Coaches Council Podcast Episode 25- Navigating the Gray Area

I would like to say that the spectrum is actually all gray and that there is no right or wrong, there is no good or bad.

There's so much conviction on one end. Even if I don't fully agree with what they're saying, I can all respect the fact that they are like not cheating on that fence of trying to be one side or another.

If you do nothing else, fall in love with ruthless exposure to your own ignorance.

This is the Coaches Council, made up of six elite coaches dedicated to serving and ending personal struggle for high performers in business, health and relationships. As a collective, we have built and helped build six, seven and eight figure businesses, dominate in multiple industries, coached and played in professional sports leagues and developed some of the strongest and most intimate relationships, both professional and personal. This isn't your average podcast. It's for the hungry, the dedicated, the doers, for those that have a dream and truly want that dream to become reality. People who want to take action, leave their ego at the door and own every level of their life. If that's you, then step into the coach's counsel as we rewrite the truths to living that high performance life. Welcome back to another week of the Coaches Council. We got John, Pradeep and Brian. And gentlemen, as always, it's a pleasure to have you aboard. Big thing we're talking about today is we live in such a binary world where it's right and wrong, Democrat, Republican, good, bad, win, lose, it's major right wing, major left wing. And this spectrum of nobody can, not everybody can win that we can never come to some type of agreement where everybody finds the light somewhere. And what we truly have found and what I've been listening to a lot of. I've been listening to Simon Sinek a lot lately. I've been listening to Joe Rogan and being able to, with a lot of this, Black Lives Matter, with a lot of this, the stage that we are in as a society that we have to be okay not knowing the answer, we have to be okay to say, I just simply don't know. And to live in that gray area and be uncomfortable and ask questions. And somebody said something that was so cool the other day and it was actually, it was a guest that Simon Sinek had on and she said, I don't like the word believe because, because.

Of different, drastically different, I mean, on certain things. But you know, it's one of those things that when I think about thinking about certain people who stand for something, it's like, you know, that gray area, that gray area sometimes can be such A safe place where it's, like, nice. It's like you don't really stand for one thing or something else. And there's some people that. I'm like, oh, man, every time this guy talks, this girl talks, I'm like, oh, fuck. But I, like, listen, like, I want to hear what they say because there's so much conviction on one end. Even if I don't fully agree with what they're saying, I can fuck all respect the fact that they are, like, not tearing on that fence of trying to be one side or another. And I think that there's so much power in that because it doesn't matter. I mean, it does not matter. There's not a single person in this entire world who said, yep, this person, like, not even Jesus Christ himself, where everybody's like, yeah, everybody was on board. You know, you're always. There's always going to be some sort of opposing force. And so I. I know the. I know. I know that when you're on that side of just on the fence of not picking one thing or another that you truly stand for, and I think ultimately we all really stand for something now where we stay on that side of being safe. We're saying, I don't want to go too much because it's going to piss this group of people off over here or it's going to piss this group of people off over here. And what happens is that we compromise that confidence and integrity within ourselves. So I think that there's a time of being, hey, I'm truly in a gray area where I just don't have enough information and I'm willing to learn. So there's that aspect of, hey, I'm strategically in the gray area because, I don't know, I want to absorb as much information as possible. But then there's that time where, hey, being in the gray area because you think ignorance is bliss. No, ignorance is not bliss. Ignorance is going to actually make you truly an idiot, and it's going to bite you in the ass because you're going to be so misinformed in not picking one side or the other. So I think that, you know, it's just. I had this thought today as well. I have so much respect for the people who I truly disagree with, but they're so vocal on what they stand for in some aspects. Although I might not agree, there is a level of respect, of courage it takes to have that much conviction in something.

So just to add on to that, because, Brian, you're big in the leadership space how do you feel about leaders that live a lot in the gray area? Because I'm going to throw something in there as someone that's looking up to a leader, whether it's in an organization or in a social group, whatever that is. Do you feel like that leader needs to have a little bit of confidence or a lot of confidence and not really play in the gray area? Basically what I'm asking is what do you think leaders in terms of their effectiveness is if they spend more time in the gray area rather than on one or the other end?

You know, I think it's a great question. I think there's. I think that there's. I think there's ranges, right? I think that there's a. There's like certain phases, I would say, where you're going to be in one area and then times where you're like saying we really need to push hard and be out of this one. Those who stay in that area the entire time, I feel it's very hard to make some strong moves because you're not really going to move the boat forward. And anytime you're out of that area, it comes with great risk of losing stuff in the process. So, you know, I think it's got to be aligned to the vision, it's got to be aligned to the strategy. It's got to be aligned to the certain circumstances, things that are happening within that whatever somebody's going through within their situation and it does become. But all those things are all. That's all part of strategy than just being like bull nose, go. It's assessing the entire situation. And that's not to give a political answer. Anybody who's truly leading assesses and is hyper aware of all the things because you cannot just be super bullnose. So sometimes the best answer, in short, is it depends.

Yeah, I like what you're talking about there because I think that it's highly situational. I think what has happened with society, and I agree with you, Brian, we have become so gray from my perspective. We've become so neutral in so many different aspects that so many people are confused in so many different areas. And I'll just give you an example because again, I work a lot with guys. There's so many guys out there that are confused in terms of what it means to be a guy and they're afraid. They're afraid to have tough conversations with females at the workplace because they don't want to be looked at in a negative way. They don't want to have sexual harassment charge. So they don't feel like they can have the same leadership style, for example, and then they go in and they take that same approach into their relationship. And so they're so neutral in so many different aspects that they lose that, you can say certain part of their differentiation. I was actually thinking about this, I think it was last week, because obviously this whole Black Lives Matter is important. It's an important piece in society. I think this needs to be addressed. But there's something to be said about differences as well. And I think it's important because we should appreciate each other's differences. But we have differences. There's differences between different cultures, different races, different whatever it is. And that's what makes this world so great. I think the problem is that people don't appreciate those differences as much. But I think what's happening right now is that there's so much confusion in terms of everything. Everybody has to be so neutral that it's. There's so much gray area from what I'm seeing from that perspective, that so many people are confused in terms of, okay, if I believe this, is this going to be completely offside? Because again, what Brian was talking about and something you mentioned, Justin, I don't know if I, if I agree with the fact of someone saying, you know, they don't feel like they believe something. I think it's okay for them to say that. But for me, I firmly believe in certain things because beliefs lead to values. And, you know, I was raised from a particular perspective that, you know, you need to have strong values in life. Those values change over time. You take on other people's values, you take an input, but your beliefs lead to your values. If you don't have beliefs, you're very wishy washy in your values. And so I think that's one of the challenges I see, and I'm speaking on behalf of my personal experience, is that I don't see that same level of people living to their values, for example, are staying committed to their values and they have tougher times in life. And so I think it comes down to people should be able to live in the gray areas because nothing is black or white. I used to live in a black and white world before, and it sucks because you're either right or you're wrong, or this is the way it is, or that's the way it is. But life is gray. And if you take a look at Buddhist practices, for example, everything is just flow, everything is about gray, right? You take it as it comes in life. So we need to be able to take that on as well and appreciate that and ultimately just have respect for everybody else's perspectives. But it's okay to have a certain belief. It's okay to be on one side just as long as you're appreciating everybody else in the world.

I don't know what reality you guys are living in. It seems to me most people have only very strong beliefs and they are shouting them on the Internet constantly. I would love to meet some of these people in. In the gray area I see. I keep in mind I'm from New York and now I live in California and I'm very, very politically involved. And so most of my conversations are. You know, I try not to live in the echo chamber of people whose beliefs are identical to mine. But it is very difficult to find people who are adjacent and I'm mostly finding people who are strongly opposed and on the other side. And it does make it difficult to have productive conversations. I tend to look at. There was a Stanford professor named Paul Safo and he put forth that the best way to live is to have strong opinions, loosely held strong opinions in that you let your intuition and your value guide you to a place where you feel here on an issue and then that's where the strength comes from. Like, yes, this is my belief, but you have to be. But they're loosely held because you're willing to change your mind based on new evidence and strong opinions. Loosely held is how I try to live my life. And you know, anytime I'm getting involved in a debate with someone, keep in mind I'm a trained rhetorician and so I try to enter the conversation through people's doors and I try to structure my arguments in a way that's going to lead not to a victory for me but to consensus between the two of us and I to just assess where the other person is. I like to ask when was the last time you changed your mind about a major issue or something that was significant to you? And if they can't point to any of that, it really says a lot about. Firstly, the adult human brain has difficulty with. There's no more. There's not a lot of neuroplasticity. It has to be forced.

We'd be remiss if we didn't take this time to thank our sponsors that allow us to reach you each and every week. The coaches council is powered by Cannibrands. A lab tested all natural pure hemp CBD company without the presence of thc. They encompass our passion for health wellness and fitness that we have on the coaches council, visit canibrands.com and at checkout, use the promo code coaches20 to enhance your wellness journey. John, can you repeat what you just said? I wanted to interrupt you when you. Right when you said it, but walking in there, it was having your opinion.

Strong Opinions Loosely held. And this is. It's credited to a Stanford professor named Paul Safo. S A F F O Strong Opinions Loosely Held. So to read you what Saffo had said, it's allow your intuition to guide you to conclusion, no matter how imperfect. This is the strong opinion part then, and this is the weakly held part. Prove yourself wrong. Engage in creative doubt. Look for information that doesn't fit or indicators that point in an entirely different direction. Eventually your intuition will kick in and a new hypothesis will emerge out of the rubble, ready to be ruthlessly torn apart once again. You'll be surprised by how quickly the sequence of faulty forecasts will deliver you to a useful result. And so that's Sappho. And one of the things I remember publishing back in 2012 was just a Facebook post I put up. If you do nothing else, fall in love with ruthless exposure to your own ignorance. You don't know what you don't know. And then sometimes you think you know, but you don't. And collecting this information is tremendous, important. And I think that, you know, as a. I don't want to take this into an overly controversial place, but I will reference comedian Louis CK who started one of his more recent specials before he had his scandal, with a discussion of abortion. And, you know, that is one of the more controversial. It's hard not to have a firm opinion about that thing. And he ultimately, you know, was making the joke that people who are pro choice or, you know, who are under certain circumstances okay with abortion, believe that this is like, it's more or less like taking a shit, which is obviously an exaggeration. And then the people on the other side think it's murdering a baby. And so how can these people ever reach consensus? And obviously people who are pro choice, like myself, don't. Are not. We're not pro. I'm not in favor of abortion. I'm in favor of like people having agency over their own body and the understanding that, like, sometimes it's better for all involved if pregnancies are terminated, you know, which is like very rare circumstances. But. And then I go back to presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg, who was asked about third term abortions, and he said these are women who almost by Definition because they're that late were expecting to carry the pregnancy to term and now for some reason can't. And it's just such that's the gray area. It's not like, do I have. Am I wishy washy? Am I equivocating on my opinion? It's having an understanding that there are outliers to your circumstantial outliers or times in which you may find that there are exceptions that help you examine and reexamine and shift your opinion on something. And when we're looking at the gray area, it's an acknowledgement that the binary isn't serving us. And I think one of the places this has been really well done. One of my favorite exchanges in American history has been wonderfully dramaticized by Lin Manuel Miranda in the musical Hamilton is the difference between Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton. Hamilton, known for being a firebrand. He's referenced in a great book I read called the Hypomanic Edge. So, you know, he did not keep his opinion to myself. And in the play he says, I will not equivocate on my opinion. I have always worn it on my sleeve. And he was a person who consistently was outspoken and forthrighted in his opinion, unlike Aaron Burr, who throughout his political career and as dramaticized in Hamilton and I'm a revolutionary worn nut. So it's great finally see people coming into the stuff I've been reading about since I'm 17. He was someone who didn't take a hard stance on many things and he was always cautious. And it was said of Burr, he didn't want to commit things to writing because then he would be held to those beliefs. And so that's a person who obfuscates and dances and tries not to hold firm opinions because he doesn't want to be held accountable for them. I don't think that's what we're talking about here. I think it's the idea that you can have incredibly strong opinions, but they should be loosely held because the willingness to change your mind based on new evidence is not only important in rhetoric and is the scientific method. It is what allows us to reach consensus and form, let's say, coalition governments with people we don't. With whom we don't necessarily agree on every issue. And in the case of politics, candidates are not, you know, it's not the one, your one true love. It's. A candidate is not marriage for life. A candidate is like getting on a bus. They are supposed to take you closer to where you want to be they're not necessarily an Uber who is like the perfect ride with five stars taking you all the way there. And so, you know, the. To me, there are very, very few people who are living in the gray area. And we seem to Justin's point in the introduction, be living in a world of extremes, at least with regard to our political affiliations, our social ideologies. And keep in mind, I know you guys are Canadian and it's a little bit different up there north of the wall, where people are sensible and unlike here where it's like there are just. There's two Americas and they do not get along and. But what I think is more people should be willing to acknowledge that the gray area exists, which I think is the point of this. So many people are living in the binary believe that they are fundamentally right and therefore people who do not agree with them are fundamentally wrong. And from my own personal experience, I'm not a religious person. I grew up in a Catholic household and that. So religion was more or less like just beaten out of me by the time I was nine. I just like, just didn't make. It doesn't make sense to me. And that doesn't mean I deny the existence of God. I just, I don't particularly agree with organized religion. I believe if, you know, if Buddha and Krishna and Osiris and Jesus and Moses and Muhammad and Allah are all sitting around at a table somewhere.

Powerful table, it's a powerful.

They're all looking down, being like, that is not what I said and it's absolutely not what I fucking meant. That is what. That's my. But that's like about as far as my theology goes, despite having studied theology in college. But that's what I believe. So, you know, the. I remember once I was meeting a girlfriend's father and he was a born again Christian. And I just like had to prepare myself for this dinner because he knew I had studied theology and he knew he would want to have these conversations. And I just thought in he was. It was very challenging dinner because the woman I was dating was bisexual and we were polyamorous and you know, had other partners. And this was so on social media and he was aware of it and he was a born against Christian and not only thought that like monogamy was essential to, as a path to God, but also was against homosexuality. And so his daughter, my then partner, very, very stressed about this, this thing where her father might be like rejecting her based on her sexuality. And for me, and I think for everyone on this podcast like, the idea that someone is gay, it doesn't even register. It's like, okay, cool. Yeah, you have to. Whatever. Gay, straight, bi, we don't. It's not a thing. But for. I am so fundamentally sure in my belief that it's okay to be gay, because that's just what you are. And I had to go in and when I say, enter the conversation through their door, I had to steel myself and remind myself that with the same level of belief and strength and fervor that I think it's totally, you are who you are. He believes that being gay is a choice and that it's the wrong choice and that it's not okay and you're going to hell. And that's what he thinks of his daughter. And there was very, very little that I could say that was going to shake him of that belief. And so we just had to find a way to exist and have a nice dinner together. And so reminding myself that as strongly as I believe the things I believe, there are people who just as strongly believe the just diametrical opposite. That is the world in which I play. That's the world I live in. That's the America of 2020. There are people who are just like, hey, you know, you should. Even if Mask doesn't do anything, you should probably just, like, put it on. Like, because it might. It might protect 1% of 1% of people from getting sick. And the other people are just like, it's the Illuminati. They're coming for us. You know, and there's. There doesn't seem to be a lot of, like, I'm a pretty, pretty flexible person. I'm pretty malleable in my behavior, not my beliefs, but my behaviors. I'm pretty willing to compromise and reach consensus. And I just. I wish that I had this sort of, like, experience of the world that Canadians seem to have where, like, yeah, everyone's, like, in the gray area. You know, I don't. That's not my experience.

And I think it goes back to John. Like, I love that quote that you said. And I'm going back to. Even to a podcast we did earlier where we talked about relationships and we talked about how to make things work in the confines of which we were living in one space together. And you were talking about how when you're having a conversation with somebody and you're in an argument, and it's not about who's going to win or who's going to lose, but rather as you're having that discussion or argument and Somebody says a point and you all of a sudden have something click in your head and you go, you are right.

I agree with you now.

I do agree with you now. And I think that's really what we're talking about within the gray area and where I'm not talking about being wishy washy on your beliefs, I'm not talking about being wishy washy on your values, I'm not talking about being wishy washy on your true passions and convictions that burn deep within side you. We need those to have purpose in life. We need those to have that purpose driven life. But what I truly find is, and that is so refreshing and a lot of people that I've been speaking to is that they show up with these burning convictions and with this Black Lives Matter time of history which we're in, which is going to be talked about for generations to come and is going to reshape the way that this world operates, which is amazing. And to be alive at this time is so. To be a part of this history is so cool, but is to know that we can have a certain belief system, we can have certain things there and understand that we don't know what we don't know, that there is a lot that we don't know. And Craig talked about this on our last episode and we were talking about something completely different, but it applies to this. Whereas when we show up and we're okay saying, yeah, I don't know the fucking answer, and you're willing to ask questions and you're willing to get uncomfortable and you're willing to dive into areas that otherwise before you would have just allowed situation unknown and sit in the ignorance is bliss type of factory that Brian was speaking about earlier. That is the garbage zone. That is the place where you are no good to anybody. And in fact you're more likely to hurt people in that space. But when you have an opinion, and I would like to say that the spectrum is actually all gray and that there is no right or wrong, there is no good or bad. There is an all gray scenario that each place is different. And if we come in asking questions rather than barking orders, rather than saying things that this is a hard way, that it is my way or the highway. I think we're gonna see a lot of knowledge and a lot of self education and a lot of, as you put it, malleability within our culture that we haven't seen thus far.

Yeah, I would like to see that. I think that this particular time in history is going to have a Lot of long term effects, particularly stemming from the U.S. i believe that however this election plays out, I think it will probably be one of the nails in the coffin of the two party system and will move ideally more towards how governments are in Europe where there are six or seven parties and they get elected at multiple levels of government. And so when you do that, they're not as cohesively tied to their individual ideologies on any particular issue. And when that happens, you have to form coalition governments and you make compromises. I believe that we're probably going to wind up limiting terms of government service to two or three terms, which I think will be fantastic because again, people don't get entrenched in their position and hold it for 20 years overall when moving away from politics into interpersonal beliefs. And the way you show up strong opinions, loosely held is the way that all great thinkers approach things. If you look at some of the greatest leaders, their ability to change their mind, and they reserve the right to change their mind. This is what makes truly great leaders so great. Gary Vaynerchuk is like this, who's a good friend of mine and a very powerful, very, very well known entrepreneur. His ability to just turn on a dime and change his mind and go the other way, he's like, nope. And his team has to adjust for that. You have to have people around you who can either be on the red team and poke holes in anything you, but who can also adjust. Eisenhower was like this. Kennedy was like this. Kennedy was a man who examined multiple outcomes at once. He had made a couple of mistakes with the Bay of Pigs, but even as he was preaching reconciliation and trying to withdraw troops from Vietnam, he was also prepping the military for Operation ortsac, which is Castro spelled backwards. It was the potential invasion of Cuba by land and air forces. And so it's somebody who keeps their options open and continues to assess based on new information. And I think for men in particular, it is important to stand up in your convictions to be a leader, to lead yourself, to lead your friends, to lead your family, to be a leader in your relationship. But the willingness to accept opposition and opinions that are contraindicated with your own, that's what makes you a great person. And great people make great leaders. And I've said it on this podcast before, and I'll say it again, when we lionize people, when we lionize men and leaders and we really look at them as being better than us, it has to do with their accomplishments rather than who they are. And I would caution anyone Listening. Anyone who is striving for greatness, who believes they have great potential to change the world, to achieve great things, to build something great, to have a legacy that lasts long after they're gone, I would caution you, as always, to never become so obsessed with being a great man that you forget to be a good one.

John, I think you're spot on there. And Pradeep, I'd be so curious to like, as John's point, men in business, I mean, it's on your shirt. Men who win. And you work with men so often, and you work with powerful men. Men who are leaders, men who are entrepreneurs, men who are executives. What John was talking about in terms of being able to change their mind, is that. What do you see in that?

Well, I see a lot of power in that because you have to be able to take other people's perspectives. That's why. Good leaders, for example, the best entrepreneurs, they have a team to help direct the ship. They, you know, they take the insight of their team members, they take the insight of the chief operating officers or the VPs or wherever it is, because that's who they put in position, that's who they trust. But also, on the flip side, the team is also looking at the CEO, whoever it is running the ship, for leadership as well. And they're looking sometimes for some concrete direction because it gives people confidence. I think it goes back to what both John and Brian were talking about. A lot of this is very situational. I think that's ultimately what it is. We have to be able to flow and we have to be able to evolve and change. Because one situation might require someone to be very, you can say direct, very forward in terms of their beliefs or values or the direction that they're going in. And a completely different situation could be, okay, I need to open up. I need to relax a little bit more. I need to take more opinions. So that's ultimately what it is. If we're taking a look at leadership overall, whether it's men or women or whatever it is, it's situational. And I think that's the most important thing that we got to take a look at. And, you know, if you take a look at the definition of personality disorder, for example, it is a person that uses the same approach in every single situation. And you can't do that in life. That is the challenge. And I think maybe that's what we're talking about here as well, is you got to be able to flow throughout and be able to go on different spectrums of the gray area. So ultimately the best versed leaders, men, people in general, are the ones that learn, evolve and actually change their approach to get the job done, whatever that job is. It's awesome.

Pradeep, you're exactly right. I absolutely love that. And on that note, I want to talk about the way we're going to be closing a lot of episodes now is with the Romanello wrap up. And there's very few men you'll ever meet in this world that have the way with words and the way they articulate things like John Romanello. And so we're going to put him on a clock one minute, he's going to summarize the episode, he's going to give you his thoughts in a way that when you go later in your day, a week from now, a month from now, you're going to be like, God damn. I remember on that episode of the coaches council, John said this and it will stick with you and it's going to have a massive impact. So, John, take it away, my man.

There are those who say that how you do one thing is how you do everything, and I believe that is not true. How you do one thing you love is how you do most things you love. How you do one thing you hate is how you do most things that you hate. If you were to do everything the same way, you would be a very ineffective person and ineffective for the people around you. And today we've talked about living the gray area and that is the ability to make change based on new information. As I've said before, strong opinions loosely held to be a great and effective leader and person in your life. What you need to seek to do is pull as much information in from as many people as you trust and make sure that some of the people that you trust and upon whom you're relying for that information have opinions that differ from yours to some significant degree. Because only through continually learning from various perspectives different than our own that we can continue to grow and serve and in turn help our businesses and our communities grow and serve. And so for that you need difference.

And with that, stay hungry, stay humble and we'll see you next week. Thank you so much for joining us for another week of the coaches council. If it wasn't for you viewers and listeners, we wouldn't have a platform. So again, it's all about you guys and we want to give you a reward just for listening. We want to give you access to each one of our coaches for a little bit deeper intimate experience. So if you go to coaches-counsel.com coaches-counsel.com subscribe and like to whatever platform you're viewing on. You're going to be entered to have that one on one experience. So be sure to go coaches-cell.com and really interact with us because we would love to interact with you. Until then, stay safe, stay hungry, stay humble and thanks for listening. Interact with us because we would love to interact with you. Until then, stay safe, stay hungry, stay humble and thanks for listening.