#60 Jim Dethmer: Leading Above the Line

Jim Dethmer, founder of The Conscious Leadership Group shares practical advice about becoming more self-aware, ditching the victim mindset, and connecting more fully with the people in our lives. Go Premium: Members get early access, ad-free episodes, hand-edited transcripts, searchable transcripts, member-only episodes, and more. Sign up at: https://fs.blog/membership/ Every Sunday our newsletter shares timeless insights and ideas that you can use at work and home. Add it to your inbox: https://fs.blog/newsletter/ Follow Shane on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/ShaneAParrish Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  When we first started working with leaders years ago, we did a little bit of measurement around this and we saw that most people in organizations keep somewhere between 40 and 60% of their agreements.

• 0:21Shane Parrish?

  Hello and welcome. I'm Shane Parrish and this is The Knowledge Project, a podcast exploring the ideas, methods, and mental models that help you learn from the best of what other people have already figured out. You can learn more and stay up to date at fs.blog/podcast. We have a newsletter. It comes out every Sunday called Brain Food. It's free and packed with all the best content we've come across this week that's worth reading and thinking about. It contains quotes, book recommendations, articles, and so much more. You can learn more at fs.blog/newsletter. On the show today is Jim Dethmer. Jim is the founding partner at the Conscious Leadership Group and has worked as coach and advisor to over 150 CEOs and their teams on conscious leadership. He's also the co-author of The

• 1:04Shane Parrish?

  15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership. I was first introduced to Jim at the recommendation of my friend Graham Duncan and I was hooked right away. As you'll discover, Jim is full of practical advice on what you can do to be better versions of yourself, better partners to the ones you love, better colleagues to those you work with, and better parents to your kids. We're going to deep dive on cultivating self-awareness through pausing and reflecting, as well as understanding the role of feedback. We discuss how awareness needs to lead to acceptance and not self-criticism in order to change behavior. We talked about the victim mindset and how to get out of it, getting out of fear-driven motivations like anger, guilt, and shame, and moving to more powerful and sustainable motivations like love and play. I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did. Time to listen

• 1:49Shane Parrish?

  and learn.

• 1:59Shane Parrish?

  Jim, I'm so excited to talk with you today about leadership.

• 2:02Speaker 00

  Me too, Shane. It's my favorite subject and I love to have conversation about it.

• 2:08Shane Parrish?

  When I was looking for a place to start, I think the best place to start is about the line, a single black line, and why that's the most important model for leadership. Can you explain that to us?

• 2:18Speaker 00

  Sure. So when we work with individuals and teams and organizations, we're looking to start the conversation with a simple model, kind of a simple on-ramp that can be immediately applicable, like within 15 minutes of the conversation. So like any simple model or simple on-ramp, it's open to being oversimplified and I totally get that. But the model itself is just this, there's a line and at any moment in time, and we can talk about that, but at any moment in time, you're either above the line or below the line. So when you're above the line, you're open, curious, and committed to learning. You're in, you're actually in a sense of trust,

• 3:03Speaker 00

  able to trust yourself, able to trust the environment, able to trust who you're ever in relationship with, able to trust the universe, wherever you're placing your trust. And when you're below the line, you're contracted, you're in a state of threat. So now you're closed, could be closed-minded, your literal body posture could be closed. Very often, your heart is closed, you're defensive, and the big idea is you're attached to proving you're right. So what we're simply saying is that the first key skill of conscious leaders is self-awareness that leads the pack. And the first act of self-awareness is,

• 3:43Speaker 00

  can I locate myself in this now moment? Am I open or closed? Am I in a state of trust or a state of threat? Because we believe that ability to locate yourself really does start a powerful conversation inside of yourself and with anybody else you're doing this work with.

• 4:02Shane Parrish?

  Let's dive into that for a second. When you were talking about above the line being open and curious and below being defensive, the natural translation in my head was sort of like outcome over ego.

• 4:12Speaker 00

  Great, yes. Beautiful translation.

• 4:15Shane Parrish?

  What does it mean to be self-aware?

• 4:18Speaker 00

  Well, in its most simpler terms, it's the ability to accurately, and that needs to be in air quotes, accurately, or as accurately as possible, see yourself. Now, of course, this has been in the parlance of leadership for a long time. The Center for Creative Leadership, when they first brought out their 67 core competencies, self-awareness, along with learning agility and communication and influence, were the top four competencies that trumped all others. So, in the world of leadership, we've been talking about self-awareness, the ability to see oneself. So, we're making it specific in not just can I see my strengths, can I see my weaknesses, can I see my style, can I see my thinking patterns, but in this

• 5:03Speaker 00

  moment, can I see the state of my consciousness? Can I see whether, to your, I like your word, can I see whether I'm totally in service of outcomes, or am I contracted in egoic defensiveness? Can I see that? And growing in self-awareness, in our experience, you know, there are three ways you can grow in self-awareness. One is to become more self-reflective, actually pause and bring almost like the lens of attention back at yourself, as though there was something outside of you looking back at you, and there are practices around how to do that. The other way to grow in self-awareness is to use some instrument, you know, you could use a technical instrument like the MMPI, or a personality instrument,

• 5:48Speaker 00

  we love a tool called the Enneagram, because it's like a CAT scan in terms of self-awareness. And the third way to grow in self-awareness is to create an incredibly feedback-rich environment, where the people around you, the most direct form of feedback, are giving you feedback. So, we talk to leaders all the time about, are they creating a feedback-rich environment? And of course, once you get that feedback is not just what people are saying to you, that you decide you're going to live in an open system mentality, where you're constantly getting feedback, now you're on a rocket ship ride of self-awareness.

• 6:27Shane Parrish?

  Those things work in concert as well as individually, I would imagine?

• 6:31Speaker 00

  Absolutely. Yeah, very much so.

• 6:34Shane Parrish?

  So can you walk me through a little bit about, I think I'm most interested in one and three. So like one being, because those are things you can sort of do without a tool or sort of like somebody else. You need feedback, you need people to give you feedback. But I mean, in terms of pause and reflection, what does it mean to actually like pause and reflect?

• 6:53Speaker 00

  So in my experience, most people live most of the time in kind of an automatic pilot. They're just in a trance, sleepwalking through life at the effect of their personality and at the effect of their ego structure. We could talk about what ego is, is there really such a thing? How does it show up? So let's just keep it simple, at the effect of their personality. So the ability to become self-reflective is the cultivated skill to pause, quiet the mind a bit, and then turn attention back on itself. And this can be done, so the quieting part, let's get there first.

• 7:34Speaker 00

  So all the leaders that I work with, I don't work with anybody who won't have some sort of mindfulness practice. I think the research is pretty compelling about the efficacy of it at multiple levels. But to our point right now, the ability to still mind, just slow it down a little bit so that I can create a bit of empty space. The mind's not going to get totally quiet unless you know you do your practice six hours a day for 20 years. But at least I can slow it down to where I can get quiet enough to ask a question. Like here'd be, here'd be a self-reflective question I might ask a leader to ponder over the course of a week as she's or he is in their self-reflective time.

• 8:18Speaker 00

  Get still and then ask yourself this question, what do I want? And then just notice what comes up, notice what comes up. And then as that begins to populate your consciousness, ask the question, what do I really want? So this is getting still, noticing and populating the moment with a question or an inquiry. There are other ways to do it other than a question, but when people start, I like to start with something like that.

• 8:47Shane Parrish?

  That makes a lot of sense. I'm curious as to other examples of sort of self reflective questions you give people. And also are there like context specific ones like I made a decision or I had an interaction with a person? What sort of prompts would you offer to reflect on?

• 9:04Speaker 00

  Sure, let's go with I had an interaction with a person. So I have an interaction with a person, you and I can do this, we finish our interaction. And before we run off to our next thing, just get still for a minute. And then a question I might ask would be something like this, in stillness, I might ask, was there any place where I got reactive in that conversation? Was there any place where I got self protective? Was there any place where I got more interested in control and approval and survival? The three core wants of any ego structure. So was there any place where I got more interested in control and approval and safety and security? Then I was in learning.

• 9:48Speaker 00

  If you, if we have a deep, authentic conversation and you go wherever you want to go and you ask questions, there might be moments where fear will come up. It'd be the natural, normal response. And so in reflection, I might go back and say, where did fear come? So I worked with an investment team outside of London last week and, you know, at all, they've checked most of the great boxes. They're really clear about their vision and their values and they've got a very clear investment philosophy and even an investment process. We were working on how to have world class conversations. So in the midst of conversations, we would just pause at times, just literally pause. Too much sound, too much fury in most conversations, pause, get still. I'm just talking about one breath.

• 10:32Speaker 00

  And ask the question, in this moment, am I genuinely open to creating a win for all outcome in this conversation?

• 10:41Speaker 00

  Or have I literally constricted such that the most important thing right now for me is defending my ego? And in my experience, this, if you're willing to just practice cultivate some self-awareness, this information becomes obvious fairly quickly. It shows up first in your body. You'll know in your body, there'll be certain somatic signatures, and then it shows up in your thinking structures and it shows up in your emotional state. So that would be, you brought up the bucket of, you know, in relationships or in conversations, what would be some of the questions? Those would be some, there'd be many others that I might ask to help people grow in self-awareness.

• 11:20Shane Parrish?

  Okay, what about, I want to actually, before we go on to the next sort of question on decision-making, what sort of prompts you could reflect on? What do you do with that information when you find it? Like, before we hopped on this call, I was, you know, I was just reflecting as you were talking about my interaction with somebody over email and how it was more curt than I would have liked. And do I reach out and apologize now? Or do I just let it go and acknowledge that it happened and sort of like move on and do something different? Like, next time, like, what do I do with that information once I have it?

• 11:50Speaker 00

  Okay, great question. So, we say that the first act of consciousness is awareness, so we're in that big bucket right now. The second act of consciousness, or the first question is, where am I? Am I above or below the line? The second question is an odd one that needs a little bit of exploration. The second question is, can I accept myself for being where I am? So, you finish that email, you pause and you say, where am I? And in our language, you might notice, wow, I'm a little curt, I'm probably a little contracted, a little below the line, and you could explore what that's about for you. Now, the second question we'd ask you to pause and consider for just a moment is, can I accept myself for being reactive?

• 12:35Speaker 00

  So what we've discovered is that awareness needs to be followed by acceptance.

• 12:41Speaker 00

  Most of the, most of the people that I work with, most of the people that you talk to, and you and me, tend to be really driven people who want to optimize for success, who want to be the best we can possibly be. So, when we start to really grow in self-awareness, what often follows a burst of insight, a burst of awareness, is self-criticism. Kind of, "Oh crap, I shouldn't have contracted. I should be above that. I should, you know, I was a little too curt. I shouldn't be curt." And in our experience, when you're already contracted, curtness comes from contraction as opposed to openness, and then you pile on with self-criticism or self-judgment.

• 13:26Speaker 00

  You actually contract further. Now, here's the deal. If, in a more contracted space, you wrote an email talking about your curt response, the probability is very high that the outcome that you want wouldn't be achieved because there's a context, a bigger thing than the words on the, in the email. There's a context you're speaking from, which is still somewhat contracted or fear-based. But if you pause and you say, "Okay, you know, today's Friday, and when I fired off that email, I was a little contracted, a little below the line." So, you could just, we just say, "There's some fear running in your system. You can explore that."

• 14:09Speaker 00

  And then you just say, "Could I just accept myself for being scared right now?" Scared, natural, normal, human response. And we teach all of our clients to actually pause and take one conscious breath. A deep breath down into the belly, which begins the process of changing your blood and brain chemistry. Because when you're below the line, there's a certain chemical cocktail that's working you, that has upside, but also has real downside. And when I take a conscious breath, that starts to change. So you realize you're curt, you take a breath of acceptance. And by the way, self-awareness is easier to train in world-class leaders than self-acceptance.

• 14:52Speaker 00

  Most of them have a superstitious belief that if they granted themselves a moment of self-acceptance, they'd lose their edge. That absent being constantly self-critical, self-evaluatory with a slightly negative spin, absent that, I'll lose my edge. And we find the opposite to be true. That the more I can do whatever it is I'm doing from presence rather than reactivity. So send that email from presence rather than reactivity. The more is available to me to be my highest and best self in the moment. So first question, where am I?

• 15:35Speaker 00

  Second question, can I accept myself for being where I am now? Excuse me, you come back into presence. And now you ask yourself, what do I really want to communicate when I respond to this email? Am I willing to be with this email from above the line? Now, what that might look like is being authentically vulnerable, transparent. It might look like revealing what it was you were contracted about in the first place. You know, we say that candor is one of the key indicators that I'm above the line. When I'm above the line, I reveal and I don't conceal. Which, so you write this email and you say, I noticed that the last email I sent I was curt. And when I tune into what that's about, I think it's because I was attached to an outcome

• 16:19Speaker 00

  and I didn't think we were getting the outcome. So I just want to tell you that. And I want to see if we could have another conversation and see if we can create something that might be more of a win for all of us. You don't know yet how you're going to communicate from above the line. You're just willing to shift the context of the conversation before you start dealing with the content.

• 16:40Shane Parrish?

  I like that a lot. I think that's a powerful sort of means to walk through it. I wanna come to one thing. We're like four layers deep. We're gonna come back, I promise.

• 16:49Speaker 00

  Okay, you keep track.

• 16:52Shane Parrish?

  I wanna talk about acceptance. And one of the comments that you made that was interesting to me is that a lot of world-class leaders have problems with self-acceptance because somehow they feel like they're driven by this. Is it a chip on their shoulder? Am I understanding that correctly? Like, what is, what is sort of driving? What do they feel or perceive is driving them? And then what's actually driving them when you change the the self-acceptance lens?

• 17:18Speaker 00

  Okay, great question. So what's driving so many of them is down deep, way down deep. There is a belief that says, it's not okay just the way it is. I'm not okay just the way I am. Now, there can be many variations of how that shows up in a leader based on their personality structure. But down deep, there's this sense that I'm not okay, it's not okay. Something needs to be different. Now, with some people, the age-old story might be something needs to be different in order for me to get the approval that I want from, fill in the blank, you know, a primary caregiver,

• 17:58Speaker 00

  you know, my siblings, my family of origin, my original community, my first coach, whoever it is, or myself. Something has to be different. Just the way I am isn't okay. That would be one form of this. Another would be, it's not okay just the way it is, and I'm not okay just the way I am, because I've got to even the score. Something was done to me, something happened, and there's a fuel in my belly that says, I am going to overcome this. And if I pause for a moment and take a break, I'll lose that fire in the belly that is driving me to overcome.

• 18:40Speaker 00

  And we could just keep exploring, keep exploring, and finding these core beliefs that sit, I believe, that were developed before we were six years old, that have driven us. And by the way, I say to all the leaders that we work with, they've produced wonderful upsides. You know, they've produced fantastic capacities for achievement and accomplishment and mastery.

• 19:03Speaker 00

  But whenever we've been driven primarily by the belief and the experience that something at the core is missing, that belief leaves a toxic residue. And when you get close to these leaders and they talk openly and honestly, when you're in a circle with six or eight or 10 of them, which is where I spend most of my time, and we create an environment where people can feel safe and they start talking, they might say, you know, this fire in my belly has driven me to this incredible sense of accomplishment, which has been wonderful, but that same fire keeps me from being intimate and close with my significant other, with my children, or I can't sleep at night, or what I would give,

• 19:48Speaker 00

  you know, when people get late, later in their development, what I would give, I would give all of my fame and all of my money to have peace. So this is what I mean, that the very thing that has created the consciousness that has made this great contribution to themselves, to the world, is the very thing that keeps them from saying, could I give myself a moment of acceptance? Now, you ask a question that I talk about with people all the time, which is, if that doesn't motivate me, what's going to motivate me? You know, if that goes away, then what?

• 20:25Shane Parrish?

  Fire, fire that I feel like is driving me.

• 20:28Speaker 00

  Exactly. This have to energy, this core fire. And I say, I'll really do it simply, I say, there are five things that can motivate us. The first thing that can motivate us is fear, guilt, and shame. And by the way, fitting in there as well is anger and rage. And the question is, does fear, guilt, shame, anger, and rage motivate? Absolutely. You don't have to look very far to see that it motivates. The deal is that if you're self-aware at all, you know that eventually fear, guilt, and shame, and anger and rage leave a toxic residue. Many of us have motivated our children with fear, guilt, and shame. I thought, I would have thought better of you.

• 21:12Speaker 00

  Or, if you want something to be scared of, I'll give you something to be scared of.

• 21:16Shane Parrish?

  I'm disappointed in you.

• 21:17Speaker 00

  I'm disappointed in you. And, you know, as a parent, you pause and you say, does it work? Well, yeah, sure, especially depending on your kid's personality and temperament. It's going to work a little bit. You'll get a short-term return. But eventually, that's going to leave a toxic residue, which is going to look like broken trust between you and your child. So, once I start to move to another level of motivation, the next level is extrinsic reward. So, does money, fame, perks, does it reward? Does it motivate? Sure, absolutely. Does it leave a toxic residue? Yeah, you know, if you're motivating your team solely by extrinsic reward, one of the things you know is you've got to keep increasing

• 22:01Speaker 00

  the capacity to keep feeding the consciousness that you've created. And it also creates people playing a zero-sum game, which creates tremendous win-lose consciousness and all this kinds of stuff. Then the next level up is intrinsic reward. Now, this is when I start to live from a sense of purpose or calling, when all of a sudden, I start to discover what we call our zone of genius or what it is that lights me up to do in the world. And this is when I start motivating people in my world with authentic appreciation. So, these are intrinsic rewards, and they actually are the first level of motivation that doesn't leave a toxic residue. And then the next level above that,

• 22:46Speaker 00

  this is fascinating, the next one above that is play. All mammals are motivated by food, play, and learning. So, I say to leaders all the time, when you can, when work can start to feel like play, and you know, this was misunderstood because there was a period, you know, when people would look at some of the classic startups of old, like Google, you know, they'd go to their office in New York and they'd see a slide or they'd see foosball tables or whatever, you know, and people would go, they'd misunderstand. They'd go, okay, I need to have play in the workplace. Right. Play means it all. It's a million miles from that. What it means is that when I'm coding, it's like a child at play. Hmm. I love it.

• 23:29Speaker 00

  When I'm deal-making, I'm a child at play, which means there's a low level of self-consciousness. There's a high level of learning. There's sustainable rechargeable energy. You know, with my children, and I have seven grandchildren, when they're playing, You don't have to reinforce, motivate, they're in the game. So when we can start to live life as play, which I think we started playing as children, then we got really serious someplace along the line, largely because of that fire in the belly. And then we're going to return to play at some point. And I say leaders, the sooner you return to play, the better. And then the highest form of motivation is love.

• 24:14Speaker 00

  And I don't mean by that some touchy feely thing. I mean, the love of the thing, the love of the thing. I love landscaping. I love playing chess. I love, I love, you know, doing analysis before investing. I love the thing itself. So here's the deal. As you decrease, you'll never take it all away, but as you decrease being motivated by fear, guilt, shame, anger, rage, and by extrinsic reward, people need to find a new motivation source, whether it's I'm motivating myself or you and I are a team. But the organizations, the teams of the future, they're motivated by intrinsic reward, play and love. You know, you love, you watch great professional sports teams.

• 24:58Speaker 00

  It looks to me now, what comes first, winning or what I'm about ready to say. But there seems to be a deep, profound alignment of purpose. That's intrinsic. A commitment to have everybody on the team play in their zone of genius. What are they best at? We're going to figure that out and release an empower you to do that. Then we're having fun. This is fun. You hear great contributors, athletes all the time say, it's not fun anymore. Well, then what's going to motivate you if it's not fun? And they love the thing itself and they love each other. Now again, not in a touchy feely way, but in the way that Marines love each other. I think when people start to get motivated by that,

• 25:42Speaker 00

  an entire different sustainability and impact starts to occur. Does that make sense?

• 25:48Shane Parrish?

  Yeah, I think it makes a lot of sense. Um, how do we, how do we shift? Like, is it an awareness issue to shift from something like fear or guilt? Uh, maybe you're staying in a friendship or a relationship out of fear or guilt? Like, is it an awareness alone? Or is it a replacement with sort of something higher up on the list that you mentioned? Like, uh, even extrinsic or intrinsic and then play and love? Is, are we shifting it? Are we just acknowledging it? Like, how do you walk me through that thinking a little?

• 26:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, great. So again, it's always going to start with awareness. So one of the things I'd ask a leader is, I'd give them like just these five options as a starting point. And I would say, just get still, practice stillness, and then take whatever it is you're doing, you know? And what, what are you doing right now? And just get curious. What's motivating you right now? Is it this fear, guilt, and shame? Is it extrinsic, intrinsic, play, love? So a lot of us are so motivated by wanting approval, to be liked, loved, valued, esteemed. We're motivated by wanting control. We want control of our world. And we're motivated by wanting safety and security. Those all weave in, in those first two, fear, guilt, shame, and extrinsic reward. So what's motivating you? Get aware, self-awareness.

• 27:05Speaker 00

  Now, on those early two motivations, the most extrinsic and fear, guilt, shame, anger, rage, those are coming from a core of fear. Now, again, when I work with leaders and I say, can you feel the fear underneath it all? When I started coaching people 25, 30 years ago, that was a totally inane question. You know, I might be able to feel my passion, or I could feel my anger. That was acceptable. Once in a while, I could feel happiness or joy. But fear and sadness? Why in the world would I want to feel those? They're a complete waste of time. But underneath, these incredibly driven, successful people, this is a funny way to say it, is a scared little five-year-old kid

• 27:49Speaker 00

  or a nine-year-old little girl in there who is terrified. So this is why I come back to, after awareness, can you give acceptance? The antidote to fear is not courage.

• 28:04Speaker 00

  The antidote to fear is acceptance. You know, I have these little grandchildren, you know, and it's so fun having a second bite of the apple around caring for little ones. You know, I had two, two girls of my own and then five, uh, four stepsons who I was in their life when they were very young and, um, you know, I parented the best I could, just like everybody who's listening to this, doing the best we can. But, you know, to do it again, 30, 40 years later is such a treat. So, you know, like when my kids would get trapped in their egoic structure, you know, I parented a certain way. And now when I have these grandkids, it's so different because I'm not invested. My identity isn't tied to how they turn out.

• 28:45Speaker 00

  You know, if they have a tantrum in the frozen peas section of the supermarket, I don't take it as a reflection on me. If they're standing on the soccer field, you know, looking at daisies and not kicking the ball, I don't have to yell, "Kick the ball!" Because I'm afraid that people are going to think I'm a bad parent or I'm not going to get them a scholarship to play D1 soccer. You know, I'm just a guy standing there loving my grandchildren. So when they get triggered, I'm in such a different place. When they get scared, I can say to them, "Oh, golly, you're scared. Grandfather gets scared too. Let's just sit together for a minute and just breathe. Be scared. Just be as scared as we are." Which of course is what Dan Siegel, who I think is fabulous about brain research and

• 29:28Speaker 00

  children and parenting and the whole brain child and all of his work. That's of course what he is saying children most need in those moments. Now, I say all that to say, inside of each of us is a scared little kid. I get these leaders in circles, Shane, and after, you know, a day, day and a half of trusting each other, they're willing to start talking about that kid. And then the question is, can they give that one a little bit of acceptance? And that is not easy to do. So until I can give a little bit of loving kindness, a little bit of acceptance to the scared, terrified parts of me. Then it's not gonna stop because my mind is gonna believe the only way to succeed

• 30:11Speaker 00

  is to keep scaring the shit out of myself unconsciously. This is mostly unconscious. Keep scaring the shit out of myself. Keep believing that I don't have enough approval yet, even though I've got any of the following things, including adulation, adoration, number of followers on Twitter, you know, trophies. I still don't have enough approval. I don't have enough control over my world and I'm still not safe and secure enough. So until that little one who's driving the show can experience some acceptance, they won't calm down. By the way, this is true of my grandchildren when they're throwing temper tantrums in my experience. I can, you know, the big adults can always overpower them. Your ego structure can always overpower the scared part of you. But I can get the

• 30:56Speaker 00

  kids to sit down, but they don't get still on the inside. And until they do that, they can't let go of their belief that they need to be motivated by that. So that's why awareness comes first. What's motivating me? Acceptance comes second. And we do tons of work on how to cultivate a little bit of acceptance. This is not ours. I'm talking about a couple of breaths. And then from there, I can start to shift. This is one of our words. I can start to shift to starting to motivate myself with intrinsic reward, play and love. But until I can cultivate awareness and acceptance, the shift moves required to be motivated by intrinsic rewards, play and love aren't there. I won't trust them enough. I'll go back to what's made me successful up to this point.

• 31:42Shane Parrish?

  That's really insightful. I do want to come back to kids. I just don't want to lose track of the thread and where we're at. So we're talking about sort of self-awareness. And we had three sort of concepts, one of which was pause and reflect, two is instruments, three was feedback. Just want to go back to pause and reflect for one second because we, we went down a rabbit hole in terms of talking about a conversation with a person and how to reflect on that. I want to also, super important to our audience is how do we reflect on a decision that we made within an organization? Maybe that decision worked out well and maybe it didn't, but what are the prompts that we can sort of do for almost a guided reflection to go back and get better at making decisions?

• 32:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, great question. So I've listened to a couple of your podcasts where I, my story was, I love the podcast, and you had people who were expert at asking that question in a way that I think most of your listeners are going to be served by it. I'm not expert at that, so I want to be clear. My expertise is how to become self-aware around the state of your consciousness. So, again, I listened to a couple of podcasts where people had fabulous input about that. I was blown away by it. Here are the kinds of questions I want to ask you. From where did I make the decision? Did I make it from below the line or above the line? Okay? Another question.

• 33:01Speaker 00

  Did I make the decision from, I'm going to introduce a new model here, from victim, villain, or hero? Victim is, did I make the decision from feeling like I was at the effect of a person's circumstance or condition? Was I in a victim consciousness? Did I make it from villain, where I was making the decision from blame, judgment, criticism? Did I make the decision from hero, which is, did I make it to rescue people? Did I make it to relieve temporarily their difficulty, their upset? This is the famous Cartman triangle. It's not new to us. That almost all life is lived from the drama triangle of victim, villain, and hero.

• 33:46Speaker 00

  So in a, when we're thinking about our decisions, did I make it from above or below? Did I make it from a consciousness of victimhood, villain, or hero? Another question we would ask is, did I allow all of my emotional intelligence to totally inform this decision? So we do a lot with leaders around the difference between IQ, EQ, and BQ. IQ being the gray matter, the thinking capacities, all that. EQ being emotional intelligence. And BQ, this new field, I think that's coming online around body intelligence, the wisdom of the body. So one of the things we see when people make decisions, or have world-class conversations, is of course, most of the people we're working with

• 34:30Speaker 00

  have a bias towards IQ, data, analysis, which is fabulous. We're not in any way diminishing that. That needs to be developed, honed, beautiful. But we've discovered that unless people are equally valuing EQ, the best decisions don't get made. And there's tremendous wisdom that comes from emotional intelligence. We teach that there are five core emotions that are healthy, life-giving, natural. And those are anger, fear, sadness, joy, and creative energy. By the way, that creative energy is actually sexual energy. We don't call it that because of all the obvious reasons.

• 35:14Speaker 00

  All these emotions actually occur in and on the body. Emotions are not thoughts. They are literally sensations in and on the body. Now, that doesn't mean I don't have a thought. So I'm, you know, I'm living in Chicago. I'm driving down the Kennedy Expressway. Somebody cuts me off. I have a thought, "You shouldn't do that." That thought charges an emotion, anger. But that emotion doesn't show up in my thinking pattern. It shows up as a set of sensations on my body. Heat in my face, you know, tension in the back of my neck, radiating on my shoulders, down to my fists, pulsing in my... That's anger. Sadness is in the chest, in the neck, in the face.

• 35:59Speaker 00

  Fear is in the belly. All these things locate in the body. And creative energy, which is an incredibly powerful tool, actually started out as sexual energy that starts in the body, in the erogenous zones, and then circulates all throughout the body. And quite frankly, it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with sex. A lot of people have sex without sexual energy. They have sex with anger, they have sex with fear, they have sex with sadness. But sexual energy is part of the key to being creative. It flows through the same pipe. So, one of the questions we would ask, going back to your original question, is, were all of the emotions welcomed in the decision process? And did we get the wisdom of them?

• 36:42Speaker 00

  The wisdom of anger is that something isn't of service and it's a boundary energy. You need to be able to say, "Stop." The wisdom of sadness is that there's a loss here and we're not fully facing and feeling the loss. The wisdom of fear is that something's not being paid attention to. So, I'm going a little deep on emotional intelligence, but that would be a category. Another question I would ask is, did we reveal everything we had to say about this? So, we have these 15 commitments and the fourth commitment is about candor. And we find horrible decisions get made when people don't reveal their thoughts, their judgments, their opinions, relevant data, facts, information, their feelings, their deepest wants and desires.

• 37:27Speaker 00

  So, what we find is that when trust is low in relationships, teams and organizations, people start withholding. And when people withhold, decisions become far less effective and they get muddied up. We call them sludge. And so, they get slower and wrong decisions get made. So, that'd be another one. Did I say everything I had to say? We call it blurtiness. When we're teaching people how to have world-class conversations and make decisions, we want to get all the relevant facts out on the table. And then, we want to create a few minutes, depends on the depth of this decision, how long we have to make the decision, for everybody in the room to blurt and to say everything they have to say. And there's a particular way we teach people to do that.

• 38:12Speaker 00

  So, that'd be another question. Another question we would ask is, are there any integrity breaches that are touching or affecting this decision?

• 38:21Shane Parrish?

  What does that mean?

• 38:22Speaker 00

  Yeah, great. So, integrity is many things, but one of it is, integrity is about my agreements. Am I impeccable around my agreements? So, an agreement is anything I've said I will do or anything I've said I won't do. Being impeccable is being clear about my agreements, keeping my agreements. And we see that people who really have high states of integrity keep about 90% of their agreements. Renegotiating agreements I've made before they get broken. And when I break agreements, cleaning them up. So here's what we discovered. A lot of decisions get made where people don't acknowledge that they're making this decision on top of a broken agreement. Wait a minute, if we, if we go back under here,

• 39:07Speaker 00

  we actually have an agreement here that we didn't keep, or somebody made an agreement with us, they didn't keep. So if I don't get back into integrity around my broken agreements or my, uh, my unclear agreements. This investment team I worked with, one of the things we worked on was how to make clear agreements. Teams waste so much time not making clear agreements. You know, it's like, we make an agreement, then you and I are having a conversation. Well, I thought we were going to talk at eight in the morning. You say, I thought we were talking at seven forty-five. I thought you were calling me. I thought I was calling you. I thought I was supposed to get you that report by five o'clock. No, it was two o'clock. I thought the scope was this. And absent these incredibly clear, what we call impeccable agreements, teams waste unbelievable amounts of time.

• 39:51Speaker 00

  So I'd want to bring that question up. And then I would just keep going with these kinds of questions that are about the state of consciousness in which the decision was made. Well, there'd be a whole set of questions here. I, I, I don't know whether that's useful to you and what you're thinking around this compared to the other people I listen to on your podcast, but that's the way we teach teams to.

• 40:13Shane Parrish?

  Oh yeah, this is fascinating. I was like so happy to geek out on this stuff. Um, there's a couple of rabbit holes here before we like go back up to the top. I want to talk about, um, how, how do we make clear commitments to each other? Like, what is it you, you encourage people to do, um, beyond sort of like basics and specifics? Like, what does it mean to make a clear commitment? How, what are examples of ways that we unconsciously make unclear commitments? And what does the, a clear commitment look like in those situations?

• 40:44Speaker 00

  Okay, great. So first I want to use a different word because, uh, commitment is a technical term for us. I want to use with you the term agreement.

• 40:51Shane Parrish?

  Okay, yeah, sorry.

• 40:53Speaker 00

  An agreement is between two or more people, although by the way, you can make agreements with yourself. When we start working with leaders, we discover they're not making clear agreements with themselves and they're out of integrity with themselves, right? So, you know, one of the agreements that I have with myself in the month of March is that I'm going to do a certain number of high intensity interval trainings, you know, per week and I'm going to do a certain amount of strength and balance and training and I'm going to meditate a certain amount each day and so on and so forth. These are all agreements that I've made with myself. So we can make agreements with ourselves, we can make them with each other. You and I had an agreement. We're going to have a conversation at 8 a.m. Central time. We had an agreement. An agreement, first and foremost, to be clear about your agreements, it's between people

• 41:37Speaker 00

  and it's anything I say I will do or anything I say I won't do. So an agreement could be, we're going to talk at 8:00 in the morning. You asked me at the beginning of this, are there anything that off limits? And I said, no, but let's imagine I'd said, yeah, you know, me as a grandfather is off limits. We would have made an agreement. And if it had been clear, you couldn't ask me about that. So, an agreement between two or more people, anything I've said I will do or won't do. Now, I'll give you one big idea. One of the keys to agreements is, they need to be incredibly clear. Every agreement needs to have a who is going to do what by when. And agreements that don't have a who and a what and a when are sloppy. And we all have a million of these, you know?

• 42:19Speaker 00

  It can be as simple as, you know, you walk in the door and, you know, your partner, your significant other says, hey, I thought we made an agreement to leave for that party at 7 o'clock. And you go, oh golly, I didn't think we were going to leave for the party at 7 o'clock. I thought we were going to meet here at the house and get ready for the party at 7 o'clock. Or, or, you know, I don't think it really matters whether we leave at 7 o'clock. You know, they don't care about that. And all of a sudden, you're in drama with your intimate partner because you don't have a clear agreement about who's going to do what by when.

• 42:47Shane Parrish?

  I think, yeah, another good example that we've all probably experienced is the meeting we've been at where something is decided, but nobody knows who's doing what. We just sort of like leave the room.

• 42:57Speaker 00

  It's so true. So when we watch world-class teams, not only do they make clear agreements, who's going to do what by when, they capture all their agreements. You know, we're huge fans of a technology like Asana. You know, I love the Asana group because, first of all, they built their entire technology, I think, in a commitment to a certain kind of consciousness. And then they, in my experience, developed an elegant, simple way for individuals, teams, and organizations to track all of their agreements. So if it's done masterfully, drama minimizes. We're not wasting time on these agreements. So now, so clear agreements, who's going to do what by when? Now, here's the next one, and I'll give you this one.

• 43:39Speaker 00

  This one is huge in organizations. We say, only make agreements that you have a whole body yes to. That's a funny term. It basically means, check out your whole body. Check your head, check your heart, check your gut, check, check your whole system. Do you really have a yes to making this agreement? So what happens in most organizations is, we don't create an environment where, when people are asked to make an agreement, they get to really check. Or, and instead of checking, people don't go, I didn't really check. I just kind of gave the corporate nod. Like, somebody asked, so I said, okay. And then they, they actually think, underneath, they think, don't worry, they don't write down, they aren't going to check anyway. I just wanted to get out of the damn meeting and go do something.

• 44:21Speaker 00

  So now, I'm making agreements I don't really want to make. Well, when you make agreements you don't really want to make, a couple of things are going to happen. One, you won't do it, or you'll really struggle to do it because you didn't want to do it in the first place, or you'll do a crummy job. You'll be passive aggressive. It'll show up late. It'll be done a half-assed. So in our world, we want to teach teams to make agreements where everybody gets to check and see, do I really have a yes to this? Now, if I don't have a yes to it, then I might say to you, Shane, I don't have a yes to having our call at eight o'clock in the morning. I might want to renegotiate the who, the what, or the when. I might say, you know, wow, you know, if we could do it at 7:30, that would

• 45:04Speaker 00

  be a lot better for me, instead of just nodding my head. Or I might say, I don't like the what, you know, we're recording this on Zoom. Zoom's sketchy for me. Can we just do a phone call? You know, I get clear. So you trust, you can trust that if I make an agreement with you, I'm in. I'm in.

• 45:24Speaker 00

  Now, we teach leaders that they also need to know how to, you know, use command and control as a viable style. They need to know when to issue edicts instead of agreements. That's true. But when you're really asking for a bilateral agreement, you want people to totally buy in. And the next, write it down. Just write down your agreements and then keep your agreements. We say to people all the time, it's unbelievable how many leaders I work with and I say, show me the agreements you're currently working with in life. And then I say, are you lined up? Are you in integrity with yourself to keep the agreements? And when we first started working with leaders years ago, we did a little bit of measurement around this. And we saw that most people in organizations keep somewhere between 40 and 60% of their agreements. Well, can you see where that would be?

• 46:09Shane Parrish?

  Oh, yeah. That's gonna cause a whole bunch of like, you're gonna be problem solving all day. There's a lot of friction involved in that, a lot of trauma, I would imagine.

• 46:20Speaker 00

  Yes. So I get really serious with myself around, you know, Tom Peters said a long time ago, there's no such thing as a small breach of integrity. To me, broken agreements are breach of integrity. By the way, it doesn't matter if I say to Debbie, my partner, I say, I'll pick up a gallon of milk on the way home. And if I don't pick up a gallon of milk on the way home, that's an integrity breach. It's not a whoops. Which leads me to the next piece, which is whenever I break agreements, I go to the person with whom I broke the agreement. And I say, let's imagine that, you know, I was late for this call. I show up 15 minutes late. I would begin by saying, Shane, before we get going, I want to cover that I'm out of integrity with you. I made an agreement to be on the call at

• 47:04Speaker 00

  eight o'clock and I wasn't there. So I want to take responsibility for that. And I want to see if I need to do anything to clean that up with you. By the way, notice in doing that, I'm not making excuses or justifying. I'm not explaining. I'm just taking responsibility because that act of taking responsibility is the commodity of trust. So that'd be some of the stuff I'd say about agreements. By the way, I want to speak just for a minute. My mentor in this was Gay Hendricks, Dr. Gay Hendricks, and his wife, partner, and co-facilitator of life, Katie Hendricks. And he's the one who taught me about being impeccable around agreements. And it transformed my life.

• 47:46Shane Parrish?

  What sort of agreements do people have that are maybe unstated in their direct personal relationships with their partner or spouse that cause friction in that relationship that are maybe like unsurfaced and you're unaware of?

• 48:02Speaker 00

  Yeah, great. Well, here's the deal. Most people in their intimate relationship, they haven't gotten conscious around this, have all kinds of unstated agreements. So you know, you're coming home from a party that you went to and all of a sudden it gets icy cold in the car, right? And then one partner turns to you and says, "What's wrong?" Well, you talked a long time to so-and-so, and it looked like you were flirting, and it looked like you were touching the person inappropriately on their arm. Boom, now we're off to the races, right? Well, we say all the time that all drama in relationships, personal or professional, is caused by unaligned commitments. That's that word commitment. We're not headed in

• 48:45Speaker 00

  the same direction, or unclear and unkept agreements. So like in coupleness, one of the things we say is, you know, you ought to get really clear about what your agreements are, about how you're going to be involved with people outside of your coupleness. It could be as simple as, are we going to be monogamous? Are we going to be polyamorous? Are we going to have an open relationship? Or are we going to have a closed relationship? Is it okay for me to have, you know, to flirt? Is flirting okay or is flirting not okay? Unless we get clear about all these agreements, they're just going to keep recirculating in drama. We say that unless you get aligned on your commitments, a commitment would be,

• 49:25Speaker 00

  "I commit to be candid in our relationship." So that, notice that doesn't have a who, what, and a by when. A commitment is more a moon launch. My north star is that I'm going to reveal and not conceal in this relationship. I'm not going to hide and manipulate information, my thoughts, feelings, or judgments. I'm going to be transparent, authentic, and reveal. Well, can you see that in an intimate relationship, if one partner holds that view and the other partner goes, "Nah, not so much. I'm gonna reveal as much as I need to reveal in order to maintain what I want to maintain." Well, we say that that unaligned commitment will cause constant recurring drama.

• 50:08Speaker 00

  Because it'll show up around money, it'll show up around sex, it'll show up around the in-laws, it'll show up around the children, it'll show up around free time, it'll show up around the credit cards, it'll show up every place. And people will think that the issue is the in-laws. "You didn't tell me that your parents were coming." But the issue is not the in-laws. The issue is that we are not aligned in how transparent and candid we want to be with each other. So, unaligned commitments and then unclear and unkept agreements are the source of most drama in most intimate relationships. So, and by the way, this is, you brought it up in the first one, but it's absolutely true in the workplace as well. People aren't aligned in what their commitments are. What are we really up to here? And how are we gonna be, behave, believe with each other?

• 50:52Speaker 00

  And then we have sloppy agreements. So, sometimes people say, "What do I do? What does our company, the Conscious Leadership Group, do?" In the most simplest terms, we help leaders, teams, and organizations minimize drama. Because drama is deeply entertaining, by the way, it's addictive, but it's a massive waste of time.

• 51:14Shane Parrish?

  Just one question that came up as we were talking about relationships, since you deal with a number of people that are sort of like learning to become self-aware. I would imagine, my hypotheses would be, like, part of that would be, I'm in an unhealthy relationship with my partner or spouse.

• 51:30Speaker 00

  Absolutely.

• 51:32Shane Parrish?

  So, what do you, what do you do if you realize that?

• 51:37Speaker 00

  Okay, so, again, I'm gonna say, let's say I conclude that I'm in an unhealthy relationship. Again, after awareness comes acceptance. A breath of, like the Buddha say, "That's just the suchness of it." Today is Friday, and my experience of my relationship, it's unhealthy. Okay, so now I'm present to that reality. And I say that because most people are unwilling to fully face what's going on in much of their life. Fully face it. They turn away from it. They partially glance at it. And one thing they're not willing to fully face is the condition of their intimate relationship.

• 52:21Speaker 00

  And they don't fully face it for lots of reasons. One, they think, if I fully face it, that's going to create a ton of mess. And right now, my prioritization is my work, or my prioritization is, you know, my friends, or my prioritization is taking care of my sick mother. I do not want to open up Pandora's box about the health of our relationship.

• 52:43Shane Parrish?

  Or I don't want to hurt the other person, right?

• 52:45Speaker 00

  There you go. That was going to be the next one. I don't want to fully face what's going on because I don't want to hurt my partner. Now, I'll just pause there for a second. If, if we were really talking honestly here, I would say, let's just say that that's true. You really do care about this person and you don't want to hurt them. So I'll grant that. Let's be with that for a minute. But for many, many people, especially who are in what you said is a unhealthy relationship, what they really don't want to do is live with the effect and the consequences of when their partner gets hurt.

• 53:21Shane Parrish?

  Hmm.

• 53:22Speaker 00

  So a typical thing would be, you know, some person in the relationship is unfaithful. And let's say they broke an agreement. Not all relationships have fidelity as part of a, an agreement. But let's say they did. So somebody's unfaithful and now they realize, oh, this is a problem because now I've got a secret. And you know, like they say in the recovery groups, you're only as sick as your secrets. And that's true about a relationship as well. If I'm really committed to closeness and now I've got a major secret, it's probably going to be a barrier to closeness. So then when we start coaching and, you know, I say, you got any secrets in your intimate relationship? Yeah, I got this one. And then we start talking about, what do you want to do with that? And we start laying out the options. And one option is to become authentic and reveal. I don't necessarily always say that's the solution, that I'd want to have a whole lot of conversation.

• 54:07Speaker 00

  But when we get down to having that very short conversation, it's not a long conversation. It's pretty short. Hey, I made an agreement with you to, you know, only be intimate with you and I broke that agreement. And I take responsibility for that. Most people don't want to see the look on the other person's face. Because if they don't care about them at all, if they haven't hardened their heart, which by the way, often they've already hardened their heart, so they actually don't care that much. But if they still care, they don't want to see that hurt, that pain. They don't want to see that anguish. But they even more don't want to live with what's coming back their way. How dare you? You know, I knew you weren't trustworthy. This explains everything.

• 54:52Speaker 00

  So oftentimes, when we say it's because we care, and by the way, that's totally legitimate. Often, what's really true is we want to keep controlling the other person. And we don't want them to see us for who we are. Because we don't trust that we're going to be okay if they have their reaction. I've sat with countless couples. For example, when they've had that conversation, I've been the third party in the room. And I say to the person who broke the agreement, who's who wants to return to a genuinely close relationship, that they believe they cannot get to as long as they have a secret. I've sat there when they've said that 30 second thing, it's never longer than that. There might be more details that come out later.

• 55:34Speaker 00

  And then what I say to them is, now you have to stay here in presence and be with your partner while they feel all their feelings, while they express all that they have to express, while they experience their hurt, their betrayal, their mistrust. Because there's no possibility for rebuilding a relationship unless you can be authentic and you can be present to your partner while they have their experience. So, I mean, I went kind of deep with here, and that's not true of everybody. But that's the kind of thing that needs to happen in an intimate relationship when agreements have been broken.

• 56:09Shane Parrish?

  I mean, that'd be a really difficult conversation for both, obviously both people to have.

• 56:15Speaker 00

  It's incredibly difficult, painful, messy.

• 56:19Speaker 00

  It's why people avoid it. But what's true is if I really want to have an authentic relationship, where we practice being revealed and candid. By the way, in my judgment, you can't have a truly intimate relationship, and I don't just mean sexually, intimate, close relationship without being authentic. You just can't. It's not possible. You can have a buddy, you can have some fun, you can have a playmate, you can have somebody, you know, who to co-parent with, you can have somebody to have a social representation in your community with. But if what you really want is closeness, candor and closeness go hand in hand. So I can only be as close as I'm willing to be revealed.

• 57:04Shane Parrish?

  Right.

• 57:05Speaker 00

  The simple thing here is unless you really, really know me and I have the guts to reveal myself, I can never trust that you really love me. Because if you knew, in my mind, I'm thinking, if you knew this about me, then you wouldn't love me. So how can I ever experience full love and acceptance unless I'm fully revealed? It's always going to be in question. Now, this is the mess. You know, that's why when I start working with couples at the very beginning and they're thinking about coupling, even getting together in relationship, one of the things I do is I just go through, what are you really committed to? What do you want? Let's make sure you're aligned and committed on that. Again, this is a lot of the stuff that I learned from Gay and Katie Henderson. We apprenticed with them. They wrote a fabulous book called Conscious Loving

• 57:47Speaker 00

  that is all about this stuff that transformed my relationship with Debbie, and it's transformed countless relationships. By the way, the same stuff is true, you know, on a team or in the business environment. What are we committed to? How real and authentic do we want to be?

• 58:02Shane Parrish?

  I'm gonna have to check out that book. I want to go one level up in the rabbit hole that we had gone down here. You talked about victim, villain, and hero.

• 58:12Shane Parrish?

  And I want to explore the victim mindset just a little bit. Is that akin to like a passive mindset? Where like you feel like life is happening to you and you're out of control of it. And these things keep, you know, you don't take responsibility for anything. You sort of don't see your role in things.

• 58:30Speaker 00

  That's exactly what it is. It is living from the belief, it's not always a conscious belief, that life is happening to me. So I'm at the effect of people, circumstances and conditions. So, you know, I'm in Chicago. It's sunny today, but it's 35 degrees or so in March. So there are people, you know, when I walk around the city and talk to people who say, you know, God, the weather is so cold. When is spring coming? I know it's officially spring, but when it's really going to be spring? Well, in that moment, they're reflecting victim consciousness. They're at the effect of the weather.

• 59:08Speaker 00

  What I'm saying is my happiness, my effectiveness, my joy is contingent upon people's circumstances or conditions. So if the weather's nice, I'm happy. If the weather's bad, I'm unhappy. If my intimate partner treats me kindly, remembers that it's my birthday, gives me a gift, kisses me appropriately, appreciates me deeply, I'm happy. If they don't, I'm unhappy. If the deal goes through, if the investment pans out, if we win the game, I'm happy. So now in psychological terms, we've moved the locus of control outside of ourselves and we're living in victim consciousness. By the way, we say that this is where the vast majority of people live, the vast majority of time, because I want to say something, Shane.

• 59:54Speaker 00

  When I'm living in victim consciousness, it doesn't necessarily mean that I'm having a bad day. In other words, imagine that it's 80 degrees and sunny in Chicago in late March. Now you walk around town and people go, I am having a fantastic day. It's gorgeous. It's sunny. And I played 18 holes of golf and shot two over parts, the best score I've had in springtime in my lifetime. And my kid got into an Ivy League school. Well, they're happy, but causation is still outside of them.

• 1:00:23Shane Parrish?

  Right.

• 1:00:24Speaker 00

  So now it's just gonna be, I'm a victim of people's circumstances and conditions. When I move from victim consciousness, which happens below the line, to above the line, I move into what we call creator consciousness. And creator consciousness is basically this. I choose, and it's an active conscious choice. I choose to be responsible for my experience. In other words, the weather doesn't upset me. I upset myself because I'm attached to beliefs about the weather. Like, I believe it should be sunny and 80, not 34 and cloudy. I'm the source of my belief.

• 1:01:09Speaker 00

  I'm attached to being right about my belief. And when the world doesn't cooperate with my constructs about how it ought to be, I upset myself. So, you know, when this really gets going, you start to see that nobody upsets you. You upset yourself. Nobody angers you, saddens you, happies you. You do that to yourself because it's literally because of the cognitive, mental, and emotive, emotional structure. Your thoughts about the world are creating your experience of the world. So when people move from victim to creator, they start taking 100% responsibility for having their experience.

• 1:01:50Shane Parrish?

  How do we do that? Like intellectually, I, I think I understand everything you just said. And if you ask me like a question, I could sort of like repeat that. But putting that into a day-to-day of practice where you're, you're giving up this sort of desire for an outcome, or you're, you're letting these things sort of dictate your happiness is much harder. It requires a ton of consciousness, maybe more energy than what we have.

• 1:02:14Speaker 00

  Yeah, I, I actually don't, my experience, it doesn't take more energy because I think living in a victim consciousness requires massive amounts of energy.

• 1:02:24Shane Parrish?

  Okay.

• 1:02:25Speaker 00

  When we start to live in creator consciousness, it actually is energy replenishing.

• 1:02:31Shane Parrish?

  Okay.

• 1:02:32Speaker 00

  In cooperation with life, I'm no longer resisting what life is bringing. It takes an unbelievable amount of energy to resist reality.

• 1:02:44Shane Parrish?

  I agree. Yeah, totally. But in the energy, I guess in the context I was bringing it up is like you need the energy in the moment to sort of like within that split site, it might save you a ton of energy later, but you need to find it in that moment to like be conscious of your thinking, accept your thinking, and then to shift your thinking.

• 1:03:04Speaker 00

  Yes, I agree with you. Actually, when you're in victim consciousness, we now know that there's a chemical cocktail, adrenaline and norepinephrine and cortisol, which is routing through your body. And that cocktail gives an energy surge. So many people are unwilling to move from victim consciousness to creator consciousness because they're addicted to the chemical cocktail and its results. So at that level of energy, I totally agree with you. If I start to live as creator, I'm going to give up my attachment to living in a constantly adrenalized state. That's a big deal. So in my experience, it's not that people even don't know how to change

• 1:03:47Speaker 00

  from victim to creator. It's usually that they're unwilling. But having said that, let's say that you and I are talking, we're out, you know, we're buddies, we're out having a beer together. You know, you're telling me about some issue in your life. You're telling me about something that you're complaining about in life. Let's stay in the personal life. You're complaining about a personal relationship. You know, something that's happening in your personal relationship. You're not getting the amount of appreciation and respect that you want. Okay, so I'd say, great, super. Tell me about it. You tell me about it. And at the end, I would say to you, well, let me just ask you, are you in victim consciousness? Do you feel like this is happening to you? Or are you in creator? Do you feel like this is happening by you? And if you're like most of us, you know, you take a sip of your beer and you'd say, this is happening to me.

• 1:04:31Speaker 00

  My intimate partner doesn't get it. They don't get what a great job I'm doing, how hard I'm trying, all the contribution I'm making, all the things I gave up to be in this relationship, all the things, they don't get it. So it's happening to me, right?

• 1:04:44Shane Parrish?

  And then you start keeping score and...

• 1:04:48Speaker 00

  And now you're in the downward death spiral of a relationship. It's two people below the line in victim, villain, and hero. By the way, they move all over that triangle. One day, you're the victim and your partner's the villain. And the next day, you're trying to rescue your partner from their bad feelings. You're on hero. And we're just running around on the victim triangle. And we're keeping score. Okay, now if I were talking to you, it's just you and me. It's not your partner. But I'm talking to you and I say, I get it, man. You make sense to me. You're triggered and reactive. Makes total sense to me. Are you willing to shift? Are you willing to stop blaming your partner for being the cause of your experience? And are you willing to start taking responsibility for being the creator of your experience? Now, that is not a small question.

• 1:05:33Speaker 00

  That is a radical question. And many people will say, well, I'll shift if she'll shift.

• 1:05:40Speaker 00

  Or something like that. Or, or what if, what if I shift and, you know, it gets messy? All that kind of stuff. But let's say we're having that beer and you're willing to shift. Okay, then here's what we'd say. We would ask you to create a recipe. And we do this with teams, organizations, individuals all the time. We would say, create a recipe for us. And I would say to you, Shane, if I wanted to have the exact same relationship with my intimate partner that you do with yours, like where you're underappreciated, undervalued, not respected. How would I need to show up to create that? What would I need to do? What would I need to not do? What would I need to say and not say? What would I, would I have to believe and not believe? How would I have to see them? How would I have to see me?

• 1:06:24Speaker 00

  And in a matter of moments, if you're willing to start taking responsibility and seeing that you're the creator of your experience, you would be able to write out the recipe for me for how to create that experience. I was working with a team in a company the other day. And like so many teams, they were in complete overwhelm. And they were, you know, in the victim, villain, hero triangle. And they were overwhelmed because of scarcity of resources. They were overwhelmed because of the competitive advantage that they were losing. They were overwhelmed because they had some product design flaws, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. They were in overwhelm. And of course, they'd been doing this work for a while. So I said, are you above or below the line? And they said, we're below the line. Great. Would you be willing to take responsibility for overwhelming yourselves?

• 1:07:09Speaker 00

  Notice the change in language. We're not being overwhelmed by something out there. We are overwhelming ourselves. So it was great. We were in a room with big whiteboards. And I said, "Teach it. Imagine there's a new startup that's coming in the world and they come to you and they say, 'We want to live in constant overwhelm too. If you could teach us, what do you have to do to live in overwhelm?'" And they laughed. They got up and they started writing all over the walls, "How you'd have to see reality to live in constant overwhelm." Because in my experience, being overwhelmed is actually optional and it's useful in the short run, but very destructive in the long run. It gives initial energy burst, but not long-term sustainability. So they were starting to take responsibility for being the creator of their experience.

• 1:07:54Speaker 00

  So you ask practically, "What do you do?" Well, first you locate yourself as in victimhood. Then you take responsibility for putting yourself there. Then you check and see, "Am I willing to shift?" Then you create the recipe for how you've created the situation just the way it is. And lastly, in the very creation of the recipe, you've given the prescription for how to change it. Let's go back to my illustration with an intimate relationship. You're complaining about not being appreciated and respected enough. And you know, when I say, "Teach the recipe, teach me the class how to do this." One of the questions I'd ask is, I'd say, "Let me ask you this. Do you give a lot of articulated appreciation to your significant other? Are you giving as much appreciation as you'd like to get back?"

• 1:08:38Speaker 00

  And you look at me and you go, "Uh, no. I'm not going to appreciate her till she appreciates me." Okay, then you'd write that down and you'd go, "Here's a formula for having a relationship where we don't have enough appreciation and respect. Don't give appreciation to my partner." So I'd say, "Great. You're really willing to change this. Just go home and do the opposite." Next, I'd say to you, "You're still committed to thinking that you're valuable if your partner likes you. I want you to move the locus of control inside yourself and generate your own sense of value from the inside. And here are three things to do that." So now you start to change, and I guarantee you, as you start to change, you create a totally different context in your intimate relationship with a much greater possibility of having appreciation and respect be a cornerstone

• 1:09:23Speaker 00

  of your relationship because you chose to shift from victim consciousness to creator consciousness. Does that make sense?

• 1:09:30Shane Parrish?

  Oh, it totally makes sense. I think that's great advice. Shifting gears just a little bit here, going back to you had brought up EQ and BQ. And I'm curious as to how we develop, hone, augment, accelerate our sort of EQ. And like, tell me a little bit about BQ, but more in terms of like EQ. What is it that we can do to consciously improve or be aware of where we're at? And what is it we can do to develop that in a way that's going to bring us closer to other people, to have more meaningful relationships, to be more empathetic towards them and more sensitive to maybe the context in which they're operating?

• 1:10:09Speaker 00

  Okay, beautiful. So I'll just give you some steps. Step number one, decide if you're willing to develop your emotional intelligence. That's not a trick question. Most people that, you know, we're interfacing with and you're interfacing with have a serious question about the validity of feelings and emotions. And let's for now say that's the same thing. So the first question I ask is, do you want to? And let's say you've lived enough life that you go, or you've read enough of the research that says that EQ trumps IQ long term. So you go, yes, I'm really willing. Great. And the first thing I'd say is, before you can become emotionally intelligent, you have to be emotionally literate.

• 1:10:49Speaker 00

  And emotionally literate is just the ability to know what you're feeling in any moment and name it. Which sounds so simple. It's something we should be teaching our kids, you know, when they're three, four, five, six years old. Because actually, our kids come hardwired to know how to do this. And then we have to teach them not to do it. They come with tremendous emotional intelligence. And then in order to socialize them, we teach them not to do that. But the first thing is, can in any moment, can I just pause and ask myself, what am I feeling right now?

• 1:11:23Shane Parrish?

  Right.

• 1:11:24Speaker 00

  Okay, good. So if I pause right now and I go, what feeling is here right now? Okay, I go, there's joy and excitement, there's peace, and there's fear. That's what I'm feeling. And if I say to you, what are you feeling? I'm not sure you want to play this game with me here, but is there a feeling here right now for you? And what is it?

• 1:11:43Shane Parrish?

  Overwhelmed, uh, happy and sad. Do those even go together? I don't know.

• 1:11:51Speaker 00

  They do. They're beautiful. Well, here's what you find out about feelings is it's never a question of whether they go together. They just occur.

• 1:11:58Shane Parrish?

  Right.

• 1:11:59Speaker 00

  Things have feelings. Now, if I were coaching, I'd say overwhelm is actually not an emotional state. It's an intellectual state.

• 1:12:06Shane Parrish?

  Okay.

• 1:12:07Speaker 00

  Or it's an energetic state. Happy and was the other one sad? Happy and sad are most.

• 1:12:13Shane Parrish?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:13Speaker 00

  So I learned this years ago, when I first got in marital therapy, many, many, many years ago. I was in marital therapy and the therapist said, Jim, what are you feeling? And I said something like, I feel that she's wrong.

• 1:12:26Shane Parrish?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:28Speaker 00

  You know, I've said this to people in the business world, what are you feeling? Well, I feel like he's an asshole.

• 1:12:33Shane Parrish?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:33Speaker 00

  That's not a feeling. Anytime I feel isn't followed by an emotional state like the five we use. Sad, angry, scared, joy, or creative energy. If it's feeling, if it's followed by a thought, it's not a feeling. This is why I say the first thing you have to learn is emotional literacy. So can I pause at any moment, take a breath and name my feelings?

• 1:12:56Shane Parrish?

  Right.

• 1:12:56Speaker 00

  Then next, can I feel my feelings? Naming a feeling is different than feeling your feelings. Feelings are actually energy. That's all they are. They're a set of sensations that are occurring on and in the body. And research, I first read this from Joe Bolte Taylor in Stroke of Insight. Great TED Talk and then the follow on book, the Harvard Brain Researcher, who said that feelings last less than 90 seconds. And that's true. In my experience, they actually often less last far less than that. If I don't feed the feeling with more thoughts, if I just tune into the body, the energy will go out of the body in less than 90 seconds.

• 1:13:40Shane Parrish?

  Is that, is that why you sort of advise to just take a deep breath? And feel like in that moment, just be there with that feeling?

• 1:13:48Speaker 00

  That's exactly right. So am I willing to just feel the feeling?

• 1:13:55Speaker 00

  Even big feelings like my older brother just died, just transitioned out of this reality a couple of weeks ago. And so as I'm letting grief move through my body, there'll be times when I'll be sitting and a wave of sadness will show up. And what that feels like is kind of a weight in the center of my chest, a weight in the center of my chest. And I can feel pressure coming to the front of my face and it's not long before some wetness starts to fall out of my eyes, some tears. Now, I could deny that, shove it down, real men don't feel sad. I could do any of that, but all I do is I just, first of all, I have gratitude for that because to me that just is my love for my brother. It's just our connection.

• 1:14:40Speaker 00

  So if I don't do anything with it, if I just let my heart feel heavy, if I just let tears fall out of my eyes, it goes through in less than 90 seconds. Now, in a big case like that where you're grieving the loss of a loved one, there might be waves of feelings that will come through. But each of those waves, if you learn to do this, will last less than 90 seconds. Then there'll be a trough where there's peace, equanimity, and then the next wave will come through. And that's true with anger and it's true with fear. So emotional intelligence is the ability to know what I'm feeling in any moment and have a receptive relationship with the feeling so it goes through my body, it doesn't get stuck. See, because if the feeling gets stuck, which is what happens with most people, it ultimately

• 1:15:25Speaker 00

  calcifies and turns into a mood. So anger that isn't felt and released in less than 90 seconds, that calcifies in the body and turns into bitterness and resentment and hatred. So, over the years, I've coached a few professional athletes and golfers are a great place to experience this. So, uh, let's say that the golfer hits a shot and it doesn't go where he had visualized it going. And one of the first things I teach them, if they want to play conscious golf, and I'm not arguing that this is the best way to create peak performance, but it's something to be considered. If they want to do this, the first thing they would do is they would notice the flight of the ball, you know, it's headed out of bounds. And then they would notice that a feeling comes into their body, let's say anger, whoosh,

• 1:16:09Speaker 00

  and it comes like a white hot flash into their body. Now, there are many views in this in sports psychology. One of the things that I see as a possibility is I don't resist the anger. I let it come into my body. Now, I learn to express it, to let it flow out of my body in ways that are friendly to me and friendly to the environment. If I'm on national TV, I'm not gonna let that anger move out of my body in one way. If it's me and my buddy's playing, you know, I might let it move out another way. But I don't resist it.

• 1:16:39Shane Parrish?

  Right.

• 1:16:40Speaker 00

  Truly, the first thing I do is let it all flow out of my body. Again, in less than 10 seconds. Then I come back to presence and what I teach is, having done that, I begin to walk. And part of my walking is to come back into presence. It's my pre-shot routine begins, the movement, I put my club in the bag and start walking to the next shot. My pre-shot routine begins then because I'm coming back into presence. I'm centering myself. By the way, this equally needs to be done if I stick at 18 inches from the hole. I need to let that joy, that excitement go through my body because if I don't learn how to let those vibrations of energy move through my body with breath, movement, and sound, they'll affect my next shot. By the way, the same thing is true if I'm investing.

• 1:17:25Speaker 00

  If I get too high, if I get too low, if I don't let the emotions flow, then I will be open to all sorts of cognitive biases. So, emotional intelligence. Can I know what I'm feeling? Can I move it through my body? And then last, can I pause and get the wisdom of the emotion? In other words, we're mammals, we have these limbic brains. These emotions have incredible intelligence. So, once the emotion has moved through my body, one of the things we teach people to do is pause and ask, what is that emotion here to show me? To teach me, to invite me to face, to become aware of, to learn from. Now, that whole process is individual emotional intelligence, greatly skinnied down.

• 1:18:09Speaker 00

  Emotional empathy, which you brought up, is I can only be as empathic or compassionate with another as I can be with myself. I say this to parents all the time, if you're not comfortable feeling your sadness, your brokenheartedness, you're not gonna allow your children to feel theirs. So when they don't get invited to the dance, when they miss the game-winning field goal, when they get shunned by their peer group, and they come home and they're sad, instead of being with them in their sadness, which again, all the best work on conscious parenting says, be with them first in their sadness, instead of doing that, you're gonna say stuff like this, "Oh honey, that happens to everybody, you'll get over it, you'll make the next shot, there's a better group of friends anyway."

• 1:18:54Speaker 00

  And because you're not comfortable just being with your sadness, you have no capacity to be with your child's sadness, or their anger, or their sexual energy. A lot of people are uncomfortable with their sexual energy, so they start denying and repressing and suppressing their sexual energy, and when it starts to show up in their kids, they shut it down in a heartbeat. So, it's the same in the workplace. I can only experience emotional empathy and emotional compassion, and emotion, being emotionally connected to people, to the degree that I can be with my own emotion. Now, once I can do that, then the next part of emotional intelligence is, I can feel what you're feeling, I tune into it.

• 1:19:36Speaker 00

  And emotions are just another data set. This is what I tell, you know, like hard-edged investors who are interested in data sets, it's just another data set. And if you wanna make the best decisions, you want all of the data available. So when you're with your analyst, you want to know what they're feeling. And one of the big problems, I think, that's existing, so many times in the investment world, we want people to have conviction. But so much of this conviction is occurring at an egoic state from below the line. Now, what I mean by that is, in order to get the PM to believe that my research is viable and to pull the trigger, I've been told I have to have conviction.

• 1:20:18Speaker 00

  But what I end up doing is denying contrary opinions. I deny my instinct, my gut. I don't bring forward all relevant information. I think that conviction below the line looks very different than conviction above the line. Conviction above the line says, wow, you know, I say to people, I ought to be telling you all the reasons I want to make this investment. And I ought to be able to tell you all the reasons I think it's a bad idea. I ought to be telling you all the reasons I'm excited. I ought to be able to tell you all the things I get a little nervous, apprehensive, scared about. And given all of that, and by the way, we haven't talked about the EU. I'd want to bring my body intelligence in as well. After we've talked about all that, I want to be able to look you in the eye and say, I want to make the investment.

• 1:21:01Speaker 00

  Now, that is not some stomping my feet, pounding my hand conviction. It is a quiet, grounded conviction that comes because I have faced, felt and dealt with all the data sets. That's what I want. So that's what emotional intelligence is to me, a basic prime round. Does that give you what you want around that?

• 1:21:22Shane Parrish?

  Yeah, I think that's amazing. I really appreciate you going into such detail on that. I want to come back to self-awareness and get into, we were talking about the three things, positive reflect instrument. I want to talk about feedback a little bit, and then I want to sort of get into parenting a little bit in terms of what we can do as parents. So walk me through feedback in terms of self-awareness. How can I use feedback? How can I set feedback up? How can I get people to give me feedback so I can become more self-aware?

• 1:21:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, great question. So one of the questions I work with leaders on, we work with teams on all the time is how feedback reaches the environment. And again, a lot of times I'll talk to leaders, you know, the higher up they go in their trajectory. It's not uncommon at all that they tell me they're getting less and less feedback. Makes sense based on power dynamics and structures and fear and all that makes total sense. But when they first start talking to me, they want to talk from victim. They want to say that they're at the effect of the environment that's giving them less feedback. And I say, would you be willing to take responsibility for being the creator of your reality? In other words, you're getting as much feedback as you're committed to getting. So stop bringing anybody around you.

• 1:22:31Speaker 00

  And then I say, would you be willing to create a feedback-rich environment? And that's a real, serious exploration. We really want to play with that. And let's say the person says, yes, I want to create a feedback-rich environment. Good. Then the next thing I would say to them is, let's identify your feedback filters. So a feedback filter is anything that completes this sentence. In order for me to value your feedback, I would need you to blank. So when I ask these, they might say, well, in order for me to value your feedback, I'd need you to be a subject matter expert. In order for me to value your feedback, I'd need you to give it to me in a certain way at a certain time. I'd need factual data supporting it. I'd like feedback early in the mornings before noon.

• 1:23:14Speaker 00

  In order for me to be open to your feedback, I'd know that you have my best interests in mind. In order for me to be open to your feedback. And they just start identifying all their feedback filters.

• 1:23:23Shane Parrish?

  Hmm.

• 1:23:24Speaker 00

  And making them conscious. And basically, I always want to make sure they have one in there that they often skip over, wait till the last, and it's this. I would be open to your feedback if I agreed with it.

• 1:23:37Speaker 00

  Because all those others are really a cover for that. And the deal is, the more feedback filters, unconscious ones, that we have in life, the less feedback we're open to. So what I want to work with leaders in, around, is becoming conscious of their feedback filters and deciding thoughtfully which ones they want to have. Now, this is a deep and meaningful conversation. It creates a very, very powerful sense of self-awareness. So I'll stop there on that. Let me keep moving. So let's say I decide, okay, what do I really want my commitment to be? Now, we're back to that word around commitment. Well, I've worked with leaders, especially some young people at the beginning of their career, who've gotten to the point where they say this.

• 1:24:20Speaker 00

  I want feedback given any way, any time, by anybody. I want feedback-rich environment. Now, I always help them differentiate between receiving feedback and agreeing with feedback. I just want to get a feedback-rich environment. Now, for most people, that's too open of an aperture. But I want them to clarify what is their aperture about how much feedback they want in life. Okay, so I want to get clear about that. Then, a real, simple thing is, ask for feedback.

• 1:24:54Speaker 00

  Right. So, you know, a real simple thing is you give a presentation to the investment committee. At the end of it, just if you have time in the meeting, great. If not, go to everybody afterwards and say, I just gave a presentation. Would you give me a number between one and 10? 10 being I absolutely killed it, hit it out of the park. It was exquisite. One being it was torturous, a complete bust. You know, with most investment professionals, you're not going to get any 10s. A rare nine, hardly ever do you get a one or a two. Right. So you might say, take seven out of the mixture just for now. Give me a number. Any number less than 10. I don't just say, give me a number. I say, tell me one thing I could do to improve. And here's a real key to creating a feedback-rich environment. I would say this, Shane, give me a number between one and 10.

• 1:25:39Speaker 00

  Anything less than a 10. So let's say you give me an eight. I say, anything less than a 10, tell me one thing I could do to improve. And Shane, don't worry about being right about your feedback. Don't worry about being constructive. Don't worry even about it being actionable. In fact, I say this at the beginning of creating a feedback-rich environment. If you don't have anything, make something up. Because I want to get the pipeline flowing. And anything greater than a one, tell me one thing I did well I should keep doing. Well, golly, if I want feedback, there you go. Go home to your intimate partner and say, hey, when we have a glass of wine tonight, could you tell me three things I could do better as a father? And one thing you think I'm doing well?

• 1:26:23Speaker 00

  Send an email to your siblings or get your siblings on a phone call and say, hey, this is going to sound really funny and I'd like you to think about it and maybe see if you give me feedback. What's one thing I could do to be a better brother? So create a feedback-rich environment. And I'll give you one more thing. I have loads on this one, but I'll give you one more thing. When you get feedback, now this is advanced, okay? But people who really want to be high-speed transformational learners. Right. When they get feedback, they do not ask the question, is it true?

• 1:26:57Shane Parrish?

  Okay.

• 1:26:58Speaker 00

  They ask the question, how is it true?

• 1:27:01Shane Parrish?

  Like, what, what has to exist in that person's mind for this feedback to be true?

• 1:27:06Speaker 00

  Nope. How is their feedback about me, true about me?

• 1:27:11Shane Parrish?

  Hmm, okay.

• 1:27:12Speaker 00

  Right, right. Obviously, we could talk about their projections, because all feedback is projection. This is what we teach teens, which parentheses, anytime I give you feedback, let's say I say to you, you know, I find you quite self-absorbed and self-centered. In the world of psychology, that's projection. And the one thing we can know is that I probably am self-centered, self-absorbed. It's, you know, 12 steps, they have such a great way of saying this stuff. They just say, if you spot it, you got it.

• 1:27:41Shane Parrish?

  Right.

• 1:27:41Speaker 00

  Which is a fabulous learning tool. If everything you're complaining about, really complaining about, and people in your world, if you were willing to eat the projection and see how the things you're complaining about, about other people are true about you, you would increase your learning agility exponentially. But most people want to keep making it about the other person. So just pause for a second. So you give me feedback and you say, Jim, I don't, I don't think throughout the podcast, you really got present enough. Let's say that was your feedback. And I go, first of all, I say, thank you. And then I go, how is it true about me that I wasn't present? And I go, well, one thing I can see is I noticed the rate of my speech, it was very fast. I noticed that I've been

• 1:28:26Speaker 00

  sitting forward almost the whole time. I noticed that I've been excited and playful. I like doing this with you. And so throughout this time, I haven't gotten still very often and backed up and taken a breath and dropped in. Thank you. Your wife says to you, you know, I don't think you're spending enough time with the kids. Instead of going, well, you don't spend enough time with them, or you don't know how busy I am, or you don't appreciate me. That, what are you going to learn from that? Zero.

• 1:28:50Shane Parrish?

  Right.

• 1:28:50Speaker 00

  And you might say, thank you. You also, by the way, might say, ouch.

• 1:28:56Speaker 00

  And then you say, I'm gonna grab a cup of coffee with myself and I'm gonna look at how it's true about me. Well, what you'll often discover is you can't find a way that how it's true about you. By the way, if you want to be a really high-speed learner, you can either go back to that person, or you can go to three other people and you can, you know, my wife gave me feedback that I wasn't spending quality time with my kids, that every time I was with them, I was looking at my device or I was distracted. And I got defensive and told her all the reasons that wasn't true. So you go to two of your buddies and you say, you've been with me with my kids. Can you tell me how it's true that I'm not spending quality time with my kids? I'm not looking for you to defend me and tell me why my wife's wrong. I'm asking you to tell me how it's true.

• 1:29:34Shane Parrish?

  Right.

• 1:29:35Speaker 00

  Well, can you just see, if you wanted to create-

• 1:29:37Shane Parrish?

  That's so much more powerful.

• 1:29:39Speaker 00

  ... a feedback-rich learning environment, goodness gracious, let alone this gets, this gets supercharged when we do it in a relationship. In your intimate relationship, if you decide we're both gonna be open to feedback and we're both gonna ask how it's true, not is it true, and we're both gonna be curious from above the line, we hold the possibility of creating an unbelievable relationship. And in the organizational world, I say to people all the time, if you create feedback-rich environments, like we're talking about here, you can let go of most formal feedback tools. You don't need to do semi-annual or annual feedback things, which, you know, still gets rated as one of the things most people hate the most, because you've created such a feedback-rich environment.

• 1:30:23Shane Parrish?

  Right.

• 1:30:23Speaker 00

  So that's, you know, that's something I really want to stand for in this world of becoming a high-speed, curious learner, is what does it look like to create a feedback-rich environment?

• 1:30:34Shane Parrish?

  Yeah, I think that's super important. And I think it's something we don't consciously think about a lot, right? Like, how do we get better feedback? How do we acquire better information about ourselves and our impact on other people and our, our knowledge of ourself?

• 1:30:46Speaker 00

  Yes, absolutely. So get more incoming feedback. And then I would come back to, if you want to really, really grow in self-awareness, eat your projections, which means anything you're complaining about out there, take it in and see how it's true about you. Now, that's graduate school stuff, but when people do that, their whole life changes.

• 1:31:06Shane Parrish?

  Yeah, okay. Well, I don't think we have enough time to dive into that part of it. We'll have to do a part two, maybe next year to, uh, to get that for sure. Cause I, I definitely do want to have that conversation with you. I want to get to parenting before we sort of like wrap up here. I know you have a time stop soon. Tell me how we can use the stuff we talked about today to be better parents. You had six kids. Uh, that must've been crazy.

• 1:31:33Speaker 00

  Well, it actually wasn't that crazy because, um, I have two daughters. They're 10 years apart. So think about that. And then, uh, I ended a marriage and started a new relationship. And Debbie, my wife, had four sons. So if she were here, you could talk to her about the craziness of raising four boys all within five years of each other. But when I joined that constellation, uh, the youngest of the kids was probably 10 or 11 or 12. Now you could still say it's a little crazy because we're blending a family, which is a master skill in consciousness or not. Talk about drama. And, you know, I'm deeply committed to my sons and loving them. So yes, but not as crazy as it sounds. Okay.

• 1:32:15Speaker 00

  So all of this, every bit of this applies to parenting. So just go back to where we started, the line. So one of the questions I ask parents all the time, you know, that interchange you just had with your 16 year old? Were you above the line or below the line? Because if you're below the line, the possibility of having a meaningful conversation that produces tangible, lasting results is very slim. Furthermore, if you're below the line, when you're interacting with your 16 year old, because they just got a traffic ticket or got busted for marijuana or whatever, there's a real probability your kid is going to go below the line too. So now you've just got two reactive, contracted, scared people trying to prove they're right.

• 1:33:00Shane Parrish?

  Right.

• 1:33:00Speaker 00

  Well, that's where most parenting occurs from when we're triggered. And by the way, it's the same thing. Are you, you know, you're, when you're working with your 18 month old who only eats two dietary things and you're not willing to give them that in the restaurant? And they're throwing a temper tantrum. Are you interacting with your child from below the line or above the line? And again, I'll circle back to it. Let's say I'm in a restaurant and my kid's throwing a temper tantrum. And I'm interacting with my kid. Most parents, this is natural and normal, are not really interacting with their child, with their child at the center of their consciousness. They're interacting with their child with themselves at the center of their consciousness and their embarrassment. So my anger at my child

• 1:33:45Speaker 00

  is largely fueled by my embarrassment that I'm outsourcing my sense of approval and okayness to strangers surrounding me at Chuck E. Cheese. Probably wouldn't have it at Chuck E. Cheese. But, you know, at a restaurant.

• 1:34:00Shane Parrish?

  This goes back to your grandparent comment earlier where it's almost easier to be a grandparent than it is to be a parent.

• 1:34:06Speaker 00

  Absolutely. So, you know, if you think about conscious parenting, one of the primers that I give parents is, you know, most parents think that their children came here to learn, for the parent to teach them how to be a human. Well, there's a lot of truth to that and that's a lot of what our job is. But I'd say it's equally, if not more true, that our children came here to teach us. So, for example, these little children in my life, all of them are under seven years old and some babies and stuff. Whenever they show up in the world, I have a talk with them, when they're little infants, write them a note, that says, "Thank you for coming here to teach me. Thank you for coming here to remind me who I am that I've forgotten." And I believe that if we make that contract with our children,

• 1:34:49Speaker 00

  they will teach us all the way along. So, these kids come hardwired to know emotional intelligence. They feel feelings. They're in their bodies. They express the feelings. Their anger comes out if their diaper's wet. Their anger comes out if their tummy's... If they start to feel the falling sensation, their fear comes out. Their sadness comes out. And every time they did that, if you said, "Would you teach me again how to reconnect with my body and have an authentic experience of the life force of emotion? Would you teach me that?" Or, "Let's go back." You know, when you're sitting with your 16-year-old that just got busted for marijuana, and you say, you know, "Before I get over there in your business," which I'm gonna do, because that's part of what I think my responsibility is, "I just want you to know

• 1:35:33Speaker 00

  that this whole situation is a gift for me." Because I really stake my reputation on being a good parent and having you be an A student and a star athlete, not do anything. And you've cooperated fantastically for these first 16 years. And now you're giving me a test. You're giving me a test of whether or not I'm going to see you as an extension of me. And whether I'm going to get my validation from how you perform, or whether I'm going to source that inside myself. So, thank you. Furthermore, you give me a chance to face what I went through when I was 16 years old. Because, you know, I was breaking all kinds of rules and I didn't have a parent who loved me enough to step in. So I'm going to face that and I'm going to step in with you. Or, you know, I had a parent who was so damn controlling, they smothered me.

• 1:36:18Speaker 00

  So I'm going to face all that and be with you. So, premise number one, your kids have come here to teach you as much as you're supposed to teach them. And by the way, if you buy into that, that changes the whole game. And then ask yourself, am I parenting from above or below the line? Am I, am I treating my kids as victims? This happens all the time. I can't tell you how many parents see their kids as victims. The villain is the coach who isn't giving their kid enough playing time.

• 1:36:44Shane Parrish?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:36:45Speaker 00

  Parent steps into the role of hero. Or the kid is a victim at the effect of their teacher who doesn't understand their learning differences. So the parent steps into the role of hero. And every time we do that, we're treating our kids as disempowered victims. And they'll learn that. So again, you can parent from that victim villain hero triangle and it creates all kinds of backlash. So, all of this applies to parenting. How candid are you with your parents, with your kids? How much do you reveal? How authentic are you? Or do you just put up a shield? There's all kinds of stuff here. Do you live in a state of appreciation with your children? Do you give them, you know, that old coaching thing? Do you give them five to one appreciation to constructive criticism?

• 1:37:27Speaker 00

  There's so much here about, in fact, that's one of the next books we're going to write is Conscious Parenting and Conscious Partnering.

• 1:37:35Shane Parrish?

  Yeah, I think there's a whole world. I mean, this applies outside, it applies to all aspects of your life, right? And it's so important to, those are the most important things. Often, we don't realize they're the most important until it's too late, right?

• 1:37:47Speaker 00

  That's true.

• 1:37:48Shane Parrish?

  We're 70 or 80, and all of a sudden, we want more time with our kids. We wanted to invest more in our relationship. And letting that hindsight of other people be your foresight is super powerful. But then it's a matter of like, what do we do with that information? How can I be a better spouse? Like, what aspires me to do that? How can I be a better spouse in a way that, or partner in a way that my partner recognizes and appreciates, not necessarily in a way that I necessarily want to give?

• 1:38:14Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 1:38:15Shane Parrish?

  So that we're communicating in sort of the same language. And it's the same for kids, right? If you have multiple kids, the way that you communicate with each kid might be different. And the way that they receive that information has to be sort of optimal for them in order to to get the message across, or to learn from them, or to sort of like, have that dynamic with them. And I think that we're just, we're so busy in day to day lives that we rarely step outside of ourselves and understand that, no, now is the time that we need to be investing in this, because there's no like metaphorical window when we're, you know, 80 that we can just go up to and like, solve these relationship problems that we're creating right now.

• 1:38:56Speaker 00

  I'm saying yes to everything you're saying.

• 1:38:59Shane Parrish?

  Uh, just before we get off, you mentioned sort of the blended family thing. And I know we have quite a few listeners out there with blended families. What are some of the lessons that you learned as a parent in a blended family situation?

• 1:39:13Speaker 00

  Yeah, great. A couple, a couple simple ones that helped us. We've got a fabulous blended family. It really is, it's fabulous. A couple of things. Number one, we made the decision to prioritize our relationship over our relationship with our children.

• 1:39:29Shane Parrish?

  What does that mean?

• 1:39:30Speaker 00

  Well.

• 1:39:32Speaker 00

  The deal in a blended family is, you know, Debbie has a biological connection with her boys. That is her offspring. That is her life force. And when the shit hits the fan, when it gets conflictual, when her kids are in conflict with my kids, when I'm in conflict with her kids, the natural tendency, and I totally get this, and by the way, it's a legitimate choice, I'm just telling you what we did, the natural tendency is to prioritize the parents' connection with the child.

• 1:40:02Shane Parrish?

  Right.

• 1:40:03Speaker 00

  In our experience, that creates long-term problems. Because those kids in a blended family are gonna wanna know, my daughters are gonna wanna know, that Debbie hasn't taken primacy over them. They're gonna be terrified of that. But if I give them primacy over her, it's gonna create a whole downstream set of consequences. So, we decided we were gonna prioritize our closeness first. And we did all kinds of things around that, around the amount of time we spent together, and being each other's allies, and, and things like that. And that was a game changer. And I've seen lots of other couples do this,

• 1:40:43Speaker 00

  and they didn't do that. And it might be one of the reasons that the statistics on marriage divorces are so much higher than first marriage divorces. Because now, there's not the primacy of that relationship, and all the stress of blended families blows the marriage apart, or blows the intimate relationship apart. So that was one thing we did. And then the other thing we did, and this is fairly common, but we, we really were good about this, is Debbie has primary relationship and decision-making rights with her children. I serve as support to that system. Now, if there's something that the kids are doing that's affecting me, I'm gonna talk to Debbie about that first. Doesn't

• 1:41:27Speaker 00

  mean I'm not gonna talk to the kids, her kids, but I'm gonna talk to Debbie first to make sure we're aligned, and then we'll talk to the kids together. Now, there's a whole lot more around this, but that's another one. She has primary decision-making responsibility with her children. My job is to support her.

• 1:41:44Shane Parrish?

  How, how does that not end up in a situation where different kids have different roles?

• 1:41:49Speaker 00

  Different kids have different rules.

• 1:41:51Shane Parrish?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:52Speaker 00

  Oh, I wish we had time because I would, what's wrong with that?

• 1:41:55Shane Parrish?

  Oh, no. Okay. That's a great sort of question. So is that okay? Like if your daughter came up and said, you know, uh, one of her kids did the same thing as I did, and the punishments were completely different, or the consequences, I don't want to use the word punishments, but the consequences were different.

• 1:42:11Speaker 00

  This would be a whole conversation on parenting. One of my views would be that part of being a conscious parent is to be so present and so tuned in that you know that your six-year-old needs an earlier bedtime than his five-year-old sister.

• 1:42:29Shane Parrish?

  Right.

• 1:42:29Speaker 00

  Now, the six-year-old's gonna say, and you can react to that from below the line, or you can come from above the line. You can say, listen, I know that pisses you off. I know you hate that. So if you want to beat a bag for a minute, let your anger out, that's great. I'll just sit here and witness and be with you. That's perfect. And at the end of the day, when I tune into you, I think your sleep needs are different. So we're gonna have different bedtimes. And by the way, that's just one time illustration. I think that can be illustrated over and over and over again. And by the way, that doesn't mean that there aren't family rules. You know, we could have a family rule that you can have your room be a pigsty if you want, but everybody cleans up the common space.

• 1:43:07Shane Parrish?

  Right.

• 1:43:08Speaker 00

  You know, so I would question the belief that we need to have the same consequences and expected agreements. By the way, parenting is all about making clean agreements with your children. Most parents don't make agreements with their kids. They give them edicts, and that creates a rebellion. I talk about how to make clean agreements with your kids around things like room clean, bedtime, and homework, and stuff like that. We're going to make clear agreements with our children, and those agreements can be different.

• 1:43:33Shane Parrish?

  Keep going with the, the other sort of lessons from blended families, and we'll follow up in part two of this.

• 1:43:39Speaker 00

  So lesson number one, we prioritize our relationship. Lesson number two, the primary parent had decision rights, and the secondary parent was an advisor, consultant, and stood as a unified field in the decision-making that went on. And another one I would say is have a long time horizon. Because... When families blend, depending on how you blend, there's so many different ways to blend now. There's almost always a tumultuous adjustment period. I tell parents, count on it. Here's what's gonna happen. Here, you can just, your kid's job and your stepchildren's job is to test you.

• 1:44:19Speaker 00

  It's gonna get messy. So have a long time horizon and understand that when you decide to end your first marriage and take your kids into a second marriage or a second intimate relationship, part of what you're choosing is a tumultuous period of time. So that's known. And then another big one, which again, we could go into intensely is, how we, as, me as an individual, me and Debbie, and me as a system, choose to relate to the former spouses and the co-parents out there is critically important. Because there's a whole energy field here and they're all part of the energy field.

• 1:45:01Speaker 00

  And the degree to which we can, and it's not totally up to us because there are other people involved, the degree to which we can relate to the co-parents and the former partners from above the line, which is not easy to do because usually we're ending the relationship for a reason, which usually carries some toxic residue. But the degree to which we can relate to them from above the line is a great, great enhancement to our blended family. You know, what's her name? It'll come to me. Who did conscious uncoupling? Gwyneth Paltrow and Goop and all that. You know, it came back up because I just saw something, I think it was New York Times.

• 1:45:37Shane Parrish?

  It was Esther Perel, wasn't it?

• 1:45:40Speaker 00

  Was it Esther Perel who came up with the idea of conscious uncoupling?

• 1:45:43Shane Parrish?

  I don't know. I know she's talked about it before in terms of like, I remember reading an article a few weeks ago that she wrote on sort of a couple that was breaking up and one of them was feeling guilty because he had had an affair, but he didn't want to be in the marriage anymore. And he had moved on, but he was really feeling guilty about his spouse. And so part of the conscious uncoupling was like, he was acknowledging that he was feeling guilty and then that was okay.

• 1:46:10Speaker 00

  That's fabulous. Yeah, I love Esther's work. It's unbelievable. And Gwyneth came up with this idea of conscious uncoupling. I think she got it from somebody back in the seventies. Gayne Katie Edrics. And she got a ton of crap for it. And this was years ago. And that's because, but I want to say you fast forward to this weird thing that, you know, in social media, I don't really do, but I hear she gets a lot of crap for, you know, that her ex-husband comes on honeymoon with her and her new husband and the kids. Now, we can all see why that, we can make up a story why that's absurd, but it's the ultimate experience of if you want to minimize the drama in the lives of those children, be conscious about your relationship with your ex-partner and their parent.

• 1:46:52Shane Parrish?

  Right.

• 1:46:53Speaker 00

  And I'd say about that is prioritize your kids' well-being. So prioritize your relationship with your spouse, prioritize your kids' well-being.

• 1:47:03Shane Parrish?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:04Speaker 00

  So it's so easy to want to, you know, trash the other person, so on and so forth. And all it does is leave a destructive, you know, wasteland in your kids' consciousness and soul. So those are some of the lessons we learned. I think there are lots more.

• 1:47:17Shane Parrish?

  Jim, that was amazing. This whole conversation was mind-blowing, so we will follow up for part two. I really appreciate you taking the time today. And I think we covered a lot of ground and there's a lot of detail. I'm so pleased with how this turned out.

• 1:47:30Speaker 00

  Oh, you're so welcome. It's great fun for me, Shane. I really enjoyed the collaboration of playing together. Great fun.

• 1:47:40Shane Parrish?

  Hey, guys. This is Shane again. Just a few more things before we wrap up. You can find show notes at farnamstreetblog.com/podcast. That's F-A-R-N-A-M-S-T-R-E-E-T-B-L-O-G.com/podcast. You can also find information there on how to get a transcript. And if you'd like to receive a weekly email from me filled with all sorts of brain food, go to farnamstreetblog.com/newsletter. This is all the good stuff I've found on the web that week that I've read and shared with close friends, books I'm reading, and so much more. Thank you for listening.