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[Music] You are the single most requested guest. And let me tell you, this has not been
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easy because we went to some hard places. But I don't think we'll ever talk about anything more important than this. Cuz it's not fear that gets in the
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way of us being brave with our lives and our work. It's the armor that we reach for to self-protect when we're afraid.
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And how that armor moves us away from love, connection, and our values. And
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the hardest work is being aware of what is my armor when I'm afraid. Is that automatic?
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Oh, no. It's a training. So, let's start with that. Then, Bnee Brown is an icon whose worldleading
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research in shame, vulnerability, and connection has inspired companies like Pixar, Google, and the US special forces
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to build stronger leaders and help the everyday person unlock their full potential.
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Ready? Is vulnerability important? It is if we want to be brave with our lives. But we were raised to believe
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that vulnerability is weakness. Like in my family, we were allowed anger, but sad was not an option. You needed to be
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tough. And so when I get scared, when I feel anxious, disappointed, I'm just angry. And so when you're raised without
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vulnerability, it'll put you in jeopardy. Like, you want to know what vulnerability is? Joy. Joy is so
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vulnerable that people choose to live disappointed rather than to get excited about something and risk getting sucker
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punched by disappointment. Like, there is no courage without vulnerability because courage is the willingness to
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show up and be allin when you cannot predict the outcome. Wow. I've never thought about that before. But you can develop skills.
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Megan's four steps to courage. Yes. We've taken 165,000 people through
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this work. That included how to build trust. And I've heard about your marble jar theory. Could you explain to me what
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your marble jar look how excited you are? I know. So this is how we teach trust to the
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most senior leaders in Fortune 100 companies. It's awesome.
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I see messages all the time in the comment section that some of you didn't realize you didn't subscribe. So, if you
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could do me a favor and double check if you're a subscriber to this channel, that would be tremendously appreciated. It's the simple, it's the free thing
00:02:02
that anybody that watches this show frequently can do to help us here to keep everything going in this show in the trajectory it's on. So, please do
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double check if you've subscribed and uh thank you so much because in a strange way, you are you're part of our history
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and you're on this journey with us and I appreciate you for that. So, yeah, thank you,
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Renee. In order to um understand all the work that you have done and the perspective
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that you have on the world and also who you are as a anomaly in many respects, I think it's probably important that I
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understand your earliest context, where you've come from, what shaped you. I'm stuck on an am I a am I an anomaly?
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I of course you're an anomaly. Of course you're an anomaly. That that should be of no surprise to you. I mean, if you
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look at your outcomes, your outcomes are anomalous. So, one would assume that there's some form of something that made
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you an anomaly. I would say that
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I'm a fifth generation Texan. I
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came from a fair amount of dysfunction. Parents doing the best they could
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with what they knew. both coming from really really really
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tough upbringings that included you know poverty
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addiction and so probably a lot of the stereotypes you would think about fifth generation Texan tough don't cry we were
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allowed a very small continuum of emotions were approval you know or approved which were pissed off or okay
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like anger was okay but no you couldn't be sad really or vulnerability was not a thing. Vulnerability was weakness and
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scary and puts you in jeopardy. I felt like a real outsider at home and in
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school, but I was really good at reading people, reading situations. I think my I
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think a therapist somewhere along the way said, "Yes, that's hypervigilance. You're hypervigilant.
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You know, I can see everything around me. I know everything's going on. I can connect things very quickly that other people don't see." And there was
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laughter and there was love. But there was a ton of unpredictability.
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I was going to say, isn't that typically what creates hypervigilance is some kind of need to be that aware when you're
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young? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think yes, being funloving
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was very valued in my family and being tough. These were the values. These are
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these are on the parental scorecard. This is what got you an A. if you're
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fun, easy, you can, you know, shoot straight, spit far, fish well, like
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really drive fast. And so those things were very valued. Athleticism was very
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valued. Um,
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but those fun things could turn really hard very quickly.
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There was a big pause there. 4 second pause as you Yeah. I could just picture it like it's fun until
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It's fun until you've had a parent eject e ejected from a game for being so hard.
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And that was your father. Yeah. Oh, he was really hard then if he was ejected from a game. Oh yeah.
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Yeah. Yeah. There's a photo I saw of you and your siblings where you're clutching your siblings and I think you referred to it
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as you could see there was a certain fear in your eyes. Do you know the photo I'm referring to? Am I on a couch?
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You're on a couch. Like a yellow velour couch like from the 70s. Yes. Yeah.
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I think about that picture. I like that picture. But there was definitely I definitely had a protector role as the
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oldest. I mean code named sister superior. It was jokingly but it wasn't joking. Like if things got hard between
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my parents and they would get in volatile fights, I would go get all my siblings, put them in my room. I'd go
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downstairs and handle it, you know? Like I was definitely the protector. physically volatile fights
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um on occasion but more emotionally volatile. Screaming and shouting. Yeah.
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Same with my parents. Yeah. Just loud. There's a background in my whole house for my whole childhood was just
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screaming. There was a Yeah, we had a lot of screaming and there's a certain like if you grew up with screaming, hearing
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screaming through a wall, you know that sound. Mhm. Do you hear that sound?
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Of course. Yeah. Oh my god. It was my whole childhood. Yeah. Was that seven days of screaming? Yeah. And so, yeah, I'm sorry because I
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don't like to hear that about your childhood and I don't like to know that about my childhood, but there was a lot of screaming. And so, I think
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hypervigilant, protective,
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responsible with a dose of
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be very [ __ ] careful because
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I will protect my siblings. And and how did that change your model
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of love as a young person? It must have been because I mean I obviously feel the same way about about my situation. And
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um I think the lesson I learned was that love was like a prison cuz it was my mom doing the shouting and my dad was the
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prisoner and he wouldn't respond. So this you've got a woman shouting at him for six seven hours a day and him sat
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there like he's a like an inanimate object looking at the screen. And I remember thinking, "Oh, okay. So, if I
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get in a relationship when I'm older, then I'm going to be a prisoner to a woman. Okay? Doesn't sound doesn't sound
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appealing. And if you move to a different room, you'd follow him. So, I avoided relationships like the [ __ ]
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plague. I did well until about 27. And then what?
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And then someone got over the wall and corrected some of the evidence. They got over the wall.
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She got over the wall somehow. Yeah. Steve got over the wall. Damn it. That's your partner, not me. Just for
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context. No, not Yeah. Not you. Although you're doing a hell of a job right now. Um,
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you're like you've crossed a piranha filled moat that I like. Um, but the drawbridge is like I'm see I'm just see
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I'm going to see my Steve my Steve definitely definitely got over the wall.
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Um, but it was like game game recognizes game. He had a wall. Oh, okay. Yeah. Uh, and so we had long
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conversations about our walls and and slowly through those conversations. We just
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those walls crumbled with each other and we've been together now for 38 years. Wow. Yeah. Um, the hardest thing I've ever
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done in my life bar none, dude. Nothing has been harder.
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When I started dating, Steve, well, when we got married, six months after we got married, this is, you know,
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you you said for you love was going to be being a prisoner. Mhm. And having to just shut down to survive.
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Mhm. Right. Run away. Run away. Right. Don't confront it. No conversations now. No.
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Um, for me, 6 months after we were married, I went to go see a therapist and I said, "I cannot do this. I've got
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to get out of this marriage." And we had dated off and on for 7 years before we got married. And I said, "I got to get
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out." And she said, "I could th this is hard. I I could see how this is not
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working." And I was like, I had a twinge of defensiveness about Steve. And I said, 'What do you mean? And she said,
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he likes you so much more than you like you. It must be terrible.
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It's like, [ __ ] you, man. You're fired. I was like, I am so
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I thought, what? That's what I do. So if you I'm going to give you one of my tells. If I do a really highpitched what
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that means I'm that means I'm looking for my purse and I'm get I know where the door is. Um I I I just kept thinking
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what what do you mean? He said it's got it's got to be very com uncomfortable to be with someone who sees you and really
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knows you and loves you so much when you have not found a way to see you and love
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you so much. It's got to be disconcerting. What an [ __ ] man. like, wow. And it
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was true. I had to get to this point where I was like, I maybe I should like me as much as he likes me and then make
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a better decision about whether this is going to work or not. When you grow up
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and pissed off or shut down are your two emotional opportunities. Like there, you
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know, in Atlas of the Heart, I write about 87 emotions that I think are
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important to understand because the limits of our language are the limits of
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our world. When you have two buckets,
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then everything must go in those. And in fact, in our research over the last 15 years, we found the average person can
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accurately identify and name three emotions. Happy, sad, pissed off.
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Mhm. And so in my family, sad was not an
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option. That was weakness. So you could be pissed or okay. So when I get scared,
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when I feel grief, when I'm anxious, when I feel disappointment, when I feel
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anguish, I'm just angry. There's two sort of outstanding question
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marks in my head and they might be the same answer, but it's you said earlier on that you didn't fit in at school or
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at home, and I didn't understand why you didn't fit in at school or at home. And then the other thing that's still a question mark in my head is the
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therapist said to you that you well asserted that you didn't like yourself as much as he liked you. And I wasn't clear on what made you not like
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yourself. I wanted out of where I was raised. I
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wanted to leave everything I knew. And so I always felt like an outsider. I
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didn't didn't want to do I mean I wasn't popular. I wasn't dating a quarterback.
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That was a dream that my my parents and their parents and their parents, you
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know, you were you were a bearcadet and you dated a quarterback and you got a
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farm. So at I felt not cute, not popular, not understood.
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And then at home, I wasn't easygoing.
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I was an I was anxious. and and always ready.
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And the point about self-esteem, which the therapist sort of highlighted about not liking oneself as much as Steve
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liked you, where did that come from or is that related in some way? Oh, cuz my parents parented with a very
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big heaping dose of shame. Oh, okay. So, if you accomplish
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something or you don't accomplish something, you're made to feel bad about it. Yeah. And a ton of it was about appearance,
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being fun. Appearance. Yeah. Yeah. Like, you know, big blonde
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hair with hot rollers. The higher the hair, the closer to God. You needed to be tough and strong and throw on a
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baseball cap and get somewhere really quick, lowmaintenance, and you needed to be a beauty pageant
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queen. Do you remember them ever being critical of your appearance in a way that has
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stayed with you? I mean, I guess.
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I mean, I think not just them. I mean, like I think
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having young girls and young women, keeping them
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from developing threats to their self-esteem is not just a parental thing. It's like
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it's like asking them not to breathe because the air is poison. Like it's like every message from everywhere, you
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know, the fashion magazines, you'd read them and you think, "Wow,
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I don't I don't look like this. How am I going to look like this?" You know, and you'd lather yourself up with baby oil
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and you put lemon juice in your hair. You put tin foil under your chin, get as much sun cancer as you could cuz we
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didn't know, you know, like you you'd we all wore jeans that you had to put on
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with pliers with for the zipper cuz they were so tight. appearance mattered. This
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is Texas, baby. You go off to university eventually, and not a straight line, but eventually you
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get into university. Not a straight line. That's the sweetest thing you've said to me. Um, I graduated from college when I
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was 29. Wow. So, you become a research professor in 2001
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and you've been a research professor and many more things um, ever since then. You get your PhD in social work at the
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University of Houston, Texas between 96 and 2002. And really for the last couple
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of decades, you've focused on research, understanding people. Obviously, there's so many more strings to your bow in
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terms of like media and podcasting and authorship, but over those since 2001, we're in 2025 now, just over two
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decades. My first question is um how has your perspective on how has the world
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changed in those last two decades in your view? Unions would say before any
00:15:35
great progression there is a regression
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and I think that when you look at various admin I know
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you have a very global audience when you look at administrations political administrations across the world and you look at
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how power is being used right now it will tell you a lot about what
00:16:01
they're afraid of.
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What What is that face? We're gonna have to pause it. I was thinking about a conversation I had recently with my my best friends. It must have been this weekend. Yeah, it
00:16:13
was this weekend cuz it was my friend's birthday in Manchester, the UK. So, we flew in. Um and we had a conversation
00:16:19
about how the leading political narrative at the moment, this might be adjacent to what you were saying, but it's the way I interpreted it. The
00:16:24
leading political narrative at the moment that seems to be getting people elected is if you say those people with
00:16:30
that skin color are the reason for the pain and anguish in your life. It's actually the people below you that are
00:16:37
coming over the border or crossing the the English Channel on dingies that are ruining your life. And it seems to be
00:16:43
like a really effective narrative to earn power both in the US and the UK. like the central narrative that is
00:16:49
swaying elections it seems at the moment in the UK and the US is those brown people on that boat or coming over the
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border are the reason for the pain in your life and it seems to work and that seems to be the thing getting power so
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that's kind of what ran through my head when I had this idea of like power and what you're scared of actually think I inverted it to if I can tell you what to
00:17:07
be scared of or find the thing you might be scared of or whatever then I get power but maybe it goes the other way
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too I don't think we'll ever talk about anything more important than this to be honest with you that's Why I thought
00:17:18
your response was so interesting cuz you you you made if I was going to like do
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the text box above your face it would have said well holy [ __ ] that's
00:17:30
interesting because when when you use power especially power over because there's multiple kinds of
00:17:35
power. There's power with into and power within. So people that use power within
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to and power within work from a belief system that's completely different. We
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believe that power is infinite and can grow when shared. People who use power over work from a belief system that
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power is finite like pizza and if I give you any I have a deficit. So it's got to
00:18:01
be hoarded and protected and not shared. Power over is really important to understand
00:18:08
because when people are using power over, they're definitely letting you know what they're afraid of because that's what they're focused on and
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they're tapping into. And I think this is absolutely true. If you give people
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someone to dislike and blame for their pain
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and they look different than the people who are voting, you will win a 100 times out of 100.
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If you say, "I see your pain." I can tell you exactly the source of it and I
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can fix this for you. And the source of it is going to be easy to see. You're not going to see yourself
00:18:45
in them. M so that narrative that you are talking about it is a full circle. People in
00:18:53
power use power to address issues that they're afraid of. They gain power by
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leveraging fear and giving people an enemy. That's how this works. It works like
00:19:05
this. I mean I spend 95% of my time in organizations working with seauite leaders and senior
00:19:11
leaders. This this is how it works in organizations. how it works in political, you know, how it works in
00:19:17
faith communities. This is how power works in general. So power over is a very specific kind of power. And it's
00:19:24
especially dangerous because in order to maintain it,
00:19:29
you have to engage in periodic bouts of cruelty towards vulnerable populations.
00:19:34
You have to remind people what you're capable of. So there's four types of power you you
00:19:40
you speak about in um Damn, you have that in your notes in Strong Ground. Yes.
00:19:46
Well, why are you surprised? I don't know. There's four types of power in leadership you speak about. There's the power over, which is controlling or
00:19:52
exploiting others. Power with finding common ground and building collective strength. Power two, which is giving others agency and recognizing their
00:19:59
potential. And power within, which is honoring differences and selfworth.
00:20:05
So as a leader of a business, if I want to be successful, are you telling me that I need to stay away from power over
00:20:12
and adopt another power within this list of four? Yeah. I think what we've seen be very
00:20:20
successful over time is power with, power to, and power within. So
00:20:27
collaborative power, co-creation power, self-awareness,
00:20:33
metacognition, knowing yourself, knowing how you think and learn. So power with and power too. Power over is
00:20:41
excruciatingly difficult to maintain. We're not neurobiologically
00:20:47
hardwired to stay in fear for very long.
00:20:52
So if I work for you, if I work for you
00:20:58
and you're using power over to lead me, you're threatening me with my job, you're threatening me with consequences,
00:21:04
you're threatening me with demotion, one of two things is going to happen for me neurobiologically. I am either going
00:21:12
to just become numb to it. It's not it's
00:21:17
not going to be able you're not going to maintain I can't maintain that constant level of fear. just too demanding,
00:21:24
just physically demanding. Or I might get hyper
00:21:29
normalized. I might just like this is this is what I work in. This is like crazy. This is it, you know? But every
00:21:34
now and then, you're going to have to do something that demonstrates to me how
00:21:40
chaotic and cruel you can actually be. Like, you're going to have to engage in periodic acts of cruelty to remind me
00:21:47
that the fear is real and to put me back in it. And so one of the things you're
00:21:52
seeing right now, I mean, like we in in the US, the deportation and immigration issues.
00:22:01
This is not a president that has, you know, tightened his belt on immigration
00:22:06
more than other previous presidents, but we've never seen masked people grabbing
00:22:12
people off the street while children hold on to their legs screaming, "Mom, mom, mom." We we we've never seen that
00:22:18
before, right? But we've had other presidents probably exceed
00:22:25
the deportation numbers that we're seeing, but we've never seen that level of cruelty and display. That is a real
00:22:34
display of cruelty as a reminder of who who holds power and who does not.
00:22:40
It also makes me think of relationships when you're talking about, you know, how people are controlled with power over. A
00:22:46
lot of people talk about like sort of narcissistic relationships or abusive relationships where
00:22:52
they don't feel like they can leave or you know they don't leave and they end up becoming acclimatized to the
00:22:57
treatment. I'm a big systems theory. I'm a systems theory person. I think in systems theory
00:23:02
I was trained in systems theory. I think if you don't understand system systems theory, at least if you're leading an
00:23:08
organization right now, you're going to fall behind because
00:23:13
the complexity inside and outside of organizations is such that we need a framework to understand how all of these
00:23:21
individual systems are bumping up against each other. Like you you probably bump up against
00:23:27
a hundred systems a day, right? Yeah. And so what I would imagine the
00:23:32
story I would make up about your success because this is true of any systems theory is in order for systems to thrive
00:23:39
and grow, they have to keep permeable boundaries.
00:23:44
Meaning they have to allow feedback to flow in and out from other systems
00:23:50
to be aware. So I'm just going to give you a very good example. I'm very excited about the female
00:23:56
the experts you had on Mhm. around menopause
00:24:02
women's life. I mean, I'm so excited about that. Like, just to be honest with you, like Mary Cla is my doctor. Oh, really?
00:24:07
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Dr. Haver. So, um,
00:24:13
what is interesting is the systems that just that podcast bumps up against,
00:24:20
you know, and the systems that would be sending feedback that, hey, this is not for me. I'm not clicking on this. I I
00:24:26
I've shared that first one with a hundred people, you know, because there's a reality to
00:24:33
our lives that is uncomfortable for people, but those are your partners and your moms and your, you know, and your
00:24:41
bosses and it's real. And I can guarantee if this was happening with dudes,
00:24:46
yeah, like it'd be a gajillion dollar whatever over a trillion gajillion, I don't know.
00:24:53
Um, but just thinking about that one podcast and the systems that you're touching, health, women's issues, um,
00:25:01
family systems are affected. Like that podcast hits 20 systems that I can think of in my head right now.
00:25:06
Mhm. The divorce rates of people of women in their 50s and 60s. Mhm. I mean, right. Yes or no?
00:25:12
Yeah. 100%. Yeah. Right. So, a healthy system has permeable boundaries, meaning feedback
00:25:18
is flowing in and out all the time. What happens when the world gets complex is
00:25:24
we start not wanting the feedback. The complexity is too big. So we start shutting down those permeable
00:25:30
boundaries. Well, what happens to a system where the boundaries are no longer permeable. It atrophies. And in
00:25:38
the in the process of atrophying, the system becomes self-referencing. Are we good? We're great. Are we right? We're
00:25:45
right. Are we on target? We're on target. because the boundaries of the system is are no longer craving outside
00:25:53
feedback even when it's tough. And in businesses today, the geopolitical
00:25:58
realities, the market changes, AI, I mean, it's crazy.
00:26:05
And so our predisposition
00:26:11
to shut down uncertainty and complexity is the biggest threat to the systems in
00:26:16
which we work and live. the self-protect, close the wall, put up
00:26:22
the drawbridge, fill the moat with piranhas. We just don't have that luxury. We've
00:26:28
got to keep the the boundaries permeable. We've got to keep learning, guessing, unlearning, relearning.
00:26:34
One of the added complexities is the rise in algorithms. And and actually when I think about algorithms that are
00:26:41
powered by AI, they're going to be even better at knowing what you want to see so that you spend time, so that you
00:26:46
consume more adverts, which means probably the best thing to show me is either something really fearful or to to
00:26:51
confirm what I already believe. 100%. An algorithm that was doing the opposite probably wouldn't be an enjoyable experience for the average human brain.
00:26:57
It would cause too much dissonance, too much discomfort, but great for democracy. Great. Yeah. Fantastic. But terrible for
00:27:03
for running a business and selling ads. So any company that takes that approach will go bankrupt. This is why Tik Tok I
00:27:09
think have been so successful is the algorithm is I don't use Tik Tok. So I have a Tik Tok account. I don't have the
00:27:14
app on my phone. But um from what I hear is it's so unbelievably addictive. People describe it to me and they're
00:27:21
like, "Oh my god, it's so addictive." But this [ __ ] is the devil. Yeah.
00:27:26
Yeah. But it's people are driven by incentives, right? And you your your
00:27:32
share price is going to tumble and you're going to be fired. And you're going to lose your your status and your power if you don't do that.
00:27:40
I'm playing devil's. Obviously, I'm not I No, I agree. What do you think the
00:27:46
solution is? And what responsibility do
00:27:51
the bros who run these tech platforms have?
00:27:56
It's complicated. Well, I agree. I'm not looking for an easy answer. Go ahead. Hit me. Well, and
00:28:01
I just think it's complicated because what what an objective party would say
00:28:06
who's just looking at the incentives of these groups of people is if they don't do it,
00:28:12
China will. So even with AI now, you know what I I'm like, I've sat with all these experts
00:28:17
and I keep hitting up against this wall, which is, okay, if we just banned people in the United States from pursuing this
00:28:22
super intelligence strategy, then Russia and China get there first, then the United States, unfortunately, are going
00:28:28
to end up being China's French bulldog. And actually, I can't refute that. I go,
00:28:34
"No, you're right." Cuz we you'd have to literally lease the technology off them. It will be so powerful and give such an
00:28:40
economic advantage that you will have to lease it off China. So, okay, I guess Sam Alman does need to crack on or else
00:28:48
so it's complicated. I mean, this is where I end up every time. I mean, look what happened with Tik Tok.
00:28:54
China made an algorithm. It was unbelievably addictive. The United States had just had to buy it off them
00:29:00
because they were scared that the data was going to be used against the United States. A prime example. Like, China like, "Fuck it. We don't care." Yeah. Right.
00:29:05
Yeah. And they made an unbelievable algorithm called Tik Tok which just captivate, you know, the youth are all just [ __ ] losing their brains. So, I
00:29:13
don't know. I don't know. It's tough. It's rough. Spiritual crisis. Yeah. I mean, you just laid it out. You
00:29:20
just laid it out. We're emotionally disregulated. We're distrustful of each other. We don't
00:29:26
trust ourselves very much. And we're disconnected. I can't give up on people, though. I'm not built that way.
00:29:33
Like, I just believe that we are more good than greedy.
00:29:39
You know, I I was in conversation with Trevor Noah at an event and I mentioned this term that I I was really excited
00:29:46
about and he challenged me on it and I said, I think what we need is cognitive
00:29:52
sovereignty. We need to wrestle control away from the algorithms
00:29:59
and decide what we consume, what we read, how we think, think critically.
00:30:06
We need to think about our attention and our focus as commodities that people are after
00:30:14
because they're after them, right? He had an interesting point though. He
00:30:20
always has interesting points, don't you think? It's so tough to to talk to Trevor because he's so he's always got an interesting point.
00:30:25
He's always got an interesting point. Damn it. Um and he's funny, but he said,
00:30:30
"No, we need less cognitive sovereignty, Bnee." And I'm like, "What do you mean?" He goes, "Everything's about the for you
00:30:35
page. Everything's for you. We need communal sovereignty. He's like, you know, the whole problem is that your for
00:30:42
you page is completely sovereign. You intellectually and spiritually I'm I'm
00:30:48
paraphrasing what he said. I'm sure it was like funnier and better looking, but
00:30:54
um but he he and then I was trying to think about like I guess maybe that's not the
00:31:00
right term, but let me let me tell you what scares me the most. I'm in I'm in some weird rooms because of the nature
00:31:07
of my job. I'm in rooms where the people who run these platforms and own and you know that own the CEOs of these business
00:31:13
and the founders are in these rooms and I hear them talking and I hear things
00:31:19
that are so misaligned that it panics me. So I hear someone
00:31:25
say, "Hey, you know, tech billionaire, what what should my kids study? I'm
00:31:30
worried for my kids." well they should study coding physics you know and then five minutes later as if that answer
00:31:37
didn't happen someone will say to what do you attribute your success I mean deeply when you think about it and the
00:31:43
same person will say my deep reading of philosophy in the stoics
00:31:49
and so then I'm thinking to myself well which is it dude and then I then I start to extrapolate
00:31:55
from there and wonder if there is a thinking class that's
00:32:00
emerging where they're like, "We're going to read philosophy and we're going to read
00:32:07
the liberal arts and we're going to study history and the rest of you just
00:32:12
keep scrolling. Don't worry about the big words. We'll we'll handle all the big words for you." Like, it's like when
00:32:18
they asked Steve Jobs, "Boy, your kids must love the iPad." Steve Jobs said,
00:32:25
"My kids don't have an iPad." And then his biographer who spent time with his
00:32:31
family said he wasn't kidding. There's no technology at dinner. They're talking about art and history.
00:32:39
The hardest chapter I've ever written in my life of any book was the chapter on grounded confidence and strong ground.
00:32:45
What is the set of skill sets and mindsets that I think we're going to need to future ready and future proof
00:32:50
ourselves to be leaders moving forward? And I think what was hard about it was the complexity of it was probably a
00:32:57
combination of 30 different mindsets and skill sets. And when I was done, you know, for
00:33:03
commercial reasons, someone on my team immediately said, "Geez, this is like a if you can train people in these things,
00:33:09
this is really this is like really important." And the first thing I thought was, "Fuck
00:33:15
that. My kids train like I get it. It's important. like we'll we'll we'll we'll develop
00:33:22
some instrumentation, measure it. We'll train folks in it. I think it's trainable. It's teachable. It's measurable. But really, I want this for
00:33:30
my kids. I want my kids to know systems thinking. I want my kids to know anticipatory
00:33:36
thinking, situational awareness, temporal awareness. I want my kids to
00:33:42
have this complex set of skills. Do I want them to have jobs one day
00:33:48
where all they're worried about is shareholder value? Really, no. I want them to own their mind, own their
00:33:54
intellect, own their attention, and own their focus. I want them to read.
00:34:02
I want them to understand history. I want them to develop pattern
00:34:07
recognition skills because these are the skills of the future. I want them to be able to hold the tension of nuance and
00:34:15
paradox when everything in their brain is saying pick one, pick one, reconcile,
00:34:21
I'm uncomfortable, pick one, reconcile, I'm uncomfortable. That's neurobiology.
00:34:26
In those in those 20 years of your 20 plus years of your career, what have you been exposed to from a 30,000 foot
00:34:32
perspective? like what what are the wide range of reference points that you draw upon to be the person that you are today
00:34:42
and you know cuz you've had it feels like you've got a very wide range of references clearly you know you're someone that cares a lot about history
00:34:47
that comes through in your answers but I'm wondering in your career like what are what are the experiences that you've had have you been working directly with
00:34:54
patients is it ac academic reference points you're drawing upon yeah um no one's ever asked me this,
00:35:02
which I've been grateful that no one's asked me. Um, so what a pain in the ass,
00:35:08
but um because no one's going to like the answer. I'm excited about the answer now.
00:35:15
Everything like every single thing. Um, yes, I, you know, I love history. Yes, I
00:35:26
read academic papers all the time. Yes, I wake up in the morning and I read
00:35:31
because of the nature of my work. I read the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Bloomberg, the Financial Times.
00:35:36
Like I yeah, I mean I I I read and a lot. But there's a chapter in the book
00:35:42
that was one of my favorite to write on the transitions home from work. Mhm. and how how how tough they are and
00:35:51
how if you're like me, you've had a very frustrated partner look at you more than once in your life and say, "Hey,
00:35:58
I know it was stressful. I don't work for you. Change gears." Yeah. Have you ever had that?
00:36:03
No comment. No comment. Yeah. I use a metaphor in
00:36:09
that book, in this chapter of a lock. And how did that come to me? Because I
00:36:17
was reading the book series, The Rivers of London. And in that book series,
00:36:22
there are two gods of the Tempames. And the Teddington Lock is where right
00:36:28
outside of London in Teddington is where custody changes for them. So, I went to the Teddington lock cuz I was
00:36:35
interested. I met the lock master that runs the lock. She gave me a
00:36:41
three-hour lesson that day. We let narrow boats through the temps. I learned how lock works and that's the
00:36:48
metaphor that I use to talk about the research on what do we do when we spend
00:36:54
all day locking in hyperfocused compartmentalizing getting [ __ ] done and
00:37:01
then instead of going home to our partner when we get home we spend 30 minutes in the garage on TikTok because
00:37:07
we can't bear to go in. So why do we do that? Because we need a
00:37:14
lock through period. We need time to go into a chamber metaphorically,
00:37:20
change levels, let go of where we were, lower ourselves to the rhythm of what
00:37:25
we're doing now. Cognitive, we would call it cognitive and domain shifting, and we need time. So, I looked at the
00:37:32
lock master at uh Teddington and said, "This [ __ ] is taking a long time. Can we
00:37:38
get this chamber filled up a little bit quicker?" And she said, "Locking through takes what locking through takes. If you
00:37:44
rush it, you risk capsizing. We get home and then we walk in the back
00:37:50
door and it's like, I can't find my shinuards. I think I left them on the pitch. Where are my goggles, Mom? Oh my
00:37:56
god, you didn't sign the permission slip. I had to sneak into the zoo, you know? And you're like,
00:38:02
take me back to work where I'm the boss of everything, you know. So, where do I learn those things? Well, cognitive and
00:38:08
domain shifting come out of psychology. Jimma the lock master at Teddington.
00:38:14
There's wisdom everywhere. I put it together through stories and metaphors. I mean, another thing in the
00:38:20
book, I mean, I'm standing on the sideline at DKR, the University of Texas
00:38:27
Longhorn football stadium. Um, and I'm standing with Emanuel Ao. Do you know Emanuel? No.
00:38:32
Yeah. He's great. He he played for the Longhorns. He played for the NFL. Now he's a writer. So, I'm standing there
00:38:38
and we're watching the game and I look at him, I go, "How would you define pocket presence?"
00:38:44
And pocket presence is an American football term. So, do you know American football? Okay. So, I'm a quarterback.
00:38:51
I'm going to get the ball and I have to throw the ball or run the ball or hand off the ball to get the ball down the pitch down the field. Right.
00:38:57
Mhm. And when when the ball is snapped and the ball is put into motion,
00:39:02
there's about 12 to 1,400 lb of really angry people trying to drive me into the
00:39:09
ground. The people that are protecting me from those defensive guys are called my
00:39:15
offensive line. And the way they do it is they form a pocket around the quarterback.
00:39:21
And the quarterback uses that time to decide where am I going to throw the ball? Am I gonna run the ball? And
00:39:28
pocket presence is the ability of a quarterback to use the on average 2.8 to
00:39:34
three seconds he has to read the field, understand where the defenders are, and
00:39:40
make a decision. And so when I asked Emanuel Ao, how would you define pocket presence? He said,
00:39:47
and I want you to think about this in terms of your business, the ability to read the field without seeing all of it.
00:39:55
and trusting your team well enough to make a move even though you can't see
00:40:01
everything. What are the skill sets you need right there? One, temporal awareness. You got
00:40:08
to know how much time you have to get rid of that ball or get it down the field. They they say Tom Brady, who played for the Patriots, is any of this
00:40:14
ringing a bell? Yeah, 92. Okay. Tom Brady, they said his pocket presence was so good, he could tell
00:40:21
where his offensive linemen were by the vibrations through his his cleats on the
00:40:26
field. So temporal awareness, situational awareness, what's going on, anticipatory
00:40:33
awareness, think about a great football player, right? Think about Mossala.
00:40:39
You don't kick the ball to where the striker is. You kick the ball to where the striker's going to be. Mhm.
00:40:44
So, anticipatory and situational awareness, right? Pattern recognition. Have I been in this
00:40:51
situation before? Do I know how to, you know, where's the goalie in the cage? Where are they standing right now? Like, and so
00:40:58
I'll take my inspiration from sports all the time, which is why there's so many sports metaphors,
00:41:03
right? Mhm. I think there's not a better sports a better metaphor to describe work right now than
00:41:09
Premier League football. One of the things um per is throughout your work is this idea of connection. I
00:41:16
did a mushroom I did magic mushrooms with my girlfriend a couple of years ago. First time I've
00:41:22
ever done it and um the message that came through for me was it was about
00:41:27
connection and that word has had a fond place in my heart ever since as being really really important. And we live in a society that's more lonely than ever
00:41:33
before, more disconnected in many ways as you describe when you're referencing the spiritual crisis that we're living
00:41:38
in. This word connection, what does that mean? Does it mean on an individual basis? Does it mean me having friends
00:41:44
and relationships? Is that connection? Is that the type of connection I should be looking for? Or does it need do I
00:41:50
need to like do you think people need to ladder up further to their city, their town, their world, to the community, to
00:41:58
something bigger, God? What what does connection mean in this context?
00:42:03
Yes. I think the answer to that question is yes. We're neuro neurobiologically
00:42:10
hardwired to be in connection with other people and in the absence of connection there's always suffering
00:42:16
always suffering in the absence of connection. So I think I mean just how we're built mirror neurons you know our
00:42:24
ability to sync up neurobiologically when we feel connected and are hearing each other. So to me, connection is the
00:42:30
ability to be in a relationship where we can both give and receive, where we feel
00:42:35
seen, heard, believed, valued. That is that human connection is really
00:42:42
important on a micro level, one-on-one with other human beings. I think a sense of belonging and a sense of place. And I
00:42:51
don't know that that necessarily needs to be a location,
00:42:56
but A sense of being a part of something bigger than you I think is also
00:43:03
important. So love and belonging, connection, irreducible needs.
00:43:12
I I think spirituality I define spirituality is being inextricably
00:43:18
connected to other people by something bigger than us. Maybe that's love, maybe that's God, maybe that's fishing. Like I
00:43:25
I you know it's different for other people. For me, I'm faith is one of my values and I'm a a pretty serious God
00:43:31
person. Um I'm a pretty deep person of faith. I guess I would ask somebody,
00:43:37
what is that thing that transcends
00:43:43
difference? Political difference, ideological difference, race, gender, you know,
00:43:49
belief systems, class. What is it that brings you to a common humanity place?
00:43:59
Like for me, it's God. That's it's a big challenge cuz like I I try to work from an ethos where I try to find God in the
00:44:04
face of everybody that I meet. Even if I want to punch you in the throat, I try to like like like that's my thing in
00:44:12
some way. I'm connected to you whether I like it or not and whether I like you or not.
00:44:20
And when you talk about belonging, it's interesting in your book Braving the Wilderness, which I think the question is kind of summed up by the subtitle
00:44:26
here. The quest for true belonging and the courage to stand alone. This appears to be a dichotomy or a contradiction.
00:44:32
Mhm. To belong, but also to stand alone. Mhm. Why are both of these important? Why is
00:44:39
it important to belong? What does that mean? And and why is it also important to stand alone?
00:44:45
Because I don't think you can truly belong to anything or any or or any group if
00:44:52
you don't belong to yourself first. True belonging
00:44:57
requires us to be who we are, not to change who we are. That's fitting
00:45:04
in. Fitting in is the greatest threat to belonging. Which takes us both back to our
00:45:10
childhoods, right? Yeah. Fit in. Fit in. Fit in. fit in.
00:45:16
The problem is that that chameleon kind of skill set
00:45:24
means that in order to fit in, the first person you betray is yourself. We've got
00:45:30
to be able to stand alone. And that's what's happening right now in the world. I mean, if I if I look back at Braving the Wilderness, that was maybe the only
00:45:38
prophetic book that I think I've ever written. like that like like that. I don't think I'm prophetlike, but man,
00:45:44
did I call what was happening in terms of the big sort into ideological bunkers
00:45:49
where we're going to get to a place where I don't even know you, but I'm going to
00:45:55
call you friend because we hate the same people.
00:46:00
And you over there, I actually do love you. you're a family member of mine,
00:46:08
but I'm not, you know, because we don't believe in the same things. You have no meaning in my life. Like, it's like we
00:46:13
have gotten to the place where ideological bunkers
00:46:19
and those are so dangerous cuz here you and I like let's say let's say that we have the same belief around immigration.
00:46:26
Um, so we're going to flip this table over and we're going to get behind it in our ideological bunker and we're going
00:46:32
to be like, "Yeah, we're right." and these guys are [ __ ] crazy and [ __ ] y'all, you know. And then one day I'm
00:46:38
going to turn to you and say, you know, one thing I'm wondering about
00:46:43
is how are we going to solve the problem with the folks coming over in the
00:46:51
dingies from France? Cuz I don't think we're going to be able to go without solving it because we do have an
00:46:58
employment issue and a housing crisis. And then you go, you're out.
00:47:05
My my care for you, my connection with you completely dependent
00:47:10
on you not questioning anything we agreed to back here. Well, that's counterfeit connection.
00:47:19
What's real connection? Like I got to know what's going on in your mind cuz your face is like we got to play poker
00:47:25
tech. We have to put that on our agenda. What are you thinking? I was just thinking about being a podcaster and I
00:47:31
sit here with all types of people. So I had Camala Harris sat here uh 3 4 days ago and I'll have someone on
00:47:40
the right s here, you know, and then I'll have we had Michelle Obama, then I'll have Jordan Peterson, then I'll
00:47:45
have the opposite of whatever Jordan Peterson is. And I was just thinking about how um how
00:47:50
that's also kind of made me feel like I don't belong because that is quite rare.
00:47:56
There's probably not a podcast on earth that has had both Michelle Obama and Jordan Peterson. No.
00:48:01
Yeah. And then Kamal Harris after that. Like I didn't manage to scare Michelle off. I didn't scare Jordan off. And so
00:48:09
you get you kind of get attacked from both sides. Oh, I mean, look, if you're not if you're not
00:48:16
getting threatening [ __ ] from the far here, the far left or the far right, if
00:48:23
you're not getting both, you're not doing your job. Amen. Yeah. Period. But it's tough because
00:48:29
Oh, God. It is heartbreaking. Yeah. It will break your heart. And it will
00:48:35
remind you of why standing alone is on the front of that book. M
00:48:41
because what it will do is it is winnow the right word? It will narrow
00:48:47
your belonging, your true belonging. Yeah. Down to a very few people.
00:48:54
I mean, I completely understand how it happens that a podcaster like me will end up picking a side because there is
00:49:01
safety in numbers. Well, because there's an ideological bunker cuz we flip the table over. 100%. At any point, you know, when the
00:49:07
left attacks you, I'm like, the right looks pretty good. When the right attacks you, you go, "Oh, the left looks pretty." Because standing in the in no
00:49:14
man's land is is not the place you want to be. I know I'm never going to succeed
00:49:20
in this. Like, I know I'm never going to succeed in converting pe converting people to be nuanced and to not get
00:49:27
viscerally angry when I have someone on the show who's on the right or viscerally angry when I have someone on the show who's on the left. I'm already
00:49:32
aware that when the commander episode comes out, it's just going to be a bunch of people that didn't listen and within the first 3 minutes, the comment section is just going to be [ __ ]
00:49:38
Yeah. And I'm like, part of me is trying to win that war with my audience where they
00:49:44
too will just listen. And I know that you don't agree with a person, but can you just listen? Cuz that's what I do.
00:49:50
And it's not some act I'm putting on. It's not like I walk out there and I start I I'm right-wing in my kitchen or left wing in my kitchen. Genuinely, the
00:49:56
brain way my brain works is, oh, I see this this good in this individual. And then I meet someone else who's on the
00:50:02
other side and I say, "Oh, there's a couple of points of good." I agree agree with them on this. That's how I am. And
00:50:07
it feels so weird because when you go on the internet, you don't find yourself being compelled by either side entirely.
00:50:15
No. No. And I think it's really confusing. And the only limit I have really is I am not probably going to
00:50:21
have a conversation with you if your beliefs question my humanity.
00:50:30
Okay, that that's going to be my line. That that's going to be that's going to be the line for me is going to be if you're
00:50:39
cruel or name call. Yeah. Or if your core beliefs about who I am.
00:50:47
Mhm. Or who other people are are dehumanizing. I I I can't I can't that I can't do
00:50:54
because now I've betrayed myself in order to make a political point about nuance. Yeah. Because that because you know
00:51:01
dehumanization is a really interesting and hard thing when you study when you look at the
00:51:08
research of people who study dehumanization and you we talked about earlier with the with immigrant populations
00:51:16
there is a circle of moral inclusion. We are not built,
00:51:22
we are not hardwired to hurt each other, to kill each other, assault, rape, beat.
00:51:31
It's not, we're not wired for it, actually. So, in order to do that, you
00:51:37
you've got a person here inside your moral inclusion. In order to be okay with that, you've
00:51:43
got to push them outside of moral inclusion to be morally excluded from
00:51:48
somebody you see as human and worthy of moral inclusion. And the first step to
00:51:54
moral exclusion, moving people out of a safety zone where you don't do horrible
00:52:00
things to them, the first way to move people out is language. throughout history, as long as people have lived.
00:52:08
So, you hear people in this administration calling a a a community of immigrants an
00:52:15
infestation the same way we would talk about animals or rats, you know. And so my only limit
00:52:24
to hard conversation is if you're operating from an ideology
00:52:32
where women are dogs, immigrants are illegals, you know, if you're operating
00:52:38
from that place of moral exclusion. You are too dangerous for me.
00:52:46
But other than that, I'd probably be willing to have a conversation with anyone. But I can understand why people
00:52:51
pick sides. I tell you what, it is lonely. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, it's nice
00:52:57
to hear though. It's really nice to hear that. That that is um
00:53:03
Yeah, we've talked about it quite a lot. Me and Jack um who's been producing the
00:53:08
show since the very beginning. Uh we've we've talked a lot about how we understand the temptation to pick a
00:53:14
side. And actually one of the greatest compliments a journalist has ever given me is they wrote in the article and this wasn't a journalist that liked me. They
00:53:20
just said um we're unable to ascertain which political party he is
00:53:26
part of. I thought that was a great compliment because I mean it means that
00:53:32
that's that's a journal that's a journalistic ethos. I think they would want to pin me down and say he's [ __ ] they'd love to say
00:53:37
I'm rightwing or something else. But they said um in a not very nice piece they'd written about
00:53:43
me or whatever, they said that we're unable to figure out what side he's part of. And I think that's a compliment because it's it's true. And I think it
00:53:50
allows me to do my job better that I don't have too many preconceptions when I meet people. I try and meet people for the first time,
00:53:55
which I enjoy. I think you're pretty good at that cuz you are insatiably curious. It's It's lovely and terrible.
00:54:02
Why terrible? It's terrible for an avoidant. I found this out recently. I've known it
00:54:07
my whole life, but I found it out recently cuz I had a conversation. If someone's I think if someone's uncomfortable with vulnerability then
00:54:12
I'm like their [ __ ] worst nightmare. You are. Which is interesting cuz I don't expect
00:54:18
you as super vulnerable. Oh, really? Uh
00:54:24
maybe not. Carefully optimistic vulnerable. Yeah, that's probably like like you're co you're cognitively a
00:54:30
believer. Yeah. And trying to move the rest of you to it.
00:54:37
You've got the journalistic ethos of
00:54:42
equal opportunity, insatiable, curious guy, right? Mhm.
00:54:48
What do you think the responsibility is of someone who has a platform
00:54:56
to vet or understand the credibility
00:55:02
especially when it comes to science or those kind of things of what their guest is saying? I think that we the school of
00:55:10
podcasters haven't really we don't have the um
00:55:15
the ex the training that journalists do. So we're almost catching up in that regard especially if you become a big
00:55:21
podcaster because you're kind of held you're held at a in a different level. So more recently, one of the things we
00:55:26
do is we we've hired I mean this recently, it was a year and a half ago. We hired a PhD who does exactly that.
00:55:32
Who after this comes out, we'll go through everything that you said and then put on the screen things that were
00:55:39
not within scientific consensus. But that in itself
00:55:45
is a decision. Yeah. Yeah. It is a decision.
00:55:53
It's not a choice without consequence either. No, some people don't like it.
00:56:00
What led you to that choice? When your podcast reaches lots of people, you're forced. This kind of goes
00:56:07
to what I said earlier about the political stuff. You're forced to really get clear on what you believe and like what matters to you. And one of the
00:56:12
things that matters to me is that the stuff we put into the world, we feel like it's helping people even if it's
00:56:19
not nice. And it kind of goes to something that I read in your work, which is like our objective isn't to be
00:56:24
nice, it's to be kind. Oh, yeah. And so, for example, my conver the conversations we have about AI, like I'm well aware that that's not going to
00:56:30
necessarily make you feel great. But I think the avoidance of discomfort in in through history,
00:56:37
oh god, hasn't led to great places. So like if you think there's a bus coming, I can, you know, it's I can pretend there
00:56:44
isn't. But if I think that there might be a bus coming and if experts and telling me there's a bus coming, I think we should have a conversation about the
00:56:50
bus coming. And actually me having that conversation, I get messages all the time which is like please stop talking about this subject. It doesn't make me
00:56:56
feel good. I'm very anchored to like what my my my job is here. And I think it's we can
00:57:01
push people further towards uh we can progress through
00:57:10
honest conversations. So when the podcast got bigger and you get more and more you get attacked more for any any
00:57:16
of your guests that you have on. Yeah. You have to get clear on what matters to you and what your job is. And so one of the things I thought is actually when we have these conversations I want them to
00:57:23
be as accurate as they possibly can be for the listener who might be confused cuz it's a confusing world in this new
00:57:29
world of democratized media. So we do that. I really respect that. I just want to
00:57:34
say um I don't think that that choice is the easy choice.
00:57:42
What is the easy choice, do you think? The easy choice is I'm going to let you
00:57:50
say whatever you want and I'll let my listeners sort out if it's real or not.
00:57:55
Mhm. And I'll take no responsibility for the
00:58:00
credibility or the facts that are being presented.
00:58:06
Mhm. Um, what I think is interesting about what you're doing is
00:58:18
it just seems like a very solid approach where
00:58:24
I'm a big believer in science. You know, I'm married to physician. I'm a social scientist. Like, I'm I'm I'm not going
00:58:31
to be the golden child of this administration when it comes to science for sure. Like I have a I love science
00:58:38
shirt that I wear with a DNA scarf. So like I'm I'm like I'm very real about
00:58:43
that. I also don't think that everything that
00:58:49
we see that is projected as peerreviewed
00:58:55
clinical trial. You know I think challenges to that system are also important. I think science cannot be a
00:59:02
self-referencing system anymore than any other system can be. So to have people that have different opinions or new
00:59:08
opinions on but to let your listeners or your
00:59:14
viewers know that this is not an opinion where there's a lot of a data collected or that this is a controversial opinion
00:59:21
is respecting people's cognitive self-determination.
00:59:26
I I just think it's a it's an interesting way to do it. I just I I think I launched the podcast and it
00:59:33
became very big during co I'll go to Yeah. And so
00:59:40
Houston is home to the biggest medical center in the world like in the world
00:59:45
and I live in the medical center area. In the beginning, there were just, you
00:59:50
know, it just there never stopped being funerals for physicians and people working on COVID. And so to hear on
00:59:57
podcasts that it doesn't exist. Yeah. Or that you can use, you know, Windex
01:00:03
or, you know, like some [ __ ] like that. I I just started to and then I got into a little dust up around it in my
01:00:09
own situation. And so I'm always interested as we enter this world in
01:00:17
platform and podcast responsibility. It is a it's a slippery slope and it's
01:00:24
um very and there's no there's no perfect outcome. Like you don't want to go too
01:00:30
far either way, right? You don't want to like the government get involved and tell you what truth is or but you also don't want to stray into um
01:00:36
conspiracy land and um away from science because you know
01:00:44
there are things that are knowable. Yeah, there are things that are knowable. But yeah, but
01:00:50
I don't know. I I I just think it's an interesting question for this time. And I think it's an interesting question
01:00:55
when you have a platform that's powerful and I think if you're doing the best you can to make decisions based what what is
01:01:03
the question that drives your decision- making for me?
01:01:09
No, like just in general. Yeah, I got yours. You you want to you want to help your listeners and you want to do good.
01:01:16
Yeah. Um that's a different thing than downloads. You can do both.
01:01:21
You can do both. But if your only filter Well, oh, you you'd go for [ __ ] total
01:01:26
conspiracy now. Right. Right. Right. Right. And so I just think it's I just think it's an interesting question. I don't have an
01:01:32
answer. I just know that it's an important question. Yeah. And you know what? I'll be honest. So, as um I mean, we're not journalists.
01:01:39
We're not journalists here, so we don't really understand the rigor. And I've got a lot of respect for journalists and the the effort they've put in to understand the journalistic method and
01:01:44
all those things. I feel like we're somewhat catching up. We didn't This podcast went from zero to 70 million people a month in 4 and a half years or
01:01:51
something. hard. So, and we're just [ __ ] holding on. Like me and Jack didn't run a podcast before, so I didn't run one before. And
01:01:57
so, we're now catching up. And part of the part of the way that we're shaped is with feedback. And you get lots of
01:02:03
feedback. Don't have this person. I'll never speak to this person again. Don't. And you kind of bat that stuff off. But if there's any ever anything that
01:02:09
actually feedback that actually is in contra contradiction that does test your own mission or your own values, then you
01:02:16
listen and you know, you can start to innovate. And one of the things that we thought was smart was to have the
01:02:21
pop-ups on screen, which everybody is probably familiar with by now. And it's a balancing act. We don't want to
01:02:26
completely discredit everything that the guest has to say, but we also just want to give context. And that's kind of
01:02:32
context what they're saying. If something's ridiculous, we'll just remove it. Like if something's abs, we we not publish the episode is probably a
01:02:37
better way of saying it. We had a couple of episodes where people some guest said some things which were just absolutely
01:02:43
[ __ ] crazy. You don't need a PhD to know that you can't exercise by lying on the ground. Like this one guest had said
01:02:49
to me that you can build your muscles just by laying on your back or whatever and and not doing anything. We just
01:02:54
didn't publish the episode. I can just say as a PhD that I have attempted that.
01:03:00
Yeah, it doesn't work. I know it was for jack [ __ ] I can be your PhD on the just laying.
01:03:07
Yeah. No, I think that I respect the approach, which is one of the reasons I decided to
01:03:13
come on because I respect the approach. We're not perfect, but we're trying. And it's the thing that you're walking a
01:03:21
path. The world of business looks entirely different today than it did 15 years ago. Back then, building a brand meant
01:03:27
having huge budgets, warehouses, office space, and lots and lots of stuff. But now, you can start a business with your
01:03:32
laptop, an idea, and the right tools. And I would know more so than anybody else because that's exactly what I did.
01:03:37
Shopify is one of our long-standing sponsors on this show and they're a brand I often refer people to when they're starting their businesses
01:03:44
because it's a tool that contains many more tools within itself. And when you're starting out, everything is
01:03:49
everywhere. It's messy and it's confusing. So having everything in the same place is incredibly useful. Shopify
01:03:54
puts store design, payments, inventory, shipping, and even AI tools all in one place, and you can sell directly from
01:04:00
your website or on social media essentially wherever your customers spend their time. It's truly a brilliant
01:04:06
business tool. So, if you want to give it a go, head to shopify.com/bartlet and sign up for your $1 per month trial
01:04:14
period. That's shopify.com/bartlet. On that point about me and vulnerability,
01:04:20
is vulnerability important? Cuz there's a lot of performative vulnerability taking place in Is it an important thing for my health,
01:04:27
happiness, my future to be a vulnerable person? Well, let's define it. Um vulnerability
01:04:33
is the emotion we experience when we have when we are up against uncertainty,
01:04:39
risk and emotional exposure. So vulnerability is what I feel. It's the
01:04:45
cringe, the awkward, the thing that I the emotion I feel in times of
01:04:50
uncertainty, risk or emotional exposure. So, it was really interesting because I had a hard
01:04:56
time helping people understand because there's we are so raised to believe that vulnerability is weakness that it took a
01:05:04
trip to Fort Bragg working with special forces to ask soldiers a question. Give me a single example of courage in your
01:05:12
life. One example that you've witnessed or you you yourself have done. One example of courage that did not require
01:05:19
uncertainty, risk or emotional exposure. No one could answer it. Finally a young
01:05:25
soldier stood up and said three tours. There is no courage without vulnerability. So is vulnerability
01:05:31
important? It is if we want to be brave with our lives. If we if we want to be
01:05:36
able to manage ourselves in a way that's values aligned and courageous, we have
01:05:43
to be able to reconcile how we feel when we're uncertain, at risk, or exposed. I
01:05:51
mean, and really weirdly, the next week after the trip to Fort Bragg, I was with Seattle Seahawks, the football team, NFL
01:05:58
team. Yeah. Ask the players, give me an example of courage on the field or off that did not require
01:06:04
vulnerability. They said that it's not possible. There is no courage. Like, if you're doing
01:06:10
things in your life, in your work, and there's no risk, no uncertainty,
01:06:17
and no exposure, then they're not brave. If you know how it's going to end,
01:06:23
that is not courage. Courage is a willingness to show up and be allin when you cannot predict the
01:06:31
outcome. Courage is saying, "I love you first."
01:06:37
That's you. You want to know what vulnerability is? I love you first. Have you ever said, "I love you first."
01:06:49
Uh, I'm not sure. Yeah, it's been a while. But it's hard. It's, you know, I need to give context. It's been a
01:06:55
while since I've been in that situation. Well, you've had to go first. Yeah. Had to go first. Yeah.
01:07:00
Yeah. I mean, there's this great story that I tell about I I gave a talk here. I was actually in
01:07:06
LA and afterwards a kid came up to me. He's probably 22 or 23 and he said can I tell you a story about your work and how
01:07:11
it's really changed my life and I was like sure and a kind of a crowd grew around and this is like the last time I
01:07:19
ever got pinned like not being able to exit a stage because it was such a traumatic it wasn't traumatic but it was
01:07:24
like he said well I was dating this woman and I was so crazy about her so I
01:07:31
took her to eat to our favorite restaurant and I waited until the dessert came cuz we love this chocolate volcano and I ordered it. And I said,
01:07:40
"I love you." And she looked at me and she said, "I think you're awesome
01:07:48
and I think we should date other people
01:07:54
and then she Ubered home." And so I was like, "God damn, this is
01:07:59
the worst story I've ever heard. This is not a good story." And he said,
01:08:05
"So I got in my car and I drove home and the whole way home I just kept saying to
01:08:10
myself over and over, "Fuck Bnee Brown. [ __ ] Bernay Brown."
01:08:16
Like, when when does this when when's the turn on the story, you know? And he said, "I got home and I walked into my
01:08:22
apartment and I pushed the door open and both my roommates were wired in and they
01:08:27
were on their computers and they looked up and said, "Dude, what's going on?" And he said, "I told her I loved her and
01:08:34
she told me I was awesome." And one of my roommates looked at me and said, "What the [ __ ] were you thinking?"
01:08:40
That's not how it works. When you are going toward them, they go away. So,
01:08:47
you're always kind of going away. So, they come toward you. And he goes, "Oh,
01:08:52
oh, no, no. I don't want to I don't want to be that dude."
01:08:58
I was daring greatly. And he said both of his roommates just got teary eyed and went, "Right on, man.
01:09:06
Right on." Like, there is no courage without vulnerability. How can you say you're
01:09:13
brave if you're not putting yourself out there? So many people have been through things
01:09:18
which have made it very, very difficult for them to be vulnerable. I was
01:09:24
speaking to someone yesterday who was cheated on bunch of attachment issues in their early childhood. And funnily
01:09:31
enough, when I was talking to her about I was asking her questions about cuz I'm very deep person. This carries over into
01:09:37
my personal life. I was asking her questions about the things, you know, she'd been through whatever else, she just shuts down. And she told me that
01:09:43
she she um what were the exact words? She said that she finds vulnerability
01:09:50
to be a form of intimacy that she tries to stay away from because
01:09:57
she needs to really really really trust the person before she opens up. And I think this is a trend you see across a lot of people. They they won't open up
01:10:04
enough to form a connection because they've been hurt before by opening up and it feels too scary to do
01:10:11
that. And that results in them being single, alone, unhappy, so on and so on.
01:10:19
Yeah. I mean, I think there's there what you said was so loaded with so many
01:10:24
things. So, first of all, there's the there there's this very interesting relationship between vulnerability and trust
01:10:30
and how does that work? And people always ask me what comes first, trust or vulnerability. Do I trust you first,
01:10:36
then I'm vulnerable, or am I vulnerable first and then I trust you? And I think it's a very slow stacking. We get to
01:10:42
know each other. I share a little bit. I don't I don't share, hey, nice to meet you, Stephen. Here's my darkest,
01:10:47
horrible, most painful trauma. You know, cuz that that is actually that kind of
01:10:53
litmus testing is actually a form of armor. I'm going to throw something at you that our relationship in no way has
01:11:01
been built long enough to hold. You're going to go away and I'm going to use that as verification that vulnerability
01:11:07
is dangerous. Like that's litmus testing. Let me prove to you that you're not
01:11:12
trustworthy. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Oh, I see you're backing away. That's what I thought. I'm backing away
01:11:19
because we haven't built a relationship that can bear the weight of this story. Can we start Can we start small?
01:11:25
Okay. Vulnerability, trust, vulnerability, trust, vulnerability, trust.
01:11:31
I think I in that in my work we call that like the smash and grab. Like I'm
01:11:37
gonna I'm gonna hit you with something really big and then watch you go away and use it as evidence.
01:11:43
Yeah. And it takes a really skilled person to say, "Yeah, I'm really
01:11:49
I'm taking in what you told me. I want to be respectful and honor that." And I
01:11:55
don't have a way to file it right now cuz I don't know you well enough. So I appreciate the share. I mean, we also
01:12:01
call it spotlighting. So, like if I had a military grade spotlight that they use in the wilderness, I work with the
01:12:07
military a lot. And I I picked it up and put it in your face right here, what
01:12:12
would you do physically? Oh, that's what that's our reaction to too much vulnerability too fast.
01:12:17
Yeah. Like, yeah, I don't know. I don't know you. Um, so you're talking about the slow
01:12:23
stacking of courage and vulnerability and trust. And then you're also talking about that when
01:12:30
when we've had a lot of hard things happen to us. I think this is where I really believe the democratization of
01:12:37
coaching and therapy that a lot of times we have to work with people like we have to get help to be able to open up and
01:12:45
take off some of the armor that we put on because sometimes that armor that we put on it's freaking survival.
01:12:53
I mean, and you want to start adding you want to start adding variables like race, gender,
01:12:59
like you know, any anything where there's social systems also at play.
01:13:06
That's survival. Like telling me right now at my career, like, hey, you should
01:13:11
be vulnerable with your new team and and talk about your previous failures. You know, well, of course I could do that.
01:13:17
And I would do it and everybody would clap and they think, oh man, she's so brave. and take the new person who's a
01:13:22
young black woman or the new first LGBTQ person on a team and say, "Hey, tell tell every don't don't tell anybody
01:13:29
shit." Develop trust first.
01:13:34
Develop uh see how how trust your own instincts about the accountability of
01:13:39
this group to hold themselves accountable for their behavior. Like vulnerability
01:13:44
is not more necessary for any of us than anybody else, but certainly more difficult for other for for some people
01:13:51
for sure. And I think what's hard about that, what's so painful, probably the
01:13:57
most painful part of my career is that regardless of why the armor is on,
01:14:04
without vulnerability, you cannot access the experiences that are the most
01:14:11
meaningful in life. Love. To love someone is to be vulnerable from
01:14:16
the time you wake up to the time you go to bed. You know that you're in a relationship. To love is to be vulnerable, right?
01:14:21
Mhm. And have you ever buried someone you loved? No. Like I lost my mom two years ago. Like
01:14:27
my kids, it's like having your heart live outside of your body. Like to love is to be vulnerable cuz it's to risk
01:14:34
grief and losing. Belonging is vulnerable. The most the most vulnerable
01:14:39
human emotion, joy. Joy is so vulnerable that when some of
01:14:46
us get close to it, we dress rehearse tragedy to prepare for disappointment.
01:14:54
Like it's so vulnerable that we don't even let ourselves feel joy because we're so afraid someone's going to rip
01:15:00
it away and we're going to get sucker punched by disappointment. Yes or no? Like
01:15:05
people choose to live disappointed rather than to feel disappoint. risk
01:15:11
feeling disappointed and get excited about something. You know, it's like the first time my kids shared with me when
01:15:17
they were young, certainly not the way I was raised, but you know, I really, really want to make this team, Mom.
01:15:24
And I said, I want to pause you for a second, and tell you how brave it is to
01:15:30
talk openly about something you want so much when you don't have control over whether you get it or not. I want I want
01:15:37
it for you because you want it. But regardless of what happens, I admire your courage for wanting something and
01:15:43
sharing out loud that you want it because if you don't get it, I'll know
01:15:48
that it was a crushing blow. But that's so great because I'll be here for you when that happens either way. So
01:15:56
we and I and I'm really I'm a really I'm we call it foroding joy. That joy is so
01:16:03
good just waiting for the other shoe to drop. And people who have trauma histories are really like that. Like for
01:16:09
me, because the way I was raised, when something good happens, I'm like, "Oh
01:16:16
god, now what's going to happen?" Statistically, bad shit's going to roll around any second now.
01:16:21
And it's interesting because the group of people that we research, the only group of people that could take that,
01:16:27
you know, there's a bodily quiver, right, of vulnerability. Have you felt it? Yeah. Yeah. The only people that can really lean
01:16:35
into joy consistently are people who use that vulnerability quiver
01:16:41
as a reminder to be grateful to be able to practice gratitude in that
01:16:46
second. So gratitude is a huge enabler of joy.
01:16:51
Is that automatic or can one train that? No, it's a training. Oh [ __ ] know I had to I I I mean
01:16:58
standing at my front door watching my 16-year-old daughter walk
01:17:04
down the sidewalk with her boyfriend in high school and get in his truck for for prom, right? And I'm standing there and
01:17:12
I'm like, "Oh god." And you know, what am I worried about? You know, prom
01:17:17
night, like car wreck, right? Of course, when I when I tell the story, the military is always like, "Pregnancy."
01:17:22
I'm like, "No, no, no, no, no. car wreck. And so I just remember staying there and she gets in and and I'm
01:17:28
staying next to Steve and Charlie, my my son's, you know, at this time he's 10.
01:17:34
And I'm like, I'm so grateful. I'm so grateful. I'm grateful for this moment. I'm grateful that I'm a part of it. I'm
01:17:39
grateful that they did the CR and the bineir over here. I'm grateful that I got to help pick out the dress. I'm so
01:17:44
grateful. And Charlie goes looks at Steve. What's wrong with mom?
01:17:50
Um and Steve goes, she's she's practicing gratitude. let her do it otherwise she's going to get on a crazy
01:17:55
train and it's going to be all health and you know like because part of me wants to say oh god oh god like it's so
01:18:02
beautiful and so joyful and get in your truck and follow them right now if he's speeding I want to know about it if he's
01:18:09
not stopping fully to stop sign follow them until this date is over you know that's that's what I want to do because
01:18:15
I'm afraid because that the joy of that moment was just too much for me
01:18:22
too vulnerable It appears you've overcome various traits of old Renee Brown.
01:18:30
No, I'm overcoming. Overcoming? No, I'm not over I have not overcome. Have you overcome anything?
01:18:36
Yes. The belief that I will overcome anything. I have overcome the belief that I have overcome the belief that
01:18:47
I will ever arrive. I am grateful for the skills that I have
01:18:52
that are new skills that keep me more aligned with the person, the mom, the partner, the leader that I want to be.
01:18:59
But I I am mindful all the I try to stay very
01:19:05
mindful that I am scary when I'm scared that I catastrophize very very easily
01:19:12
and that's painful for everybody around me and I don't need to be liked. I just need to be myself. Like, but those are
01:19:19
things because I will I will sit down like two days ago and be like, "Oh my god, it'd be so freaking easy to be
01:19:24
liked here." I was like, "This will be this would be a piece of cake." And I'm like, "Shit, I don't do that anymore."
01:19:30
Bummer. Two days ago. Yeah. Ahead of what? Just with a group of people that I knew
01:19:35
what it would take to be liked. And you made the choice to just be myself. Be yourself. Yeah.
01:19:41
Why? Because now the person I'm going to betray last is me.
01:19:50
Yeah. I hope I see you again, but not that important. Some people might find that somewhat
01:19:56
demoralizing to know that they they too might never cure parts of themselves that they're
01:20:02
desperate to change. I think people, you know, they often come to podcasts like this or read books like yours looking
01:20:07
for sol fix fixes to not liking myself to the way that I react to my emotions. They want to fix
01:20:14
it cuz if they can fix it, then they can be happy. I don't think that's in the consideration set for a very
01:20:23
beautiful reason that if we could fix it
01:20:30
and never have to wrestle with it again, we would be so short on grace for other
01:20:37
people that we would be tyrants.
01:20:45
So, you think it it creates a form of empathy for others? Yeah. I mean, like I'm not going to I
01:20:50
have like really serious boundaries. I'm a very boundary person. But when I see someone behaving a certain way, I was
01:20:56
like, "My [ __ ] sees your inner [ __ ] right here. I I get it. I get what you're doing. I'm not going to
01:21:02
tolerate it. I'm going to set a boundary around it, but I'm not really judging you for it. It's just that behavior is
01:21:07
not okay right here. But you like yourself now.
01:21:16
Yeah. Yeah, I do. I I
01:21:25
Yeah, I do. I do. I can I can I think I can say that
01:21:32
pretty I like what I'm becoming. And for anyone that doesn't like
01:21:37
themselves, what what work has had to go into getting to the point where you like what you be you're becoming?
01:21:51
I think the hardest is maybe one of the biggest findings of my
01:21:57
research over the last 25 years is it's not fear that gets in the way of us
01:22:03
being brave with our lives and our work. It's armor. Everybody's afraid. It's okay to be
01:22:10
afraid. What's dangerous is the armor that we reach for to self-protect when
01:22:15
we're afraid. And how that armor moves us away from love, connection,
01:22:23
and our values. And so I think the hardest work is
01:22:30
for me constantly being aware of what is my armor? What am I what am I grabbing
01:22:36
for when I'm afraid? What am I grabbing for when I want to protect my sense of self-worth, my ego? Like, and and how
01:22:44
heavy that [ __ ] is. You know, at some point I had to wear it
01:22:50
because that was survival for me growing up. But this is the big this is the big
01:23:00
developmental milestone of middle age which you are squarely
01:23:05
entering which is kind of when the universe grabs you by the shoulders and
01:23:10
pulls you really close and says I'm not [ __ ] around anymore. They
01:23:17
gave you gifts. Choosing not to grow into them is not
01:23:23
benign. There's a consequence for that and your armor is getting in the way. You're a
01:23:30
grown ass person now. You have different choices. Let go of
01:23:36
what doesn't serve. And that is the big milestone I think
01:23:42
that we have to wrestle with in midlife. What no longer serves that's preventing
01:23:49
us from growing into who we want to be. And is that where vulnerability comes into the picture? Because
01:23:54
Oh, for sure. Cuz all the armor, all the armor is about vulnerability.
01:24:01
It requires a huge amount of um I was going to say self-awareness. Yes. That some people just don't could
01:24:07
probably never accomplish. I mean, that's why I think metaphor is helpful.
01:24:16
I mean most of us can understand if you back me into an emotional corner
01:24:23
what are you going to get like as a leader I know my armor perfectionism micromanagement I get super intensive I
01:24:31
get recklessly decisive I know my armor and my team knows my
01:24:36
armor I think my armor in my personal life
01:24:43
especially when it comes to my when I get when I feel vulnerable is
01:24:49
control control. Take over all the chess pieces.
01:24:55
But that's not a good idea. It's not possible. It's just it's just pretend. That's
01:25:02
called anxiety. Like pretending that you can control the chessboard of other people's lives. Your own, much less
01:25:08
other people's lives. But I think I do it out of
01:25:14
Fear is fear the opposite of courage or is it
01:25:23
No, I think the opposite of courage is armor. Armor. Okay. I think the opposite of courage is self-p protection.
01:25:30
To be courageous in this context, whether it's as a leader or in another environment, you talk about these four
01:25:35
steps to courage. You talk about it in strong ground. Yeah. This was research that emerged
01:25:40
like 15 years ago and I was really really nervous because I'm a grounded theory researcher. I'm a qualitative
01:25:45
researcher. So a grounded theory is only as good as its ability to work new data.
01:25:51
So you develop a hypothesis or a theory based on data and then as you collect
01:25:56
more data does the hypothesis hold. And you know this we collected that data
01:26:02
pre- pandemic you know pre pre a lot of things. And so
01:26:08
I was really worried about the four skill sets of courage which are
01:26:13
identifying and understanding your core values. I would love to do this exercise with you sometime. Um two,
01:26:21
understanding what gets in the way of you wrestling with vulnerability, kind of owning it and moving through it
01:26:27
constructively. Three, how to build trust and how to become super important
01:26:33
trustworthy to yourself, selfrust. Because one of the first casualties of
01:26:38
failure or disappointment or setback is we lose our our ability to trust
01:26:45
ourselves, our ability to make good decisions, our ability to take care of ourselves. And the last one, which is my
01:26:51
favorite because it can really I've seen it really change an organization is how
01:26:57
to get back up after failure and disappointment. How to reset, how to be
01:27:02
how to manage your own bounce when hard [ __ ] happens. So those are the four skill sets of
01:27:08
courage. Again, evidence-based, observable, measurable, and teachable.
01:27:14
We've taken 165,000 people through this work across 45 countries, collected data on all of
01:27:22
it. It's so exciting. And it withtood all of the complex changes over the last
01:27:29
5 years, including AI, organizationally, because this is where we do our work. I don't I'm not a therapist or clinician.
01:27:35
I don't work with like families or individuals. I mean, I have a therapist, but I'm not one. Um, so I think
01:27:43
you can develop SC courage skills. The third point is braving trust.
01:27:48
Yeah. And I've heard about your marble jar theory. So, I got a jar of marbles. I saw that. Um, could you explain to me what your
01:27:55
marble jar? Look at how excited you are. I know. Um, so this comes you know where where
01:28:00
is where where do I get my information? Ellen's in fourth grade, my oldest. She comes home from school.
01:28:06
The front door closes. She slides down the door into a heap, sobbing. Oh my
01:28:12
god, Ellen, are you okay? Are you hurt? What's going on? She says that
01:28:17
something hard happened. She shared it like very confidentially with one or two of her friends during recess. When she
01:28:24
got back to the classroom, they had told everybody in her class, all 30 kids,
01:28:30
everybody was laughing and pointing and making fun of her. And she said, "I will never trust anyone again." And my
01:28:37
response immediately to my in my mind was, "Damn straight, not [ __ ] person.
01:28:43
You trust your mama." And that's it. Like that was my response. But again, that's not the right thing to do, right?
01:28:50
You want a kid who can develop trust with others. So I said, "Trust is really hard." She said, "I don't understand
01:28:56
it." And her teacher at the time, Mrs. Bockam, had a mar a marble jar. And when
01:29:03
the team when the when the class would collectively make good decisions, she would put marbles in this empty jar, and
01:29:08
when it got full, they'd have an extra recess and party. Mhm. And so immediately what came to me,
01:29:14
because I'm describing trust, which is a hard concept to a fourth grader. I said, "Trust is the marble jar." She's like,
01:29:20
"What do you mean?" And I said, "Every time you share somebody something with someone that's confidential and
01:29:26
they don't share it, they get a marble. Every time you build trust, when you want to share something really private
01:29:33
and personal, you look for a friend whose jar is full of marbles. Do you have any marble jar friends?" She's
01:29:40
like, "Not the ones I shared with today." And I said, "Who are your marble jar friends?" And she said, "Hannah and Lorna." And I said, "Tell me something
01:29:47
they do to earn marbles." Oh, well like if I get to my tray late at lunch and there's no place to sit, Lorna will
01:29:53
scoot over and give me half her seat and then we just share one seat and I can sit at the table. And then the other day
01:29:59
when I had strep throat, Hannah was worried about me. So remember her mom called and said, "Hannah's worried about
01:30:04
Ellen. Why wasn't she at school?" But then the biggest thing that Hannah did was the other day and Opa, my parents,
01:30:11
my mom and her her husband came to my soccer game and Hannah looked over and goes, "Oh my god, your ma and Opa are
01:30:17
here." And I said, "Why was that a big deal?" And she goes, "Because everybody's divorced and
01:30:22
remarried and I've got eight, you know, four sets of people." And she remembered their names. And what was shocking to me
01:30:29
is that Ellen was conveying that these marbles were being earned on
01:30:36
these very small. She knew my grandparents' name. She gave me a seat to sit at. She checked on me when I was
01:30:42
missing school. And so it made me start thinking about the literature on trust. So I immediately go
01:30:49
to the Gottman's. Have you had the Gottmans on here? Oh, twice. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, just like Yeah. So I go to
01:30:55
the Gottman's research on trust. And I read right off the bat where Gottman say
01:31:01
trust is earned in small moments every day. He tells a story. It's my favorite
01:31:06
story that he tells and I've had them on my podcast and I've done blurbs for their books and written forwards. They're just great. So, he tells a story
01:31:13
about how he's also a mystery lover like me. He's on the second to last page of his mystery. He's like, "Oh my god, oh
01:31:19
my god." Like, who did it? And he jumps up to go brush his teeth and he gets
01:31:24
walks to the bathroom and he sees his wife crying and brushing her hair. He's
01:31:30
like, "Shit, don't look. Everything's good. Just go to the bathroom and get back in your get back to your book." And
01:31:35
he's like, "That's a sliding door moment. I can I have a choice in that moment.
01:31:42
to build trust and stop and say what's going on or to build betrayal and pretend like I don't see her hurting. So
01:31:49
I stop I take the brush out of her hand. I start brushing her hair and say, "What's going on?"
01:31:57
That's a sliding door moment that we have all the time, right? And so to me,
01:32:02
trust is built slowly over time, a marble at a time. And that's how that's
01:32:08
how we teach trust to the most senior leaders in Fortune 100 companies. That trust is a marble
01:32:15
jar. It's earned. Leaders believe, and you're a leader, so you know, you know the temptation.
01:32:22
leaders believe that in the middle of a crisis, you know, you put the numbers together
01:32:28
and there's a fever dream in the United States and there's new tariffs and you wake up and you know, you're you've got a revenue line that's in crisis and then
01:32:36
you can just look at your people and say, "Hello, every this is like back to the the uh executive presence. Trust me,
01:32:43
here's what we're going to do." Then it means nothing to people. What matters is the leader that walks past you in the
01:32:48
morning and says, "Hey, good to see Stephen. How's your mom's chemo going?
01:32:55
Marbles. Marbles. Then when the crisis happens, you don't need to say, "Trust me." You just need to say what's on your
01:33:02
mind. They trust you. The other thing I think uh is often plagued my mind is as a leader,
01:33:08
sometimes you say things and those things can't happen for whatever reason. Things change, right? And um
01:33:14
and I think leaders sometimes think that trust is always being correct, always predicting everything correctly, always
01:33:20
being right. No, trust is man did I think we had
01:33:26
nailed this. I thought this was how this was going to
01:33:31
happen. We were wrong. You've been working your asses off for 6 months on this and I've got to dep prioritize it
01:33:38
today standing right here in front of you. But I'm not going to [ __ ] you. You've been working your ass off on a
01:33:43
priority that literally does not exist today. I want to stop and say thank you. I saw
01:33:51
what you were doing. I want to be completely transparent about why the priority has shifted and then I'm going
01:33:57
to ask you for the same level of work on the new priority.
01:34:02
Yes or no? Yeah. And in the blame and responsibility often rear their heads. That's right. For for better or for worse. Go like
01:34:09
this. The eyelash or something. Oh, no. One marble. There you go. Oh, yeah. Is that a marble?
01:34:14
Yeah, it is. Yeah, cuz you didn't have to say that, you know. I think that sometimes people say you got some [ __ ] on your shirt. I'm like,
01:34:20
that's Thank you so much because it would have been much easier for you not to point out the bogey on my face or
01:34:26
whatever. You know what I mean? I don't trust somebody that doesn't do that. So, I guess it is a marble. Hm.
01:34:32
Someone said to me a couple of weeks ago on the podcast, they said, "I trust people who say things in public that is against their near-term interests." And
01:34:38
I thought, "Oh, that's good." Yeah, that's that's like a That's like a
01:34:47
That's a Right. Yeah. Yeah. It's a good metaphor though,
01:34:53
right? It's the trust in the marble jar has been very helpful for us. And let me tell you, there are behaviors
01:35:00
This is plastic. There are behaviors in relationships where you take this whole thing and just slam it in the ground.
01:35:07
She I think that's an obvious one.
01:35:17
There's one that's more has a more ragged edge of grief and distress than even cheating, which is just slowly
01:35:25
disengaging.
01:35:32
Emotionally disengaging. Yeah.
01:35:37
Yeah. Gosh, that's a ragged That's a ragged break on that marble jar. And it just happens
01:35:43
over time and every that other people think that they're nuts and it makes
01:35:48
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01:35:53
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Stephven and get started with Adobe Express. That's adobe. SLS Steven, you have been in a
01:37:59
relationship much longer than me, but we share a lot of similarities in many ways. I was wondering if um if you were to give me any relationship advice that
01:38:06
might hold my [ __ ] together Mhm. over the next 30 years.
01:38:12
I mean, you could give me so much. I know cuz I've seen I've seen so much of the incredible I've actually stolen so much advice. One of the things I stole
01:38:18
recently, which me my girlfriend talked about, was sometimes I'd come home and I'm on like 10% and I heard you say
01:38:23
this. Oh yeah. And I just I don't communicate to my girlfriend that I'm on I've got like 10% left and then she you know she
01:38:29
might want to try and work through some [ __ ] but she can't do it. It's going to go bad. It's going to go bad. Go bad.
01:38:34
Yeah. Let's not do this at 1:00 a.m. No. And I saw you talk about how you communicate. You vocalize what you have
01:38:40
left in the tank to give context to the other person. I guess to create some empathy for both of you, but I've stolen
01:38:45
that. But is there anything else that um you think might help me over the next 30 years to have a good rel relationship
01:38:51
with my girlfriend with all the risks that you see? I'll just start by saying I think therapy
01:38:57
couple's work is like so incredibly powerful and helpful. I think the
01:39:02
Gottman's work is really like we read the Gotman's work together sometimes. So
01:39:07
I think I think that's helpful. I'm surprised you were willing as someone that struggles with
01:39:13
vulnerability. Oh yeah. know for sure. Well, you you weren't No, I was willing. Oh, really? Okay.
01:39:18
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I struggle with vulnerability, but I really respect
01:39:24
humility in people so much that even if I'm not feeling humility, I will fake
01:39:29
humility and be like, I need help. And then I'll say, [ __ ] this is real. This is hard. This they got my number. Like,
01:39:36
I'm like, damn. And they just called a thing a thing and it hurt my feelers. Um, but I I guess the biggest thing is
01:39:44
that neither Steve and I nor I had any modeling of what a healthy relationship
01:39:50
looked like at all. And
01:39:57
I think one commitment we made is to just keep showing up. I think these are the
01:40:03
three commitments. Keep showing up. Don't buy into the [ __ ] that it's supposed to be easy. It'll be the
01:40:09
hardest thing you ever do. and ask for help. And that's not there's no I wish I could
01:40:16
give you like a here's the secret to it, but the secret to us is we keep showing up.
01:40:22
We know it's not supposed to be easy and we get help. And the help being you turn
01:40:29
to him and ask for help or external. Well, well, we get external help, but we read, we try new things.
01:40:35
Um, we try new tools. We're just We don't
01:40:41
ever want to be done learning and trying to be better for ourselves and for each other.
01:40:47
And that's a lot. I mean, 38 years together is
01:40:54
not just like the so slow roll movie of a life and a family, but we've buried
01:41:03
parents, you know, we've gone through illnesses.
01:41:08
We've raised, you know, kids. We've
01:41:14
we've gone through different seasons in our own lives where we were not synced at all. It's really really hard. But
01:41:22
it's I'm more proud of it than anything I've ever done cuz my setup for success
01:41:27
was zero. You've buried parents? Yeah. Christmas Day.
01:41:32
My mom died on Christmas Day after my sisters and I were their her primary caregiver for four years with dementia.
01:41:38
Four years.
01:41:44
I wouldn't wish that [ __ ] on the people I hate the most. I I try not to hate
01:41:50
people, but I God gives me grace for it on occasion. But um I would not wish that on anybody.
01:41:59
You know, there's the reality of it. You know, she gets there, there's an accident, you're showering your mom, you're bathing your mom,
01:42:05
you know, and she knows just enough
01:42:10
to be humiliated by it. But this is life. Like this is this is
01:42:17
caregiving, you know, and it's a tremendous emotional, physical, mental
01:42:26
weight that falls primarily on women who are also in the workforce.
01:42:32
You know, thank God I had two sisters, so there's three of us. Um but
01:42:37
and many people have very many people have zero. It's like you and your PhD
01:42:43
resource PhD researcher. I have resources a lot of resources
01:42:49
and I think it almost killed me you know and so it almost killed you. I mean, yeah, it
01:42:55
it to lose someone that you love, like I
01:43:00
love my mom in bits and pieces, in chips and bones in, you know, like that is,
01:43:09
you know, and then there was a day when she just got incredibly incredibly
01:43:15
cruel. Like my mom was the fulcrum. Our family changed on her back. like she
01:43:23
was the first person to go to therapy. She left my dad. She got us into therapy. She worked three jobs. She she
01:43:31
changed everything. She talked about the long history of addiction in our family, you know, on both sides everywhere. She
01:43:39
changed our family. And so to say she was like, you know, somebody who I
01:43:44
respected and revered like was is an understatement. and you know
01:43:51
and we did so much healing work around kind of how she showed up as a parent in
01:43:58
her marriage with my dad. And so then the one day I went to go take care of her and I saw that thing that I hadn't
01:44:04
seen since I was 14, you know, and I'm 54, you know, and it literally like I
01:44:10
couldn't drive like it brought me physically to my knees like like my husband had to come and get me.
01:44:18
And I don't like like I can I can't talk about it without getting emotional cuz it's not like I
01:44:24
blamed my mom because she's in the middle of this disease, you know, but it was like I I didn't see her for 2 months
01:44:32
after that. And Steve kept saying I I said I can't. And he's like, you got to you got to heal from that. I mean, just
01:44:39
imagine being dropped back in a worst case scenario situation when you were 13 or 14. And then, you know, you're just
01:44:47
like, I can't I can't. And, you know, my sisters were like, I got we got we got
01:44:52
this. And then they'd go through a period where they were like, I can't right now. And then, okay, I got it. But
01:44:59
Steve always had it.
01:45:04
Steve was like, I got the diaper. I'll take him to dinner. I'll meet with the doctors. Like, that's partnership.
01:45:12
You know what I mean? That's partnership. How did How did you deal with the grief?
01:45:17
Well, don't send me your hate mail, [ __ ] But, you know, when she died, it was
01:45:23
nothing but relief. I've heard this. I've never not heard that from someone that had a parent with
01:45:29
struggling with dementia and passing. Yeah. It was completely relief. I mean, the day before she died, I think we had a really important time with her, and
01:45:37
I'm sure she is, you know, playing dominoes with Anne Richards and Molly Ivans and great other female Texas
01:45:43
politicians, um, Democrats. But um because my mom was
01:45:48
very radically political, but uh
01:45:57
the window of grief was just years of
01:46:02
there. There was, you know, very early on there was no calling her to say, "Oh, Charlie got a really cute date. Let me
01:46:07
show you the homecoming pictures." Or, "Hey, Ellen, you know, got into her master's program." That that all just
01:46:13
went away just every week.
01:46:18
And so that's why, you know, the whole the
01:46:23
whole strong ground book, there's a there's a sentence in the in the first chapter that said, I have a sticky note
01:46:29
on my window on my mirror in the bathroom that says, I'd rather be the oldest woman in the gym than the
01:46:35
youngest woman in assisted living because I do believe in the connection around
01:46:41
exercise, you know, dementia. And I I took care of my grandmother with
01:46:46
dementia with my mom. And my mom and my grandmother made a lot
01:46:52
of different lifestyle choices than I've made. But the whole strong ground
01:46:58
metaphor is that I went to go see a trainer. And one day he looked at me and
01:47:03
he said, he called me brown. He said, "Find the ground, Brown." And I looked
01:47:10
down. I said, "Okay." And he goes, "Not the floor, the ground. Take your feet, push in to the ground. Use your mind to
01:47:17
connect with your body. Push into the ground and then tell your mind, "You're going to be using [ __ ] lats." And I
01:47:23
was like, "Okay." So, I did it and I felt them and I started whispering every
01:47:31
time I would do a weightlifting thing, "Strong ground. Strong ground."
01:47:36
Strong ground. An unbelievable unbelievable book. So, we we didn't cover everything in this book today,
01:47:42
which is a great shame, but hopefully we'll speak again in the future. But it's the lessons of daring leadership, the tenacity of of paradox, which is
01:47:48
something I was keen to talk about, and the wisdom of the human spirit. All of your books are amazing. You said earlier
01:47:53
on that someone called you a wizard when you were younger. That's exactly what I think you are. I think you're a wizard.
01:47:59
Why? I think you're a wizard. You have an unbelievable pattern recognition, understanding of humans. You have so
01:48:04
many wide reference points that it appears to be magic to a muggle like me. We're out of time and the team are going
01:48:10
to run through the door if I'm not careful. But but we have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest. Not doing they're leaving it
01:48:15
full. You actually know this person. Um did you I know the next guest. No, you know the one that left the question for you. Oh, got it.
01:48:21
They didn't know it was for you. Dear beautiful and highly intelligent next guest,
01:48:27
what are you optimizing for right now?
01:48:35
Strength and longevity. mentally, physically, spiritually, and emotionally.
01:48:43
Strong ground. The lesson, the lessons of daring leadership, the tenacity of paradox, and
01:48:48
the wisdom of the human spirit. You are you are I was trying to think if there's
01:48:54
any others. You are the single most requested guest. Um, and you have been on the show for for a long long time,
01:49:00
for three or four years. When we ask people who they want me to speak to, they say your name. and they say your name because of these the incredible
01:49:05
work you've done through your own podcast which I'm going to link on the screen and below right now, but also through some of these incredible books
01:49:10
which have changed people's lives. If you're unfamiliar with Bnee's work, um I
01:49:16
think people will understand after listening today how much they're missing out on, I'd highly recommend you go and
01:49:21
listen to Bnee's podcasts. Um but also to check out this book, Strong Ground, which I'm going to I'm going to link
01:49:27
below. Um also Dare to Lead. I think all of um all of the leadership team in my office reference Dare to Lead so often
01:49:34
which an incredible book about brave work, tough decisions and whole hearts. You make the most beautiful artwork. I
01:49:40
consider these books to be artwork again because they pull on so many different reference points to make something that feels so original and you've helped so
01:49:46
many people. The fact that my audience have demanded I speak to you for so long I think is testament to that. And um
01:49:51
you're a wonderful human being and actually one of the things you've inspired me to be is myself because
01:49:56
that's exactly what I find you to be. So, thank you so much, Bren, for your time today. It's deeply, deeply appreciated, more so than I could say.
01:50:02
And I think you're a wonderful human being. Please come back again soon. I will. I have enjoyed every minute of
01:50:07
this. I would say it has not been easy cuz we went to some hard places together,
01:50:13
but it's been meaningful. Thank you. Thank you.
01:50:19
[Music] Heat. Heat. [Music]
01:50:36
[Music]