Enjoy over Manage — Master Class Series #4

Imagine that you're on a boat and you are going down a river. Management is when you're fighting against the river, but when you're in that effortless flow of the river, there's an enjoyment to it. What you have to do is you have to be listening to that river deeply. You have to be listening to that impulse.

Welcome to The Art of Accomplishment, where we explore how deepening connection with ourselves and others leads to creating the life we want with enjoyment and ease. I'm Brett I'm Chris Lussler, here today with my co-host Joe Hudson. We are told all of our lives that if we want results, we have to manage ourselves and the world around us in order to get what we want. But what if that isn't true? What if intention and determination are critical, but managing life gets in the way? What if the way to get the life we want is to focus on enjoying our life, not only by doing what we enjoy, but also by learning to enjoy whatever is happening? This is what Joe and I will be getting into today. So Joe, what makes this an important topic for for you?

There's a personal story behind it. You know, when I was, um, really young in my career, I did international stock lending for a while, and I was, you know, still sorting through so much of my personal issues at the time. And, um, I, I decided in my head what I really wanted was to have a creative career. That— and that was something that I decided also was like far out there that I had to like attain instead of realizing that it was really available if I had the right perspective. And so I, um, quit this great job as far as money goes and as far as career path goes, and I, uh, went for 7 years trying to have a creative career. And there was this place where I was where I had basically reached it. I was working on this TV show and I had written something and I was being, um, brought in to train to direct the show. And, and I did this 2-week stint on the show and I realized it was this the same thing that international stock lending was, meaning that everything that I had run away from in international stock lending, I was running to in this creative career. One person had all the power. Everybody was working long, hard hours. They were unhappy. I remember the actor of the TV show saying to me, you know, "Every time I come into work, it's like having a piece of my soul ripped out." Everybody wanted to be doing something else and not the thing that they were doing. They had some dream of the next level of their career. And most people weren't leaving because of the money. And I said, wow, that's exactly the thing I was running away from and running to. And I had spent all these years of my life trying to manage this outcome, and I had finally achieved it, but I didn't have any idea that it wasn't the thing that I wanted. And at that moment, the revelation came on me, and I said, wow, you know what I'm going to do instead? What I'm going to do is I'm just going to say yes to whatever shows up, and if I enjoy it, I'll keep on saying yes. And if I don't enjoy it, I'll say no. And then all of a sudden there was more and more stuff to say yes to. And so I got to just keep on picking the things that were more enjoyable. And as that happened, everything took off— my money, my happiness, my career, everything— in ways that I couldn't even have expected. It was like I, I, I had surrendered, and I allowed that surrender into my own enjoyment to lead my life. And all of a sudden, I, I was surrounded by a life that I enjoyed. I neither enjoyed stock lending, nor did I enjoy trying to become an artist, nor did I enjoy being the artist. But I ended up enjoying my life not by managing it, by focusing on the enjoyment. So that's, that's why it's important to me. I think why it's important to talk about in general is because it's the biggest misconception that a lot of people have, is they think that if they're going to manage their life, they're going to end up with a life that makes them happy. But in actuality, if you learn to manage your life, you end up with a life that you need to manage, and that is not happiness.

Hmm. So what does it mean to manage your life in the way that you're describing?

One way to think about it is intellectually you're trying to assure an outcome. So when I was directing films, one of the things that I really realized in that process was that if I had a very specific outcome in mind of how the actors were going to do their thing, It was horrible. The result was horrible. Everything was horrible. The process was horrible. If instead I gave the actors direction and then I just waited until it felt right, and I just allowed that impulse to carry us and go, oh, that's it, that's what— that's gonna work, without the idea specifically of how it was going to be, the results were far better. And that's one way to think about the difference between management and non-management, is that you're not holding really specific future outcomes. You're holding the intention of, "This scene is gonna be great, and it's gonna be emotional." And you're holding the intention— the actors are holding the intention of whatever it is for them, getting the person to say they love them and getting out of the room, whatever their intentions are. Everybody's holding their intentions. But the outcome is something that you are recognizing when it's right. It's not something that you're being specific and controlling about. So there's this implicit feeling of trying that happens when you are, um, doing management. And trying is very different than doing. Doing is just the action. It's like in Mental Waves, you think about doing as alpha. There's like this flow state that happens, and it's just everything's happening, and there's not like a lot of tension in it. Managing life is when you feel like you have to bring tension into the process to get it your way. Another great example of this, I think, that's really, really palpable is— I see this with clients all the time— is they're thinking about a big conversation they have to have. Maybe it's with their husband, maybe it's with their boss, maybe it's with a good friend, and they're trying to figure out how they're going to say it in such a way that they're going to get the outcome that they want instead of thinking about what's the authentic way for them to say it, what's their deepest truth that they're trying to share, and let the chips fall where they may. If they're in the first, then they're in management, and if they're in the second, then they are not in management.

Yeah, I think that, that film example is actually a great one because in filmmaking in production, you'll often have like an art department that's trying to make exactly the igloo that's in the treatment, you know, for the director, when, you know, maybe they could make any number of igloos that fit the theme and that would work great in the scene. And many other parts of the scene are likely to drift through the course of production from the treatment. And there are ways to flow with that, and there are ways to try to manage every single detail. Um, which you just end up having the entire crew fighting reality for a while.

Yeah, so it's something that I've realized, like, when I'm running businesses and I want something in a specific way that's where it's creative, or someone's doing something creative and like copy editing or some sort of visual aspect or building slides, I've realized that if I just give them 3 adjectives, just, I want it to be reliable, grounded, and empowering, then the results are far better than if I start thinking I know how to design something and I'm like, well, it should be a little more blue and turn this a little way. It's like that kind of broad stroke thing. And, and people— we know that people in general, in management of people, that people respond a lot better, a lot more motivated if they feel like they have autonomy. And that doesn't mean that they don't want direction. It means they don't want management in, in the way that I'm talking about management.

Right, I see that a lot of design as well. Micromanagement of design is a great way to get terrible work from a good artist.

Exactly. And, and that's everything is— and there's a way of looking at every person's role as an artistry, and you're going to get bad work out of everybody's artist— artistry in that. I think the other, the other way to look at it is imagine that you're on a boat and you are going down a river. Management is when you're fighting against the river. And when you are in the flow of the river, even if your paddle's in the water every once in a while and you're doing that stuff, but when you're in that effortless flow of the river, there's an enjoyment to it and there's a non-management. But when you're fighting against the river, then you're in the management. And for that to happen, you have to— to not be managing a river, which obviously never really works, what you have to do is you have to be listening to that river deeply. You have to be listening to that impulse. So then when people are in management mode, they usually are not listening to their internal impulse or the impulse of the people around them.

So it sounds like the, the distinction to be made here is like management is to try to fight reality to conform to your results, and enjoyment in this concept is, uh, more combining your intention with the randomness of reality and seeing what happens.

Yeah, that's right. It's also— so I work with a lot of executives, and this is one of the hardest things for the executives to really catch on to because they have all made a living in being able to have this determination and drive to get the results. And many of them have used management to get there. That determination and drive, that utter unacceptance of a result that's different than the one that you want is really critical. But you need to be very general about the result that you want. Like, it can be general, like, I want a company that's super successful. I want a product that sells better than all the competition. That's great. But when you start managing that process and want it to be this specific way, you want it to have this kind of sales technique, you want it to have blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Then that's when it goes south. So you have to keep all that determination, you have to keep all that fortitude, you have to keep all that utter unacceptance of a reality that, that you don't envision. And there is also a reading the river and letting the river flow and paying attention to that river and, and following it to get there.

A lot of this seems to happen by buying into in the moment, like, oh no, this has to happen because if this doesn't happen this particular way, then, you know, the entire plan is as ruined. So like, how do you know, like, without this 30,000-foot view that we're discussing right now, how would you know in the moment if you are managing rather than following your intention? What are some ways to, to mindfully recognize this in, in the process?

So one of the things that I see managers do, since we're on management specifically, one of the things that I see managers do is they don't ask this question. They don't say, what speaks against that? Let's say I come into a room and I say, I want to sell in question-based selling. And we're talking to the sales team. I'm like, let's do question-based selling. And then I might try to convince everybody and push everybody into it and motivate everybody, give a good speech, and everybody's like, yeah, let's do question-based selling. What is usually far more effective, and that tells you that you're not in the management of that experience, is to say, let me give a good case for question-based selling. Here it is. Now tell me what speaks against it. And people will tell you, here are the things that we don't think will work about it. That tells you the things that you have to address, and then you address them, and then you're in the flow of the situation. Then you're like, okay. And then most likely you're going to get a much better solution because the things that they want you to address are important to address. And if you can't address them, then they— you don't have real buy-in. And without real buy-in, they're not going to do as good of work. But without real buy-in, it probably means that there's a better solution out there. So that's one of the ways to know is if you're trying to push people into a result instead of being eager to find out what speaks against it. When you know, when you're listening to what speaks against it, your results are going to be far better. So that's one way to know it.

There's a delicious irony there. The idea of trying to sell a sales team on a sales process about question-based selling without asking any questions.

I hadn't thought of that in my example. Yes, exactly. That would be incredibly ironic. Yeah, exactly. And it's why question-based selling works is because you're not managing the customer. You're actually empathizing with following the customer. You're following the river instead of trying to manage the river. So that's one way to know it. Yeah. Other ways are you're more listening to the outcome than you are the impulse. Right. So like right now, if you listen for the impulse as to what to say next, that's a very particular somatic experience. And you can still have determination in this experience, right? You can still be feeling like, oh, we're going to get to resolution, and I can be listening and waiting for the impulse to speak. Like, that's all a very possible situation. But when I want your next sentence to be something, or I want my sentence to do something to you, to get to a particular place, then I'm in management.

Yeah, and that kind of— that adds another step in the— like, another filter in the process of what you're going to say when you have to think about how you think it's going to be received.

Exactly.

Which then builds in all of your projections into the conversation.

It also builds a tremendous amount of inefficiency when you're managing stuff. What you are always doing is not looking at the root cause, right? So as an example, let's take which is a more enjoyable car, an MG to own. Is it an MG or is it a Lexus? Most, most people who don't like fixing cars would say Lexus is a far more enjoyable car to own than an MG, because you know with an MG every 500 miles you have the thing up on blocks and you have to do something. And so when you are in management, you're just constantly trying to figure out how to fix the MG with the least amount of money and as quickly as possible. But when you're in enjoyment, you're looking at the core issue, right? And so if you are looking at the core issue, everything becomes far more efficient because you're not trying to, you know, patch the boat as it's, as it's sinking. Instead, you're thinking what's the right boat to build, right?

Yeah, getting out of context is a better, bigger question.

Exactly.

So we have learned to manage things for a reason, many would propose. So like, don't you have to manage some level of things for anything to get done? And if, if so, what is— where is that line?

It's not where you think it is, that's for sure. What I mean to say is, if you ask the people at Hyatt, hey man, do you have to manage your properties? They'd say absolutely. If you ask the people at Airbnb, do you have to manage your properties? They'd say no. If you ask, you know, SK Telecom and all those telecom companies that tried apps before Apple did, do you have to manage your apps, the building of the apps? They'd say yes, absolutely, we need to manage it. But Apple said no, we don't. We just— as long as they hit a minimum requirement, they can be on the App Store.

Right.

And if you think about all your great employees, like, how much management do they actually require? It's the people that you're managing that are not usually your great employees.

So, and maybe because you're managing them so hard.

Indeed, right. So do you have to manage, and what's the boundary? The answer is, is that the, the better your system is in place, the better you have the mechanism working, the less management is necessary. So every place that you are managing is basically a way to look at an inefficiency that you have. If you build a really good machine, say like an iPhone, you don't have to manage the iPhone. You, you and I have never said the word, wow, I really had to manage my iPhone yesterday. It's because it works.

We might have to manage our iPhone use, and that arises from inefficiencies in our attention.

Exactly. That's right. And even that, so that's, that's the self-management part, right? Which is you can say, oh, I need to manage myself, my cell phone use, or you can turn off all your notifications and you can turn your phone into black and white and don't allow for color usage on your phone. Or you can, um, you know, put on the sleep mode. There's all sorts of things that you can do so that you don't actually even have to manage your your cell phone usage, that it's all done systemically.

I can find out what it is in my emotions that makes me want to go to Instagram and start scrolling.

Yes, exactly, exactly. Yeah, all, all different levels of it. So even managing your own state is, is ineffective. And, and in fact, that's the thing about meditation generally, is that most people call sitting still and trying to manage your state of mind meditation. It's not meditation, it's torture. And enjoyment of sitting there is meditation. Yes, management is going to happen. This isn't something that you get upset about. Is it something you're going to never have to do in your whole life? No. But every time you're managing something, you can absolutely see it as a chance to become more efficient. And the way that you find that efficiency is through enjoyment.

That's great.

The other thing that happens here, oftentimes when people are talking about, they're like, yeah, but I got to manage my company. I got to like I gotta like tell people what to do. And then you look at other companies, there's this company called Valve, there's this Valve handbook which is just amazing. And the way they manage what they do is they figured out how to choose really good people. They have a whole thing about that. And then they— when you get to Valve, you have a, a desk, it's on wheels, and where you push your desk is what projects they do. So there's not even somebody saying, okay, these are the projects we're going to do, here's our big initiatives. They literally just have people roll their desk to what they want to do, and those are the initiatives that get done in the company. If you look at our entire economy, like, we have like 4 tools to manage our economy, and we don't do it very well, right? There's just like interest rates and, you know, how constraining the laws are for businesses, etc. And our whole economy doesn't have a manager, and yet we're the biggest economy in the world. And we're— and so far we have been the most, um, the most resilient economy in the world. So is there really a need for management? Is there really a need for that level of centralization? And there may be in certain circumstances, but guaranteed there is a more efficient system out there. And when somebody finds it, they will be the winner of that business and their life will be more enjoyable.

It sounds like there— if somebody wants to start experimenting with loosening management and finding more enjoyment, there, there seems to be a requirement for a certain amount of slack in the system. Like, if you, if you're running a company that's just barely making payroll month after month after month, and you imagine that if you just stop managing people in the way that you're currently managing them and you even have one or two hiccups, then that— then everything is all over. Or imagine in a personal— in a life where somebody's like, well, you know, I'm working, you know, three jobs right now to make ends meet, and if I just started focusing on enjoyment, then, you know, if I— if I left one of those jobs, well, then I'm not going to feed my family. How would you respond to— to that? Or how does that— like, how would you respond to there being a feeling for a need for slack, or people's fear that they don't have enough slack to try and experiment in this way?

I would say that they're looking at enjoyment, uh, in a backwards way. Meaning, there's one way to look at enjoyment, which is, here are the things that my head says that I will enjoy when I do it, like me having a creative career. But your head doesn't really know what you're going to enjoy. So you can try to organize a life where everything you do is enjoyable, meaning that you've chosen things to do that you enjoy, that you think you enjoy, or you can learn to enjoy the things that you're doing. So I'll give you an example of this. This is, um, when I was, I don't know, 27 years old or something like that, I did this experiment where I said I'm not going to do anything I don't enjoy for a month and see how that goes. And for the first 3 or 4 days, it was everything that I enjoyed. I took a nap when I wanted to take a nap. I, you know, did everything. But then, like, the trash started smelling, and I was like, well, I'm not enjoying living with no trash, and I don't enjoy taking out the trash. What the hell am I going to do? And I learned, oh wow, there— how do I take out the trash and enjoy myself? How do I write emails and enjoy myself? How do I pay bills and enjoy myself? Because I don't enjoy not, you know, having bills unpaid or having a bad credit rating. That's not enjoyable for me. So the only way to really get to a life that you enjoy is to, is to not avoid the intensity. It's not to run away from difficult things. It's finding the pleasure in whatever you're doing is— it has to be a major part of the equation. So if you have 3 jobs and you need the 3 jobs to get by, then learn to enjoy the jobs that you have. Learn how to do them with more enjoyment. And watch, when you do your job with more enjoyment, your job changes pretty darn quick. People want to be around people who are enjoying themselves. People want to work with people who are enjoying themselves. And people will be attracted to you. People will give you more opportunities. Enjoyment— it's the same thing in your business. If it's like, maybe you don't have the ability to do a Reinventing Organizations where the management is so low that people are deciding their own payroll and people are deciding, you know, people on the bottom line of a company, like the manufacturing line of a company, are deciding what $3 million pieces of equipment to buy. Those are companies that are run like that. And maybe you can't get there tomorrow. Maybe it's not even smart for your company to get there. But the question that you can always ask is, what's making this so unenjoyable? And how do I enjoy this process? And, and that is going to build efficiency in your company. The thing is that there's somebody's mind right now when they're listening to me and they're saying, this isn't necessary. I can be successful without enjoying myself. And that is so true. You can be successful financially, you can accumulate a lot of power, you can have a good-looking, uh, mate on your side, you can, um, have all the toys that you want and not enjoy yourself. That's absolutely 100% the case. Um, they're not actually even correlated. That kind of success and enjoyment there's a lot of people that successful who don't enjoy themselves, and there's a lot of people that successful who do enjoy themselves. But what I am saying is that you can have both, and if you are having both, you are finding efficiencies.

Yeah, so let's, let's define enjoyment then. A lot of people think of enjoyment as like there is sort of a sense of control, people have the freedom to do what they want to do. But a lot of what it seems like you're describing with enjoyment is that it doesn't really require freedom. For example, you could be working 3 jobs and be micromanaged and potentially find enjoyment in what you're doing. So can you talk a little bit more about that?

Yeah, absolutely I can. So there are people in jail right now enjoying themselves. There are people on this earth right now who are sitting in 3x3 cells who haven't lied down in 2 years, 2 months, and a day, who are doing it to learn how to enjoy themselves. That's, that's part of the Lama tradition, right? The, the enjoyment is available to you right now. Like, right now I can say to everybody who's listening to this, hey, enjoy yourself just a little bit more right now. Just a little. Just allow a little more enjoyment in at this moment.

My entire body just relaxed a little bit, right?

Exactly. Like, what did that take? What had to be— your condition did not change at all. Like, you know, you're in the same space, you have the same bank account, you have the same girlfriend, you're every— nothing's changed and you just enjoyed yourself a little bit more. Enjoyment doesn't cost anything. Enjoyment is just a, a perspective. It's just an allowing. It's, it's just a receiving. It's, it's visceral. It requires us to be a little more present. That's it. It requires us maybe to be a little bit more in our body. It's not something that is ever inaccessible to us.

I mean, this, this is definitely an internal thing as well. We've been talking a lot about enjoyment in, in our environment, in our circumstances, in our, in our businesses, in our organizations. How does, how does this management and enjoyment dynamic work internally in the way that we just experienced?

Yeah, it's a bit of a mystery exactly how it works. Um, what I, what I've seen is that internally there's a a capacity to feel pleasure that is like a muscle almost. It's a nerve— it's a nervous system thing, but it feels like it's a muscle in the fact that you can build it. You can build the capacity for this feeling of enjoyment in your life and this feeling of pleasure, and that there's a certain amount of overwhelm that happens when you feel too much of it. And your level of too much is going to be different than my level of too much, which is going to be different than person sees level of too much.

What makes it be too much?

I'll tell you what I think it is, is if you, if you put your hands together and like put your hands like your thumb and your fingers all together and then intertwine your fingers. And now intertwine your fingers in the opposite way so that your hand looks the same but your pinkies have switched positions. And you'll notice that one of those ways is comfortable. The first way is comfortable. The second way is uncomfortable.

Yeah, interesting.

Pleasure being too much is very much like that. It's just what you're used to. It's very much a level of comfort based on what you're used to and based on what your nervous system feels safe handling. If your certain nervous system had to be on high alert to feel safe as a child, then there's a low level of pleasure that you are going to allow yourself, an enjoyment that you're going to allow yourself, because you're going to feel unsafe. And if you were deeply nurtured as a child, then that level of pleasure and enjoyment is going to be much higher. And we can train our nervous systems to start accepting higher and higher levels of pleasure.

Yeah, it seems like there's an inverse relationship between enjoyment and like letting our guard down. So the more enjoyment we're experiencing, the more down our guard must be, and there's some baseline level of guard that we must viscerally believe is required to be safe. Does that make sense?

That's right. That's exactly right. What you're basically saying there is that you have to believe that a certain level of defense is necessary to be able to protect yourself, which also means that you don't believe that you can respond in the moment, that you have to be prepared. And that is one of the main things that, that creates us not listening to our impulse, not watching the river. Is that idea that we have to be prepared. So we're not in the moment, in the present moment, handling the thing that's in front of us, or that we're in the future in a way that's very hard, right? We're not in the future in a soft way. You can be in the future and be like, oh, and dream in the future and have intentions in the future. But most of the time when we're in the future, we're trying to control the future. And, and that's like the perfect example of management. Like, that's the most and we do this internally all the time, is that we're literally having conversations in our head to control the future. Have you noticed that the conversations that you've had about how you want the future to go, they have never worked out specifically as you planned? You think about how you're going to have the conversation 10 different ways, and it never happens that way. It always happens differently. So we're thinking about our thoughts, we're trying to manage our future. It never works out, and it's definitely not enjoyable. We're— that's called spin. We're just spinning, right? And now imagine that you're in that conversation with that person and you're just like listening to the impulse and focused on enjoying the conversation, which results in a lot more listening to what they're saying as well. Exactly. And it helps them feel connected with you and You feel more heard, they feel more heard, the conversation goes better. So it's the same thing internally. Internally, we're trying to manage ourselves all the time. Hey, lose weight. Hey, get more in shape. Hey, you should listen more. Hey, you should stop managing. Hey, whatever it is that your brain is constantly telling yourself, you should manage, and it doesn't work very well. It's not the most efficient way by any stretch. And we do this in meditation, and we do this in yoga, and we do this in— now, what is it like to, to meditate and focus on enjoyment? Not just doing something that you enjoy, but also enjoying what you're doing. Or what is it like to do yoga and focus on enjoyment? Or CrossFit, for that matter. Exactly. So what's the internal— what's the internal thing that you do and when you're managing and how effective is it compared to enjoyment. And the amazing thing is I could say to somebody, hey, look, whatever internal exercise you do, just focus on enjoyment. Just enjoy that exercise. That's your number one thing to do. And if they do it, most people won't because they're like, ah, enjoyment, scary, subconsciously. But if they do it, what they notice is that they do it a lot more because it's more enjoyable. If meditation isn't enjoyable, you don't keep on meditating. If working out isn't enjoyable, you don't keep on working out. So the enjoyment like propels the, the practice. And telling yourself you should do it and you really have to do it and you have to do better and stronger and it's not very enjoyable, and so you stop doing it, right? The, the other thing that's important here to say is that the reason you think you have to manage yourself is because you don't see that you're inherently good. You don't believe in your inherent goodness. You believe that you're like some lazy, gluttonous asshole if you were left to your own devices, and that you need to be whipped into shape. And if you believe that about yourself, then that's who you're going to end up being. And if you believe that you are inherently good, that you want what's best for you and the people around you, and that you want to have an active, enjoyable, fulfilling life, then what on earth would need— would you need to be managed for? If you want that stuff, what would make it that you wouldn't just naturally do it?

It seems that that would also show up in the way that you manage or treat your employees, or expect to be managed or treated by a boss.

Yes, any boss that you've ever had who is a micromanager, I guarantee you they micromanage themselves horribly. And, and if they're not depressed now, they will be And if they don't have major anger issues, they will have. Any boss that you have that's, that is constantly in fear for how you are behaving is constantly in fear in how they're behaving. It's just the nature of it. It's why the self-development work works so well in companies, is because you are projecting your internal relationship externally.

So yeah, let's, let's dig into more about how this, uh this management-enjoyment dynamic shows up in relationships.

Yeah, here's a story that I think freaks everybody out, and it's a good— it's very apropos. I have two girls. I don't think there's any time I punished them, and I don't think my wife ever punished them. We, we got angry from time to time. That absolutely happened. Um, I'm sure they felt ashamed from time to time though, we did our very best not to ever shame them. And the thought process then is that, well, your kids must be spoiled and that your kids must not do what they're told and your kids must not behave well. And if you get into my home, what you find out is that my kids are amazing kids. And it's like so palpable that when people come, they're like, oh, wow, like, you have amazing children. How did you raise them? Like, that question gets asked all the time. And even after they see our kids, they're just— most people are dumbfounded. That's how we did it. It's what we trusted in, that they wanted to be connected with us. We trusted that they wanted to be connected with themselves. And when they were connected with themselves, they would show up thoughtfully and lovingly and with care. And that's what they did. That's how it worked out. And We never said to them, hey, you're a bad person, hey, you, you're naughty and we need to control that naughtiness. Like, that never happened. So they never believed that they were naughty. They just saw that we saw them as good, and they ended up as good. So obviously some adults, that would take years and years and years of treating them that way for them to act that way. So I'm not suggesting that you go around and like go into a maximum security prison and treat all of them like they're amazing people who are inherently good, because unless they believe that, there's going to be friction to get to that point. But in general, that's the way that you walk around in relationship. The way you walk around is that you find out what's motivating them, find out what's moving them, find out what they want to do, and follow that flow instead of saying, this is what I want you to do, and do that. Like, you see this happen all the time of one person convinces another person to join a project. If I'm hiring somebody for a project, I basically say, what's your dream job? And if they're not really close to the job that I have in mind, it's not a good fit. I'd rather have somebody whose dream job it is to do the job that I have in mind than to convince someone to do something, because eventually I'm going to have to manage them. It's something that I learned in making investments and what I realized was that the amount of management that it took to make a deal happen was the same amount of management that I would have to consistently provide to make the deal work. Then that's really inefficient at investing. So if I have to— if I learned that if I had to manage to get a deal done, I just would not do the deal because it was the deals that happened with a certain amount of flow and ease that then continued with that same amount of flow and ease, obviously There's ups and downs with everything, but generally that flow needs was far more likely.

There's also that like disempowering factor of managing. Like if you, if you invest in, if you invest in somebody's company and then you manage them, you're really saying that you don't trust their idea unless it's done the way you think it should be done.

Yes, that's right.

That brings you back to that prison example as well, because like, you know, you could go into maximum security prison, it's like, yes, on one hand You can't just relax all the restrictions and behave as though everybody knows their inherent goodness. But we could actually stop doing a lot of the things that we do that reinforce those, uh, I am bad belief. Like, there's a lot of— yes, you know, talk about how the system reinforces itself.

Absolutely. You can go in and treat every single person in a maximum security prison like they are good people, and that absolutely will help them. There's a, a great video, um, uh, documentary called Being Human, and there's a— if you look it up online, Leonard, Being Human, you will see an example of somebody who was— killed a, a woman and her child, and the grandmother of that woman and the child showed him a certain amount of love that changed his life, and you can see it. It's, it's absolutely doable. And that's how it works in relationships. When the other thing is like when you're trying to be managed in a relationship, you don't want to be in the damn relationship. That's just— there's some part of you, whether it is you are getting sold a car and the person's trying to manage you into buying the car, you don't want to be in the relationship. And the salesperson isn't as successful. They know that the best car salesmen are the ones who focus on having a good relationship, that don't try to sell the car, and they outperform the ones trying to sell the car. Like usually 4 or 5 to 1. But it's the same thing, we see it in our love life, our husbands, our wives, our girlfriends, boyfriends, that when we are trying to manage the other person's mood, there is less love. When we are trying to manage the other person's reaction, there is less love, there's less enjoyment in the relationship, right? If you are enjoying the person, there's a lot less management. If you're enjoying the moment You're— there's a lot less management.

But as in the prison example, you can have boundaries.

Yeah, you can have boundaries without having to manage anything. A boundary is following an impulse. That's a great, great, great point. Having a boundary is basically the deepest act of non-management on some level. And the reason it is is because what you're saying is, here's what I'm gonna do, and then you allow the other person to do what they are gonna do, right? Which is like, hey, what I know is that interacting in this kind of relationship isn't working for me. So if I'm going to continue to act in this relationship, then what I want is it to not have a lot of yelling, and I want it to be respectful and kind. Now, that person can leave, and they might, they might leave you. So it's really a non-management. It's just saying, this is what I'm game for, this is what I'm willing to do in this world. And that's what non-management is to a large degree. That's what creates an enjoyable life, even if it's scary to get there.

It sounds like what you're— what you've been saying would be also, if, if the partner is going to leave you and then you're going to have a lot of uncomfortable feelings because of that and sadness, then that is also something to be enjoyed.

Absolutely.

Or we're going to be trapped by it, right? That's another fear of it.

Yeah, that's another way people— most of what we are trying to manage in our life is an emotional reality. We're trying to manage emotions, trying to not feel heartbreak when our lover leaves us, trying to not feel like a failure if our boss gets angry at us. And the non-management of those emotional states— and when I say non-management, I don't mean that now you're like a puddle on the floor throwing temper tantrums and throwing, throwing tennis rackets around your house. I'm not saying non-management in that way. I'm saying like allowing yourself to feel the emotions fully not act out on them, but allowing the non-management of emotions so that you can actually feel them fully and you're not trying to push them down and repress them and hold your muscles to not feel them or judge other people not to feel them, then that is a far more productive way of changing patterns in your life than all the management of telling yourself you should do this or do that. And you, you even mentioned it at the beginning of the podcast you talked about, or I could just look at emotionally what's happening when I scroll on Instagram and what I'm trying to avoid.

So how can we cultivate the enjoyment of those, those feelings that we are trying to avoid by managing?

Well, stop resisting them. That's half of the lack of enjoyment is the management itself. Stop trying to manage them and they all of a sudden become a lot more enjoyable. Stop resisting them. A lot of the things about emotional states that we find out is that it is the resistance to them that's painful, not the actual emotion itself. It's the fear of them that's painful, not the actual emotional itself. All of it is a physical sensation in your body. It has different intensities, but once it's unresisted, they change rapidly. The, the sensation of them changes rapidly. No one's ever really been killed by an emotion or maimed by an emotion. Internally. Maybe an angry person maims somebody else, but if you internally are feeling your emotions, you're not going to be wounded.

But we can slowly, through the process of managing and suppressing our emotions, we can slowly kill ourselves with stress.

That's true.

And depression.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Generally, that's the thing about management, is we think we need it, and what it actually is is just this constant signal that we can find a more efficient way and a more enjoyable way. And just dropping the management itself can be enjoyment. And it's just about, just to say, it's just about like taking your hand of control away from it slowly. You know, some people after listening to this is like, okay, I'm just not gonna manage any of my employees ever again. And then everything goes to shit and then they'll be like, yes, that's right. I needed to manage it and I've proven that I do need to manage it. What I'm saying is just like, see what the next level of enjoyment is. See what the next, level, because you have to find the new ways of being without management. And an example of this, I think, that's really critical is like you, you're sitting with a bunch of employees and, or people that you work with, and you need a job done. Let's say you need the, the car cleaned, right? And the least amount of management is to see if anybody cleans the car, which may happen. If they have the right defined roles and everything like that, Reinventing Organization style, somebody might just come and clean the car because they see it needs to get done. And then there's like, hey, I need the car cleaned. And then there's like, I need to get the car cleaned in this way, this way, this way, and then make sure you detail this and do this and da da da da. And then there's car cleans just like, hey, I need the car cleaned and I need it to look like it looks when you get off of a new car lot. And I need it to be done for less than $150, and I need you to enjoy yourself doing it. Where you give people the parameters of what a good job is, but you don't tell them how to do it. You just tell them how to win, right? And you don't see a lot of people doing it that way. You don't see that, that interim step, the interim step of letting people discover how to do it in a way that meets, that allows them to win. Because most people want to know how to win. If you keep determination and you keep intention and you keep boundaries and you keep maintaining and, and mandating the, the results that you want, then how, how necessary is management? The management is just the fear that you're not going to get there. The management is just the fear that people are going to hurt you, that people aren't going to show up.

What you've been saying then in this entire episode is that in order to stop managing, we need to be willing to feel and enjoy feeling these emotions that we're trying to avoid, like fear. And that sounds like a really interesting topic to get into on, on another episode.

Indeed. Yes, indeed. Yeah, there's a great way to think about that, which is we often try to figure stuff out before we actually allow the feeling of stuff. And if we really let that feeling happen and learn how to enjoy that feeling, then most of what we're trying to figure out doesn't need to be figured out anymore.

Thanks for listening to The Art of Accomplishment. If you enjoyed what you heard today, please subscribe and rate us in your podcast app. We'd love your feedback, so feel free to send us questions or comments. You can reach out to us, join our newsletter, or check out our courses at artofaccomplishment.com.