Lead With Purpose, Create With Intention, and Inspire Change | Seth Godin

What is the

change

you are looking for to make this interaction? The reason you showed up. What is the

change

you are looking to make? I will do work that I am proud of but I will not judge myself by the way I am judged. I want people to do it. realize what a miracle this moment in time is and stop fighting, stop fighting each other and stop fighting with yourself. Seth Welcome to the Finding Mastery podcast. I'm so excited to sit down with you, but before we start I just want to ask. and look how you are, how are you?

I'm doing great, thanks for asking and they told me that if I came here I would find some mastery, so go ahead. I'm ready, yeah, that's okay, okay, maybe right before us. Diving into the Mastery piece, let's start with a little bit about the state of the union. You know you are known as a marketing genius. You've been writing, teaching and speaking about business and creativity for decades, and with that in mind. We're just starting the year 2024, what's your personal State of the Union right now on

lead

ership and teamwork and the way you're designing your life?

Three-part question, okay, so the FCC forces me to point out that marketing is not What most people think is that it's not podcast ads, or interrupting people, or spamming them, or exaggerating, not It's not promotion or spreading the word, that's what marketing used to be, it used to be advertising, what my job is about is telling and living real stories. that engage with people and spread stories that make change happen that we are proud of and because I wrote the books I get to decide what marketing is and that's what I've decided. That being said, when we think about any period. call it a new year if you want the ideas of

lead

ership and teamwork to make a difference, these are marketing options because every time we open our mouth, every time we write something, talk to someone, we connect in any way we can. what we are doing to make a change happens if we are not here to make a change, why are we wasting other people's time and too often we allow ourselves to be seduced or indoctrinated into thinking that our job is to do our job and I don't believe Is that really the job? it's being clear about who we are here to change what we're trying to change and how we're going to do it together, so that's been the narrative of my life for many years and it's not changing right now, okay?

So when you think about leadership, how do you think about leadership? So, many people get confused between leadership and management, they think that managers lead and leaders manage, they are totally different activities, sometimes a person does both. But many times leadership is not a voluntary activity in which someone decides to speak up to achieve change and ask people to follow. Administration is based on authority. There is an organizational chart. You must do this because I said so. I'm the manager and you work for me now we need managers otherwise fast food places would collapse and no one would show up for their shift and we need leaders too but just because someone anointed you as a manager doesn't mean you're automatically I'm a leader and it seems to me that in times of change, in times when people are distressed or lost, is when we especially need people to step up and lead, so there is a theory about leadership that best fits leadership, because you know, contextual experiences mean that when people lead or the way that leadership typically happens in a high-stress environment versus something where everything is going very well and it's easy there might be some differences there, but that's what I really want. say when I speak out loud.

With that out of the way, can you give your best kind of synopsis of the traits of a great leader, like what you think those skills are? Well, I mean, you've had some extraordinary guests on the show and some of them had to be extraordinary because they were in the right place at the right time and lightning bolt and some of them, you know, winning championship after championship after championship, it's Pretty clear that they have a practice and the practice starts with enrollment, enrollment is essential if you want to lead, so what do I mean by this?

I mean that managers don't need emotional commitment. Managers simply need people who follow the manual and if they don't follow the manual well, they will have to leave. Leaders need people who have voluntarily signed up to get on the bus. that's going where the leader wants to go, so when you were talking to Jack about rugby, the thing is that you shouldn't spend four years of your life at Berkeley playing rugby if you don't want to win the NCAA championship. enrollment is a given right, that's what you signed up for and what he has is the power to simply say you need to get off this bus because you're not helping the bus get to where it's going or he can say you need to sit nearby. the front of the bus because you're helping the bus get to its destination, but it doesn't work without enrollment, so when we think about what Satcha did at Microsoft that doubled its value compared to Apple in just one year, well, I can say he had the insight to announce that AI was going to be next and if you look at his predecessor at Microsoft, one of the worst CEOs in the history of American management, Balmer was good at telling people what to do, but the problem was he messed up a lot and he wasn't leading, he was managing, whereas what Nadela figured out how to do was

create

the conditions,

create

enough space for people to fill the gap between where they are and where they want to go to sign up. that journey and what I think is that's what most people want from a good day at work: they want to feel like they've signed up for something worthwhile.

Yes, one of the notable things about SAA is how aware it is of relationships with other people. and then we were in a session together and I was sharing an idea and he looked and stopped at his team and said, I don't care if we spend the rest of the day on this, I want to make sure and what we're talking about is knowing the philosophy. personal of each one. I want to make sure that we understand each other very well because we have something really important that we are trying to achieve and that idea of ​​​​creating the space.

Not only within oneself to share, but also the space between the team to be able to get to know each other and be able to work well with each other. It seems like it is written as if I don't know some kind of novel about how the greats. do it, but that's how he does it and often there is a difference between what happened, what is written and what is actually done, and when you can align those two things, it is quite remarkable what can be done, Yes Yes. I would love to talk. on the question of personal philosophy because I think there are some pitfalls, but it gets to the heart of the inscription that you know part of the magic of Goldman Sachs or somewhere like that, when it's working, everyone is very clear that they are there. to make a lot of money, so here you have this super easy metric that you can just advertise, but in almost every other job in the world that metric is not really what is offered, so we need to figure out where we are and where we want to align ourselves.

Around that, I think it's on an emotional level, not on a practical level, but emotions are at the center of the inscription, so when you say about personal philosophy that it has some trap doors, what parts suit it so well? to your eyebrows, there is a great conceptual artist and the name of her book I was looking at is to forget the name of what you see and if you think about that phrase for a moment it will really get under your skin we invented words a million years later Even though we had emotions and words almost never fully capture what we are looking for and what happens is that when we do this exercise, particularly if we go around the room in a circle and everyone is busy thinking about what they are going to say, we end up trying to express it. . in a box that ends up being a label in the same way when companies have a mission statement.

Company mission statements are almost always stupid because they have been through so many compromises that they don't mean anything right, so why someone who is one of the best? Hundreds of people at Johnson and Johnson go to work tomorrow. I guarantee you it's not because of what their mission says to create health opportunities, blah blah blah blah, no, they have something personal about status affiliation, they fear security, I mean, these things, those are colors. They are not words, how do we talk to ourselves about what we are afraid of? How do we talk to ourselves about what we dream about?

And if we have to put it in one or two clever sentences, I guarantee we've put it there. turns into amber and is no longer alive, it is more complicated than that, which means that the outline and shape of the emotions are different from the words on the walls, which means that there is some kind of behavior, since that must happen with that. I was thinking. about what 45 years of me doing projects what is this thing that keeps me going because I don't have to do this for a living and I like solving interesting problems I like turning on lights for other people and I like feeling like I did something generous that people It would be strange if I weren't there, but none of those three things are really decisive.

There are many interesting problems that I don't want to solve. There are many people I don't want to teach. there's a lot. of interactions where my generosity would make me feel worse, not better, it is much more complicated than the three sentences I just said, there are organizations that I have worked with and where they asked me to go solve a problem and that has enlightened me completely. and then two days later there is a different problem but the way they asked me or the people who were involved in this or the side effects completely flattened me.

I didn't want it to work so I don't know how to do it. I will tell you and I am a writer in 40 words or less what My Philosophy is. I just know that there are variants of it and it changes all the time. It sounds like your personal philosophy is to help shine the lights on others. I mean you. I said it easily and eloquently, but I want to acknowledge how you're posing the challenge, which is what you're saying, um look, I'm a writer, I work to put ideas together and even for someone trained and like me this is very difficult. and I nod and say it sure is and then I would tell them to, you know, toughen it up a little bit even more when they think about the greats of the world, Mandela to Mother Teresa Gandhi, Jesus Buddha, whoever that is to you. .

They were so clear about their philosophy and the way they aligned their thoughts, words and actions and I say this with great reverence, their thoughts, words and actions were truly aligned in every room they attended, that it was clear what Nelson La Mandela's philosophy was and what he can do or she can do, I think I can also do is be that clear with my philosophy and it is also, and if you don't mind staying here for a minute, this is the real space , Yeah. right, how do you think about your philosophy and what are the mechanics that you're not saying this is what happens when you go when you put together the big words that you say no, that's not what it's for.

Okay, so let's leave aside another word distinction that I think is really important, which is authenticity, which is authenticity, and I know it's a word that you use a lot and you use it honestly and carefully, and I completely. I disagree I don't think people want authenticity I think authenticity is overrated I think Nelson Mandela had really bad days I think my friend Jaclyn Novogratz, who should win a Nobel Prize, has had bad days when working with a professional who is having a bad day you don't want them to be authentic you want them to be consistent you want them to be the best version of themselves authenticity in 2024 is often used as an excuse to be an idiot hey I was just being authentic well yeah but don't be an idiot because there is a version of you the version of you we hire the version of you we work with the version of you we follow that version of you I wouldn't talk that way I wouldn't undermine this project that way I know that right now you are authentically feeling what you did well, but you are a professional , professionals are consistent so I'd rather have a consistent surgeon than a genuine surgeon and I'm sure Nelson Mandela argued with people that he was short.

Tempered I'm sure there were days he took the short way instead of the long way and but when he was doing his job he did something very difficult and so for me I don't need a model and I don't need a motto what I need is to have deep inside me what that I think the best version of Seth Goden in public is the best version of Seth Goden in a relationship is can I act like that right now? Could you find the effort, the emotional work to show? like that and I've found that when I do that I don't regret it and there are people who disagree with me who say that we should live in a world where it's okay to say what you want to say and do what you want to do at all times and I have trouble hang out with those people, yeah,especially if that includes ignoring the other person's experience of what is being said and experienced, coherence is a really great word and for me, coherence is a difference to me between a high performer and a teacher or someone who is walking the path of mastery and someone who is walking the path of high performance so that high performances can be consistent on demand, even under high stress conditions, like they can appear, do it with a scalpel, whatever, and you want to be able to bet on them and there is consistency in your ability to replicate the right internal and external conditions to be able to, quote, earn whatever it is to be excellent at it, but there is a difference between that and Mastery and the path of Mastery and I'm not going to supplant authenticity and Mastery interchangeably, but the path of Mastery has an Outline. there is a way and a soul that I like, I love the title of your book, an important song, I love it, not only the alliteration is really cool, but what illicit song exactly and that for me, yes, a lifestyle or a stylish life that has song imbued in the way we're going to be, you know, poetic in how we're living life and there are the ups and downs and da da da and all those things that I say Well done in the title and well done a approach for life if you can live with any song in your life now Mastery has that similar feel and Contour is okay what is said is authenticity to me let's make sure we are saying the same thing authenticity is not saying what I feel it should say authenticity is ability of declaring what are the values ​​and virtues that are most important to me and being consistent with them across conditions, so that yes, we are actually saying something very very similar here consists of AC, cross conditions, yes, and so on, Where things fall apart, leadership falls apart.

It's if someone says look, I mean compassion and kindness and d d d d right and then you steal $5 out of their pocket and they berate you in public and make you feel small and stupid, that's not authenticity, it's actually kind of Shadow. . game they're playing yeah, yeah, so yeah. I wonder if we are saying something similar and I think we are totally aligned. I'm challenging the way people might interpret what they might hear when they hear authenticity that I think you're highlighting something important when you talk about Mastery because, again, words matter here. Mastery in a way implies that you have learned what you need to learn and that you are as good at it as one can be.

You have mastered it. but in fact, Miles Davis and 5,000 other people we could name were always learning to explore the limits, but those people had what you're talking about, which is the confidence to change the standard promise of a professional to one that goes beyond . to say that I'm going to consistently be a version of this that's very difficult for other people to replicate because I've paid these fees because I care enough because I have the domain knowledge because I'm willing to sacrifice the short-term right as if I had written the sequel to this, this is marketing instead of a meaningful song, it would have sold 20 times as many copies, but I'm not willing to negotiate to do that, that's something I think you're trying to capture, yeah. so selling out for something is not the path of Mastery, it is certainly not the path of the artist, you know?

So selling out is, "I hear you, I hear you loud and clear and I say, oh, that's great, that's great that you even acknowledge that, but I love that quote you just shared about how the promise that you're making and authenticity. Let's go back. to that word again, it gets very confusing, so it was in the subtitle of one of my first audiobooks or my first audiobook living and leading authentically and it makes me cringe on a level and the reason why you say why you chose. that word then because I really wanted to unravel what authenticity is, so I thought you and I think about this a lot and because it gets criticized very easily, but authenticity is not about making someone feel bad because that's what you need to be authentic. in your expression of discontent or whatever, that's not what authenticity allows, it doesn't allow it because authenticity requires discipline, and with that discipline staying on the edge when it's uncomfortable for you but you still take into account the experience of others. people or discipline yourself to stay true to the first principles that matter to you and become, yes, the kind of person you are looking for. become and then it becomes authentic to you, but it's not the way you were born, so I'm remembering years, yeah, like that, years and years ago, when I was a book packager, I made 120 books in 10 years with a team and so on I was. constantly in book editors' offices presenting one idea or another and I remember one, there's this person and it's like this, they refuse to make eye contact, it was like a body language lesson, uh, on how to get as little as possible out of a meeting and an hour later I had a meeting with a different person who was also skeptical, but they were projecting this openness and this curiosity and asking me provocative questions that would bring out the best in me, so here were two people doing their job, one was doing got it wrong because they were being genuinely skeptical in the way they had developed it because they thought they had power and that the other person was serving me, them, and the institution using the same amount of time. to create the conditions to get more out of me, well that second person would say I was being too authentic somewhere years before there was a fork in the road between these two people and one person said how am I going to get through this meeting to calm myself my boredom and one person said how am I going to get through this meeting to be helpful and you had hinted at it before when you said the best version of me is to do that inner work to understand what the best version of me is. and I didn't think we'd spend so much time on the authenticity of Au, but I think it's really good, no, I think it's really good because I want, I want to not understand how you get to that felt sense and how you articulate that better version, but let's do it.

Pause here for a moment and let's say that the best version of me is speaking truth to power and I'm sorry that I came out nervous. The other, better version of me might be, you know, I just let it go, that's how it was. it was that I just needed to be a little more accepting of what other people are doing and I just needed to let it go in the same circumstances where someone trips and spills, you know, coffee on your new dress or whatever. he's right and a part of me says, Hey, be more careful, now this is dangerous and you just ruined a shirt, so I'm speaking truth to power, so to speak, if that person is a supervisor and then the other It's in this strange example. okay, no big deal, the point is you really have to be aligned with it, that's where I'm going, it was authentic, if you have to be aligned with it, where does the alignment come from? because in both cases I think what we're asking is how long is the period where you speak truth to power in the moment because it makes you feel good or do you speak truth to power over time and you're changing the system? in a way that you are proud of because the person who is doing it? in the short term it does not cause the change to occur, while that is exactly what it is.

I love what you just did. I love it. I love what you just did. Alright. That's how you think about consistency. Consist of consistency that way. There is no consistency in the way of high performance. What I was really thinking before is really cool, so I really like it, okay, and then the other part of the journey where you meet your best self. I think I heard you say my best self. in a relationship and maybe I add it as the best of me at work and I don't remember the exact example there, but that idea that I am different in different conditions, yeah, it made me my eyebrows rise like wait, what It means that?

You know, I want to be the best version of myself regardless of external conditions. I want to consistently bring out the best in me and so how do you help me understand that part? Okay, so there are two ways I can help you figure it out. I am one of the most stylish canoeists in the world. I learned from Chuck, who learned from om omr invented the sport in 19424 if I'm in a cedar canoe in Alanin Park, Canada, doing my fancy Dan canoeing I'm not talking on stage the same way Seth Goden talks on stage. I'm in a totally different context and I'm not Seth Goden, the author of that canoe.

I'm Seth Goden, the paddler/canoe instructor on that canoe. that's a different context if my wife and I are talking about something, I shouldn't talk to her the way I would talk to Fred Wilson when he was on the board of my company, it's a totally different context, so what's the best version? of you as a father is almost certainly not the best version of you as a canoeist, why would they be related? because the virtues and values ​​are consistent in all conditions, however, the skills and abilities for success in each are unique, but what if I play poker if I play poker I better be good at lying because in that context that's how you win, yeah, yeah, okay, so yeah, maybe poker and other forms of cheating are very complicated, you know, or surgery or surgery if I do.

If I am a surgeon and a four-year-old child dies on the table and I feel it in the same way that a neighbor's child dies because I cannot be a surgeon for long, what they teach you in medical school is to find a certain professional distance because when you do surgery you cannot be present with that four-year-old child in the same way you would with the street child or you will never be able to operate on him again. I mean, at least that's how 200 years of surgery, you know, we were taught that they're being like this and listen, my surgeon friends are going to like to give me a lot of now, but orthopedic surgeons still use hammers, nails and screws , and you know, I mean there's room to grow, that's my point, oh, meet a neurosurgeon, my dear friend, he's a healer and a surgeon, so, I'm not saying he's the model, no, I just need to be clear and again, no You don't have to have the last word every time, but you don't always cry because you can't bring that personal trauma to the front lines if you're a trauma worker, you just can't be a professional, Yes, yes, because the requirements of that environment according to your point require, I wouldn't say, a different version.

I think we're going to have semantics here on this one. I require different abilities so that I can face that moment. Look at this one way. authentic way okay, cool, yeah, anyway, yeah, okay, so the point. I think the point here Seth for both of us is who you are and how you want to show up in this world and if we can get some movement towards that as a constant practice for people that would be great, those are the people I want to be with, yeah , this is at the heart of your contribution and you've made a big difference for a lot of people and I just piece it together because I don't know why maybe a course I took when I was 20 years old.

I'm not sure I've pieced it together like what's the change you're looking for to make this interaction the reason you showed up today what's the change you're looking to make could be something as simple as I'd like my manager at McDonald's to not fire me and make sure to get paid, that's the only change I'm trying to make to change my manager from someone who's going to fire me soon, which he's not, but on a very big level Nelson Mandela had a much bigger change in mind and If we can be of service to the change we seek to make, the consistent response is to be authentically consistent or consistently authentic because that is the best way to make the change we want.

We seek to do and to me that is where the meaning lies: to be a significant, specific person, to appear with a reputation that gives us the benefit of the doubt, that gives us influence so that we can make happen whatever change we are seeking and There are many people where that changes, let's make the stock price go up and there are other people who say I want to make someone who's lonely feel a little less lonely right now. You know what I love about that framing you're doing. Does it put the person asking the question in the driver's seat of not necessarily the change that is occurring, but the actions that are aligned?

So now you're in that simple little frame that instills agency and effectiveness and you know that kind of internal valuation to make a difference in the external world and that's why I love that frame that's so well grounded in good research, it was that intelligence. yours or was it that, you go and search, you know and you investigate. Sorry, like bandora's theory of efficacy and the self. -Determination theory, you know, how do you come up with that powerful framework? I think the starting point for me was my first year as an independent. I got 800 rejections in a row, so my first book means that as a freelance writer, yes.

Well, I wasn't a WR, I was a book packager, so my name didn'tIt's on the cover of a lot of the books I made, but I made them happen like a movie producer makes movies. chip Conley chip Conley and I did our first book together in 1986 I sold it for $5,000 and then I got 800 rejection letters in a row and what I was doing on the books that I was promoting to publishers was I was saying this is a book that I would like to read, this is a book. I would like to make this a book that shows that I am particularly intelligent and insightful and I met this guy, John Boswell, and Boswell completely changed my way of thinking in one afternoon and said, look, no one wants to buy a book that you want. write.

They want to buy a book that they want to publish and I was like, "Oh yeah, that's right," so the change was how do I produce a book that matches what an editor and a reader want. It's not what I want and if I can, accept it. and realizing that I am the best version of myself as a book packager. I make books that I'm proud of, that other people want to publish and other people want to read, it suddenly became profitable but also useful. Because I wasn't demanding that the world give me a standing ovation, what I was saying was how I could be useful here.

I love that and it's a bit like you're having your cake and eating it too like an artist someone might What would this look like in a commissioned piece? If you were aligning the commission, the person paying for the piece, and the things you want to create correctly, then you're aligning those two worlds instead of you know. Rogue artist who is creating what he wants and damn those who don't find it interesting and I'm going to eat my you know, I don't know chicken tuna for the rest, yeah right, so Herby Hancock's autobiography is fantastic and yeah We look at Herby's career, Herby didn't pursue electronic music when it was popular, he didn't pursue what led to Rocket, he pioneered those things that he has in four different categories, he just succeeded, always surrounded by some people who said he was crazy and they said You should do more than you did yesterday, so he leads, he doesn't ask people for directions, he says, I'm going there, who wants to come, but he had enough empathy to say that if no one wants to come, I'm feeding the wrong voice. in my head let's hear a different place that I might want to go and that other people would really want to come to, that's really cool, I think there's so much power in that and that doesn't seem to fit with my way of thinking about what's true.

The innovators I know are almost obsessed with how they see a future state or a future product or something and it feels like they're constantly testing that, most of them don't work in a solitary environment, they're testing it e iterating quickly based on the way it comes out of your mouth or the way it feels when it comes out of your mouth if it's like creating a Future State versus a product necessarily and to me it feels like those innovators are committed to something that fits as they go, but they don't say if no one's listening maybe I should turn or I heard there are so many juicy ways to decode this okay so here's the first one Vincent van wasn't born to paint. oil painting, if he had been born 200 years earlier or later, he would have done something totally different.

What he did was see things around him in France in the 19th century and then he came to what seemed like a natural conclusion that this is how he was born. Doing that Steve Jobs and Bill Gates are almost exactly the same age, it's not a coincidence because they came of age when those silent emotions they had inside them were best expressed by hitching the fast train car of Moore's Law and what computers . I could do it, so Steve understands you, he's obsessed with pushing something, pushing something in a different direction, but it didn't come out of nowhere, it came out of the world it was being marinated in, so that's the first part, the second part is there.

There are tons of innovative people who are in love with a version of the future and you've never heard of them and neither have I because they're just wrong and the ones you and I found were so right that we realized it. them, so it's easy to imagine that the symptom of being an innovator is being self-confident, but in reality we've never heard of most innovators being self-confident. It's just that sometimes there is someone who is sure of themselves and their innate perception of the world was lined up and someone was ready for what they had to say, so I invented email marketing, I built some of the first games online, those things didn't come out of nowhere.

There were things around me that made me feel like I could survive criticism and people saying I was crazy because I was contextually aware enough to know that there were some threads there that I had a decent chance of weaving together, but there were also things that I made up that were wrong and yeah I was still sticking to it and I wouldn't be talking right now, yeah, that's how, that's why you wrote the book, the dip, to help people understand how to get out of it, yeah, like that that the dip, the dip was. the first book about quitting smoking and it's amazing because we all quit smoking and we don't talk about it, we don't think about it, but the fact is that unless you wear a tutu or you're still playing ice hockey at 40 years old.

You give up things your whole life and we have to get better at that and we have to be clear about the difference between leaving a dead end and giving up in depression, and depression is that moment when it feels so difficult and so unlikely that you will stop doing it. . We should quit because that's when everyone quits and enduring that fall is how we get to the other side. Organic chemistry is one of the biggest falls that every doctor has to face. They don't use organic chemistry when they become doctors, but they have to take it.

It's because it's a filter, it's a bathroom and if you can't get over this, you probably won't be able to get over your residence either. Yes. Seals training on the old gym program just to make it easy to understand. it was like level seven or eight when they had to do a double backstroke on the beam for the female gymnasts, it was like that was the place where you watch The Exodus, yeah right, and this is what I always gave to your book. I got a lot out of it when I was working high volume one-on-one with athletes at that stage of my life and I gave it away a lot and I was always very nervous about giving it to people, but I thought they needed the ones I gave them.

I mean, they needed a way to discern the mechanisms underlying, uh, quitting smoking rather than helping them recommit to moving forward exactly and yeah, and it's not like your book doesn't say you should quit smoking, it does. you know, it basically says that you understand the between quitting and quitting and you know, yeah, I think Pete talked a little bit about that with you and Coach Carol, yeah, and I think his retirement or however his retirement comes about. exit, that's what adults do. You're not going to be 80 years old and play or coach in a major sports league, so there's a day between now and then when you're going to quit.

Why don't you do it on

purpose

? Why don't you do it with your eyes? open why don't you do it so that you can re-register on the days you don't quit knowing that one day you are going to quit smoking but it is not today, yes, of course, and that reaffirms that it is not today. I have to give this the proper attention, know exactly the details and love or whatever because now I'm making a decision, yeah and um again to the word agency, like I'm choosing how I'm going to experience life, even if the external conditions They are not the ones I hope so.

I'm still going to choose the way I do it, which is a radical way to live life. You know, we had Chi Conley, which I know you mentioned him and you have a long history with him and we titled his podcast Overcoming Limiting Beliefs and here we're talking about, you know, the human condition, so you've been thinking about these things for a long time, how the chip influences or the chip that influences you and probably in both directions, but I'm there. This conversation that's brewing just below the surface for me, at least, is about something that's been really interesting to me about limiting beliefs, which is this excessive rate of paying attention to what other people think about me, yeah, and when I'm very careless with my life and I don't know who I am or how I feel and I'm not very confident and I'm more interested in looking good and performing well to be part of the tribe or the community.

I outsource my sense of being okay with other people we have fun we call it Foo fear of people's opinions being one of the great constrictors of potential all they say is, do you know how you think about that modern experience where we constantly look outside from ourselves? to see and evaluate if we are okay, how to talk about that phenomenon, yes, no, I saw your riff on it and I think it's really important, oh, thank you, I gave a thousand speeches all over the world when I was flying, I never like it, oh you're not, you're not, you're not flying, I haven't been on a plane for two and a half years because of the weather, um, because, oh, wait, wait, wait, I want to get to the fopo part, but I think I read this and I timed it, but you're not flying because your commitment to the environmental conditions of the weather is that yes, it makes me feel like a cannibal and I also think I have enough influence to If I say I can do a virtual talk, some places will say yes and if more places do virtual talks then the number of people not flying decreases even more and eventually we will have to change the culture somehow and that is a small part, the other part is after getting sick during Co and things like that.

I'm like life is too short to run on airplanes, the technology exists to be able to talk to Michael here and now better than we can. I could be speaking in person, let's just do it, let's engage, so I never liked doing talks with simultaneous translation because everyone in the audience hears what you had to say about six seconds later, so the response is strange and number two, I really don't. I like to talk. in the convention centers because the acoustics are terrible so I'm giving this talk in Mexico City in a Double Blow Convention Center and in the third row there is a woman talking on her cell phone now she is not listening on her cell phone while I speak she is talking on her cell phone while I'm talking and oh my god I'm on stage and I decide this means I'm failing so I put all my energy into it and I don't have a talk memorized so I'm actually talking to her about distractions and digital devices looking directly at her and after about 10 minutes, it was probably 90 seconds, I realized that there were 3000 people in that room who came to listen to me and there was one person in that room who didn't No, why am I sacrificing my contribution to 2999 people and , in my mind, she disappeared, she just disappeared from the room and I could be judged by people again?

I want to be judged well, that's the key to work, so when you tell a certain type of friend that you have a new idea or that you're thinking about getting a new job or whatever they will try to dissuade you from doing it they will try to dissuade you from doing it because they care about you they will do things that will feel like they are judging you by the way they roll their eyes or whatever because they are afraid for you and part of the reason they are afraid for you is because they are afraid for you. themselves because they don't want to do it. stare into space, don't ask those people for advice, don't tell those people your new idea, but that doesn't mean you should ignore everyone because that ends up with trolls and narcissists, what we have to do is find out who they are. that small group of people that when judged by them make us a better version of ourselves find those people treasure those people honor those people that is hard work worth doing I offer you this and see if you have a different one lever that there is a round table where I have eight chairs and it is a sacred seat in my life and there are two criteria for doing it, you know, at this table, one is that you have shown time under tension with me, you understand my scars, my ambitions , my hopes, my dreams, so when you have an opinion it is in context and there is a care that has endured, you know, the tension and the time that I go, yes, we are careful, so that is one criterion, but the second criterion is that The person needs to have done something that you know, like they have really been in the arena and tried it in their life because I value that frontier information that way and that means it doesn't mean that "If it is world-known , it simply means that they have actually made changes in their lives and have decided to make those changes about them, so those are my criteria.

What if you quickly thought about the criteria for you for those people? What are they? Which are? Well, I solve the problem in a different way. There are two hats. There are some people who I want to assure that the only reason I tell them something is because they should tell me that it is something worth doing. that if anyone can do it it's me, calm me down and there is a second hat, if you only have people with the first hat, you know a comedian who surrounded himselfOf seven men who do make bad movies, right, you have to have a second hat.

The second hat people, the people have Insight, the second hat, people will ask you difficult questions, the second people, the second hat, they will tell you yes, but what is the difficult part and what are you going to do after that, what are you going to do after that? It's very difficult to find someone who is going to do both roles and I'm comfortable with the list of people I have on both teams and as I've progressed in my career I don't call on the first team people too often because if I get way too much reassurance that I'm going to do something scarier than I'm ready for, but I love talking to people on the second team because it's an interesting problem worth solving and I do the same for them, so let's look at this, let's think. about this and you can talk to the reassuring people later.

I'm not here to reassure you and I have many colleagues and friends who know I'm not the reassuring person they don't come to me to reassure you because I think reassuring you is mostly useless, it's over too quickly and I don't want to be responsible for telling you. which was a great idea when I didn't think it was insight and discernment, those two, it's a really important skill. and I love that you know it explicitly or you know it intuitively. I bet most of us intuitively know who to go to to get a yes, yes, yes, yes, you know and who to go to if they say, well, wait, you want to talk. about this seriously, yeah, so if the reflex is to go first and not second, we'll probably have problems, but second versus first is really cool, thanks for the clarity there, do you have a personal experience with ? fopo fear of people's opinions and it being a constrictor in your life in some way over a thousand stages almost every day oh my god, really Seth, yeah, I mean, I grew up with undiagnosed ADHD and, um, a He often said something that could be right or clever.

That was inappropriate and it wasn't. I was the nerdy kid, not the popular kid, and when that's your high school experience, you wear that scar for a long time, maybe forever, so I'm sorry and then I do the same thing anyway, right? that I'm going to stand up and give a TED talk. I've been lucky enough to do it five times and some people in the audience aren't going to understand it and I have to work hard to make the PR pretend I'm ignoring it. people who don't get it okay they're there they don't get it if everyone got it I didn't give a good enough talk I wasn't far enough along in the cycle but I had to stop going to Ted in person because I just didn't like the way he how it made me feel when someone whose work I respected turned their back on me and walked away because they were being judged in a way that wasn't helpful.

How honest he is! I can't tell you how reassuring it is for people to go, oh, even Seth has it like he's seen his TED talks because of the way you've crushed them, you know? I don't know if I found myself in hat one or table one. with you, but like um, so I think it's really an amazing gift that you just gave to a whole new community of people, uh, the Quest Mastery Community like, oh yeah, Seth has it too, you know, and obviously I speak about it in my book. something I also struggled with and so how do you work on it?

Of course, you can't go back to Ted, but when you're on stage, the way I work is that I have to be my tuning fork to choose the right shape, contour and feel of the words. I also don't shape my talks. I have a couple of slides and then a couple of words on each slide and that's something like that. I leave the rest to risk, which is fun, you know? but how do you do it if you manage like uhoh that person? I really need to get your approval or I really hope you like what I'm saying.

Oh, they're walking, are they leaving? No, they can't be. leaving oh they must be going to the bathroom they will be right back okay so there are two piles in my answer the bigger one the bigger pile is this one choose your clients choose your future if you choose clients in any sense of the word client If you choose clients who have the power to make you unhappy and you have made a bad decision, then you know. I can imagine being a vet who works with small, friendly dogs, but I can't imagine being a vet who works with big, angry dogs. dogs because if I spent the day with big, angry dogs, my day wouldn't be as good, so we can all choose our projects, we can choose our bosses, we can choose our careers, we can choose our relationships, don't choose. someone who can stop an important project find a different place to bring these ideas that is more resilient, so when you choose your audience you choose your future and then the second thing I did as a speaker was to have the same first section that was 40 seconds long. of my talk for a long time and almost everything was on the slide, not on me, and I structured it that way on

purpose

because I could see the reaction of the room, if the room didn't like it, that wasn't my performance. of the day CU I had the exact same thing I could test over and over again so now I could rate the audience on a curve so if I did I talked to 3,000 Goodyear rubber tire and car maintenance franchisees and they had I was up until 3:00 in the morning drinking the night before.

I know this because I couldn't sleep that night because they were making a lot of noise in the hallway and that's why I'm 830. I wasn't with them. I wasn't with them, so it's 8:30 in the morning. I'm the first to speak. There are people in the room, but they are not actually in the room. I open it and it burns, it just dies and I think. I'm not going to speak faster. I'm not putting any more energy into this. I'm not going to try to get something out of these people. They have announced where they are on the curve.

I will be here for them. I will do a Job that I am proud of, but I will not judge myself by the way they judge me because they are not the people they would have been if they had risen to the occasion, that doesn't mean I don't like them, it just means I'm being clear with myself in the same way if you are a comedian and everyone in the audience only speaks Italian, don't beat yourself up for bombing, they don't only speak Italian, so figure out how to put people on a curve so you don't amplify imaginary criticism They help you figure out what should happen and what shouldn't happen next, this usually happens to most people in a negotiation because if you are negotiating with someone and they are good at it They make you feel that the price is too high and that you are morally wrong.

They do it in simple ways, like not talking while you understand what the goal of what is happening is. It's what a professional does. What an amateur does is simply keep going down. your price to make the other person happen you just dropped so many gems in like 90 seconds I'm not going to judge myself the way they're judging me could be the quote could be just the quote of the day maybe you know for sure in January for the podcast series like that is great, Seth, but the clarity that you have and the conviction that you shouldn't do it probably prepares you to be more consistently or consistently authentic or it's authentically consistent, you know like that. that discernment there, wow, I'm going to give you a test.

I have a lot of Base, it's a benchmark, you know, your first 90 seconds, is it a slide, a video slide or something, it was, it was a, um, it was a joke, but the punchline was on the slide. , not from me, and if they say, ha ha, you go, oh, I get it, you know, because this thing has killed most of the murdered, it sounds like you don't know the language. I want to use this. They've done really well in most of the rooms, so I know this is more about them and not me, yeah, oh that's really good, maybe you don't know this, but in football, ​​so I spent nine seasons with the Seattle Seahawks as you mentioned Pete Carroll. and one of the things we would do is the team would spend a lot of time figuring out what the right plays are and there are two ways to choose the right plays for the game and you think about them and then you practice them. you know Wednesday and Thursday and you go W those didn't work and those did work and oh maybe we try a couple different ones for Friday and Saturday to see how they work and then you script the first 15 or so Which we did at least. and then there was this thing that was GTS go to school and the world doesn't know it, but if you get three yards on the play, that's great in a GTS, go to school, you're seeing how they lined up, you're seeing how they played this appearance and football is like a lot of people understand it's like a game of deception, so you're testing the defense, you're gathering information, you're watching, you know how they're playing and responding, and that.

That all sounds like what you're doing in the first 90 seconds is gathering benchmarks for how they're going to appear, so I say that because I've never talked about it out loud publicly, no. I think you and Carol were doing something where the game theory was much more pronounced. CU, you are actually looking for vulnerabilities. Etc. What I was doing was telling myself a story and I needed to tell myself a story to do my job, yeah, so that's the difference. In part, the GTS was like game theory to your point and what you're saying is like it's a way of telling a story.

You probably don't need that rubric anymore, but you know it because you don't need to say it. to yourself BAS on how they respond I'm fine, you could probably delete the rubric, but it's still a good reference point to see how they come across, yeah, and to figure out which people are there for the trip you want to take. Because you can give a talk or make a presentation to a company or whatever with a different kind of drive and energy based on where people are willing to go. A quick aside, when we were inventing email marketing, we could set up a meeting. with any marketer in the world in New York anyway because it was New Media, it was 1996 and you say we were on the web, would you meet with us?

They had a guy whose only job was to meet with you, so we're on one. of these meetings, uh, David Simon, my sales manager and I, and for the first seven minutes, everything we said, not statements but truths about things that had worked in the past, was met with straight skepticism, just a big amount of rejection, not the objection. from someone who was eager to be persuaded but just compromised and we had an hour long meeting and at minute 7 and 7 and I hadn't discussed this with David first so I was hoping he would follow my lead.

I closed my laptop and put it in my briefcase I closed my briefcase and said we don't want to waste your time thank you for inviting us and we both got up and came one step beyond the threshold and they ran after us and said no, no. don't come back we're sorry and the rest was great for me because what I did was instead of constantly pressuring them I told them if you're not signed up for the Trip Don't come and it's an exchange of status roles, it was an understanding of the professionals talking to each other.

If you're not there, that's fine, we'll go, but we don't need to play this particular game. I would never have done that in a meeting where the other party was encouraging me to go. faster and faster because they were already signed up, so figuring out the level of emotional signup that you have in the room is part of why you're a great podcaster because I feel comfortable talking to you about these ideas, whereas someone who just got a list of questions, they are not really enrolled yes, yes, yes, how did you do that? How did you get me involved?

How did you talk about meta-awareness before? I want to go back to what is the game of all games if there is such a thing it's a game of life, you know, I'm not sure it's a game, but like this, you can see how it goes, you're watching it happen and as a psychologist trained, it's the best part of the experience it's like oh I see myself, I see this person, I see the space between us, I understand the context and I'm in myself and I'm also observing like it's the best part and I try to do that in all my relationships the best I can, but how did you do that here between us?

I've heard enough from you to understand that you're not here to gratify your ego and just get people to buy your course, but that you're actually really interested. at work and the first two things we talked about were things I didn't agree with you about and you did that? Wait, did you do that on purpose? Yeah, come on man, that's cool and then what were you testing? Well, I didn't agree with you because I've been on 500 podcasts. I don't need to do any more podcasts, so I'm going to make this worthwhile for me. I'm not going to come out and say I agree with this person on everything, blah blah blah, please buy my book.

I'm not here to promote my book, I'm here to have a good conversation with someone I've never met before. Well, right, you gave enough signals that what makes it an interesting conversation for you is when there are points of agreement and disagreement, and if I just came up and said, oh, everything you do is really great, what do you want?talk? I don't know where we would have gotten from there. Yeah, I love it because there was a moment where this is a public form of Of course, but it feels intimate because it's just the two of us and that's a moment where I could have swallowed it all like ah, the expert on this says that's okay or I like it and you saw us both.

I think we both took the test. We're ok? Are we okay to continue doing this? It was great. I really appreciated that from you, so thank you for that and then the second part of the question, which is about the metap piece, is how to improve your ability to observe. without attachment to observe and see and feel what is happening without being absorbed by the first drama of the experience, okay, so let's talk about attachment. I wrote about it in practice. Yes, it is a Buddhist term, but many people have problems with it. It's in the west, so that's how I describe it.

If you and I are going to swim across Canoe Lake in Aanin Park and we don't have the proper safety equipment, one reasonably safe thing we can do is stay about 8 feet apart be aware of each other. The other way to do it is to take four ropes and tie them hand to hand and leg to leg and attach ourselves to each other and if we did that, one of us would drown or maybe both of us. Many of us would say that attachment is emotionally connected to the outcome, even though we have no control over the outcome, so I will write a blog post and I wrote the blog post.

I can't rewrite the blog post, it's out in the world. I need it to be the best blog post I can make. but I'm not attached to the outcome if it didn't resonate with you my day will continue. I'll learn something about how to make a better podcast and a better blog post tomorrow, but I'm not attached to that outcome and what has happened. What's happened in traditional corporate culture is that we've pushed people to become attached to the outcome. We think that if you win the lottery you have some kind of ability and if you lose the lottery, you did something wrong, the result of the lottery is totally different. than the lottery, the mistake you made was buying the ticket in the first place, but whether you won or not is irrelevant. right, when you won the lottery, you still did something stupid, you bought a lottery ticket, so what I'm trying to do when I'm doing my job and saying this probably won't work but it might be worth a try and if it doesn't work Would the trip have been a good decision anyway?

That's different than saying this is only a good decision if it works because it does. is not the case, so we are talking about the right work and I think what I hear you talking about is making the decision not to be attached to the outcome, but to make the decision because you believe with the best available information that you have and the ability to having some insight and discerning and maybe even calibrating that among other people like you, you know what you think you know? The eight, in my case, the eight people at the table to be able to move forward with a decision. but what I'm trying to understand is how do you gain meta-awareness of what's happening in a present moment and move into attachment, which I don't like, and what I hear you saying is simply If you practice detachment, if you practice, let go. article you wrote once it is in the wild, it is a reflection of your ideas at that moment and it may not be for anyone or it may catch fire, as if you practiced. without attachment, you will be more available and more free to be able to have a meta-awareness, it's true, that's right, I think so, that takes us there and then the second half is what almost all people have in common and I would say that a Once our basic needs for food, shelter and medical care are met, what we have in common is that we seek status or affiliation, affiliation is dignity, being part of something, being respected, status is who is on top and who is on the bottom, it is my leader. beat your leader, did my team beat your team?

Why do people wear $150 professional sports jerseys to hockey games? They're not playing nice, it's status and affiliation, so if you're in a circle of people and the dinner bill comes from the person grabbing it they might be looking for status. The person grabbing Fort could simply be nervous about the membership and remember they didn't pay last time. When you see two people arguing about something, they are almost certainly not arguing about it. we are arguing about they are arguing about status or affiliation where is the fear where are the dreams who has been stripped of their dignity and who needs more respect and if we can find those we started this conversation with those colors those flashing lights then we have a chance to help someone adjust, so one of the people when I first became a teacher in 1977, this 12-year-old girl, she was six inches taller than all her friends and if you disagreed with her about something, He hit you hard in the face.

That was her method and we both got in a canoe and I taught her a few things, some of which had to do with paddling a canoe, but most of which had to do with focusing energy on a different type of control. Now I have words. That's why I helped her reconfigure her status and affiliation in her head. I helped her get to where the fear was and she never hit anyone again. And that's not CU. I'm kind of a talented psychologist, it's because she was right. place at the right time and saw something to show him a different path down the road, most people are so deeply entrenched in parenting, mold, indoctrination and chemistry that you're not going to fix it all at once, but still so what informs The Meta of what's going on what I definitely know is that no one knows anything you know in my industry, like this book that saved my career.

I didn't have a publisher when this book came out, which is why it's on a milk carton because I self-published it and the person who's been my publisher ever since rejected it because he said you're done. I don't understand it and after the book sold a quarter of a million or whatever he changed his mind and for the people for the people that it's for friends that are in the audio reference, the title, please, yes, yes, It was a book called Purple Cow, um, you know, the fact is that Adrian is not an idiot, he is much smarter than me, but at the time, based on what was happening around him, the crazy bald guy who I had one more crazy book, this one named after a cow, it was too much, too soon, no, I wasn't interested and then the world changed, but it wasn't about me or my book, it was about status and affiliation and opportunity, fear, connection and all the other things and discerning the difference between someone who actually realizes it's a bad idea and someone who has their own thing in their head, is an art form that is not easy to do, OK?, a bad idea. versus someone who has something on their mind, which means that when you really Cali, when you really calibrate, you can discern if that's their thing versus your thing, and if 10 people in a row, who has good taste?, if 10 people in a row I say , I don't think it's a good idea, you have to make a new right decision, so JK Rowling put up with more than 10, but 10 really good editors rejected Harry Potter, but if she was never going to reach 40 because there were not 40 good editors, you got lucky towards the end and it was luck, but most of the time, for most of us, our work doesn't need to get past the number 10 person if there are 10 people in a row who you respect and who have Insight and who they are all coming from different places of status and affiliation they look at something and say based on my professional knowledge this is not going to work maybe you want to try something else I love this conversation I love how you have co-created or created organs your life I really respect and respect to that Seth, what do you really like, really, really want?

I want people to realize what a miracle this moment is and to stop fighting, to stop fighting with each other, and to stop fighting with themselves. I want them to fix the problems before they get too big to fix and I want us to stop being little kids and start being adults if we're in person, I want to give you a big hug and say, damn, that's good, yeah. and where does that come from for you that for me is the important song about your new book right, where does that come from but I'm sure you felt it I felt it in this conversation the way you just contoured your language and the way you expressed where does that come from that is so important to you my parents I miss them every day is what they would want me to talk about that is so beautiful I feel it in a way that um of course you just requested my relationship with my parents um thank you for that how long have they been? how long ago did they happen? uh my mom was probably about 20 years ago my dad was more recent than that they were EX ordinary human beings who taught Me through example I grew up in Buffalo, New York, which is not a very big place and we regularly had strangers in the Thanksgiving table.

My dad sponsored dozens of refugees. He helped run the United Way as a volunteer. My mother ran part of the art museum. It was just that I thought it was normal. I thought it was normal to be in a community. That's really cool. One thing mom taught you was about giving people the benefit of the doubt and she started by teaching me to give other people the benefit of the doubt. and then inevitably I started giving myself the benefit of the doubt, oh dear, that bit of kindness you're advocating is necessary, it sounds like level zero for mom was like, let's just do it this way and it came full circle for you, how? about dad um, my dad was an engineer and Entre and he loves to solve interesting problems.

He was my hockey coach and he saw that the other teams had 10 years old, the other teams had a Puck for 18 kids and he saw how cheap the pucks were. So he just went out and bought 20 discs, but then he discovered that carrying 20 discs is awkward, you have to put them in a bag and everything, so he went out from the drill and drilled a hole in the center of each disc and then he only had one large shoe lace and had an easy way to carry 20 records. D was solving problems Giant and small regularly and also absorbing my mom's lesson of like he was on the board of the Black Baptist Church in Buffalo just because someone I worked with him and asked him to do it, yeah look at dad , look at your parents, quite radical and all, yes, I see why you feel what you feel and I don't know if you want to.

I'm going to ask you. One question, I don't know if we're going to keep this on the podcast or not, if it's too sensitive, but what were you like as a son? Obviously, you've acted and you're world famous and you have all that. I wonder if I wonder why you've gone so far to be so extraordinary at something and then I also wonder how that squares with how you were as a son to them. I don't think there's much I want. I have to go back to talking about the relationship I had with my parents and I'm very fortunate in that sense wow and there was enough communication and enough clarity around the fact that we all make mistakes.

I have made many mistakes and being a teenager is always very difficult. I don't think it's useful or particularly accurate to say that I've accomplished an extraordinary amount. I started at the 99 and a half yard line and the world aligned for someone with my skills, it aligned for someone with my attention span and I don't know, I look through 9,000 blog posts and every book and everything else says yes , that was great, but it took me a long time to do those things too and yes, doors opened for me that weren't open. for enough people and there are all these things, not just things that I did and would probably do better if I did them again, but there are so many things that I didn't do, so many people that I didn't notice or see or help so many. doors I didn't open for other people, so I'm not ready to pat myself on the back anytime soon.

It's so refreshing to hear that response, you know, I was born on third base, I think you hit a triple, that idea, you know, it's really refreshing. listen and and the fact that you say I'm not done there's still more for me to give sounds like yeah, giving is an interesting term um you know generosity isn't about lowering the price generosity isn't about giving things away, it's about of doing the emotional labor to make things better for someone else and that could mean that if you are a purveyor of luxury goods and you raise your price, it could mean that you show up in the operating room facing that thing that you are afraid to do because a patient you need it. do it, yes, and you know Atul Gand.

I hope one day you have him as a guest. G.'s book The Checklist Manifesto is brilliant and fascinating because all the data shows that if you just put a simple one page checklist in the operating room, millions of people are not harmed or killed versus not doing it and achieving For surgeons to say yes is really difficult because they have to face the fear of their status, they have to face all the things that are part of their identity and, therefore, for me, the best work I do is The work that helps me achieving the goals I have feels like a gift to me and to them, but it doesn't cost me the things that mostpeople associate with a gift that costs someone.

Let's keep the analogy. We'll round out the home base here. Do you work in such a porous way between your thoughts and your feelings? Do you work well with your emotions on a regular basis or is this refreshingly new to you? Okay, then, Spolsky's new book. about free will determinism is absolutely fantastic and emotions are just chemicals, we have many emotions available to us, there are some that we try to isolate ourselves from, so when I was in Kabira with the Kab book club years ago with Jacqueline talking to some of the poorest people on the planet about a book I wrote and who had read more carefully and carefully than any reader I had ever met.

There was a source of excitement that I had been isolating myself from because it is easier to live a life in New York if I don't realize that every day there are people who live in Kabira. It's true that we

intention

ally focus on certain things to get through the day. There is a source of emotion that I tap into to do my best work, but it's not necessarily the Emotion of Mortality or Grief, there are other people who can find that fuel. I don't find it as fuel. Emotions run through us all and if we ignore them all all the time, it is corrosive if we embrace them all all the time.

We're paralyzed and I think part of the work is realizing that we have agency even if we don't have free will and that agency can be harnessed and if I look something square in the eye and make it productive then you should sign me up Seth Goden, you're singing the important song I hope I'm not the only person who has ever told you that, what a beautiful emblem you are for the work you've done, the well is deep and the articulation is crisp and the outline is warm and I want to thank you for the way you brought the best version of you to this conversation, so I'm looking forward to some point at some point to be able to meet you in person. and maybe have a glass of tea or something, Seth, thank you for the work you've contributed and I'm excited about the work you're continuing and I want to encourage people to listen to an important song.

Good thank you. Time well spent, you are on an important path and I am glad to be able to accompany you for a moment. I appreciate you Seth, I loved this conversation bro, I loved it, so thanks again.