Finding Brave 149: The One-Degree Shift That Will Change Your Future, with Eric Termuende

Hey, hello, everybody. Kathy Caprino here. How are you? I'm not sure when this is coming to you a few weeks from when we're sitting here doing it, but I hope you're feeling brave and I hope you're feeling confident and that you are tackling the challenges that are in front of you. And there are many, let's face it, we're not in a challenge free world. We're not in a bubble. So we are going to be talk. I'm so thrilled to have our guests, Eric Termundi. And Eric's been on before and I tell you, I keep bringing up to him that the comments he's made to me in the show and beyond reverberate very, very strongly and help me. And I know the same is going to be for you and we're going to be talking about the one degree shift that will help you change your future. So, Eric, thank you again for coming. And I understand you've had a little surgery over here in the mouth.

Yeah. Listen, before we get into it, I just want to say thanks for having me back. You know, like nobody I've ever spoken to before have this ability to create a space that is very safe, that doesn't require any performance from my. And require. Perhaps that's my issue and not whoever I'm speaking with. But I feel that in our conversations, um, you know, for better or worse, I don't prepare a lot because you've always been able to create the space where I could just be my complete self. And wherever our conversation goes, you know, I never know where we're headed, but I'm always happy with where we end up.

Oh, Eric, that's so beautiful. Thank you. That means the world to me. It really does. You can't imagine. Thank you for saying it. All right, my dear, first of all, people, I want to tell you about Eric in case you don't know. And then we're going to get into what is it to create an intentional future. And I was just sharing with Eric, I had something happen that, you know, you can't even imagine when you're doing this work that you really don't. How do I put this? You really don't know as much as you think you do because you keep getting shocks in your own life that teach you. Oh, that's what that meant when I was teaching that. So I know we're going to have an incredible conversation. So let me tell you, Eric is a best selling author and keynote speaker on building great places to work and. And also creating Your intentional future. Intentionally creating the future that you want. So again, repeat guest and I looked it up. It was episode 31. You were really in the beginning. We're on number 100 and whatever. It's amazing. And already you talked to us about creating the future of work, but you're joining here to talk about how we navigate uncertainty. We should have had you on in March and building an intentional future. So thank you again, Eric. Now let's, let's just dig in here. You talk about creating an intentional future, and we can guess what that means. But can you dive in and tell us? What do we mean?

Look, if we go back to episode 30, which 31, I think 31.

Yeah.

If we went back to 31, here we are in the hundreds. Neither of us would have predicted what has happened in the time span of those hundred odd episodes. Right. The future is impossible to predict. And the future, the way that I see it, is either something that you default to, something that you drive into an autopilot and you sort of go with the tides and the currents and you see wherever life takes you, or it's something that you can actually build by design by constantly re evaluating what success is and, and by making these 1 degree shifts, which in my terminology is the smallest viable change. Kind of like your, your, your, your minimum viable product. For any of you startup folks who are looking to get your product out there, this is that this is similar, but it's your smallest viable change. What's that small, little intricate tweak you can make to reduce the friction in your life? Now, when this comes out, we may or may not have a new president, things politically are going to be wildly different or very much the same. I don't think it's for either of us to maybe necessarily talk politics on the podcast today, but the fact remains that we don't know what the next couple of months are going to look like. Undoubtedly, though, there will be friction in our lives that we're trying to reduce and we're trying to minimize. We want to live that sort of frictionless flow state that a lot of us talk about. And to do so, I think we have to identify where that friction is coming from and ultimately make the smallest viable change over and over again to reduce it.

I love this. Now let's dig in because, you know, I mentioned something to you and I can't get into all the details, but I want your help with this. I couldn't agree more, and I use different language that it's the micro step, that brave micro Step that when you do it, you think, if I can do that, I can do anything. Or it just. But can I dig in with you? And we didn't prep on this, so if it puts you on the spot, I'm sorry. But what I was sharing with you is, let's put it this way. I'm in a commitment and an arrangement that I've been in for nine years. It did a lot for me in the beginning. It felt very constraining at the end, and I was aware of that. I feel constrained. I feel that I can't really be my whole self. I got that. What happens to so many people, I think, is that for a myriad of reasons, we don't make the change you're talking about. One, because I think we don't understand that it's causing so much friction.

Sure.

Or two, we might understand it, and we're just too afraid to let go of all the parameters of it, whether that's a job or your big house or whatever a contractual arrangement you have that's making you miserable. So what I want to ask you is this. You know, in my situation, I said, I've had enough. And it was a breakthrough breakdown moment. Like, I've had enough of what you just did. And in letting go of this thing, I literally cried at the relief of it. And I. And here coach therapists. Former therapist. I hadn't realized how constraining this thing was. And immediately, a day after, something fell in my lap. That is so exciting that it's probably the most exciting thing I've done. And I think they're related. So can I ask you. So we can really give practical strategies. Do you deal with people that kind of know something's bugging them, but they really don't recognize how much friction the thing is really causing? Does this make sense? That was a long story with a long question.

In my research, I found that there are two things that people hate. Number one is change. And number two is the way things are. Which kind of puts us in a tough spot. Right. We don't want to change too much, but we can't stand still. And I found that in a situation like this, the issue that I believe, if I can generalize, and I don't really like to generalize too much, especially in a situation like this, because all of our happenings are unique in how we deal with them and how we approach them are unique. But I find that a lot of the times we're not addressing the root of where that friction is coming from. We understand at the surface level where that friction is coming from. But we don't necessarily understand at the root. We don't take the time to reflect and be introspective and understanding of ourselves to really understand where is that tension? You know, a lot of us will feel it in our shoulders. A lot of it will feel it in our stomachs. And we know that there's something wrong. You know, we obviously, like you, always hear, listen to your gut. Your gut to me, is the root of where that friction is really coming from that we haven't been able to identify or put our thumb on yet. As soon as it travels from your gut to your head, to me, what that says is that you've started to identify or to put a meaning or to put a source on where that friction was coming from. And so what I think I would say is to ask these questions. Number one, where am I feeling this friction? Okay, where am I feeling this friction? The second question is, what am I supposed to be doing about it? Okay. Because intuitively, I think we all like to reduce that friction. We're all taking steps in one way, shape, or form. You might have doubled down because you thought you needed to work harder to persevere, to push through it, instead of to walk away. But then you can ask yourself, the third question is, well, where is that going wrong? Maybe you're starting to feel that you're further burnt out, that it's not working anymore, that you're not doing your best work. The fourth question that I want you to ask is, where is that really going wrong? Because if it's not doubling down and doing that work because you're not doing any better work, where else might something be going wrong? And this is where I think it's really important to take that step back to understand at a deeper level. Okay, I'm still feeling that in my stomach or in my. In my shoulders or even my throat. You might feel your heart sort of up in your throat. What can I do to identify that? And I find that what I'll do is I'll run through a various checklist of things that I might be feeling way deep down. And you'll know as soon as you write it out. It might be that I don't want to be here anymore. And as soon as you write that down, I remember in some cases when situations like this have happened to me, I'm just like, oh, that's it. You know, it might be the 15th or the 17th or the 24th thing that I've written down, But I'm trying to run through all of the sources of friction to really identify where the root of that is coming from. Then when I can identify where the root of that is really coming from, that's when I can start to make the change. Now, you might argue that leaving this commitment or stopping that thing that you're doing isn't a one degree shift and that I would agree with you on.

Just like you mean it's a 10 degree shift or it's a full life change, in many cases that's a big, big shift.

Yeah, absolutely. But we've all heard the expression, you know, the straw that broke the camel's back, right? It's that last thing that pushed you over the edge, I think. You know, I can't speak for you, but I' been in a bad relationship before and there's been that one thing at the very end where I'm like, I can't do it anymore. That last thing, when we identify where that's coming from is the 1 degree shift. When you give credit to it, when you identify it, when you name it, and when you can ultimately act on it. What happens after that is a series of course corrections to adjust and to act appropriately. I think a lot of us saw this when we moved from the office into home. You know, when we were sent from the office to home. That's not a one degree shift, that's an entire life change. But if you're anything like me now, I'm working with my partner at the kitchen table and every move that we make after that is a 1 degree shift to adjust to what we're building as our new normal. So we started to move a different desk into the other room. We adjusted our seating, we adjusted the cushions, we adjusted the blinds so we didn't have the sun in our face. We started to write out different schedules so that we didn't talk over each other or compromise our bandwidth. And we started to create a new practice through a series of 1 degree shifts and friction reduction that work best for us. So let's go back to your example. When we're able to write out this checklist of where that source of friction is really coming from, what's really speaking to us deep down. We start to identify what that is. That's what we can start to reduce the friction because now we've addressed where the root of it's really coming from.

I love so much of this and it's so weird that it's exactly what I'm going through. So I would love to Build on something and amplify something. Can I. I think if you do answer your questions, you're totally going to get at the heart of it. And I also have to just hug you up for saying so much resides in our physical being that. I mean, I. One of my chapters of my first book was about what your chronic illness is really saying. You know, in therapy we learned your says what your lips cannot. So the fact that we're so disconnected, you know, that. Why. Why do I always lose my voice when I'm speaking to Eric or whatever? Why do you. I mean, you're. Anyway, love it. But one thing I do want to add when I look at my own situation, that I didn't realize how much friction there was. Two things are really important, I think. We make assumptions. There's even a book about it. I'll have to find the title. It's the assumptions you don't know you're making that kill you so often. If I were to consciously write down what you said, I really still wouldn't get to the root of it till I ask this question. What assumptions am I making that keep me feeling like I have to stay in this friction zone?

So maybe I'll ask you then, are you, without giving too much away, are you able to share some of the assumptions that you've been making in this example so that I can better understand what an assumption might be to identify the friction?

Well, I will. I'll say a little because I'm still in morphing it. So this is a situation that when I began it, doing what I loved, it was great for me and it was extremely lucrative, really lucrative. Over the years, it became the opposite of lucrative. It became. It was so much work that. And so. So little coming back. But the assumptions I made were if I leave this, there's loss of. What word would I use? It's influential. This thing that I'm doing, it gives. It gives me credibility in ways that probably not a lot else could, which is a ridiculous assumption. I take that back. I could do it with another organization. So the assumptions were, if I leave this, I'm walking away from potential money. But if I really look at the reality, the money's gone. That was six years ago that the money was huge. So that assumption is wrong. Number two, this is what people do. Let's take a job or a relationship. They might be miserable in this one, but they don't realize how close another opportunity or another relationship could be if they release themselves. So I could walk away from this thing, but I could get a very comparable and much more beneficial situation. So I didn't understand the assumptions that were holding me. And I also would have to say I didn't understand how constrained I really felt doing this thing.

Interesting. What I found is that change only willingly occurs when the alternate state is more beneficial or positive than the current state.

That's why we wait till a breakdown moment.

That's why we wait.

Right.

Because we can't see it until it's there. So perhaps an exercise that we could work on too is getting ourselves out of the current situation and imagining that if we were to make this change, what might the possibilities be? What could I accomplish? What could the upside of this be? You know, because often we forget and get stuck in the situation that we're in without looking at what might be, what the other side of the fence might look like, too.

Do you think it's possible that what you're suggesting is on a spectrum of easy to extremely hard? Do you think it's possible that it's on a, you know, one to 10? 10 is so darn hard. One is that it might be a 10 when the thing that we had or the situation or relationship or job had at some point given us so much.

Yeah. The word that comes to mind is identity.

Yeah. Eric, are you psychic?

Where that comes to mind is identity. Because how much of our identity is changing based on the decision that we're making now? I think I want to talk about identity too, because I am a different person. I'm perceived to be a different person to each person that I have an interaction with.

Really.

Kathy will see me as one person. My partner will see me as another person. You on the end of the podcast or listening to the show will have this sort of assumption or identity for me that you'll have have given me. And the more I think of identity and how I show up in the world, the more I realize that I don't have one identity. And if I did, it's how I'm able to ebb and flow through the world as I grow into it, which then would require this change that I need to make. Because if the identity is how I show up in the world, that it doesn't matter what I'm doing or what partnerships I have established or what company that I'm working for. It is who I am, how I show up in the world and how I treat people. And if I can maintain personal health, I can maintain my introspection, my mental health, my physical health, I can treat the world, the others around me to the best of my ability, then my identity will always be positive, regardless of the changes that I make along the way that ultimately best serve me.

That's a whole topic podcast in and of self. Can I understand what you mean? At first you said. I think you said there. I thought you said you have one identity in dealing with me or my perception of you is one identity or your partner's perception is another. Are you saying that actually there's one identity? You were making a different point. I think that other people are going to see what they see based on their perception. But if we could build an identity that is as coherent and supportive of who we wish to be and who we can be, it's all going to be good. Is that basically what you're saying?

You know, I said at the start of our podcast, you create this space that I think gets your guests. I'm speaking from an audience of one here. To say stuff that they've never said before. So this isn't market tested. This is just what's coming to mind right now, given the situation and the conversation that we're having. But, you know, I've had this interesting relationship with the word identity and wondering how I show up in the world. But if I can keep as consistent and as positive as I can be, then how people interpret who I am is really up to them and not up to me.

I love it. I'm gonna say, say this, see what you think. And again, people, we're just. It's like Eric's over for dinner or a drink. We're just, you know, we're. We're focused. You said a word. Consistent. I want to say something and see what you think. You know, honest to goodness, writing my book, the most powerful you, Eric, has made me have to be braver. And part of my identity is I am not going to write a thing that I don't do or try to do. I won't do it. I can't live with myself. So if I'm writing about communicating from fear not strength, power gap number two, I can't do it. I can't. I can't live with myself. So the book. Who would have guessed? I mean, they do say we write what we need to learn. We teach what we need to learn.

Absolutely.

But I swear, it's this writing of this book that has made me had to say things that are so difficult to say. So why I bring that up is I think our. I. I know a guy who writes about identity. He doesn't agree with Me, he thinks it's formed, and there it is. I feel like it's shape changing and shifting every other second. But there are things that create the bedrock of it, and that could. That could be our values, our ethics, our ideals. So I would say, thank God my identity is. Has not.

Is.

Is not consistent with what it was 40 years ago.

Amen. I don't think. I think the world changes too fast. I think that how you've grown, learned, developed, you know, the pivots, the changes, the tweaks that you've made along the way, you know, how you found yourself in the world that's changing so fast requires you to become the person that you are. You know, I heard that authenticity isn't created, it's revealed, but it's revealed through a world that continues to pivot and change around us. I think that inherently some of those fundamental foundational building blocks, you know, that is the Cathy in you will remain consistent and constant. But the things that you do and how you show up and what brings you joy and what brings you fulfillment and satisfaction, you might not have known those things existed, you know, 20 or 30 years ago, you know, and I think that comes in the form of relationships. I think that comes in the form of career opportunities. I think that comes in the form of health and physical wellness you might have discovered. You know, I heard that. What is it, you know, like pickleball, the sport, you know, it was just absolutely exploding in the United States right now and in Canada, too. I didn't know that sport existed a year and a half ago. And because I've started to play it, I was like, this is fantastic for those who are curious, is like, it's played on a court half the size of a tennis court with a Wiffle ball and a hard plastic racket. So it's short, it's fast. It's a mix between badminton and tennis.

I guess, is probably, what a blast. I'm a tennis.

But the point remains is that how we show up in the world and what we do it inevitably is going to change based on what we learn and discover about the environment around us. It has to.

I love it. Can I give an example and see what people think? See what you think till you write. Write me about it. We're about to have an election here. You're in Canada. Lucky you. I am a liberal. Everybody knows that who listens to me. I'm a feminist. I'm a liberal. One thing this has made me do, the divisiveness in our country is I can either go down the rabbit hole of being angry and rageful and hateful of everyone who doesn't see it my way, or I can listen, shut up and listen. And so I have purposefully not put out political, anything political about my views, because that's not the place on social media. I don't want to do it. But yesterday I put out a piece on masculinity, reinventing masculinity, and it was Trump versus Biden. Their what? They're demonstrating about masculinity. It was not political. It was about masculinity. I loved it. Ed Frownheim, I think we pronounced his name. He's coming on the podcast. He's the co author of Reinventing Masculinity. I really put it out there and I did not mention the two individuals. I said, this is fascinating about masculinity. And what, what, what's really interesting is some people said, amen. Other people said, yeah, but what about the policies? What about the policies? What about. I bring it up because when you're in a vortex of divisiveness, a vortex of friction, my gosh, we're in the middle of the 1 degree, 1 million degree shift. You can either choose to exacerbate and amplify the friction or do something else. And can you talk about that? Is that an important part of your one degree shift, what you want to do when you show up to the world?

One of the quotes, you may have just seen me typing really quick. I was trying to get a source for the quote, but the quote was, I don't like this man. I better get to know him better.

Right?

Which is Abraham Lincoln quote.

Come on. Brilliant.

And I think, you know, if recent documents.

Can you repeat that, please? Say it slowly, please.

Abraham Lincoln's quote. I don't like that man. I must get to know him better.

Oh, my gosh.

I found that I, whether I like to admit it or not, have done this in the speaking space too. I've seen speakers that I didn't like, and I realized that that disdain from them came from my jealousy of where they were at and how well they were doing. Now we've talked about.

So honest.

This doesn't mean that I want to be them. It means I really admire the success and the happiness they've created through their career path that I want as well, that you perceive.

I mean, we don't even know this poor schmuck.

Thank you for that. So I've taken this to heart and I've started to call and connect with the people that I didn't think I was aligned with and understand where they're coming from and what they mean.

What did you learn? Do you end up liking them?

My assumptions in most cases were wrong. First of all about who they were and how they're showing up. You know, again, they might be arrogant or conceited or something like that, but again, that was my reflection on how they were presenting. And I get to know these people and some of them are great friends now because I get to understand their perspective and their opinion. Now, when it comes to the political landscape, it doesn't necessarily mean I'm going to change how I feel about the world and it doesn't mean I might say side with them. But what that does teach me is how to be a little bit more empathetic about where they're coming from. And when I can appreciate where they're coming from, then I might also be able to appreciate our differences too. And despite which way they lean, can respect their decision as to why they lean that way.

I think what you've described, you know, is the Abraham Lincoln of. I happen to adore Abraham Lincoln's philosophies, but I think what you're talking about is the heart of being intent, living an intentional life rather than living a need, being a knee jerk reaction of everything around you. I'm jealous of her. I'm angry at him. I don't think that's how we want to live.

But that's the essence of the 1 degree shift. Yeah, 1 degree shift. Let me just describe this very quickly. And I don't want to get too meta and too conceptual, but the 1 degree shift doesn't live on the Y axis. It's not about being better or worse. It's not about winning and losing. It's not about getting to a 100 or being 1% better every day. No, the 1 degree shift lives on the X axis. It's kind of like trying to navigate your way across the city without a map, you know, knowing where you want to get to at the end. You might take the wrong way on a one way street. Oh, quick, better get out of there. You know, you take a left when you should have taken a right, but you find that you weave your way a little bit closer through. You know, some might call it failure or some might call it learning until you get to your destination. And you might find that along the way your destination changes because of what you learned. I might be looking to go to a donut shop on the south side of town that I've Never been to before and my maps are broken and I realized that I get to an ice cream shop about halfway and I couldn't have been happier. I think that's such a metaphor for the life that we build. We might want a certain career, we might want to live in a certain place, and we find that when we're open to making these 1 degree shifts along the way and learning different perspectives and learning different points of view, that we might find that we end up at a different destination. Which is what we said at the start of the podcast. I don't know where we're going, but I bet we're going to like where we end up. And when we apply this one degree shift framework to being, learning to be, learning, to being open, to a commitment to growth and development and being wrong, I don't know where we're going to end up, but I bet we'll like where we arrive when we get there.

Love it. Eric, you know what this reminds me of? I would love you to take it, but I'm going to tell you what I think you are. I have action style quiz and what I started to see working with so many people was there are six particular action styles, preferential styles that one, help us or motivate us to achieve a particular goal, and number two, the style through which we're going to achieve it. You are a seeker. There are six styles, the striver, seeker, pacer, challenger, researcher and advocator. Okay, now very quickly, everyone will link to the quiz. Take it. Because if you are working in a world, in a work culture or a job, or you're in a relationship where you are one of these styles and you can't naturally be it, it's suppressed, you're going to be miserable. But it's we look at the metaphor was you're going to drive from New York to San Francisco.

Sure.

You know, the striver is all about doing it and checking it off. I did it and this is when I'm doing it. And this is who I'm going with. I'm going with Eric and we're doing right. The seeker might not even end up in San Francisco, ends up in Santa Fe. It's about the experience and learning and growing. Right. And you can guess what the challenger, researcher, advocator all are. But what about 95% say to me is, oh my gosh, I see that I have to be a striver. It's got to be check the mark that I did the what really, I'm something else. I'm A pacer. I'm a seeker. I'm a challenger. So what you're. You described. I mean, I'm pretty sure you're a seeker, and you probably have been. Were you. Were you ever a striver that it had to be about I got to get the goal, I got to accomplish the Y axis?

I think that. Well, I think. Sure. Because I think society teaches us that we have to do certain things and accomplish certain things in order to be. I'll put in air quotes for those who are listening, successful, and we talked about this last time. I want to. I won't get into it, but success to you might be different than success to me. You know, someone listening might strive for the white picket fence. You know, son, daughter, an suv, a dogged cat and a goldfish. And, you know, I might not want that. You know, we've got people who are taught that you're supposed to marry a different sex. That's not how we're supposed to. There's no. Here's what I'm trying to say. There's no supposed to anymore. And because we can't predict the future, because we can't see what tomorrow is going to bring, I think we're all seekers. Whether we like it or not, we might have a perceived destination in mind until life throws an inevitable curveball at us to some varying degree that we have to navigate.

I love what you're saying, but people will hear this and say, yes, there are. There are a lot of supposed to's. And I don't agree with you. So, you know, we're sitting here saying, we, you know, we respect all views here. We respect your right to have your view. I would like to believe there are not supposed to's being a woman. There are more supposed tos. Well, no, that's not true either.

So let me say this. And there was a time where black people were supposed to sit at the back of the bus. There was a time where women weren't supposed to vote. There was a time where you were supposed to marry the opposite sex. There were a lot of supposed to's until there weren't. And I think the more that we break through the mold of yesterday to live a life that ultimately allows us to be successful in our own right, the better off we'll be.

I agree with you, Eric. I do. I want to say one thing because it came up. I was talking to my son who's 23, and, you know, and I talk to my family members, my friends. A lot of people use the word I'm behind now because of the pandemic. I'm behind. You know, these poor. I have family members who their college years are. What a S show, you know, an S show.

Right, right.

I'm behind. I'm behind. I'm behind.

Right?

And I, I am a relentlessly positive person. But I do want to touch on this a little bit in the remaining minutes. This is what I believe. You know that expression man plans and God laughs, Right? There's no behind.

Right?

There's no behind. What you're learning is something that is going to, it's going to be 100 degree shifts. It's preparing you for things you never thought you had to be prepared for. You know, everything can have a silver lining if you look at it. I mean, listen, my 96 year old mom had Covid and recovered but is still is not well. So I am not one of these people that says everything is hunky dory, happy, beautiful. It is not.

It's not.

But what I do want to say is you are not behind. What do you think, Eric?

Behind what?

Right?

Behind who? Behind.

I think these people are saying behind what I could have been.

There is no could have. When we can't predict the future, there is only can now. I said at the start, life is either the future is either something you default into, you know, you're going with the currents and the tides, or it's something that you intentionally create. Now, a lot of us might be stuck at home. There may be incredible disasters that we've dealt with over the past year to varying degrees.

Loss and grief.

I'm going to empathize with everyone who's on the, on the phone call or on the podcast today because it's. Some of it is absolutely unspeakable. And my heart goes out to you and you know, life isn't just about how we act and about the plans that we've made that inevitably have likely been destroyed this year. It's about how we react to what life presents us and how we can really grasp that. And using my language, make these one degree shifts because of it.

Beautiful. Is there anything else you can tell us? Strategies. You know, I love strategies to help us figure out what we want to be intentional about.

I pulled this from the workplace. It's three questions that, that teams would ask themselves in order to increase their efficiency. But I think we can ask ourselves on a personal level too. Very simply, what should we start doing, what should we stop doing and what should we continue doing? And I think when we can, when we can be reflective enough. I think that's the most critical thing that's missing, is this time to reflect on what we've learned. One of my mentors shared with me, he said lessons aren't learned as events are happening. They're learned in reflection of events that have happened. And so I think the more we can reflect back on what we've learned along the way, that's when we can understand what we should start doing, stop doing and continue doing. So I might have learned something last week that I could start to build into my personal practice too. And I say practice and not habits because I think there needs to be room for improvement. It's not always repeating the same thing over and over again that gets us the best results. I think to learning from what we repeat over and over again and making those 1 degree shifts that get us to be more effective. But we can start doing something different. It might serve us a little bit better. Who's to say that yesterday's best practices, today's best practice too? The world is too unpredictable and it's moving too fast. The second question what should we stop doing? Maybe we did something back in March when we moved from the office to home or had some sort of life change that we thought was going to serve us throughout. And maybe it just doesn't serve us anymore because we've started to identify that it's actually causing more friction than it is help. What should we stop doing? And the third, whether we're doing it with the team, with our family, or just with ourselves, I think when we end this little exercise on a positive note, like what's working? What can we continue doing? What should we really double down on? What have we seen a lot of positive maybe change or just a lack of friction or resistance. We can really focus on what we should continue doing. And I think as a result, we start to make those 1 degree shifts and we start to build a more intentional future and we start to take control of what it is that life throws at us.

Totally love it. I have one comment and one remaining question if I can keep you on. I interviewed Mitch Shepard. Find it. People will link to it. She and her family took a year sabbatical, 23 countries with young children. But one thing she said, I literally almost fell off the chair. They sat down with their young children and said what are our families very values? Like why the heck didn't I listen to this When I was raising my husband, I were raising two little ones. What are our family values? What are we trying to accomplish Here, what do we want to get from this? And the second thing she said is she sat down with her husband and basically said, this is going to be a petri dish of everything that isn't right in our relationship. We better work this out. Now. What are the 10 things I've got to do differently?

Sure.

Wow. So. So I say all that to say I love what you're talking about. Start, stop, continue. And I want to suggest that you add in what are my values in this and how does that inform what I want to start? I just stop, start, continue, think about what you value. And now I got to ask a way out question. Eric. I don't think I know the answer to this, but somebody said to me, and I'm going to say something to you, two people in the past week said, wow, Kathy, you're built to do this podcast. And I said, well, what do you mean by that? And they shared what they thought, why I was built to do it. I think you're built to do the work that you're doing, to write the books that you're doing, to speak. But I want to, in order to help you all understand how we take who we really are and do meaningful work with it. Eric, can I understand if you would agree with the assessment? You're built to do this work. I mean, even the way your mind works, I can see it. I can see, you know, I say something, you're. You're talking and you're looking up a link. I mean, you're so fast moving, brilliant, curious, inquisitive, demanding in terms of your own thought leadership. Is there anything in your childhood and your early life? Because I'm always talking when people come to me and say, what do I do with my career? I don't know even what I'm good at. I often say, go back to who you were, what you were amazing at. Was there any sign that you would be doing this kind of work and having these kinds of conversations when you were little? I know I never asked you this before.

You've never asked me this before, and I've never been asked this before. Nope. I mean, first of all, I take what you say as a compliment, so thank you. Tells me I'm in the right space. So thank you for that. It feels like the right space. But if you, I think if you look at the theme of anything that I speak about, it's. And you said it sort of in the description, too. It's this. It's this curiosity that I can't shake. I'm Always curious. And I think if I go back to my childhood, I never knew what I wanted to be when I was growing up. I never wanted to be a police officer or a firefighter. I wanted to maybe have a briefcase and a suit and tie and work on the 38th floor for a consulting company for a little bit. I wanted to be like Kurt Cobain until my mom told me about Kurt Cobain and that didn't go over that well. But I wanted to be a rock star and I was a big Nirvana fan, you know. Then what came after that? I wanted to be a magician, I wanted to be a performer, I wanted to be on stages. I wanted to be all of these different things. But what that required then is this practice to understand myself better so I could go get whatever it was that I wanted. Now, there's two ways that you could look at it. You could argue that I haven't found who I'm trying to be yet, or what I'm trying to do in a traditional career sense, or that journey of discovering who I am has become the career that I'm now building because of this discovery of self. Now, again, I've never said any of this before either.

I love it.

I've taken my personal discovery of who I am and the problems that I'm trying to solve in my life, like asking things like the values, what I should start, stop and continue doing. And I'm trying to reduce that friction. And really what I'm doing is I'm projecting it all over the world so that people could go on their own journey of self discovery with me and going through some of the steps that I'm taking along the way.

You couldn't say it any better in my view, and this may not perfectly apply, but you're. You're doing. What I think many inspired people do is turn their mess into a message. Oh, I wish I had said that. I wish I had create. I don't know where I got that. Yours doesn't sound like a mess. Mine was. My life was a bit of a mess, my corporate life. And I definitely am turning my mess into a message. But I think some of the most fulfilled, rewarded, driven, but excited people are taking their dilemmas and perhaps they're half a step ahead of someone else. Maybe not. But they're taking their challenges and dilemmas and bringing new solutions to the table for themselves. And it's joyful for them to offer them to others. Does that sound right?

Yeah, absolutely. I've come to realize that when you try and be everything to everyone. You end up being nothing to anyone. And so I don't need the world to share my problems. I just need to empathize and to relate with them. I don't need that, you know, But a lot of us are on this discovery for better, for more authentic, for more genuine, for just, you know, better understand who we are and how we fit in the world. And I'm trying to help that. On an organizational level, I'm trying to help that. On a personal level, I'm trying to, you know, really doing it for me too.

Oh, Eric, you are very inspiring. So where can people hire you, hear you speak? I mean, if you're running a team, who wouldn't want Eric to come in and have these discussions?

I appreciate that. It's been. It's been the busiest time of my life, actually. We've done 15 events in the last month or two. Great companies like Dell and IBM and Zoom and TD. It's been a wonderful experience. If anyone's looking to get in touch with, you know, LinkedIn, I'm there, but my personal website is just EricTuraMoney.com. i would say those would be the best, too. I don't want to send people all over the Internet.

And your book, your books, you have two books, don't you?

The second one is on its way. You know, it's a work in progress. But, you know, taking that advice that lessons are learned in reflection of events that have happened, not as they happen. I wanted to really digest these last eight months to see what the true lessons came out, what true lessons came out, so that I could really reflect on those and not be too scrambling along the way. You know, I wanted to be really, really solidly placed on the ground before I started to write about what's been happening and not directly write about what's happening too, because I think it's so variable, but my experience in it, and you can look for the 1 degree shift coming in in the coming months.

You know, I'll promote it like mad. Everybody, I hope you found this as thought provoking as I. I need to go back and listen to this.

I think I do, too. I do.

I really do. You know, where I think we're both in a zone that it just comes out what we're saying. But I need to listen. There's so many layers of depth here. People hope you feel the same, and I hope you will listen again and again because I think that you're going to take away something that's perfect for where you are this minute. That's what. Every time I talk to Eric, it's like, I can't believe he's saying this very thing that I'm going through. I hope that you feel that way. If you have questions, comments, you know where Eric lives, you know where I live, comment on wherever you see this. LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter. I'm now on Instagram, which is kind of a fun thing.

There you go.

You have a big following on Instagram, don't you?

I don't know.

It's your brain.

It's not something that I'm really working on too heavily. It's just if people want to follow along the journey, great. I'm not promoting it or anything else.

Damn relaxed. All right, people, I hope you're. I don't even want to say inspired. What word would you hope? Intentional. That's the word we're looking for.

I hope you're intentional, but I hope you're. I hope you're content. I hope you're happy. You know, where you are now perhaps is exactly where you need to be. And I think really what the 1 degree shift is, is a language to allow you to live life as you've already been living it. You know, that's. It's really all it is. You've made shifts and pivots, you've made tweaks and adjustments.

You.

Your entire life. Now, I think you can put your thumb on this. This act of living life as it happens, of growing and learning and developing, as the world presents some perhaps unfortunate or unforeseen events. But now that you know, to make these 1 degree shifts along the way to build a more intentional future, I think that allows us to live life more relaxed, more composed, more confident, knowing that we can't see what tomorrow's going to bring, but also at the same time that we can act accordingly when it does bring whatever it's going to bring.

There we go. I'm not adding a word to that, except huge. Thank you.

Thanks, Kathy.

Love you people. You finding brave people. Please let us hear from you. And I hope you're doing well, and this will help buoy you in times that are uncertain. Have a wonderful week and we'll see you next time.

Bye.

Bye.