Breakfast with Stephen

This episode of Pity Party Over couldn't be more timely following the US presidential election results, which have left voters and the world feeling equally joyful and hurt. This pivotal moment highlights the importance of listening to bridge divides and overcome polarization, which destroys relationships and the opportunity to create a system that accommodates everyone's needs.  Dov Baron, a leadership consultant, author and speaker, helps leaders find more profound meaning and fulfillment in their work. Our conversation centers on the transformative power of authenticity and curiosity in creating genuine connections in our polarized world. Cultivating curiosity means actively seeking to understand others' perspectives, fostering compassion, and reducing divisiveness. By focusing on the broader context rather than just content, we can gain empathy for others and build meaningful relationships that transcend division. Listen to the episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Amazon Music, or your favorite podcast platform. Subscribe to Pity Party Over for more insightful episodes. Questions? Email Stephen Matini or send him a message on LinkedIn. #Belonging #Curiosity #Authenticity #Purpose #Integrity #EmotionalIntelligence #LeadershipDevelopment #SelfAwareness #PersonalGrowth #Mindfulness #Kindness #PainAndGrowth #Transformation #Innovation #ContextOverContent TRANSCRIPT Stephen Matini: Since you and I met, there's one word that is really dear to me, but I also know that is dear to you that I would like to ask you why it is dear to you, which is belonging. Dov Baron: Belonging is a really important thing for me. And at a very real level, it's real to me and important to me because I never did belong. I didn't feel like I belonged when I was a kid. Coming from that to the present tense, I think belonging is really important because we, particularly since COVID, since the lockdown, people had a lot of problems. I remember calling the CEOs that I work with and saying, "When pandemic happened and you're going to lock down, you're going to want to fire me. You're going to want to take me off your regular paycheck, and it's the last thing you should do." And they're like, "Why?" And I said, "Because you're going to have way more problems after than you have now." And they were like, "Well, why?" And well, it'll soon get back to normal. Well, A, normal is never coming back. That's over. And B, when you come back, you're going to see human beings are tribal. We need interconnection with other human beings. So whatever this does, we can talk about how it impacts our nervous system, our limbic system, how it affects the gut biome, and all the other things that it's going to affect. But psychologically, we are going to be hungry for community because we're being removed from communities. And we've all set up our own communities. If we're not ready for that, when they come back, people will find themselves drifting into communities that they don't really belong into. And they go, "What do you mean?" Well, they're going to find communities where they can distort themselves and they can make themselves fit in. And let's face it, you and I both understand this. In the corporate world, everything was about fitting in. Yeah The whole thing that everybody was excited about is get the right people on the right bus in the right seat. Yeah, well, that means distort yourself to be in that seat. Belonging means I can show up with all of me. Gay, straight, wearing a dress and a mustache, artistic, creative, highly intellectual. You know Any flavor, shade of context that person wants to bring is where you belong. But in a fitting in culture, we have to disenfranchise parts of ourselves. We have to remove parts of ourselves. We have to distort parts of ourselves in order to fit in. So belonging is very important now more than ever. It's always been important because we're tribal, and it's important to me because I never felt like I fit in when I belonged when I was a kid. Stephen Matini: When did you start feeling that you belonged?  Dov Baron: Probably not until my early to mid-40s. Stephen Matini: And what happened?  Dov Baron: I got married to my bride, who I've been with for 27 years when I was 39. We've been together 27 years. And she was the first person I felt like I belonged with. I remember asking, I say to my friend, we went for a drink and he said, "How's it going with Ranuka?" And I said, "Magnificent." And I said, "I think I'm going to ask her to marry me." And my friend's like, "Oh, you can't do that." And I said, "Why not?" He goes, "Well, you're the last dying breed of Bachelor." And I'm like, "Yeah." And he said, "But you can't ask her to marry you." And I said, "Why?" He says, "I know your highest maxim." And I said, "Yeah, so do I." And he goes, "Well, has it changed?" And I said, "No." He goes, "Is still freedom?" I go, "Yeah." He goes, "Well, how can you get married?" And I said, "Because freedom for you is your accessibility to different vaginas." That's not what freedom is to me. Freedom to me is access to more of myself. The more free I feel to be me, then the more free I am. And in this relationship with this woman, I have another area I didn't even know I'm allowed to express or I give myself permission to express. So that was the beginning of it was freedom of being with her. She was so powerfully in her own space that it gave me permission to stop doing my s**t that I did in relationships. And so I started to feel like I belonged. But it was also at that point in time that after at 39, it was 20 years of work. So I'd been working on myself personally with therapists and mentors and all the rest of it for 20 years that I suddenly got comfortable with the fact that I was a polymath. I wasn't specialized and I didn't know enough in a particular area, but I knew vast amounts in a lot of different areas. And I started to surround myself with other polymaths. Belonging my tribe or a tribe of polymaths. People who have incredible specialties, but you don't know. They also have these other 18 things that they're so deeply embedded in. And being around them made me feel like I belonged. So that was the beginning of it. And that's where I live now. I live in that place of being surrounded by them. Stephen Matini: So if I understood correctly what you're saying, you start belonging when you have license to be yourself or someone gives you that opportunity to be yourself. Dov Baron: I don't know that anybody gives it to you. I think that you give yourself permission to not distort or disenfranchise and allow people or groups to fall away that you thought you wanted to be in. So this is the challenge we're seeing with the very polarized partisan political system and political followers. You have people who used to hang out together who can't talk to each other anymore because they're polarized politically. The question is, can I be all of me and can I allow you to be all of you? So if it's not okay for me to be all of me or I feel like I have to put you in your place, then that's not my tribe. You know My religion, I tell everybody, my religion is curiosity. So if I'm going to live in the blood of that curiosity, I'm going to eat, sleep, breathe that, then I have to be willing to show up. Now, that's me showing up to them. On the other side of that, they may want to shove me in some box, and that's not where I belong. So I know where I belong, which is where you where I don't have to disenfranchise or repress or deny some part of myself in order to be with you. And at the same time, be respectful, of course. Stephen Matini: Some people, maybe you heard this, may say, "you know Dov, that's easy for you to say this because you are an independent professional. You don't work for anyone you know so you're not actually in an organization. But me, I am part of this thing, so I have to be extra careful. So I don't know if someone ever made the comment to you, but if they did, how do you respond? Dov Baron: I respond with, "If you don't feel like you belong, you should be somewhere else." Sorry. I mean, I know that that sounds like an easy solution, but it is an easy solution because there are companies that you have access to, whoever you are. So for me, the key is not in, "Well, I can't leave." You've not taken ownership of your specialization. You've not taken ownership of your power yet. When you take ownership of that, then you can go anywhere, anywhere at all. So if you're in a place where you have to disenfranchise yourself, that's too high a cost for a salary because it means you have to take off your personal head and put on your professional head in order to be there. It's fascinating. I'm often asked this question, "How is this possible? Many of your friends are your clients." Yes. Because they're not paying me to be their friend. I can make the separation between those two things. So I am going to work with you and I'm not going to change anything. So in fact, you still get the same guy. I'm just not coming at you from the same position as a friend. Yeah So I speak to you the way I speak to my friends. I speak to you the way I speak to my clients. I speak to you the way I speak to anybody. And if that works for you, that's fantastic. And if it doesn't, that's also fantastic. So if you're working somewhere where you feel like you have to disenfranchise yourself and you have to take off your personal head and put on your professional head, then there's two things to look at there. One, the environment, which I just said, if it is someplace that forces you to disenfranchise, that's something to look at. But there's also the other side, which is you have to look at yourself. And you have to look at yourself, A, why am I so willing to disenfranchise? Why am I so willing to distort myself? That's a question in and of itself. And B, if I'm pissed off with this place that makes me disenfranchised, what is it in me that I'm not bringing forward? What is my own discomfort? What am I not examining that I need to bring forward? Because I'm facilitating this. Like What's magnificent about you that you're facilitating being shoved in the corner? Stephen Matini: Maybe one of the reason why that happens is because all of us, to a different extent, we are afraid that if we set the boundaries, if we said the no, we would not belong.  Dov Baron: If you don't do those things, you won't fit in. You will belong, but you won't fit in. And you've got to get the distinction. Particularly you know English is a difficult language because we use so many alternates of the same thing. But fitting in and belonging are vastly different. I love beautiful clothes, and I love beautiful shoes, and I have pretty exotic shoes. But if I'm going to find some nice shoes and I buy them, I'm not going to force them into the closet. I either have to get rid of some and make some space for it, or are they going to get damaged? So if you think about anything that you shove into something to make it fit, it has to distort. If I buy a nice new shirt and I put it in there and the shirts are full, and I've not emptied some out, then the shirt's getting all creased and crinkled and doesn't get to shine. So it's the same thing. We make things fit in rather than belonging. This is your place. When I met my bride, I felt like I'd come home. I didn't have to go, "Oh, you know should I minimize this or maximize that?" It was like I was over that before I met her. It was like, "No." I mean, when we met, we went on a blind date and spent five hours on a blind date. And halfway through the blind date, she said, "I feel like I'm being interviewed." And I said, "That's because you are." And she said, "Really?" And I said, "Yeah." She goes, "Well, can I ask you anything?" I said, "Anything at all because I'm not going to hide anything from you, and I don't want you to hide anything from me." And I realized that socially in the world, you've been trained to say the right thing or do the right thing. We're all trained that way. It wasn't a criticism to her. And I said, "And this may be your first experience of not having to do that, but I'm not going to do that." So I'm going to say things that you might think are sexually inappropriate or politically incorrect or whatever it is. I'm not going to hide any of it because I'm not politically correct. I say things that some people will find offensive. All you have to know is my heart and soul are deeply embedded in love and kindness and generosity and curiosity. But that doesn't mean I won't piss you off or say things that are in a or you have been conditioned to be inappropriate. And this is how we're living our lives. And this is what's really important in my work around the emotional source code. It's called the anatomy of meaning. You have to look at the meaning you give everything because it has anatomy to it. You have to go below it and see, okay, well, where did this connect with that? And how is that part of this? Because these words that you're holding don't mean anything except to you. And part of the problem with our society today is we're imposing meaning. So when they, whoever they are, whether it's your boss, whether it's an employee, whoever it is, when they use a term, your only response is, "Tell me what you mean by that." Because you may discover that they do have horrible intent, and you may discover they have playful intent. But you don't want to write people off based on the intent that you're making up because nothing has any meaning but the meaning you are giving it. And this is what's so vastly important for us to understand that. Nothing has any meaning but the meaning we give it. So question that meaning because it's not truth because the meaning you give it, you hold as truth. And if you don't question it, you won't know if it's real or not. Stephen Matini: How do you deal with a tribe of people, a tribe meaning could be an organization, could be whatever that is in which somehow there are certain words that have a specific meaning for that tribe and they consider it to be appropriate or not to use them? How do you face the situation if you want to belong to the group of people?  Dov Baron: Well, again, you're talking about fitting in versus belonging. So my tribe, where I belong, we all know that we're all going to say things that out in the world would be, quote, “inappropriate." It doesn't mean we're not discerning. So please be clear here. I'm not going to say to my friends those things that I might say on a CNN, right? Or I might say on another national I'm not going to say those words because I'm not an idiot. And by that, I don't mean that I'm afraid of being canceled. I don't care about being canceled. It means I understand that people are going to associate a meaning. So here's the thing. My wife and I teach speakers how to speak, the Speaker's Academy for Authentic Leadership. And one of the things we'll talk about in that is if you're going to use a piece of jargon and by the way, almost everything is jargon, right? But you're going to use jargon, right? Or you're going to use a word that is not part of the lexicon of the language. So for instance, I was born in Britain, so my vocabulary tends to be much larger than the average North American. There are words that I use that are French in heritage, that are part of the English language. I just can't use them here. Not because people are dumb, it's just because it's not used. But one of my words that is just part of my lexicon is the word ubiquitous. Ubiquitous. Now, ubiquitous is part of my I say it all the time in a reference point. I cannot say that in America or North America without giving a short explanation because then what I'm doing is I'm giving meaning. So I say, you know it seems like polarization is ubiquitous these days. If I stop there, I'm as smart as using a big word. There's nothing good about that. For a lot of people, yeah. Right? That's all I am. But if I say it seems like polarization is ubiquitous, meaning everywhere you look, people are on either one side or the other. They're fighting against some kind of polarization. Now that person has learned the word ubiquitous. So now instead of feeling distressed or disrespected or talked down to, they now feel smarter. What if we do that with politically incorrect statements, which is what I do? So we get this understanding. What we're doing there is transferring meaning so that you can still be offended. And by the way, if you're committed to being offended by something, that's something for you to really consider having a look at. Just as I would tell you this, and just so you understand, if you're committed to anything, have a look at it. If you're committed to being a Christian and you've never thought about it, if I say to you, "you know, what faith are you?" And you say, "I'm a Christian." And I say, "Why? Because I am. That's what I've always been. Then question it, please. Not because I'm anti-Christian, but because I'm pro-curiosity, because I'm pro-consciousness, because I'm pro-expensiveness, because I'm pro-human being. And I want you to understand that there are other ways to see things. And the only way we can grow as human beings is by looking at things from different perspectives. So what if it doesn't mean this? So this is how we develop ourselves. This is how we grow as leaders is by putting aside our assumptions of meaning and embracing curiosity to discover meaning that may have nothing. Like you may be blown away to discover these other purposes. And that meaning might be insane. That's fine. But at least you know they're not coming at it from the way you're coming at it. And that allows you to grow. And that allows you to find where you actually belong rather than where to distort yourself to fit in. Stephen Matini: You know As you're talking, I'm thinking other words that seem to be important to you. One is integrity and purpose. Integrity and purpose, you know I'm thinking out loud, do they come before what we're talking about?  Dov Baron: If you and I walk around your city center and ask people, are you integral? Do you have integrity? I guarantee you that 99.9% of people say yes. So integrity is a complete waste of time if you don't understand it. So that's the proviso. Integrity is something that you have to understand. What are you integral to? So if I ask you, was Adolf Hitler integral? 100%. So integrity is not a good or a bad thing. It just means your commitment to what it is you say you're committed to. So for me, if you don't know your purpose, then what are you integral to? You know most people will say, "Well, I do what I say and I say what I do." Okay. Why do you say what you say? Well, I thought about that. Well, then I don't know what you're integral to because you don't. So that's a harder question, a much harder question. This is why you know my clients work with me is because they are highly intelligent people. They are highly successful people. They've done amazing things, but they've not received the kind of pushback at a deep curiosity. Not to be argumentative, but to allow them to expand, allow them to explore deeper parts of themselves so they can have a deeper relationship with life. So from that integrity, we come back further, which is into purpose. But here's the thing, we can't get into purpose because even I say people, "What's your purpose?" Most people in the business world will say, "Yeah, they know what their purpose is. They read Simon Sinek’s “Start with Why.” I know my purpose." And then I tell them to tell me what it is, and I go, "Do you want the good news or the bad news?" And they go, "The good news." And I go, "You read the book, and the book is called Starts With Why?" And they go, "Okay. What's the bad news?" “The first word of that book title is what?" And they go, "Starts?" And I go, "Yep, you've started. You're not there." And they go, "What do you mean?" You have constructed purpose out of mission. It's a construct. It's a manufactured thing. You can't find purpose unless you self-examine at a very deep level. Purpose actually comes from pain. It's the thing that you are pained about. I'll give you an example. I had a conversation with someone who is insanely highly respected about being mindful. And deservably so, this person has done insane amounts of research, written books that are magnificent on it. I have spent time with this person on several occasions, and this person speaks mindlessly. And this is not once. This is always. Now, I get being a quick thinker. I'm a quick thinker, but that's different. No room for anybody to breathe because it's just like, "I'm going to suck all the air out of the room." It's like, "Oh, that's interesting." So why is this person's mission, purpose, around mindfulness? What I know about this person that they never told me, but I know by observing is there was a primary caregiver or somebody of incredible importance who never let this person speak, who spoke to them mindlessly and never gave them room to speak. So this person has made their life's purpose about being mindful, including making sure that you think about what you're saying and letting other people have space to say it and be aware of your own thoughts. But this person is still living in the wound. Your purpose is always connected to your pain. If you're not willing to look into the dark shadows, you'll never find your purpose. In the words of Joseph Campbell, "The treasure you seek can only be found in the cave you fear to enter. And most of us intellectually go there, but we don't emotionally and spiritually go there. That's why they work with me because they've been to all the top coaches. They've been to the top therapists. They've been to you know the Tony Robbins weekends in Fiji or whatever it is. And like how come it's still not there? Because this is the deep work. If you don't want to do that, that's great. You shouldn't do it. And I taught people out of working with me more than I talked them into it. But if you want to take that on, the majesty of that journey is so beautiful, so fulfilling. But you should know this. If you're in a company and you want innovation or you're an individual who wants enlightenment, the path is the same. And they go, "Well, what's that?" Destruction. You know We think about enlightenment as being, "Oh, the angels are singing." We think about innovation as, "Oh, you know we're going to develop this new technology." But the truth is that all innovation and all enlightenment burns everything down because otherwise you just cling to what you knew. And so most people you know don't want to burn anything down, so they go to Tony Robbins or whatever it is, and that's great. Nothing wrong with it. And when I say burn it down, I'm not talking about, "Oh, well, now I'm going to destroy my business when you work with me." No, you're actually going to be more successful. I always tell people, "I have no interest in making you more successful, but I know it's going to happen." It's a bonus. You will be more successful, but you'll be far more deeply fulfilled, and that's more important. You'll be on purpose with your life, which is more important. But you have to burn down beliefs that you've clung to that you actually think are you. We've all been there. I was certainly there. I was like, "I'm certain this is who I am. I'm the savior. I'm the superhero." That was my s**t that I carried around for 32 years. That was a hell of a burden to put down. But imagine it like you know it's like you're atlas. You're carrying this weight on your back. And somebody says, "You can put it down now." And you're like, "Well, who will I be? If I put down the world and stop carrying the world, who will I be? Who's going to even recognize me in the marketplace if I'm not this identity that I've clung to?" Guess we'll find out. So we cling to our identity. We manufacture purpose out of that identity. So you can't have purpose without dealing with identity. And then as we manufacture purpose, we then say we're integral to purpose, but it's a purpose that was manufactured that is rooted in a false identity. So now you see how it's flipped back into your question. Stephen Matini: What is the best way to experience that pain that you were talking about? Because the pain can be really scary for a lot of people. You know.  Dov Baron: Of course! Stephen Matini: Last time you said, well, you just said it. Enlightenment is a destructive process, which I love that. But what is, I don't know, a healthy way to stay in that pain? Dov Baron: So let me be clear. Nobody wants to stay in the pain. I didn't want to stay in it when I was in it, and I've been in it several times. If you put your hand on a hot plate, you're going to pull your hand away. It's another form of pain. You're going to pull away. The answer is to become anti-fragile. It's not my word. But to become anti-fragile. So let me give you an example. You work out at lunchtime. Yeah Do you lift weights or what do you do? Stephen Matini: A little bit. A little bit of everything. Yeah. Dob Baron: Okay. So you lift weights? Stephen Matini: Yeah.  Dov Baron: So I've been a bodybuilder for many, many, many years. I used to do these videos from the gym that were called “sweaty leadership tips.” I'd be all sweaty. There's a bunch of them on YouTube somewhere. And you know I would hold my phone, but every now and then, I would flip the phone just a little bit off angles over my shoulder, looking at gym equipment or looking at other people. And so I did it this time, and I said, "See that guy there?" There's a guy working out. And I said, "That guy's been here every day that I've been here and I'm here dedicatedly five days a week for at least two hours every morning. He's here five days a week for at least maybe he's here more, I don't know. But he's definitely here the five days I'm here, and he's here for at least as long as I'm here. He's usually here before me, and he sometimes leaves just before me, but mostly he's sometimes often after. Now, you've seen me in a semi-clothed state and you know that I'm muscular, right? I'm not trying to show that off. You know That's my form. Okay. Now, if you look at him, I realize he's far away. You probably can see that he's not particularly muscular. What's the difference? And you might say, "Well, maybe he doesn't want to be muscular." And I can say, "Sure, of course. Everybody has that choice." But let's remember he's here as long as I'm here as often as I'm here. What's the difference? You don't know. Like It would be kind of puzzling, right? And the reason it's puzzling is because he kind of looks out of shape. In fact, he looked like he was in the same shape as he was two years before when I first and I'd gotten to meet him and said hello. And, you know, I, I actually have an enormous amount of respect that he'd show up every morning for two hours. But what I noticed was he never increased the weight. He did his four sets of 10 for everything over and over again. So his body had adapted and never gotten any better. He was doing all the right things, but he wasn't willing to embrace the pain. When you go to the gym, you know that's enough for me to stay the same. And you know that you have to enter into the discomfort in order to grow. You have to run for 10 seconds longer than you feel like you're capable of. You have to hold the pose for 10 seconds longer than you think you can in yoga. You have to 10% more weight on. You have to do all of those things. You have to do that in order for it to work. The way to understand embracing the pain is anti-fragile rather than resilient. So resilient means that you get knocked down nine times eight times and you get up nine. That's stupid. That means you're not learning. I know I used to be the king of that. That's dumb. Be anti-fragile, which means you get knocked down once and you go, "How can I get up stronger?" Your muscles are anti-fragile. They have to be torn and broken in order for them to grow. That pain that you're in in your growth process is celebratory. Wow, I'm growing. If you go to the gym and the next morning you wake up and you're kind of like, "Ooh, ow, ooh, ooh, ow." And your friend says, "What's going on?" He goes, "I worked out yesterday. Are you okay? Oh, yeah. I had a great workout. I'm just sore. You celebrate that. Celebrate the pain because it's taking you to an outcome that you can't get to unless you embrace being anti-fragile until you embrace being stronger. Stephen Matini: It feels like you are giving me a recipe with all these different ingredients. And so while you mentioned this ingredient, but I would like to know where does kindness go in your recipe, as I call it? Dov Baron: If you want to insult me, call me nice. If you want to compliment me, call me kind. Stephen Matini: You are so kind.  Dov Baron: Right. Thank you. Nice is an insult, NICE, neurotic, insecure, controlling emotions. Kindness is something we're talked out of. I believe with every fiber of my being that our nature is kindness, but most of us will mix kindness up with niceness. So I'm just being kind. No, you're not. You're lying. I didn't want to be unkind. No, that's not being unkind. Tell the truth. If you have a big decision in front of you and you have a friend over here who will always be nice, and you have a friend over here who loves you and cares about you, but will always tell you the truth, and you got a major decision. Who are you going to? You're not going to the nice person. You know, they're going to just say something nice. This is a major decision of your life. You're going to go to the person who's kind and truthful. I used to call myself in my 20s. I was brutally honest. No, I was brutal. I was brutal. That's what I was. Because it lacked kindness. Kindness is compassion. It's caring. It's loving. But I will not lie to you. Does my ass look fat in these pants? That's a question that every man who's ever been in a relationship has heard. Let's just say the answer is yes, right? So is that kind? Not really. If I'm nice, I say, "No, love it. It looks great." Ugh. I'm lying, but if I have kindness, I will say, "The fact that you ask me means you feel like it is. I would suggest you change. No, I want your opinion. Okay. I love your ass. But those are not the most flattering pants in the world. I don't have to deliver it with a hammer. I can deliver it with kindness. And kindness to me, if you sort of boil it down, where I go to is this. I need to remember that everybody I meet, no matter how deliriously happy they seem or how miserable they seem, everybody I meet is in some kind of pain. They may have a magnificent mask. They may have a mask they don't even know they have. But everybody's in some kind of pain. Everybody wants to feel better about something. So I can approach them from that place of, "I'm not here to make you feel miserable. I'm not here to rub salt in any wound. I'm here to have compassion for you. And how do I have compassion for you? I become deeply curious and discover what's going on for you. Why are you this way? Because you're in pain. The person attacking you isn't attacking you because they're an a*****e. They're attacking you because they're in pain. And you look like somebody who might cause them more pain, so they're attacking you. And you go, "But I was being really, really nice to them. Yeah, well, I might attack you if you'd be nice to me too because nice is s**t. They're lying." So it's really important to realize that everybody's in some kind of pain. Have compassion for that. Ask yourself, "I wonder what kind of pain this person's in. I wonder why they're being that way." Again, curiosity is my religion. Become deeply curious about them. When you do that, people will open up to you. People will not be as offended. Remember, attack is defense and defense is attack. If somebody's attacking you, it's a defensive move. They feel like you're attacking them. And you go, "But I wasn’t... I understand that you weren't. And I understand that that was not your intent. That's not relevant. What's relevant is that's how they feel. All little children are kind and they're caring and they're loving and they're cuddly and they're deeply curious. They want to know why the sky is blue and why the grass is green. They don't have all these assumptions. So if that's inherent, then everything else that's showing up that isn't that is showing up because that person had to fit in somewhere in order to not feel alone in the world. Okay. Maybe that somewhere was their own family. That happens a lot. Stephen Matini: I have one last question for you, because it's beautiful how all these ingredients come together. And you have explained them to me very clearly. So I'm very grateful, and very peaceful, you know because a lot of things that you said make total sense to you. But the way you say it, it helped me reconciling some discrepancies that I may have on how I connect them. But I was wondering ...  Dov Baron: You know what I just want to say before you go any further, that's really important. Like I want the listener to understand that. The challenge with today a lot of the time is we deal in content, not context. And in order to deal in context, which gives us a deeper understanding, we have to look at all the pieces of the puzzle. All this puzzle is one big sky, right? Well, you're holding one piece of the jigsaw puzzle that has blue on it. That's just one piece of the puzzle. There's so much more. And so when you like listening to this conversation that we've had, if somebody started at the beginning and kicked out after 10 minutes because I said a certain word that offended them, they have no context. But even if you have discrepancies in your head as I'm speaking, by the time we get to the end, you can then look at, well, what came together? What made sense? Am I in the same place? Again, as you said Stephen before, it's that willingness to change and not be so rigid and fixed. So I sincerely appreciate you saying that, that it brought the discrepancies together and, "Oh, now I see how this connects to this." But if you take it out of context, everything's lost. So this is why it's important to listen to the full conversation. And moreover, listen twice. And you suddenly hear what you know because now the second time you're not listening with your own biases. So thank you for bringing it up. It's really important. Stephen Matini: Maybe it's also the combination of my own curiosity. I'm also very curious. And the fact that anything you say to me comes from a place of kindness, you know including the jokes or anything you said. You know For those who are going to listen to this episode, you pointed out all these amazing ingredients, you know integrity, purpose, meaning, belonging, and kindness. You talked about context, assumption, pain, loving, love. If you had to tell to our listeners, what could it be a starting point? Where should they start with all these ingredients? Which one is the first one to tackle? Dov Baron: Without doubt, it's curiosity. I sign off everything I do with stay curious, my friends. Stay curious. I'm very philosophical and very spiritual in my background before I became a psychologist, before I became somebody involved in neuroscience and quantum physics and geopolitics and all the other stuff. There is a philosophical understanding that life is in quest of knowing itself. I believe that if there is a force in the world that you or in the universe that we call God, that intelligence is expansive. And if God is the ultimate in intelligence, then it is the ultimate in expansion. If it has to expand, then it has to constantly experience and learn. And the only way to do that is curiosity. Of course, I don't have that power, but if I was to say, "What are the exhibits of the presence of God," it would be love and curiosity. But curiosity still comes first. I love that. Because if I love without curiosity, I lack discernment. If I'm curious, I'm constantly learning and I'm willing to constantly change. And it means I'm willing to constantly let go of my biases. So all the things I talked about, get curious about, get curious about what pain might be underneath that fake smile. What pain might be underneath my need to fit in rather than belong? What is the pain that stops me from being curious? What is the pain that stops me from being loving or kind in a situation? Because if I wasn't in pain, if I wasn't protecting, I'd probably be kind here. Yeah. You probably would. What is the pain that stops me from experiencing my purpose? What is the pain that I feel that has me fear the depths of my emotions, my shadow self? What if my purpose actually comes from my pain? What if my purpose is to serve in the world in a way I've never considered? What if my purpose is to serve in the world with some part of myself that I disenfranchised, that I've got boxed away somewhere in the shadows of myself? Every time you're about to answer, think about how you can change it to a question for yourself, not for the other person. Because you're not going to turn into some interrogator, but a question for yourself. You want to be more innovative in your organization? Be curious. Don't jump to assumptions. You want to be a better leader? Be curious. You want to be a better manager? Be curious. This applies to every area of your life. Be curious. It's the essence of what I do on my podcast on The Dove Barron Show. It's always about curiosity. I'm curious about this. Tell me about that because everybody's formed by their curiosity or quote their lack of it. Stephen Matini: I’m very grateful for this time you're giving me. Thank you so much, Dove. I've learned a ton. Thank you. This has been absolutely wonderful. Dov Baron: My absolute pleasure, Steven. Thank you so much for inviting me to be part of this. Thank you for inviting me to speak with your audience. And by the way, for you, dear listener, dear viewer, you know I want you to understand something. I understand that the highest value in this crazy world is time. Even more than that, time is the engagement. So you actually being engaged with this. And if you've made it from A to Z, from the beginning to the end, you know I really want to thank you for taking the time. And if I pushed your buttons, thank you for letting me push your buttons and not flip it off, not because I want to irritate you, but because I want to irritate the parts of you that are stuck so that you can have connection to that, what I would call your soulful, more soulful self, because I believe in your magnificence. And it may have been a little too in your face for you, or it may have been a little too direct compared to what you used to. But you do need to know that I love you, and that's why I push you. And that being said, podcasts is a one-way street. We do this. It's not like that. We don't know if you're listening. We don't know if you're enjoying it. We don't know any of that. So here's what I want you to do. I want you to write to Stephen. You can write to me too, [email protected], yes, that is my email, really, [email protected], I know I'm insane. It's okay, and write to Stephen, write to me. And tell us what you got out of this. Moreover, tell us what you're going to do with it because it matters more. I hear from people 10 years ago after you did a podcast you know 10 years ago, and it really changed my life like, "Great. Wonderful." Or you did a podcast or you did an interview. You were on this TV show you know seven years ago, and you really pissed me off. And I was like, Fantastic. Write to Stephen. Tell him what you got out of this. This man brings you the very best people to interact with so that you can learn. He puts the time, the energy, the effort, sits around for hours doing all the prep work and all the post work. You have no idea. It's much longer than this. And he brings on people who cost thousands of dollars an hour to give you their time for free. Appreciate the man. Go on to wherever you listen to podcasts with Apple or wherever it is. Rate, review, and subscribe to the show, and then share the show with everybody you know. Don't hoard it. Be abundant in your thinking. Share the show out. And I'm not just talking about the episode with me on. I'm talking about this great show this men puts together for you. Share it out there. Write to him. Tell him you appreciate him. It's not a one-way street. Have reciprocity in his generosity. Stephen: Dov, all my love to you. Thank you. Thank you. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit breakfastwithstephen.substack.com

Michelle Kuei is a visibility marketing coach. At age 11, a car accident left Michelle permanently disabled. She shares her journey, highlighting how growth and transformation stem from shifting our mindset, embracing personal responsibility, and allowing ourselves the permission to be vulnerable. Michelle highlights about the importance of recognizing when we’re stuck in a negative space, allowing ourselves to feel those emotions, and then consciously choosing to move beyond them by focusing on our strengths and making deliberate decisions. In our conversation, we explore the importance of taking agency over our journey, learning from life's patterns, and showing up authentically while giving ourselves grace along the way. Listen to the episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Amazon Music, or your favorite podcast platform. Subscribe to Pity Party Over for more insightful episodes. Questions? Email Stephen Matini or send him a message on LinkedIn. #VisibilityMarketing #Resilience #MindsetShift #PersonalGrowth #Empowerment #OvercomingChallenges #EnergyShift #Vulnerability #PermissionToReset #SelfCompassion #MentalHealth #TransformYourLife #PositiveChange #LeadershipMindset #WomenEmpowerment #Authenticity #PityPartyOver #StephenMatini #MichelleKuei #NewPodcastEpisode TRANSCRIPT Stephen Matini: When you feel the way I do now a little bit overwhelmed, what do you do?  Michelle Kuei: There’s so many things I do. But first of all, what comes up to my mind is when my energy is down, I actually do quite the opposite. I go onto a treadmill, I start working. If I'm feeling stressed, there's a lot of things on my plate. I've learned to drop everything and just go into a physical activity. So a lot of times, you know, when we think about mental stress and burnout, we're in our mind, right? We're thinking about, oh my God, how am I going to take care of this? How am I going to process this? How am I going to tackle this? So we're doing a lot of thinking. So when we're thinking, our mind is working, but our body is not. And so what I have learned, and that really worked well for me, is if I were to just stop the thinking, stop the thinking mind, and just drop it and go do something that involves my body, activity, running, jogging, walking, whatever it is that you get into that physical mode, then you start taking your mental processing into, OK, I need to make sure that I step at the right place so I don't fall down. So your mind starts to think about something else other than the things that you're feeling stressed about. And when you start doing that, you're making room and making space for what needs to come. And the creativity comes when you make room for it. And how do we make room for it? When you shift from a mental stress to a physical activity, you allow your energy to flow. And everything is energy in this world, right? So if you shift one energy from one place to another, then things start to shift as well. When I was overcoming that physical disability, I realized that you know my muscle groups, muscles, they need to learn and get used to the activity I'm giving them. So every single muscle in our body has a job. Just like we have a purpose in this world, they also have a purpose in our body. And so when you give that purpose to the muscle that you're working on, sometimes you need to give it a break, right? Because when we overwork, the muscle will snap, the muscle will break. And same thing with ourselves, you know if you don't start taking a break or realizing that I need to try something else that will relax me, that will keep me into a calm state. I need to take some vacation. I need to make sure that's in my schedule before I snap and break. And so I feel that a lot of us don't realize that, you know yes, resilience is great. Resilience is powerful. Being able to bounce back and getting back on your feet and staying strong is important. But it is also important to allow yourself, giving yourself the permission to say, you know what, I'm going to take a day off. I just need a day off, or I just need a week off. And we were talking about this earlier. I took a week off because I needed a week off. Stephen Matini: My ideal world would be probably work for three months and then take a break, or maybe three, four months, you know, every three, four months, I think it should be a stop, you know, somehow. And I guess it depends also how you work. But I'm one of those people that tend to go, you know, full force. I mean, seriously, there's no a second during the day that is empty. And so after a few months, I do feel it. So you mentioned disability. And in the past, when we talked about it, you mentioned that disability is one of the ingredients that are part of your life. You know, your life is ginormous. What does disability mean to you today? Michelle Kuei: It means that there's something that I am not gifted. I am not talented to do. And I use the word gifted and talented because we have a lot of talents within ourselves, right? And talent is something that you develop. It's something that you train yourself to recognize that this is what I can do, and this is what I can do well in. And there's other areas where I might not be interested in performing or doing at all. I am not interested to become the next athlete who's running a 10K marathon. That's not my interest, but someone else is. Someone is really happy to do that as a profession. For me, disability, it just means that there's part of us that we're just not trained and we're not passionate to do. Now I don't see it as a limitation. Rather, it's just like my hair, my finger. It's just a natural part of me of who I am. And it may be a disability, physical disability on me, but it may be an emotional disability on someone else I cannot see. But that person doesn't mean that that person is not doing well or not performing well. It's just that there's something else that person is so good at that I don't need to see the limitation on that person. It's a change of mindset. It's a change of feeling about what we choose to see, what we choose to embrace this whole entire self and recognizing that there is something that I'm really good at and nobody can beat me to that. And I'm very proud of it. I'm taking ownership of it. And I can do Christmas countdown whenever I want to. But there's also a part of me that, you know what? Someone else can do that. Someone else has the purpose of doing it. So I'm just going to let them serve. I'm just going to let them do it. For example, in the past, I go to grocery and there's always stuff on the very top shelf. And the most important item, like your toilet paper, is always on the top shelf. And that is the most essential thing that people need. And so every time I go to a grocery, I'm looking on the top of the shelf and I can't reach it. So in the past, when I felt my limitation, it was a limited ability to me, I hesitated to ask for help. I hesitated because I was looking at the perspective of I'm not good enough. I'm not normal. I'm too short to reach to the shelf. But then there is a shift. There's a moment where I started to recognize and realize that, hey, yeah, I am short, but this is why we have tall people. Right? This is why we have tall people. The universe makes tall people for a reason. So that's put them to use, right? Because the universe created everybody. And so we're all equal. Stephen Matini: You make it sound so flowy and real beautiful, you know, when you're talking. And one thing that I always wonder is how is it that some people are able to change their mindset as you did, you know, and to really overcome it and others instead get stuck there, you know? So what did you do? How did you make that humongous shift in yourself?  Michelle Kuei: Before I answer that question, sometimes I joke about myself that I have this young looking Asian body, but my soul is really old. I have a very ancient soul. And so to answer your question is that you have to be ready. And there's no rush into getting ready for that mindset shift. And so this is something that I observed, also something that I experienced is no matter how I know the podcast is called Pity Party. A lot of us are staying in that pity party for a very, very long time. But it's not because we don't want to get out of that pity party, or we don't want to, you know, advance ourselves or better ourselves. We don't want to look at the positive aspects of things. It's just that we're not ready. And I think the universe by design has a lesson plan, a giant project plan for everybody. I don't know what it looks like. I don't know what the agenda is, but there is a universal big plan for everybody. And each lesson on that universal plan, it's teaching you a lesson, right? So maybe the lesson I need to learn during this stage of my life is gratitude. I need to learn how to appreciate. Or the next stage in my life, I need to learn forgiveness. I need to learn how to forgive to people. And so we're going to see evidence and lessons or teaching moments where we continue to experience the emotional triggers or external trigger that teaches the lesson of forgiveness. I want you to forgive this person. I want you to forgive that person. I want you to let go of yourself. And so we continue to find ourselves learning those lessons repeatedly until we can master it. And once you master it, then you can move on to the next lesson. But how does that agenda look? I have no idea. I don't know, but I trust it. I trust there's a universal plan. And so the people who are stuck in the pity party still in that pity party have, we have everything, the ice cream, the chocolate, everything full on. We're not ready yet. We're not ready to move on to the next stage of life. And so for me, that stage of life, I felt it was evolutional. It was ever evolving. And when I finally got out of my pity party, I was gifted a book and it was from Eckart Tolle, The Power Now. And he made me realize that there's two thinking mind, right? There's an unconscious mind and there's mind that's just in our everyday evolution, the conscious mind. And so it made me realize that I have this dual identity of myself. One is who I believe I am, and one who I truly am. And it is the one that I truly am that overrules everything else I experienced in this life. And so I was on a journey to discover who I truly am. And that was the moment that made me realize that, huh, pity party is something I can choose to attend or to choose to thank you very much for the invitation. I am not here to party, right? So you started to see the options of making that choice and making a decision for yourself. And I think the roots from decision come from a Latin roots of you need to sever, right? You need to decide. It means that you have to pick, choose between the two. You have to make a sever between the choices that you have. And so to me, that was the moment where I realized that, oh, I don't have to feel and think and look at this way about my life, how sorry I am, how small I am. I can choose to see the other way. And that was a pivotal moment for me because everything else changed when I started to recognize the fact that I can choose to see my life differently. Stephen Matini: Do you ever have sleep ups moments that somehow you may go back to the old behavior? Michelle Kuei: All the time. I think it's a constant thing because we're living in a real life and there's a lot of things that whether it's causing by ourselves or triggered by someone else, when I see someone else's success, it makes me think about, hmm, what am I not doing to be that person, to be that successful, right? And so I go into this comparison mode very quickly in comparing myself and how poorly I am doing in my life, how much less money I'm making, how much less title I have and how slow I'm moving. So I'm constantly comparing myself to others. Stephen Matini: You're describing me? (laughing) Michelle Kuei: I think I'm describing a lot of people, you know, I would love for people to if you're listening to the podcast, you know, just drop a comment in Stephen’s feed if you resonate with this, because that comparison mind is just never quiet. And one of the good things about comparison is this is how we improve. This is how we become better. And so we can choose to see comparison as, oh, it's something negative. You should never compare. I would encourage people to actually compare yourself. Use someone else to be your aspiration, right? Compare yourself to that person. But what you want to think about is how can you better yourself to be even better than that person is? And this is how we continue to master our skills, master our knowledge, mastering everything that we do so that we can be better than that person. I can be a lot more creative. And then that successful person who's making a lot of money, I can outgrow that person. And only if you believe that your ability and your strength and your superpower is within you, nothing else is going to matter. Stephen Matini: But when you feel that the moment of whatever, you know, self-doubt that you may go back to, you know, to the whole posture, the whole behavior is about to happen. Is there anything specifically you do? You mentioned that you are very physical, you know, is there also other tools that you use in order to make sure, nope, I'm not going to go that way. I'm going to choose, you know, this one, this path, which is more, you know, which is better for me. Michelle Kuei: I keep a judgment journal. So I have like journals in the back. I have books and everything. I keep judgment journal. And judgment journal, basically, it's very simple, very easy to do. And listeners can do this at home. You take out a sheet of paper and what you do is you write down the things that you're judging. You're judging whether you're judging someone else, you're judging yourself. What is it that you're saying to yourself right now? And usually it's very negative. It carries a lot of like, I need to be better than this. I should do this. I have to do this. So it's very negative. So you write down that phrase that you're telling yourself that you're judging yourself or others. And then what you do is your next step is to come up with three different ways of how you're going to say that same thing, but you're going to look at it in a more positive way. So let's say I'm too short. Stephen is too tall. And that's a judgment statement. That's a fact, but it's also a judgment. I'm too short. I wish I can be I can be taller. You know I asked for this for every Christmas, but never, I never got it. And during the Christmas, I don't believe in Santa. No, that's another story. But so I would write down, I am too short and I feel too short, too small. And I would come up with three different ways of saying this again in a positive way. So I am too short, but I am very gifted in public speaking, for example. I am small, but you know great thing comes in small packages anyway. Like the Tiffany, the Tiffany rings. Everybody wants. It comes in the tiniest, smallest package. So I'm OK with that. So you come up with three different ways of saying the same thing, but in a positive tone of voice. When you start building a habit in doing that, you'll notice the next time you judge someone or judging yourself, you're very quickly, it's like the muscle that we train in going to the gym, right? So you're very quickly, you're going to come up with an alternative perspective of, eh, yeah, this is what I'm thinking, but this is what I can think. And so now I have choices. Which one do I want to choose? So you're allowing yourself to giving yourself an option to choose. If you do it regularly and it becomes a habit, it becomes second nature to us. The moment that you judge, you're going to choose the one that's more positive because it makes you feel good. Stephen Matini: So it's a mental gymnastics, basically.  Michelle Kuei: Mm-hmm. Yep. Stephen Matini: And by the way, while you're talking, I'm comparing myself to you and I feel a bit of a loser. If I have to be honest, no, I don't do this. I'm not doing that. Not all the time, but you know. Michelle Kuei: You see, we're all equal. You know, our feeling is all mutual. You know, for me, it was my height. My height was driving me nuts. It was like, I wish I could be taller. I wish I could be prettier. You know, I wish I could be sexier. I wish I could wear this. You know, I can wear that. But, you know, at the end of the day, we all have some similar thoughts and idea around that. Oh, I wish I can talk like her. I wish I have her. Yeah, it's always like that. Stephen Matini: Last time, there was another, when we talked, there was another word that goes to my head that you mentioned, which is the notion of visibility. And I love the word. So what does visibility mean to you?  Michelle Kuei: Visibility means that you're showing up and being an authentic self. I know it's an overused word, but you know it's about showing up and just genuinely being who you are. And you know what's interesting is a lot of people think that visibility, whether it's on social media or in person, it's about making yourself high up being perceived as someone who has the authority, someone who is celebrity. But in reality, visibility means that when you have an opinion or when you want to say something, you say it, what's on your mind without thinking that, you know, I'm going to make people feel offended. I'm going to you know making sure that I side with the popularity of the people pleasing side. Visibility is about being truly who you are, saying what's on your mind, telling people what you truly believe in. So you show up with value, authenticity, you show up with character, your voice, and your opinion. And you do it in a way that is going to elevate everybody. When I speak, whether it's in person or on social media, I always ask myself, what is the purpose of me talking? And if there's no purpose, then why am I still talking? I'm not teaching anybody. I'm not elevating people's consciousness or mindset, or it makes them feel better for their day, making their day, then why am I still talking? It sends off a message to me that when I'm visible, I'm going to show up with my character. I'm going to show up with my value. I'm going to show up with my belief. And all this becomes so loud and clear that you don't have to do anything else. People see you, people hear you, people recognize you for who you are. And it's just a natural thing for people who are just attracted to you. And so how do we use this is a lot of time, if you're a business owner, you can use the visibility of what I talked about, the character, the value, and how you're showing up, your voice, your opinion, your beliefs. This becomes your natural attraction, your client attraction mode. People attract to the people who they resonate with character, values, and beliefs. And so you become this natural attraction magnet that people just draw into you. It doesn't need to have any reason. People will just come to you. And if it's in a everyday activity and interaction, visibility becomes something that you simply living in your purpose. You're living with the intention of today, this is me. This is how I am. I am true to myself. This is what I believe in. And when everybody starts doing that, our whole world become a better world. And that is my goal. Stephen Matini: What if someone somehow did not have much of an understanding of her authentic self? You know, just I'm not sure who I am authentically. What could it be the first step to take to go in that direction? Michelle Kuei: The first step would be to hire a coach. What to start working with, Stephen .. Stephen: Who’s clueless!  Michelle Kuei: Who’s a little more advanced. The reason why people are not seeing their true authentic self or they don't know who they are is because there's a lot of that beliefs, that unconscious world that we have been conditioned to. We've been training schools to believe that we need to behave. We need to follow the agenda. We need to follow the classroom. We need to follow the society rule. We need to follow everybody else's rule. But underneath all the rules, the rules are created by people for people. But we're more than just the people. We have the soul. We have the body. We have the thinking. We have the superpower that's within that we don't even recognize that we have the superpower. And so if you take away all the conditioning, all the teaching, all the rules that we had to follow, it is up to you to decide who are you globally. I think the reason why we have so many different disasters and things and conflicts is because we forget our true identity. And so we find ourselves in this identity crisis. We have no idea why we're doing things for what we do. I really love Simon Sinek, his book, Start With Why. And when you find yourself in that identity crisis, I call it a crisis. If you don't know who you truly are, then you're in this identity crisis. You're just following everybody else's rule and that you believe that this is who you are. But in reality, you're so much powerful than what you believe in. And in order to recognize what you're capable of, you have to understand your why. Why are we here? Why are you here? What is your big mission? What is your big purpose? And some people are like, wait, what? You mean I have other purpose than going to a job? Yeah, you have bigger purpose than going to a job. Can you believe that? Yes. You have better, bigger purpose than going to be a husband, a wife, you know, a teenager who take your school bag and go into the school, you have bigger purpose. But you also have to do the lessons that the universe is showing you and teaching you. Because each time you learn those lessons, it's showing you a piece of who you are. We learn our values. We learn our characters. We learn all these from our life experiences. Stephen Matini: Michelle, how do you find out what lesson or lessons you're supposed to learn?  Michelle Kuei: I saw patterns in all the things that I have experienced. There was a period of time where I was in my 20s and you know in my twenties and thirties, I was like ready to be in the dating world, right? So I was trying out different dating apps. I went out a couple of dates with guys. And each time I go and I got rejected, I felt bad. I felt terrible. I felt miserable. I felt like there's something wrong with me. And this is why they don't want me. This is why they don't want to be with me. And initially, that was my thought. That was my idea. But when I started to see the reputation, repetition of people are rejecting because they're going after the physical, the physical appearance, the physical attraction. And what they made me realize was, OK, I don't have that. So that's what you want. Goodbye. That's not me. What I do have, I started to recognize what I do have. I have big heart. I'm always willing to give. Generosity was one of my big gifts to a lot of people, even in my business today. Generosity is something that I'm very proud of. And so I started to recognize the pattern of what people are showing me by rejection, by telling me that, oh, this is what I'm looking for. And this is what you're presenting. And this is what you don't have. I'm not going to say that at that moment, it was not hurtful. It was pretty hurtful. And I took a while. I was in my pity party. I had balloons. I had party hats on. I was in the full mode pity party. But then after that pity party, I started to recognize the fact that that may not be something that I have, but I have something else that others don't. And that's okay. So I'm going to embrace what I have and I'm going to stand proud of what I have. Stephen Matini: So it's about being mindful of patterns and things that repeat patterns and what they're trying to teach you. I agree. I call them whispers because they are all over the place. They are all around us, but you have to be aware of them. You know If you go too fast, if you're not that present, it's very difficult to see them because they're not super loud. They happen all the time, but I always sense they're kind of, you know, whispers, like very subtle sounds, you know, I believe that in your business, you specifically focus on empowering women. Why you decided to the women was your thing? Michelle Kuei: First of all, I'm a woman. And there's certain things that in a society as that we live today, there's still the community of women who do not get the same equality, who does not get the same treatment compared to the men, compared to all these other people on the top as a leadership. It's a very unfortunate and very sad moment for us to continue to work on, because the women's history has been over 100, I believe by now it's 105, 105 years, right? So we celebrated women's history. But over the last 100 years, women still remain to be somewhat, I know I'm going to say this and men are not going to like it. We still remain to be the minority in decision-making. So a lot of the important things that's being made on the top, women are still kind of like, here's your job, you do more, but this is what you're getting paid for, right? And so women, when they come home, not only do they have to do the job, they have to go home and take care of the family, there's still a lot of expectation out of women. But a lot of these women are very, very gifted and talented. Only if the society and the world give them an opportunity, a stage to show their expertise, to show their talent, the world would be a much better place. Coming from women, you know of course I'm going to say that. But I do believe that if we give women an equal opportunity with pay, with the opportunity, with the leadership, with the expertise that they're capable, they're demonstrating. If we treat everybody the same, then these women are going to move the world. They're going to change the world. So I have this vision in my business where I am that someone who may be a few steps before them, and I'm reaching to the top, almost to the top, I'm turning around and I'm holding on a chain, a woman. I'm holding on to one woman, and that woman is holding on to the next woman. So we create this human chain one person at a time. And I'm about lifting one woman up so that that woman can go out and create that ripple effect to make a change for anyone who's coming to her world. And so I chose women community because, first of all, I'm one of them. And when I was building my business, when I was in the world, I wanted to have a community of women where I share the same vision. I share the same energy. You know When we talk, it's like, you know we're having a pajama party. I know yours is pity party, but you know we're having a pajama party. And so it's a very different dynamic when we have a group of women together. I would say that a lot of men nowadays has become the minority on the contrary because the woman empowerment is like all over, right? So now people are looking at to the equality and diversity. But I think personally, I still have that affinity. It's my sisterhood. And we just need to find our tribe that we feel comfortable in supporting. And sisterhood is where I find my passion. It's where it lights me up, just thinking about them. It brings a smile to my face on a daily basis when I work with them. And so it's in the community that I chose to serve. Stephen Matini: So does your chain of women have space for a feminist guy like me?  Michelle Kuei: Absolutely. You are invited to our pajama party. You do have to put on your pajama. Stephen Matini: You know, I'm not a woman and I will never know what it feels to be a woman. So I can only, you know, listen. But I agree with you 100%. And I also do believe, and I sense that the future really needs female leadership for a bunch of different reasons. And you covered a lot of them. But yeah, there's something very distinct about being a woman that I believe the world needs right now. So I agree with you, you know, full heartedly.  Michelle Kuei: I believe the world needs everybody. And so earlier, I talked about the purpose, right? So every single one of us has a purpose. And no matter what gender you are or what identity you choose for yourself, the world needs everybody and everybody has a role in it. There's no exclusion. There's no inclusion. There's just us. There's just we, right? We're all in this together. And however that you decide to serve in this world, it's good because it's a purpose. You're serving your purpose. And that in itself, it's the ultimate goal of what the world needs to be. So no matter what identity that you choose, the world appreciate you. And that's more important. That's the belief that we need in this world. Stephen Matini: Yeah, and probably it's a way of being that we need. I know I call it feminist. I don't know what it is, but gender for sure historically has a huge weight. But it's a more distinctive way of being and showing up in the world with the people, you know, and all that. You know, of all possible directions that your career has taken, you have developed such a fond passion for marketing. Why marketing?  Michelle Kuei: Marketing makes me alive. I think I've been, my personality has always been, I'd like to be with people. I'd like to have conversation with people. So people are my people. And I find all ways to be with people in conversation. And marketing in the core of it is about having conversation. It's about building a relationship. It's about serving that person to exactly what that person needs. And you do that by understanding what that person is going through. And one of the things, I can't remember, it was this week or last week, I was talking about the core of what makes a good marketer or good coach being a good coach. And one of the essence of being a good coach is that you have to have empathy. Empathy is your superpower, both in coaching and both in marketing. Marketing relies on a lot of your empathy. You have to understand what your client is going through or your customer is going through in order to understand and meet what is it that they're looking for, what their need is so that you can create product, you can create services for that person. And so empathy is really your superpower. And I think empathy has been a big lesson for me to learn from my journey when I was very young. After the accident, I spent five years within a rehab center and I was exposed to a lot of different other children, other teenagers who experienced a similar trauma. And back then, we had a group of people who are experiencing polio. Back then in the '70s, there was an outbreak of polio in Taiwan, in Asia country. So a lot of these children, they're having polio. And so when I was exposed and saw what they have to go through, it taught me how to empathize with them. I may not look the same way, but I knew their struggle. I knew that, you know, being, bound on a wheelchair, you cannot reach to the top. And I knew just by interacting with them, I knew what it feels like. And so it was teaching me how to empathize with people who may look different, who feel different. And it taught me to recognize their emotion, their feelings, their limitation, and how I can help them to serve them, to make it easier for them, right? So I learned that skills at a very young age without recognizing that this is empathy. And so I took that lesson later on in life, and I was still practicing empathy along the way. And when I finally got into marketing, I was like, oh my goodness, this is exactly what I need in order to understand what my client is going through. In order to help them to see that your client is experiencing this, how can you position your service to help your clients? And so in other words, I wasn't just teaching them about marketing. I was teaching them how to empathize so that they can create the product and services that they can help their clients. Stephen Matini: We covered so many different things. All of them are really super, super important. If you have to point out, one, that somehow you believe a listeners should pay attention to, what would you say that is? Michelle Kuei: Permission. I think from what we have talked about today, it's really that permission to be vulnerable in a position or a permission to allow yourself, there's going to be days that totally doesn't make your day look great and you feel miserable. So the permission is to give yourself to have that moment, to OK, to put the balloon up, put your potty hat on, and have that pity party, but give you permission also to get into that moment of, I feel bad about myself, but I'm going to put on the time clock. I'm going to allow in the next five minutes to feel miserable. But after that five minutes, I'm going to take off my party hat and move on and think about what is the opportunity here? What do I need to learn? But permission is important because it allows us to reset and it allows us to bounce back. So just like the coil, you need to stretch, but you also need to allow it to go back to its original state so you can stretch further. Stephen Matini: Michelle, you are, to me, you are gigantic. So you feel huge. You feel immense. Thank you so much for all these insights and for your energy. I absolutely love it. Thank you.  Michelle Kuei: Thank you so much for having me. Even though this is our second time meeting each other, but I feel like I know you forever. Stephen Matini: Me too. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit breakfastwithstephen.substack.com

When we constantly prioritize others' expectations over our needs, we become mentally and emotionally exhausted, leaving little room to focus on what truly matters to us. In this episode of Pity Party Over we explore how embracing authenticity and purpose can lead to both personal and professional freedom, even in the face of fear and uncertainty. Our guest today is Selena Blackmore, an intuitive life and transformation coach who helps individuals reconnect with their life purpose. Selena spent nearly 20 years in the corporate world, constantly seeking new challenges. However, she ultimately felt unfulfilled by the persistent politics and lack of connection to her values, realizing her calling lay elsewhere. Having a personal conversation about meaning, freedom, and legacy is crucial, whether we decide to be independent professionals or continue in the corporate world. Being true to ourselves is more than just a career move—it’s a lifelong path of growth that helps us stay aligned with who we truly are. Listen to the episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Amazon Music, or your favorite podcast platform to learn how to become an authentic and emotionally engaging leader. Subscribe to Pity Party Over for more insightful episodes. Questions? Email Stephen Matini or send him a message on LinkedIn. TRANSCRIPT Stephen Matini: My first question for you is actually something that I see in a lot of people's eyes when I talk to them, you know, to professionals. At some point, you decided to become an independent professional. So how was the transition for you? What inspired you to make the leap? Because that's something a lot of people would love to do, but somehow never bring themselves to the point of doing it.  Selena Blackmore: Because I spent almost 20 years in corporate and a great company, and I moved around a lot in that space. So I had, I call it a luxury of having a very big company where even within that company, I could almost sort of redefine myself. So I would purposely, every two to three years, would go out and look for something different, something new, something I hadn't done before. I have, I would call probably a fairly I don't have low attention spans the right way, but I get bored quite quickly. So I get someone that I like learning and I like doing new things. So I felt like if I was in a job for two, three years, and I kind of I feel like I'm there now, I wouldn't kind of stay with it and be like, OK, let's just, you know, let's just enjoy the ride. I'd be like, no, I need to go and push myself out somewhere else. And it wasn't really like a conscious decision, I'm now going to set up my own company. I always knew since, you know, very early on that at some point I wanted to be independent, self-employed, and go into that direction. But I'd always thought it would be later in life when my children were older, etc. And it was just things that happened. So my position basically was there was a reorg. My position didn't exist anymore. And I spent three years doing different things in the company. And again, I had a luxury. This was a very it's a very good company, right? So I was allowed to go and try out different things. Again, new areas. And I just felt the same things were coming out that just they weren't aligning with me. So it was just the same things that this thing is still bugging me. You know, it's still the politics, or it's still this, or it's still that. And there was just a moment when I was like, you know, why not just go for it? And when I decided to make the move, I didn't have a big plan. It wasn't like I had a detailed business plan. I hadn't got it all figured out. It was very much a hard decision of this is try. What's the worst that can happen? I guess I kind of went into it thinking, you know, worst case scenario, if it doesn't work out, I can just go get a job again. And I just knew I didn't want to stay in that company. So I just thought, well, let's go. Let's go try. And I have to admit that I am a bit of a risk taker, so I am someone that probably does take risks in life. I think I also just had a sense of trust. It will work itself out. Or even if it doesn't, that's also okay. So I kind of went in feeling kind of open to however it turns out. Stephen Matini: Back at the time, did you sense that there was something missing from your corporate life that you needed to find that somewhere else?  Selena Blackmore: Absolutely. I think someone said beautifully, becoming independent is like the biggest journey of personal growth disguised as work or disguised as a job. And I think that's really true. I think what I was missing in my corporate world was the connection to me. So I was very lucky towards the end of that time. I was working with leadership development, so I was getting more closer to the work, I think, that was more attuned to me naturally. But I think I was just missing where I could really feel my values connecting. So, you know, my purpose in life is to serve others and support others. And I was kind of missing that I didn't really feel I was being able to do that. Or it was it felt superficial. It didn't feel real. And I think what I was missing sometimes was, even though the purpose we were working towards was was a great purpose, a fantastic purpose, I felt people were losing sight of that. So there was a lot of, you know, people got lost in the politics and wanting and looking good and all that stuff that goes on in these big companies and kind of lost sight of the purpose of why are we here? And I think I just got to a point and said, no, I want to I really want to work with people and companies and businesses that are really aligned with their purpose and still have that clearly, clearly in front of them, because it just matches more with my my values as well. Stephen: You pointed out two things that sometimes don't go hand in hand, which is you have the politics, the organizational politics and the ability of people to live their values and purpose. In your opinion, if you had stayed, hypothetically, is there something that could have been done in order to create a more authentic, driven purpose environment? Or this is just a dream that is impossible in organizations?  Selena Blackmore: So for me personally, absolutely. I think where I am now, and this is actually also the kind of work that I'm now engaging in, that I think that when you are, you can be aligned with your purpose and kind of living your truth, it matters where you are, but you can do that in different environments. And I think at the time, I wasn't a space where I knew how to do that, or maybe I didn't, you know, have the right people around me there to kind of help me find how to do that. But I think, absolutely, I think finding your truth or finding your purpose may change where you're working, or it may shift, you know, exactly what you're doing, but it also may not. Because I think a lot of it's around really, when you feel that sense of being comfortable with what you do, and it's really like, you know, this is really me. This is why I wake up every morning, and I feel super excited about being me and going out there and doing work and helping others, whatever my purpose is, just that energy in itself when you're bringing it into the space you're going in, whatever that work looks like, or that job or that career, I think you can absolutely be in your purpose. From my experience with working with a lot of people and also my space of coaching, I think people feel, as you said, this is often a conflict. And I think it can be brought together. Obviously, you can only own you, right? So I think you can decide how much work you're going to put in into yourself and how you want to show up. You're going to have less control on what's going on outside. So I think you also have to be okay with you're not going to be able to maybe, you know, you can't change the other people. You're not going to necessarily change the organization. But I'm of course a big believer in like, you know, the ripple effect. So if you start showing up differently, if you start maybe bringing different energy into meetings or how you connect with people or how you lead, that will have a ripple effect on others as well. Stephen Matini: Have you ever seen the level of authenticity in your corporate experiences in someone that openness? Have you ever witnessed it? Selena Blackmore: Yes, I have. After a couple people there was so there was one person I was working in in leadership development. He was heading that group. It was so different to anything else I'd experienced in that organization. And I had moved a lot. And the organization had also transitioned a lot since when I started, also in terms of how, you know, people were being treated and how people, the expectation of how people should show up. But he just said what he thought and shared his truth. And what I specifically really respected, that he didn't care whether it was the CEO of the company, or it could have been the cleaning lady. So the way he showed up and shared his truth, he had no, he wasn't he was anti-political. So there was no like, Oh, you can't say that to that person. He was like, Well, I mean, why not? Why is that person worth more than this person? And he really lived that. He really lived that. It's hard to be like that. I think it's not easy. So I think, again, as a person to really show up like that, yeah, it takes a lot of inner strength and inner work. And I think also the awareness that, you know, you're not necessarily going to be liked by everyone. And I think it's letting go of the sense of, you know, this is going to be challenging for some people and being OK with that. And again, he wasn't he was quite open about I'm not here to be liked. I'm here to create change. I'm here to ask the difficult questions and to kind of, you know, put the elephant on the table and kind of be like, what are we talking about? And I really admire that. He's still one of my big inspirations in that company. Stephen Matini: What you just said, it must be probably the main reason why I am an independent professional, because of the luxury, the beauty of being able to create a space with people in which you can be yourself. In all these years, working with different so many people, thousands of people, from CEOs, managers, you name it, I haven't seen a single time, a moment in which people with me in that some sort of sacred space didn't feel comfortable to be themselves. And I love that because it's a space of possibilities in which people can really think. And fun enough, sometimes in that space, I have people that normally within the organization may have some difficulty of being transparent, but then when you create that bubble, people can be that. So I really wish that there was some easier way for everyone because people really suffer tremendously as a result of politics.  One thing that I often investigate with people as you do is their sense of purpose. So it seems to be a gigantic question, like, you know, the meaning of life. How would you make it simpler for people? What would it be a first step to get a sense of who the heck you are? What is your purpose?  Selena Blackmore: I'm actually going to share something that I just an experience I had yesterday. So I had a beautiful experience yesterday, where I was with a group of women, and it was kind of a mixed sort of art manifestation, sort of vision purpose workshop. So basically, you had you had a beautiful dinner, and then you kind of did a painting that represented just what you said, kind of what is your purpose? What's your goal for the year or your purpose? The lady that was running it, she the way she got us to introduce ourselves, which I found very profound, is she said, I want you to answer the question, Who are you? Sounds like a simple question. But then she said, but I don't want you to use your name. I don't want you to say, you know, how old you are, you know, how many kids do you have? Are you married? What is your job? What are your hobbies? Nothing that defines you kind of that we associate, we associate we create these associations, right? Well, I'm, you know, I'm single with three kids, I'm married with two, or, you know, I do this job. So leave that all away. And who are you as a person? Who are you? So who is who is Stephen? Who is Selena? And it was such a profound question and really made me sit back and I think I was like, I don't know if anyone's ever asked me to basically describe myself like that. And it's a very simple question. And I think starting with simplicity to really start thinking about who am I? Who am I as a person without all the external stuff going on is a fantastic way to really start doing exactly what you said, to really start checking into ... who am I? And then I think leading on to that is something also like, how do I want to show up for myself? I think again, and I'm sure you're familiar with this, particularly within kind of the coaching space, a lot of people, you know, want to focus up like, how do I show up as a partner? How do I show up as a parent? How do I show up as work, you know, to my family, to my friends? And these are all great questions, right? I think these are all good things to be thinking about. But I think a lot of us don't start with how do I want to show up for myself? And really kind of consciously kind of tapping into thinking about who am I? And then how do I want to show up for me? Because would you start starting from there, that's going to then automatically or the other spaces where you're going to show up, it's going to be much easier. That's going to be more in flow, because you're going to know who you are, what your essence is, you know what your purpose is. And then automatically, that will start flowing and also how you show up. It's actually a really hard question to answer, but it can be as simple as asking a question. And then, you know, you might not know. You might be like, actually, I have no idea who I am. And that's great, right? That's also good. Then, you know, but it started that process, you know, in your head and your heart. So you might then, you know, on that run or in the shower or drawing a paint, whatever you do to maybe connect in with yourself, you may then be thinking about that and then have an aha moment to be like, Oh, maybe it's not. I'm also a big fan of journaling. I don't know if you journal, Stephen? Stephen: I do.  Selena Blackmore: Oh, that's fantastic. I love journaling. I've made it really my morning, my morning ritual. And I think journaling is also a great way, right? So even just writing things down that come up to you can help you sort of really think about these kind of questions. Who am I? How do I want to show up? Even asking yourself that question every morning and writing it down. And again, no judgment. There's no right or wrong. It's just what feels right to you. And then maybe things come up that you never expected or never thought about. And that's the exciting part of getting to know yourself, right, and kind of transforming. And I mean, I'm 43 now. I'm turning 44 this year, and I feel like I'm only really starting to get to know who the real me is. And I spent a long part of my life thinking or pretending to be something maybe wasn't quite me. And now I'm like, oh, no, actually, this is actually what I think I really am. And I think it's a lifelong journey. I think until we our last breath, I think it's the journey of getting to know yourself is one of the best investments I think you can do in terms of relationships that I think will have huge impact on all the other relationships you have in your life. Stephen Matini: When you made this commitment of being really authentic with yourself and decided to go, you know, to be independent professionals, what was the reaction of people around you where they are supported, where they are critical? Did you get crap? Selena Blackmore: So there was a mix. And I should maybe add that when I made the choice to go independent, that the timing was really off, right? I was quite freshly divorced. I had I have three children, a single parent, and the divorce was financially not good for me. So I was kind of kind of financially starting against the timing really wasn't good. It wasn't like, this is a smart financial, smart decision to kind of go out there and kind of put your family into risk. So there were some people that were basically like, are you sure? I think I didn't get I didn't get crap from anyone. I think no one was anywhere to my face. I put it that way. I don't know what they said behind closed doors. There probably were quite a few stuff like, Oh my God, what is she doing? So I did have people that were just you could tell like, are you sure? Again, the company I left, it's a well known company. I've been there a long time. The pay is very good. You know, I have really good paid jobs. So I was losing leaving, in theory, something very secure to go to something completely not secure and quite random. And there was kind of no plan to that. So there are definitely people that were just like, what are you doing? People closest to me, and one of my oldest friends we've known since like 13, she was probably I always say she's my biggest cheerleader. So she was definitely like, Oh my God, this is fantastic. You've got this. This is so right.  And during all my time now, and I think as you know, any any person who's taken the leap to be independent, you know, it's not all fairy lights and sunshine, right? It's a bit of a rollercoaster. So you're going to have good times, you're going to have lots of good times. And she's a fantastic cheerleader. So there's been times when I've been like, oh, I'm not doing this anymore. This is too hard. And she's like, no, you've got this and hang in there. And I think having cheerleaders in your life is super important. You need to have those people. You don't need to have like a whole like a whole cheerleading team, but just having one or two is super critical. And Germany was interesting. So a lot of people were just kind of said, oh, you're very brave. So it's kind of like you're a little bit crazy, or you're very brave, or you're kind of both. But I was interested. A lot of people were actually quite positive in terms of like a bit of a sense of, as you mentioned before, like, oh, wow, I'd love to do that. Like, that's almost a little bit, I'd love to do that, but I don't feel safe enough to do that. Or people often share their ideas like what they'd like to do. But yeah, but, you know, the kids are small, or I'd be nervous about, you know, how it would work. So it was more positive than negative. Again, to my faith. What I've also learned is particularly when you're working on new ideas and they're not quite formed yet, to be a little bit careful with who you share them with as well. I think that's something I've learned, you know, sharing with your cheerleaders, right? Because they're going to be like, yeah, absolutely, you know, go for it. This sounds amazing, or it sounds great, but maybe adjust, they'll be honest with you. But be careful, you don't share with too many, because I think people can also pull you down energetically or also be kind of like, Oh, are you sure? And, you know, and yeah, if it's not going well, maybe just look for another job or, you know, do this. And that's not necessarily what you're needing to hear. So I've learned to be more careful with who I share certain things with. And yeah, definitely get make sure you have a couple of cheerleaders in there because we all need them and do it yourself as well, right? So I always then try and be a cheerleader for those around me too. Because I personally think anyone can set up their own business or become an entrepreneur or do their own thing. And interesting, if you look at it generationally, I think there are more and more younger people that are actually doing this, right? So I think it's the younger generations coming through seem to just have more of this sense of trust or like, you know, I'm going to try it and see what happens. And I think, yeah, maybe people more in my or our generation are still like quite risk adverse. But yeah, I mean, I think anyone can. I think you have the vision and you have the motivation and your hearts in it. I mean, why not? I think that's when we start going out, distracting ourselves, right? We start going out, finding external things to try and feel because it gives you that feeling of there's always something missing. And I think I mean, I did that, right? There's that sense of something missing, and then you'll distract yourself with working too much or, you know, doing excessive, like people that, you know, do excessive sport or whatever it is you do, you know, or, you know, change relationships a lot. You'll find your search for external ways of trying to fill that gap, because it's not a nice feeling, right? And at some point, you might realize that nothing's going to fill that gap, right? Because that gap has to be filled by you and you looking inwards and kind of connecting. When you lose a lot in a short space of time, it makes you realize, you know, everything is just so in the moment, right? What we have now could disappear very, very soon. I mean, I lost my dad when I was 25, so I lost him quite young. And then I had a period when I kind of, you know, separated with my husband, worked myself into a burnout, got divorced. And then I actually also lost my mom when I was five months pregnant with my daughter. And she was similarly she was my rock. Like, she was my she was my everything. I mean, my mom was literally like my best friend. She was in and out of my house all my time. You know, she was helping my kids. And I lost like this, this like rock in my life. While I was five months pregnant, she never got to meet my daughters. I have two boys and a girl. She never got to meet my daughter. And, you know, there's a point when you're like on your knees, you're just like, this is I can't, you know, and you can take it because I also believe that life puts obstacles in front of you that you can deal with. But and there are opportunities for growth. But at the moment, it's really hard. But when you get through that, when you grow through that, I do believe it takes away a lot of that sense of being scared of maybe smaller things, because when you've kind of lost everything that defines you, and I remember when I was in the burnout, and I felt like I failed on my marriage, I failed at my job, everything that I felt defined me as a person, and you're left with nothing. You're like stripped bare. It's very humbling. It's a humbling experience, right, where you really need to think about, okay, well, what am I then? I think that was really the first one of the first nudges when I had to start thinking about, well, who am I? You know, if I'm not, you know, this family unit that I wanted to be, I'm not the successful corporate person that I thought I was, and that kind of taking that step back or being forced to take that step back and reevaluate who am I is humbling. But it does, as you said, help you to maybe take more high risk decisions later on, because you're like, well, I've lost it all. So as you said, what's the worst that can happen? And I think, you know, I'm the most grateful every day for my health, because I think health is just the utmost thing we can have. And for the health of my children and my loved ones, and everything else is just cherry on the top, right? I mean, if we're healthy, if we can wake up every day and we're healthy, we can move our bodies, then everything else is, it's the sprinkles and the fairy dust that adds to our lives. Stephen Matini: And even now, when I think about what is the worst possible thing that it can possibly happen to me, whereas before, it was a lot of fear. And now I think, oh, wow, that would be really, really hard, but I'm going to live it. I'm going to experience it no matter what that is, you know, because that's really, that really is what makes me alive. So I think for me, it was a lot of trying to avoid, you know, that pain. And it's something you cannot avoid because inevitably life brings you that. So ... Selena Blackmore: yeah, and then it's beautiful. Thank you for sharing that because it just makes me think of when you said we're trying to avoid pain. And it's also a lot of it's what we have in our heads, right? So we create this, we create this. I'm going to say fake reality. And I know because I used to do this all the time. I mean, when I was a child, I was this huge worry. I'd worry about anything and everything that could ever happen. I had quite high anxiety as a child. And we create these like stories in our head about everything that's going to happen. And we tend to default to the negative, right? So, you know, you get an email from your boss that just said, oh, can we meet? You know, can we meet in half an hour? And you don't have a meeting plan. And automatically, I had to go, have I done something wrong? Why do they want to see me? Well, you know, oh my God, have I not done something? And you go to all the things instead of like, you know, my manager wants to check in with me. And I'm really looking forward to it. So I feel we default very quickly to the negative and create these stories about, you know, all these terrible things that can happen, I still catch myself doing this. And then after you're like, Oh, okay, you know, it wasn't. And I personally say, I find it's actually really hard work to consciously like stop yourself from doing that, to really work in, you know, being in the present and be like, No, I'm here now, because the future is not is not reality, right? Because it hasn't happened. It's just in our heads of what we've created. This avoidance of pain or, you know, being being left, you know, the sense of lack of something. Again, it's not real. It's just what we are telling ourselves with this story we're creating in our head. And I think we're finding ways of whether it's, you know, through mindfulness, meditation, or whatever, journaling, lots of different ways of really helping yourself to be more in the present. I'm a big believer in breath work. So you know, kind of like breathing. If you're feeling, as you said, you said beautifully, you learn to feel more in your body. Where am I feeling anxiety? Is it my chest, my heart, my stomach, and breathe into that? And that can that can have huge shifts. I mean, just it can be simple things. I think people sometimes think, Oh, I need to meditate every day for half an hour, and I don't have time for that. You don't, you don't. I don't have time to meditate every day for half an hour. But it can be just literally sitting and breathing for like a minute, 30 seconds, breathing into the ocean and then letting that go and then being like, OK, now I'm ready. And I'm going to go on. And as he said, I'm going to go forth into it. And I think releasing that sense of all that worry in your head, finding spaces where you can connect to you, I think is such a pivotal practice in embracing, you know, who you are. And as you said, going through the emotions, because they're all there for a reason. I mean, fear is a good thing, right? We have fear for a reason. I mean, fear, we have fear millions of years ago. We need to have fear to survive, right? We need to when we had to run away from the Sabertooth tigers and, you know, whatever else is trying to eat us, basically. So I've had to do a lot of work with embracing my fear and basically saying to my fear, thank you for being there. You've kept me safe in situations that could have been dangerous for me. You've kept me safe and I could have, you know, done stupid things or hurt myself. But there are going to be times when I just don't need you. So again, it's I think the sense of and I love how you describe it, letting all the emotions be a part of you, because as soon as you reject something, the way the universe usually works, it's going to throw it back in your face, right? I mean, it's like, even you drive, I don't want to have fear or I don't want to feel pain. It's like, yeah, okay, we know you don't, but you're going to get it. And then usually what happens is that you're going to attract more of it until you decide to have a look at it. So learning to love all your emotions goes back to what we discussed is, you know, who you are and showing up as yourself and loving yourself, right? I think falling in love with yourself more, which is, I think, again, something we're not used to doing. It's really hard for us to love ourselves, truly. And something, this is my lifelong mission. I think I will be doing until the end is really working on, you know, loving myself and loving me. Stephen Matini: You know, if you can be of any consolation, because you are still so young, bear in mind that when you pass 50, that feeling becomes even deeper. Yeah. Selena Blackmore: Oh, so I'm excited now. So now I can look forward to that. Thank you. Stephen Matini: Yeah, like, you know, when I when I turned 40, I thought, oh boy, I thought I knew something at 30 now, you know, and it was really in 40s, I think a wonderful. But now, you know, my 50s, it's almost like you tear apart another layer, another layer, another layer, like everything, anything you're saying, it becomes even much more so, you know, so you'll see.  Selena Blackmore: I'm excited now. Thank you. You've helped me look forward to me turning 50. Yeah, it's funny, isn't it? Because if I think back when I turn 30, you kind of think, oh, I've got to all fit it out now, right? And you're just like, no, you don't. But it's funny how you go through those stages of thinking like, you know, you've got you have this image in your life, image of how you want your life to be, and you set it up that way. And then, yeah, you realize that it's maybe not. And that's good. I think it's good. It's part of your part of the learning curve, right, of experience yourself in different stages. Stephen Matini: It does. And for me, being free is such an important thing. Being free means a lot of stuff. It means exactly what you said, like, have a sense of who I am, enjoy my life. And as time goes by, I do see the freedom becoming more and more and more. So I think it's a beauty probably of aging. Certain things, unfortunately, you just do not know when you're younger. But as you age, you have that. It's difficult for all of us to age, but the understanding and the, I don't know, awareness that you have, it becomes so much richer for sure. As a result of all this transformation, how do you define success these days?  Selena Blackmore: Very differently to probably actually even five years ago or a couple of years ago, even actually no, even since to when I started my business, it's changed, evolved a lot. I think for me, success now is being able to really live my truth. So do follow my purpose, be able to live that, be able to do that every day, and kind of make that also how I earn my money. So kind of, you know, make that into also how I attract abundance into my life. And also, for me, success is, and you touched on it. I think having a having a clearer sense of what's really important to me in life, that makes sense. So I think when I was younger, I was probably I haven't been super driven by money. Money's not been super motivated for me, but I think I was much I was used to be more driven by kind of position and role. And I definitely have, you know, I was quite driven about where I wanted to go career wise. And I think now it's one of my I say my biggest luxury I have now is time, like time has become so important to me. You know, time I have with my children, time I have with my friends, time I have with me. It's like I spent a long time of my life where I put myself really far back behind everyone else. And I feel now I'm really starting to change that balance. There needs to be a balance, right? So just time is a huge definition of success for me. And as you said, you know, the sense of freedom. So I feel it's a huge luxury that I can have time for me. I'm not in this kind of nine to five space where I have to be somewhere and take part in seven hours of meetings a day. But I really can, you know, choose the people I want to work with, choose the spaces I want to work with, work in, and just be authentic. Yeah, be authentic to me, live my truth, be authentic to me. And in that also could follow my purpose to serve, to serve others. And time, yeah, time is a huge definition of success for me now, because it's a huge luxury. When you're in the hamster wheel of work, you underestimate it because you're just kind of in it. And once you step out, and I think that was a big thing also, when I have my burnout, is once you're out of it, all of a sudden, you're like, Oh, wow, oh, there's something else. This is also kind of cool. I think it's something that I still see, particularly from a lot of my friends and social circle there, a lot of them are both working parents and with children and, you know, jobs that take quite a lot out of them. And there's always this constant sense of stress and rush and this and that. And I feel really privileged that I've been able to step back out of that and just give myself more space, give my family more space, give those around me more space. Because again, it goes back to that, how do I want to show up? And if I want to show up as being true and present for people, and if I'm constantly stressed and constantly running from here and there and there, you know, I'm not going to show up with the best version of me. Stephen Matini: When people, our listeners are going to listen to this episode, if there's someone that feels not quite authentically herself, you know, feels a sense of misalignment. Where would you say they should pay attention to? Where should they start in order to create the better alignment? Selena Blackmore: I think it's a very individual journey. And I think that's what I find so kind of exciting about working with people is that people are very different stages or very different spaces. And I think it's also very important, as you know, with the coach, you know, you need to really pick them up where they're at, right? There's no point going out there and telling, "Okay, you need to do all this big stuff?" And they're just not there yet. I mean, as I said, you can start with simple things. If someone's already started asking themselves the question, or they've already noticed, you know, something doesn't feel right, and they've already started asking themselves the question, what is it? You know, what we talked about earlier, who am I? How do I want to show up? They've already kind of planted that seed. I don't, do you know, do you know Gabby Bernstein? Stephen Matini: No. She's written several books and a lot of work around manifestation, and she talks about the power of planting a seed. And I love this analogy. So it's almost the second you kind of start putting that out there, planting that seed in you, and again, as you mentioned, not just from in your head, but also in your heart, in your body, in your emotions, that's starting to create momentum. And I think it's like starting, if you spark that seed and start to create that momentum of energy, you're already doing it. And that's why I think a lot of people underestimate you're already starting to do the work. People often feel like they need to fill in a form, or they need to do something, or they need to like, you know, go to a workshop or do X, Y, Z to start the process. But the process starts from when you've actually started recognizing, I need to change something, or something doesn't feel right, or, you know, every time this happens, I feel this thing, or I'm getting sick all the time when I do this, for example, that's already putting momentum into the energy of your inner journey, right, to recognize, what do I need to do? And then I think to take it from there, it can be a variety of things, right? It can be array of beautiful, wonderful coaches, therapists, workshops. I'm a great believer in also when you sow the seed, kind of putting that energy out there and asking for what needs to come to me to come to me. So almost rather than worrying about, okay, but what coach should I take? And what will be the right therapy? Because again, we go back into that head of, what if I don't find the right person? And I don't know what I need, but just say, you know, I want someone to help me with this, or I would like some guidance, and then let that go. And I swear, because it's happened to me so many times, it will come to you, right? You'll either Google the right person, or you'll bump into a friend, and they'll be like, Oh, you know, I know someone, you know, Stephen’s a great coach, you know, you should get in touch with him. Or, you know, if you think about even how we got connected, right? I mean, that was through someone we both know, someone who I worked with, you know, about over four years ago, I haven't, you know, seen for a long time. So there are constant nudges out there. So it's a sense of just letting that go and seeing what comes to you and being open, and then the right people will come to you. It's important to be open. That's why I go back to that. If you're too much in your head about worrying about the right coach, the right therapist, the right, what you should be doing, it will block it. But yeah, I think it's the work started from when you first recognize that there's something to be done. So you're already doing it. Be compassionate with yourself, right? I mean, again, give yourself a pat in the back that you're even exploring this, because there are so many people out there that just aren't. And again, there's no judgment, but just aren't doing this yet. And the fact that you're even thinking or exploring what else is there, you know, who you are, why something doesn't feel aligned, that's already amazing. They're already doing that's already amazing. So be compassionate with yourself and be kind and say, Hey, wow, you know, I'm already doing something, because we're hard on ourselves. I try and be compassionate with so many people. And I had a coach once say to me, like, you don't leave any compassion for yourself. Where's your compassion part in that in that? And I think it's, yeah, we need to be a little bit give ourselves a bit more self love. Stephen Matini: In addition to what you said, I agree with you 100% in terms of where to start, one thing that I've learned over the years is to seek the help of people that have been there, that have done that, that have a lot of experience. Yeah, I think I owe a lot to amazing mentors and coaches and professionals that provided that. I call it the craftsmanship, you know, the experiences. They really helped me taking so many shortcuts in many, many different ways, rather than having to experience every single possible thing myself. And so for that, because you have been through that, I think people should talk to you because you know how it feels, you know, you know how it feels. You know how difficult it is. So people should get in touch with you. Selena Blackmore: They’re more than welcome to. They're more than welcome to. But I agree. I think authenticity of the people you speak to is very important. And it also probably depends a little bit on if there's a certain area in your life you really want to work on, right? It could be whether it's, you know, more with parenting, you know, relationship with children, relationship with partners, work yourself. But again, that's what I think I was I meant before. I think if you put it out there, you'll attract those people that will have that experience or have that space that will help you. And I think it's also the experience, but also inspirational. As I mentioned, this great art and manifestation workshop we did, I was able to be part of it was just inspiring. It's just a lot of inspiration of talking to people, as you said, that being through the same. And there's a sense of automatic connection and that sense of presence that it disconnects you as well. And I think it helps you to kind of grow from that. So absolutely. I think we should there's so much knowledge and love and learning from people around us, and we don't tap into enough. I think there's a lot more out there and we don't tap into enough. It's a huge space where we can get better in as a community in the world is tapping more into the people around us. Because I think there's a lot more out there that we realize. Stephen Matini: Selena, I've learned a lot today. Thank you for sharing with me your authenticity. Thank you very much. Selena Blackmore: Thank you so much. It's been such a pleasure. Thank you, Stephen. Thank you. It's been great. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit breakfastwithstephen.substack.com

Dr. Fateme Banishoeib is a visionary in organizational development. She blends analytical prowess with poetic sensitivity to craft innovative work cultures through storytelling and creative methodologies. Dr. Banishoeib underscores the transformative power of cultivating empathy, care, and creativity within workplace environments. She highlights how facilitating open discussions enables teams to tap into diverse perspectives and insights, leading to more innovative solutions and inclusive decision-making processes. When leaders shift from focusing solely on metrics to considering employees' emotional and psychological needs, workplace satisfaction, resilience, and engagement improve. Listen to the episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Amazon Music, or your favorite podcast platform to learn how to become an authentic and emotionally engaging leader. Subscribe to Pity Party Over for more insightful episodes. Questions? Email Stephen Matini or send him a message on LinkedIn. TRANSCRIPT Stephen Matini: Like me, you have two different cultures essentially that have inspired your life. And then both of us have moved around quite a bit. So when people ask you, where's home, what do you say? Fateme Banishoeib: I don't actually have an answer to that. And I have to tell you something. I have to confess a secret, which is not that of a secret. One of the reason why I have traveled so much I lived everywhere in the world is actually because I don't know where home is. I've come to the conclusion that home is a feeling is not a place. And when I find myself into that feeling or when I can recreate that feeling, then I know that I'm at home. I've been confused most of my life about where home is. I was interviewed. There is a video in which I actually talk about home and where home is, and on top of my bed actually have a, a beautiful painting of the world. And Maya Angelou said what she said something like, freedom is being at home everywhere. It is true. And it comes with a price. So I don't know where home is. Home is wherever my cat is. Stephen Matini: So in terms of your professional choices, you know, growing up kind of understanding where I should go with my professional career, how much these two backgrounds that you have have influenced the way you think? Fateme Banishoeib: Work or career wise is a similar journey. I've embraced the same journey as I embrace like traveling and looking for, for home everywhere till I made home for myself. The same happened for my career. I think in our first conversation I mentioned to you that I was born a highly artistic child, but of course art is not a job or is considered a frivolous hobby. So my parents were, every time I would say, I want to be a poet, I want to be a designer, they were like, no, no, no, no . As soon as I became a little bit, you know, older that I couldn't understand, they were like no, no, no, no, that's not really a job. What do you really want to do to earn a living? And another thing I would say is I want to be a crazy scientist. And I literally use those words, crazy scientist. So actually they convinced me that art is not a job and in some way they are right in the sense that to be an artist is a way of being. And this is what I do currently now, and I can talk about that a little bit more. So I became a scientist and I became a scientist really for the deep love have for science and understanding how we work as a human being. And also for the love of curing people that I've always been passionate about curing people since I was a little child. I mean, there are memories and stories in the family of me. Every time I would hear someone saying, oh, I haven't headache or whatever, I cut my finger. I would just run and I would make up something and I would create something to cure them. And I've said that. And I've also written about, in my first book in the Whisper, I literally wrote this word like I became a scientist to cure people and wrote poetry to save my life. And this has happened to me literally what saved my life as being really rediscovering poetry in my life. Once I have become aware of that artist within me again that was just there maybe dormant and and sleep as I was, you know, busy with my corporate career, I actually start seeing the world with very different highs. And I started wanting to be all I am and not just the scientist or just the artist actually I get equally upset or equally triggered when someone refers to me only as the scientist or you know, the executive, the mentor or the artist. I really want to be all of them because I am and all of them. And I've spent the past years in my life trying to bring harmony and an equilibrium between all of these facets. And that's how I redesigned my career. That's when I founded Renew Business. And when I decided that there was place for all of I am, I didn't need to, you know, take a break from my corporate job to paint or I didn't need to whatever. To me, there is no switch. We can only be all of who we are. And that has changed not only what I do, but also how I perceive life by that, how I can support or help others. For example, there are occasions in which someone calls for my help for very specific or technical tasks. However, I do not forget that I'm an artist. I do not forget there is border within me. I do not forget that sensitivity. I do not forget that way of seeing things. And one of the remark that people always make is like, do you see those things? How do you come? And to me it's surprising because it is like why isn't the same for you? And after all, I actually really think that the quality of what we do, whatever it is, that what we do depends on the quality of who we are. I'm trying to be everything I am. Stephen Matini: A lot of people can distinctively perceive it. There's more sides to themselves. They have multiple interests, multiple talent. And somehow so many people feel compelled that I have to choose, you know, whichever route. And that creates a lot of stress to people because it always feels, as you said, what about all the other parts of myself? When did you realize that your, who comprised the scientist and the artist? Fateme Banishoeib: Well, I've always known what I did not know and took me longer. Also because society and the su and education don't help us understand that we can have different interests and we, if we want, we can pursue all of them or some of them. I mean, we live in a society and an education that really pushes us to specialize in something. And there are people who are very happy with doing that. They only have a passion or something. So it's a, so-called like growing vertically or in a, or specializing, going deep into something. And there are people like me who can go deep in different sectors, in different areas, in different backgrounds. What I actually like to think is that we can act as a bridge between domains that apparently look like so separate and so different very often actually make this example which helps people understand especially when they ask me like, but what the chemist and the poet have in common. And I always say them, well, the seeking the, this love for seeking truth. When I was a chemist in the lab and now when I write poems, that's what I seek. And there is a peculiar, maybe a little bit pot poetic metaphor that is brilliant alchemy is combining the elements that could be material elements, molecules, atoms or experience feelings and making something that didn't exist before. And in that I only act as a bridge. So I've always known, I just had to unlearn what society, people or conditioning had told me that it was not possible and create it, make it possible for me. But I've always known Stephen Matini: Was there an event or something that happened in the past that this somehow pushed you to realize that meaning you have always known, but then a moment you made the decision to fully embrace this, who it was, was a result of something to happen. Fateme Banishoeib: My book, the Whisper knows exactly what I will be saying right now because I actually wrote it in the book. It was few years back out of the blue. I decided while I was still in my corporate job and I wasn't even thinking about writing or anything artistic at that moment, I decided out of the blue I wanted to go to a writing retreat. And that was a particularly challenging moment in my life. It was very tough. I'd moved to a new country. I didn't have any network. And there were several events in my life that actually had tested me quite a lot, really out of this desire of taking a break and just do not think about how crazy and chaotic my life was. I booked myself into a writing retreat. It was not too far from where I was, just out of the blue was a synchronicity. One of those synchronicity, even though, you know, Karl says, and even Julia Cameron said, the synchronicity do not exist. Coincidence do not exist. So I booked myself into that. And I remember this was very distinctive at the opening of the retreat, the facilitator asked us, write something nobody knows about you. And this became after the opening line of my book without thinking, I just came out of me without any talks or consciousness about it. And I wrote, I run a manufacturing plant and I hate it. But I had not realized that at that specific moment I wrote it. But it was like, okay, still foreign to me as a concept. And then the retreat facilitator asked us, can you please read out loud what you have written? I remember the face of everyone when I read what I had written and my realization at that moment of the shock, not only me or everyone because I had to read it out loud. And in the meantime we were sitting in circle. I saw the shock in everyone's face. Well, I think they were more shocked by the fact that I wasn't the writer in that moment. They learned what was my job. I mean, we had no time to, you know, to introduce one another. That line became an unstoppable flow of poem. So actually I've written 200 pages of poems in one go. It came out as a stream, as a flow. And it took me a while to process and understand what came out of me. But that was the distinctive moment in which things were somehow put in motion. Of course, it took me a few years first to understand what I had written second to decide what I was going to do after I came into that awareness and then create a word, create a space for me to contain that multitudes. Stephen Matini: And now you bring the poet, you bring the crazy scientist, you bring the healer, you bring it to organizations. And so when you work with organizations, how do they react to your approach? Fateme Banishoeib: Okay, first of all, I have to say that when I'm called in, people know exactly what to expect. So there is this openness. I wouldn't be able to do my job in the way I do it if there was resistance. Of course people are like curious, they still want to experiments and then try. But when they call me and say, can you come and I help us or or me they're open to try something that maybe they haven't tried before. What I notice all the time is that there is deep desire of finding a space where someone or a team or is truly listened. There is this deep desire and I understand why. I mean we don't listen to others because we are too busy checking our phone, answering 20 mail or in the meantime talking, I'm talking especially specifically in corporate environments. We are always in the middle of something. Even when we are having a one-on-one with someone that is the phone ringing, the, the the sound, the notification of email comes. So we are not really listening. We are missing clues. And there is this deep desire from everyone, every single one to be listened. So first of all, I create the condition, first of all for me to listen. Without me listening to everything, I wouldn't be able to propose anything. But then for the organization to listen to itself or themself, because that's really missing. There is another element that is always missing, expressing being free and being safe to express what's going on inside. I mean, and I say this very often, neuroscience tells us specifically that first we feel, then we think and only afterwards we act and we completely up and neglect the feeling aspect. In best case scenario, we notice what we are feeling and we dismiss it and we push it and we repress it. Most of the time we don't even have a word to express what we are feeling. So there is actually a thinking and an action or a decision making that is happening completely in the blind without knowing what we are feeling. And when we don't know what we are feeling and we don't have a way to express it, forget about it, knowing what everyone else's feelings. So it's literally impossible. It's literally impossible to think clearly and act effectively. First of all, there is no such a thing as act effectively. But anyway, that, that's my personal opinion. So it's like trying to keep an equilibrium on two legs rather than, so we have a three-legged stool and we are trying to sit and trying to keep, you know, the equilibrium without using one one of the legs. And then of course then we blame the overthinking, the action taken without knowing the background. Yes, but the, what we don't know is not data. We are over flooded by data. What we don't know is the feeling. And even when we know we don't have a way to express it, most of the time we go into shaming or oppressing or denying judging in a series of things. So that's the the second element I always bring. So is the listening, then the space to express, then it becomes clearer. And so I asked again as a bridge, as I said before, for people to walk that bridge and go in the direction they really want to go or an organization in direction, they really, they really want to go. But people will say in a more informed way, I would say in a more aligned way because it's about aligning. How do we align if we are blindsided by something? So this is what happens and it can happen in different contexts, in different modalities, but this is more or less what happens in, you know, in a generic way. Stephen Matini: What is it about feelings and emotions that when we finally let them be or at least listening to them, somehow everything becomes clear. Why does it work that way? Fateme Banishoeib: I don't know why, but I have a feeling there is this thing, and I mentioned this word, there is truth coming in. Once we realize and we are free to express it or we even find a way to express, and when I say express, I don't say necessarily using words, but most of the time because it's not linear, it's not logic, it doesn't involve the logic side of the brain very often is an image, a sensation, a sound and something. So we find a way to use art and is not really used in the terms of exploiting. But really to tap into art, to be able to see, okay, what's the that, what's the fabric? What's the extension of whatever I'm feeling or whatever we are feeling, what's our, what are the boundaries? So once we have clarity what we are feeling, we find the courage, we really find the courage to look in the eyes. So we know for example, why tension is Avis. We cannot deny it anymore. And once we know it's very easy to, or maybe not easy, but simpler to talk about it, I've seen over and over again that's even in the worst conflict I had to deal with that when people had found the safety of expressing whatever they were feeling without any judgment and without anyone saying, no, you shouldn't feel that way or you should feel this way or that way is an expression. And when it is an artistic expression, no one can say, no , you can't feel well I feel this way. It's this color, it's this fabric is this shape. No one can say no, it's whatever I'm feeling. Then there is also more space to understand how others are feeling. And that puts us into a dialogue. This is my experience over time. That this possibility to look truth in the eyes and know the truth of why we are in a certain situation or why we are thinking in a certain way or why we are acting in a certain way opens us up to a dialogue. And when we can enter into that space of dialogue, things look very different. Stephen Matini: So feeling is speaking the truth and art is what allows me to speak the truth. Fateme Banishoeib: In a way, yes. But it's more than that. It's not just the ability to express whatever is going on, but it's also an opportunity to make sense of why that is also an opportunity to create with that raw material. 'cause When we can create then we are indeed in a creative mode rather than in a complaining mode. We are already creating without being told or be creative now with that raw material. So it's more than just speaking the truth is creating with it is making meaning, making sense and then transform it. Stephen Matini: So as of today, when you think of the word creativity, when you think of the word art artistry, what is your definition of that? Fateme Banishoeib: So to me, creativity and artistry are two different things. Creativity is really the act of creating words, whatever I have. So I create with what I have, I create with the emotions I create with the glass I create and is innate to all of us. We all have, it is actually being said. And biology say that that is distinctive characteristic of us as a species is creativity. So it's not something that we can associate only to creative professionals or artists. Art to me is the opposite. So creativity is from the inside out with the input or what is I create something I could, art is a little bit different to me is more of if you want also spiritual journey is entering into dialogue with that. And too often we associate art to a specific artwork. So to a specific outcome, I think differently. It's regardless, and this is actually what I'm devoted to, that's why I do the job that I do, is trying to evoke the artist within everyone. It doesn't depend if you write poems, if you paint or at all, it's a way of being and caring of being in that way is a sensitivity, is a capacity to look at the world and enter, participate in the dialogue with the world, with others. So as such is a very inclusive place. Stephen Matini: As you work with organizations using your approach, what have you observed over the years? Me personally, I think that everyone perceives that we are going through some sort of change of paradigm that we, we used to do business that is totally focused on performance, you know, in terms of numbers, results that doesn't no longer fit the purpose. And also we have new generations that that really, really sensitive to specific themes as, you know, work-life balance and diversity and such and such, which were introduced by previous generations, but somehow for them is super important. So yeah. The question to you is what have you observed over the years working with organizations? Fateme Banishoeib: First of all, and I can speak also for myself or what I've seen in myself, and this is similar, so it's not different. I think that what gets laid up, what gets awake is similar because at the end of the day we are all similar and organization is also composed by people. So we shouldn't ever forget that. So what happens is that our empathy gets expanded for different reasons when we pay attention, because to practice art, we need to pay attention. And as we pay attention, we start caring and care is the first thing that actually gets So through empathy, we expand caring, and when we care, things change. I think it was Peter Senge who said that the last space for innovation is care or the ultimate space of innovation is care. And I wrote, I think he said this in the forties or something like that. And it was absolutely right. When we care, everything that we do comes from a different place. So when we think about the reason for innovation, do we know, do we want to innovate for what, what reason? Because we care about whatever a, a problem, a solution or someone and a met needs or something. So care I think is the shift that enables other things to happen. And as a result people measure KPIs. I personally don't, but people who measure KPIs see when we care the metrics, you know, companies are really focused on engagement. Engagement also rises when we care, details don't become a burden. And when we care also we become more courageous. And courage allows us to practice other, you know, skills and virtues because we do have the courage to practice integrity or any of the other values that accompanies. So I think that the really the key element what shifts is care. Stephen Matini: What would you say that is the opposite of care Fateme Banishoeib: Entitlement? Stephen Matini: I love that. Do you feel optimistic overall considered, you know, in this crazy world that is filled with this so much apparent negativity, everything you share with me, it feels really hopeful. So you optimistic? Fateme Banishoeib: I don't know what to answer in the sense that of course I have hopes for the world to become a better place for really organizations and workplaces to really care about the wellbeing of the people they work for them also their customer. I really do. And at the same time I also know that the current system is actually serving its purpose, its job. The system as it has been designed is doing its job. So I, there are a lot of people thinking and talking about a para game shift. I also believe that is about time and I see at least counting the number of interactions that I have and the type of talks and chats I have with other people. So I know that there is really so many of us wanting this shift and this paradigm at the same time. And that's why I can't say I'm optimistic or not optimistic. I know that whatever old is there, whatever old system or process there won't go that easily because it's designed this way. And we would also do the same if we were set to go. We wouldn't just say, okay, thank you, goodbye. We would resist that. So I think that before we really see a complete shift, I think tension will arise and which is normal is physiological and it is up to us not to fall backwards when that happens, but creating these spaces for dialogue and participation so that we can together come out of that whatever tension and whatever conflict is in a constructive way and not in a destructive way Stephen Matini: This evening when I go to sleep and also move forward with my life. Out of all the insights you shared with me, is there any concept that I should pay attention to? In particular? Fateme Banishoeib: There is something I always repeat to myself. So I don't know if you would consider in in pondering onto that, that, and I share this with you earlier, that the quality of what we do depends on the quality of who we are and the quality of our being. So maybe it's about time we all focus more on the being than on the doing. I probably doing is what got us into this situation. So maybe it's about time to shift our focus on on to the being. Stephen Matini: One thing that I tell myself, I don't know if it's connected to this, probably it is like anybody else, I have a busy life and it goes way too fast. And I try to remind myself why I do what I do, you know, about everything because everything can become so transactional can become so doing it. Just another thing to reach. And when you do that, you know, have the time to appreciate anything. So I really try to, even if it's super fast, is to stay in the moment as much as I can and to enjoy it as much as I can. And it's something that often becomes normal because I've done it for a while, but very often, particularly when I'm tired and stressed out, I have to make the conscious effort of remembering this is , you know, that's all is and so enjoy it because that's the the whole point. So I try. Fateme Banishoeib: I think that, and of course this is easy for us to say in this moment when we are upset or triggered is less so if we remember that everyone is facing a struggle or a challenge and that maybe we have been at that point in time and how it was the only thing maybe we wanted in that moment was someone listening to us. Maybe things change, but I'm the first one to snap when I'm super upset at something or when I get triggered. So don't take me as an angel. I'm actually quite the opposite . But this capacity of remembering that everyone is facing a struggle, I don't know anyone who is not facing this Stephen Matini: Well. I just wanna say thank you to the crazy scientist, A thank you to the poet for giving me a moment of relief today. Thank you so much for sharing these amazing insights. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit breakfastwithstephen.substack.com

Prof. Carolyn Goerner is a leadership and development expert and negotiation guru at Indiana University's Kelley School of Business. Prof. Goerner suggests approaching conversations with a sense of curiosity. By being genuinely interested in people’s needs and perspectives rather than solely focusing on our agenda, we can create a more collaborative and less adversarial environment. Prof. Goerner emphasizes that authentic leadership requires ongoing learning and empathy, especially in understanding others' perspectives and needs. This empathy extends into negotiations, where it's crucial to balance our needs with those of others to maintain long-term, positive relationships. In a fast-paced world often dominated by transactions, Prof. Goerner advocates for authenticity. Simple gestures like offering sincere compliments or asking thoughtful questions can transform interactions from empty exchanges into meaningful connections. Listen to the episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Amazon Music, or your favorite podcast platform to learn how to become an authentic and emotionally engaging leader. Subscribe to Pity Party Over for more insightful episodes. Questions? Email Stephen Matini or send him a message on LinkedIn. TRANSCRIPT Stephen Matini: So Miss Caroline, welcome to Pity Party Over!  Carolyn Goerner: That’s delightful to be here, Stephen. Thank you. Stephen Matini: It’s my joy. I've been waiting for months for this moment. I'm very, very happy. So listen, the first question that I have is the following and it comes straight from your LinkedIn profile. The first thing that I read is, “Leaders are learners.” So, which is pretty fabulous. It's very short to the point, but I would like to know why you chose that.  Carolyn Goerner: Well, honestly, there's a couple of reasons. The first is that leadership, I don't think, is something that you wake up and you say, I've mastered it. It instead is something that we try to get a little bit better at every day. And so for me, the idea that I don't need any more leadership insight, I don't need any more leadership training, that's just silly. We all do. Nobody ever reaches the point where they're done, right? And then second, I think there's also this point about, if I'm really going to be a good leader, I've got to figure out my context and I've got to figure out my followers. And so I've also got a learning curve around developing empathy for people, making sure that I'm really seeing things from multiple perspectives. And that's a really big piece of it too. So I think people absolutely need to continue to learn about leadership, but then they also need to learn about the people in the context. Stephen Matini: And how did you get into the whole world of negotiation, power, personal influence? Carolyn Goerner: It's interesting. John Lennon said life is what happens when you're making other plans. And that sort of is how my career trajectory went. I actually did my undergraduate degrees in philosophy and religion and went through college on a debate scholarship. So was just not really thinking about professionally what I might do. And I kind of stumbled my way into consulting. And then when I burned out on that, decided I was going to go to graduate school. And my parents are professors of communication. So I went to get my master's degree in rhetoric and communication. So all of that persuasion, influential language really was something I was interested in. But what I very quickly realized is that I am so glad there are people who do that study, but I didn't, it wasn't me. So I did my PhD in Management and Human Resources, and this is really the intersection of all of that coming together. It's my fascination with how we use language and how language affects people, also coupled with really interesting studies in organizational dynamics and organizational politics and how all that plays together. Stephen Matini: Was it an advantage or disadvantage to have two parents who focused on communication growing up? Carolyn Goerner: I think it was definitely an advantage, but I'm blessed to still have my parents living. And my goodness, they are two of my very favorite people. I think it was not the kind of thing where we always sat and scrutinized everybody, but instead there was a lot of very healthy, okay, you need to tell me about that. So I suppose it was a little bit like having parents who are psychologists being very conscious of having good, healthy conversations. Stephen Matini: Because your parents have been such an ... they are an important figure in your life. If they were here with us and I said to them, hey, what is the secret of communication? What would they say in your opinion?  Carolyn Goerner: Empathy. That's what they have taught me. And that's absolutely what I've seen them do with other folks. It's not about me and it's not about whether or not I'm right. It's about whether or not I'm connecting with the other person. And so true communication really comes down to figuring out what the other party is all about and how I can then be a part of the conversation with them in ways that they can understand. One of my favorite local leaders was a gentleman who was representative in Congress for my state for a long time. And he made a comment when he was talking to one of my classes that leaders are supposed to make everyone else in the room comfortable. And I thought, well, do you have to agree with them? That seems a little pandering and silly. And he said, no, my job is not to agree, but I need to make a space where it's comfortable for them to express what they're thinking, and it's comfortable for us to disagree without someone getting defensive. And that just really stayed with me. And it's very consistent with my parents' advice as well, that in order to make good communication happen, you kind of need to get out of your own way. Stephen Matini: Have you ever worked with a client, could be, you know, one-on-one with a team that somehow you noticed they really did not have that at all. They seem not to have that ability, that social awareness.  Carolyn Goerner: Yes. Where I see it a lot is when folks are coming from a technical background and they are making a proposal and they have worked so hard on the data. They have run their numbers 74 times. They have absolutely convinced themselves that this is the way to go. And so they get in front of the decision maker and all they do is discuss all of the reasons why they, the presenter, are convinced. They haven't taken into account anything that the other person might need to hear or how they might need to make the decision. Instead, they're just all in on convincing people that they're right. And that's the thing I see the most often. And I grind when you ask the question because it's actually very typical. I'm lucky enough to work with people who are really smart and really know what they're doing. And the issue is not that they can't justify or find data to justify what they're asking for. It's just the way in which they go about asking that gets them into trouble. Stephen Matini: The thing is a lot of people, particularly around the whole notion of conflict, confrontation, negotiation, they really have a lot of issues, you know, including myself. Like I've learned it to be comfortable, but I used to feel, oh my God, awful about it. Particularly when I was younger, like I would get this block in my throat. I couldn't even speak. So a lot of people, People have all kinds of things like, you know, fear rejections. Also, there are, you know, cultural factors, social factors that come into place. What would you say that is the first thing, the first step to make peace with this so that negotiation is not so scary? What would you do?  Carolyn Goerner: My first piece of advice is get curious. Start figuring out what it is that the other person is asking, where they might be coming from. There's this interesting thing that psychologists call the spotlight effect. And basically what it means is that if I'm feeling uncomfortable, I feel like there's a spotlight shining on me. And it's almost paralyzing, right? I can't move. I'm just hyper-focused on myself. And I feel like everybody else is hyper-focused on me too. And it's really paralyzing. And it's funny that you say the neck thing. My neck actually gets red when that happens. So I totally feel where you're coming from because you'll see the color just kind of start to move up into my face. And so the way around that is to do something that two folks who study negotiations, Yuri and Fisher, who wrote the book, Getting to Yes they call it going to the balcony. And it's the idea that I am somehow going to step back emotionally from the conversation and watch it and watch it unfold and see what I can learn from everything that's going on. And so it's trying to develop a genuine curiosity about where the other person is coming from. And the interesting thing about that is that the minute that I turn my attention on someone else, that spotlight effect starts to minimize. So I always tell people, like for example, if you hate networking, go find someone who looks more uncomfortable than you are and be with them. Because the idea that you're focusing on someone else besides yourself can really help lessen that tension. Stephen Matini: Is this the basis of what you say is empathetic negotiation?  Carolyn Goerner: Absolutely, yes. The whole notion of empathetic negotiation is I need to come in and not just be focused on what I want, but I also need to make sure that the deal allows the other person to walk away feeling good. And that may sound counterintuitive, but you know the times where we're just worried about price and we're never going to see each other again, that happens. You know haggling on the street, it happens when you're maybe buying a car or a moped or something. But it's not necessarily the way that most of our negotiations happen. Usually we'll make a deal and then we have to implement it together. And so the key is, can I understand what this deal means to you as well as to me so that when we're doing the implementation, there's no surprises. And you're not suddenly having buyers or sellers remorse and trying to sabotage the deal or we haven't thought of something. There's still a bridge for us to get back together and figure it out. And so the point of the empathic negotiation piece is that we're really not talking about a negotiation or a conflict resolution as a one-time thing. We're talking about it in the context of a larger relationship. And the focus is really on maintaining the larger and longer relationship. Stephen Matini: What do you do when you get the sense that the other part, your counterpart, doesn't care? Carolyn Goerner: That's the perfect question because that's the downside. And there are a couple of things that you hopefully will have the opportunity to do. The first is just to kind of, for lack of a better phrase, call it out. So you seem really focused on the outcome here and you know not to really care what that means to me. Can you tell me a little bit more about that? Why is this so important to you? And sometimes just the direct question will be enough for people to say, oh, it's often the case that someone can be perceived as really being aggressive and really coming in to fight for something. And the reality is they're just scared. You know, they're just reacting defensively or they're coming across in a way that is not what they intend. So that question can call that out if it happens. It can also be the case that especially if you've put yourself in a situation where you're asking questions, you're really trying, and the other person isn't reciprocating, you can very honestly say, you know, I'm trying to do something here that's going to work for both of us. And if that's not something that you're interested in, maybe we shouldn't be talking. And it's not the threat to walk away, but it's legitimately, man, no. You know I just don't want to do business with this person. And so that's where having alternatives become so important. Making sure that when I go into a conversation, I've thought about what I'll do if this doesn't work out. So if I go into this conversation with this person, what happens if it doesn't work? And knowing what that alternative is for me is a real source of power because it tells me, all right, if I can't get something better than my walkaway alternative, well, I don't have to be here, right? The other question, and this one's harder. This is especially hard for entrepreneurs or people who are just kind of starting out their business, is asking yourself, is this going to be a client that I want to keep long term? And of course, generally the first answer is, well, yes, I need the money. But when we really start to think about it, is this the kind of person that you want to be making money with? And so it's kind of the opportunity cost question. What am I giving up by working with this person? Maybe the perfect client is still out there and I can wait for them. Now, again, that's the best possible world. And the real world is more pragmatic than that. I need to keep the lights on and pay the bills. But the idea is to really look at the other person in a longer-term perspective. And so, you know it's much like they say when you're dating, for example, can I see myself trapped in an airport with this person? You know. That's going to happen, trust me. And so it's that kind of thought, right? How am I going to feel a year from now when the phone rings and I look down and that's who's on my screen? How am I going to feel? And so that, you know again, that's a tough question. And so oftentimes people will say, if I've paced with someone who's really being aggressive, I am actually going to respond in a way in kind. I'm not going to offer them as much. If we do make a deal, I'm going to make sure it's pretty limited and it has parameters around it. Or maybe I make a deal, but it's only for a period of time and we give ourselves time to get to know each other and then we renegotiate. So there's other strategies, but fundamentally it comes down to if I view this as a relationship, is this somebody that I really want to be with? Stephen Matini: Based on what you said, I'm thinking out loud. Could it be that when people feel whether it's real or not, that they don't have an alternative, that's also when the negotiation gets really, really difficult? Carolyn Goerner: Yes. Oh, yes, right on the money. Because if I've got nothing but what's going on with this conversation right here, oh, exactly what you said. Then I feel like I've either got to do one or two things. I got to fight really, really hard, or I just have to give in and give you whatever you need. But if you're my only alternative, I have not got good options. Stephen Matini: So do you believe that people always have an option, an alternative option?  Carolyn Goerner: No, I wish they did. There are some things where we don't, and that's when we just have to really get into a mindset that says, I want you to win, but I want me to win too, and we're going to have to get collaborative and creative, which is really hard to do. It's scary to assert your interests and say, "No, I need this too," when you don't have an alternative. On the other hand, in the long term, if all I do is keep giving in and giving in and giving in, that's just a recipe for feeling bitter. That's a recipe for long-term, ooh, I hate this, right? And so, yeah... I think that looking for options is always a good idea, but it's not the case that we have them. Is that kind of where you were coming from with that question that maybe we don't? Stephen Matini: Yeah. Yeah, because, you know, as you were talking, millions of things flying in my head. And like one of the things that I hear very often when I do this kind of work with clients, because yeah, very often the notion of boundaries come up in all the time because it's a conflict, because a negotiation, whatever there might be. And one thing they say is, oh, you know, for you, it's easier because you're an independent professional, you have options to which I say, I understand where you're coming from. And it's true. You know, I've worked really hard to have a, a diversified portfolio, but keep in mind that I have no security whatsoever, as you are saying, but the answer that I often provide to them is this one. If I really feel that I'm stuck with the client, that I have no option for me, that is no longer a negotiation, but it falls under me having the right expectation.  Meaning for a certain time being, you know, I have to stay here. It's pointless to fight it. It's pointless to get all worked up about it because I lose energy. So I'm going to stay here as, as aware as possible. In the meantime, I'm going to seek options that somehow I'm representative. And it does the trick for me because it saves a lot of energy.  Carolyn Goerner: Oh, I love that. I absolutely love that. So you're right. Not only does it save you from just kind of complaining about it in your mind all the time or to other people, right? But it also just puts it in perspective. A hundred percent. That makes all the sense. I love that. I will be stealing that, but I'll tell people it came from you. Stephen Matini: Yeah, because people complain, complain. Listen, are you going to stay here in this workplace with this boss and that? Well, then what is the point? You know, and then sometimes they vent to me. You can vent at me as much as you want. Unfortunately, there's nothing I can do about it. So I think a better question is how can you stay here as long as you have to stay here in the best possible way? And then maybe to have some sort of you know, awareness, calling, whatever, so that you can find the right situation for you. But I understand it's very difficult. You know, I'm thinking of four different types of scenarios, which is like super, super hard, which is when I have to deal with my boss, a difficult negotiation with my boss, or it could be with my teammates, or it could be with the client or a loved one. So these four, you know, so boss teammates, client and loved one. In your experience, which one is the hardest?  Carolyn Goerner: Oh, a loved one, of course. Because you, you, I don't have an option, right? In my mind, there is no option to the person that is my, my, my husband, my partner. And I'm lucky because he's amazing. But there is no option for him, right? So, yeah, so obviously that's when you have to just get really creative because that's just not the way it works for me. You know, and so I get it. I think people will often tell you that the negotiation with the boss would be next. And that's where I really would push folks to say, you got to do your homework first, right? And so what is the value that you bring to the relationship with your boss? In other words, how do you make her look good? How do you help him achieve his goals? How do you make them, at the end of the day, look better? And at that point, you know, it's kind of sitting back and reflecting on why your work is important to them. And so if I recognize, well, part of the reason that my work is, you know, that I'm important to my boss is that they use me as a sounding board to come bounce ideas off of, right? Pretty common. Well, I need to know that if I'm going to go in and ask for more time working remote, and I need to have thought about, look, this is how they need and view me. And so I need to go in with a solution that says, I will stay on a teams channel with you, or I will do whatever it takes. But my job, first of all, is to understand why I might get pushed back and what it is about what my boss wants that could make that tough. And so that's the homework that we've really got to do before then. With teammates, it tends to kind of be a lot of reciprocity. I'll do this for you, you do this for me, just kind of working back and forth. But the same with teammates and with clients, the one power that people often underestimate the most that they have is likability. And so, I mean, think about for a second. Think about the last three times you did a favor for someone. So somebody asked you to do a favor and you did a favor for them. Stephen Matini: Yeah. Carolyn Goerner: I'm going to bet that two of those three were just because you liked the person. Stephen Matini: Yes.  Carolyn Goerner: And that's not uncommon. I mean, yeah, we do things for people we like. And so the key to those is making sure that I'm not only talking to you when I need something, but that we've really worked on a relationship and we've worked to find things in common and that I've shown a real interest in you and I really do want to know what you do and what you're about. And if that is the context with teammates and with clients and with your boss too, I think to an extent, then we've got a very different kind of conversation. In context, we get each other. And so I realize how busy we all are. And believe me, I have to remind myself of this all the time, but that five minutes that I spend after a team's meeting or in the hallway or in a coffee shop, just actually having a conversation with how's your kids? How's your dogs? What'd you think of the last sporting event? That stuff matters. That stuff really matters because that makes it easier for us to then have a tougher conversation. Stephen Matini: I agree. In my head, I am aware of the principle of reciprocity. I'm aware of the impact of what I do for people. I think for me, mostly I do because I know that there have been key people in my life. And it is because of their generosity that I've been able to have the opportunities that I have. And I know how difficult it is. And I really, I owe them everything. So I try to do the same. The biggest recent experience has been really the podcast. And I've been so grateful to everyone who has given me help and decided to do this. It's just amazing. And all it does, it gives a sense of yeah, gratitude and you want to work harder. You want to work better. You want somehow to reciprocate. So I agree with you. It's a wonderful cycle. Absolutely, 100%. Carolyn Goerner: It's almost that paying it forward type of feeling. But all of the research that talks about the importance of gratitude and what a difference it makes in the way we view the world. Oh, exactly what you just said. That's, that's a big piece of it as well. Stephen Matini: Everything these days, though, seems to have become so transactional, to a point that we oftentimes because we're busy or whatever that is, people forget about, hey, I'm a human being, you’re a human being. At the end of all, none of this will matter other than really this moment that we shared together. What would you say that is the first step towards creating relationships that are more genuine and less transactional in a world that's super busy? Carolyn Goerner: Let me think about how to phrase this for a second. Do you remember the last time that someone said, "Hey, how are you?" or "How you doing?" And you were just like, "Fine." And it was like the question never got asked, which is very transactional, right? We do that all the time. So last night, my husband and I were out for dinner, and the server came up and said, "So hi, how you doing?" And was not expecting an answer. And when I just made eye contact and said, "We're good tonight. How are you?" She was almost startled. I think it's just taking being the person who reminds everybody, no, you know, this doesn't have to be transactional. This doesn't have to be that, right? It can be something where we have a little more of a connection than just saying, you know, asking questions that we don't really need the answer to. And she stopped and went, I'm good. You know, it was just kind of funny. I have a colleague who, whenever you see him, it'll never be just, "Hi, how are you?" But he asks a question like, "Caroline, what are you working on that you're really interested in?" Or, "What's the coolest thing that happened to you today?" And it's always a genuine interest asking that question. Now, does it take an extra 30 seconds to have the conversation? Absolutely, but it's worth that 30 seconds to get the feeling of the connection. The other thing that I make it a real practice to do is to give compliments to other people, particularly to other women, even when I don't know them. And so if we're just, you know, I see someone coming in for dinner at a table near me, and as I walk by the table, I'll just stop and say, "You look amazing. That dress is perfect." So a random compliment from a stranger. And I think the more that we just remind people that we're people and that I see you in a positive way, COVID didn't help this whole perception that we've got to stay safe. We've got to stay in our cocoon. We have to protect ourselves, right? And I think the more we model, let's just be open and let's just be vulnerable to one another, the more people kind of relax and go, Oh, that's right. I remember that. We used to do that, didn't we? Stephen Matini: In the world of humans! Carolyn Goerner: Exactly. And so it's just that sense of modeling it. And will it sometimes get misinterpreted or thrown back in 2% of the time? Sure. But for me, the 98% is worth it. Stephen Matini: Do you think the issue is what you said? Is it around vulnerability and the difficulty that some people have in being vulnerable? Maybe? Carolyn Goerner: Exactly Oh, of course. Yes. Absolutely. Actually, let me just kind of back up on that a little bit, because this is one of my thought questions. What does vulnerability mean to you? So when you're vulnerable, what does that mean? Stephen Matini: That I dare to be myself? Carolyn Goerner: That is such a great explanation. Because first of all, I dare. So I'm going to step outside my comfort zone. And I'm going to basically be transparent, right? I'm going to peel off the layer of the onion and sort of let you see. And so I'm taking a risk that says, all right. And it's almost like you preface everything in your head with, "They're going to think this is weird, but." And the irony is that we all have that same thought, right? We all go, "Oh, they're going to think this is weird, but, you know, and off we go." And so, as a colleague of mine says, "Revel in the absurd, just embrace the weird." And it becomes a mindset where again, you just kind of say, "I'm going to try." I'm not going to lie, there are times when it gets smacked back in my face hard. But most of the time, and a vast majority, like more than 90% of the time, it's met with, "Oh, I can be vulnerable too." And you can actually even see people's shoulders relax. And, you know, it's like, oh, oh, okay, this is cool. And it's nice. Stephen Matini: In this regard, have you, and not just about this, about the way, let's say you negotiate, you deal with this whole world of confrontation. Have you changed over the years? Have you always been this way? Carolyn Goerner: Oh, completely changed. Yeah, you've changed. Completely changed over the years. And I'm not sure what, well, it's been an evolution of a lot of different things. First was getting comfortable with, we all have a sense of imposter syndrome and getting comfortable with mine was a big part of that. It also has just kind of come down to, I've tried enough, I've dared enough, and I know that most of the time it's going to end up well, and I know I'm strong enough to handle the times that don't. And so that's just a little, you know, self-awareness and knowledge and confidence really comes from practice. And so that's what, but a big part of that is. But I think genuinely, maybe it's getting older. Maybe it's the white hair. I don't know. Stephen Matini: I have one last question for you. What keeps your mind busy these days? Is there any thought, any insight somehow that keeps your mind wandering these days? Carolyn Goerner: What a great question. And interestingly, it really is around the gender, the gender differences issue. There is a lot of, well, there are books about negotiation called Women Don't Ask. And so for a long time, we had this belief that women just didn't negotiate and that that was part of what explained the wage gap between men and women. And it was almost as if that was a slam on women, right? They're not asking. And newer research has said, first of all, anybody who's trained is more likely to negotiate. So that takes the gender difference down a bit. And so as long as someone's received training in negotiation, regardless of gender, they're more likely to ask, which is why I love what I teach. But, there's a big difference in the perception still. If people hold traditional stereotypes, then women are going to be perceived differently when they ask than are men. And so that's, I think, where my brain is trying to do, to play at that intersection of if the person that I'm talking to is coming to me and seeing me through the lens of really traditional gender stereotypes, how do I work with that and make it so that we can have a conversation without them automatically having a negative reaction because that stereotype violation? So that's the thing that kind of keeps me thinking in the car, is just trying to figure out how those traditional stereotypes that still exist play with the advice that I want to give people about how to move forward and succeed with any gender. Stephen Matini: Carolyn, I'm really happy that I got to spend this time with you. Carolyn: Oh, this was fabulous. Stephen, thank you so much. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit breakfastwithstephen.substack.com

Prof. Emily Balcetis at New York University is an award-winning social psychologist and author of Clearer, Closer, Better: How Successful People See the World. In the book, she highlights how the perception of our goals conditions our motivation and ultimate success. Prof. Balcetis views motivation as the difference between where we are and where we want to be, warning that limiting stereotypes or narrow definitions of success impact our motivation and ability to reach goals. When addressing the challenge of sustaining motivation, Prof. Balcetis suggests balancing short-term and long-term perspectives, allowing for incremental progress while maintaining a vision for the overall objective. During our conversation, Prof. Balcetis also points out the interplay between perception and leadership and how expanding mental representations of leadership can inspire more people to see themselves as capable leaders. Listen to the episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Amazon Music, or your favorite podcast platform to learn how to become an authentic and emotionally engaging leader. Subscribe to Pity Party Over for more insightful episodes. Questions? Email Stephen Matini or send him a message on LinkedIn. Please check Prof. Emily Balcetis book, Clearer, Closer, Better: How Successful People See the World, and use the affiliate links to support Pity Party Over at no additional cost to you. TRANSCRIPT Stephen Matini: So listen, as I was thinking of you, there's a bunch of words such as, you know, perception and misperception, perceptual illusions, perceptual habits. How did you end up in this world? Emily Balcetis: Well, there's lots of ways I could answer that. But to be honest, I really like magicians. I love going to magic shows. So there's that. I think I was already probably predisposed. But honestly, it was because when I was in graduate school, I went to study with a fabulous, fantastic, wonderful mentor. But after the first year, I really wanted to go spend the summer in Europe. And I was a graduate student. I didn't have any money. So I needed to figure out how to afford it. So I was looking for like, well, what academic conferences are happening in Europe? And there weren't any in my field, but there was one that was in vision science. And I was like, well, I better do a quick study on something that has to do with vision so that I can get the data, put together a poster, submit to this conference, and then get my graduate school to offset the cost by $500 of this trip. And then I did all of that and then told my advisor, oh, by the way, I like did all this stuff, I'm going to go to Europe for two months. And that's not how grad school really works. But he's lovely and said, like, okay, fine, but like maybe we should start working on these projects together. And so that's what sort of became the intersection, honestly, of my interest in social psychology, motivation science, which I had gone to graduate school to study. And how did you end up roping in visual experience? To be honest, it was to afford a trip to Europe when I was really poor. Stephen Matini: When you work in organizations and you start talking about motivation, it is such a huge broad field. How do you make things simple for them to understand?  Emily Balcetis: To be honest, I really do think that the concept of motivation is quite simple. The definitions that are foundational definitions, they vary, but they do have a commonality, which is that they're quite simple. One definition is just motivation is a discrepancy between where you are and where you want to be. And that's a driving force, just to close that gap. That's motivation from one perspective. Another perspective that I find myself in my work relying on more often is a multiplicative function. So motivation can be like motivation equals value times expectancy. Value, what is it that you want times? Do you think that it's possible to get it? So there can be stuff that you really, really want, like, oh, I really wish that I was a billionaire. So like, what's my motivation to become a billionaire? None, right? Because you multiply anything by zero and the answer is zero. So you can have like the things that you care most about. But if you have no feeling of self-efficacy, no means to accomplish it, no belief that you can get there, it doesn't matter how much you want it. Because in some sense, you know that you can't achieve it and some motivation stays low. So the concept of motivation, I don't think is that challenging. What to do about it, how to harness it, how to sustain it, that's where the challenge comes in. But just knowing what it is in the first place, from my perspective, isn't the difficulty. Stephen Matini: Has your own motivation changed over the years as you got deeper into the subject that you researched, you work with people? Is it different today compared to the way it was?  Emily Balcetis: Yes. I mean, everything about life is different over those, like my life is just so different, right? When I started this work, like I was saying that first summer after graduate school, you know I was 24 years old, whatever I was, like early 20s and now I am much older and married with two kids. So yeah, everything about motivation has changed. But in what way? I mean, I guess what I value has shifted. And so again, if motivation is value times expectancy, what is it that is the value, that's shifted. And I don't think it's like that unusual of a story, looking for balance, wanting to, you know, find a fuller life than just how you get your salary in the door. Stephen Matini: Do you find it more easily to stay motivated now than it used to be? Emily Balcetis: I feel lucky in that I've always been fortunate to be able to do the stuff that I really love. When I was an undergraduate, I went to study music. I have a degree in music performance, and I was fortunate to get to be able to go and be a musician to really develop that. At the same time, I was studying research in psychology. And so then when life events happened and pushed music sort of out the door for me as a career path, I still play. In fact, just this morning, I was at my two-year-old daughter's preschool playing baby shark and row, row, row your boat and wheels on the bus on my flute for them all. That was a highlight of my morning so far before this. And yeah, but so I got to do music and I love music. And then when I couldn't really become a professional musician, then I was loving psychology and the psychology research. And then I just get to keep doing that here. So I get it how privileged I am to say that I've always gotten to do what I love. Now it's not to say that like, oh, every day is wonderful. And like, no, it has its challenges too, but at the heart of it, the motivation for me isn't the problem because I've always been in a place where I have the resources and freedom to do the stuff that I love. And I really love writing. That's a big part of my job. And I really love writing. So a lot of people say that they struggle with, how do you go from a blank page to writing a book or to writing a scientific article? It can just be overwhelming to see that blank page. But I've never experienced that. A lot of the students that I work with do. So I've been able to figure out how do you help people? How do you advise people through that? But the motivation has stayed high. Again, the challenge for me, and I think the challenge for a lot of people is what do you do with that motivation? How do you keep it high? How do you balance the fact that you have multiple goals that you might be highly motivated towards, but resources like time are limited? How do you manage that? How do you sustain the motivation when there isn't an outlet for it? 'Cause you just can't get to the things that you really are motivated to do.So that's where I feel like I personally reflect and struggle the most. Stephen Matini If I ask the same question to myself, and I don't know if this is part of motivation probably, but I noticed that when I was younger, I've always had entrepreneurial ideas. There was this humongous gap between what I wanted and sometimes I really felt super, super far. Sometimes I would get excited. And then today's, I guess the approach has changed because I focus for the most part of today. Today with you. We record the episode and I try to do my best. And I know that probably in six months, in a year time, you know, if I continue doing this, it's going to be better. And I just simply focus on today. And somehow I find that motivating. It kind of calms me down and let me keep going. What I'm saying is something has to do with motivation based on your studies. What is it?  Emily Balcetis: Well, there's a lot to unpack with what you were saying. So that phrase of like, just focus on today, just get through today, that comes up so often. People are starting out in the Alcoholics Anonymous program. That's like one of the slogans and the guiding values and principles and philosophies that can help them too, because it just feels so overwhelming to thinking about having to stick with the change for the rest of your life. And if you let your mind go there, then this goal feels impossible. So sometimes people use that phrase of like, I'm just going to focus on today because the alternative just makes it feel so overwhelming that it puts it into a definitional category of what is the goal that is in the perceived impossible. And that's when you just see efficacy, perceived efficacy, the belief that I can do this just drop. And so again, then you're multiplying against zero and motivation goes away. Other people say that, like focusing on today because they want to live in the moment and they find value and focusing on a singularity rather than trying to multitask. And there's value in that too. That is a valuable strategy. It's a mindfulness technique. And if people go through the effort of thinking about what are the benefits of multitasking, multitasking is not always bad. We can talk about that if that's of interest. Multitasking is not always good either. It's about knowing what multitasking can do and being intentional about when you use it. And so if people focus on today and what's happening today is a strategy to manage the negative consequences of multitasking, then it can be really effective. But there can be some cost to this focusing on today as well. And some of those costs can be that it can be challenging to make sacrifices today that need to happen in order to achieve a long-term goal. So if you think about in the realm of health, for example, what are you eating and how much are you exercising? If we think about today, I want to focus on today. I want to have today be a really good day. You might choose different foods to eat than if you're thinking about, okay, in six months' time, this is where I want to be with my health. That could require making harder choices, making sacrifices today for the long-term payoff. So that can be a downside is that people may have a more challenging time connecting today's choices with the future's outcomes, which might need to happen to change behaviors. The other thing, the last thing I'll say about this is that with my research team, we did study. What is the effectiveness? What's the impact of focusing on today versus taking what we were calling sort of a wider bracket, thinking about time in a wider bracket? So what we did was have people think about what's something that's really important, a goal that you care about. You're not going to accomplish it today. You're not going to accomplish it this week. Probably not even this month. It's a longer-term goal. What is that? For one week, they woke up. Each day, they thought about, what can I do today? They took that narrow focus on the day. What can I do today to make progress on that goal? They thought about the concrete actions that would help them make progress. At the end of the day, they reported how much time did they spend working on something for that goal? They did that every day for seven days. We counted up how much time did they spend. A different week, they took that wider bracket. They woke up on Sunday. They thought about the goal that really mattered to them. On Sunday, they made a list of bunches of things that they could accomplish. What are concrete tasks that would help advance the goal and bunches of them? And then thought about the next week and thought about, well, which one of these concrete actions can I put in on Monday? Schedule that another on Tuesday, on Wednesday, on Thursday and Friday. So they scheduled out by six days. Still at the end of every day, they reported how much time did you spend working on this goal? And what we found is that doing that was helpful. Regardless of whether they took that day by day or the wider bracket, the week-by-week approach, they spent time working on their goal. But when they took a wider look at their calendar and planned out their week in advance, they spent two and a half more hours in the week working on goal relevant tasks than when they thought day by day and planned day by day. Strategy was effective for increasing the amount of time anybody spent on goal relevant activities for 66% of people. Two out of every three people found this to be a beneficial strategy for improving on how they spent their time. So lots to say about like, should you focus on the day? Should you take a wider frame? It's a strategy. It's a tool. And just like a hammer's great, but a hammer won't always work. You need to know what is the job here? What's the challenge? And is the hammer the right tool? So thinking about that, like, should I be narrowly focused on the day? Should I take a more expansive look at time? Just remember, both of those are tools. And if the tool isn't working for you right now, then try a different tool. Stephen Matini: Oh, wow. That's really interesting. You know, narrow and wide. Yeah, I do feel that way about a lot of stuff. Probably the latest project that require a lot of motivation is this very podcast. You know, in April will be two years that I've been doing in my podcast. And I never really worried about what is gonna happen with the podcast. Is it gonna work? People are gonna love it. I truly, genuinely loved every single interview working with colleagues, being out with you. But then, you know, it's a lot of work, particularly for a podcast when you have to publish every single week. And so as of late, maybe because I'm sick, I started thinking, dude, what are you doing? I mean, are you going somewhere with this? You know, is this worth it? Because it so far has been enjoyable. But once again, it's not something you can do five minutes a day. So with that said, should I go wider? Should, should I go narrower?  Emily Balcetis: I think this is a time for introspection and thinking about what your goal really is. Probably when you started, it was just, can I do this thing? And can I connect with people? And you answer that, yes, you can do this thing. Yes, you are connecting with people. So that goal has been met. And so now it's time just to think about, well, what's the goal now? What is the goal? And it's about resetting. So, you know, I talk about being our own mental accountant and your accountant doesn't go in with you and look at your books and just say, oh, let's just keep rolling. Hey, look, things are moving up. Things are moving down. Here you go. Here's a description of your finances. They take stockable. What is it that you're working towards? And are you on track to what you're working towards? And at least the ones I work with, they want you to check in at least once a year to talk about what those goals are. And are you on track for meeting those goals? So we do that with accountants. Why not we do that for ourselves and our own personal goals as well? At least once a year, take stock of what are the goals that I'm working towards and what's my progress like? And so maybe that's where you're at right now with this podcast is what's the next goal as it relates to this work? Stephen Matini: When you feel the way that I do, if you ever feel the way that I do, so that you need to take the time for yourself to understand, is there anything specific that you do to regroup?  Emily Balcetis: I mean, I literally just went through this myself. As I was working with the coach that I work with, and we were just thinking about how are you spending your time? And is this how you want to spend your time? Everybody needs more time. So let's take inventory of how you spend it. And so there was something that I, you know, similar to you, I've been working on a project for years and it's just, you know, the return on investment right now just feels like, I don't know. It's not there for me. Do I feel like, oh, I failed at that? Well, I'm personally struggling. Does it mean that I failed on meeting it if the return on investment hasn't continued to be high? No, I don't think so. I think I have done what's possible with this project. And now it's time to think about, well, why was I doing that project? So I'm not like, how can I keep iterating on this? But why was I doing it in the first place? When you ask why, why, why, why? You help yourself figure out what your value systems are. Why was I doing this thing? Why was I doing this for the years that I was doing it? Why doesn't it feel gratifying anymore? Why, why, why? And then you get up to, because this is the kind of work I want to be doing and this is no longer the vehicle for it. Okay, great. So no, I haven't failed at my goal. It's that I extinguished that trail, ran its course. And now I need to find another trail. And that was really beneficial for me because it made the idea of quitting something, which I plan to do in the near future easier. 'Cause it's not like quitting my goal. It's about finding a different trail to get me further along towards where I really want to be. Stephen Matini: You know, one thing that I was curious is your work is so focused around perception. And I love this is wonderful. And another focus of your interest is leadership and specifically leadership styles. So I was wondering, how does perception and leadership styles combine, if you don't mind sharing with me some thoughts? Emily Balcetis: Oh, of course. Sure. Yeah. I mean, I think they are quite intertwined because leaders have to want it. They have to want to be leaders. But how do they get there? How do they want to be leaders? Well, how do people want to be leaders? How do they come to thinking like, I can do this? Again, thinking that they can, thinking we can do something isn't an integral part of what motivation is. If you don't think you can, motivation is zero. So what leads some people to think I can do this and I value it. I want to do this? Lots of reasons. But one of them that we've discovered, especially as we work with adults, but also with children, is when I just pose the question, think about what a leader looks like. What's the image that comes to your mind? If you were to see a profile, what's the image that comes to your mind? And you don't have to answer, actually, but like listeners can do that for themselves. What we find often is that it's somebody who's older, it's somebody who's male, and it's somebody who's white. And so that represents a lot of the population, but it doesn't represent all of the population. And what we find is that that is the majority view in people's minds, even people that don't identify with being older, with being white or with being male. And that mental image of like, well, what does a leader look like if it's discrepant from their own view of themselves because it is, because the demographics are different? Or when we start thinking about what are the values? What does it take to be a leader? What are the qualities of a leader? We think agentic, loud, controlling, assertive. And those are traits that also don't align with a lot of people's own self-definitions of what they think their strengths are, or even maybe what they want to be. So when they think about the visuals of what a leader looks like, or they think about the personal qualities of what a leader looks like, if there's not a lot of alignment, then that reduces motivation. This doesn't seem like a place for me. It doesn't seem like something that I could succeed in and or and/or a place that I want to succeed in. But we know both of those things aren't true, that there are lots of effective leaders who are older white men, but there are effective leaders who don't fit any of those demographic profiles. There are leaders who are agentic, assertive, who are domineering in that they can come in and control a room. But there are leaders that are quite effective that don't do that. Leadership can look in many different ways. It's just that we have this stereotype. We have pretty constrained mental representation about what a leader looks like and how a leader acts that could suppress people's motivation to try to join that space and do well in that space. So with the work we do, we try to expand that mental representation so that the image that comes to people's mind is more inclusive. It's broader. The set of visuals, the set of traits and qualities is more expansive. So there's room for more people of different varieties of people to see themselves in that space. Stephen Matini: The mental representation that people have of a leader, whatever leader you have in mind, does that depend on the figures, the important figures that you've met in your life?  Emily Balcetis: Yes, absolutely. So there's disparity in who assumes leadership positions. So the role models that we see or the way that we see the space filled out is not representative of all populations. What we see on TV also, you know, people who are portraying or who we see on social media who are portraying leadership, even if they aren't actually holding power. That's also not representative of the population. And so that can contribute to that narrow mental representation, that narrow definition of what constitutes a leader. But you can sever that. You can break that connection through role models and through who is it that you see, even if it's just one or two people that you connect strongly with, that's enough, that anecdotal experience of seeing a different type of leader is enough to help expand that mental representation as well, which is why role models are so important. The work that we've done in schools in particular shows us that the diversity of the teacher demographics within a school really matters for shaping kids' beliefs about kids' mental representations. Literally when we give kids a box of crayons and a piece of paper and we say like draw what a leader looks like to you, we see those drawings are extremely different among black teenagers specifically when they're in schools where there is a lot of white teachers and it's really different when they're in schools where there's far more non-white teachers. So when they see variety and the leadership within their own school, the drawings that they make with those boxes of crayons show a more diverse understanding or more diverse belief about who can and should be a leader. Stephen Matini: You have worked with a lot of different people. You work with athletes. You work with artists. If I may ask, is there anyone that somehow, for whatever the reason has a special place in your heart?  Emily Balcetis: Yes, absolutely. So there's disparity in who assumes leadership positions. Kids, I mean, yeah, it's probably you're just catching me at this point in my life where it's the kids that I get to work with. And I have a seven-year-old and a two-year-old. So they're just magical creatures, my children, but children in general. You just get to see their brain growing and moving and shaping in real time. It only takes one emotional experience to have an impact on their brain for the rest of their life. I don't know, maybe that's selfish, but just like all the power that you have, right? If you can just, if you can find a way to give them these experiences, it can really be transformative. But yeah, I've learned incredible things from some of the amazing people that I've gotten to work with. I got to work with the developer of one of the apps on the Apple Store that's been like the number one app for a long time. It's hit number one, you know, like every day it changes what's number one, but it's had its place, the top, the most downloaded app on the Apple Store. It's called “One Second Every Day.” And this is an incredible app. What it is, you know, it's an app that encourages you, if you want to use it this way, to take a video of something every day. And it's a one-second video. And then this is what I'm doing this year. I've had the app forever. I've worked with this guy for many years. But just like I saw a family doing this, which is for their New Year's Eve, they played their one second everyday video to just reflect on what was this year like? 365 days, one second each day. And I don't know, I just want that. I want that for our family too, to have this moment of reflection about what was this year for us. So that's sort of my New Year's resolution is to make sure that I do this one second every day. So when he talks about it, when the app developer talks about it, I asked him, like, what were some of those one-second clips that were most meaningful for you? And one that he shares is like, there's one, there's a one-second clip of a brick wall. And I was like, what? I've got a one-second clip of our wedding. I've got a one-second clip of an anniversary or like the first time I got to meet my daughter or my son, right? And it's like the brick wall. And he was like, yeah, that brick wall means so much to me because the moment that my sister-in-law was admitted to the hospital and we found out that her intestines were strangling themselves and she was on the brink of dying, that's the first thing that I saw after we got this news that she might die so unexpectedly, so oddly. She didn't die. But he said like that wall, when I see that one second clip of that wall, it just reminds me of this transformative moment that I had where all of his hustle and what he needed to do for his life and for his career, for developing this app. And it just felt like it doesn't matter, right? My family matters more than anything else to me. And so that brick wall is a reminder of that for him. And that is surprising in some sense. I mean, it's not surprising when you hear that, it's like, oh my God, how awful. And I totally understand how that could center and ground him to have that visual reminder. But also in some sense, like remembering bad stuff. Who wants to remember bad stuff? When you think about when you said something really embarrassing, when you hurt somebody's feelings, when you really messed up at work, if you got fired or all of our big, big mistakes, who wants to go back there in their mind? Nobody. Nobody wants to relive the worst days of their life. So it doesn't come as like intuition that like, yeah, let's capture the awful stuff in our life and let's reflect on it on New Year's Eve, and that'll be a good thing. But it actually can be. It can help us make better decisions, like it did for Caesar, the developer of this app, that, you know, remembering what restaurant gave you food poisoning, yeah, you should probably remember that. Remembering when you had a choice point, you chose this way, it didn't go as well, or you regretted that choice. Great, you should remember that so that you can make a different choice in the future. And that also makes sense. But our intuition probably says like, no, I don't want to remember. I don't want to take pictures. I don't want to post on social media. I don't want to put the negative stuff out there. And I'm not saying we should. I'm not saying tell people about how awful today was. Show them about, you know, show them your bet. I mean, whatever. How you manage social media is like outside of my sphere of expertise. But it is within my sphere of expertise to say like there are big benefits from having a more inclusive memory than what our memory wants to do. If you can remember the times when you did feel icky, when you made the wrong choice, that can help you make better choices in the future. Stephen Matini: Out of anything we said, is there anything that, in your opinion, those who will listen to us in the future should pay attention to?  Emily Balcetis: Yeah, I think, you know, one of the things that can be challenging is feeling like if you've been working hard at something, you're not making the progress that you want, sunk costs is a thing of just continuing to invest in something that might not be working out. It could be a relationship, it's not working out, or it could be a project, or it could be like working for a promotion within a company that isn't giving you the opportunity to grow. And it can feel really hard to let go of these things that aren't bringing you joy, bringing you the value, and helping you manage and satisfy your goals. And why don't people leave? Why don't people relieve the relationships that they shouldn't be in or the jobs that aren't satisfying? Because it can feel like a failure. There's lots of other reasons. People need jobs. They have responsibilities to others that doesn't allow them to just leave a job that isn't gratifying. I get that. But still, the idea is true that why do people hold on to a course of action that isn't paying off? Because we have such a stigma about failure. Because failing at something is, we try to avoid that at all costs. But leaving a relationship, leaving a job, giving up on a goal, changing a course doesn't have to be failure. It can be an important learning opportunity. Yeah, it's risky. And it's sometimes really challenging or maybe even impossible to take big risks. But if we think about quitting something as not quitting and not as failure, but as a pivot point for reflection, what did I learn? What am I going to take from this? The next thing is a chance to start new, start fresh. How beautiful is that? I would love it if I had a chance to just start some parts of my life over, but with all of the knowledge and expertise that I have now, God, that would be amazing if I could, you know, have a blank slate to reset, but being as informed as I am. And that's what it can do. So rather than it being a failure, a goal failure, or a quitting, which are stigmatizing words that we don't want to apply to ourselves, going through the work of mentally reframing as like a beautiful opportunity for rebirth, I think can help people make some of those tricky decisions to learn from them and to, you know, maybe find more happiness than what the current pursuits are offering. Stephen Matini: Emily, thank you so much for sharing this time with me. I've learned a lot and I think your work is beautiful. Please continue to spread the inspiration because your work is really important.  Emily Balcetis: Thank you for this conversation, for the opportunity. Thank you so much.   This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit breakfastwithstephen.substack.com

Paulinho Muzaliwa is a social entrepreneur passionate about regenerative agriculture and founder of the Unidos Social Innovation Center in Uganda, East Africa.  As a refugee facing personal setbacks and challenges, Paulinho’s dream is to transform refugee camps into regenerative communities where every refugee can access clean water, abundant food, and quality education. He believes that change and progress come from within the community and demonstrates how refugees can become change-makers by leveraging their unique experiences and skills to develop innovative solutions.  In our conversation Paulinho emphasizes the importance of moving beyond reliance on humanitarian aid by fostering local leadership and sustainable practices.  Listen to the episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Amazon Music, or your favorite podcast platform to learn how to become an authentic and emotionally engaging leader. Subscribe to Pity Party Over for more insightful episodes. Questions? Email Stephen Matini or send him a message on LinkedIn. #SocialEntrepreneurship #RegenerativeCulture #SustainableDevelopment #Permaculture #Sustainability #SocialImpact #RefugeeStories #Uganda #Africa #HumanitarianAid #WorldFoodProgram #UNHCR #ChangeMakers #Podcast #NewPodcastEpisode #PodcastInterview #PaulinhoMuzaliwa #StephenMatini #PityPartyOver #Alygn TRANSCRIPT Stephen Matini: So Paulinho, I want to ask you just to get to know you a little bit. Growing up, were there any specific person, people, events that somehow have impacted who you are today? Paulinho Muzaliwa: Not really. I grew up in a memory, which is a little bit modest, not so much poor and not so much rich. My dream was to be a pilot. Once I was not being able to go to university, so I chose to being an accountant. I met in secondary school. I done business and demonstrative administration. After finish up, it was quite hard to push and walk him. And all my dream really disappeared. So I gave up to all my dream. Being a refugee is kind of starting a new life. Stephen Matini: Going through challenges, life in general, how do you keep your spirit positive? How do you keep the hope?  Paulinho Muzaliwa: How I keep the or stay positive is understand that all my life have been challenging. And in order to be successful or in order to have a decent life, I need to be satisfied of what I have and cherish, also connect to myself. And the most of it is if things are not good right now, as long as I work hard, so I expect something positive will come no matter the time that we spend on these things. So I try to be optimistic because the worst part of my life is what I have done. I just want to be more positive so that I cherish all the moments that I'm having right now. Stephen Matini: And this is something that you also share with entrepreneurs. You know, to be an entrepreneur, you must have a vision. You must constantly fight self-doubts, challenges, insecurities and problems. How did you get to social entrepreneurship? What attracted you to this?  Paulinho Muzaliwa: Yeah, exactly. So I think there is so many facts that has motivated me to jump into this based on the challenges that are accounted in being a refugee. The first one was language barrier, which has been most affected young people here in refugee settlements to get access to employment. Four percentage of refugee are unemployed. And this due to language barrier, lack of experience, rigid education. So all this prevents people to get access. Job markets is quite also low in Uganda. So we have been able to at least, while learning entrepreneurship, instead of relying on the system, better creates our own system, better creates our own opportunities as refugees. So mostly from, especially from the country that I am. So the system, especially the education system, make us slaves of the system. You may be almost 100 people who are learning business and administration. And you are going to alert that the company in the city. So you are going to fund at only two companies. So if you are not really a non-person or your parent is not a non person, so you never get a job. So this has been the fact that has motivated me a lot to, okay, let's create our own opportunities instead of relying on the system. And then we jump into this and then I get an opportunity to learn entrepreneurship at idea for Africa and path through different centers here in refugee settlement to foster my experience. And then this is where I start found Unidos Social Innovation Center. Stephen Matini: How it is to live in a refugee community? Paulinho Muzaliwa: It's quite hard. Psychologically, it's really hard to let it go. The life that you had in your home country and start a new one here in refugee settlements. And this is something that's traumatized most of people and not able to let it go and start a new page. But economically, they're living in refugee settlements, especially where I am in Nakivale Valley refugee settlements, Uganda. As I've been saying, 44% of refugee are employed. So most of people are running small businesses to generate income and which is not really profitable enough to sustain their lives. So people are struggling currently due to humanitarian aid which I keep on decreasing every day. In 2018, when I reached here, so we used to get food from the World Food Program, but currently there is no food. So they fast in when reaching COVID, they transition from getting food to get money. And then this money is keep on decreasing. And currently they give $3, which is roughly a that can buy a two liter of oil, cooking oil as they provide this as a monthly rationed food. So can someone sustain with $3 a week or month? Quite hard. In term of education. So we have one secondary school and some private primary schools, which is not really provide the quality education. So for some parents who have at least some money, they take their children to go to learn out of refugee settlements. I think this is how life looks like in refugee settlements. So people have been relying so much on humanitarian aid, and when this has keep on decreasing, so life becomes keep on being harder. And the food on the market keep on increasing the price. And we are going to realize that life is becoming quite hard in refugee settlements. And some people decided maybe to go back to their countries and maybe starting hustling, no matter the insecurity that they are passing through there. Stephen Matini: When I read your LinkedIn profile, I really loved what I read. It says, I dream about transforming refugee camps into regenerative communities where every refugee can have access to clean water, abandoned food, and quality education. Would you mind explaining what regenerated culture is? Paulinho Muzaliwa: Yeah, sure. I think regenerative culture, I define it in two ways. So first of all, is to have access to abundance food, being able to grow food in an environment friendly way while taking care of the soil, but also growing organic and abundant food. And of course, why food? Food is currently the first need for refugees since the humanitarian aid, as I've been saying, keep on decreasing. So we need to make sure that we sustain ourselves in growing food instead of keep on relying on humanitarian agencies. Access to clean water. I've seen people spending a week without having birth. I've seen people, young girls get raped while looking for water. And I've seen people not being able to cook. You may have a portion of food, but you don't have water to cook with it. I've seen people struggling with typhoid and malaria just because of not having access to clean water. I've seen also people when I say about education. So education is not about only learning, but being able to co-create something which will impact as at least two people from what you have been learning. Education is not about only learning, but it's to boost someone providing him resources that will enable these people to shift from the life that you reach or you have meet them. And when you will go and come back, you say, oh, there is a quiet difference. This person is no longer depending on someone. This is what I summarize about regenerative. Regenerative is to shift from humanitarian dependency and be able to sustain your life no matter the place where you are. Stephen Matini: You say that in the refugee camp, there's a tremendous problem with unemployment as a result of a lack of skills. So in your experience, what are the most important skills that refugees should have? Paulinho Muzaliwa: Yeah, so I think vocational skills are the best things that I can shift or can help them to not only learn, but also starting co-creating something that will not only impact their life, but also impact the community as a whole. When I say vocational trainings, I see about handmade skills, for example, making soap. For example, teach people how to grow their own food. Teach people how he can make a dough or carpentry, for example, because when he will be able to do all with these skills, so he can generate money. For example, make soap making. So we empower women in terms of making and they're generating a lot of men to not only sustain their families, but also make saving for future needs. Stephen Matini: One thing also that I believe I've read it in your profile, I think, one thing that you said is this one. You talk about that you believe in horizontal leadership and decentralization. And before, you pointed out several times that you cannot rely on the system. You know, we have to move it from dependency to be more independent. So why do you believe that it's important to have an approach to leadership that is more flat and decentralized? Paulinho Muzaliwa: Everyone needs to have the opportunity to lead. Everyone has the opportunity to feel like, yes, I'm responsible on something that can impact the whole community. And everyone could have, we always look on inclusion and not, for example, when we go in the field, so we're not trying to think on behalf of people that are surrounding us, but let them own. I mean, a project, for example, that we are bringing to them, being feeling, being part of that project or being part of that solution that will change their lives. Instead of being just beneficiaries, for example, just because we believe in everyone's uniqueness. So I may have this approach, but when I involve someone else and give the responsibility to lead, it can innovate something greater than what I've been thinking and contribute to a positive impact of our community. Stephen Matini: Do you think that everyone could be a good leader?  Paulinho Muzaliwa: Not really, but everyone can learn to be a good leader. The opportunity to provide this space is there. It's a transformation process, and it's always take time to become one. And this passion is what most of people are lacking with. And reason why is not a good leader, but everyone needs time to become one if he's really open to learn. Stephen Matini: Would you mind telling me a little bit more about your project at Unidos projects, how that happened? Where did you get the first spark for that idea?  Paulinho Muzaliwa: Yeah, so I think what we need to start just as an English club. Most of us came from countries which English is not a first language. And reaching in Uganda, you must speak English so that at least you have, if you go to the market, you know what you need to buy. We start as an English club. And then after an English club, so we start sharing stories which can get us connected. So Nakivale Valley Refugee Settlement is a host of almost five community, different communities, Congolese, Burundians, Somalian, Ethiopians, South Sudanese. So in order to be connected, we need to learn from each other, background and belief, culture so that we cohabit, so that we speak, we really know about, we practice well, the nonviolence communication. And this was a way to get it together when learning together. So sharing story, sharing what is your culture, what's your belief? And so this help us. Oh, so if I do this to, for example, for Stephen, so he will get angry. If I do this, he will be happy. This has been really a great approach. So when I finished to learn about entrepreneurship, so I added about some session about entrepreneurs, so how we can turn a problem into solution, how we can create our own opportunities, how we can start seeing a problem as an opportunity for us to bring a solution that will not only will benefit us as a group, but the entire community. So this is where we have started  Unidos. And then in COVID, we had a challenge in terms of accessing food. So this is where the World Food Program decided, okay, so we are running out of funds and then we are going to start diminish the food ration for refugee. And remember that in that day, there was lockdown. So most of people didn't go to their field to collect food. So it was quite terrible moment. We get a mini grant of $200. And the one who gave us, he told us to buy a toolkit that will help us to prevent ourselves from COVID. And I told him, so, OK, buy toolkits. It's quite fine. But hunger will kill people here before the COVID. So and they say, OK, do whatever you want. Once I decided with my team, so we bought some maize, flour, sugar, soap and distribute to the most vulnerable people in the refugee settlement. And after this process, we have a lot that most of people start coming to the center, and it was quite a dilemma. So the money that's being sent to us was finished. But then people came and requests for food. And we sit together and say, OK, instead of providing food, how not to start teaching people how to grow their own food. Because if in case that we get another extra are found and we buy food and distribute to these people, we are making them beggars. But if we're teaching them skills on how to grow food, we will make them being sustainable for their families, for the community, and for themselves as well. In the group, we didn't know about there is no one who was experienced about agriculture, honestly. And so how are we going to do this? We are not experienced. Let's start looking for someone who can teach us first and then after teaching us so we can spread the message. So I was connected to Morag Gamble. She's a permacultureist and has a lot of experience in regenerative agriculture and she won out. She's really an inspiration. So she trained me and I was also connected to a community, which is called Warm Data. I was connected to introduced the Permaculture Design Course in Nakivale Valley Refugee Settlements in 2021. I trained the first courts and it gives a great outcomes seeing how people have started growing in a regenerative way. They are gardens and produce enough food on a small space because in refugee settlements, there is no big space. This has motivated me again to train in other cohorts and keep this sustaining until now. But from this, we have also generated more projects. We started focusing on solid regeneration because we realized that no matter the different approaches that we have implemented, so the soul was not healthy enough to grow more food. So most of people or most of refugee have been using chemicals to grow their own food. Of course, at the first time, the first time you get food, but at the second one, so the production keep on decreasing. And most of people have reported this to us. We get challenged in terms of growing food. We do this and this and this, but it is not really sustaining. We sit with the community and say, so what shall we do so that we come up with a innovative solution? So we then started, okay, let's try about applying organic fertilizer instead of chemicals. And the organic fertilizer that we opt on, we started producing organic fertilizer through the vemi compost. This is a process of collecting food waste from different markets around the community. And then we decompose it with the help of worms and to get organic fertilizer. So this organic fertilizer help us to, when applying in the soil, it's regenerate the soil and balance the pH and add more microorganisms in the soil to make the crop being more resistant in term of climate change, especially along droughts and give you nutritious and organic food in return. So we tried this and we have already built two vermicompost sites alongside with a community regenerative demonstration sites where we demonstrate the effect of this organic fertilizer. This will be will play as an inspiration for most of the community to see how regenerative this can transform the way that we have been compared to the way that we have been applying chemicals. This was our first project. So another project was mushroom growing. So we have realized that mushroom is a nutritious and a regenerative food that can play a great role in a refugee settlement in terms of providing food in a short period of time, not only providing food, but also it gives it another way that could help women to generate income or selling the mushroom and generate income that can respond on the basics needs. So we have also several projects in terms of soap making, so just organic soap. All this is just to empower women to be financially self-dependent in refugee settlements because women and children are the most vulnerable people in refugee tournament. We come up with all these incentives to help them being sustainable and to contribute also on the change that they want to see in the refugee settlement. Stephen Matini: You know what's interesting? The fact that the word sustainability, I believe, for a lot of people is something that evokes something that I do now to make sure that the future will be better. So sustainability for a lot of people has this dimension of let's create something that has the ability to endure. And the way that you are living and breathing sustainability through your business is actually something that addresses an emergency in the present moment by creating the conditions also for the future, but it really provides a solution in the present. And I love the fact that you mentioned several times the importance of networks and communities, working with different people that bring different experiences using each other's background and what we know together we can create solutions that nurture the soil and creates the background in which life can actually prosper. I really love that. On your website, one thing that I read, which I love is this one. You wrote, "Our goal is to transform these young refugees into change makers who will drive the community and make sure that everyone will be heard when it comes to creating a better tomorrow for all of us." So for you, who is a change maker? What are some of the attributes of someone who becomes a change maker? Paulinho Muzaliwa: A change maker for me is someone who, when people see problem, it's take an opportunity to come up with a solution that will transform this problem of how people have been seeing it as an impact driving. I've been thinking that, so if at least we get our 100 changemaker in refugee settlements coming with a diversity of innovation that will impact people. I think we now need to depend on humanitarian aid or beg people to support us if we have really this commitment to reach that level of how I'm envisioning it. Stephen Matini: You use a lot of interesting words, you know, including begging. And then you mentioned several times being independent. But anything you say is about taking responsibilities, is about not feeling that I need to beg someone to help me. I'm going to create my own opportunities, which is incredible. It's so remarkable. Paulinho Muzaliwa: In reality, the fact that you are a refugee, you are directly or indirectly a victim of so many things. So you're going to realize that the time that we have been getting food, of course, it was not real enough or the time that we get this $3. And you need to spend all the day under the sun on a line to make sure that you get this portion of food. And if you don't, you'll not get. Another thing is this dependency. Being dependent is quite really something terrible because everyone can treat you the way they want, just because you are dependent, dependent on them. Being dependent is being out of control of your own life, because all the decision will be made, maybe for your benefit, but without your concern. And this can affect you positively or negatively. And people, they don't mind how you will feel about this. They will just, oh, it's a help and they will be excited about the help. But will this be the first things that you need before? We have seen so many ridiculous scenarios of local organization. And I think this has been the things also that has opened eyes for refugee in starting their own incentives. So local organization always came in the refugee campus. Okay, we come up with clauses and yet they didn't ask you is something that you need, but someone gave you a soap, yet you didn't eat in your home and then take your pictures and go and report. So this is what we have done. So we discovered this. We have all the fact that, okay, so these people get incredible amount of money. Just they say, okay, we want to advocate for refugee, but the reality which is happening in the field is quite different from the concepts, not that they submit. So this has motivated us. And we are going to allow that so most of sustainable incentives are coming from and within the community, the refugee communities, just because we understand the struggle that we are passing through. We understand the problem in deep of the community. And we come together with a solution that will benefit everyone. Not think on behalf of a group. Just because you see myself having so much bear or air on my head and say, oh, this place needs a salon. Maybe it's not something that I need. So for this big organization, like for example, World Food Program to work directly with refugee service. But I think these people also understand that we can also trust refugees in making decisions on their lives. So last year, we have a partner with UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) and in term of trained people in regenerative agriculture and ecological aspects. And this, we have made a great progress through this partnership. I believe that there are also so many incentives that are now supported by UN Syria from within refugee settlements. Stephen Matini: So Paulinho, we talked about many different things. And hopefully a lot of people are going to hear through this important conversation because you do live and breathe sustainability. You show how applicable this is and how important it is to have a sustainable mindset. So I want to ask you, for those who are going to listen to us, to this episode, what would you say that is an important point they should focus on on our conversation?  Paulinho Muzaliwa: Normally, I would say on a perspective of refugees settlement and how people are seeing refugees. There's so many incredible people, incentives, and courageous community here in refugee settlement, doing things which are really exceptional, worth to be supported or worth to be charmed. And unfortunately, this work is not seen anywhere. And I would recommend people, if they really want to support amazing calls, it is in refugee where they should more focus, because these people are really doing things in a way that it's matter because the challenges or problem that they're explaining to or pitching in different audience of people. So these people are being victim of this problem directly. And then when I talk about hunger, I know what mean hunger. I know that most of people, they advocate about, okay, we advocate about hunger, but have you felt before this feeling of just saying to your children that we today, my children, so we I didn't been lucky to get food for you. So you should go to sleep and see what tomorrow will look like. As a parent, you sleep and figure out, spend all the nights figure out what the possibilities that I need to do so that these people or these children eat tomorrow. And this is how change makers, entrepreneurs from within the refuge when they talk about the problem that they are advocating for. And for us, as Unidos, we are more specially focusing on soil regeneration with the goal of prevent hunger crisis in refugee settlements in time of growing ambient food and organic, empower women to be self-reliant through different entrepreneurial skills that will enable them to experience or being part of the change that they want to see and feel being empowered or having a word in terms of contributing on the economy of not only the refugee community, but also of the country that hosts us as a refugee. Stephen Matini: Paulino, I think you are a phenomenal entrepreneur. You're a great leader. You're a fantastic change maker. And I believe your message is going to resonate and to be a shiny example for a lot of people, because everything and anything you said is something that is so relevant these days and is so needed. So thank you so much for your efforts. Thank you. And thank you for giving me your time. I've learned a lot today. Paulinho Muzaliwa: Thank you as well for providing this space, it’s really meant a lot for us in terms of representing our community. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit breakfastwithstephen.substack.com

How can we make our common road lead to a world of hope and joy? Our guest today is Gunnar George, author of the book Aha... Wow! Yes, and leadership development expert. Gunnar George believes that the most effective leaders are those who are compassionate, inspirational, and have a vision that promotes hope, joy, and sustainability. He challenges the notion of transactional communication in business and personal interactions, advocating instead for authentic and emotionally engaging exchanges. By developing others and maintaining a vision that encompasses societal and global impacts, compassionate leaders can play a significant role in creating a better world. Listen to the episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Amazon Music, or your favorite podcast platform to learn how to become an authentic and emotionally engaging leader. Subscribe to Pity Party Over for more insightful episodes. Questions? Email Stephen Matini or send him a message on LinkedIn. #LeadershipDevelopment #EmotionalIntelligence #TransformationalLeadership #GlobalImpact #Sustainability #CompassionateLeadership #BusinessTransformation #AuthorInterview #NewBookRelease #PodcastEpisode ... TRANSCRIPT Stephen Matini: The first question that I have for you, being someone who wrote a book, is how is the whole experience of writing a book? How your idea for “Aha... Wow! Yes.” came by? Gunnar George: Oh, the whole experience. It's a long experience, actually. It started many years ago. I thought I wanted to write a book. And I also worked in a company that had a different way of leading. We were consultants working with strategy and big transformations. And we had a different way of leading change that most of the traditional consulting companies had in those days. So we said to ourselves that we need to write this down sometime. And I had that in the back of my mind for many years. And then I've worked a lot with leadership development programs lately. And one of the things that I realized is that the more you share, the more you get and sharing is sort of the sharing of knowledge and experiences and views and so on. It's really what that is the core of leadership development. I met so many fantastic people and been part of extraordinary things in meetings with companies and transformations in big companies and so on. So I thought I need to share myself what I've experienced and what I've noticed and observed. But I didn't want to share it sort of to give advice, more to sort of to share my observations and my reflections on that. But it is a fantastic experience to see it grow and to see it take form. And then also, another thing is that the people you have around you and the people you meet, as soon as you start to talk about it a little bit, people want to contribute. And I have a friend who likes Paulo Coelho and he often quotes him and says that you have to be careful what you dream of because universe will conspire to make it happen. And that is sort of joked a little bit about it sometimes. But when you write a book, you see that almost like this is true because people come from suddenly from nowhere and say, I can help you or I can do that. So it's an amazing experience in that way. Stephen Matini:When you thought about writing a book, what was your initial biggest wish for the book? Gunnar George: I wrote it in English, in a simple kind of easy to read English. So I wanted to reach out to as many as possible in the world, not only to English native speaking countries. That was one of the thoughts I had. And then one of my wishes also that people start to think more about, “Aha... Wow! Yes,” which is the title of the book. That is sort of if we need more emotions in business, we need more emotions in society and positive emotions. And often when we structure things or do strategy work or communication work, whatever, we use why, what how as a structure that is sort of, you check that you have covered, why, what, how? And my thing thought with it, my wish with this was that “Aha... Wow! Yes,” would be the new why, what, how. So that is also a wish that I had. So I have in the book, I had sort of this “Aha... Wow! Yes,”, circular that I spoke about many times in the book. Stephen Matini: One thing that struck me when you and I met, you were talking about the importance of contributing to create a world of hope and joy, which, you know, these days, it seems to be so important to do, considering all that is happening, all the negativity. How do you keep that hope and joy within yourself? Gunnar George: I try to find it in the people I meet. I see sort of the positive things and heard an interview with the previous foreign minister of Sweden the other day. And he said that he had hope for, he saw hope in the world because we haven't done the transformation with women. Women has sort of, that is still a big transformation for the world. And he saw a lot of hope in that sort of, because it is a man's world. And this transformation is to make it a balanced world with both men and women is, he saw a lot of hope in that. And I agree totally with that. And I see that type of messages and people who think like that, that just brings me hope. And also the young generation. Every time I talk to them, I get amazed a little bit because I think back when we were young, were we that clever and that did we see so much? Did we see the world with that clear? Do we have this engagement or not when we were young? Stephen Matini: And to keep that youthful approach to things, I believe is really important. You know, like I believe for you, one of the key points is learning. And learning for me is one of the components that probably keep me positive, but keep me wanting to keep going. Absolutely. You said a few times the word transformation, which seems to be such an important word to you. What does transformation mean to you?  Gunnar George: For me, transformation. A lot of people talk about change and transformation and it's sort of, and everybody have their different definitions about it. I see transformation as a bigger type of change than just improvements. So transformation for me is a radical change. And you often start from the future and look back. What type of future do we want? And then you look back and say, what do we need to make happen in order for this division to happen, so say. And transformation is also more, it covers both the mindset and the system and the culture of a company or a society. So it's a very thorough change. That is the way I see it. And I think you mentioned learning and learning, I see, is the big way to get there, learning and seeing different perspectives. And I have in my book, I have one of the longest chapters about learning, actually, how to learn faster, faster than the speed of change. Stephen Matini: A lot of people say around learning, oh, I don't have time. I'm busy. I don't have time. I don't have time. So how can you keep what they say? A growth mindset, you know, a learning mindset, despite the fact that so many of us are super busy. How do you carve that time in your opinion? Gunnar George: Yeah, that's the biggest challenge, I guess. I think we need to add the inspiration part to the learning. We need to talk much more about inspiration. And if we are inspired and curious, we will learn much more. And we will create the time. You can see yourself. You have a lot of mails and messages coming all over. And then suddenly one of them, you can spend quite a long time on that. And then you can also say, why do you do that? And I think it has to do with you get inspired or you get, this is something that attracts you. And suddenly you create time. You don't have time, but maybe you spend half an hour or something, you didn't think that you were going to spend half an hour. And there was something that triggered that. And then to learn for half an hour just because it's really interesting. We have a limited amount of time during the day. So I think also we need to set aside learning as part of our work. So we have you answer a lot of emails. That does a chunk in your daily work. But you also need to put in maybe one hour or two hours a day just for learning. I mean, if you take a writer, for example, many writers, they read a lot. And so they have before lunch, they read or after lunch they write or vice versa. And that is about learning and getting new inspiration, new perspectives on things. In business, we have forgotten to take this time to learn. So we need to book it in our agendas, I think. I have a lot of examples and stuff in the book that how to speed it up. Stephen Matini: You said what we find inspirational, and I have to say during the day, a few things are inspirational, but a lot of stuff is boring. Yeah, yeah. Exactly. Emails are God ... such a boring thing. You know, emails, I started writing less and less email. And I'm definitely using more and more of chats because they're faster. But the emails, God is still. I mean, emails have been around for what, 25 years? And still, people complain, oh, I get put in CC and so much stuff. Hundreds and hundreds of emails a day. And you think, yeah, but I mean, what does it do anyway? You know For sure, it's not inspirational.  Gunnar George: But you can ask yourself, what is that really gets your attention? What type of headlines is it? What type of pictures is it that you sort of stop for a moment and give it a chance? Stephen Matini: I have to say that a lot of stuff that I see in business, I find it very transactional. You're trying to get something out of me. And I think that all of us can spot that in a second. And what I'm thriving and what I try to seek is something that feels more simple, simpler and more authentic. Because when everything becomes transactional, then the energy doesn't flow, you know? Gunnar George:  So that is also why I have this “Aha ... Wow! Yes.” When you see a title or something, you see a picture and they say, aha, I didn't realize that. Or you say, wow, that was new or something. Or yes, I would like to try that. Then those type of emotional expressions are also, you see it everywhere, this aha, wow, yes. These are the things that we're focusing on. Stephen Matini: So it is an emotional book. It's supposed to evoke emotions.  Gunnar George:  Yes, I put in a lot of stories in it and a lot of quotes and stuff like that. Because many books on leadership and change and transformation, they are written in a very transactional way, in a sort of square mechanistic engineering type of books. I don't believe that you can explain leadership to leaders. You cannot, but many do. Many think that if you explain a model or something, then people will say, okay, and then they will sort of get it. But I think you need to go the whole circle. Aah, that is the learning and wow is the inspiration. And yes, it's sort of the action. So you have to go do all the whole circle in either way. Stephen Matini: In your book, there are three, I guess, ingredients that are so talked about these days. One is the notion of sustainability, which means a lot of different things for people. Another one is technology, new technology, and how technology is speeding things up. And the other one is this whole global political discourse, that is becoming apparently dark and dark and darker. And so these three components seem to be as part of this transformation. So from your perspective, what would you say that is a healthy, positive approach to the three of them? Gunnar George: The way I see it is that the more you learn about it, the more you understand. So you sort of feel that you are not maybe on top of it, but you feel that you are following what's happening. So that is one way. And the next thing is that I think you need some sort of vision as inspiration. If you don't have a positive future vision, then you will just do a lot of problem solving and you will run around and feeling stressed and so on. But if you have a vision, then that will sort of color the things that you do. I heard one person once talked about visions as memories of the future. And the reasoning was that memories that forms the way we sort of select information and the way we think our memories. If you have a vision, then you have sort of that is part, then that is your memories. You start to see new things just because you have this vision. If you have a vision to go to the moon or to Mars, for example, nowadays, suddenly you start to see all things that can help that. If you have a vision about the sustainable future, then you pick up all the things that are positive and that can add to that vision. You also see the barriers, of course. But yeah, I think you need to see these positive things to be able to cope with all the stress in a society today. Because I think it's sustainability, new technology and geopolitics. These are the three major forces. It's like a perfect storm now with three storms just enforcing each other. And they are connected, of course. Stephen Matini: How do you build a vision when you don't have a vision?  Gunnar George: It is to paint a picture of what kind of future you want to see. If it is in business, for example, if you take that, then most companies, they are not used to painting visions that are sort of something else than their own company. Because in today's world, it's so much focused on the shareholder value, for example, and there's a lot of companies looking at their valuation because they want to become unicorns and so many visions is about we are going to be the leader in the world or the leader in our industry. But the real vision is they go, they leave their own company and look at the customer or the society. What is the future customer experience? What is the future society we want to live in? Who are the future leaders? That type of vision is something more than yourself. Most companies start with the wrong question. They start with, what do we want to be in five years from now? And then they start talking about their own company and market shares or whatever, profitability. Instead of talking, what kind of customer experience do we want to see? What type of society do we want to see in the future? So I think when you have bigger visions like that, then you need to go outside of yourself, connected to the purpose of the company or the organization. If you look at yourself as an individual, if you can do the same there, you can come up with a wonderful vision, which is not only about yourself, it is about your network or the whole world, if you want to have a really, really big vision. And in the book, I try to connect the three levels. It's the individual level, the organizational level, and the world, the global level. And most books are about one of these levels. But I try to connect them all because now if you take sustainability, for example, you actually can do a lot as a responsible person as an individual, but it also can make even more as a company. And it's all connected to what's happening in the world. So all this, you have to cover all three today in many of the big challenges we have. It's not enough just to look at the individual or to look at the team or the organization. You have to go all the way. It is a time for big visions, I think, that we live in right now. Stephen Matini: You know, as you're talking, I'm thinking about vision and whether or not I've had the vision in my life, but everything you are saying, that sort of vision that goes beyond myself, I think it's something that I have developed only in recent years. And a lot of that, I think it has to be with age, and the understanding that I will not be here forever. So the question to you is, do you think would you have written this book earlier? Gunnar George: Maybe not, because I think you have a point there. There are many young people with strong visions, but it's also when you get older, you have a broader perspective and you have more experience. Since part of the book is a big reason for the book is sharing experiences and observations is I needed to collect a lot, of course, before you can do it. But I think it's an interesting question you have. But there are young people with a very fantastic visions, of course, that I think is amazing when you see them. Stephen Matini: In your life, were there any experiences, any people that somehow, you know, looking in hindsight, were responsible for the way you think today? Gunnar George: Well, there are many, actually, maybe a thousand. But actually, in my book, I wrote down, I did an exercise. I was doing a presentation at the conference. And after the presentation, two persons from China came up to me and they thanked me a lot for, and they said that they had learned a lot. And I didn't realize it. I said, I said, yes, thank you, thank you. But then they said, we learned a lot. And then I said, one more time, we learned a lot. I thought about what was so, why did they say that? But then I realized that that is one of the best things you can say to someone, especially in Asia. So then I thought about it. Who has I learned a lot from? Who could I say that to? So when I wrote the book in the beginning of the book, the introduction, I wrote down the people I learned a lot from. And then I was thinking, when I've done that, I put them in the right order. And then I realized that that was a very interesting thing to do. But I also developed it into an exercise because if you do that, then you can start to think, who did I put on a list and who did I not put on a list? And why did I not put them there? Because the list cannot be too long. And then you can ask yourself, who could I have put there that I didn't put there? And why did I not take that opportunity to learn from that person more? I've developed maybe 10 questions. I think it was that was that you can connect to this list that really says a lot about how you think and how you can start to learn faster and learn more. If I should pick one or two persons from that list, I learned a lot from this guy that I told you about earlier. He was an Irish guy, was an expert on cross-cultural communication. Sean Gaffney was his name. And I learned a lot from him. And that thing I said, I love people. That summarizes a lot of his view on things. I learned a lot from Thor Heyerdahl, a Norwegian explorer that I had the opportunity to talk to. And his view of life, I take him as an example a couple of times in the book, also things that he said and one thing that he shared was that he had traveled around the world as an explorer, looking at digging out this ancient pyramids, whatever. And then when we talked to a group of people, he told us that I have learned what is a good society or not. There's an easy measure of that, he said, and everybody was curious. And then he said, you can just count the number of smiles on the streets. That is my, from all the travels are done all over the world. If you count the smiles you see on the street, that is the best indication for how good a society is. And I thought that was a really strong message in that. But I learned a lot more from him also. And then I learned a lot from my wife that I'm very thankful for having met. And there are many others also that I work together with. And you learn every day when you work with the curious people. And if you work in situations that are really stretched, so really challenging situations. So I learned a lot. I can go on forever, talk about people. Stephen Matini: And sometimes you learn from people that they teach you stuff unintentionally. It may not necessarily be someone that you know super well. It could be someone that you met very briefly, but somehow the person says something that you really need at the moment.  Gunnar George: Yeah, exactly. Small things. I learned a lot from one of my sons. When he was about five years old, he was, every time the doorbell rang, he was just running as crazy to get first to the door because he wanted to stand there and shake hands and see who it was on the other side of the door. And it was so curious. His eyes were just glowing when it was a new person coming, ringing on the door. When I saw that, I thought, what a fantastic curiosity. That is something I need to develop even more also myself. So you learn all the time from all kinds of sources, of course. Stephen Matini: You know, you've been working in leadership development for such a long time. If you had a leader in front of you, and if you had to share with such a leader a very important point that you think should know, what would you say that is? What I seem to say the most now is people always look at you and they seek a consistency. So you may ask people whatever you want, but they don't see that behavior in you, they're not going to follow you. So be mindful that people always look at you. They always seek for consistency. Gunnar George: For me, if I say something to you, it's to take initiatives and develop your people. It's not about yourself. It's about your people. If you as a leader can develop really good leaders, that is the ultimate sign of good leadership. And I think one of the key questions in the book that I've written is about sort of what type of leaders? How do we get leaders who care for the whole world? I think that is one of the core questions we need to ask ourselves now. How do we get leaders who care for the whole world? If you as a leader can develop that, that would be fantastic. And there are many more things to say, of course, in that. But I try to think a lot in the book about what, you know, this famous quote from Einstein. So if I had one hour to solve a problem and my life depended on it, I would just spend 55 minutes on finding the right question. Then I had five minutes to find the answer. So I was thinking about that quote. I said, "What is the right question in a book about leadership?" So I thought a lot about it. And then what I came up with is that the question is, how do you develop, how do we ensure leaders that we have leaders that care for the whole world? That is the key question for me when we go forward now. That is part also of a vision, of course, if we can have that. Because what we see now is the opposite in many cases. Stephen Matini: Is this also the reason why you name your consultancy Compassion? Gunnar George: Yeah, it is. Because I think that is one of the keys to the future. It was actually my wife who suggested the name for the company. She has done a lot of yoga, and that is a key element in yoga. And when the yogis talk about the future, they talk a lot about the compassion. And also compassion as a word is sort of passion, it's passion for communication, which I work with. And it's also compass is part of compassion. And I work a lot with strategy visions and values. So that is sort of the compass. So it's a lot of things that come together in that name, compassion. Stephen Matini: So it's more passion and a vision, basically. Gunnar George: Yeah. There are so many different definitions on compassion. I did one myself in the book. I will just look it up and see if I say the right thing. So the way I usually define is to listen with your heart and do good. Stephen Matini: We talked about different things, a lot of different things. For those who are going to listen to this episode, is there anything in particular that you would like for them to pay attention to? Gunnar George: What we talked about with the compassion, I think, is the key. That is the last chapter in my book is called compassion as the cornerstone. And so we talked about compassion. And I think that is the key for the future. And if we can determine how we interact, how we communicate, and how we lead. It comes down a lot to that single word, actually. So I think if they find out more about compassion and they try to behave more compassionate and see the effect that it has on your surrounding and the boomerang effect that you get back. Like when you inspire people, you get so much inspiration back yourself. Stephen Matini: From your perspective, compassion starts with the relationship with me. Does it start with people? Gunnar George: What it starts with, I think it starts with yourself that you want to see the positive, that you're curious, want to see the positive, like what I said, to listen with your heart and your good. And so you listen a lot. And then in all your meetings, you're trying to find these positive things and create this positive feeling in the relationship. I think that is the core of that. Stephen Matini: This listen with the heart and do good. I’m going to write it down. Thank you so much for sharing this moment with me. I learned a lot of important things. Thank you. Gunnar George: Thank you. This has been fantastic to talk to you. You are very good at talking to people, you know. Stephen Matini: You too, you too. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit breakfastwithstephen.substack.com

Andy Eberechukwu Akukwe serves as the Vice President of the PlungeSmile Foundation, which provides education, health, nutrition, and infrastructure programs to support rural communities in Nigeria, Africa. PlungeSmile exemplifies how corporations can forge impactful partnerships to tackle pressing societal challenges. Our conversation explores how authentic corporate social responsibility drives sustained business success and why it should be central to every company's mission. Corporations elevate their brand reputation through these collaborations and showcase a solid dedication to social causes. Additionally, these alliances offer valuable insights into pressing societal issues, empowering companies to gather data for refining future product development or service enhancements. Listen to the episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube,  Amazon Music, or your favorite podcast platform. Subscribe to Pity Party Over for more insightful episodes. Questions? Email Stephen Matini or send him a message on LinkedIn. #AndyEberechukwuAkukwe #PlungeSmile #RelianceInfosystems  #CorporateSocialResponsibility #Sustainability #SocialImpact #Leadership #CommunityDevelopment #PityPartyOver #Alygn #Stephen Matini ... TRANSCRIPT Stephen Matini: What I love about your background is the fact that you are a business person, you are an entrepreneur, but at the same time, you also have a tremendous sensitivity for sustainability and sustainable development. So how did this come about? You know, how did you join these two things?  Andy Eberechukwu Akukwe: Okay, splendid. Plunge Smile is a foundation established by the group managing director of Reliance Info Systems, Olayemi Popoola, who I happen to be a member of his team. And then over the years, he's personalized to help to assist people, develop even on a career level as well. He took this out to the public to salvage the problem that we have in the Nigerian society, which was mainly centered on education. Marrying his passion was not a thing of difficulty for him. And then getting members of like mind onto the team was not much of a hard work as well. I love social impact. I love to see people smile. So joining the team of Plunge Smile and see that it's all about making this social impact is our dreams actually or fully attained, gives me that confidence to move with the team. So it's a seamless flow because it's a mixture of career and passion. Stephen Matini: I’ve had the pleasure of talking to other business people in Africa. And one thing that all of you have in common is your sensitivity towards corporate social responsibility. And CSR is a huge topic in the Western world. But then oftentimes the need for profits, you know, to make money seems to get ahead. Why do you think in Africa this theme seems to be so important to a lot of people?  Andy Eberechukwu Akukwe: The African society is built for interdependence. When you talk of the traditional family system, we majorly operate an extended family system here unlike what you have in Europe. So here, when you are concerned with your spouse and your children, you still need to think about your uncles, your aunts, their families, your in-laws and all whatnot. These actually traditionally make up for the unique African family system. Corporate social responsibility is a huge thing here in that in a local community, you would always find people who are not as privileged as others. You would always find people who actually need a helping hand. So it's such a big one because we call it giving back, right? It's such a big one that many business founders and of course giants in different fields, including sports, where actually people who depended on others to survive, people who depended on others to rise. So some survived on the streets, some survived through certain tissue-free schemes, scholarships and all that. So the first thing anyone wants to do when they succeed is to think of how to give back to the society. And so that's why CSR is a big thing for us here, tying it to our traditional family system. Stephen Matini: When did you hear about CSR for the first time? Do you remember?  Andy Eberechukwu Akukwe: Oh, yes. That was when I had my first corporate job in the early 2000s. I joined Diageo at the time. It was a big thing. And of course, for many other corporates all over the world, CSR is high because you want to give back to your host community. You want to give back to those that actually form your mass markets. Stephen Matini: In the Western world, oftentimes a big debate is about, should I manage my business for shareholders? Should I manage my business for stakeholders? Oftentimes, CEOs, they really focus on short-term returns rather than long-term investments. In your opinion, how can we find balance between making sure that a business is profitable, but having a long-term goal?  Andy Eberechukwu Akukwe: So business deals with numbers, right? It all comes to approach. So there has to be the quick approach of making money, carrying out your research, finding out what it is that the market needs, curating products or services that the market needs, curating your routes to market, positioning your brand, activating all your strategies and tactics in the marketplace to be at the winning edge. All of these, of course, make sure that revenue, profits, and of course, growth structures almost immediately attained. But then again, likening these to the UN SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals ), which talks about sustainability, you don't just want to build for today. The shareholders primarily wait for, say, half a year, end of the year to take some shares, those who would sell off, those who will liquidate and all that, they do that. But of course, the stakeholders are beautiful tomorrow because many of these employees would want to work for decades, for perennial years. So they want to see that the business succeeds. So it's just an approach knowing that, okay, we need to get the numbers. And then we have to develop a culture, a sustainability culture building on the long term, where we are not just looking at numbers, we are looking at goodwill in the market. And you can't all but attend this with marketing, selling campaigns. This is where CSR comes, because when the people are on your side, you have good will with them, then in fact, your stay in that market is almost all even guaranteed. Stephen Matini: Do you think that this approach can be applied to any industry, to any company?  Andy Eberechukwu Akukwe: Definitely, yes. So it depends on what the vision is, what the mission is. Of course, the vision is that big picture, and then the mission are those tiny pieces that actually lead us to the big picture. How we are going to achieve or how any organization would achieve this would be fundamentally assembling the right team. And so this is where HR professionals come to play. For instance, in Reliance Group here, we've got a robust HR professionals or HR team made up of professionals who actually bring a whole lot of experienced wealth into their field. So what that would mean is you have to make sure that the team are of like mind with you. So if I am the CEO, I am the founder and I have these long-term goals, I need to make sure that I get the right people by my side. Of course, over the years, there will be churn, right? There will be staff churn and all that. But those who share the same vision with you will remain. And then you build something with them, you know, progressively and make sure that they are rewarded and that they keep staying with you. Stephen Matini: So Andy, me personally, I agree with you 100%. So everything you say resonates very deeply with me and what is dear to me. But let's say hypothetically, I were someone who said, Andy, that's beautiful, but that's not applicable. That's not realistic because you have to make sure that your company runs and to make your shareholders happy. So I don't think what you're saying is possible. How would you respond to the type of criticism?  Andy Eberechukwu Akukwe: Irrespective of the size of the corporate, that's why you have Plunge Smile. That's why we are here. So there are B2B partnerships that you can enter into with NGOs, Punge Smile referentially here. While you're doing your business, you could make financial contributions. You could have employee volunteering. You could do pro bono services. You could actually do some skill-based volunteering where you identify certain people who bring certain skills to play, for instance, you identify people who could actually help these schoolchildren with, say, coding and then free coding services or free coding aptitude is actually a provision to them. There could be cause marketing or advocacy and public influence where you use your marketing campaigns, you highlight social mis-norms, crime for advocating actually for social reforms, for policy reforms and all that. You could actually partner with Plunge Smile in the area of supply chain integration. So let's assume that yes, you want to deliver on education or you want to deliver on free school feeding or you want to deliver on certain piece of your corporate social responsibility. So we have the leg, we have the guys on the field, we have all the mercenaries and tools. So when we integrate our supply chain, we get to deliver this. Then of course, impact investing is that tranche where, for instance, you are trying to say cure a water challenge in a society. And at the same time, that company actually sells water. So while solving for water problem, you are still positioning your brand as maybe the supreme or superior brand over others. So these are more even research and data sharing as well. So how do people actually gain insights into what could be called real time societal problems that they could solve for? That's when they actually partner with NGOs, when they partner with serious NGOs like Plunge Smile, get on the field, see what these schoolchildren are going through, see what community residents are going through, and then of course, begin to solve them. And they have rich data to form whatever product or whatever service that they want to create in the future. It's a win-win. You can't just say, I'm here to do business and I want to look out a corporate social responsibility. And that's why we are seeing here at Plunge Smile. As an individual, you can go about your daily activities where we help you run this other aspect of your corporate social responsibility. We have dashboards that gives you real time visibility into your donations, your resources, where they are going, how they be used, what impact they've made. And of course, you can celebrate your success, even on your website, on your page, and all that. So I see it as a collaborative effort where you just get to identify who you're going to collaborate with, then focus more on your business while we focus more on your social impact. Stephen Matini: I love that. It's such a systemic collaborative view of the world and what the world could be, you know, in the future. Of all possible directions, what attracted you to Plunge Smile, why you decided to join this initiative?  Andy Eberechukwu Akukwe: At a time that age, I presented my school in a quiz competition. I got to state level. In fact, I was in certain quiz competitions even at national level. So I found out firsthand that certain people would actually want to fly, but they don't have means to fly. Certain children were deprived of the rights to education because of poverty, of low appreciation of the impact of education by their parents or any other factor. It could be peer pressure, it could be violence in the community, whatever it is. So collectively seeing that the world could actually be a better place, even especially the less privileged children get access to college education, have the right funding, have the right tools. And Plunge Smile is already playing in this space over the years. Why not? So you could see that the marriage is something that came seamlessly and effortlessly. Stephen Matini: Where do you hope a Plunge Smile to be let's say 10 years from now, what do you see?  Andy Eberechukwu Akukwe: Before I answer that question, I want to give it a two-leg approach. So Plunge Smile actually have a flagship initiative called Educa. And this Educa was better as a result of our years of interventions in educational sector of Nigeria. And our plan is actually to scale this across to Africa. So Educa gets to see that children who don't have school fees to pay are being funded. Children whose school buildings are dilapidated. These buildings could be repaired. Children who stay out of school because of hunger, they could be fed in school. And then most importantly, many children who stay out of school because they don't have uniforms. They don't have the screen. They don't have bags. They don't have shoes. Neither do they have the full skill kits, right? So they stay out of school. And what we found in interventions is we saw it at 5% response increments in the attendance of schoolchildren when you kick them up. And that's why the scent of education is kid up a child. So we have “Kit Up A Child” program. So Kit Up A Child program actually highlights making sure that the child goes back to school and stays in school, having the full kits, which are the uniforms, the bags, the shoes or sandals, as the case may be. And then of course, there are different ways by which any organization or individual can actually key into the program of London, which is educated. So you could donate, you could volunteer your skills, you could sponsor a child with an amount, you could sponsor 50 children, you could sponsor 100 children. So those details we could actually share with you, it depends on the school, depends on the popularity of what you want to do. And then you could partner with us on a long term, you know, a while ago we talked about partnership and the different trends of partnership. Partnership goes to see that these solutions are scaled. And of course, there's a long-term retention in our schemes. So we actually have people that we work with along these trenches. So educate proper, what's the workings of educator? So in Educa, we build, we have rather interactive maps, we have dashboards, all the APIs, and of course, the user-friendly experience that anyone would have on the app. So here you explore the map, you choose a school, you select a project. I've mentioned a whole lot of projects. You select a project, then of course, you donate towards this project. You track the progress through the dashboard, you have real-time tracking of the project. And then, of course, you celebrate success. You celebrate impact made. We help you do this on social media. We collaborate with you. There are badges. There are so many other things that we've come up with to actually help you touch like this, because we are not doing this in our name. So we are doing this in the name of the corporates, but because we have the experience, we have the wherewithal, we know what the problems are. And we have over 112,000 public primary schools in Nigeria already in the system. So we could actually help you navigate. It could be your alma mater, it could be any school that you know that actually has a problem. And with this, your go-to social impact is made easy and you achieve your dreams. So where I see Plunge Smile in the next few years is scaling across, you know, out of Nigeria, you know, scaling across Africa, because the plan to actually do this is already in place. And I see 2024 being that year, where all of these will begin to unfold. And so that's why we actually need collaborators, we need individuals, we need corporates and all. We have, of course, Plunge Smile is riding on the back of a technological giant, which is Reliance Ecosystems Group. So all the tech driven solutions, all the tech enablements, all the functionalities that will actually help you have visibility into your project and actually make sure you know there is accountability there. So on a weekly basis, on a monthly basis, on a quarterly basis, depending on how we agree or however you want to do it, we could actually have some reviews. We could actually have some performance reviews. We could actually celebrate your donations, whatever resources you would see them live. And if there are leftovers, of course, they will be reimbursed. Stephen Matini: Has education always been central in your life? Andy Eberechukwu Akukwe: Oh, yes. A man informed will make informed decisions, while a man uninformed will make deformed decisions. So he could think that he's smart. He could think that, oh, I've met the market women. I've met the market people. I know the pain points. But he doesn't know what we call research. He doesn't know what we call inferential analysis, right? So if he cannot actually do that, then his decisions will always be deformed. So education is central to anyone's life. And that is why through the Educa Initiative of Plunge Smile, we are drumming on education. We are asking individuals, we're asking corporates, come join us in what we've done over the years. We have a whole lot of achievements. We've donated thousands of textbooks and notebooks. We have school teachers in some committees that we hired. And under bureau, we have buildings renovated. We have several schools where children don't bother about what to eat. They just come to school. There's always a free school feeding. Even in a unit like this, a Plunge Smile still goes out to communities, you know, share some staples, some foods, materials, and even some drugs to make sure that, you know, residents are safe, they are healthy, and of course, they are welfare. So over the years, and of course talking about technology, we have an ICT center where children actually just come. There are laptops, there are gadgets, they just come to up their skills in computer proficiency. There are several programs for them to do across fields. They get to see the outer world. They get to understand Internet, cloud computing, coding, graphics design, data analysis, at least at that basic level. And all of these will form their mindsets to say, you know what? I have to continue this. I have to get to the top. It's just beyond what I'm taught in English mathematics and some other general science subjects. So yes, it's central to everyone and it's central to me. Stephen Matini: You know, these days, a lot of people feel scared and afraid what the future might hold. You know, we listen to the news and it's just this constant polarization, bickering, fighting and wars and such and such. So a lot of people feel not that optimistic about the future. How do you stay positive? You have so much strength. There's so much energy. How do you keep your energy up?  Andy Eberechukwu Akukwe: Man, who is a tripartite being, spiritual and body, has to always draw strength from God. Personally, I'm a believer of Jesus Christ. That is my key strength and how I draw energy fundamentally. Then I draw energy, of course, from happenings around. The problems of others get to inspire me and get to make me know that I need to find solutions to their problems. 'Cause I told you I grew up seeing people with diverse problems. I had some of my challenges myself. So problem in the African society is an ending. And then keeping your head above the waters, navigating through those challenges and getting to the top, you just need to be focused because it's only through being focused that you can help others. So one from God and then two, being inspired by helping people get out of their problems. Stephen Matini: What advice would you give to young entrepreneurs who are interested in pursuing your similar route, a route that is filled with sustainable development?  Andy Eberechukwu Akukwe: All right. So according to a UN, we have 17 SDGs. Three may be very much pronounced, which has to do with health and well-being, quality education, and of course, industry innovation and infrastructure. First and foremost, across the 17 divides or 17 goals, any venture need to tie their vision to the actualization of some of these goals, because trying to achieve all of these goals may be a tall order for any corporate, right? Because it's a very broad space. So when you need to identify your key strengths, marry that with what you would want to solve in the society business wise, then of course, you have the social impact that actually inspires you from seeing people with similar problems. It could be people with nutrition problems, it could be people with shelter problems, it could be people with water problems. And then maybe you are working on any of these or a sinister solution area. So that inspires you to even go out there to get solutions to their problems. So this could be viewed in the form of impact investing, which I said a while ago, which is where you're actually making this impact. There'll be financial returns. But in addition to financial returns, of course, there is this corporate or social impact made at the corporate level. So my advice would be, when you research, you find out what the problems are, you know what your key strengths are, you position yourself to take advantage of your key strengths and then bring the solution to the social space. Then of course, you need partners. And being that one smile is that foundation that has been on the ground, that has actually worked in these key areas. You need to partner with an organization like Plunge Smile. So that is very, very important because you actually need a helping hand. You need one to actually serve as a compass to help you have a soft landing and then make sure that your resources or the resources you're deploying are well utilized. So this is the advice I'll give them. Stephen Matini: Growing up, was there any person or any event that somehow contributed to help you realize who you wanted to be?  Andy Eberechukwu Akukwe: Oh, yes. Okay. So growing up, I've had challenges, right? My upbringing was settled with certain challenges. I needed certain things and they were not readily available. And then I had to be determined as the first of four children, just calling it straight. So I lost my parents at an early age. I needed to make sure that, of course, my younger ones would actually get to where I was. So at the time, still in secondary school, there were certain luxury that were available to others that were not available to me. And I knew one thing that the only way for me to access this luxury was actually to study. So I was a bookworm. So the only thing I knew was how to study. I never really kept friends. You wouldn't believe that the first time in my life that I played PS, that's PlayStation was actually years after marriage when I bought it for my children. So many of my mates would play those games, would indulge in so many activities, even in primary school and secondary school. But hey, I didn't have that luxury. I just knew that the only thing that would actually get me above the waters was to study and then believing in my God. So I did this and that has been my main state. Stephen Matini: Is there anything that you would like our listeners of our episode to focus on in particular?  Andy Eberechukwu Akukwe: I want to speak across life, without any industry, without any solution area in mind. So fundamentally, you need to be socially aware of who you are. You need to understand that as a man, we are not just elevated animals, we are created to solve problems. So you need to start out early enough to find out the problems that exist and those problems that resonate with your inbuilt capacity. Now, the capacity may not be well enough. You could have 20% of what you need to solve those problems. So the one lies on you to make sure that you build for the 80% capacity while trying out solutions. So what do I mean? I can't say I want to take care of 100 households if I didn't have the resources to do that. But I could actually start with a household while taking up courses, learning how people do it, building my business, to have the full capacity where I could even achieve beyond the 100 households. Then two, you need to be tenacious. You need to be consistent in whatever it is that you do. Because there will always be storms, there will always be criticisms. Even in this social impact, even as London actually delivers the social impact to communities, you see here a few people doubting, suspecting, why are they doing it? Is there anything in need for them? Is there anything hidden? They are not telling us stuff like that, right? But you need to be considered what you do and find a way to navigate through those criticisms and those challenges, because they will always be there and they should not put you down. Then of course, finally, you need to have your eye on the ball. What is the ball as a corporate want to make X revenue? Y profits and employees get to Z countries, make T social impact. This should form your daily watch, right? So every day you get to review how close am I to achieving these call-out points? How close am I to getting to my destination? And then whatever it is that you need to adjust, you adjust. Not forgetting that you have to study some people that have gone ahead of you. They are always models, so get to find out how they did it, how they built their businesses, how they built their social impact, how they actually built their nonprofits for a long term, how they actually delivered and they were trusted. Just as we do the Plunge Smile, we built a trust system where I'll call it a trust foundation, where as you join us as a partner, as you come in, everything is clear to you. So we need to make sure that this is maintained because this is what actually gives everyone confidence at the end of the day. So even in an organization, your employees, your co-C level staff need to have visibility into what you do, ideas will just come up. And then, of course, achieving your dreams will be a walk in the park. Stephen Matini Well, Andy, I feel energized after listening to you. So thank you so much for your vision, for your leadership, for your energy, for all the things that I've learned today. Because oftentimes I talk about corporate social responsibility, but you are the embodiment of concepts that sometimes are just, you know, very academic. You really live and breathe this. So thank you so much.  Andy Eberechukwu Akukwe: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for having me, Stephen. You have a lovely day. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit breakfastwithstephen.substack.com

Chris Marshall is a futurist, behavioral scientist, and founder of the Playfulness Institute. Futurism is not about predicting the future, but it involves looking beneath surface-level events to identify trends that drive seismic changes.  Chris's journey as a futurist highlights the importance of curiosity. In his experience, being multi-passionate and embracing diverse interests is advantageous in a world of rapid change and disruption. A curious mindset fosters resilience and creativity, allowing entrepreneurs to adapt more effectively to uncertain environments. Our conversation revolves around adapting to change and embracing a multi-dimensional perspective in navigating disruptive environments.  Listen to the episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, or your favorite podcast platform. Check Chris Marshall’s Decoding Change: Understanding what the heck is going on, and why we should be optimistic about our future, and use the affiliate links to support Pity Party Over at no additional cost to you. Subscribe to Pity Party Over for more insightful episodes. Questions? Email Stephen Matini or send him a message on LinkedIn. #Futurism, #BehavioralScience, #ChrisMarshall, #PlayfulnessInstitute, #AdaptingToChange, #MultiDimensionalPerspective, #DisruptiveEnvironments, #Curiosity, #Entrepreneurship, #Resilience, #Creativity, #Innovation, #FutureTrends, #RapidChange, #DiverseInterests, #CuriousMindset, #Adaptability, #SeismicChanges, #MultiPassionate, #PodcastEpisode #StephenMatini #PityPartyOver #Alygn #MikaelaSchiffrin #TaylorSwift TRANSCRIPT Stephen Matini: My first question for you, which probably would serve a lot of people listening to this episode, is who is a futurist?  Chris Marhsall: So what's a futurist? A futurist basically, it's not sci-fi. It's not predicting the future even, because that's what a lot of people do think it's about. It's kind of we have a crystal ball somehow and go, oh, well, this is going to happen at this date and this time. The way I approach it is I look at the big drivers, the big trends and megatrends, which are just kind of bringing about seismic change, but often under the surface. So I guess for me, the definition I like to use is that a futurist looks below the surface level events and look to what is happening beneath the surface, which might not be being picked up by mass media and things like that. And really, when we start to understand that, we start to see that everything is always in flux. Everything's always changing. You know, this isn't new thinking. In fact, Eastern philosophies have talked about this kind of natural law of impermanence for millennia. Being a futurist, the way I try to look at it is, well, what's the current trend? What's currently powering society? If we're looking at kind of societal philosophy or we're looking at business technology, what's the current trend? What's the one which is potentially coming in because that's the one that's then maybe going to take over? And then we can build out scenarios around that crossover. And you can also go further out and go, well, actually, what's right at the fringes, what's being developed right at the fringes today? And this has less probability, has less certainty around it. It makes you aware of what's happening, what might change the world, what might move this market or this group of people or this business or organization. It's a far more scenario-based way of looking at things rather than the typical, let's go back to business and the business plan, which typically has one scenario, and it's normally very, very positive, and I'm going to get 1% of this market share. And hey, Presto, it's an amazing business. Futures thinking really just tries to bring in the different scenarios and then paint kind of, well, what are the pros and cons? What are the things we need to be aware of in each of those? Stephen Matini: As you're talking, I was also wondering when you realized in your life this passion of yours, because for me happened really, really early on, and I could express it as a passion for patterns. You know I could see patterns in everything. How did you find out this attitude of yours? Chris Marshall: So I lived in North Wales. I still live in North Wales. Obviously, a few hundred years ago, 1,000 years ago now, the Romans came and kind of conquered Britain. And Welsh roads, they weave in and out. They have a corner every about 30 centimeters. The joke is that there used to be sheep paths. And the Roman roads in contrast are pinned straight. Now, whether this is true or not, my parents told me that this would kind of save travel time and it would stop bandits lurking around a corner and all these kind of things. And for me, I was always interested in these big shifts that we had these kind of, I'm going to call them scars on the landscape from eras gone by that no longer exist, but they're still visible to us. And so I was fascinated by these big moments of change, kind of pivotal moments or paradigm shifts. That kind of like lay dormant in me for decades. Obviously, just curious. And I think that's probably the key is I'm a highly curious person. And that sent me down an awful lot of rabbit holes of, you know, kind of if I list the titles of things that I've done. I'm a master distiller. I'm a psychotherapist. I'm a performance coach, a behavioral scientist, a futurist, an investment manager. What's happened in the last few years is really, I think it was when I was researching for the book "Decoding Change," I realized that all of this life experience, this kind of life of being a multi-passioned person, this highly curious person, actually, they do have crossovers. They have transferable skills and transferable insights. So for me, it was really just a life of being highly curious and often getting stuck into things which fascinated me, which I found interesting. Some people would just call them distractions from what I was meant to be focusing on. But essentially, over that time, I just found all these different avenues. And then eventually it all came together. This is maybe going back only maybe seven, eight years into this field that, okay, if we actually add all these together in this kind of beautiful Venn diagram almost, then right at the center is the overlap between all of these things. So that's for me, and I constantly draw on all of those different experiences and skills I've built. Stephen Matini: Basically, based on what you're saying, you need to have so many different tools to navigate in a way that makes sense. I don't think you were unfocused. You were building your resilience, probably.  Chris Marshall: Oh, absolutely. Yeah, and I couldn't agree more. In fact, most of my work now not only draws on all those different skills, but helps people promote it in their own lives. And this isn't to say that if you are a highly focused person with one focus, one job, one project, that that's bad. You know, the world needs both types. But what we've done, I think, in the modern world is promote this kind of idea that we go through school and we continually specialize until we come out with this hyper-focused specialization in this niche area. And that's all we do and all we look at. But as you'll know from your teaching in your own life and seeing this in businesses, when we kind of look for creative solutions, they tend to come from spillovers. So I think Einstein described it as creativity being combinational play. So this idea of knocking two molecules together which have never met before. And you don't get that very easily when it's just one molecule. It's got nothing to bounce off. So you can get it in a committee, you can get it in a team, you can get it in an organization, but you can also get it in individuals. And the world we've promoted, I mean, if you even think about how you promote yourself individually, if you're a multi-passion person, the question I hate the most is, what do you do? I struggle to answer that one because it's like, well, what's your interest? And I'll tell you what's relevant. But the way we've promoted the world, these kind of 30 second, 60-second elevator pitches that we're all told to have, they don't allow for multi-passion people to kind of promote themselves and thrive. In fact, all too often, they're hit back with these ideas of, "You're not focused," or, "You're a jack of all trades," which is kind of this derogatory term for you're not really a master of anything. But in a world of disruption and change, I actually believe having that multi-passioned mindset, that highly curious one, is a distinct advantage. We haven't had to have it in the last 250 years, and we can dig into why, but we're moving to an era of radical social change, radical disruption. And if you can't see things from different perspectives, not only do those situations become stress-inducing, anxiety-provoking, you're engulfed in that situation, but you haven't got the skill set and experience to see it from different perspectives. So actually, the multi-passion mindset is extraordinarily important as we move into a disruption, disruptive era, which I believe we are. Stephen Matini: And I think probably of all people, what you're saying is something that may resonate very deeply with entrepreneurs. They have to wear so many different hats. And sometimes your budget is just nothing, and you have to make the best out of nothing. Is that maybe the reason that you enjoy working with entrepreneurs?  Chris Marshall: Yeah, absolutely. I think it's creatives in general. So I've kind of founded two different companies around, not specifically entrepreneurs, but multi-passioned people, curious people, creatives, whatever label people want to kind of give themselves. And the first was a company called the PPM method or “pause play move” method. It's a decision-making framework that allows people to pause more, be more playful, and we can dig into why those two things are kind of highly relevant. But yeah, it teaches people to deal with this constant bombardment of wearing multiple hats, being pulled in different directions. And if you look at kind of stress levels, burnout rates, then entrepreneurs are normally pretty high on the top of the table. So there's a downside to being multi-passionate as well. And that's why also as a psychotherapist, I set up a company called The Refuel Clinic. So it's a small psychotherapy practice specifically for multi-passioned and creative people, because we experience different sets of burnout and stress and anxiety because we're constantly flicking between tasks, we're constantly wearing different hats, we're constantly being pulled in different directions. We're normally behind because we're not that well organized. And so firefighting as we go. But yeah, absolutely. I find it an incredible group of people to work amongst and with because it's my tribe of other people who are creative and insightful and innovative in their nature. Stephen Matini: You know what I just realized? You said past play a move. I did not realize this, but the tagline of my podcast, you know pity party over is a pause, learn and move on. You know So maybe I'm a little bit of Chris, but I love yours more, I have to say. I love the word “play.” Why you picked that word of all possible words? Chris Marshall: This was kind of, again, some research into what makes us resilient. At the time, one of the avenues I'd kind of dive down, I'd set up a micro distillery in the UK. This was 2014. The reason being was essentially, I was working in an investment management space. I wanted to do something a little bit more creative. There is quite a lot of creativity within investment management, but I wanted something more tangible. And I was starting to notice this trend of people wanting things which were authentic, that they were artisan, that they were small batch, you know all these kind of things. I nearly opened a brewery and then I found out I was gluten intolerant, so I can't drink beer. And I thought, well, that's not the best company really to own, is it? So I set up a distillery because they start in similar ways. And I've always loved chemistry. And it's really just a big boy's chemistry set with a nice ending. You get to drink the product. And at the same time, I was obviously still head of investment strategy, a fund manager. I was doing research into behavioral science, particularly around resiliency. And this is where it becomes a little bit embarrassing, because while I was doing academic research on resiliency and mental toughness, I actually burnt out. And the irony for those who don't really understand those concepts is that those mindsets, states, personality types, however you want to construct them, they are meant to protect you from the very thing I was experiencing. I realized kind of lying on my back in hospital for three days, you know I did a pretty good job of burnout because you know that's if you're driven and you're committed, that's what you do. And I'd come from a world of professional sport as a young child. So I raced on the British ski team up until about age 17, 18. Within there, we talk about mental toughness a lot, but the construct of mental toughness and resiliency within elite sport is very different to within a business and an organization. But the mistake we've done is we've just transported it from elite sport and gone, this is what entrepreneurs need to do. But with an elite sport or any sport, you tend to have both short timeframes of when you're competing. So you might be mentally tough for a day and then you can chill out or let's extend this. You might have to show resiliency for a season and then you have an off-season. Being an entrepreneur, you don't get that. Often you don't even get that while you sleep. I was kind of looking at this and going, "Okay, I think we've actually got things wrong here. There's a lot that we can take from the mental toughness research and resiliency research into entrepreneurship and organization psychology and things like that. There's a missing piece. And the missing piece is within organizations. And as an entrepreneur, it's constant. It becomes chronic rather than these more acute periods where we have to be mentally strong. So I was then looking for what's the missing piece. And for me, I stumbled across research on adult playfulness. And adult playfulness is so under-researched, so underrepresented. I mean, it's overlooked. When you kind of tell somebody as an adult to be playful, particularly if they're in a professional setting, they tend to kind of look at you as if you've lost your head a little bit. You can see what they're thinking. They're thinking, yeah, kids play. I'm a professional. I make the joke that as kids, we're second nature and we're very playful and creative. And then when we become an adult, somewhere along the lines, who knows quite what happens, but there's a defining moment when we go, okay, well, I'm going to be a professional and that means I need to be stressed and serious. When we actually look at playfulness, what it brings us is incredible. I mean, the benefits of cognition, of thought, of creativity, of curiosity, of collaboration, we can keep going and adding on all these things that happen when we're playful. And I'd actually go further and say, if we even draw on lessons from the animal kingdom, playfulness is not only an adaptive response. So if we meet a situation where we're failing or it's not going our way, play is a way of exploring new options without being too hung up on the outcome. It's actually when we consider it, it's, I believe, the optimal state of being human. When we're playful, we can think with like this swiftness and clarity. We can collaborate with others. We're not rigid. We're not closed-minded. We're open-minded. We're happy to kind of be adaptable and flexible. And so the challenge for us all is how do we cultivate playfulness? And that was really what led me to both the poorest play move and the play part as a middle pillar in the PPM method. It was stumbling across this research and it was really just trying to find out what was lacking. Why was I burning out? Why was I lying in hospital when I was a researcher on mental toughness and resiliency? I mean, it was ridiculous. And it was finding that missing part because if you take the mental toughness or hardiness construct, you have commitment challenge as kind of these two big pillars. But really, as an entrepreneur, if you're very high in those kind of if you're self-challenged, high commitment, then essentially what you do is you just bury yourself in the ground eventually. You need something to break that and to actually make it more fluid and fun and be prepared to ports. So for me, you know again, how I typically describe this is we have to go back to kind of our stress response. And when we start looking at stress, we start understanding stress isn't just about a situation we find ourselves in. Stress is the total load, if you like, on our body from our behaviors, what we consume, the environment we're in, you know all of these different things. And our stress response is incredible. So when we meet a situation that we detect as threat, we're not detecting safety and comfort anymore. If we go back far enough, it would have been a lion at the cave door. It would have been an angry tribesman from the tribe in the next valley across. What happens is our body goes through this incredible shift to prepare us for what might be imminent physical danger. Now, what's happening in our modern society is the email that comes in with the angry tone, the message that goes, "Where's this report?" Or, "That report you sent was rubbish," or whatever it might be. It's also triggering our stress response. And our body is reacting the same way as it would have when we were cave-dwelling Neolithic men, but we don't require the same physical change. We don't need for our cortisol to spike and cut off our prefrontal cortex or limit access to it. We don't need our heart rate to increase and digestion to actually kind of take a pause so that we're physically ready to tackle a line. But that's still what's happening. And the issue in our modern society is it's happening so frequently that this stress response, which is amazing if it only goes on and off very quickly, is we're keeping that stress buzzer jammed on. The link with playfulness is built into this whole stress response is when we see stress increase, and I want you to think about stress not as either on or off, but as a scale. So level five might be that you're actually past fight flight at level five. You're completely depressed, immobilized. It's freeze response, an animal playing dead, essentially, that we can link this with things like depression. That's a highly stressed state, but low energy. At four, this is where you're ready just to punch anybody. 'Cause it's just like, they've got in your way and they've just said something, which is really annoying. You hopefully don't act out on that, but within you, you are ready to fight or run away. And so I want you to think about it as a scale, 'cause most people don't live at level one, which is joy and calm. They live probably at like level two and a half, sometimes three, and they're easily spiked to level four. So you see this in road rage because they're detecting all these threats and they're easily just moving up that stress scale, but harder to actually move back down to level one. And again, kind of bringing this back to playfulness. When you're in the higher stages, you can't be playful, because being at the highest stages, your body is now hyper-focused on the threat. It's hyper-focused on the outcome. It's hyper-focused on understanding everything about that single situation and it becomes completely engrossed in it. Engulfed is probably a better word. This is where emotions can completely consume us. Playfulness happens at the lower stress levels. Stress levels one, maybe just as we come into level two. As soon as you go two and a half, three, you can't access it. And it's got evolutionary properties. If a lion was coming at you at the cave, the last thing you want to be is playful. You don't want to be curious. You don't want to be wondering, oh, well, I wonder what it had for breakfast, or I wonder what shampoo it uses in its mane. You want to just be either kind of preparing for this run of your life or tackling it if you're protecting other people. Those are the choices and your body completely prepares you for that. So playfulness has to do with stress. Now, as I said, the issue in our modern society, we can look at data on this from stress and anxiety and burnout and everything else. Since the '80s, something has been going fundamentally wrong in society. The rising level of stress, the rising level of anxiety shows that collectively, we are no longer coping with the environment that we're in for whatever reason. And actually there's a whole myriad of reasons and sometimes it's very individual. But on aggregate, the collective is no longer coping as well. And I believe that we just need a new way to actually navigate highly disruptive environments.  Since the '80s, the world's been disruptive. And I think from this point on, it's going to become even more disruptive. If we're not coping already, then we need something drastically new in the way that we think, the way that we compose ourselves, the way that we deal with our stress response, the way that we actually come to behaviors and relationships and everything else so that we can manage ourselves so much better. But nothing is being presented. That was the whole reason why I developed this PPM method, because I could see there was something. Even me who understood all this stuff, I was still falling foul of the environment I was in. So playfulness, yeah, has so much to do with stress levels. And unfortunately, the environment we're in and the ways that we've been taught to think and behave and calm ourselves, coping strategies, they aren't good enough anymore. They aren't strong enough. Stephen Matini: I think that what happens probably to everyone, but for sure to entrepreneurs and definitely to small entrepreneurs is that you are ambitious. You want to achieve things, you have all kinds of different stuff, and it's very easy to go, go, go, go, go, go, go. And our environment is loaded with information. It's going way too fast. In the meantime, as you know, way better than I do, our brain has not evolved as rapidly. And so we are in overload. You pointed out these many, many important things, playfulness. You pointed out the importance of being aware that we are in this particular moment in time of great, great, great change. And then you talked about the fact that there are so many stimuli that we are constantly in this state of alertness.  And to me, you are a positive person. And I would say most people these days feel very scared. So the question to you is, why are you positive despite everything? Chris Mashall: I am a positive person. You know I have my own doubts. I think that's the important thing is when you're looking out to the future, there is a lot of fear and anxiety. And I think we need to bring this back. Let's join this up to the conversation we've just had, because what you're doing with your body in your kind of exercise regime is what we need to also do cognitively. We need to shift how we're cognitively looking after ourselves. The physical body can help cognition, absolutely, but also the way that we think helps cognition. And coming back to this environment of increasing stress. Now, one of the key things that your brain and my brain hates and everybody else listening to this podcast, we all have different windows of tolerance, we can cope with, some people can cope with a lot, some people can cope with a little bit. But the fundamental thing that our brains hate is uncertainty. In fact, our brains will do almost anything, even lie to ourselves, to create certainty because uncertainty is the biggest threat to this organism. And if we really think about what the brain's job is, it's not to perform amazing kind of calculations to put rockets into space. It's to keep this organism alive. That's fundamentally what it's there for. We've used it for other things and it's amazing. But fundamentally, it's to keep us alive. And it can't do that job if it doesn't understand what the environment is, if there's a lot of uncertainty around it. So when we have disruptive change, we have tons of uncertainty. We have tons of different scenarios and everything else. And as that stress level increases, because that's essentially one of the roles of that stress response is to give our body energy, our brain energy, to go find more information, to solve this problem of uncertainty, to find, well, what is the outcome? Because I need to know the outcome. Even if it's terrible, we'd rather have an outcome which is terribly bad in our head than sit with no outcome at all. Now, also what happens with the stress response, and I promise I will come back to optimism. What happens with the stress response is as we become more stressed, we become more pessimistic. And that's quite obvious why, because we're detecting threat. We're not looking for optimism. We're looking for things which are going to hurt us. That's what the stress response is. It's an energized, mobilized state of finding the things which are dangerous. So if we add together all of these things, higher disruption, higher levels of stress, higher levels of uncertainty, is it really too surprising that we see rising levels of anxiety and fear about the future? Absolutely not. Add in that, we really do have some hurdles to overcome. I completely agree with that. But we've got this additional layer of fear on top. And that additional layer, I believe, is psychological. And you can actually trace this back to other time periods through history where it's been radical change. And actually, there's been an equal fear within society. I mean, let's take the Industrial Revolution. The Luddites, the group of bandit-like people who were reasonably in their own head, kind of burning down factories because it was taking away their livelihoods. And whenever we kind of have these massive moments, that there's always this additional fear and anxiety. So we have that. Yes, we have hurdles to overcome, but I think the biggest lesson I learned from writing “Decoding Change” was in the research, one of the things that stood out, and perhaps even the prominent thing which stood out is us humans, when we're at our best, when we learn to pause and play, actually, when we're at our best, we are the most incredible, creative, innovative creatures to have ever walked this earth. We are adaptable, we are flexible, we are collaborative, we're cooperative. When we're not at our best, we're rigid, closed-minded. And so my optimism comes from seeing through history how humans as a species have walked out of situations that we should never have walked out of. And if you bring that forward, and there is a kind of a hope that, you know, some of the, me and a very, very small part of this, helping people basically find their best decision making to reduce their stress, to unblock emotional blockages and everything else, that hopefully, collectively, if we can get towards our best, our optimal state, that we can embrace those human qualities. And what happens when we do that is just stunning. We can't even forecast what might be. I mean, again, come back to the Industrial Revolution. All the Luddites could see was that their industry was being taken away. Let's fast forward this to AI. Countless careers and jobs are on the line. If AI manages to do half of what it is supposed to be able to do, we're looking at that from, oh my word, 50% of the world's going to be unemployed. And if there wasn't any progress or innovation or creativity, absolutely. But what happens is we are innovative. Whole new industries pop up. I mean, just look at some of the industries which have kind of gone by the wayside. There used to be people with a long stick who used to come, they were called tapper uppers, used to walk along the streets to wake people up in the morning because there weren't clocks, there weren't alarm clocks. And it was a big career. You could have that as a lifelong career. And there are countless other careers and industries like that. Every wave of technological progress, every paradigm shift in cultural philosophy or natural environment absolutely changes the status quo. But as we said right at the start of this podcast, there is no such thing as the status quo. It's always constantly in flux. And what we're trying to do when we're stressed is go, we want to keep this piece of ground we're standing on exactly the same. We can't do it anyway, even if we wanted to. That's where my optimism comes from, is seeing what humans can be and do when they're at their best. It's not a naive optimism. I completely agree we have lots of things to sort out. The shifting natural environment will certainly be one of the biggest things, which makes many, many changes to how humans live and where we live and how we migrate. Technology will change the industrial and career landscape, no doubt about it. We also have the shift in cultural philosophy, which is stunning at the moment. Normally, if you look at kind of tribes and communities, elders pass down their wisdom to the younger generations. What we're actually seeing for the first time in human history, as far as I can see anyway, is that the younger generation is influencing the older generation just as much as the older generation is influencing the younger. And we have this kind of collective wisdom of different perspectives. And it's bringing friction. Absolutely. It's bringing friction at the moment because it's different. But if we can embrace collective wisdom, then all of a sudden we start to bring in so many different perspectives. And this is where the diversity piece, you know diversity and inclusion piece is so important. It's not about box ticking at a company. It's about making your organization or your team the most collaborative and creative and innovative group of people you possibly can. You can't do that if you select just from one type or group of person. Stephen Matini: By listening to you, your insights, your energy, my stress level is going down. You do have this soothing feeling that, okay, maybe it's not as bad as I thought. I'm not as weird as I thought I was. If we could have in this moment, you and I talking, if we could invite a couple of people from the past, a couple of great minds from the past, who would you invite? Who would you like to have here with us? Chris Marshall: I think I'd have to go with the physicist, Richard Feynman, to start. That's probably a controversial one because he was fundamental behind the hydrogen bomb. But where Feynman for me gets things right is in this idea, what we should be looking at from learning is how everything is connected. And when you start to actually see things clearly, you start to see how things move together and how you can transfer skills from one to another. And it's a far more kind of nothing is thrown out in his way of thinking. Everything is kind of brought in as a kind of, oh, well, let's kind of it was actually a very playful way of thinking that, oh, well, okay, that's new to me. How does that fit with the current model rather than I have to be very defensive and throw it out because it doesn't conform to my understanding right now? Stephen Matini: Well, you know there's a lot of people that I really admire, and it saddens me to think that I would never meet them. They're no longer here. But one person that I've always been so curious because it's so veneered would be Leonardo, you know Da Vinci.  Talking about someone who could multitask! But it would be amazing to hear his point of view. It's like, hey, look at all this. What do you think? He was such a disruptor for your time. That would be one that I would love to.  Chris Marshall: I had like three in my head. One would be definitely Sir Ernest Shackleton. So actually in the TEDx Talk, which I know you've watched, he kind of features as my kind of the person I've put up there as having this playful attitude in the most ridiculous of situations. And for those who don't know his story, Sir Ernest Shackleton was the captain of the Endurance. He set out on a mission to basically cross Antarctica, thousands miles of pack ice. I mean, we're going back to like wooden boats here. It's a ridiculous feat, thousands miles of sailing through pack ice. And they were one day's landing away from their kind of intended landing and disaster struck and the temperatures dropped and the ship became pinned in the ice. And what people don't realize is not only was there the world's most incredible rescue mission, 800 miles in a small lifeboat that isn't designed to go ocean going travel. But they spent 10 months on the ice before this. It's incredible. And he embodied this idea of playfulness, even in that situation. In fact, when he was talking about how he selected his crew, there's this incredible quote from him that talks about withstanding the agonies of thirst with laughter and song. Now, he used the word optimism. And in the TEDx talk, I argued that if he was living in our modern day, that would have been playfulness. Withstanding agonies of thirst with laughter and song, that's not optimism. That's not you looking going, "Oh, isn't it a nice day?" That's completely framing and reframing a situation, which is terrible, which is life-threatening in its literal sense. Stephen Matini: Have you seen any video of Mikaela Schiffrin?  Chris Marshall: Yes. Stephen Matini: She has a series on YouTube, “Moving Along,” I love her and I love her attitude. I love how hardworking she is, and at the same time, humble and always curious. You know What a phenomenal athlete.  Chris Marshall: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And interestingly, I saw reading a piece the other week on her, because obviously I kind of keep up to date with the World Cup Circuit. And she said she found inspiration from Taylor Swift's playbook. And I found this really interesting because if you look at Taylor Swift's playbook, whatever your view of her music and her as a person doesn't really matter, is she's been able to consistently generate music, which resonates with the zeitgeist of the time and just get this incredible following. You know, I would put her up there in the likes of kind of other artists who've managed to do this over multi-decade careers like Elton John. And Schiffrin kind of was citing this, just saying how not only Taylor Swift has been this inspiration and her albums always seem to get her through whatever emotional crisis is unfolding in her life, but also just this constant adaptability and flexibility. And that's really what we're talking about. If you want to remain relevant in a changing environment, you can't just go, okay, well, I'm charting a course from A to B and I'm going in a straight line. It's got to constantly have this awareness of what's going on and adaptability and flexibility. But we don't often talk about this or even teach it. And so yeah, I kind of bringing it back to what we were talking about. Absolutely incredible career that Schiffrin's had. But I just found it fascinating how she was finding inspiration from another artist. They're very similar ages. I think they're both about 33. And so kind of going through these life-changing moments almost together in a virtual way, almost, but also just this whole adaptability and flexibility piece that Taylor Swift has shown. Stephen Matini: Now, because of the podcast, I interview a lot of colleagues, but I would say that I get most of my inspirations from completely different industries, not necessarily my industry. Like I watch a lot of interviews and Taylor, you know Taylor Swift, I'm not a Swiftie in a sense that I don't listen to her music, but I watch a lot of interviews of her. I love her as a director. I love how incredibly kind and eloquent and precise she is, how gracious she is. I get inspired by all kinds of stuff, and kind of what we said before. You must have that cross-pollination. I was sharing this yesterday with the guest. You know I did another episode that the idea of doing this podcast with a lot of colleagues of mine came because for years and years and years, I watched a lot of makeup videos.  How incredibly cool the fact that all these kids, they do collaborations. So technically they are competitors, but they do all these collaborations. They review each other's products. The intention is to make this industry better. It's like, I wonder if this can be done in my own industry. And now that I've been doing this podcast for two years, I love it. It just gives me a tremendous amount of pleasure to work with my colleagues, you know to learn from them, to build something together. Chris Marshall: Yeah. And that's one of the incredible things. So within Decoding Change, I was obviously looking at these big driving forces. And I stumbled across what I call information revolutions. And I think this is kind of really nice for the point that you're making there. So information revolutions are, they don't happen very often. So technological revolutions happen every about 50 to 60 years. That's been quite consistent since the start of the Industrial Revolution. So the last one was the semiconductor in 1971. Hey, Presto, we're talking about AI and machine learning and robotics, 53 years on. But information revolutions happen at far longer cycles. So the first one that I'm going to cite is the kind of Guttenberg press, that all of a sudden knowledge was able to be shared not person to person, but freely shared by transporting a book. And if we combine that with a transport mechanism of the great age of exploration, all of a sudden we had the printed press sailing around the world because we had Columbus and Diaz and Vasco Gamma, all kind of going on. What happened is there was this massive change in cultural philosophy with that. I mean, it wasn't all positive. There was some pretty dark periods, but it was the ability as you bring more voices to the table, as you bring more philosophies to the table, you get this incredible kind of incubator of creativity. Same thing happened when we got to, we could cite a few things, but I'm gonna use the telephone, partly because we just overlook the telephone. None of us even use the telephone anymore. I mean, if you think before the telephone, before they laid those cables into continentally, transatlanticly, before that, we were essentially relying on ships with letters. Steam ships kind of made it far more consistent the crossing from sailing ships, but still you're talking several days to get a letter to the states. And okay, there were a few quicker mechanisms, but for the general public, that was the only way. Then all of a sudden, the telephone comes along. And not only is there a richness in the information, I can hear your voice and the tone of it and the sentiment of what you're saying, but it's instant. And you can reply to me instantly, not three weeks later. I mean, it's bonkers when you really think about it. We're at this next age, the Internet started this next information revolution and AI accelerates it. And all of this stuff, I mean, even the way we're recording this podcast, you're sat in a completely different location in the world. Yeah, I'm speaking to you as if you're sat on the other side of the table. And the richness of data, we've not just got voice, we've got visual. And what happens with all of this is we get more voices around the table as long as we embrace it. And that's come back to why we need to learn to pause and play, is because we become open-minded and more collaborative. But when we learn those skills, we can accelerate businesses, we can accelerate organizations, we can accelerate teams and everything else because we bring so many more views and technology enables that. Information revolutions are fascinating. This is one of the reasons why I say we're at such a disruptive point in time. It's not just about AI, it's not just about natural environment. We're in the midst of so many different trends and mega trends. Stephen Matini: Well, Chris, I have learned so much in this hour with you. I truly believe you are really special. And I don't mean it to flatter you, you know, just pointlessly, but I think I really, truly believe you are very special. Everything you say resonates beautifully. And I love the way that I feel now. I really feel calmer. You're very, very special. Thank you so much for this time together.  Chris Marshall: Oh, well, thank you so much for that compliment. And thank you for having me on and rabbiting on about my stories and research. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit breakfastwithstephen.substack.com