 1: I don't know if you're coming back. And we can
Speaker 1: do something about this by building communities that support kids
Speaker 1: who end up believing in themselves enough that they can
Speaker 1: wait for the second marshmallow. And it's not something we're
Speaker 1: born with, it's something we can learn.
Speaker 3: Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, I agree. I find that that
Speaker 3: experiment fascinating because at first glance, it almost seems to
Speaker 3: be a well, if I didn't have good self control.
Speaker 3: At three, I'm doomed, right, I'm not going to be
Speaker 3: any good at things. The other thing that they did
Speaker 3: find in that experiment was they could teach those children
Speaker 3: how to delay to the second marshmallow, So even then
Speaker 3: they could see ways of teaching the child. But I
Speaker 3: think that the thing that you illustrated is the second
Speaker 3: fascinating piece, which is, yeah, depending on what a child
Speaker 3: believes about adults trustworthiness, grabbing the marshmallow might be absolutely
Speaker 3: the smartest thing you could do, you know. And it
Speaker 3: didn't control for that, and it didn't understand those factors.
Speaker 3: And when I was eighteen, I formed a nonprofit program
Speaker 3: to tutor disadvantaged children from you know, generally very poor schools.
Speaker 3: And it was so evident then that what children of
Speaker 3: an affluent school and children of a school like this,
Speaker 3: how different the circumstances were. If you send a child
Speaker 3: home in an upper middle class background with homework, there
Speaker 3: was a reasonable chance somebody might say, hey, how about
Speaker 3: the homework you're working on the homework. You sent a
Speaker 3: child home with homework In these other systems, that wasn't
Speaker 3: even on the radar. It was just chaos.
Speaker 1: So this shifts into the next thing, which is the
Speaker 1: idea of false proxies, which is so important. False proxies
Speaker 1: are things that are easy to measure but not helpful.
Speaker 1: So if you're hiring a programmer, knowing how many words
Speaker 1: permitt it they type isn't helpful because it's easy to
Speaker 1: measure how many words permitt it someone types, but it's
Speaker 1: not relevant to whether they're going to do a good job.
Speaker 1: And you know, if you've got one of these things
Speaker 1: on your wrist and it's measuring things, is it measuring
Speaker 1: things that help you address the things that you're trying
Speaker 1: to change that align with your strategy, or is it
Speaker 1: simply measuring things that are easy? And one one of
Speaker 1: the things that we have the opportunity to do is
Speaker 1: walk away from false proxies. So in my case, I
Speaker 1: don't use Twitter, Facebook LinkedIn any of them because I
Speaker 1: would be under pressure to make those numbers go up,
Speaker 1: but those numbers are not related to the change I
Speaker 1: seek to make in the world. I know that I
Speaker 1: have some one star reviews on Amazon, I have not
Speaker 1: read one in ten years, and that means I can't
Speaker 1: read the five star reviews either, So I don't read
Speaker 1: any of the reviews, because I've never met an author
Speaker 1: who said, oh yeah, I read all my one star
Speaker 1: reviews and now I'm better at writing. It doesn't make
Speaker 1: us better at writing. It just feeds the wrong wolf.
Speaker 1: It persuades us that we're no good, when it really
Speaker 1: means I didn't like your stuff because it wasn't for me. Right,
Speaker 1: So we need to seek out, actively, seek out useful proxies. Right.
Speaker 1: If I am good at this, it is likely that
Speaker 1: I'm getting closer to the thing I seek to do.
Speaker 1: I'll give you one specific eggs. Years ago, I did
Speaker 1: the swim across Long Island Sound because I like to swim,
Speaker 1: and I thought this would be a fun challenge. And
Speaker 1: they put you in a boat and they take you
Speaker 1: miles out into the ocean. You have to swim home.
Speaker 1: And the boat totally freaked me out because there were
Speaker 1: all these people on the boat in their fancy suits
Speaker 1: with their oils and their lotions and trash talking each other,
Speaker 1: hyping themselves up to get a good time on the swim.
Speaker 1: And I got in the water and I swam too
Speaker 1: fast for the first half mile, and then I wiped
Speaker 1: myself out right because I was using the proxy of
Speaker 1: how do I please these people? How do I fit
Speaker 1: in here and earn their status? Instead of saying swimming
Speaker 1: is a lonely sport, I'm going to swim by myself.
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter what the people on the boat think.
Speaker 1: And we spend too much time on the wrong boats
Speaker 1: thinking about what people think, as opposed to getting back
Speaker 1: to our strategy of what is the change we seek
Speaker 1: to make? Who are we here to change? Who are
Speaker 1: we here to help? How do I bring tactics to
Speaker 1: be able.
Speaker 3: To do that? This is such a difficult thing to
Speaker 3: do because when we start to think about wanting to
Speaker 3: make change, I don't know how much of it is
Speaker 3: natural human thing and how much of it is cultural imposed.
Speaker 3: But there's always it's got to be more. If I'm
Speaker 3: helping ten people, I really should be helping ten thousand,
Speaker 3: and once I do that, I need to help a million.
Speaker 3: And once I help, and it just goes on. And
Speaker 3: You're right, you can start to pay attention to all
Speaker 3: the wrong things. I've talked about this a lot with
Speaker 3: the show, right, Like there's intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Right
Speaker 3: on one hand, I pay attention to downloads because downloads
Speaker 3: are part of how we make a living, so I
Speaker 3: can't ignore it. But if I give it too too
Speaker 3: much attention, yep, I end up very unhappy. Right, Both,
Speaker 3: I'm unhappy and I'm not probably doing a great job.
Speaker 3: When I turn my focus to what am I trying
Speaker 3: to do? Why am I doing it? Things get better
Speaker 3: to me. It feels like it's sort of a consistent redirection.
Speaker 3: Bad wolf over there, I don't even know if I
Speaker 3: want to call it bad wolf, but not useful wolf
Speaker 3: over there? Right and over here is the good wolf
Speaker 3: that's going to help me. And it's this consistent redirection,
Speaker 3: particularly given that we swim in systems that are trying
Speaker 3: to measure all these things.
Speaker 1: Right, well, you bring up two points. Let's do the
Speaker 1: old one and then shift to the new. The old
Speaker 1: one is you're got a false proxy right in front
Speaker 1: of you downloads. It's not a useful proxy for the
Speaker 1: importance and impact of this podcast. It's just not. And
Speaker 1: you need to find a better proxy and measure that
Speaker 1: relentlessly because it will make the podcast better. But you
Speaker 1: must ignore the other one because you can't do anything
Speaker 1: to make your rack downloads, so it's not worth you
Speaker 1: knowing and then the second one about this idea of more,
Speaker 1: it is directly related to industrialism and Western culture. So
Speaker 1: I've spent time in little villages that had no electricity,
Speaker 1: and the spiritual leader there I just bought a solar
Speaker 1: lantern and I said to him, what are you doing
Speaker 1: with the solar lantern? And he sat me down and said,
Speaker 1: we sit on my front lawn. I have twenty four
Speaker 1: people in my congregation, and we just wait for it
Speaker 1: to break. It's something to talk about. And he's not saying,
Speaker 1: how am I going to get fifty people to come here.
Speaker 1: He's got twenty four people he needs to take care of.
Speaker 1: That's it. And when you have a farm, you're not
Speaker 1: going to get any more acres. You grow what you grow.
Speaker 1: If you can make a tree more productive, that's fine,
Speaker 1: but it's unlikely. Once you have a factory and you're
Speaker 1: leveraged and you've borrowed the money and your competitors have
Speaker 1: borrowed the money, and there's another machine for you to buy.
Speaker 1: All of a sudden, more becomes the nature of it.
Speaker 1: And the thing is, people who are very successful get
Speaker 1: hooked on that. And you know, we think about the
Speaker 1: richest people on earth, they are working harder than you
Speaker 1: and me. Why what game are they playing? And why
Speaker 1: are they playing that game?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 2: Yep?
Speaker 1: And so the opportunity is to say how do I
Speaker 1: do better? Not how do I do more? And the
Speaker 1: lovely silver lining is if you do better, you get more.
Speaker 3: Yeap. Let's change direction a little bit here. This probably
Speaker 3: isn't even the right thing to talk about in the podcast,
Speaker 3: but I can't help it. I can't help it because
Speaker 3: you talk about flipping a coin ten times and there's
Speaker 3: a slim chance you'll get ten heads in a row.
Speaker 3: And I talk about this idea that when you roll
Speaker 3: a die, it's not more likely that the next role
Speaker 3: is going to be a six again because there was
Speaker 3: just a six because the dice doesn't know what it
Speaker 3: rolled before. Correct. You then went on to say something
Speaker 3: that explained something that I've seen fancy mathematical formulas never do,
Speaker 3: which is that the coin doesn't know what it did yesterday.
Speaker 3: Each flip is an independent event, but time knows. Time
Speaker 3: keeps score over the long run.
Speaker 1: Right, So let's assert for a minute that the system
Speaker 1: we're in is actually fair, that the system we're in
Speaker 1: doesn't judge us or know about our personality. That's coin flipping, right.
Speaker 1: We know that if you flip a coin enough times,
Speaker 1: it's going to come out even give or take. There's
Speaker 1: some physics involvement, give or take, so that means that
Speaker 1: over time it has to even out. That doesn't increase
Speaker 1: the chances that you're going to get a tail next
Speaker 1: time if you've got six heads in a row, but
Speaker 1: it does mean that if we do twenty more, it's
Speaker 1: probably going to regress to the mean. Now, the danger
Speaker 1: of knowing this is you then apply it to applying
Speaker 1: for a job. You say to yourself, I've applied for
Speaker 1: twenty jobs. I've been rejected every time, so the odds
Speaker 1: are or if I keep going, it's going to work out.
Speaker 1: What's missing from that is the system isn't fair, and
Speaker 1: the system is already judging you somehow. Something about your background,
Speaker 1: or your resume, or whichob you're applying for, whatever needs
Speaker 1: to change because repeating what you did yesterday, this is
Speaker 1: someone who got eight hundred book rejections in a row
Speaker 1: my first year in the business, doesn't work. What works
Speaker 1: is learning from something, not just the rejection, but going
Speaker 1: deeper and improving what you do to make it a
Speaker 1: better fit for what you're trying to accomplish. And so
Speaker 1: we have to balance both those things. Understand how probability works,
Speaker 1: but also understand we don't live in a fair.
Speaker 3: World, right, And I think talking about things that are
Speaker 3: really hard to know, one of them being like what
Speaker 3: can I control? And what can I The other is
Speaker 3: what I'm doing not going to work? Meaning then I
Speaker 3: need to change it? Or is what I'm doing hasn't
Speaker 3: worked yet?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 3: I mean, I think you have a book about this,
Speaker 3: right exactly.
Speaker 1: It's such a challenge in our fast moving western world
Speaker 1: to navigate this. But the thing is, almost everything rhymes
Speaker 1: with what came before. Someone is going to win the lottery,
Speaker 1: it's probably not going to be you. Somebody is going
Speaker 1: to be the first X to do something, It's probably
Speaker 1: not going.
Speaker 3: To be you.
Speaker 1: So the opportunity we have is to pattern match. So
Speaker 1: my first book proposals were idiosyncratic. They were delightful to me.
Speaker 1: They were unique and original, and nobody in book publishing
Speaker 1: could find the confidence to say yes to that because
Speaker 1: who is I. But as soon as I said, this
Speaker 1: is just like this but with a little twist, oh,
Speaker 1: we can match that pattern and then I was off
Speaker 1: to the races, and only twenty years later was I
Speaker 1: able to come up with things that are original that
Speaker 1: no one had ever done before, like a book about quitting.
Speaker 1: But I couldn't do that the first day because I
Speaker 1: didn't have the ability the right to do it. In
Speaker 1: their eyes, the empathy that I got from John Boswell,
Speaker 1: who wasn't very nice to me about it, but I
Speaker 1: learned so much, was Oh, I am being self absorbed
Speaker 1: and arrogant by insisting my books are better instead of
Speaker 1: saying you have good taste. This rhymes with what you like.
Speaker 3: You just mentioned the lottery, and that leads me to
Speaker 3: something else that you talk about in the book that
Speaker 3: I really like, which is the difference between a good
Speaker 3: decision and a good outcome. So share with me the difference.
Speaker 1: Well, for the people who have made it this far.
Speaker 1: In the podcast, this is a gem. It's from my
Speaker 1: friend Andy Duke. This will change your life. Here we go,
Speaker 1: We're do a little telepathy right now. Think hard about
Speaker 1: a decision, a good decision you made in the last
Speaker 1: six months, a really good decision you got it got
Speaker 1: in mind? Yeah, yeah, okay, did it turn out well?
Speaker 1: Everyone says yes, that's what made it a good decision.
Speaker 1: They say it turned out well, they're unrelated. Buying a
Speaker 1: lottery ticket, even if you win, is a bad decision
Speaker 1: because the math is against you, the odds are against you.
Speaker 1: It doesn't make sense. It's not a good way to
Speaker 1: increase your money. If you start congratulating yourself for decision
Speaker 1: making because it worked, you don't understand how decision making works.
Speaker 1: If you make the right decision and it doesn't work,
Speaker 1: that's okay. You still made the right decision. Good for you.
Speaker 1: And we need to let go of our attachment to
Speaker 1: the outcome, because that's not how you make a good decision.
Speaker 1: Make a good decision by knowing what you know now,
Speaker 1: understanding what came before, and making a choice. And if
Speaker 1: you did that with rigor, it was a good decision
Speaker 1: no matter what happens.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for example, I for some reason, we seem to
Speaker 3: be talking about coin flips and dice, and I went
Speaker 3: to the casino recently and I won money. It was
Speaker 3: still from a financial perspective, not a good decision. Right,
Speaker 3: Going to the casino with the goal of having more
Speaker 3: money is a bad decision. Correct Now, from the perspective
Speaker 3: of having a good time and spending time with you
Speaker 3: my friends may be good decision in that regard, But
Speaker 3: from a financial perspective, the fact that I won money
Speaker 3: that night does not. It just was a happen to
Speaker 3: be a good outcome. But yes, playing a game in
Speaker 3: a casino is a bad decision if you're just caring
Speaker 3: about finances, and so you know, it's really being able
Speaker 3: to separate those two things is such a useful idea.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, I've done more projects than most people,
Speaker 1: and I have failed way more than most people. And
Speaker 1: people point to my successes and they say, I'm really
Speaker 1: good at this. Now, what I'm really good at is
Speaker 1: launching projects in a way that if they don't work,
Speaker 1: I'm still in the game. I never put all my
Speaker 1: chips into a project because I know it might not work,
Speaker 1: but I still did it like a professional. If it
Speaker 1: doesn't work, that's okay, because I get to do it
Speaker 1: again tomorrow.
Speaker 3: So last thing here, I'm just going to read something
Speaker 3: you wrote and let you just say a couple of
Speaker 3: words about it as a way to go out here.
Speaker 3: You say, when the person you could have been meets
Speaker 3: the person you are becoming, is it going to be
Speaker 3: a cause for celebration or heartbreak, and I'll let you
Speaker 3: finish us any way you want with that prompt.
Speaker 1: I can't believe I wrote that, because when I read it,
Speaker 1: it choked me up. That doesn't happen to me very
Speaker 1: often when I'm writing the person you could have been,
Speaker 1: the one you're dreaming to become, the one with high
Speaker 1: aspirations and who wants to make a difference. That person
Speaker 1: a year from now, in five years from now is
Speaker 1: going to meet the person you are going to become.
Speaker 1: And if those two people get along, thank you and congratulations.
Speaker 1: But if they don't because the other one didn't have
Speaker 1: a strategy, the other one got buffeted by systems, the
Speaker 1: other one made bad decisions. That's where heartbreak comes in,
Speaker 1: because we know we could have And what I'm trying
Speaker 1: to help people do is not lower their expectations, but
Speaker 1: instead raise them and meet them by deciding it's worth
Speaker 1: it to have a strategy, because the work is worth doing.
Speaker 3: Beautiful Seth, thank you so much for coming on. It's
Speaker 3: been such a pleasure to talk with you.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Eric, keep making this ruckus it matter.
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