82: Hunch—How to Translate Intuition into Business Ideas with Bernadette Jiwa

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For show notes from this episode, visit pivotmethod.com podcast if Change is the only constant, then let's get better at it. Here we go.

Hello everybody. Welcome back to the Pivot Podcast. We are going cross continental today. I am just elated to be talking to Bernadette Giwa, her little book that packs a big punch hunch. Hey, that rhymes arrived in the mail and I thought oh man, I wish I wrote this book. So naturally had to get Bernadette on the show and we have the same publishing house portfolio so there's so much. I can't wait to share this this content with you and Bernadette and I are just meeting to do this show. So really excited to see where things go. Bernadette is a recognized global authority on business philosophy and the role of identity and story in business innovation and marketing. She's the author of six bestselling books on marketing and brand storytelling. Bernadette advises, consults and speaks with entrepreneurs and business leaders from startups to Fortune 500 companies who want to do work they're proud of and create the future they want to see. Her work takes her from Melbourne to New York and everywhere in between. Her book the Story of Ideas that Fly was featured in Inc. Magazine's Best business books of 2015. Seth Godin listed her blog this was many years ago and I've been following Bernadette since as one of the top blogs he reads. And Bernadette's latest book and the topic of today's show is turn your everyday insights into the next big thing. Bernadette, welcome to the show.

Oh, thanks for having me, Jenny. I'm thrilled to be chatting to you. Finally. Finally. I've been following you for a long time too.

Same. Yeah, I just really love your work. And as I mentioned, when I saw Hunter Rive, I just thought, wow, she's done it Because I keep thinking about the importance of intuition in business and innovation and entrepreneurship. And yet for some reason, it seems like there's this great divide of books about spirituality and intuition and then business books. And I even hesitated as I was thinking of a next book, like, well, Portfolio would never go for the kind of stuff that I've been thinking about. And so when I saw your book arrive, it gave me a little hope. And I'm curious, what was your hunch that sparked the idea for this book? And did you have any concerns about business people reading it and just kind of crossing the chasm that sometimes exists only on the surface? Because I think when you start talking to leaders, they often say, oh yeah, I meditate. I use my intuition all the time.

Well, if I had any hesitation, I got rid of that a long time ago because the header on my blog has got a heart in there. And this is not a quote from me, but I wish that I had come up with this phrase. It's my husband who says, you invent with your head and you create with your heart.

We can't divorce the two sides of ourselves. So that's why I was really excited to write this book, because I feel we're going too far down the rational side of what does the data tell us? And let's stick to that hard line.

You say that anxiety over being more innovative leads entrepreneurs to create solutions instead of problems. But what if you could use your intuition to identify an existing problem problem that's begging for a solution, say more about that.

Well, if you think about anything that has been really innovative, something that's been a giant leap, the products that we love, the services that we love, the cafes where we just feel compelled to show up, they have looked for a gap. They've looked for an unmet need and a problem to solve, and then they've solved that instead of thinking about ideas.

Because it's not possible to create.

A great product or service without thinking about the people you're going to create it for. And sometimes we can.

Lose sight of that. We can really lose sight of the fact that our product or service won't be successful unless it becomes meaningful to the people we want to serve.

I love what you shared about your husband's advice and how you have a heart in your logo. I actually have one too, when I in my signature for when I send out newsletters and things. And it's true. It's like if we just focus on what's my next big idea, then we lose the heart in it. We Lose the connection to what really resonates and what's going to really connect with people and what people need, which, as you say in the book, often starts from our own frustrations with something.

And I think it also goes back to how we've been educated. You know, we've been conditioned to compete to win. And we talked a little bit about this before you started recording.

The headline on my website right now is you don't have to compete if you know who you are. And.

We get to this point where we're looking over our shoulder at what other people can do and trying to emulate that instead of thinking about what's unique about what we can contribute. And that comes from listening to ourselves, but also paying attention to what's going on around us and marrying the two things.

One thing I've noticed that seems to make that a little tricky or trickier in today's day and age is just the sheer abundance of information and social media. You say in the book distraction is the enemy of insight. And it also seems that comparison is because. I guess I'm curious to hear your thoughts, that sometimes the moment we think of what we feel is something unique to us or, I'll speak for myself, something unique to me or some innovative idea. If you go online, you can immediately see it done many, many times. So how do you combat that? How do you know when to look at what's out there and when to just go with what you truly.

No matter what?

Well, when you think about it, everything we feel, we get to the point where we feel like everything has been done before and perhaps it has to a certain degree, but it hasn't been done by you. There are lots of people who are talking to people about, thinking about what their talents are and what their career choices might be and what their options might be. And you. There's still room for your voice in this. You talked about your friend Dori before we started recording. There are lots of people talking about what Dori talks about, which is entrepreneurship and building a following and using your talents. And yet she's still able to do it in her unique way.

It gets to the point where you can get stuck in comparison. And if you do that, you're never going to try anything. And we don't make progress without making a start. Right.

It occurred to me, as you were saying, Matt, that also in the beginning of a new idea or a hunch, it may seem like other things that are out there, but you're right as you put your own stamp on it and Mold the clay over time, it has that unique impression. It was somehow easier for me to hear you talk about Dory. Like, I can look at what Dory does and say, oh, Dory is so uniquely Dory, and she's so good at being herself, you know, but any one of us can put that stamp that we probably don't even quite see in ourselves. Like, it's probably outsiders can see what makes us unique sometimes better than we even can.

Exactly. And how many. And that's to one of your points earlier. We actually probably don't spend enough time thinking about what makes us unique and how we can uniquely contribute. We're spending more time and focusing on how we can get from where we are to over there. The next step to thinking about, to looking back and thinking about what is it in our backstory, in our history and what's unique to us that we can bring into the idea or into this service in the service of others. We need to do more of that.

Just so we get on the same page. I would love to hear how you define intuition, what it means to you, and if it's the same or a little different than when we talk about what a hunch is.

Well, I define intuition as an insight and a foresight coming together. So a spark of insight and then making the leap forward.

That beautiful quote from Steve Jobs, you can't connect the dots going forward. You can only connect them backwards. I feel like intuition is a little bit of both. It's a little bit of looking at the past and allowing that to help you inform the future, with no guarantees.

But enough of a spark to get you excited about being the person who does that, who takes action on that.

I loved in the book, Bernadette has this great formula, that hunch equals insight, which consists of patterns in practice plus foresight, potential and predictions. So cool. It's funny you brought up the Steve Jobs quote, because I actually include that in the book. And I said, he may have said we can only connect the dots looking backward, but I think we need to connect the dots at least one dot forward. And that's something you describe, is that hunches don't happen randomly, but we're immersed in our field or a set of interests that teach us slowly over time, almost on a subconscious level. So that when we do get hunches, we're more onto something. Or at least those are the hunches that are going to be likely to play out most successfully.

And even in our life experiences, it's not just about our career choices. But if you think about one of the stories I tell in the book is Debbie Sterling, the amazing entrepreneur who invented the GoldieBlox brand, which is the construction toy for girls, where she married storytelling with construction. And how many roadblocks she came up against from the industry saying to her, this just won't work. You know, boys like girls like to play with pink fairies and dress up and Barbies and boys like to play with construction stuff. And her unique experience going through engineering school and coming up against roadblocks that helped her to make that leap forward and not give up on her idea.

Yeah. I love all the examples you provide.

Why do you think it is that if so many of us have intuition, I believe we all do. It's more of a muscle that we build. But why do terms still exist? I guess I felt when I was writing Pivot and often this came up in the editing process of like, oh, this section's too woo woo. I'm curious if you thought about that when you were writing Hunch, if there was anything you took out because it was too woo woo and what that even means or if you've heard that, if you've had that Gremlin. Because I've certainly had it and I keep trying to get rid of it.

So I'd love to know why what you. What you're thinking about when you talk about woo woo and what's your definition and then why you're thinking it isn't relevant.

Okay. The term now really bothers me. There was a time where I used to qualify things. I might say this is really woo woo, but I like to just surrender. You know, money is energy. So here's an example that I truly believe. Money is energy. And when I focus on the highest good for all involved and I surrender the outcome, money flows or you know, all the things like that that aren't based in something. I believe it is provable because it has been proven to work in my life. But for some reason it seems like when it comes to talking about it, especially in a this context, I used to qualify things like, well, this is really woo woo. But if you just surrender, you know, or even the word surrender. I remember that being one that was flagged in my book. Like, well, don't overuse these concepts.

And I'll let you know if I think of another one. But there are these principles. Yeah. That they underlie so much of what I do. But I still have a hesitation and it's almost like.

I don't know. Or just, you know, everyone has Such different spiritual practices and beliefs that I'm just curious. Yeah. Has this shown up for you at all?

It gets to the point where you, you have to think about who you're writing for and know that. And if this is one thing I've learned from Seth Godin, it's that you're not for everybody and you can't be for everybody and that's okay. So therefore you need to write to the people who believe what you believe.

The person who picks up your book and sees the money is energy and totally doesn't believe that will put it back on the shelf. And that's okay.

What I tend to do is think in stories and reflect to people how this has been done before. And I think what's happened is we've started to look to the data and to proof because we've got more data and more proof.

And therefore intuition gets a bad rap. If you think about the work of Daniel Kahneman, the brilliant psychologist, in Thinking Fast and Slow, where he's definitely shown that our intuition can be flawed in certain decision making in certain decision making situations. And on the other hand, he says, you know, intuition can be marvelous. I love, love, love this story from a guy who's trying to disprove that intuition is flawed where he says, when my wife calls and I pick up the phone, or when I call my wife and she picks up the phone and she says hello, she says one word, I know exactly what kind of mood she's in. I love that.

Because it's true that we have these senses that we can't explain and they can't be explained by data because we're heart and head.

Yes. You say in the book we use our intuition to make. Make business decisions. It's just not fashionable to admit it. Which that kind of reminds me of this. And I love that anecdote you shared because it's true. We can glean so much in a flash. Of course, Malcolm Gladwell also wrote blank about this concept. But it's funny because you mentioned Kahneman's work and no doubt, I mean he's such a luminary. But it became this thing where in business books and business psychology these books all had the same exact format like concept and then study after study after study to prove it. And they never interested me. So I love. Did you. I mean actually yours has quite a mix of stories and data, but I like that it's not just doesn't follow that same like over reliance on data to prove a point.

Well, I also am not an academic so therefore, I don't feel that that's my strong suit. My strong suit is to look, here are people like you who were ordinary people who didn't have any advantage apart from the fact that they were paying attention. They recognized a pattern. They maybe had some experience in the field. They cared about the people that they wanted to serve or the change that they wanted to make, and they just went for it. And they didn't know for sure that it was going to succeed. And who does?

And I don't want to keep going back to Steve Jobs because obviously people get sick of him being overused. As an example, even he said that intuition played a big part in his work. And when I was doing the research, it was really interesting.

To see that people like Stephen Hawking luminaries, as you say, scientists all talk about making intuitive leaps because it's their job to come up. Their work starts from a hunch. They don't know for sure. It's their job to find the proof. So where do they start? They start just with an idea that could be true or false.

That's so true. I think it was Nikola Tesla. My friend Penny wrote this in her book that he would visualize machines functioning completely and totally in his mind. And so he would kind of dream them, picture them first, and then figure out the mechanics of how to make it happen.

Yeah.

Do you have a memorable hunch in recent memory that you. That might have seemed off the wall at first, that you pursued and became something?

Everything. All of the books, every single blog post, everything I create, and likely everything you create.

You put out a post or a newslet or an idea, and you've got no idea how it's going to resonate with people. And you're often surprised by the ones that people really latch onto and share. Every bestseller is a surprise, you know. Every New York Times bestseller is a surprise, I'm sure to the author or the publishing house, they don't know either. So you're using books as an example. But I feel that it's like that with ideas, too. People didn't.

Didn't think that Elon Musk would have taken Tesla to the heights it's reached today. Bitcoin.

If we could predict all of those things, we wouldn't be doing what we're doing now. Yeah.

And I don't know if you feel this way. I know we are using the example of books, but I think this can be any really big creative project that takes a lot of commitment. I can't do it without a hunch. Without intuition. So even if my mind, kind of what you said at the very beginning, even if my mind thinks, well, that would be a good idea, or I should write this book, if my intuition, if I don't have, like a gut instinct that this is the one, I can't write it. I'm not a writer that can just churn out concepts. It has to resonate on a really deep level. And usually, as you said, that level, there is uncertainty involved, but I have to follow it. And even when I was writing Pivot, I would use intuition of, like, I would talk to my book. I would say, what do you need? What do you need to fly? You know, if I had to make cut 50,000 words, I would just, in my meditation, ask, what do you need? So that when I sat down, I felt like I was already having a dialogue with it to take it forward at every next step.

I feel like you're right. That.

Although we're talking about books, you're right. It relates to any creative project.

The idea finds you almost. And you have to take. You know, I've got a whole Dropbox folder of book ideas that sit there and, you know, I could write one every six months, but they really have to take hold of you before you can bring them forward. And you really have to know that you're the person to take that idea forward. Otherwise you can't do it.

Well, that brings up a good point, which is if you have this whole Dropbox folder full of ideas, how do you know? What are your signals that it's time to take one forward?

Potentially, as a book, it just won't leave me alone. So it keeps showing up. And then I get. It's like that.

It's like the thing where you buy a green car and then you see green cars everywhere. You just keep getting this positive reinforcement about the idea. Everywhere you look, examples keep showing up or.

You really imagine it.

When it's completed, as a completed project. That's certainly how I do it. Mostly when I have a really strong feeling about a book idea, I just get onto my designer and say, okay, we're creating the COVID That's even before I've written the whole book. And then the book, I know the book is going to exist.

It's like getting pregnant before you have the baby for me. Yeah.

Or before you know what the sex of the baby is. It's like, okay, something's brewing, but, you know, don't know what yet. That's so interesting. I love how too in the subtitle, it's turn your everyday insights that you debunk the notion that it's only geniuses who have these game changing hunches. Or even that aha moments are this wholly magical, instantaneous thing that actually aha moments build over time. Can you say more about both of those things? The aha and the genius misconception?

Yeah, I would love to debunk that. I think that the more globalized we've become, the more we've had an have an excuse not to do things because we see people like Elon Musk and we think he is a special kind of person who can do these kind of things. And that's not for us. And that's why in the book most of the examples I use are ordinary people of different ages in different places, at different times, in different industries. Like a school headmistress who realized that the reason her kids weren't coming to school was because they didn't have clean clothes to wear and they were embarrassed, embarrassed. So she installed washing machines, laundry facilities in the school and that improved attendance. Or the barista owner who just in Melbourne who just got to the point of being so distressed about how many disposable cups they were giving to customers and her daughter was drinking from a little plastic cup and she thought, you know, I would never dream of giving my daughter disposable cup every time she needed a drink. So she invented this first reusable coffee cup. So these are ordinary people doing everyday things but noticing. That's the thing. I feel like that was the other reason I really wanted to write this book because I am really despair of how little we're noticing now with the earbuds in and the heads down in our phones, as my middle son says are glass rectangles.

I see people on the tram, mum, stroking their glass rectangle. That's what we become.

Oh my gosh. It's so true. It's so true. I know you. I wrote this quote down in the book. You say technology is hijacking our minds. As a result, we are noticing less and missing more certainly are. And it can feel so intrusive. It's like it's just relentless too. And as you say in hunch, it's just our devices and these apps are designed to be addictive, to be sticky, to pull us in, to keep us in. We're getting bombarded all the time. It's, it's, it's crazy.

And we think we're being interested in things and we think we're informing ourselves, but actually we're doing the opposite. You know, I feel like we're moving to a place where we're so obsessed with being interesting that we've stopped being interested.

I was brought up in Dublin, which. Which I say is the storytelling capital of the world. And I remember the author, Maeve Binchy, talking about where she got her ideas for her books from. And there were conversations on the bus, overhearing a couple of girls talking about going to buy an anniversary card. And one says to the other, oh, that's great. So lovely. They've been married so long. And the other girl says, oh, no, it's dreadful. They've got a dreadful marriage. But, you know, the worse the marriage, the bigger the card. And then she just wrote a whole book about that.

Oh, my gosh. Wow.

So we're missing those things. We're missing the opportunities to pay attention to the lovely moments around us and to eavesdrop and to be a part of things and have conversations with strangers and meet each other.

What boundaries do you. Because I kind of think it's a skill now to learn how to unplug. It's not something that we've had to get better and better at it to keep up with. How almost intrusive. So what do you do that keeps you sane around all this?

I'm really conscious. Well, firstly, I'm not on Facebook, apart from when I became a portfolio author. They said, you need a Facebook page. So I put a Facebook page up, but before that, no Facebook presence at all.

I.

Try to stay off Twitter as much as possible, especially nowadays where it's super negative. I don't always succeed, and I make sure that every time I go out, I don't plug myself into a podcast, however tempting that is, because there's so much great content. You can listen to things like this, but we could listen forever to the opinions of other people and other people's ideas. And that's great, to inspire us to get better and to do things. But at what point do we get to the stage where we are.

Creators and not just consumers? I did an interview with Seth many years ago, and he just came up this beautiful line at the end. Before you can consume, create, before you listen to a song, write a song, before you read a book. And it's just so true, so poetic, so right for the moment, and we need to pay attention to it, otherwise we're going to lose ourselves.

Yeah, I noticed this even when scheduling that I would fall into the habit of only saying no once my schedule was full. It was almost like, oh, I simply can't add a new meeting. It's full. But now I'm practicing. And I sent a note to someone today where I said, I'm practicing creating a button space in the new year. We'll see how it goes. Because I feel like we can't just wait till we're cramped full with information and meetings and work and to do's. It's almost like innovation and intuition works best when we create space first, then magical things can rush in to fill it.

And also, I feel. I'm sure this is probably true for you too, but it does something with your energy when your schedule is too full. If I don't have time to just sit and create in peace and quiet, then I get really grumpy.

Yeah, I get very grumpy. If I can't read for like one to two hours in the morning, I just get and meditate and do all kinds of things. And it was 9:30am for Bernadette when we started this call, and she said, oh, I've already had it like practically half a day. I love it that you did so many things for yourself, like, before coming on to this.

Yeah, yeah, it sounds selfish, but that's when you. When you do that, then you can contribute. It's only when you do that you can contribute. And I know there might be people listening who think, well, that's all very well for you because you set your own schedule and I've got a boss. And.

I think that even when we've got a boss and even when we've got that nine to five gig, there are spaces in our day where we have choices, where we can choose what we do with that time. And we need to just tap into whatever lights us up and gives us energy.

This concept around looking for problems first, not solutions. I feel like this could be a whole book in itself. But there's the message of hunch and following the three pillars. You say curiosity, empathy, and imagination. But I think one of the main nuggets of this book is that opportunity really follows from problems begging for a solution. And I know for me, when I think about my two books, it's because I really struggled with something. I felt like it was inefficient and I wanted to throw my hat into the ring to help solve it. And every time I've tried to think, well, what should I do?

What solution? You know, like, where you start with the solution, who is this gonna fit? And map it backwards. Doesn't go anywhere at all. So can you say a little more about this, like, because also I think sometimes, at least I will find myself almost getting discouraged to focus on the problems because it's like, well, this is a problem for me, you know, I'm not qualified to talk about this or to fix it. And then of course, that's just a gremlin because, you know, oftentimes we're the ones closest to. To it, to unpack it and understand. But what do you do when you're first noticing a problem or you're debating whether you should be the one to kind of jump in and help out?

I think what you're describing there is really common. We immediately jump to this, well, who am I to tackle this problem if it hasn't been sorted already? There are a couple of the case studies in the book. Spanx is one example, and the woman who invented disposable diapers. So Spanx founder Sarah Blakely saw this problem with women's underwear and there was a whole industry in existence. Who was she to sort that problem? She sold fax machines for living.

And she just was like a dog with a bone and thought, okay, this is the problem. I'm sure I'm not the only person who's got this problem. I'm going to go out there and try and solve it. And the same with disposable diapers. The industry.

Understand that just because people were buying rubber baby pants didn't mean there wasn't a better solution around the corner. And what were the intimate problems that the people, the person experiencing that using that product day to day were having? So.

Actually we've all got that backwards. If we have an intimate understanding of the problem, then we are the person to know how to fix it it.

So, yeah, you just gotta trust yourself and go sometimes.

I also find that I've often I give this advice to coaching clients and then of course need to take it myself. But sometimes when we're experiencing the problem, we're not necessarily equipped in that moment. So I always say, you know, you are patient zero. You're the one in the trenches fighting your way through. And when you come out the other side, then you can look backward and think, well, what helped me get through, what didn't? What can I bring to bear on this problem for other people that may exist in other fields, but not in this one. So it may not always be that you know the solution while you're in it, but for someone. Actually, I heard James Altucher say this on a podcast the other day, which is related. But basically for someone who never had that problem, they're never even thinking of the solution. So James had said, you know, Brad Pitt is not going to write a book about dating. How to improve your dating. Like how to get girls. Like, he's never had that problem. It's not even on his radar. So actually, those of us that notice problems or frustrations are. We're in a better position to be curious about solving it and then go about whether you're curating information or oh yeah, I came up with something new that helped me get through it.

And I love how you said that working backwards from your eventual solution back to where you started. You know, this is also paying attention to what we do in our day. And we often don't understand the significance of what we're doing because it's just normal for us to do those things. We don't understand our own genius.

Essentially, how do you cultivate your. That inner genius? Like so in addition to creating space in the day, how do you know of all the millions of thoughts that flicker through your mind, which ones are your mind and which ones are deeper intuition or high?

I'm very good at listening to my heart and always have been. And part of what helps me to do that, I think, is.

In some of the circumstances that have happened to me in my life, things like losing my brother 17 years ago when he was only 31, really made me think about not wasting opportunities and.

Not being the person who had regrets about what they hadn't done in their life and what they hadn't said. So I think it's that I love.

How even when I asked about thoughts that flicker across your mind and immediately in your response it was, well, I've always been good at listening to my heart.

How interesting to notice the difference that they. There's the million zillion beehive thoughts in our brain and then there's your heart.

It's interesting, isn't it, when you speak to me, probably if you listen back, you might hear me saying a lot, well, I feel this. And instead of I think that or it might be, I believe that.

You know, I don't know for sure either.

I'm just doing my best, as we all are, are to show up as who we are and put our ideas out there and trying to make a difference to the people we come into contact with every day.

You mentioned that, you know, just now you said showing up as we are and that that's really. It's just what we strive for. How do you do it? How do you chip away at shoulds and really get to the core of who you are, knowing that sometimes it is harder for us to see ourselves most clearly.

I guess I'm at the point where I'm 50, Jenny, so it gets to the point where you have fewer. I'm not saying I don't have any inhibitions or any doubts I do, but I feel like it's easier to be true to yourself because it's just easier to be who you are than to pretend to be somebody else. So. So it's who I am in my writing is who I am when I meet people in the street. It's who I am when I go to the gym and I.

Look out for people. I am a sort of a taker, caretaker people. I love looking after people. So that's who I am in everything I do. That's part of my identity. So I just own it in the end, instead of trying to.

Think I should be something else.

Well, I love what you said, that it's just easier. Like life just works better when you're doing that.

Yeah. Instead of trying to be the next Jenny or the next Dory or the next James Altucher.

Be you. That's probably the hardest thing to do.

Yeah. It's so funny that human evolution works this way where our teens and 20s and maybe into 30s or something. It's like striving and shoulds and pressure. And then it is a common thing to hear where people start to say in their 40s, 50s, like, oh, I don't care anymore, like, I'm dropping all that. It'd be so nice if. Well, maybe there's some purpose for it. But yeah, to just figure out how to do that earlier and earlier.

I think our education sometimes had a lot to do with. With.

Inhibiting that, which is sad.

Ken Robinson, of course, in the famous TED Talk, talks about this. But.

We have. Our system is designing us to fit into certain boxes and to strive for certain things. And.

Sometimes we can lose sight of our own gifts when we do that. What are our special talents? And because of how the system works, we have people who come into our lives that tell us we shouldn't be that thing. One of the most amazing podcasts I would encourage people to listen to, even though they don't need to have their earbuds in all the time, is a podcast from the BBC called Desert Island Discs. And you can listen to backstories of people from Tom Hanks to Malcolm Gladwell. And just to see how they succeeded by being exactly who they are is so enlightening and so refreshing. It just gives you pause for thought and courage to go forward.

I just watched a great documentary on Netflix with Jim Carrey. Have you seen? It's called Jim and Andy?

No.

And oh, I highly recommend it. Jim Carrey is now like guru level. Just. It's so cool to hear him talking now. And he talks about how. How the Mask, which is the movie that really made him famous and the one that he had previously written himself a check for $10 million. And when that movie came out, shortly thereafter, he even went to a psychic who told him, you're gonna have three movies that are gonna make you uber famous. And he did. But anyway, he said the mask paralleled his life, as did the Truman show, and that he realized at a certain point you have to drive, drop the mask or it will drive you crazy, that you will lose you, you will kill yourself, you'll kill your soul if you keep the mask on for too long. And that he just had to drop it. And then. So now to watch him in the documentary, he has this glow and this wisdom and this total non attachment. The interviewer asks him like, so what's next for you? And he's like, I don't care. You know, it wasn't. I don't know, it's I don't care. Just want to be and spin around the sun on this planet that we call Earth. Like, it was great.

What's interesting about that, isn't it that the people we're really drawn to are those people who have a really keen sense of identity and a keen sense of self. I'm now talking about my next book, by the way. I'm into that. The next one. Oh, great.

Same wolf.

So my next book, the title is Story Driven and it's the Power of Identity in a Competitive World. And it's all about that. It's all about being who you are and understanding your backstory and your values and your purpose and then working towards the strategy of whatever it is you decide you're going to do and the way you are going to do it, and only you can do it. Because somebody like Debbie Sterling, her backstory influenced and her values influenced what she did with GoldieBlox. And the industry in inverted commas would never have tackled the problem in the way that she did. It was her unique perspective that enabled her to do that. Interestingly, while we're trying to filter ourselves on Instagram and take the best selfie we can, the people that we're really drawn to are the people who.

Just own that sense of identity and don't no longer feel the need to pretend to be something they're not.

It's so true. And also who allow their story to be unfolding in a sense that it's not a fixed story that you craft and you're done. And now you need to keep up that rap for the next 30 years. It's like this growing, evolving thing. It's the story of your, I would say your soul really more than anything on the surface that you've done or will do.

Mm, well put, Jenny.

Thank you, Bernadette. I'm excited for your book. It's like it answered half the questions that came up on this podcast. As we start to wrap up, I would love if you could share, let's say, three practical tips or pieces of homework that when people. Because I know now it's really like, okay, everybody stop listening to this, to this show. Take out your earbuds. And what would you have them do? Three things.

I would really think about being conscious of how much time you're spending online on social media as opposed to how much time you're creating or doing the things that you really care about and becoming not just aware of the outside world, but also more self aware and. And that's harder than you think.

And then noticing, just noticing the tiny things. I'll give you an example of the girl who did my eyebrows the other day. I noticed that she had a new wedding ring, an engagement ring on, but I also noticed it was a little bit loose and I didn't connect the looseness of these rings until I got chatting to and long story short, she had had an arranged marriage and she'd never met her husband. So therefore those rings could never have been sized for her. And just those tiny details add up to something and will teach you something about the world and teach you something about your ability to.

See things that you don't even know that are going to influence you or shape your ideas.

Just be more curious about the world in general and.

Be open to looking for problems in need of solutions, not just thinking about what's the next big idea that's going to get me from here to there.

Yeah, I love how is it one of your exercises that someone could just go sit in a coffee shop and observe the flow of the room and where do people get stuck? Where are the bottlenecks? Something along those lines.

There are so many exercises in this book like that that you can just do today. One of my favorite ones is something that IDEO does with people is sit down with somebody and a friend and ask them to unpack their bag or their pockets. What's in your bag? And tell me the story of what that is and why is it in your bag? Why do you car and.

What'S that doing there? And just getting curious about people on a whole different level, just going beyond what's on the surface is really interesting.

Okay, well then on that note, I can't let you go without knowing what's one thing in your bag that we might be surprised to find.

Ah, let me think. Okay. One thing that's usually in my bag is a pair of cycling shoes. And I'm not a super fit. I'm not a super fit person or anything, but I got into these cycling shoes that you have cleats in them for indoor cycling this year, and that is always in my bag. And a pair of weightlifting gloves.

Oh my. That's amazing. Now, is this so that if you get the impulse to go work out, you're prepared at any moment?

Not so much that my bag is sort of organized so that, yeah, it's ready to go. So there are the things that are in there. Yeah.

That's amazing. Bernadette, thank you so much for sharing your heart and soul and ideas with us here on this show. Where can people find you if they want to keep in touch?

My website is thestoryoftelling.com and it's just been a privilege to chat to you, Jenny. It's been lovely.

Thank you. Likewise. And also if you go to hunch how, there's a hunch log worksheet that's really cool that you could fill out and tell us when. Do you know yet approximately when your next book will will be out?

It's going to be next spring, I'm hopeful. Your spring.

Very exciting.

Yeah.

Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Bernadette.

Thanks, Jenny.

Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Pivot podcast. Make sure you don't miss an episode or my insider tips and templates by signing up for Pivot List, a curated twice monthly newsletter where I share the inside scoop on what I'm reading, watching, listening to and the latest tools I'm geeking out on. Sign up@pivotmethod.com pivotlist get show notes from this episode@pivotmethod.com podcast and connect with me on Twitter ennyblake.

Remember, build first, then your courage will follow. Hasn't it always.