The Personas Playing You: How Founders Get Trapped in Drama & Identity

Hello and welcome to another episode of Heart of Entrepreneurship, where myself and Dave Kashen, uh, explore how to have your heart going while, while being an entrepreneur. And we challenge the assumption that's common, which is, you know, in order to build a startup, I have to eat glass and get punched in the face, and it's gonna be this horrible, painful experience. But instead, we think it can be a loving, uplifting,, and, and beautiful experience with a lot of tools and, and a lot of self-introspection and awareness. Um, so that's, that's the point of this podcast. Today's episode is, is gonna, a tool we're gonna introduce and it shows up in a lot of different places in, I don't know, personal growth work, I'll call it. Um, and I've used it a ton. I've been using it a lot recently, so I think that could be fun to talk a little bit about and even do an exercise today. But let's, uh, let's kick it off. Uh, we're talking about the topic is personas. That's kind of the broad topic. And I'll just start, Dave, what is a persona? Sure. Yeah.

I first learned about personas from the Conscious Leadership Group, and I think they learned about it from Katie and Gay Hendricks, just to give credit. And the idea is that there are these, uh, patterns that we learn to survive, basically, to ways of getting our needs met. Most of these are learned, you know, in the first sort of 8, 10 years of our life. You can think of them as groupings of patterns, like ways of seeing the world, ways of thinking, ways of behaving that sort of get grouped together. And What's interesting about them is for a lot of people, they think of that as who they are. Like, oh, I'm, I'm, you know, I'm the firefighter. I'm the one that comes in. I'm the hustler. I'm the, uh, I'm the hero. You know, I'm the one that, uh, let's say firefighter. I'm the one that comes in and stays cool under pressure and can deal with like really crazy crises. And what we don't realize is that, um, you know, we don't tend to see the world as it is. We see the world as we are. And so we'll project our personas onto the world and we'll either, you know, filter out— I'll just keep playing with this firefighter example— filter out the sort of data and only see the crises because, you know, to a firefighter, everything's a fire, right? Um, or we'll, we'll unconsciously create them. Or at least attract them, attract people who see things as crises. And so our world becomes like this self-validating experience where like, yeah, everything's a fire and I'm a firefighter. And I have lots of clients who are like, oh, you know, they're sort of bemoaning it like, oh, Dave, I'm constantly having to fight fires, not realizing that they're actually attracting creating, perceiving the world as a series of fires so that their persona has, uh, you know, sort of validated.

And I always think of the mental, like, I always like to think in extremes to point this out. And for, I don't know why this one keeps coming to my mind, but like the, there's this woman on TikTok who used to be a newscaster who's now a mom and she's a stay-at-home mom, but as she has a massive TikTok following because she does she puts on her newscaster voice and she reports on her toddler. She's like, this is Kayla reporting live. Uh, my son has just thrown poop on the ground and da da da da da. And, but if for anyone listen, it's like you think of that, you have to think of people who are of extreme, that's like a really easy way to see it is like, oh yeah, when someone goes on to be a newscaster, that's not who they are. That's like, it's a very specific persona that they've taken. Or even like as someone who's a parent, I think. Oftentimes we show up differently as dad. I show up differently as a dad than I do as a friend. And so I think just this idea that we all wear, we have multiple masks or multiple different ways we show up. And I'm sure everybody has the friend who's, anytime they tell a story, they're the sort of focal point and the hero of the story, or the other friend who's always kind of Eeyore and everything. And I think when you see these things in extremes, they're easier to kind of, because most of us don't live in the extremes. We live in a lot of different versions of it.

Yeah, I like your newscaster example because it's clear in that case, it's, it's almost like putting on the uniform to go to work.

Yeah.

Right. And to be clear, these are useful. We're not saying like, oh, it's bad to have a persona. It's just, you know, the way I always heard it from Dana Chapman from Conscious Leadership was either you play your persona or it plays you.

Right.

So it's like if you're playing a part, if you're playing a role, If you're aware you're playing it, you can do it consciously and say, okay, this situation, it calls for my firefighter persona because this is a real crisis and I need to come in and I need to assess it. Take it.

Uh, one of the pieces of advice I give to young founders all the time when I, I'll see this stuff with leadership and other things. And one of the simplest things I do, and this is what I did when I became a CEO at 25, 26, is for the first couple of years, I was like, what would the CEO of a company do in this situation? Like, I would just ask myself that question and I used it as a tool.

Right.

Right. I'll step into the, yeah, they, they need to tell, tell everybody what to do right now, or they need to come up with deadlines for the game plan, or, you know, this person, I wasn't always right about what I guessed, but I, I, I had to come up with some, I was 25, I was an associate, like that was my previous job. And all of a sudden I had a team of 10 people all staring at me. And, and that's a young founder advice I give, which is actually to, to create a persona to effectively go. Who is, you know, you are the CEO of this company and what should the CEO do and what would they say and how would they react? And it's kind of like training wheels for a little bit of fake it till you make it.

It reminds me a little bit of the notion of be, do, have. Like most people live like, oh, if I do this, then I'll have these results and then I'll be this way.

Right.

And then I'll be confident. And it's, I hear you kind of pointing to a little bit, okay, I'm gonna choose to be a confident CEO and then see what occurs to me to do, and then I'll have confidence. And I like that idea that like you can be really conscious and intentional about who are you being, what persona you're playing. But most of the time, most people, the persona is playing them. It's unconscious.

Yeah. We're not aware that we're showing up that way because it's become, it's like, again, we would describe it as our personality or who we are. I was gonna say in, in, in Conscious Leadership, there's the, you know, we talk about this being in a state of threat. Or being in a state of sort of presence or openness. When you're in a state of threat, and these are, I think they're common from psychology, what are the 3 most common personas?

Yeah, I like the idea of thinking of them as personas. They're encapsulated in what I've heard called the drama triangle or the fear triangle. So one is victim, right? That's often how we think of threat. It's like, oh, I'm a victim. But there are actually other flavors of victimhood. The other is bully or, or villain, we could call it. And then the third is hero or savior. And, um, you know, the, the victim, as it sounds, is this person, this persona is like, oh, poor me, right? It's hard. It's happening to me. The, uh, the bully is like, actually feels quite alone and scared, but tends to like um, what, you know, need to control and need power. And so the bully tends to show up super righteous and judgmental and, you know, blamey. And sometimes it's interesting, sometimes like we have an inner bully, right? So there's a whole other conversation around how the voice in our head can play these personas, right? Because we often experience our inner bully that's like, wow, you screwed that up, what's the matter with you, you need to do better, right? And that's, um, but then we'll also sometimes outwardly play that, especially if we have a active inner bully. And then the savior, savior tends to, um, basically want to avoid feeling something by, um, kind of rescuing the situation. It's like, oh, I, you know, I want to save you from feeling sad so that I don't have to feel sad.

Um, I don't know, an example of this may be, you know, you're, you're missing your, your sales team doesn't hit their quota for the quarter. They missed their, they missed their number. And, you know, immediately the poor salesperson is not going to get paid their, their salary. They're, they're upset. They're complaining that the system wasn't fair for them. You're looking at your sales leader, blaming your sales leader. They're the villain. They screwed this up. They didn't project properly, whatever., and you're gonna come in as the founder, of course, and you're gonna save the day cuz you're gonna tell the person they're valued, come up with a comp plan that changes.

Uh, it's okay guys, it's all gonna be okay. Maybe a rah-rah speech.

Save this. And this is a real example. That's why it came to mind that's happening. And, and I'm gonna, I'm gonna come up with a plan that everybody kind of saves face and we all move forward. Maybe one, so I may just make sure that's clear that, you know, in this case, this sort of example, the employee was the victim. This, leader, the VP, let's call it, was the, uh, was the villain and you, the founder, get to be the hero, which is not an uncommon pattern for founders. We oftentimes put ourselves in that hero seat.

And just to, um, uh, expand a little bit. So sometimes it's like that where there are 3 different humans.

I wanna come back. I, I know where you're going. I wanna come back to it. Okay.

Go ahead.

I wanna come back to it before, so I wanna, I, I wanna go there 'cause I, I'll, I'll tell you why in a second, but So in that case, just, I just wanna make, be clear why, what's wrong with that? If I'm the founder and I come in and I save the day, like, dude, that's my job. I'm the founder. What, what's, what's the trouble with that?

So, um, what tends to happen is you don't fundamentally resolve the issue.

Mm-hmm.

Right. The, the hero creates temporary relief. So, okay. Everyone feels a little better. But you haven't actually learned. People haven't taken responsibility in the sense of like, oh, I see how I created this. Uh, you know, like this, if the salesperson really, um, has to face like, oh, how did I, you know, I said I wanted to hit my quota, but I missed it. Okay. What do I need to do differently? What do I learn? Sales manager, you know, doesn't have to face, okay, how did I sort of co-create this?

Right.

And so it undermines learning growth. Um, and you, uh, you don't fundamentally resolve the issue. So you'll end up repeating the cycle. And then often heroes end up resenting the, um, the victim that they save.

Yeah.

Cause it's like, oh, I had to come here and do this. Um, and so it's not, it's like, it's, it's not clean.

Yeah, and I would just add just a couple in this example, you know, the, and some, 'cause I think in my experience with doing this, sometimes these things are pretty subtle and the unlocks are subtle. So there could just be like, hey, the salesperson didn't make enough phone calls and you're not actually holding them accountable for that. That's an obvious one, but a less obvious one could be the salesperson didn't speak up when they realized the goal didn't make any sense. And they have to recognize that they created that. And, and by not, by, by just band-aiding the situation, you end up, or the sales leader Um, just went with the founder's number and didn't actually reconcile what it— like, so I think a lot of the stuff, sometimes there's very obvious aspects of responsibility in my experience, but oftentimes they're like, candor is missing or feeling, a feeling was missing, or there's something else that didn't happen that allowed that. And then that, as you said, it continues to just recycle and repeat throughout an organization and for, for a person.

Yeah. And, and to go even further, the founder might unconsciously create these unattainable goals so that they get to be the hero, right? That's again, back to the, like, we tend to create reality as we are. So if the founder's identified and gets worth and value from being the hero or the savior, they may actually create situations where they have to come in and save the day, which isn't ultimately empowering the people on the team. It's not ultimately scalable.

Doesn't allow you to— And talk about the resentment thing, because I think it's now it's obvious to me, but I don't think it's always obvious. So let's, you can use the example that the founder did this, it's, you solved the problem for their sales leader and the employee with some whatever. Can you unpack a little bit this, this notion of how hero, like how being the hero or the savior creates resentment in that person? Um, and the, in this example of the founder is the founder solves the day, you know, solves a problem that comes up. How does that, how does that start to generate resentment for them? Yeah.

So, um, well, there's two things I'd say. One is heroes require victims. So, um, if you're in the hero role, you are seeing other people on the team as victims. Like they, you're not seeing them as empowered, responsible, you know, humans, leaders, um, you know, contributors. And so even just seeing them that way will affect the way they see themselves. Like you're kind of complicit in the story that they're a, you know, that they're a victim. And then over time, um, you know, the victims don't feel— because they feel like victims, they don't tend to feel, um, grateful and appreciative. They feel, uh, diminished. And so the heroes keep heroing. And then they expect to be, uh, celebrated and appreciated for their act of heroism. And when they're not, they get really resentful.

Yeah. And I, I mean, the example of this one, just to keep playing it forward, is the founder solves this problem. They start feeling resentment towards their sales leader. They come to Dave Kashen in their session and they go, man, my sales leader, they're never on top of their stuff. They're, you know, blah, blah, blah. And then the sales leader's like, well, what's the point of, of me setting the plan and the quota anyway? Because the founder's just gonna muck it up the second I do it. So I'm gonna lean out now. And then the founder turns around and is like, wait, I'm doing all this for you and you're not even taking responsibility and ownership. And, and it's like you said earlier, it's just, it makes everything a little messy. It's just not very clean. Yeah.

And ultimately, if you're gonna scale a business, like people need to be, um, taking responsibility for their own contribution. They need to learn and grow. And, um, and frankly, they need to feel all their feelings. Like, uh, again, the, the real underlying motivation of the savior tends to be, oh, I don't want anyone to feel bad or sad or upset. And if the, you know, let's just take the salesperson never gets to feel the disappointment or frustration. They're not gonna connect with like what's actually true for them. They're not gonna kind of move past it and get present and be able to, you know, perform at their best.

Yeah, that makes sense. The, so earlier you were going somewhere, um, and I told you to stop or pause. And cuz I think every time you first explained this to me and anyone I might explain to someone else, everybody's first mental model is to create 3 people and and to essentially say there's, there's, I'm, you know, I'm this, I'm victim, I'm villain, I'm hero. And then even to talk, even if you talk through transferring those things, um, they'll stay with the same 3 people and go, okay, well yeah, I can see how they're the vic— you know, they'll kind of go through these 3 personas. But I think what you were gonna say earlier is in, in reality, this is all just happening in one person's mind. And it's a mental model that's actually a pattern that's going on in, in our own minds. Can you talk about that?

Yeah. Yeah. So these dramas do play out.

Was that where you were gonna go, by the way?

Yes, it was.

Okay.

Yeah. Great tee up. These dramas do tend to play out in families, in work dynamics where there's, you know, 3 different people involved. Like for me growing up, you know, my dad and stepmom were like the villain in my movie. I was the poor, you know, young victim and my mom was the savior. It would always make me feel better. But I never fundamentally addressed, you know, the issue for a long time. And they also occur inside of us and we tend to rotate through those 3 different roles where it's like, oh, poor me, you know, this happened to me. And then we'll go into blame and say, oh, it was, it was their fault, you know, or it was my fault. And then we'll go, ah, okay. You know, it's okay. Or by the way, another version of hero is like, there's hero moves we can do. Like, I'll just go have a glass of wine, or I'll just go watch Netflix or veg out. And a lot of the distractions that, you know, people think of as like addictive behavior, you know, I'm addicted to my phone, or I just go watch, you know, YouTube or scroll on Twitter.

Or even a common one for founders, myself, you know, this is like just avoiding, like, I just won't look at the numbers or I won't, I'm just going to wade away from that situation and I'm going to just walk away.

I don't want to feel the disappointment or fear. So I, yeah, I just, I'll just not look at it or I'll ignore it or I'll pretend things are better than they are. Um, you know, I'm fond of saying, I've probably said this in a previous episode, that the team that sees reality the clearest wins. And this is one way we tend to avoid reality is by seeing it through this distorted lens of these different You know, personas.

Yeah. So when, when you start doing this, it's actually the, maybe we can use the same example of the, of the founder. So how would you, if you were coaching a founder who was giving you this exact situation, how would you help them see their, their own, like their own movements on the triangle themselves? Those 3 personas they're taking on.

Yeah. One, I mean, one of the things I really appreciate about the, Fear triangle or drama triangle is most of the time when I start to explain to people like, oh God, I totally see myself in that. Right. It just has a lot of face validity. It's like, we, you know, we know drama as humans, right? We go see dramas. Movies are based on this pattern, right? It's like the damsel in distress and the hero and the, you know, the Lex Luthor, the villain. Um, so anytime, well, blame is usually an either blame or victimhood are usually easy place to start, places to start. Um, the hero or savior tends to be the trickiest one because like you said, a lot of people think, well, isn't that a good thing that, you know, it's not my job to come in and make things okay. Um, so villain's pretty relatively straightforward. It's just, um, are you kind of, you know, I like the motion. I think it was like that finger pointing motion. Are you just blaming?, right? Like, are you blaming? Are you judging? Are you criticizing? Um, or are you hearing inside your, your mind blame, judgment, criticism? You know, that's basically, um, there tends to be a little bit of anger in it. Um, that's generally a, you know, the signature of the villain or bully. Um, if you're more in this state, like so many founders are like, I'm stressed, I'm stressed out. I'm so stressed out. Right. And they're typically experiencing that they're a victim to their workload or to their financing round or to their goals. Right.

Or their team.

So any, any, or to their team or to, yeah, just the macro environment or how it's so hard, right? Anytime you hear yourself saying, oh, it's hard, or, you know, essentially that energy of poor me. That's a good sign you're in victim mode. I mean, really anytime you're seeing your experience as conditional, as at the effect of something outside of you, you're seeing yourself as a victim. And then again, the hero, the most obvious is typically like, I don't want them to feel bad. I don't want that. There's some way you're trying to manage or control how other people feel. Again, usually really because we're trying to manage how we feel. Like, I don't want to feel what I'd have to feel if they feel angry or sad.

Right.

So that's, to me, that's the, the, it's subtle, but that's usually the most clear way. But yeah, if you're stepping in and saving the day, you know, like literally, like you're, you know, micromanagement is often a form of like hero moves. If you're feel like you have a pattern, like a repeated pattern of like you're stepping in to do the work, um, you're probably in hero mode.

Yeah. And in this example, I think it's probably maybe helpful, like the, the, if you zoom out, you're like, oh yeah, compensation quota missed, plan bad, I fixed. That's kind of the one version of it. But in, in these situations, the, at least in my experience, and I think you see this as like Everybody emotionally is kind of rotating around their own triangle. So in this case, the founder may feel like a victim to the sales leader. Oh gosh, this, this gal could just put together a good plan, then I wouldn't have to come and swoop in here. I'm gonna have to hero it. And that, that was a little bit more like villain actually, like blaming them, but then also feeling like it's so hard to hire people, so hard to hire good people, and that's why I'm in this mess. And so I'm just bringing that up 'cause I think every time I like, When you first explain this to people, they almost always do what I just did, which is make it about 3 people. But then very quickly in anyone's individual experience, they're always, almost always rotating around those 3 personas in their head.

Totally. Yeah. We cycle through this, this, you know, fear triangle, drama triangle all the time. And if you really start paying attention, the voice in your head is mostly playing those 3 roles most of the time. Right. And so it's interesting to just watch it go, what's wrong with you?

Blah, blah, blah.

And then we go, oh God, it's so poor me. This is so stressful. This is so hard. I know. Well, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, and it's just, and then we just cycle through it.

I don't want to be like this. Okay.

Yeah.

I should, I should really tell this person that they're an asshole, but I know I shouldn't. That's not nice. That wouldn't be a nice thing to do.

And yeah. And by the way, so much of our self-improvement comes from this fear triangle. Right. How, what the, what's the matter with you? You should be better at this. You should be more confident. You should be, be, oh, but poor, but it's hard. Okay. I'm going to have a 30-day plan. I'm going to, you know, think of like how much, how many products and services are sold to us as hero moves. Like this, this will be the thing that will, you know, you'll finally lose the weight. And then, you know, how many times does it actually work? Because when we're in that cycle, we just tend to recycle again. That's the issue. And then I think, I think you were alluding to this or, um, like, okay, so now great. Or maybe, maybe it's the unasked question, but okay, great. I recognize I'm in the, I'm in the triangle.

I want to, before we do that, I want to just talk about IFS for one second. Cause I think of IFS as the 201 of the drama triangle.

Sure.

Like once, okay. For you, you're like, all right, you, you you believe the persona thing, everyone listening's like, okay, yeah, I see those personas. The newscaster, I get it. I play that role. Oh, I see those three and I can see how I, I, I find myself in this. Let's talk briefly just about, I don't wanna spend a ton of time, but just cuz it's, yeah, I found it to be a really powerful tool.

I'm gonna go two places. First, within those three, if we call those like meta personas, victim, villain, hero, or, you know, uh, victim, bully, savior. There's a whole bunch of personas, right? So even within, let's say, savior or hero, you know, it could be you're the firefighter. It could be you're the peacemaker. It could be you're the cheerleader, right?

Like for me, for me, I'll just like, my big hero moves are typically avoiding or they are coming in with a solution, like the idea that's gonna, that's gonna solve it.

Yeah. And that's probably a persona of yours, the idea guy.

Yeah.

Got it, guys. Yeah. And one of mine is the nice guy, right? And this, I thought, I thought that I was, that was just me. I'm just a nice guy. And I had to really face this to become as powerful a coach as I wanted to be, because that's not what serves clients all the time. Like, yeah, sometimes it's great to be loving and compassionate and the nurturer, and sometimes clients need like a loving kick in the ass. Right. So I had to really work on disidentifying with that persona. And, and this, I just, you know, I've said this, I said this in some video or something that like, it's an interesting nuance because a lot of clients will be like, oh no, that's not me. That's not authentic.

Yeah.

Right. If I'm like, oh, your team needs you to be like the rah-rah cheerleader right now. And maybe it's a, I'm going to stereotype, but like a former engineer come CEO, like, that's not me. That's not authentic. I'm like, bullshit. It's just not comfortable.

Right. Right.

And there's this, there's this, um, subtle distinction between like true authenticity and just comfort, right? Oh, I'm just comfortable for me to be the nice guy. Yeah. But to really serve people, sometimes I have to express anger that's arising or, you know, some fierce challenger. Which is not inauthentic. It actually is arising in me. It's just with my persona, it's almost like it doesn't feel comfortable because I'm just used to being the nice guy.

Yeah.

So, okay. So I just want to name that inside of these three, there's lots of other personas and it's really useful to get clear about your persona. I have like a, uh, whatever it is, like a PowerPoint with like all my, you know, a bunch of my different personas and I kind of describe them and I've, I have found like, I think the Enneagram is really helpful in your default persona.

Like that's, mine tend to be pretty true. And then also Conscious Leadership has a bunch of worksheets that give you a subset of what are hero-like personalities that, and it's like, some people are just more, you know, again, these sub-personas underneath.

Tendencies.

Yeah. They just have tendencies.

Yeah. Yeah. And by the way, the one, so amongst those three, hero, victim, and villain, the one that you most don't think you are is probably the one, it's like the blind spot. Like I could really see my victim and villain. But I was like, no, no, I'm, I, I don't hero people. Like, I'm a coach. I know how to do that. And I realized for so long I would coach from a hero place and be like, like with you, Jesse, if I may, you know, there was times where you're like, oh, I'll feel, I feel whatever shame around this thing. I'm like, no, don't you see? You're such a great person. You know, shame is just a story. You don't need to feel that. And I think it was actually a disservice. Um, I kind of woke up to that pattern. Because it was the one I thought I didn't play. So if there's one you're like, no, no, I'm not, you know, I'm not this, that's probably the one.

And, or the one that irritates you and other people a lot. And like for me, you know, and it's, it's so recent, it's like in the last 2 or 3 years I've like found that I actually like victim is like, I was like, I'm never a victim. I like never, like it felt so not who I was so opposite. And it turns out there's a really big part of me that is, and it's like, unfortunately, like unseen and sort of, yeah, it's undernourished.

Yeah. And again, all these roles are adaptive, right? It's not a problem, but it's just, are we conscious about them or not?

Okay.

So you asked about IFS. So IFS stands for Internal Family Systems. There was a psychologist named Richard Schwartz who was a family systems therapist. So what family systems therapy is, is looking at the whole family system. So if, you know, if the child is having an issue, right, historically they would just, you know, see a therapist and they talk to them about their beliefs and their patterns and family systems, the recognition that no, but their issues may be reflective of the broader family system. And it's like maybe there's a role they have to play because no one in the family is playing that role. If mom or dad are failing to be the, you know, the assertive one, maybe the child feels like, oh, I have to be assertive. And then, you know, mom or dad brings them to therapy thinking, oh, they need to be fixed. You know, they, they need to stop being so rebellious. And it turns out it's actually the system that's the issue. So he was doing this work for a while and then realized it wasn't always all that effective. And then he had some clients that would say things like, Well, a part of me, you know, wants, like, let's say, I think one of the quintessential examples he uses in some of his books is like anorexia, right? You know, part of me really does want to eat, but a part of me is just can't, you know, can't bring myself to do it. And as he hears this, he's like, are they schizophrenic? You know, like, are they, is this more like, but he heard it time and again, and he starts to realize that, um, this isn't a mental illness. This is just a common human experience is that we actually have different parts inside ourselves. Right. We tend to think of ourselves as one whole human. You're Jesse. I'm Dave Kashen. But, you know, I, I always use that kind of related example of like, if I'm just one person, how come I can at the same time, like want to eat the candy and not want to eat the candy. Right. It's like this funny experience we have as humans. So that's where the internal part of Internal Family Systems comes. He said, oh, maybe we have these kind of family systems inside of us. And, um, that's actually causing some of the patterns that are showing up in his patients and in humans in general. And, you know, I have like a very, the most common example where this comes up with clients is when they're struggling to make a decision. And, um, you know, they even say it this way often.

Part of me wants to go, go build a house. Part of me wants to sell the company. Part of me wants to—

Totally. Part of me wants out, right? Wants to just get out. And part of me wants to swing for the fences, right? You know, they have an acquisition offer. God, part of me just wants to take it, but part of me wants to just raise money and like see how big this can be. And, um, they see that as a problem, you know, because we, especially entrepreneurs or, you know, people who are used to getting accolades for being smart and knowing the answer, like, oh no, I'm confused, this is bad. And what I'll, you know, we can go as deep as we want into IFS, but the sort of lightweight version is just let the parts speak, right? So I'm like, okay, the part of you that doesn't want to, what was my, sell the company and wants to go for it. What does it want for you?

Right.

It's like, oh yeah, I wanna see what I'm made of and I wanna, you know, go for it and be courageous. Okay. The part of you that does wanna sell, oh, I'm tired. I want a break. I want to, and usually just like any good negotiation, right? Harvard had this whole, you know, a theme and, and, you know, course of study around interest-based negotiation, which was basically like, instead of staying at the position level, oh, I want X, well, I want Y. If you understand the underlying interest, you can find the common ground and the win for all. We can do this internally, like, oh, okay, well, okay, if I want a break, but I want to go for it, maybe I can take a sabbatical or maybe I can take a secondary and take some money off and I can relax a little bit, but you know, so I find, um, it's really useful to think of these different parts as distinct because then you can, you can do this kind of work almost like a facilitated negotiation. Um, and then what we often find is both of these parts are below the line in a state of threat, not trusting each other.

Right.

So I'll often go through this process of like, okay, what are these parts not trusting about each other? Well, the one who wants to sell doesn't really trust that I'll be able to like enjoy the experience of going for it and it'll actually be fulfilling. And the one who wants to go for it, doesn't trust that selling it, you know, that he'll feel good about himself cuz he'll feel like he's sold out, you know? And the more you just get curious about the interplay, cuz, cuz there is an interplay, that's the idea of the system of these parts. Um, usually you can, you can uncover sort of what's not being seen that allows for some resolution.

Yeah. Yeah. And I think for, for me, I think we've been talking about this over text and stuff, but, and I'll just give a little bit more of the, the lingo, I guess they, they use, they say there's protector parts and exiled parts. And so an exiled part is like the kind of, we were talking about earlier, like, oh, I'm not a victim, that's not me, or I'm not angry, or I'm not a hero. Like, that's not, I just don't, I don't roll like that. This is some part of you. And I think the other thing you've said to me at different times I find very valuable is everybody is everything.

Yeah.

Like this notion of response, of personality, that like we all are everything, and that we've sort of weighted we put weight on different parts of a, of a thing that we then call our personality. So, but what we exile, okay, that's the exile. Then there's protector parts and they show up in two different ways. One is manager, which is sort of the person who keeps you humming along day in and day out. And it's like, oh, well, I'm the, you know, I'm, I'm a, I'm a leader, I'm an accountable person, whatever it is. And then there's these things called firefighters where when you're really under a state of threat, they show up out of nowhere and you can kind of see how it, how it mirrors the drama triangle. And I'll give my example, like, I don't, I don't, you know, I say I'm not a victim. My day-to-day is probably hero. Like, I'm, you know, I'm Mr. Energy and positive and spinning things and ideas. And then if you, if you come too close, historically, I think I've grown out of this for the most part, but I would, I would clap back at you real hard and I would be able to go in Mr. Debate mode. And I'd, I'd, I'd argue and win a debate. And those were just, those were 3 examples of sort of how that exile manager and, and, uh, and firefighter.

Yeah. And all of it is like survival patterning. If you think about just, um, I was just mapping it in my mind to fight, flight, freeze, right? Like we've heard of, oh, you know, what happens when we're scared? Fight is villain, right? Bully. Flight is hero, right? We want to run away from feeling the thing. So we see the days and then freeze as victim, feel stuck.

So it's a, it's, and the other thing I would say, and you were kind of alluding to this, but like, as I've been doing some of this work and I'll just actually describe it because it's so present for me now is like, there's this, you know, for me, there's this exiled part that's like, it feels like a younger, sad, sad little boy. Who probably wasn't able to be sad for— not to blame anyone, just like that's just how I grew up. And, and, and then I was like learning all this about myself. Then there's a part that has kind of sits like almost like physically feels like it sits on top and it's a little older. It's like 8 or 9 and it's like, oh dude, I'm going to be really smart and well-liked and achieve. And, and but it's, it's, it's very— it's actually very fear and anxious. It feels anxious. And up until probably about A year ago, I would've never even told— if you said, hey Jesse, you have anxiety, are you anxious? I'd be like, nah, what do you mean? I'm Mr. Cool. Like I, and then on top of that is like a whole array of parts of me. There's like the guy who's a visionary who looks out to the future. There's the idea guy. There's, uh, problem solving, you know, problem solving guy. There's positive spinning and, and they're all doing stuff. And then even there's others, this other set, I would just call it out of like a judging part that likes to judge. Or an apathetic part sometimes that shows up in his act. And those are more hero-y, actually. I'm realizing that they actually— the judging part tries to— now, the funny thing about all these, so like I was telling you, I think the other day, like my whole personality has been to avoid sadness, basically. Like that's how it's been constructed. And we're getting— we're learning about me and I'm learning about me and it's great. But one funny thing is I've been doing every day, I've been doing this meditation you and I've been talking about, and every day I'm just like, how are you? What's going on with you? And the answer to the question of what do you want? Every single part has the exact same answer. I want to keep Jesse safe. All of them, other than this little, the little boy who's like, I just want to cry. I just, I just want to cry. And even he wants to feel safe in that crying. But he like, but every other part is, is just like, I'm just trying to keep this guy safe.

Yeah. There's so much in there. Um, Yeah, just, just to be clear, when you say you're, you're meditating, you listen, you're listening to the different parts is what you're saying.

Yeah. I'm trying to, I mean, there's a meditation they give in the book, No Bad Parts, which is the IFS book I read. And, and in the meditation, it's like super, it's a really interesting system. It's even somewhat more passive than CLG, where it's just kind of like, what are you, what's going on with you? What do you need? What are you saying? And like, and then I find it, I mean, it's, I found it to be pretty, pretty valuable.

Yeah. So, um, I spent a couple of years training in NLP, Neuro Linguistic Programming, which has a similar kind of understanding about the different parts. And one of the things that, um, they said was every part of you has an intended positive outcome.

Yeah.

That to the point, there's no bad parts. They're not, there's no, there's not trying to sabotage you. It's not trying to get in the way. And so it's useful to get curious, what is the intended positive outcome? And even when there's parts that are in conflict, like the example of, you know, part of me wants to sell, part of me wants to swing for the fences. I think you made this point. Yeah. If you ask what's the intended positive outcome, they'll both say, oh, I want Jesse or I want Dave, you know, to be happy and fulfilled. And even that can be useful to realize, oh, we're, we're on the same team here. We just have different strategies we've learned. Or believe will work to meet that outcome. And again, just like any—

I think it's particularly powerful to do this with the ugliest parts of yourself.

Yeah.

So like the liar, the one who's a liar in me, what's, you know, and starting to really— and you and I have done that work together for me, but like, it's— I think that's where— yeah.

Cause I think, you know, you mentioned exiles, which is what IFS calls it. I've also heard it referred to like your shadow. These are the parts of you that you deny, that you judge, that you, um, and if you come back to this point that like we all have all the parts, right? Um, one easy way to, to know the parts you deny is, and we talked about this, I think in a previous episode, is projection, right? If you look at other world, like that's bad, or you get really triggered or upset. Oh, fuck. You know, that guy's such a liar.

Yeah.

I use this example. It's likely telling you, oh, you don't, you won't, you haven't loved that part of yourself.

Right.

Because let's face it, let's keep using this example. We're all human and we all lie.

All lie. Yeah.

We all lie. We lie to ourselves. We, you know, subtly, small ways. Oh, no, uh, no buddy. Uh, that's not, that toy's not available.

Right.

You know, or, you know, um, you know, and, and sometimes in big ways and the the way we've sort of, most of us have learned to relate to ourselves is like, we're bad and we need to be controlled. Right. And so, oh, I got to stamp out that part. I got to make the liar wrong. I got to shove it down deep and like not see it, not embrace it. And ironically, you know, the result of that is that these, these parts tend to leak out right in unhealthy ways. Right. Or I'm not, um, I'm not a jerk, you know, I'm a nice guy. Right. So I like buried deep down the like really aggressive assertive one. But then if I got really upset or, you know, I might get really triggered all of a sudden, you know, I cut, you know, then I really am a jerk. As opposed to if you can love that part, you know, can I, can I love the one in me who wants to lie because I'm scared, you know, or, um, well, and as for me, when I was doing this work, I mean, again, the, the—

I was doing this with a therapist here, and she, you know, you're getting and talking. I'm talking to this anxious fear-y part.

Yeah.

And it's kind of a crazy experience because it really does talk back to you. I don't know how else to describe it than it— like, you ask it questions and it talks. And so I'll share two things that were crazy. One is it was pretty upset. It's like mad at me. It's like, dude, you pretended like I didn't exist for 30 years, and here I've been working my ass off trying to like keep you You know, on the, on the straight and narrow. And then recently, like, I think earlier this week, I was like, what do you need to feel safe? I asked that question and it was like, I need the judging part to stop judging me for how I'm feeling. And it's like, oh yeah, dude. And then, and I like judge my, I don't, and I judge others who are anxious. I'm like, dude, get your shit together. Like, don't even, like, I've gotten better at this, but like my wife gets a little anxious on planes and I used to, like a few years ago, I'm like, what are you, what, you know, what are you worrying about? Like, here's the statistics or whatever. And it's like, there's just that, that anyone behaving that way would, because that part of me was like, you know, anytime we're judging, we're just avoiding feeling something we don't want to feel, right?

Um, but let's go. Yeah, let's—

I want to go— well, I want to go now and talk to you. Earlier you were going to talk about— we've kind of gone deep on all these like things. Now it's like, so then what? Like, why, why, you know, cool, Jesse, you've been talking to yourself, you're kind of weird, like That's weird. And there's this triangle, like, what's the point of all of this stuff? Like, it all sounds entertaining, but like, why, why is it useful? And how do you then use it to—

Well, let me first just key off something you said, which is you're realizing in some way you've organized your entire life to avoid sadness. I think that's a really profound and important insight, right? And I think most people, so just for anyone listening, it's worth reflecting on, like, Which emotions have you organized your entire system and life and personality to avoid feeling? And when you start to, um, recognize that and start like you are to, uh, welcome that feeling, all of a sudden you gain a ton of freedom because you no longer have to re— you know, and it is interesting to think about how many founders might be doing the entire, you know, their entire startup to avoid some kind of sense of shame or not feeling good enough or, um, you know, heartbreak or some feeling that they don't want to feel. And if that's where you're coming from, it's never going to ultimately be fulfilling.

Right. And I mean, I texted you this question the other day. I was like, who would I be if I wasn't afraid to feel sadness?

Yeah.

Like what I would probably swing bigger, you know, would I be bootstrapping or would I just raise a lot? Like, you know, it sort of created this whole other path that has kind of blindly felt shut off to me. I didn't know it was not there, but it, yeah, there's that. And then, I mean, and then the other, the tendencies of like, it's funny how things relate, like keeping my calendar super packed for a long time. I just told myself that's what it takes and that's what you gotta do. And it turns out I was probably doing that to avoid allowing too much space to feel things.

Yeah. There, there's this quote, most of man's or woman's struggles comes from his inability to sit quietly alone in a room. And what that really is a reflection of is there's some feelings, some, and you could think of it as parts of ourselves, like the sad one, the angry one, the scared one, some parts of ourselves, some feelings that we're just unwilling to be with. And we've sort of organized ourselves to just not feel that. And so when things get quiet, it's, it's gonna, it's trying to come up because it's there. And so then we go busy ourselves. And, um, so I think this is really, really important. Like, I think we may even want to go deeper on this, this notion of shadow and these exiled parts. Cause I think so many people, even like self-love, which comes up a lot, or self-doubt, it's like, why can't I love myself? It's, it's because we have all these parts of ourselves that we've judged, we've pushed down, we've denied. And, um, I think like the journey to wholeness is a journey of welcoming and embracing and loving all the parts. Not just the ones we were told or believed were good, but like, you know, the ones that are supposedly bad. 'Cause we're, 'cause we're human and we have them all. Um, all right.

So let's go back to the drama triangle and, uh, with the last 5 minutes now, 'cause we've talked a lot about these challenges. Like what do, yeah, what do I do about it? I'm a founder. Cool. I, I see myself in this triangle. First of all, why should I not be in the triangle or what, what payoff do I get benefit? And then, and then how do I actually get myself out of it?

Yeah. So most times where we're, um, acting to avoid feeling scared, which is what these really are, they're, they're ways to avoid feeling the fear, right? Oh, I go into victim, I go into villain, I go into hero. Um, or we're in reactivity. Uh, it's just really inefficient. We don't end up creating the results we want. Um, and there it's like the dirty fuel. We, we end up feeling like this constrictive energy and then spreading that to the team. Um, and again, we tend to keep recycling the same issues.

Yeah.

You know, we don't fundamentally resolve them. So that's—

what you said at the top of the episode is ringing in my ears right now, which, which is you either play the personality or it plays you. In other words, you either, if you're not aware of it, it's gonna, you know, it's basically going to run the show. You're not going to be choosing, you're not going to be consciously choosing.

Totally. And like, there's this, there's this notion, um, that like, if you could behave any way any other human behaves, you could achieve anything any other human achieves. Right. So like Steve Jobs or Elon or Sam Walton, you know, whoever your heroes are, like, at least like there's no fundamental reason why you couldn't do what they do. Um, if you're—

other than you would say, that's not who I am, right?

That's exactly, that's the comfort thing. Right. So in some way, the other side of, um, kind of the restrictive persona, this total behavioral flexibility, right? If, if I could in any given moment show up in full presence and without some like restrictions on how I'm allowed to be, you know, I tell myself I'm allowed to be, well, then I could show up any way. And show up the best way to meet that, you know, to meet the moment. I could respond in a way that is most likely to create the results that I want. Right. And so that's what we're all about, you know, in entrepreneurship is creating something from nothing, right? Creating the results we want. Well, that behavioral flexibility that arises out of transcending the personas is what allows you to create whatever it is you wanted to create and be who you want to be. Maybe as importantly.

Yeah. There's one, one framework I heard that was interesting that like, instead of saying threat and open it, they say confusion and clarity. And that's like, it's kind of coming up for me a little bit of like, oh, like this triangle is confusing. There's a lot of like, there's, it's murky, it's muckety. And then all of a sudden you get clarity and everyone's had that experience of going, wait, I see this clearly. And, and you know, here's what I need to go do and blah, blah, blah. And it, it, it crystallizes versus letting the, the thing ride you.

Yeah. Avoidance of fear tends to distort our perception of reality. Right. And by, you know, one way we avoid fear is we go into our minds and actually like imagine all these future things that might happen. That's the clearest example of distortion of reality. Like most entrepreneurs I know spend an inordinate amount of time imagining future issues that might happen and trying to solve them, which is a crazy way to use your time. Because you're not addressing the issues that are actually happening. And most of those issues never happen anyway. Um, and just to be clear, that's, that's all actually a symptom of avoiding feeling the fear.

Right.

So, okay. So to your question, so awareness is always the key. It's always the first key because most people are unconscious. They literally believe that they're the victim or, you know, or that, or, or that, um, or that they're at fault. Or, you know, like they, um, that's where it gets really, um, well, confusing is when you believe this distorted view of reality is real, right? Right. I mean, people spend their entire lives in the drama triangle and believing that, oh, it was all my mom's fault. It was all, you know, it was all this person's fault. Life is hard. Life is bad, you know?

And so, um, and I think one of the reasons that IFS, the personality or the parts thing works well, and it's been working well for me is like, oh, when I think of myself as anxious or scared, that's actually scary. Like, I'm like, oh no. But I'm like, oh, there's a part of me that's— I'm like, yeah, that is 100% true. There's a part of— like, the part of me language, if you just introduce that in your day-to-day, like, part of me is this, you'll— I found myself being willing to share things that are probably previously I wouldn't have been willing to share. And even again, like, I, I'm— there's a language does something that makes it just don't call it you. And that's valuable because you're not identifying with the, those individual things.

Yeah. That's a whole important topic is, is identification, right? Because if you're identified as your thoughts, as your feelings, it's a different, it's much more challenging to just observe and be with those thoughts and feelings. So if we take, you know, to your point, if you just see, oh, a part of me is scared. Well, you're recognizing that there's something more expansive than that part of you that's noticing that that part of you is scared. So, so the awareness in some way is that more expansive thing and becoming aware of something you previously weren't aware of is like the 80/20, right? Just, just recognize, oh, I'm in a state of threat. I'm below the line. I'm seeing the world through this victim lens. You know, that's the, that's always the first step.

Yeah, I've heard it said is like the, the second, it's like putting sunlight on, uh, you know, a, a mildew towel. Like you don't even have to do anything. Once the light's on it, it just, or sunlight on a shadow, the shadow disappears. And, and there's so much of just awareness that solves these issues.

I love that point. And I, I'm, I'm seeing that more and more clearly and it's really counterintuitive cuz we tend to think, no, no, I gotta do something about it. I have to fix it. Often just the awareness. It will just naturally unfold. Now that said, it can be useful to exaggerate. This is also counterintuitive. Like a lot of clients find if you go like, okay, go all the way into the persona, right? Like, oh, we have this exercise that again, I learned from Conscious Leadership Group. It's like, it's, it's like actually get on the drama triangle. Like you're on it anyway, but like really get on it and ham it up. Almost like you're an actor. And I'm like, okay, play the victim. Like, oh God, oh, poor me.

Yeah.

Woe is me. It's so hard. And like, oh, it's their fault. They're, you know, just like really exaggerated. That can help you see the pattern and it, it's, it's naturally playful and it'll kind of loosen the grip of the pattern. So again, if you come back to this idea of like, if you don't, um, either you play the persona or it plays you. If you take that literally, play the persona, like really play it. Yeah. Like play it up.

Play it.

And that will automatically loosen the grip of it and help you see it more clearly.

Um, one of my favorite stories about our work together when we first started working together, I always tell, I tell this story and it's about all of this. I actually should have started with this was like, you know, I was, I was looking at some friend of mine who had sold their company for a billion dollars and kind of being like, oh, I, I like, I could do that. Or like, I, you know, I like just kind of being unsatisfied with what I had and looking over there and you were like, I want you to, like, do that for the next week with everything. Like, I want a different car, I want a different wife, I want different kids. And my first reaction was like, dude, are you crazy? Like, I have— like, I clearly like— no, no. And then you were like, just trust me, do it. And I was like, fine. And you didn't tell me why. But then I think you called me 4 or 5 days later, like, how's it going? And I'm like, it just seems so silly.

Yeah.

And I think what you said to me very specifically, I can remember, was I can't stop you from having that thought or that persona showing up. But I can basically tell you not to let it have power over you. 'Cause once you note it as, we, I think we named it Mr. Unsatisfied or something. It's like, oh, he's gonna keep coming. And then you're just like, oh, there he is. Like he sees something. And, and it's, it's worked wonders for me because that has not, I mean, it's been 5, 6 years since that happened probably. And it shows up all the time. It just, it, it, he comes and he goes. I'm like, oh yeah, okay. Like I gotta get back to work now. And versus it used to be with me for days, weeks, or months at a time. Yeah.

And that's the beauty of naming and recognizing our patterns, our personas. There's the, there's the in-the-moment awareness, but the, by recognizing it, we know what to look for. It's easier to spot it in the moment. Right. That's a great example. Mr. Unsatisfied or the Comparing My— Comparing Charlie. I think I had a client, we called it Comparing Charlie. And once we named it, it was just much easier to recognize it. And again, in that moment of recognition, There's a way— the fact that you can see it tells you that you're not it, right? Like, if it's an object of your awareness, it can't be you. So then it already gives you some spaciousness and some choice around, do I want to keep playing that? Is that serving me? Maybe sometimes, yeah, it's motivating me. I want to compare, or— but most of the time, like, no, that's just, that's just the persona. I can let that go.

All right, well, we're up at time here. Maybe next week we can talk more about the shadow stuff, but then also talk even more on the What does it mean to kind of work from presence and how does this stuff start to show up and flip?

Sounds great.

You want to bring us home, Dave? Any parting words?

Oh, um, yeah. Well, I like, I, yeah, maybe as a, as an exercise, I liked what you just said. So listener, I would challenge you to identify one persona, right? That you tend to play, one pattern and, um, see if you'd be willing for the next week to just like ham it all the way up. Right? So like, If it's comparing Charlie, great. Compare like crazy. Compare to everyone, to everything, and just see what happens when you kind of really exaggerate that persona.

All right. Heart of Entrepreneurship. Thanks everyone.

Thank you. Pleasure. Bye.