6 - Leadership & personal development with Nikola Ilic

Hey, I'm Daniel, a political activist and campaigner turned management consultant turned coach. And this is politikwise, the podcast where politics meets personal development. Let's face it, it's easy to criticize those in politics, but being in politics is not an easy ride. And yet, for many who make the leap, it's worth it. They can make a real difference. So how can we have both? How can we make a difference or while at the same time showing up as the best version of ourselves? It's a question that's been with me for the last 20 years. First when I started out as an activist leading an NGO, then when I did a PhD in politics, and later when I quit my job in consulting to help build up a political movement and run an election campaign. Today, as I coach young leaders who want to make a difference while staying true to themselves, I know the answers are out there. So join me on this podcast. We'll hear from political leaders, from psychologists, neuroscientists, philosophers, about their findings and experiences. Together we learn about the ideas, mindsets, and tools of wise people in politics and beyond. Let's go. My guest today is a leadership development and change management practitioner based in Washington, DC. He is the co founder and CEO of changelab Global, a community of experts, educators and practitioners in leadership development. Some of his clients partners include the US Government, unicef, the World bank, and the Obama Foundation. He is also professor for Leadership at Georgetown University. He has supported several grassroots movements, two of which are the Citizen Engagement and Anti Corruption NGO Serbia on the Move. And then in 2017, he was one of the first supporters of the Pan European movement, Volt or Roper. My guest today is Nicola Illich. Nicola, excited to have you on the podcast.

Yeah. Thank you, Daniel. Thank you for the kind introduction and thank you for doing this podcast and thank you for inviting me. I know you have some interesting people already. I think you're doing great and I'm really excited to talk to you and, you know, see where we go with this today perhaps.

Yeah, let's, let's, let's start with how we know each other. We know each other from Vault. I've come to you for advice, especially in 2017-2018, building up this grassroots movement. And I know you have a big history in grassroots movements. That's your origin, that's where you come from. But I think we never talked about that. At least I don't remember that conversation. So perhaps let's start there. Perhaps. Tell us a little bit about your involvement in Serbia on the Move. One of the first involvements of yours, as far as I understand. And your. Your motivation for joining it. Right. Why. Why did you join back then?

Yeah, it's a good question. But I would say that my first involvement with Grassroots was actually way before. So, as you know, I was born in a country that doesn't exist anymore. Yugoslavia, I like to say I changed four countries without changing an address because Yugoslavia went through different iterations of its names and stuff. But the 90s and the Yugoslav wars really shaped me because I, you know, I have family that comes from, like, you know, all the. Pretty much almost all the republics of ex Yugoslavia. I was born in Belgrade. My family also, you know, most of it come from south of Serbia. A lot of them come from Bosnia, Croatia, Montenegro, roots, so forth. And I remember vividly this. This shift that happened to me when I was seven years old, before the war. Until I was seven or eight, I would go every summer, visit my family in Bosnia, visit my family in Isria and so forth. And then everything shifted. In the 90s, when the war started, you felt isolated being in Belgrade, and the sanctions you felt lost their freedom. And I remember it was 1992, I think, when we were all at my grandmother's place and grandfather's place, and they had this big apartment with a lot of old school brown wooden furniture and high ceilings, and all the grownups were there, and everybody looked super worried, and I had no idea what was going on. And then someone knocked or rang a bell, and my grandmother and Nana opened the door, and there were cousins from Bosnia, Bogdan and his family, his two kids and wife. And I had no idea what they were doing there. There was no time with cell phones or anything. Right. They just looks like they looked exhausted, very worried. Soon enough, I learned that they became refugees. And I remember the sentence that cousin Bogdan said as they were leaving. He said, we saw your family house in Bosnia sacked. They took everything. They even took Nicola's toys. And this is the house where literally my mother was born in, because my grandmother never made it to the hospital. And I had this big bag of Transformers and Masters of the Universe toys, because I would go there every summer before. I would go to Croatia to spend my summer there with the family. And that was sense making for a little Nicola or like, oh, wait, who took my toys? But that. That evolved quickly into, you know, who caused all this war, all this suffering, who made my cousin's refugees, who made so many lives disappear. And it took some years. That really focused me on politics. I'm trying to understand who did this because, you know, this idea that grownups know what they're doing really came down crashing for me in these years. And few years after that I had the chance to join this organization called otpor, which means the resistance. And that was the first time I felt empowered and I could do something about the, all the injustices I saw around me.

How old were you? Were you then?

I think I was 14. And I was just, you know, a kid going around with the pro materials, with the, with the stickers, going to demonstrations and doing some graffiti, being traced by police here and there. But that was the first time I felt, hey, look, like some grown ups and you know, there were some grownups that gave us some space to express ourselves. What we, what did we think about this regime the dictatorship lived in, about the horrible society, the 90s. And they trusted us with something. And I felt empowered. And that was the first time I was hooked on the grassroots only. And it was about the community as well. Because you made friends. It was the whole thing that came with it. It was part of your identity. Now, young one who doesn't just sit on the side and you know, talks about how things bad but like, hey, this is what I'm doing now. And it was, I don't think anyone should be an activist or do what we did at the age of 14. But I never felt there was a choice. We're just very natural, like, oh look, we can do something about this. It was briefly about a Serbian, a move in 2009, group of friends or people who knew, you know, friends were friends. We thought, what if we, you know, one thing that I always say the, the biggest victory of politicians, particularly in Balkans is, but all over the world these days is that they convinced masses that politics is by default corrupt and bad and the politicians are by default lying and bad people. And that's what it is. So we wanted to, that was our starting point. Everybody in the world, you know, in Germany even, which I admire aside in so many ways, you know, people probably perceive politics as some, some dirty game. It doesn't have to be like that. It's not, it's not always like that. It's more or less, you know, but that was a starting point. So we said, huh, what if we try to engage people about the problems in the community without directly engaging in politics? So we don't have, we don't, we're not going to seek anyone's vote. We're just going to seek and ask people, hey, do you want to join us? In solving this particular issue, there's a corruption, healthcare. There's a problem with the. With this park that they want to, you know, turn into a parking lot. There's a problem, you know, there's a issue in this neighborhood with the. With the street holes, potholes, like we just want to engage people in problem solving. And that we were, like, quite naive. And I think people should stay a bit naive because that enables you to see the world a bit differently and try to create something that others cannot think of. And we said, hey, what if we do politics without politics in the way? And we started. Then we came across this commute organizing methodology. But what it did to me and to us was we learned how important it is to build communities and relationships and, you know, how important it is to understand what you want, what is your personal purpose so that you don't fall in the trap of chasing some kind of power and authority, just the sake of it. And it became so clear how much more pleasant it is if you build a community in which you create space for others to create and lead. And you learn that it's not zero sum game. It's not either I lead or Daniel leads or someone else leads. It depends. And you can create more of it. It's not like if I lead, you can't.

How do you. How do you do that? Or have you come across, you know, you wanting to create that kind of environment, but something going wrong. Right. It's perhaps being about the person who leads and, you know, politics in the worst sense. All the negative associations you have of that politics in that way coming into play.

Yeah. This. This paradigm of our leaders are the providers of all the answers and solutions.

Yeah.

And they shouldn't be. Right. The idea is that they are enablers of all the talents. And there's conspiracy between people and politicians or other authorities because on one side, people, some people, a lot of people, especially in my parts of the world, they like this idea of, huh, I'm just gonna do this. I'm gonna circle a number once in four years on the. In the elections, and then it's all up to you. And all I have to do is complain or not about how you're doing. And on the other side, so I'm gonna surrender all the power to you, basically, but also all the responsibility. And then politicians, at the same time, many of them, if not all of them, in, in the case of at least my country in the region, they take it because it's. It feels powerful. Huh? And then it becomes this dance between the people and the politicians. You know, the politicians become this. They sell all the solutions. I'm gonna promise you everything. So there's always, and they always find the market for those who are ready to buy it just to surrender their power, but also to surrender all the, and, and to give all the responsibility. That's what's on my mind when, when you talk about this.

Yeah. So there's this alliance. Both, both gain from it, I, I guess. Right. Like the polit or the person who wants that for whatever reason. And on the other side being able to give away that responsibility, not having to, to perhaps bear the, the burden.

Yeah. You know, it's funny thing, we talk about development and I think there, both sides are overcompensating for something. Like if you're ready to give away power and responsibility, like why is that? What's behind that? What's behind you not wanting to take control of the things or have some influence is this, you know, are there, are there some issues of self worth? Are there issues of taking responsibility? And what about failing? Is a failure the ultimate failure where you cannot recover this idea of like, you know, I better not try but just have someone else and then I can, I can just criticize on the other side of the politicians. Why do you need to be loved and liked? And what is behind that? What is that need for what are you over compensating for gaining power? And then you get into this vicious circle of well, if they, if the market, if the exchanges. I'll give you the, the idea it's illusion. The illusion of all knowing creature because I'm going to solve all of your problems, then I can never admit that I'm wrong.

Yeah.

So how did that. And that's how the politics looks like today.

Right.

You cannot be wrong because you sold your omnipotency. So you cannot be wrong. And if you're, if you cannot be wrong, you cannot learn. So you're stuck. But what you, what you have to do, you have to market and PR and paint and you know, you have to start creating illusions because you will screw up. Everyone does. That's, that's just the way it is. No one knows everything. But in this game, in this, in this dynamics, that one who portrays himself or herself as the most omnipotent wins the market of those who are ready to surrender their power and responsibility to, to you. And it's the vicious circle, you know, and it's both left, right and center. This is not just one direction, it's the mindset.

Yeah. And Then community organizing is the antidote. Antidote to that. Right. It's, it is giving people the, the ability to, to take some on or build power in a community, to not shy away from the responsibility and at the same time perhaps towards the, the politician side, it's, you know, you're part of this, but you're not the only nodes here. You're not, or perhaps you're not even at the top of it.

Yeah, community organizing and even deeper. But this is, we're talking about culture here. Even like this is deeply rooted in society, social culture in many organizations and you know, nations and you can trace back like in my region this like way back into the even narratives and you know, this culture of surrendering power and, and responsibility to someone. The truth is what commute organizing teaches you the shift that leadership is a position that's wrong. Leadership is what you do. It's about exercising it. And this idea that the truth is that everyone has power, but not everyone knows it. And everyone can lead and can access leadership, but not everyone knows it either. So the community organizing idea, what I think makes it so effective is that it leverages the core of what makes us human. Some things, some systems that are older than the civilization. Necessity to know yourself, to understand your purpose, to share and hear a story, to create meaningful relationships, to belong to. And you know, when you, when if that's and, and that's, that's the base of community organizing. And if that becomes the base, then action becomes almost self evident. Like aha, I, I have clarity on my purpose and I can articulate it in a, in a way that others understand it. And when I say I have clarity, I mean it's not. You find it as if you're trying to find the hidden treasure. You literally create it, self author it. Then you learn how to share it with others. You know, storytelling is powerful tool for that. But also you start understanding that getting to know others builds trust and you start aligning purposes and, and when there's trust and there's some direction and some idea and it's not super, you know, I'm not talking about high level clarity, but it's, you know, there's enough clarity and there's enough trust that that's, that's the fuel for action. Now we have an idea of this is what kind of we are all about. These are our values and that we can project some idea of how we can design our surrounding our community, our society and we trust each other. What if we start working on that? Actually it becomes so and the trust.

Starts with the knowing, right? The knowing the other person at a deeper level. Not just, you know, this is the person, you know, they did that in the year 1999. But it's like these are your values, this is your purpose. I understand you are at that level and let me share, share perhaps who I am also at that level. And then connecting.

Yeah, trust is built in different ways. You know, big, you know, good start is always getting to know each other on basic level and then learning each other's whys. Because people when, when they understand. Hey, Daniel, you know, what is your reason behind this podcast? And if that's clear and it makes sense to me, then I, I can value, I can, I can judge your intentions much better. And if I think you're intent, because now I know your intentions and they make sense to me and I say, okay, that makes a lot of sense to me. But that's the beginning. What really builds trust is action.

Because tell me a bit bit more about that. I know action and practice. You've mentioned these words already. They are important to you. You know what, why is that such an important piece? And you've said it doesn't start there. Some other work comes before that. And then action is perhaps even like a consequence of that. But still those words figure strongly your way of looking at leadership.

Look, I did see relationships that came out of the action first and then people got to know each other. I've seen that. Usually commit organizing, you need to build a bit of trust just, just enough so we can start committing to each other to do something. Commitment is, oh, you know, I will do this, you will do that. We have clarity. Who needs to do what? The thing with action is that. And we, I think we're going to talk about it a bit later. It reveals the most. It's the ultimate information producer. You know, action produces a lot of information. So much that big part of the information, when you observe, when you're acting, you know, you pick up with the, you don't even know what you're picking up. You know, you're learning and you don't know that you're learning. It's tacit. So people say talk is cheap, right?

Yeah.

And there's a reason for that because, you know, I can learn how to seduce you with words and tell you what you need to hear, but then what I'm going to do will tell you way more about me. So action, you know, going back to serving the move, what we really were doing, we were enabling people to act upon Their values. So because one thing is to have a value. People have this idea of heroic selves and that's, that's a good start. They think I'm this, I'm that. I, I value this. I value that. I'm just help people and so forth. And then in action, what, what really happens in the real world is that these values clash and you have to prioritize like you want to help this person, but that, but that's. There's going to be some risk. And you discover. Oh, also value self preservation.

Yeah, because.

And so, so, so what kind of person are you with? So action reveals that action starts clashing your values. It messes them up. It asks you to prioritize what really matters to you. And then if you and I do something together, Daniel, and we are going through some challenge, that challenge reveal what are my priorities, what I see the world way more than if we talk for 10 hours.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's, it's. I came across this, this definition of wisdom, practical wisdom by Barry Schwartz or the, the same person who came up with the, the paradox of choice or the more. Yeah, and, and, and his, his conception is exactly that. Right. So being wise means there are different principles at play and you need to make a decision in a concrete situation. And it isn't that, you know, one principle is always more important than the other. And being wise means exactly making those decisions in a real situation.

You know, I feel there are two pieces here. One is I remember it's a very brief story when I was a kid, again, I think I was 9 or 10, I was in this walking zone in central Belgrade and I heard some noise and I saw a few skinheads beating up this Roma boy, obvious racism case. And there were at least 50, 60 people who were observing that. Long story short, I like to ask my students and some of my trainings, so how many people do you think thought that that was wrong? And the answer is probably, if not all of them, probably most of them, like 90, 95% of people would for various reasons that that was wrong beyond just violence, the racism and so forth. And, and then the question is, well, why. So that's the value. We just encourage the value. So when why no one done, why they didn't act yet? And that's a big question. Because there are some hidden values that they also value their safety. And then remember what happened is one or two younger, stronger guys start walking up to this group of people that were fighting and they, they chased off, but as they were. And, and the first the yelling started and then the movement started, the frontal movement. And then you see more people will join and I come back to this moment a lot and I think hi. You see like often this is again going back to a community. Like you know, people have values but sometimes they need a bit of a support to activate them. This is where community really helps you. And it's, it's okay to be as to scared. I'm not judging people who want to self preserve everybody, everybody is trying to do that. But I got me thinking, how do you do this more often? How do you more often create these opportunities, these mini acts of leadership where you almost liberate the people to start acting on the value, to break through the fear. So that's big part. Like hey, are you acting upon the value? And the second part is different going back to wisdom. Different challenges will trigger different clashes of values.

Yeah.

Royalties, you know, these and the higher up you are and the more important or tougher things you're doing in life, the more so called conundrums you will have to encounter where extremely important values will flash and you have to make decision and if this, whatever decision you make, something is going to suck like you're going to betray one of your values potentially.

Yeah.

And that's like the upper side of that. Like well what do you do then? Actually these things, it's the ultimate. But another thing I want to add just here, action really reveals to you also like you know, you don't know yourself fully. You know yourself to a certain extent. There's a lot more of you than you than you know. But when you interact in, in action, you interact with your full self self known and unknown. And the world gives you feedback on your whole self known and unknown. And that's why after action you want to debrief, you want to reflect because the feedback that you've got from whatever you've done is on your whole self. So if you pay attention, you might expand your knowledge of yourself. Yeah. And that's such a big, you know, the ultimate learning tool.

Yeah, learning tool. And that's such, such a powerful point to underlie for you know, anybody who's interested in politics and change and looking at the world and has a certain idea of what should be different. Right. As to, to do something, to, to start doing something. Because by doing that well you learn but also at the same time you in a sense become more of who you are, of, of perhaps of who you don't know you are. But it's tapping into that iceberg underneath the water. Right. Of who you are, but you don't know it. But it's through that action, through that engagement, through just going out there in the world, trying something out, that you learn about that.

Yeah. And just to add here, I bet everyone who is listening surprise themselves at least once. How would you surprise yourself?

Yeah.

Surprises whom. Yeah.

Yeah.

That's what action does to you. Right. It reveals parts of you that they were there all the time. Maybe at some level you knew they were there and enables you to also locate. But you need to debrief and reflect. It's not just, you know, action without reflection could be lost learning. It's always lost learning, I would say. But going back to, you know, becoming more who you are, you know, you construct your identity through all the values and all the ideas of yourself, of your heroic self, at least. And then action is, you know, putting that identity, you know, in the real world, acting upon it. And you'll learn usually, you know, if you're honest with yourself, that who you think you are is not who you act. And if you're able to constant, you know, constantly, not overthink things, but, you know, you plan, you act, and then you debrief and you, you reflect, you learn. You'll start aligning more and more with who you really want to be. And that's very powerful. That's a really good feeling. That's one of the most powerful feelings when you enact your values and you. Huh. All right. That felt good because that, that, that action matches my theory of myself. Yeah.

And it, it doesn't always feel good. Right. Like the part of where you realize, oh, damn, you know, I thought this was something that is important to me. I didn't act right. I didn't, I, I didn't act in line with my values. But, hey, that's information. That's, that's, that's something to again, reflect on. On the reflection bit I recently thought a little bit about that is coaching.

Right?

We're both involved in coaching. We're both coaches. I've had that experience as someone being coached and as someone coaching others where there's too much reflection going on and too little action. And so it's also that, you know, you need some of the action to, to have something to reflect on that can be. That's my, my, my pers right now. Something has too much reflection, too little, too little action.

Sometimes I asked some of my collaborators who have kids, hey, do you remember the first time you held your baby? And they. Yes. And like can you teach me that feeling? They're like, well, I can describe it, but. And you know, I heard people describing this feeling many times before I became that become a dad. And no one came close. So it's tacit. It's something that you cannot transmit through words. You know, language is a new phenomenon, new thing in our evolution. It's a brand new thing. We're still perfecting it, right. And it's such a small part of our brain. And, and, and then there's a famous metaphor of learning how to ride a bike, right. You can read about it, maybe it will help a bit. But you really gotta get on the bike and you'll probably fail first time. And there's. That's going to involve physical and emotional pain of failing and then you have to get back on it. That's the decision moment, right. Knowing that the failure may happen again until you get it right. So it's actually. So when you talk about leadership turns out to be exactly the same way. It's emotional learning, it's tacit learning, it's full body learning. You learn beyond what you can describe with your words. And that's why it's so rich. Because again, you, through action, you learn more than you know. And you learn things that you don't even know that you know. And I know this sounds esoteric, but you know, there's a good cognitive science behind it. There are things that we know we don't know how we know, and there are things that we don't know that we know we, but we can act with them. Like we can inactive, still affect our lives. That's the power of action.

That's by the way. And that's a little bit on a tangent. One of the challenging bits with artificial intelligence right now is this. We, you know, we can, we can define and program all of these rules into an artificial intelligence, but somehow the wealth of the, you know, I don't know, the human capacity comes a lot from what is under the iceberg. And how, you know, how do we define that for, for artificial intelligence to emulate us? So that's a whole different area. But that's, that's a challenge of that AI faces right now.

Yeah. And the challenge that many people face is also, yeah, to make a quick point on overthinking because thinking will be based on what you know right now and you can really overthink anything. And at the end what you're doing, you're just stalling. Type of procrastination because there's some kind Of a fear.

Yeah.

And, you know, big part of growing as a person and big part of the leadership development that I am doing is creating space for people to, to learn how to thrive in uncertainty and, you know, action. No matter how much you plan, things will go differently because you don't know everything about the world. The world is so complex, especially that involves other people. Other people don't know themselves the best. You don't know them even as much. So things will go differently, which means that whatever you think, you will not know enough. And you just have to go and do it and learn how to be okay with uncertainty that that action brings. And the more you learn how to deal with uncertainty, which is, I think, one of the course of leadership development. Like, what do you do when you don't know what to do? Type of a question. The, the more you grow and it's not easy as, you know, it's going to be tough and you're going to have doubts and you'll maybe fail in a way that's gonna disappoint you and you might be disappointed with what you enact. And that's not who you are. The key, not to stop, but to reflect, to learn and try again.

Yeah. So perhaps that, that's, That's a good switch to. And we've been talking about this the whole time, leadership development. And this is, this is.

I would.

Yeah. This is part of. Part of your work or a major part of your work you're involved in that you do that. Tell me a little bit, why do you think that is important today? That that's important work to do? And perhaps let me be a bit challenging here. Do we need it at all? Isn't that something that you've learned to do by just doing it without taking, I guess, a leadership development course when you were younger? You know, what, where does leadership development come in and why is it important?

The key question here is, can leadership development be accelerated? So I went through experiences and if I, you know, back in the, in my teens and early 20s, if I had a coach and if I had some framework that will scaffold my learning at the time, I would probably learn way more from these experiences that I did. So that's one way to look at it. That's self development, growing it. I think there's a good science that proves that you can accelerate it through particular ways of doing it right. Through particular coaching and, you know, programs and so forth. But the reason why we do it, we need it now, today, I believe, is because the world is becoming just more complicated. Everything is becoming more complicated. I heard someone said whatever the CEO was doing like 20 years ago now is the job of the manager. Whatever manager was doing 20 years ago or 30 years ago now is the job of like a supervisor. Whatever the supervisor is doing 23 years ago now, it's just the job of employee. You know, the complexity trickled down a lot. So people are facing, people today are not facing as many so called technical challenges. Kind of like where you just need to optimize and learn how to be more efficient. You kind of just applying already existing knowledge. But we're seeing this throughout organizations, societies. Think about anything you guys who are listening to this, think about anything you have to solve today. There has to be a bit of a learning, a bit of a creativity, a bit of innovation. And you know, and you're already. And there's. And all of that brings a bit of uncertainty. So you have to create something. And we are in the realm of leadership already. So that's one aspect of it. Because the world is becoming more and more complex. We're encountering more and more complex challenges, bigger challenges. So if for us as humankind to keep thriving, we need to collectively go to the next level of understanding things and we need to increase collective leadership capacity. And the second part is a democracy. And that's, you know, a lot has been done. And democracy starts within yourself. The whole idea of plurality and ability to have different perspectives and opinions. Maybe you start with yourself. Are you able to hold different perspectives, opinions and respect them and understand them, not just judge them. And that's part of leadership development too. Like, you know, ability to, to be complex thinker, ability to hold opposites, ability to suspend judgment, to better see the things for they are. Ability to understand your own biases and all that. And that mindset we see in democracy of United States how institutions, when institutions flash with the lack of mindset for democracy, democratic mindset, institutions lose. So democracy is not just institutions, institutions are a big part of it. But in society, as we see today, is losing the democratic mindset, which is the core of the type of leadership that I am working with, which is distributed leadership. Leadership where again, it's not about having all the answers, but it's about enabling all the talents and growing more capacity around you and within you. Yeah, I feel like most of my work is focused on that since I started when I was a teenager in the political movement, anti dictatorship, anti Milosevic. My whole, looking back, my whole work was always political actually. How do you create more Democratic mindset and more democratic leadership that builds institutions and sustains them and keeps evolving to release more and more, more human potential and to enable people to live purposeful lives. There's, that's, that's like, you know, that's a big question. Why are you here? Purpose. Yeah.

And, and it's an, it's an ancient, ancient tradition. Right. I, I came across this book. Melissa Lane, I think from Princeton wrote, you know, writes about Roman and Greek political systems. And in, in one of those books, she comes to the conclusion it's, you know, just like you said, it starts at home. You know, a stable political system starts at home. And the Romans and Greeks knew that. Right. They were experts at building political institutions that lasted, you know, criticize them how much you want from today's perspective. But they weren't just about the institutions. They were also about that human side of how can you not just control a government and, and, and, but how can you control yourself? Self control is one aspect, I would.

Say institutions are expression of collective mindset. And then when collective mindset starts deteriorating again, look at around the world, you see institutions deteriorating too. So it's not given, you know, you need to keep working on the generation after generation. Yeah, I said nothing new. People said it more eloquently. Every generation has to win their own freedom and build their own democracy or keep at least what they had. I found.

And I feel, I feel there is, there's so, so many gold, golden nuggets in this, in this conversation that we've had so far. And I know this, you know, this quick and easy ask for, you know, what are the takeaways? What, what's your advice? Is, is, is, is an easy question for me to ask, but I ask it nevertheless, you know, for people listening, what should they take away from this conversation slash, what advice do you have?

A few things come to my mind. One is be clear about your why, your reasons and why. You know, where are you going with your life? And understand that it's not about finding it, but it's about self authoring. So you get to construct your own story or your own narrative and you get to decide what is your life purpose. But you got to work on it because once you know, you understand your why. And it's ever, you know, it's, you know, you keep working on it and it might change a bit, but the clarity of your why will anchor your whole life in extremely powerful way. If you know where you're going at least approximately the world reveals in a very different way and there's even cognitive science supporting that depending. And I, I bet many people saw that experiment with the two groups of people in red shirt and blue shirt passing the ball to each other. And then you're asked to count the ball and then there's gorilla coming through and nobody notices gorilla because you're focused on the ball. So you see physically what you're focused on. So, so you better know your why. Otherwise you might see wrong things when you have clarity or why literally, physically, the world looks differently for you, that's one thing. So I would say you're not. And you know, just to be sure to understand you're not all the experiences you had, you are what you make of them. So you're in control of understanding your best self. Authoring, right. The second thing I would say, learn what you really want anchored in your why. So that you don't end up seeking power just to overcompensate for some flaw of character or some need. Want a longing that you're not satisfied. And this is big part of politics. I would say, like deal with your insecurities, learn, you know, I like to learn about your beast. Like what is that? You know? Or you know, some people would say incorporate your shadow because if you enter politics or some, any game that has some power in it, it might become very seducive and, and it might start feeling like it's filling in that gap and it will not feel it, but it will make you you. You will be seduced by it, you will be hooked on it, deal with your insecurities, face your challenges voluntarily. It's really good for you. And then focus on people and relationships. It's all about trust and community. As we talked. Listen, understand before you project and you know, pontificate. And the lastly really important is find, you know, besides the fact we made a lot of points about the action and act, but find time for daily self reflection to capture learnings, make sense and be more strategic and accurate yourself. This has to be your daily practice. Journaling is what I do, for example, and meditation.

Yeah, this has been fantastic. I want to say thank you. Thank you for taking the time, Nicola, really pleasure.

No, absolutely. Thank you so much, Daniel, for having me. And good luck to all the listeners and I hope you folks will act on what you heard today, at least some things.

Hey, this is Daniel. Thanks for listening. I hope you liked the episode. Please share it with someone who might find it valuable as well. And if you have a topic you'd like me to cover or a guest I should talk to. Let me know. You can find out more on my website. Head over to politicwise.org until the next time.