Speaker 1: You don't control nature, not in the slightest. Nature is
Speaker 1: much bigger and stronger and more capable, and that is
Speaker 1: a very liberating realization. You can do your best, you
Speaker 1: can try your best, you can try to provide the
Speaker 1: best possible conditions, and you have to just leave it
Speaker 1: at the door.
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.
Speaker 3: It's not every day that someone you think you know,
Speaker 3: someone urbane, accomplished, cerebral shows up with mud on their
Speaker 3: boots and tears in their eyes from.
Speaker 4: Doing a pull up.
Speaker 3: Debbie Milman, longtime host of Design Matters and acclaimed designer,
Speaker 3: returns to the show with a quiet.
Speaker 4: Surprise, a book about gardening.
Speaker 3: But the Garden isn't about tips or tools. It's about
Speaker 3: what happens when we let ourselves be bad at something,
Speaker 3: especially later in life. In this conversation, Debbie opens up
Speaker 3: about learning to grow and why failure might be the
Speaker 3: richest soil we have. Whether you've ever felt stuck, afraid
Speaker 3: to try, or unsure, if it's too late to start,
Speaker 3: this episode is for you. I'm Eric Zimmer and this
Speaker 3: is the one you feed.
Speaker 4: Hi Debbie, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Hi Eric, Thank you for having me.
Speaker 3: I am excited to have you back on. We are
Speaker 3: going to be discussing your latest book, which is surprising
Speaker 3: to me, about gardening, and we'll talk about that in
Speaker 3: a second, but before we do, we'll start in the
Speaker 3: way that we always do with the parable. In the parable,
Speaker 3: there's a grandparent who's talking with a grandchild and they say,
Speaker 3: in life, there are two wolves inside of us that
Speaker 3: are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which
Speaker 3: represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the
Speaker 3: other's a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and
Speaker 3: hatred and fear, And the grandchild stops think about it
Speaker 3: for a second. They look up at their grandparent and
Speaker 3: they say, well, which one wins? And the grandparent says,
Speaker 3: the one you feed. So I'd like to start off
Speaker 3: by asking you what that parable means to you in
Speaker 3: your life and in the work that you do well.
Speaker 1: As a designer, I think that we're constantly in a
Speaker 1: mode of me making very deliberate decisions about our work,
Speaker 1: solving problems, making choices about which direction to take, and
Speaker 1: I think that extends to every aspect of one's life.
Speaker 1: I think that we don't just design things. We design
Speaker 1: our choices and we design our paths. So the parable
Speaker 1: really dovetails quite seamlessly into I think, what it means
Speaker 1: to be a designer.
Speaker 3: I've had you on the show before, and you very
Speaker 3: kindly had me on your show a number of years ago,
Speaker 3: and that day is carved into my memory as one
Speaker 3: of my favorite memories. Tell me why I was in
Speaker 3: New York City and you interviewed me. No, you're a
Speaker 3: big part of it. You're a big part of why
Speaker 3: I came to New York City. So I came to
Speaker 3: New York City and you interviewed me, and I believe
Speaker 3: I might have also appeared on Jonathan Field's show. But
Speaker 3: it was a whole day where I did things related
Speaker 3: to this podcast in its work, and at the time
Speaker 3: I was still working a full time job in the
Speaker 3: software business. But it awakened this thing in me that
Speaker 3: was like, maybe someday this could be what I do,
Speaker 3: and now it is. But anyway, I just think back
Speaker 3: to that day. I remember coming to your studio and
Speaker 3: everything about it was wonderful. So I want to thank
Speaker 3: you for that day because I have a terrible memory,
Speaker 3: but that day really stands out to me. That day
Speaker 3: also introduced me to you in person, at which time
Speaker 3: I thought, and this is similar to what you say
Speaker 3: in the book The Garden about what your wife Roxanne
Speaker 3: thought about you, which was I was like, she is
Speaker 3: such a New Yorker, sophisticated and design oriented and all
Speaker 3: of these like New York type things. So I when
Speaker 3: I saw you had a book about a garden, had
Speaker 3: a little bit of a double take. I was like,
Speaker 3: I hang on a second, Like I've got you as
Speaker 3: this very urbane, sophisticated person, not that gardeners aren't sophisticated,
Speaker 3: but it just sort of surprised me. So when I
Speaker 3: was reading your book and you mentioned that your wife Roxanne,
Speaker 3: had the same reaction when you talked about gardening, it
Speaker 3: sort of tied all these memories together for me. So
Speaker 3: talk to me about why a gardening book now, Well.
Speaker 1: It wasn't something that I was seeking. But first, let
Speaker 1: me just say thank you, thank you for having me
Speaker 1: on the show again, thank you for caring about my work,
Speaker 1: and thank you for sharing that memory because it's really
Speaker 1: wonderful and I'm so glad that we have this connection
Speaker 1: me too. As far as why a gardening book, now,
Speaker 1: it's primarily because I was asked to write.
Speaker 4: One that'll do it.
Speaker 1: I was not in any way seeking about gardening, how
Speaker 1: to garden, anything about gardening. Honestly, I've always, as an adult,
Speaker 1: try to cultivate some sort of greenery around me in
Speaker 1: the various apartments that I've lived in over the four
Speaker 1: decades i've been in Manhattan. But writing a book on
Speaker 1: gardening was not in my wheelhouse. Was it on my
Speaker 1: bucket list. I had these various somewhat dubious attempts and
Speaker 1: results in the previous spaces that I tried to cultivate
Speaker 1: as some outdoor space slash gardening and as I mentioned,
Speaker 1: various apartments since the nineties, but it wasn't really until
Speaker 1: I came to Los Angeles during COVID that no pun
Speaker 1: intended that my efforts blossomed. Roxanne had gotten this house
Speaker 1: that I'm sitting in right now two weeks before we
Speaker 1: started dating, and I had been living in Manhattan for
Speaker 1: all of my adult life, and so when we first
Speaker 1: met and started dating, we were long distance commuting to
Speaker 1: each other. And she has a beautiful house. The backyard
Speaker 1: when she first moved in was a very typical sort
Speaker 1: of suburban backyard, beautiful, beautiful tree, a lot of grass, boxwoods, boxwoods.
Speaker 1: And because I had always tried to cultivate some outdoor
Speaker 1: space in the various places that I've been living, when
Speaker 1: I first got here, I asked her if she would
Speaker 1: mind if I judged it up a little bit, you know,
Speaker 1: with some potted plants and various herbs and things like that.
Speaker 1: There was a beautiful garden center a couple of blocks away,
Speaker 1: so it was super easy, very convenient, and so that's
Speaker 1: what I started doing. And it was very rudimentary because
Speaker 1: it was during COVID. Let me backtrack. Then, when COVID
Speaker 1: hit the world, we decided that I would come to
Speaker 1: California because I had a lot more time, we had sky,
Speaker 1: we had a car. It made more sense for us
Speaker 1: to be somewhere where we could get out a little bit.
Speaker 1: And so that's what I did at the time. You know,
Speaker 1: we had no idea that the world was going to
Speaker 1: shut down for as long as it did. I remember
Speaker 1: the then president at the time saying, Oh, we'll be
Speaker 1: all back together for Easter. And that was in March,
Speaker 1: and so Roxay was like, oh, pack for two weeks
Speaker 1: and I'm sure everything will come back to normal after that.
Speaker 1: Well we all know what happened after that. And so
Speaker 1: I need a lot more I need a lot more underwear.
Speaker 1: And so we were here. I had a lot more time.
Speaker 1: I was working on a book at the time, but
Speaker 1: also had a lot of other time to do things,
Speaker 1: and decided to expand my efforts in the garden as
Speaker 1: a way of trying to feel closer to the world.
Speaker 1: And I was having some luck because of the weather,
Speaker 1: and so I started with the herbs, and then I
Speaker 1: went to lettuces, and then I got more ambitious and
Speaker 1: started to plant tomatoes and cucumbers and things that I
Speaker 1: really loved, and I was documenting that on Instagram, and
Speaker 1: I was making these little ten panel stories about what
Speaker 1: I was doing, but it was also very much about
Speaker 1: what was happening through the eyes of somebody that was
Speaker 1: also as the rest of the world was living through COVID,
Speaker 1: and how gardening made me feel more hopeful and a
Speaker 1: bit more optimistic, and seeing how we could grow and evolve.
Speaker 1: And the TED folks, who I have good relationship with
Speaker 1: through my podcast and through speaking there and so forth,
Speaker 1: reached out when the TED conference went completely online that
Speaker 1: year and asked if I could create some interstitials between
Speaker 1: the online talks to break up the talking, and I
Speaker 1: made some stories about gardening masks mad if I would
Speaker 1: make some visual essays that I would narry and that
Speaker 1: would be shown throughout the conference, and so I made
Speaker 1: one about gardening. Fast forward to twenty twenty one, and
Speaker 1: for my sixtieth birthday, I had decided to take an
Speaker 1: expedition to Antarctica for two reasons, one to see Antarctica
Speaker 1: and then also to try and witness the total eclipse
Speaker 1: of the Sun that was happening over Antarctica at the
Speaker 1: end of twenty twenty one, and it was a magnificent
Speaker 1: expedition and it was everything I hoped it would be,
Speaker 1: except for the eclipse, which I didn't see because of
Speaker 1: cloud cover. And so I wrote all about that and
Speaker 1: also put it up on my Instagram and somebody from
Speaker 1: a wonderful art director and editor saw it on Instagram
Speaker 1: and she worked at a farm magazine and reached out
Speaker 1: and asked if I'd be interested in doing a piece
Speaker 1: for the magazine, which I did. Fast forward another year
Speaker 1: as things happen, and I get an email unsolicited from
Speaker 1: an editor at Timber Press, which is part of one
Speaker 1: of the big five Hashet, and she asked me if
Speaker 1: I'd be interested in doing a book on gardening, having
Speaker 1: seen all of these visual stories that I had done,
Speaker 1: and I thought she was pranking me, like I'm like
Speaker 1: a New Yorker, I write, not a gardener. If you're
Speaker 1: interested in my talking about my journey to try to
Speaker 1: be a gardener and the myriad failures along the way,
Speaker 1: and what I've learned and how I've grown and evolved
Speaker 1: and so forth, then I'm all in. But if you're
Speaker 1: expecting me to be the next Martha Stewart. You have
Speaker 1: the wrong girl. And so she wrote back and said
Speaker 1: that sounds great. A quest to become better at gardening
Speaker 1: through the lens of visual storytelling would be welcome, and
Speaker 1: so that's what I did.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And to say that it's a book about gardening
Speaker 3: is to sort of describe it and also sort of
Speaker 3: not right, because there's no real gardening advice in there
Speaker 3: unless you take, like, move to California, because it's easier
Speaker 3: than New York to grow things as advice which you
Speaker 3: don't even directly give. And like you, it's a beautifully
Speaker 3: designed book that, with very few words and not a
Speaker 3: whole lot of pictures, really conveys some beautiful things. And
Speaker 3: I think it's a lot like your design work in
Speaker 3: your podcast, which on the surface, it's sort of about
Speaker 3: the surface, right, and yet there's a deep reservoir right
Speaker 3: underneath it of lots of depth and wisdom. And you
Speaker 3: kind of start off early on by saying that seeds
Speaker 3: are tiny and densely packed with their entire.
Speaker 4: Existence, what does it mean to exist?
Speaker 3: And you also sort of talk about how the universe
Speaker 3: itself sort of came out of this seed idea, and
Speaker 3: I think that's a off a place to sort of
Speaker 3: start with, this idea of something coming from not quite
Speaker 3: nothing but almost nothing. Yeah, talk to me about how
Speaker 3: that as an overall idea has been important to you
Speaker 3: throughout your life.
Speaker 1: Well. As I was beginning to become more adept at
Speaker 1: gardening and was not just planting container plants and things
Speaker 1: that I bought already born, so to speak, from nursery,
Speaker 1: I was also planting seeds. And to think that any plant,
Speaker 1: any vegetable, any tree, starts from this sort of tiny
Speaker 1: compact enclosure that then opens to create an entire universe
Speaker 1: of sorts is endlessly fascinating to me. And I'm somewhat obsessed,
Speaker 1: endlessly fascinated at another right words here about how we
Speaker 1: all got here? And I think about it all the time, Eric,
Speaker 1: I think about it all the time, And in some
Speaker 1: ways it's sort of depressing because I'm never going to know.
Speaker 1: We're so far away as a species from understanding the
Speaker 1: mysteries of how we got here and why we're here
Speaker 1: and how it all started. And you know, how did
Speaker 1: the helium and the hydrogen get here in the first place?
Speaker 1: You know, where's the carbon come? From I had so
Speaker 1: many questions that I have, and I'm on this quest
Speaker 1: of trying to understand my purpose here and what my
Speaker 1: contribution can be and how I could potentially, if at all,
Speaker 1: make a difference, and so it all ties together the
Speaker 1: universe and if we did get here from this big bang,
Speaker 1: this tiny, tiny, densely packed point then expanded to create
Speaker 1: what we are in such vastness that it's inconceivable. It's
Speaker 1: incomprehensible for us to even be able to envision, yep,
Speaker 1: what we're part of, and to think that, you know,
Speaker 1: trees have this grand underlying root system that communicates, and
Speaker 1: it's all so beautiful and so abstract and so mysterious,
Speaker 1: and it all feels so mystical and magical in so
Speaker 1: many ways that for me it became the ultimate way
Speaker 1: of trying to express the questions that I have and
Speaker 1: the tiny little answers that I attempt to tell myself.
Speaker 3: One of the things that I really thought about a
Speaker 3: lot as I was read the book is that you
Speaker 3: describe your early attempts at just buying plants and putting
Speaker 3: them outside and them dying and failing, And there's two narratives.
Speaker 3: I think that we sometimes tend to separate about what
Speaker 3: doing anything successfully looks like. And one narrative is you
Speaker 3: just have to keep trying, you know, failure is just
Speaker 3: a chance to move on. If you just keep trying,
Speaker 3: you'll succeed. And there's truth in that, absolutely, right. I mean,
Speaker 3: you've talked about it a lot. There's a lot of
Speaker 3: truth in it. And then at the same time, there's
Speaker 3: another element that sometimes the story is well, yeah, except
Speaker 3: it's all about circumstance. And what I think is interesting
Speaker 3: about the gardening example is that you actually need to
Speaker 3: bring those two together. You can't grow anything anywhere. You
Speaker 3: could keep trying and it's not going to grow, right,
Speaker 3: So it's not all about just keep trying effort. And
Speaker 3: yet at the same time, it is about iteration, it's
Speaker 3: about learning, and it's about saying, Okay, if I want
Speaker 3: this thing to grow, whatever it is, whether it's this plant,
Speaker 3: whether it's my career, whether it's my relationship, that there
Speaker 3: are circumstances conditions that are more conducive to things growing.
Speaker 3: And I think that's one of the big challenges that
Speaker 3: a lot of people wrestle with. It's one of the
Speaker 3: I think the core tension is like, do I just
Speaker 3: keep going in this direction or have I learned something
Speaker 3: that tells me, yes, keep going, but go in that direction.
Speaker 3: And I feel like your book somehow to me, just
Speaker 3: brought that whole question into really clear focus. And I
Speaker 3: don't know what my question is. Now that's my reflection.
Speaker 3: I'll let you go where you like with it.
Speaker 1: Well, I write about how as I've gotten older, it's
Speaker 1: a lot more difficult for me, or it had been
Speaker 1: more difficult for me to attend things that I'm not
Speaker 1: good at. And it's a bit narcissistic in a way,
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways to think that if you
Speaker 1: try anything you're going to be good at it. Why
Speaker 1: should you be if you haven't been taught, if you
Speaker 1: haven't practiced, if you haven't extended yourself into a realm
Speaker 1: that is further than what you're currently aware of. And
Speaker 1: so asking for help has never been particularly easy for me.
Speaker 1: Asking for favors has not been particularly easy, And so
Speaker 1: the idea of trying to learn something new out of
Speaker 1: a school environment where that's sort of the accepted norm.
Speaker 1: And it's been a long time since I was in
Speaker 1: a desk as opposed to behind a podium teaching. It
Speaker 1: took a while for me to realize that in order
Speaker 1: to no pun intended he or grow, that I had
Speaker 1: to ask for some guidance and that watching HGTV wasn't
Speaker 1: going to be enough, and so I really needed more
Speaker 1: deeper learning about the conditions that I was in. And
Speaker 1: this is a good metaphor for life, I think, and
Speaker 1: how to how to grow from there, how to get
Speaker 1: better at what I was attempting to do. And this
Speaker 1: experience actually helped me find the courage to begin to
Speaker 1: do other things that I've said for as long as
Speaker 1: I can remember, that I really wanted to do, but
Speaker 1: for some reason had this obstacle path in front of
Speaker 1: me that felt too daunting to attempt. And it's opened
Speaker 1: up that obstacle a little bit to make more attempts
Speaker 1: at doing things that I never really felt like I
Speaker 1: had the ability to do, and that's been liberating in
Speaker 1: a lot of ways.
Speaker 3: Can you share what any of these new attempts have been, Well,
Speaker 3: you don't have to if you don't want to, but no, I'm.
Speaker 1: Fine with it. I'm on day four hundred and eighty
Speaker 1: one of learning French on due lingo.
Speaker 4: Nice.
Speaker 1: You know it comes a time where you're like, I
Speaker 1: can't keep saying, oh, I wish I knew how to
Speaker 1: speak another language. I mean, you either do it and
Speaker 1: you don't do it. I just was tired of hearing
Speaker 1: myself wishing for this magical ability and thinking that somehow
Speaker 1: I'd learn it in my sleep. And so I've done
Speaker 1: this now for a year and a half and I'm
Speaker 1: not very good, and I'm not a great learner, but
Speaker 1: I know a lot of words. That's been also revelatory.
Speaker 1: And then the other is getting into shape. And so
Speaker 1: I've been working with a trainer for two years and
Speaker 1: so you know, got a little bit of message, all right.
Speaker 1: And so those two things are things that I never
Speaker 1: really envisioned that I'd be able to begin to do
Speaker 1: in the way that I'm doing it now with consistency.
Speaker 3: I think that ability to do something and not be
Speaker 3: good at it and still do it is so sort
Speaker 3: of fundamental, and for some reason for me, I think
Speaker 3: that it's an ability that has gotten better in me
Speaker 3: as I've gotten older, where I think when I was young,
Speaker 3: I thought that how good I was at various individual
Speaker 3: things with some reflection on how good I was overall,
Speaker 3: And now I've realized, like, whether I can roller skate
Speaker 3: or not says nothing at all about who I am
Speaker 3: as a person or my value. So if I go
Speaker 3: out and make a complete fool myself skating, which I
Speaker 3: assure you is what happens. I mean the last time
Speaker 3: I went roller skating, they now have designed these things.
Speaker 3: They look like walkers on wheels, and I'm out there
Speaker 3: tottering around with one of them, which was I mean,
Speaker 3: my younger self would never have got like, no way.
Speaker 3: My older self is like, well, this is kind of
Speaker 3: mildly humiliating, but I'm just going to keep doing it.
Speaker 3: But I think that maybe it's certain things like I
Speaker 3: decided early on I was going to be a musician,
Speaker 3: and I'm not musically talented.
Speaker 4: Really, no, I'm not.
Speaker 1: I'm surprised.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't know why I am. I am deeply
Speaker 4: not natural at it, but I love it deeply. But
Speaker 4: I've just stuck with.
Speaker 3: It for I don't know, thirty five years now, and
Speaker 3: I'm I'm okay, you know, Like my friend Chris is
Speaker 3: a natural, Like I'll spend three months figuring out and
Speaker 3: learning how to play something that he will then turn
Speaker 3: around and play in like an hour of time, which
Speaker 3: is mildly like eating, yeah, infuriating, and I'm like, you
Speaker 3: know what, that just doesn't matter, Yeah, because I'm doing
Speaker 3: this thing because I love doing it. And I think
Speaker 3: that with your gardening is such a great example of
Speaker 3: you just embracing learning how to do something because you
Speaker 3: simply wanted to do it, same way with French or
Speaker 3: with getting in shape.
Speaker 1: Gating in shape has been the hardest one for me,
Speaker 1: even harder than French, I think because I'm much more
Speaker 1: comfortable doing anything cerebral, and I'm also more comfortable learning
Speaker 1: anything on my own in that I can go at
Speaker 1: my own pace. I don't have to worry about judgment
Speaker 1: for lots and lots of reasons that we've talked about
Speaker 1: on your podcast before. I for all of my life
Speaker 1: have been very cut off from the physicality of living
Speaker 1: and always approach things from a much more cerebral point
Speaker 1: of view, where I can think through things and not
Speaker 1: necessarily engage physically through things as much. And so I
Speaker 1: was forced to start working with my trainer when I
Speaker 1: had surgery and needed to do PT and that's how
Speaker 1: I started my relationship with my trainer. He's also a
Speaker 1: physical therapist. He's a PhD in physical therapy, and I
Speaker 1: was very compliant with what I needed to do. The
Speaker 1: one physical activity that I did engage in on the
Speaker 1: daily was walking. I'm a native New Yorker and was
Speaker 1: always walking through the city and always walking wherever I
Speaker 1: could go because I enjoy it so much, and I
Speaker 1: didn't want to give that up because that was at
Speaker 1: the time my only physical activity besides pacing. And so
Speaker 1: I started to feel better about myself physically and then
Speaker 1: decided that I should continue working with him in weight
Speaker 1: training and so forth. And so that's what I've done,
Speaker 1: and I've even started running. People I tell they're like,
Speaker 1: did aliens take over your body? And I'm like, yes,
Speaker 1: they did a long time ago. Now I'm shooing them away.
Speaker 1: Right right when I first started with him, because of
Speaker 1: all the trauma, if I couldn't do something eric, I
Speaker 1: would start crying involuntarily. Like it wasn't like, oh boohoo,
Speaker 1: poor me. This was involuntary projectile tears because I was
Speaker 1: facing so much of my own I don't even know
Speaker 1: what the word is, bad wolf. And so the first
Speaker 1: time I did a pull up, actually cried, but it
Speaker 1: was not because of my trauma. It was because of
Speaker 1: my joy that I could actually do something like that,
Speaker 1: and again it was involuntar and that's been one of
Speaker 1: the most surprising things in my life. Actually, I have
Speaker 1: to say, to be able to be conscious in that way,
Speaker 1: or even allow my subconscious to bubble up in the
Speaker 1: way that it has, has done a lot to help me.
Speaker 3: It's hard to separate natural affinity from avoidance responses sometimes, right,
Speaker 3: So I think I do have a natural affinity towards
Speaker 3: the brain. I think that's part of who I am,
Speaker 3: and I think I was very disembodied for a lot
Speaker 3: of my life. And so, yeah, physicality is something that
Speaker 3: I've sort of learned, and I also paradoxically have figured
Speaker 3: out that it is, for me the most important mental
Speaker 3: emotional health tool I have. If you forced me to
Speaker 3: only have one the rest of my life, which I'm
Speaker 3: glad I don't because I need like twenty seven of them,
Speaker 3: But if you force me to have one, I would
Speaker 3: probably say it's exercise, really, because there's something about what
Speaker 3: it does for me, the way it connects me up inside,
Speaker 3: the way it releases anxiety, the way that it increases energy.
Speaker 3: It's just it is for me, maybe my most important one. Again,
Speaker 3: I'm glad I don't have to choose, but it's been
Speaker 3: a really important one for me. And the thing about
Speaker 3: exercise that I always find fascinating, and listeners have heard
Speaker 3: me talk about this a lot, but I do find
Speaker 3: it really interesting is how if something we come to
Speaker 3: see as so valuable for me every time I've ever
Speaker 3: done it, when I'm done, I'm like, I'm glad I
Speaker 3: did that, like literally every time. Why does it remain hard?
Speaker 3: You'd think basic reward learning would have me running to
Speaker 3: the treadmill every day, but I don't. And I think
Speaker 3: it's just because it's it's such a significant output of
Speaker 3: energy that as organisms, we are designed to evaluate that
Speaker 3: amount of output very closely.
Speaker 4: You just don't.
Speaker 3: You know, you just don't go running around for no
Speaker 3: good reason as an organism trying to survive. But I
Speaker 3: still remain kind of fascinated by that dynamic of how.
Speaker 4: I've faced it.
Speaker 3: Today, I was like, I know, I really the best
Speaker 3: thing for me to do would be to get on
Speaker 3: the peloton and ride.
Speaker 4: That's really hard.
Speaker 3: So what I've learned to do is I just went like, well, okay,
Speaker 3: you're preparing for Debbie instead of sitting in front of
Speaker 3: a screen reading, put in your headphones and just at
Speaker 3: least go walk outside in the sun while you prepare,
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 4: So those little sort of hacks.
Speaker 1: Yeah help. That's why I have to keep working with
Speaker 1: the trainer Eric, because I'm too weak and lazy to
Speaker 1: do it on my own, you know. David Foster Wallace
Speaker 1: talks about what a real leader is in Considered Lobster,
Speaker 1: his collection of essays, and he talks about how a
Speaker 1: real leader is somebody who helps people who are weak
Speaker 1: and lazy to do things that they would not consider
Speaker 1: doing on their own. I'm paraphrasing, yep. But weak and
Speaker 1: lazy we're in that. I'm not paraphrasing those words. And
Speaker 1: that's what my trainer does for me. He helps me
Speaker 1: get over my weakness and my laziness to do better
Speaker 1: things that I can do on my own. And if
Speaker 1: I don't have an appointment with him, I don't do it.
Speaker 1: And I'm hoping that I can get to a point
Speaker 1: where I can. The one area where I think I
Speaker 1: might is actually with running now, and I don't know
Speaker 1: that I'll ever be a runner. Maybe I'll be able
Speaker 1: to do a five k one day. But I experienced
Speaker 1: that runners high one time once and that was like wow,
Speaker 1: I never felt something like that before. But I totally
Speaker 1: hear you. It's not like I'm going rod time to run.
Speaker 1: I mean, I haven't run since the last time I
Speaker 1: had a training session, and I've been on a book tour,
Speaker 1: so you can only imagine what that's been like. And
Speaker 1: I do find it's super interesting this whole idea that
Speaker 1: you just brought up, because I don't have any issue
Speaker 1: starting to make a drawing. I have no issue engaging
Speaker 1: in anything I really love on my own. I don't
Speaker 1: need a trainer to draw. I don't need a trainer
Speaker 1: to read. I don't need a train to ride, I
Speaker 1: need an editor, but I don't need anybody to motivate me.
Speaker 1: So I do find that I have to think about
Speaker 1: that a lot. That's a really really interesting observation that
Speaker 1: I need to mull. And if you do find this
Speaker 1: to that, please let me know.
Speaker 3: Well, for me, the solution has been accepting that like
Speaker 3: that that's normal, right, that it's just okay that like
Speaker 3: making myself do something very physical is always going to
Speaker 3: take a certain degree of coercion. Right, I told you
Speaker 3: before the call. I just got done writing this book.
Speaker 3: I turned it into the publisher about a month ago,
Speaker 3: and a bunch of the book is about how we
Speaker 3: actually change. And one of the things that I'd picked
Speaker 3: up three years of doing the show, but also really
Speaker 3: got driven home as I did a lot more research.
Speaker 4: For this book is that if you gathered all.
Speaker 3: The behavior change scientists together in the world and you
Speaker 3: put them in a room, right, I think the thing
Speaker 3: they would all agree on is that relying on our
Speaker 3: own internal engine, what we would commonly call willpower, is
Speaker 3: generally a bad idea for anything that is, for whatever
Speaker 3: reason for.
Speaker 4: Us, difficult to do.
Speaker 3: Why is that because our environments matter so much, and
Speaker 3: willpower is a very finicky thing because it's tied somewhat
Speaker 3: to mood. Right, Because if we think about motivation or
Speaker 3: willpower in the sense that most of us know it,
Speaker 3: it has to do with how much we feel like
Speaker 3: doing something. And if you've got a mood system like mine,
Speaker 3: it is just up and it's down and it's up.
Speaker 3: There are some people who are a whole lot probably like
Speaker 3: you know, steadier up at like eighty percent. I feel
Speaker 3: good eighty percent of the time and for them might
Speaker 3: be a little bit different. But for people whose mood
Speaker 3: system is as variable as most people, you can't rely
Speaker 3: on just that. So it becomes all about what are
Speaker 3: the strategies that you, as an individual need to figure
Speaker 3: out that will get you across the start line for
Speaker 3: whatever that thing is. So there may be people listening
Speaker 3: to this or like, I don't have a problem going running,
Speaker 3: get up and I just go running, But when I
Speaker 3: think about sitting down to do something creative, oh my god,
Speaker 3: it's like a total block comes up. Okay, and I
Speaker 3: would say they're not lazy. You're not lazy. It's difference
Speaker 3: in what we find easy to do. So for you,
Speaker 3: you need to set up a structure, and a trainer
Speaker 3: is a very wise structure. That's why fitness classes exist
Speaker 3: because people are like, oh, if I sign up to
Speaker 3: go to the class, I'm more likely to go, and
Speaker 3: if I actually go, then I'm aren't likely.
Speaker 4: To work hard.
Speaker 3: It's just it's wisdom to know like, oh, I need support,
Speaker 3: I need help, I need these structures, whereas for somebody different,
Speaker 3: they might need to sign up for an art class
Speaker 3: to do it because they just won't do it because
Speaker 3: for them, the friction is high related to previous failure
Speaker 3: or doubts that they're good at it, and so for
Speaker 3: all of us, I think that change. To me, I
Speaker 3: always think of just as like a puzzle, like what
Speaker 3: are the puzzle pieces that I need to put together
Speaker 3: that make this thing work? And for you, with exercise,
Speaker 3: you finally got the puzzle piece is lined up, and
Speaker 3: they'll probably get unlined again at some point and you'll
Speaker 3: need to go, oh, let me think, Okay, what pieces
Speaker 3: do I need to put in here?
Speaker 1: I think it also has a lot to do with
Speaker 1: who's teaching you. Yes, And I think that part of
Speaker 1: what has made me feel capable or emotionally available to
Speaker 1: do this is my trainer. You know, he's so lovely,
Speaker 1: he's so patient. He really I was very clear with
Speaker 1: him when I started. I'm like, look, I have all
Speaker 1: these issues and so I hope that you can be
Speaker 1: respectful of them. And I have a lot of limitations
Speaker 1: and blah blah blah blah blah. Yeah, and he was like, Okay,
Speaker 1: he's been super respectful always, but he's also unwilling to
Speaker 1: let my own limitations, my own self perceived limitations yep,
Speaker 1: impact my actual abilities.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 1: And I'm not talking about abilities to do any physical activity.
Speaker 1: I'm talking about my mental life.
Speaker 3: Your mental Before we dive back into the conversation, let
Speaker 3: me ask you something. What's one thing that has been
Speaker 3: holding you back lately? You know that it's there, You've
Speaker 3: tried to push past it, but somehow it keeps getting
Speaker 3: in the way. You're not alone in this, and I've
Speaker 3: identified six major saboteurs of self control, things like autopilot behavior,
Speaker 3: self doubt, emotional escapism that quietly derail our best intentions.
Speaker 3: But here's the good news. You can outsmart them. And
Speaker 3: I've put together a free guide to help you spot
Speaker 3: these hidden obstacles and give you simple, actionable strategies that
Speaker 3: you can use to regain control. Download the free guide
Speaker 3: now at oneufeed dot net slash ebook and take the
Speaker 3: first step towards getting back on track. My partner, Jinny,
Speaker 3: who you met when I came to New York. She's
Speaker 3: similar to you in physical things. When we met, you know,
Speaker 3: I guess it's been almost eleven years ago.
Speaker 4: At this point.
Speaker 3: Probably she just hated everything that had to do with
Speaker 3: exercise and movement. It was something she was like I
Speaker 3: know I need to do it and I hate it,
Speaker 3: you know, And she could find periods where she made
Speaker 3: herself do it, and over time she has learned, I think,
Speaker 3: just to appreciate it more. But I remember we took
Speaker 3: I was like, I really want to learn to play tennis,
Speaker 3: Like why don't we go take tennis lessons together? And
Speaker 3: the first two tennis lessons, similar to you, ended in
Speaker 3: tears with her. There was just something about a ball
Speaker 3: flying at her that just brought up like being scared
Speaker 3: as a child and like I hate this, yeah, you know,
Speaker 3: and just the inability to know what to do, and
Speaker 3: just so I think some of that stuff is really
Speaker 3: real for us. And again I think that people face
Speaker 3: this in different ways. I mean, I know people all
Speaker 3: the time were like, I really wish I could learn
Speaker 3: to play guitar, and I'm like, well, of course you can,
Speaker 3: you know, but you have to be really really uncomfortable
Speaker 3: for a while in doing it right, because you're going
Speaker 3: to be terrible at it for a little while. I mean,
Speaker 3: everybody's terrible at guitar to start, just because you can't
Speaker 3: make those shapes with your fingers. Your fingers just aren't
Speaker 3: strong enough. But any learning to do anything, and so
Speaker 3: I think when we look at that and we're like, Okay,
Speaker 3: there's this thing that I want to do and I'm
Speaker 3: having a really hard time doing it, to me, is
Speaker 3: just about okay, what you know, what's the strategy that
Speaker 3: we can come up with? And you sort of snuck
Speaker 3: in the back door of it by having to have
Speaker 3: a trainer for your back that also then managed to
Speaker 3: shepherd you through another door, right, yeah, which is amazing.
Speaker 1: I love how you're helping me better understand myself on
Speaker 1: this podcast. It's fantastic.
Speaker 3: So, speaking of podcasts, when I was getting into and
Speaker 3: preparing for this interview, something happened that as I was
Speaker 3: doing it, I was like, that is amazing, and it
Speaker 3: is this you have been doing your podcast. You're at
Speaker 3: the point I am now I've been doing this podcast
Speaker 3: a decade. So when I started this podcast, you had
Speaker 3: already been doing it for a decade before that. And
Speaker 3: everybody's always to me like, well, you're one of the
Speaker 3: early founders. I'm like, no, not exactly, but holy mackerel,
Speaker 3: twenty years does that fill.
Speaker 4: You with pride?
Speaker 3: How do you feel when you think about twenty years
Speaker 3: of having these conversations.
Speaker 1: It makes me very humbled about the nature of time
Speaker 1: because that went by flash. Yeah, And I remember my
Speaker 1: first podcast. I was interviewing John Fulbrook, who was then
Speaker 1: the art director at Simon and Schuster, and I was
Speaker 1: super nervous. I had my notes in front of me,
Speaker 1: but I also had because he's a book designer, a
Speaker 1: book jacket designer, I had covers of his books all
Speaker 1: pasted over my office wall so that I could easily
Speaker 1: refer to something. I chose John not only because he's
Speaker 1: a fantastic designer and a good friend, but because he's
Speaker 1: extremely gregarious, and I felt like if I choked, which
Speaker 1: was a really good possibility, he could carry on. Thankfully.
Speaker 1: I think I've grown in the twenty years, but it's surreal, Eric,
Speaker 1: It's surreal, and it's also surreal to see how both
Speaker 1: I and the show have evolved and what it means
Speaker 1: to again, coming back to this pun that I don't
Speaker 1: really intend but to really grow as anything. I didn't
Speaker 1: grow up thinking well, I want to be a podcaster
Speaker 1: when I grow up. There was no such thing, and
Speaker 1: that this very unusual path that my life took based
Speaker 1: on a cold call from an internet radio network. Please
Speaker 1: edit that out, Like what if I hadn't picked up
Speaker 1: that call?
Speaker 3: Isn't that fascinating? I interviewed a guy recently. His name
Speaker 3: is Brian I think you say it class, and he
Speaker 3: wrote a book called Fluke and it is a on
Speaker 3: many levels.
Speaker 1: Do you know the book or I'm going to read
Speaker 1: it at great title?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's all about how life is like you just described, like, yeah,
Speaker 3: you don't answer that phone, your whole life is different,
Speaker 3: you know. He talks about how the city of Kyoto
Speaker 3: was originally on the slate to be bombed by the US,
Speaker 3: and it turned out that the war director of the
Speaker 3: US had gone to Kyoto about twenty years before on
Speaker 3: a vacation and loved it. So he said, no, let's
Speaker 3: not do that one. Like it's crazy, Like that is
Speaker 3: life when you look at it. There's just all these
Speaker 3: things that I could have just decided not to do X,
Speaker 3: and my whole life would look different. And his point
Speaker 3: is ultimately that if you embrace that how we actually
Speaker 3: control and how little actually happens, like you know, for
Speaker 3: a reason, that it can be freeing and liberating. It's
Speaker 3: also deeply disconcerting on on some level too.
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, I mean, it takes both the good
Speaker 1: and the bad things and puts them in a completely
Speaker 1: different you see them through a different lens, and I
Speaker 1: think that's also something to honor.
Speaker 4: Yep.
Speaker 3: It goes a little bit back to what we were
Speaker 3: talking about earlier with gardening, right, like there's both what
Speaker 3: you do which matters. What you do matters, and there's
Speaker 3: all the elements that you can't control about growing anything.
Speaker 3: You can be more strategic, like you cannot plant roses
Speaker 3: like you once tried to do in a fully shady patio.
Speaker 3: That's plant a fern there. Right, there's strategy and ultimately,
Speaker 3: though you control what you can, but there's a certain
Speaker 3: element of it that is just out of your control.
Speaker 3: You can't make something grow.
Speaker 1: That's for sure. You don't control nature, not in the
Speaker 1: slightest Nature is much bigger and stronger and more capable,
Speaker 1: and that is a very liberating realization. You can do
Speaker 1: your best, you can try your best, you can try
Speaker 1: to provide the best possible conditions, and you have to
Speaker 1: just leave it at the door.
Speaker 3: Another point of intersection with you and I a little
Speaker 3: bit is that your wife Roxanne, and I both did
Speaker 3: a project with a company called rebuind dot Ai where
Speaker 3: you pair a person like Roxanne with a book. She
Speaker 3: did Age of Innocence. I did the dowd Aching and
Speaker 3: mine is about to come out. I think hers has
Speaker 3: probably been out for a little while. The Doo is
Speaker 3: all about that idea of you just have to work
Speaker 3: with the way nature is. If you try and go
Speaker 3: against it, you're going to lose.
Speaker 1: Every time, I had a plant that had died and
Speaker 1: it had been really established, and then it over the
Speaker 1: years in a previous home that I lived in, and
Speaker 1: I talked a little bit about this in the book
Speaker 1: The Rhododendrons in my previous home, and I was devastated
Speaker 1: to watch them die and wanted to pull them out
Speaker 1: of the ground after they had died, and it was
Speaker 1: really hard. I felt like I was fighting with nature,
Speaker 1: you know. It didn't want to come out of the ground.
Speaker 1: And if pulling a plant out of the ground is fierce,
Speaker 1: you know, so was everything else.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I don't know if you said this in a book
Speaker 3: itself or elsewhere, but I put it under the notes
Speaker 3: I have for the book, which is failure is fertilizer.
Speaker 3: It feeds the next attempt. The deeper insight the unexpected path.
Speaker 3: And I love that idea because it doesn't just say
Speaker 3: just again, this idea that we mostly talk about with failures,
Speaker 3: try try, try again. But I think that the wisdom
Speaker 3: there is yes, try again, but as you point like,
Speaker 3: maybe there needs to be a deeper insight before you
Speaker 3: try again. Maybe there needs to be a different path
Speaker 3: you actually have to be learning. It's not just keep trying.
Speaker 1: Right, And I think that it's really important to be
Speaker 1: conscious about your failures and not just keep trying, because
Speaker 1: if you keep trying to do something the same way
Speaker 1: without understanding what led to the failure and what you
Speaker 1: can do to improve the odds of success, I don't
Speaker 1: know why would be different if you just keep trying
Speaker 1: in the same way.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it's one of those really difficult things
Speaker 3: about people who are trying to build anything. I'm thinking
Speaker 3: of it in a business sense, having been in the
Speaker 3: startup world for a lot of my life, but it's
Speaker 3: really hard to know. It's like, do I just need
Speaker 3: to keep going in this direction because it just takes
Speaker 3: time and people are slowly coming on or is this
Speaker 3: the wrong idea, the wrong direction? When do I pivot?
Speaker 3: How have you thought about that in your life, Like,
Speaker 3: do you have any way of sort of thinking through that,
Speaker 3: whether it's a designer or in any way.
Speaker 1: I think it depends on who you're doing things for, okay,
Speaker 1: and the bar that you need to be able to
Speaker 1: reach in order to do something. If you're doing something
Speaker 1: for someone else and you're getting paid to do it,
Speaker 1: there's much less tolerance for failure. And that could include
Speaker 1: your shareholders, it could include a board, it could include clients.
Speaker 1: If you're doing something for yourself, I think you have
Speaker 1: a bit more leeway. For example, when I started the podcast,
Speaker 1: I was working a full time job. I was working
Speaker 1: as a corporate executive, and I was making a good salary,
Speaker 1: So I wasn't dependent on this other effort that was
Speaker 1: really started as a labor of love. I didn't need
Speaker 1: to monetize it, and I didn't need to do anything
Speaker 1: other than really fulfill my own creative dreams and hopes
Speaker 1: and aspirations. And to a large degree it's still the
Speaker 1: case for me. I'm lucky that I can monetize it
Speaker 1: in some ways, but I've never been dependent on it.
Speaker 1: And when you take out the dependency equation, it gives
Speaker 1: you a lot more freedom to experiment or evolve in
Speaker 1: ways that don't impact others. If you're being hired to
Speaker 1: make something for something else or for the public or
Speaker 1: for profit, it does change the way in which I
Speaker 1: think you approach anything, And ever so slowly, you know,
Speaker 1: now that I'm in my six decade, I've tried to
Speaker 1: eliminate the need to fulfill any obligation to the outcome
Speaker 1: for others' purposes. And It's taken a long time. And
Speaker 1: I'm very lucky, in privileged that I'm in a place
Speaker 1: right now where I can do that more frequently. But
Speaker 1: that's also a choice. You know. I'm not as comfortable
Speaker 1: anymore fulfilling financial obligations. I don't want to live a
Speaker 1: life anymore where I'm working to increase the market share
Speaker 1: of products that I don't feel proud of doing. And
Speaker 1: I did that for a very long time now that
Speaker 1: I wasn't proud of them. I mean, I am very
Speaker 1: proud of the work that I've done. I just don't
Speaker 1: feel the need to redesign any more fast food restaurants
Speaker 1: or over the counter pharmaceuticals or soft drinks or salty snacks.
Speaker 1: And again, I'm very lucky that I was very successful
Speaker 1: doing that, but there comes a time where you have
Speaker 1: to decide how much more of this work do I
Speaker 1: want to do in service of that work? And so
Speaker 1: I feel extremely privileged to be able to take the
Speaker 1: talents that I manifested and grew and developed over my
Speaker 1: corporate career and now applied them to movements and efforts
Speaker 1: that I feel are helping the world be a little
Speaker 1: bit safer or a little bit kinder. And that's the
Speaker 1: work that I'm trying to dedicate myself to doing. Now.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a really tricky thing. I mean, we started
Speaker 3: this conversation with me sharing this magical day in New
Speaker 3: York City, come into your studio, and me being like,
Speaker 3: I wish I could do this full time, And now
Speaker 3: I get to do it full time. And that comes
Speaker 3: with a shadow side to it, which is that this
Speaker 3: thing that started just because I wanted to do it
Speaker 3: and loved doing it now provides a living for me
Speaker 3: and for a couple other people, And so it's different.
Speaker 3: And I think for me, the thing that I have
Speaker 3: to sort of continually sort of do is like, yes,
Speaker 3: I have to hold that there.
Speaker 4: It's real, It's true, it needs to.
Speaker 3: Be And I also need to turn as much of
Speaker 3: my attention as I can to what about this matters
Speaker 3: to me most deeply, and that actually is then what
Speaker 3: ends up creating the best work. But it's always a
Speaker 3: mixed thing. I wanted to ask you about your career.
Speaker 3: You talk a lot about and you've advised a lot
Speaker 3: of young people about their careers. And it's easy to
Speaker 3: look at your career, maybe many people's careers, but I
Speaker 3: can look at your career and I can see it. Okay,
Speaker 3: it started, you know, down over here to the left,
Speaker 3: and today it's up over here to the right, in
Speaker 3: that all the things you just described are true, like
Speaker 3: you are better able to do the work that you
Speaker 3: want to do, You've had some degree of financial success.
Speaker 3: So if I look at it, I go, okay, look
Speaker 3: started down here to the left, ends up here to
Speaker 3: the right, straight line up.
Speaker 4: That's not it, right. So I was wondering if you would.
Speaker 3: Share a little bit about some of the times that
Speaker 3: you might have felt like, Okay, my career was going well,
Speaker 3: and how all of a sudden it feels like uh, oh,
Speaker 3: you know, or any sort of bumps in the road
Speaker 3: or different things that sort of give us a little
Speaker 3: bit more of the nature of the up and down
Speaker 3: that happens in that chart if we zoom in on it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I don't know anything that is just
Speaker 1: a straight line up. I can't even imagine what that
Speaker 1: would be like. I've graduated college in nineteen eighty three
Speaker 1: and moved to Manhattan. I'm a native New Yorker, so
Speaker 1: I wasn't that big a jump, and the first thirteen
Speaker 1: years of my career there was some success there in
Speaker 1: some highlights, but for the most part, it was a
Speaker 1: lot of despair as I was trying to figure out
Speaker 1: who I was and what I wanted to be. I
Speaker 1: graduated with a degree in English literature, so I wasn't
Speaker 1: really prepared for the big time, and at the time,
Speaker 1: I wasn't in a place where I either could or
Speaker 1: wanted to go on for a higher degree. I wanted
Speaker 1: to live in Manhattan and be a working girl, so
Speaker 1: to speak, and because I didn't have a lot of
Speaker 1: training or a lot of guidance or any money, it
Speaker 1: was really really hard for me. And I was also
Speaker 1: grappling with a lot of unresolved trauma and was living
Speaker 1: on my own for the first time in my life,
Speaker 1: and I often say that I considered that first decade
Speaker 1: of my career just experiments and rejection and failure and
Speaker 1: bit of humiliation, and then quite serendipitously ended up in
Speaker 1: the world of branding. You know, I had some skills
Speaker 1: in design coming out of college because I worked on
Speaker 1: the student newspaper and the editor of the section also
Speaker 1: had to put the paper together, and that meant designing it.
Speaker 1: And that's when I discovered my love of graphic design
Speaker 1: and began to develop the skills that were required to
Speaker 1: be a graphic designer. It was still pretty rudimentary. Although
Speaker 1: I had, I think, a good eye and some good ideas,
Speaker 1: I didn't at that time have the drafting skills that
Speaker 1: were required in the eighties. I developed them, and that
Speaker 1: was a good thing. Again, it was very serendipitous, a
Speaker 1: fluke that I ended up in branding. And then, as
Speaker 1: you were talking about earlier, discovered I had a natural
Speaker 1: ability for it. My brain just understood the psychological underpinnings
Speaker 1: of wanting to engage with products that made people feel
Speaker 1: either better about who they were, gave them more social confidence,
Speaker 1: made them feel like they were part of a bigger tribe,
Speaker 1: were enjoying a moment that they were engaging with that
Speaker 1: brand and what that did to our psychological makeup, and
Speaker 1: though even that entry point was marked with difficulties. I
Speaker 1: came into an agency that was mostly comprised of young
Speaker 1: British guys, and I came in as a sort of
Speaker 1: loudmouth female American that was challenging. For the first couple
Speaker 1: of years that I was embraced mostly because I was
Speaker 1: doing well for the company. I was bringing in a
Speaker 1: lot of business, and so I was then finally embraced.
Speaker 1: But then, you know, when I was bringing in the business.
Speaker 1: Part of my original offer to join the company was
Speaker 1: that I would begin to earn equity. I knew that
Speaker 1: the senior partner was interested one day in selling the company,
Speaker 1: and so I wanted to be part of that. And
Speaker 1: initially there was some resistance, as there would be for
Speaker 1: anybody asking for equity, and I had to say that
Speaker 1: if I didn't get equity, and I don't know where
Speaker 1: this courage came from, that I'd have to leave the company.
Speaker 1: And I didn't want to leave the company because it
Speaker 1: was the first time in my life that I was
Speaker 1: really successful and happy doing what I was doing, and
Speaker 1: at this point I'm in my mid to late thirties.
Speaker 1: I didn't become a partner at Stirling until I was
Speaker 1: thirty eight, and was terrified that they'd call my bluff
Speaker 1: and say, okay, well sorry, you know, we don't want
Speaker 1: to give you shares. And then I did get on
Speaker 1: an equity path which became really important to my life.
Speaker 1: But I remember that night going home and thinking, oh
Speaker 1: my god, what have I done. You know, I made
Speaker 1: this threat that I would leave this job that I love,
Speaker 1: that I'm finally good at something, you know, from a
Speaker 1: professional point of view, and then thankfully that worked out,
Speaker 1: but there were a couple of moments in there where
Speaker 1: I wasn't sure it would And working in new business
Speaker 1: the way I did is a constant street fight because
Speaker 1: you're competing with other agencies. You're at the whim of
Speaker 1: what a client might or might not want. I was
Speaker 1: the chief rain maker for a long time in the
Speaker 1: division at Sterling that I was running. You can only
Speaker 1: imagine what that pressure was like, especially for somebody that
Speaker 1: is not only competitive but using their success to be
Speaker 1: their self worth. And that is really challenging because if
Speaker 1: you aren't successful, it's something. If you don't win a
Speaker 1: piece of business that can just decimate whatever little self
Speaker 1: esteem you've built. And so I had to get off
Speaker 1: that hamster wheel. But that's a really long time and
Speaker 1: I still grapple with that, not necessarily in rain making,
Speaker 1: but just in any area where I have to prove myself.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that that is something that many of
Speaker 3: us wrestle with it. I think we can better at,
Speaker 3: but I don't know if it ever completely goes away.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'll let you know. I'm still searching for that.
Speaker 1: That's my holy grail, Eric, that's my holy grail. Just
Speaker 1: to feel good as is.
Speaker 3: Well, that is sort of the ultimate way to be
Speaker 3: because as we've said, you sort of can't necessarily make
Speaker 3: what is aligned with the way you want it to be.
Speaker 3: A certain ability to be like, okay, this is I'm
Speaker 3: going to be okay with what is is the thing
Speaker 3: many of us are striving for. I suspect that there's
Speaker 3: a creature, though, who may be good at this is
Speaker 3: Maximus Touretto Blueberry adept in this skill.
Speaker 1: Well, Maximus Toretto Blueberry, the little multipoo we adopted during COVID,
Speaker 1: is really an example of what it means to live
Speaker 1: in the moment to have utterly no self consciousness about
Speaker 1: any of our bodily requirements and is proof that unconditional
Speaker 1: love exists. So Max is not my first dog. Max
Speaker 1: is Roxanne's first dog, and so it's wonderful to see
Speaker 1: all of those realizations birth themselves in her, and the
Speaker 1: realizations and the relationship she has with Max, which is
Speaker 1: just heart bursting. I can't even explain it. But the
Speaker 1: first dog that did that for me was my dog Duff,
Speaker 1: and that was twenty five years ago. One of the
Speaker 1: great loves of my life taught me what it meant
Speaker 1: to feel loved unconditionally and to love unconditionally, and that
Speaker 1: is one of the great great gifts to the world
Speaker 1: that our pets can do for us. And so I
Speaker 1: love to have my furry my furry family around me.
Speaker 1: We have two cats and a dog.
Speaker 3: Before we wrap up, I want you to think about this.
Speaker 3: Have you ever ended the day feeling like your choices
Speaker 3: didn't quite match the person you wanted to be? Maybe
Speaker 3: it was autopilot mode or self doubt that made it
Speaker 3: harder to stick to your goals. And that's exactly why
Speaker 3: I created the six Saboteurs of Self control. It's a
Speaker 3: free guide to help you recognize the hidden patterns that
Speaker 3: hold you back and give you simple, effective strategies to
Speaker 3: break through them. If you're ready to take back control
Speaker 3: and start making lasting changes, download your copy now at
Speaker 3: oneufeed dot net slash ebook. Let's make those shifts happen
Speaker 3: starting today one you feed dot net slash ebook. Well,
Speaker 3: I think that is a beautiful place for us to
Speaker 3: wrap up with the happy image of Maximus and your
Speaker 3: wife and your old dog, and I think it ties
Speaker 3: right back to kind of where we started, which is nature.
Speaker 3: Dogs are part of nature, and there's a special type
Speaker 3: of connection that comes from being in partnership with.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and also witnessing what grows and what develops and
Speaker 1: what evolves with or without our participation.
Speaker 4: Well, Debbie, thank you so much.
Speaker 3: It's always such a pleasure to talk with you, and
Speaker 3: I appreciate you joining us.
Speaker 1: Eric, thank you, Thank you so much for all of
Speaker 1: your kindness and generosity to me, and thank you for
Speaker 1: a really nice interview.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much for listening to the show. If
Speaker 3: you found this conversation helpful, inspiring, or thought provoking, I'd
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