Is the game of life playing you?

So welcome everyone to Stepping into Possibility. This is the first of what will be 3 calls where I am going to lay out kind of the— what I think are the 9 fundamentals of, um, really getting to the point where you can move from acknowledging that you're, um, you're, you know, the game of life is— feels like it's playing you, to acknowledge that you can't win a game that you don't want to play, and then move into playing your game on your terms, all in and Full Out. And I believe that there are 9 fundamental principles, practices that you need to be aware of and employing in your life to move from, uh, what I call self-awareness— recognizing that there's a problem here, the game of life feels like it's playing you, not you're not playing it— to self-efficacy, where you are recognizing you can't win a game you don't want to play, and you're starting to pick up some of the tools and habits that will help you move to self-actualization, the very top of Maslow's pyramid. Although I think he actually eventually came to self-transcendence or something like that. So there might be a piece beyond this in the future. But when you're in that, you know, that phase of self-actualization, uh, you, you're, you're stepping into your agency, your power to play your game on your terms without, um, without compromise. And so today's call is part 1 where we're really going to just talk about the Awakening. And we're going to talk about the first 3 of the 9 fundamentals. And just in transparency, this call is mostly about setting up the situation and recognizing and acknowledging the challenges that we're going to learn how to address and navigate in the next 2 calls. And so If it feels like— if this feels more like a doom and gloom call than a hopeful call, hope is just around the corner. I encourage you to join the subsequent calls and you will see that actually the way forward, the way through— actually, I'll reference my favorite Robert Frost quote, "The way out is through." And I love that quote. I think it's true. Um, however, it leaves out a really important part, which is before you can start to navigate your way through, you have to be willing to step into. Uh, and so today is the day where we kind of acknowledge that, or awaken to the situation that many of us find ourselves in, so that we can step into it. In the next calls, we'll start navigating our through and, and eventually out on the last call. So that's, that's what's on offer for today. Just going to check in one more time before we get to the first thing. Is all of that everybody on board? Am I tracking? Or are you all tracking with what I'm saying? Fantastic. Okay. Oh, I should also share that this this— I'm going to try to get through what I want to intend to get through in the next 20 minutes, at which point the paid— the people that have a premium subscription will be invited to stay for continuing the conversation and Q&A. If you don't have a paid subscription, I'm going to ask you to just go ahead and leave the room at that point. I'm not going to like be checking up on people's subscriptions. I don't have that kind of bandwidth. I'll just trust that people like us will do the right thing and acknowledge the boundaries and guardrails here.

So do you mean the Substack subscription?

Yes. Yes. Thank you. So if you are, if you have any kind of Substack subscription, you are welcome to stay for the second half. Boy, that's a lot of S's. So awakening, waking up to the fact that the, the game of life is playing you, not the other way around. And I think everyone in this room is somewhere on that spectrum where this, this often happens. You know, sometimes, you know, it can be much earlier, obviously. But what I, in my experience with clients, it's people in their somewhere in their 30s and beyond. Um, who have played the game of life by the rules they were given. They've gone, gone to school and done what they're told and gotten good grades so that they could go to another school and do what they're told and get good grades so they could get a piece of paper that would allow them to get a job and do what they're told and move up the career ladder or, or, uh, get the promotions or get the raises or what have you. And, and your reward for that was, um, the reward for this pursuit of happiness is we're going to give you salary, we're going to give you status, and we're going to give you stuff. And at some point, many people that I work with, or everyone that I work with, wakes up to the fact that, hey, I, I played the pursuit of happiness game and I played by the rules. I did all the things I was supposed to do and I'm not happy. What's up with that? And so awakening has the awakening fundamentals are 3 Rs, and that is routines— I'm sorry, the R is the first of, um, yes, 3 Rs: routines, reactivity, and relationships. And under each of those are 3 things that it would be good for us to become aware of so that we know what exactly it is that we need to look out for as we start navigating our way through and, um, and, uh, so that we know what the, the skills, the tools that we need in order to start navigating our way through. So let's talk about the 3 that are under routines. The first is waking up to the fact that we are mostly sleepwalking through our life, that we are 95% of what you do today is very much like what you did yesterday. 95% of what you think is very much like what you thought yesterday. And 95% of our lives, the neuroscientists tell us, is lived unconsciously. This is not necessarily a bad thing. I think if we had to consciously beat our heart and breathe all day, we'd probably not last very long. Um, but when it comes to the way that we, you know, where we, where we spend our time, what we do, who we're with, you know, those are, those are things that we could bring our conscious awareness to, and it would probably improve our, our sense of health, happiness, well-being, and so forth. But, but we don't, because that's— we are responding to programming and conditioning programming. We all have heard of the fight, flight, or freeze response. That comes from programming from our amygdala, the oldest part of our brain. It is way faster and way more powerful than our prefrontal cortex, where consciousness can happen and where we can start to bring some logic and reasoning into things. So we've, we've got that working kind of against us. That's, uh, and not, not always a bad thing. Obviously, if, uh, uh, in the days when everything on the planet was bigger, stronger, and faster than us and wanted to eat us for lunch, hearing some rustling in the underbrush and immediately running away or climbing a tree or whatever, that would be good for survival. I don't know where you all live. But I'm guessing that there's not a lot of saber-toothed tigers around. And so, but the problem is that oftentimes, all of life's little challenges and, and major and minor trigger this fight, flight, or freeze instinct. We also have this really interesting contrasting nature, we really, as human beings, like to know where we stand and what's expected. This is why status is so important. This is why belonging is so important. This is why safety and security is so important. And we have this other nature where we really love to explore the edges of our understanding and abilities to seek the new, to seek out and embrace innovation. So these two things are always kind of working against us. But very, very often that impulse to remain humble and hiding and keeping our head down has been— that kind of programming has been reinforced, um, by, uh, by schooling, institutionalized education, institutionalized occupation. So there's programming and conditioning that we have to be aware of if we're going to learn how to bring our consciousness in and build the new habits, build the mindset, build the new attitude and approach to life that's going to help us get— move away from this letting the game of life play us so that we can start playing the game, or playing our game. The second thing under routines is learned helplessness, again reinforced by institutionalized education and occupation. You know, part of it is we are given this narrative that if we just follow the rules and do as we told, that everything's going to be okay for us. And so we look for roadmaps, we look for formulas, we look for checklists. And the problem with that is obviously roadmaps can only take you where other people have been and everyone else is, everyone else is going. So it's, it's not a very effective way to, to, find your idiosyncratic gifts and to employ them to live, uh, a life in, in pursuit of your destination. Um, the other thing is, you know, just if you look at the way, uh, a brand like Amazon reinforces learned helplessness, you can buy whatever you want, they'll deliver it to your door the next day, and if you don't like it, you can send it back. You know, you don't have to take any responsibility for, for your purchasing decisions. And so it happens, it happens, uh, in, in calls with the community. Uh, I try to be really clear, not, not always successfully, but I try to be really clear about, um, hey, this is going to be recorded, it's going to be available for subscribers to the Substack, but if you want to come for free, you can come live, uh, and And people start asking, well, is there going to be a recording? Well, yeah, if you, if you take responsibility for reading the, the, the emails, you'll know, and we won't have to waste time answering a question that has already been answered. So just that idea that, you know, we don't have to always expect that people are going to take us by the hand and lead us to where, and, and make up for the fact that we haven't been paying close enough attention. So learned helplessness is a big one. And then the third under routines is what I exactly what I wrote about in the Substack today, the identity trap. You know, we, we are creatures that are heavily invested in our roles and our goals. And, you know, one of the reasons why some people have that moment of crisis in their midlife moment is certain roles and goals around family and career are winding up or ending or have been or are ended. And that means that a lot, you know, we tie a lot of our identity into, into what we do for a living, what role we play in the home, in the workplace, in the community, etc. And so we have to recognize the attachment we have to these roles and goals. Excuse me, we've got someone coming in. And start to figure out a narrative around identity that is a little bit more inclusive of the many splendored facets of who we are. And and then not— and learn how to not be too clingy and attached to narratives that we have around identity. This is not at all to say, and I made this clear in the, in the, um, article, you know, there are— I mean, identity matters, uh, you know, we've been seeing this in a very pointed way recently with, um, you know, there are people that are, uh, very invested in their identity around race, gender, um, and, and so forth. And of course that's important and true, but again, at any point you can, you can be clinging to an identity, uh, or, um, invested in an identity to the point where it's actually impeding your ability to, uh, and increasing your fragility in situations because we navigate our way through roles and goals throughout our day. So routines is the first R, and what we want to be aware of is our programming and conditioning that are the learned helplessness that we have been encouraged to practice and the, um, and the dangers of the identity trap. So now that brings us to the third— second R, which is reactivity. Penny and I talked about this a little bit yesterday. The first of the three under, uh, reactivity is dropping the drama. Cartman's Drama Triangle. We have, uh, in any situation where drama is in play, there are going to be three roles that are being played, and we all play these roles in various— at various times in various situations. There's the victim, there's the rescuer, and there's the persecutor. Okay, so, you know, we all, we all have that moment when we feel like other people and circumstances are conspiring against us. And that makes other people in the situation the perpetrator. And we are hoping that the rescuer is going to swoop in and get us out of the situation, and so forth. So if, if you pay attention to your inbox tomorrow morning, you'll actually hear in the podcast that's dropping Penny and I talking more about this. But just a quick reflection. Again, we're just talking about being aware. Like if you are feeling a heightened sense of anxiety, dismay, frustration, anger, regret, shame, guilt, whatever, there's— it's an indication that there's some sort of drama narrative going on. What role are you playing? Uh, if you're in a situation with another person where there's drama at play, what role are you playing? Are you playing the role of the victim? Are you playing the role of the persecutor, or perceived as playing the role of the persecutor? Or are you being the rescuer? Uh, my take on this is if we can get rid of the victim Nobody, nobody else has a job. So if you can eliminate the victim narrative or reduce the amount of victim narrative in your own life, um, the persecutors and rescuers in your life won't have anything to do. Um, if you know, I would argue that the savior is the most dangerous player in the Cartman's triangle because And honestly, many people like us, like the people in this room, find themselves in this role sometimes. We like to help people. We are generous. We are giving. We are compassionate. We want to be a force for good in the world. And I know, speaking for myself, that desire to solve other people's problems for them is a very seductive way of not paying attention to my own problems. And so If we, you know, catch ourselves in that savior role, is there something that we're actually hiding from? Is there something that we're actually avoiding by investing in helping other people with their problems? And are we simply reinforcing their learned helplessness? And then the perpetrator— persecutor, rather— that's an interesting one because I don't think it really exists. Most of the time. Most of the time, everyone is doing what they think they need to do and what they think is right. It may be done out of ignorance, um, it may be done, um, just without awareness that it's causing harm, but with the exception of the, of the clinical sociopath or psychopath, most people are doing what they think they need to do, which means, again, it's, it's up to the victim to address their narrative around what's happening in terms of the persecutor. Um, second under reactivity is curbing your dogmatic thinking. You're— we are all born with biases. We all, um, are born into situations that build the beliefs that we navigate the world through. And so dogmatic thinking is, uh, is the opposite of scientific thinking. Dogmatic thinking is, I believe what I believe because I believe it. And you can see this in play all over. Turn on the news tonight. No, actually, don't turn on the news. Just trust me that there's a lot of dogmatic thinking going on. Look at social media. You know, I've been dabbling in Twitter recently. Um, and the number of dudes that look like me except 30 years younger that seem to have everything figured out and are telling you exactly what you should and need to do to get X, Y, and Z is astounding. And I just, I find it hard to believe that people that young have actually got it all figured out and are actually living the dream that they are putting out there., in their effort to get other people to buy stuff that will, uh, that they have for sale. So dogmatic thinking is just something to be really careful of. Obviously, the, um, antidote is scientific thinking. You know, show me the reasoning, show me the logic, show me the evidence. If it can't be replicated, if it can't be, uh, tested, and if it can't be seen, um, it might be something that you don't want to spend a whole lot of time, invest a whole lot of your time and attention in. And then the third under reactivity is the blame game. Uh, and the blame game works in two directions. It works when you're looking in the rearview mirror and you're living in stories that might involve guilt or regret about things that have happened in the past, shame about things that have happened in the past. And it can also exist through the windshield where you're looking ahead and attaching yourself to expectations and desires about what you want in the future that are beyond your control. Or you're looking out the window at all of the things that are to blame for the, the way you feel, the situation you're in, etc. The mirror becomes really important here, because what you need to do when you catch yourself playing the blame game is recognize it's time to stop looking out the window and it's time to look in the mirror because the source of what's usually holding us back is, has to do with something being done by that person in the mirror. And the solution to that problem has to do with the person in the mirror. So under reactivity, we have dropping the drama, the drama triangle, curbing dogmatic thinking, and stopping the blame game, which gets us to our third and final R for today under Awakening, and that is Relationships. Under Relationships, one of the first things to recognize is to be aware of what I call the intention impact gap. There's a great paper about this called The Rocky Road Between intentions and actions. But I arrived at this, this intention impact gap through my work as a head coach at Akimbo, where I was needing to navigate situations where students had conflict between themselves, or students had conflict with coaches, or students had conflict with the dude that created the course. And it was always, always, again, most people are not trying to cause harm. Most people are doing what they think is right. Their intention is not to cause, cause other people pain or hardship. However, the— what we don't— what we fail to recognize is that we don't always communicate as clearly, directly, and respectfully as we think we do, which means that the impact on another person can be seen very different than your intention. And that's because between intention and impact, there lies interpretation. And so knowing that everybody can see and respond and feel differently about what's being said and done, opens up, you know, some of the antidote for this, which is how do you, how do you communicate more clearly? How do you do it more respectfully? How do you do it with less dogmatic language? All these kind of things. The second under relationships has to do with the Dunning-Kruger effect. This is the idea that when we When we have a little bit of a success, we think that we're much smarter and better at something than we might actually be. When we are actually very proficient at something, but we see someone that appears to not know as much or be experienced achieving a lot of success, we tend to fall into the valley of despair. And it really takes some work to recognize that it's, you know, this, this comparison of our, you know, of, of achievements or our competitive nature, uh, does not serve us very well. So Dunning-Kruger is, um, is, is, is, is just that, that, uh, when we mistake, uh, a little bit of knowledge for proficiency or, or becoming an expert in something and when we compare ourselves to people that appear to be doing really well and can't figure out why we're not doing as well. And then the third under relationships is to, um, is recognizing the power of networks. So we all have heard of Jim Rohn's you are the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with. Turns out that's false. There's been a lot of scientific study about this, and what they have found is that you are the, the cumulative average of everyone in your network. And that means that you're the average of the people that you have direct contact with and the people that they have contact with. And the people that they have contact with. So there's 3 orders of concentric circles rippling out, and you are the cumulative average of all those people. So just by way of example, um, if the average of your cumulative network in includes people that smoke, the chances that you are a smoker are very, very high. On the other hand, if the cumulative average of the people in your network, um, are, uh, you know, healthy eaters, uh, and exercisers, the chances that you'll be a healthy eater and exercise are very, very high. So it's important to be aware of, um, you know, who— it's, it's not about ditching all your loser friends that are dragging down your average. It's a matter of being judicious and thoughtful and deliberate about Who, who are you spending more time with, paying more attention to, uh, you know, more connected to? And, um, how can you, how can you, uh, be thoughtful about and deliberate about building boundaries and guardrails around the people that, you know, you may still have to be connected to or feel you have to be connected to, um, but not giving them not investing your valuable time, attention, you know, communication, all those resources that, that, that, you know, will, will cause them to drag down your average. So under relationships, the third is the intention impact gap, being aware of the Dunning-Kruger effect, which is just basically this idea that we're comparing ourselves constantly to other people or competing with them. In a way that's not fueling our health and happiness. And then improving the network effect of making sure that you're being thoughtful about the people that you're spending attention with. So just before we go move on to the interactive part of things, Stepping into Possibility, this is the new book. We're actually addressing some things that are in that first in the introduction, which is on the Substack under Start With Who. If you just put start in the search bar, you'll find it. Um, and what we're doing is we are just kind of laying out or outlining the entire process. So it begins with awakening to the fact that the game of life is playing you, not the other way around, and we want to increase our self-awareness about what's going on. Under that, we have routines, reactivity, and relationships. Um, and then moving forward in the subsequent calls, we'll be addressing, um, acknowledging that you can't play a game that you don't want to be in and, uh, or that you don't want to play. And we will address the 3 Rs fundamentals, uh, around that. And then in the third call, we'll address, um, stepping into our agency, playing our game all in, full out, Without Compromise, and there will be 3 hours around that. So with that, I'm going to wrap up this portion, and I will just respectfully ask anyone that does not have a paid subscription to step out, and then the rest of us can, can jam for a little bit.

Well, hey, Do I have a paid subscription?

Yes. Uh, so, uh, Jackie Cato, who just left? Allison left, but she, she needed to leave. But wasn't there one more? Oh, the other Allison. She could, she, she could have stayed, but she left, so maybe she had to leave. Um, so yes, a couple of you are here because you were gifted, um, a 30-day subscription. And, uh, a couple— one of you is here because you're in the Catalyst community, and one of you is here because you're awesome and you paid for an annual plan. I don't know, I wasn't going to name any names, Kato, but Kato, before we continue, I just want to tell you that your response in the thread, your little poem about identity, was really beautiful.

Oh, thank you.

I think there's a Substack, uh, beginning right there. So any, um, any questions, reflections, uh, things that you would like to discuss further about what we just talked about? How, how was that for everyone in terms of clarity? Interest, actionability, on a scale of 1 to 10, no 7s allowed, what would you give it?

7.5.

I knew you would be a contrarian. Well, if it was below, if it was below 7, then let's, let's get it above, above 7. Uh, questions, reflections, things that you need more insight about—

like, there's, uh, if you could actually spell out or put in the chat the resources that you were mentioning, because I didn't— you know, some of them I just didn't get. I didn't— somebody's triangle and the Dunn-Kruger something.

And so, well, Jackie, there will be a replay and you will be able to help yourself Uh, however, I might also be willing to put some, um, some links in into the replay because I'm such a nice guy.

Thank you so much. You're so kind.

I thank you. I, I really, really am. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Yeah, but I, I had an observation. I don't know if it's an observation. I just thought it was really interesting, the triangle, when you talk about the victim, the Persecutor and the rescuer. And it made me think about— I don't know if it's true, but it made me think about a therapeutic relationship. You know, almost feels like someone feels like they're the victim being persecuted by someone, and then they go off and they consult a therapist, a psychiatrist, whatever, who is the rescuer. And I said, well, you know, if people gave up the victim mentality, what would happen to all these people who are, you know, therapists?

Yeah, well, I think that's a, that's a really great insight, Jackie. Um, I actually have worked and am working with, um, therapists that, um, you know, this is really interesting because most of the therapists that I have worked with or am working with actually are also really great coaches. And I think that therapy and coaching— like, if your therapist has coaching skills, that's the ideal situation, because so much of therapy still, at least in my experience from therapists I've worked with, is, you know, you just dump and they go, uh-huh. Uh-huh, tell me more about that, you know. And so it's, it's in some way you're repeating narratives that really are no longer serving you. And that's, that's not very therapeutic, you know. And so, like, I think coaches that pretend to be therapists, and that you will see them on LinkedIn, like when you see trauma coach, I'm like, warning, warning, Will Robinson. That's, I mean, that's super dangerous because You know, I think therapy is really important. It's, it's a, and it's, it's a, it's a skill like being a doctor or an engi— like, I want my planes to, to be able to, to actually fly. I want my engineers to have a degree. I want my doctor to have a degree. I want my therapist to have certification. Um, coaching doesn't require any of that. And so, um, if you're a coach and you're playing therapist, that's not cool. Um, But if you're a therapist, a trained therapist, and you adopt coaching, um, it just seems to me in my experience, again, personal and working with people in that profession, that that just seems to avoid that, that thing that you're kind of pointing at, which is, you know, if, if we all just continue to repeat our sad stories, we're just going to keep living are sad stories. Um, but the victim thing is— and I will tell you that, um, I have a friend who is a, um, a highly credentialed therapist who thinks that my whole interpretation of the Karpman triangle is a bunch of baloney. Um, but I suspect that it's because if enough people listen to my take, he wouldn't have as much work. I don't know if I answered a question or, or, or added anything to, to what was mostly a reflection, Jackie, but I hope that's helpful.

Yeah, thank you.

Well, actually, what you just said too reminded me of— I used to— my first job, professional job in theater, was for a company where we did original comedy about the experience of living with mental illnesses, and we toured it places, and about 80% of the people in the troupe had some experienced a form of mental illness that they had lived with at least at some point in their journey. And a lot of people that were active in the troupe were, you know, receiving services and things. So what— when we were running this troupe, the several directors, we would think of it more as we were lighting this circle and we were the light. We were keeping the light lit. We're keeping the circle lit and the theater happens in the light. Doesn't happen off. And we would help each other navigate, because if we were to leave getting into anybody's stuff, their like thing, would mean we were leaving the circle untended. And so we would often help each other come back to like, we were here to provide this space and do this thing, because it's so easy to cross over into getting in the stuff. Or what is that line between the theater artist who's doing this versus the therapy? They have therapists and you need to know where to help people get help. But that we did this other thing, it was one of the few things also in their life that wasn't organized like, this is theater therapy. That wasn't what it was. We were like, no, we're a theater. We were written about in the New York Times and all these other things. But you got to be an artist here instead of like everything else was therapy. Meal planning was therapy. So much of their lives is organized that way, and the people that were working, the members of the troupe. But anyway, that was that idea. And I think you were kind of hitting on that too, of that idea of like, how do we stay here and create language that helps us come back? And we check— we would check in all the time too, like if we thought we were— oh, it sounds like you're leaving the circle, come on back, you know.

Oh, that's really— that's a great insight because it reminds me Well, number one, it speaks to the importance of like, you have to establish the boundaries and guardrails, and you have to, you have to provide— like, if someone's heading out of bounds, like, hey, here's the boundaries and guardrails, here's where you are, you might want to think about course correcting. Um, and that was very much the approach that we had in the— on the coaching teams, at least the ones that I headed. In the workshops is let's make sure that we're clear about the rules of community engagement. And like, to your point, like, one of the things that you often hear me say when, when calls, you know, especially when I know that there's like new people on a call and I'm going to send people to breakout rooms, which is dangerous, right? It's risky because I'm not going to be there. I'm not going to be able to make sure that the rules of engagement are being complied with. But I just say, hey, while you're in the breakout rooms, let's make sure that everyone has a chance, an equal opportunity to share. And remember, no one came here to be advised or criticized or have their intelligence or activities questioned. It's like, be an active listener. Here's what I heard you say. Did I get that right? Is there anything else?

Right.

And so, like, establishing the container is really important. And then, um, being able to, like, warn people when they're heading out of bounds. But then the final piece, and I don't know if you have any experience with this in your troop, well, you know, there are, there are sometimes people, and often in akimbo they would be people that looked a lot like me, that would go out of bounds. And then argue about how they were inbounds and how they didn't have to do any of the things that you were saying. Here's what you need to do if you want to stay in the workshop. At which point Scott would write them a very polite letter letting them know that I hope you find what you're looking for out there in the internet, because you're not going to be able to come back in here.

Wow.

But one more thing, Cato, on that is, and it— I just said it, but in— to use different language, it's, it's the difference between, um, it, it, it, it, it's, it's avoiding prescriptive act, uh, activity behavior, right? Like when people And it's the saviors, right? Oh, you got a problem? I'm going to help, help you solve your problem. And like, you know, someone has depression and someone says, oh, but depression's just all made up. You don't have depression, you just have to, you know, do, do, do, do. It's like, no, no. Um, but that's, you know, we, we also like, we have this desire for prescriptive treatments. We want there to be a magic pill and, and take our pain away. So it's, it's, it's, you know, so, so much is going on in these kind of situations. I just reminded myself, like, one of the— like, often, at least a couple times in every workshop, I would get a message from a student saying, hey, I'm having a really tough time, I, I really need to talk to someone, can we jump on a call?. And, you know, sometimes they were indicating that they were having, you know, suicidal thoughts or, you know, whatever. And, um, you know, so I had a, I had a link, you know, that I would be able to send that they could find help in their zip code. Um, and would have to like say, you know, I'm sorry, the coaches don't have the training, and it, and it would not be in anyone's best interest for me to hop on a call and talk about this with you. However, please, you know, um, and Seth was always really great about helping us craft language for, for those kind of situations because they came up a lot, especially in creatives, um, Not so much in freelancers. Freelancers think they know everything anyway, so they never had any, any problems. But yeah, yeah, people are fascinating.

Yeah, so I, I encountered some of that myself.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, to just direct people to where it might be a good place, or also sometimes to the coaches because— or whatever their thing was. And— but yeah, I know exactly what you're—

yeah. Any other reflections? Any other questions? Arguments? Counter assertions?

Well, actually, the thing though that actually came up yesterday because I did the akimbo, um, the altMBA meeting that they had, and the thing about actions versus intentions. Came up, and the idea of misalignment, because one of the people was working on a workshop, but we're going to be addressing that in a couple days. And so that came up, and I was just curious how it landed on the same page in my notebook, because this happened— this was the next thing that happened. Oh, that's really interesting. There's my notes, and you said almost the same thing.

Well, that, um, that rocky road between intentions and actions is easy to find if you Google it, and it's, it's a pretty fascinating study because it's— it is— it's— I think it's a I think it's a dissertation. Um, I think it's actually, uh, well, I'm not going to guess at the school, but anyway, um, but that, you know, the, the, they study, studied this, and it just turns out that we think we're way better at communicating than we actually are. And then even when, um, even when we are given evidence that we're not, we can— like, we still— we, we just maintain that, um, we're, we're just really, really good at it. Um, they did a study where they had people tap out a song and the other person had to tap it out. They tapped out the song and were asked, what, what, what's the chances that you think this person will guess it? And they'd be like, oh, 80%, it was clear, clear, clear as day. And like it was 3% or 2% or something like that.

So, well, and where I learned about that wasn't— I'm going to look that up because that sounds like a fascinating source for it. And it also came up twice in a row for me in my book. But the— when I studied linguistics as part of cognitive science and took a separate course in linguistics, that I started realizing how much room there is in language just as far as we under— because we were studying semantics as well as syntax and things and, and how the organizations work. And I was like, oh, because we were using mathematical things to just show the formulas and, and using set theory, especially when it comes to semantics. And I was like, there is so much room in every single little part. And we think this is a clear sentence, but look at all the things it could mean to a different observer when when we were looking at it like a, like a formula, an equation. And that, that got me questioning, like, okay, I could totally see how it was misinterpreted, right? Yeah, I might not see, like, how I was misinterpreted, but I understand why there was room. Well, and that helps me calm down too, like, all right, oh, let me figure out you, how you interpreted.

That also speaks to, I mean, we just have this we have this, um, this instinctual need for certainty in our lives. And, um, and we have, you know, and if you look at society, we seem to reward the people with the highest degree of certainty and overconfidence, even though they have no right to any confidence in the things that they're certain about because they are things that can't be absolutely defined, determined, what have you. I'm not going to mention any names, but certain politicians come to mind, certain pundits come to mind, certain bros on Twitter come to mind. Um, you know, and the antidote to that is consideration. Like, what if like, what if, what if you didn't have to understand? What if you didn't have to know? What if both things could be true? Like, there is this— there's room for multiple interpretations, room for multiple truths, room for multiple perspectives. And so, you know, I always think, um, consideration, just the— just, just to consider, to embrace either not knowing or embracing, uh, the consideration that there might be more than one perspective on this, um, and considering that maybe you're not as smart as you think you are. And that's one of the things, uh, there's another, um, famous, uh, I think this, this was the Harvard Business Review, Teaching Smart People to Learn. That is another article that is really And as a recovering smart person, boy oh boy, does it hit, kick you right in the gut. Um, yeah, so we have in this other community that I'm actually a member of, um, we have this thing called DALLA, which you can interpret it one of two ways: Directions for Acting Like an Adult, or Don't Act Like an Asshole. And it's all about holding space for consideration. And, and, and, you know, the, the intention-action gap can also, you know, if your actions are not reflecting your intentions, then you're not acting like an adult, you're acting like something else. So just Yeah, another thing that pops up for me. Um, Jackie, if that was— if, if that was Hollywood, I'm ready. Oh, got about 5 more minutes. Anybody, anybody with a final reflection or question before we wrap this up? And, and just to be clear, um, so what I'll do is I'll upload this as an unlisted video to YouTube, and I'll make that available to all the subscribers Um, which includes Catalyst Club members and, and paid subscribers to the, uh, Substack. Um, and then I'll probably also put it out as an article on Substack just for subscribers so that, um, if you want to reference the video later, you can. But obviously my intentions, you know, just to give you an idea of what's going on here, is this is the way I write books. I come up with an idea that I think is good, and I start talking about the idea. Um, and once I kind of refine the idea to the point where I feel like I've outlined the three— like, all my books have three sections. All my books are about one central theme and broken into three sections. And, uh, usually I try to break those three sections into three separate sections. So Um, what we're doing— what I'm doing now is I feel like my idea for my book is sound. Um, I feel like my framework is sound, but now I'm, I'm workshopping each of those sections to test for resonance and to check for my faulty reasoning or my, you know, my, my bad ideas or my clearly articulated ideas and, and that sort of thing. So, um, next call will be in 2 weeks because I'm away next week. And I think I have the next one scheduled for 3 weeks, but I'm probably gonna bump that one from out 2 weeks from the, the, the next one just to get myself some breathing room, um, and to be able to process the, the feedback, um, from each call. So any questions before we wrap up or any, any last, any last words?

Yeah. Thank you.

Go ahead, Sandra.

I just had a thought because in the last year, I'd say the triangle has come up a lot in different workshops and sessions that I've been to. And just as you were talking and you said, if you do away with victim, then the other two roles don't have a job. And then I'm wondering if— and it just came to me, it's just thinking, it's just a question. Is it dropping the drama triangle, or is it that as we move through life and our daily, you know, experiences that we're exposed to, is it finding a balance between the three? So you're not heavily one victim, because, you know, victim, persecutor, rescuer— I couldn't figure out what the third would be, but it's like, um, Are you open to being a receiver? Are you open to being a giver in your fullest potential? And then I don't know what the third would be. So, oh, maybe just recognizing that you, you're, you, you could be being misunderstood or misinterpreted because we kind of play like in any given situation, we'll play one of those three roles. And then it's one being aware of that and then Instead of dropping the triangle, is it finding the function of the purpose of that moment by being in balance with the 3 position?

I really like that reflection and the question. My take is certainly there's room for multiple interpretations of the triangle. So the first is, the most important thing is that we recognize that the triangle is actually like there, that there is this triangle, like when there's drama going on, there's going to, we will find the three roles in play. And so it's about like awareness and acknowledgement. What I'm hearing and what you're saying is like the roles are very clearly specified in the triangle. And what you're saying is, because I think you're absolutely right, like most of us should, like, could really work on our willingness to ask for help and receive help. Um, so, and if, and if, if a helper is doing it in a way that is not done to just avoid their own shit, then obviously that's cool too. And if the people that might be causing harm in a situation become enlightened or whatever, but that almost feels like it's the— that almost feels just right now. Like it's the next step. Like, once you acknowledge, like, here's the roles, and then how do I reframe the way that I'm looking at myself or looking at the situation? And how do I— and then, and that, that will really be addressed more in that the last piece, like, how do— what are the tools and skills, approaches, um, principles and practices that we need to start to, reframe some of the things that we talked about today or navigate our way around, over, through, um, you know, that sort of thing. But yeah, you gave me some serious food for thought, so I appreciate that. Penny, were you gonna say something? I couldn't tell if you were coming in when Sandra came in. No, I was, I was, I'm interested in what she said and I was listening again.

That's all.

Okay, so are we good? Awesome. Appreciate you all attending. Appreciate you all sitting in on the second half and for giving me some good ideas and things to talk about, but mostly just a chance to run my mouth and test my ideas out in the wild with people that I actually like. So enjoy the rest of your day, and I hope to see you on some of the future calls.

Thanks, Scott Perry.

Thanks.

You're very, very welcome.