Why a Messy Life Might Actually Be the Sign You're Growing

Most people think that life is complicated, and if they can solve that one single problem, everything else will fall in place. Everything else will take care of itself. But here's the real question: what if our lives are not complicated, they're simply complex?

Life has not been, and I don't think it is for anybody, a linear progression from A to B on a, on a non-random, predictable, stable line. It's more of that, here's point A, and there's a wadded spaghetti noodle, and it touches And most of us spend our lifetimes trying to untangle that spaghetti. Those detours, those disruptions, those things that take us off our, our linear, nice, neat trajectory are actually opportunities for growth, to learn things that we need to learn, to be able to master the place where we ultimately want to end up being.

The real shift is not finding your passion. It is something much simpler.

Don't pursue your passion. What you need to do is pursue the things that make you happy.

Let's dive into the episode and understand how life is just complex, not complicated. Welcome, Matt, to the Ignite Your Nouns podcast.

Thanks, Utkarsh. Really appreciate it.

Really looking forward to this conversation, Matt. And, uh, and we dive straight into the deep. If that 8-year-old Matt, wherever that Matt was growing up, if that Matt were to come and meet you right now, what kind of a conversation would emerge between the two of you?

Yeah, that's a great question. You know, the The thing I would tell my much younger self would be, you know, it's, it's been a fun ride and I'm glad you set the initiatives and the dreams that you did. And unpacking those, those things, it was, it was my, my 8-year-old self was that, was that kid who loved life like most kids thought the future of the world was my oyster. And I believe he would ask me if I kept true to myself and, and Did you do what you set out to do, what you imagined you would do? And, uh, and we'd have a conversation about that because I believe that I would. And, and what's funny is, is this reminds me of a lecture I did. This was a couple of years ago at a conference. And I was speaking to a bunch of college students who are 30 years younger than I am now. And I said this then, and it resonated with me so much that I brought it up several times, but I said, you know, I'm not doing anything I ever thought I'd be doing. But I'm doing everything I ever imagined I'd be doing. And for me, that's incredibly profound. I think that's true for most people. I know that when I talk to my colleagues, my friends, even my kids and my wife and people like that, you know, we were doing something different than what we thought we'd be doing in terms of getting there. You know, how do you get to become whatever it is you become? Well, you do this and then you do this and you do this. And, and all of a sudden you just end up there and I've never known it to happen that Life has not been, and I don't think it is for anybody, a linear progression from A to B on a non-random, predictable, stable line.

Hmm.

It's more of that, here's point A and there's a wadded spaghetti noodle and it touches point B. And it's that spaghetti noodle in between where you begin to realize, hey, listen, at least for me in my case, it was, this isn't what I thought I would be doing, but I am doing what I imagined myself doing. And what that is, is inspiring people, bringing hope to people, bringing clarity to people's vision, purpose, meaning. That's what I'm doing now. I thought I'd be doing it a different way than I am, but I am doing that. And that's really what I think we would talk about. And I would tell the 8-year-old Matt to lighten up and chill out a little bit. As we're in the midst of the conversation, because I imagine he would be grilling me first, but it was like, well, what gives? What about this? And what about that? You were going to be an astronaut or, you know, you were going to, you were going to, you know, you didn't worry about any of this stuff. And after we got through all that, I'd say, you know what? It's been a crazy ride and it's been a ton of fun.

I love all of that in it. And I think what I just want to kind of add that to that spaghetti noodle that you spoke about. And sometimes I think, Matt, we just take too much time in untangling the spaghetti, whereas we could just like, just eat it. Just eat it and enjoy it.

100%. And that's one of the things that is very important to my mission in life is understanding that the spaghetti noodle is in fact what it is. And it's so important that we understand that life should not be about trying to straighten out that spaghetti noodle, as you said, untangle it. I just think that's a waste of time when really we ought to just go where it takes us. Now, I don't mean become a victim of your circumstances. There's obviously, we have agency here, but But we also need to understand that there is a rule at play that takes us to these unknown, even sometimes backward paths to get us to learn something that we need to learn for whatever's coming next. I believe that. I believe there is a, even though I'm, I love chaos theory and complexity and all that, I do believe very strongly that there is an order to the universe.

Hmm.

And even though we don't see it in the middle of it, it is funny. You know, when you look at us, the spaghetti, the A and B with the spaghetti noodle in between. It only looks like a mess when you're looking at it really close. The further and further back you go, the straighter and straighter the line looks.

Yeah.

Only when we zoom in on it super close that we see all the curves and all that kind of thing. And, and so when you step back a little bit though, I believe you can start to see a more clear trajectory of where you went. Oh, I see how this distraction prepared me for this. And I see how this detour in life that I wasn't expecting actually strengthened this. And oh, this particular event that I really wasn't excited about, I really thought was the end of it all, gave me insight about this. And then that's what I think we need to do with that spaghetti noodle. And in fact, at any rate, I won't get on that yet, but I'm working on a project right now. It's called Disruption and how critical it is that we look at life's disruptions and the detours and all those things, not as something that's conspiring against you to keep you from being who you want to be. I And I believe this with all of my heart, is those detours, those disruptions, those things that take us off our linear, nice, neat trajectory are actually opportunities for growth, to learn things that we need to learn, to be able to master the place where we ultimately want to end up being. So, so I believe that with all my heart. And I think that's what that conversation would be about.

Love it. I love it. I was for one second thinking maybe you have like a bowl of spaghetti on the right that you're going to pull out, but I'm glad it was about that project. You said somewhere that that 8-year-old is going to ask you, were you true to yourself? It's one of those sentences, Matt, that at least I think both of us would have heard a trillion times, almost misused, abused, overused, sometimes even underused. What does it really mean to live a life true to yourself?

So for me, I do think that that's unique to each person. We talk about temperament and personality, and I don't even really mean that. I mean the joy, because it's hard to find an 8-year-old in any country for that matter. And I've been in a lot of third world countries, poverty-stricken countries where the 8-year-olds and young, they were still happy. They didn't even know they were poor, you know, kind of a thing.

Yeah.

And again, I know that can become cliché, but for me, what I mean by that is Did you enjoy the journey? Because I do know this, my 8-year-old self loved life.

Mm-hmm.

And, and I, you know, I, I enjoyed, I was that kid, of course, back in my day, it was much safer to do, but, you know, the parents told us to get outta the house after breakfast and not come back until the streetlights came on kind of a thing. So, you know, we were out playing all the time, riding our bikes across town. There was no Ubers or buses. You know, we, if we wanted to go see our cousin, you know, Way down the road, we had to ride our bikes kind of thing. And so I very much always wanted— I remember, you know, it's such a great question because you're just already pulling up things in my own mind. But I remember telling my younger self when I was younger, you know, when you get older, don't become a fuddy-duddy. Don't become this stuffy adult who takes life so seriously. And, and that's what I think my 8-year-old self would be asking me, you know, did you stay true to yourself? In other words, for me, did you have fun doing the process because life does hand you limits. I mean, let's, let's be honest. There are bad things that happen. You know, myself, I found out 2 years ago that I had a pretty advanced case of prostate cancer. And so for the last 2 years, I've been battling that, but it hasn't stopped my wife and I, my kids, my grandkids from doing all the stuff we want to do. You can't, you can't take yourself too seriously. And that's what I think that meant. To my 8-year-old self of, hey, did you stay true to yourself? Did you at least have fun while you were doing whatever it is you were doing?

Yeah. And the saying, right, that the fun— or I think we don't stop playing because we grow up, we grow up because we stop playing. I think something of that sort. And I love this idea, right? Just find out that joy. Just make sure that you don't take yourself too seriously and don't become that stuffy adult that the society almost expects you to become at some point.

They do.

They do.

And that's a shame. And this is a theme of kind of what I do. And I teach adults this, this way. Passion. Let's take passion, for example. We hear so much about passion. Find your passion, follow your passion, pursue your passion. I believe that stresses people out. I believe people feel guilt. I believe some of them even feel shame when we start talking about, well, I don't know what my passion is. And everybody says pursue your passion and I I don't have a passion and I don't know. And I believe it's a mistake, even for people who think they know what their passion is. It actually becomes narrow because then they're only talking about, do the things that make me what I think happiness is. That's my passion. My passion is to make more money. My passion is to, you know, well, if you want to do that, then you're working, you know, 20 hours a day and working on 4 hours of sleep and stuff like that. And that's, that's silly. But I do believe there's a way to find your passion in the midst of that spaghetti noodle, which I think is where we And I tell my clients and my students, don't pursue your passion. Okay. Let's put passion on the side. Let's not worry about that. What you need to do is pursue the things that make you curious. And that I think is a real game changer. And it's a subtle, it's a subtle kind of semantics maybe, but a nuanced shift between focusing on the things that make you curious. And that's what I've actively tried to do. I came to this insight myself probably 12 years ago. And since then, I can't tell you how many more things I've learned and how much I've grown and matured pursuing what I thought my passion was and started just following the path of the things that I thought was curious. And what I mean by that, every time I had a question about something that, hey, what's that? How does that work? What might that look like? You know, those kinds of questions, I went ahead and chased it. And in the chasing of those things, I found out a lot of things that I knew I shouldn't be doing and wasn't cut out to do or had the skillset to do. But I also found a lot of things that I never would've found if I was only focused on what I thought my passion was, you know, which was like leadership development. And if you were to ask me a professional passion that, you know, what do I lose time talking about? Leadership development, leadership theory, that, those kinds of things. So I thought, well, that's what I have to pursue. So everything was about pursuing that. And, you know, You actually narrowed your scope that you become annoying, you know? And what I started to do is just pursue these other things that make me curious. And in that, of course, you tie everything back to leadership. At least for me, I was able to see a lot more connections than I ever saw before. And that's what makes you a better person. And then in the process, you are always refining that thing we call passion.

Yeah. That's such a— it's just a subtle shift, right, from passion to curiosity, but it makes it so much easier because when you think about passion, passion could be an n number of things and could be things that you sometimes don't even fully understand. But curiosity is just asking yourself this one question, what can be different? What can I do? What can I learn about this? And that just changes the game. And this subtle shift of word, which I started the episode with, I want to go back to that. So when we say this, this idea between complex and complicated, break it down for us, Matt. Yeah.

So this is, this is something that's so fun for me. It's something that I learned chasing the things that made me curious, by the way, is, is the subtle difference between complexity and complication. We say as humans, and again, it's, it's, it's irrespective of where you're at, what culture you're in, all those kinds of things, your age, but we say life is complicated. And if you think of what that actually means. It becomes very interesting because a comp system is a system that has many moving parts, but each part moves in coordination with the other parts. So the classic example of a complicated system would be a machine, a car engine, for example, or a watch, one of those old-fashioned watches that you had to wind up, you know, but the nice watches. And, and so, so that's what a complicated system is. If we go with a car engine analogy or machine analogy, You've heard people say about their team, their corporations, their businesses, whatever, we're a well-oiled machine or we're firing on all cylinders, kind of a thing. And what they mean is we're doing really good. Everybody's in coordination. Everybody's in sync. Everybody's doing their part and playing off of each other. And that's great. But it's a major giveaway as to the metaphor that you're using for life. And it's It's the wrong metaphor. And because like I said, a complicated system has many moving parts and for it to work, every single moving part needs to be constantly tweaked, adjusted, honed, refined. So there's always something breaking down, always something that needs to be tweaked or fixed in order for a complicated machine to work. The other huge negative to a complicated system is if one thing goes awry, everything goes awry. You know, you can't, it's just, it's connected. So you You shut it, you have to shut everything down. So when the spark plug fails in a car, the car doesn't run. So you're not accomplishing anything, but here's what's so weird about it is you fix it by taking— so they're, they're, they're together, but they also maintain isolation. So this is, this is weird. So let's, let's, let's try to think about this. So a car engine, spark plugs break down, you, you, everything else stays the same and untouched. I take the spark plug out, I put a new spark plug in, and everything begins to run in order again. So what that means is you can fix a complicated system without messing with, perturbing, or molesting in any way any of the other gadgets, you know, any of the other gadgets in the machine. And because of that, we approach problem solving a certain way. In a complicated system, problem solving includes isolating and quarantining the problem, separating it out from everybody else, repairing it, and then reinserting it back where it was. And, and if it can't be repaired, you reinsert something brand new back where it was, but everything else remains untouched and unaffected, just waiting kind of in this limbo space for this missing part to come back. That's a complicated system. Well, the world isn't like that. Relationships aren't like that. People aren't like that. Or living systems and organizational systems aren't like that. They're complex. So here's how a complex system is. A complex system also has many moving parts. The difference is when you integrate a complex system, the integration of each part creates a new identity within the system. In other words, it can't be reduced down. So the metaphor for a complex system, we could, we could take as a birthday cake, for example. So a birthday cake also has a lot of different ingredients or parts: flour, eggs, milk, sugar, butter, cocoa, you know, whatever you're putting in the cake, you know. So you put all those things together, and yes, there's eggs there. Yes, there's sugar there. Yes, there's milk there. But once it goes into the system, it can't be reduced down. So if something was wrong with the eggs, like say the eggs were spoiled, and you're like, okay. This, this cake tastes horrible. And you realize, oh my goodness, these eggs expired 2 years ago, you know, kind of a thing. Then you can't go in and take the eggs out and put new eggs in. The whole cake is a wash. And with a complicated system, hey, you've got, you've got, you've got the spark plugs, you've got the O-rings, you've got the gaskets, you've got all these different hoses and nozzles. Hey, I could just replace this gasket. Everything else is still fine.

Hmm.

I just need a new gasket. Well, with the cake, it doesn't work like that. Or Play-Doh is another great example, is if I have 3 different colors of Play-Doh and mix them all together, what's gonna happen is you're gonna have a swirl ball of different colors of Play-Doh.

Right.

And if I say, oh no, I, I need the red Play-Doh back because my granddaughter has a school project she needs to have done for her art class, I can't get the red Play-Doh back. But if I had red and yellow and blue Lego bricks and she says, hey, grandpa, I need a red Lego brick. I could simply go to the Lego, take the red Lego brick out and replace it either with a, with another color and everything's still the same. So I like to talk about it as Lego versus Play-Doh worlds. A complicated world is a Lego world. A complex world is a Play-Doh world. And when we think about that, that has dramatic and sometimes traumatic Implications on problem solving, critical thinking, et cetera. And so that's the major difference in complex systems, like in human organism, the weather, the ecosystems within the weather patterns, things like that. Those are all very complex human relations, human organizations. They're complex. I can work in an organization for 20 years and then something's going wrong with that organization. They need to fire me. It's not just Just letting the spark plug go and replacing it. You know, if there's a problem with recruitment in an organization, for example, you say, well, we just need better recruiters. And so we're revamping the recruiter system and all that. So you fire your head of recruitment, you hire a new one, and then you find out 6 months later, we still have a problem with recruitment. We're still not getting the best people for the job because you're thinking of the organization as a Lego. Lego, as you know, this system that's been built and I just need to replace Lego bricks.

Mm-hmm.

But if you think of them as Play-Doh, you realize, oh, hey, this head of recruitment is the yellow Play-Doh. I can't just take out all the yellow Play-Doh. And as much as I can get out, I've taken out some of the other colors with it. And there will always be some of the yellow in there. And what's even more interesting is the longer you mix Play-Doh colors together, you'll eventually lose the swirl and you'll get a completely brand new color, some muted grayish brownish color. And what's interesting is like, okay, now this is a brand new color that wasn't any of the original 3 colors, but still all of the blue is in there, all of the yellow is in there, and all of the red is in there. You just can't get them out. And that's really how human organizations are, human systems are, human ecosystems. And if we start to think of them that way, it does really require of us to start asking different questions and solving problems in a different way.

Fascinating. As I'm listening to you and I'm imagining a car engine and the different pieces, the spark plug, and then the human systems, and I understand how one is a complicated system. And so one piece can be taken out, figured out, put it back, you're done. It's working again. And then the complex system, which is us, our ecosystems, our lives, where it's almost like we are part of like a bigger whole, right? A bigger sum. And our identities are impacted and change and shift because of that system that we are a part of.

In a complex system, the sum is greater. The part is greater than its sum, so to speak. The end is greater than its sum parts. And I mean, you can't have a human body and take out its nervous system, you know, in a car engine.

Yeah.

You can take out the spark plugs and put them back in and nothing, nothing else is affected. But if I took out my nervous system, everything else would be affected. You know, I mean, even the title of your podcast, Ignited Neurons. I mean, we're talking about the nervous system and how it affects our brain, how we think, how we process, how we feel, how we see, how we perceive. So that's very much an example of a complex system.

So that understanding, Matt, how does that— so now we understand that there's the complicated system and then there's the complex. So we now, instead of calling life complicated, we call it complex. How does that shift how we live, lead, And operate?

Beautiful question. The answer is it gives us more options for success, more options for solving problems, because in a complicated system, there's only ever one right way to do something. And in a, in a complicated system, you have to diagnose the one thing at the foundation core that's causing whatever the problem is. And you isolate and quarantine everything else away from that so that you can get at it and fix it. In a complex system, it means you have to start thinking of alternative interventions. So first of all, it's very difficult to have to isolate one particular source of all problems. I mean, think of the human body. I mean, when you break your arm, it affects all kinds of other systems, your nervous system, your integ— integ— get— oh, I can't say it now— your skin, your skin system, you know, all those things. And there's so— the muscles, the way they attach to the arm, things like that. And it's, it's very, very difficult to just isolate the bone, you know, in that. So we— what do we have to do? We have to shut down the whole arm.

Hmm.

So the muscles are still fine. The blood flow's still fine. All that stuff's fine. But what do we do? We have to put a cast on the whole arm and prevent anything from moving. And then when you take it off, there's residual problems, right? Atrophy. The muscles are sore. The skin starts to deteriorate. deteriorates. You got soreness and rashes and itching and all this kind of thing, and it affects everything else. And, and, and that's what we— in a— well, and that's because we've treated a complicated— with a complicated solution.

Hmm.

Well, let's just, just isolate the arm. Well, we're just— we'll keep the bone from moving. But if you keep the bone from moving, well, that means the muscles at that joint don't get to do their job, and you have all kinds of collateral damage.

Hmm.

But when we approach it as a complex system from the very beginning and treat it as a complex system, it helps us get creative With other solutions. We're not trying to find the one problem. We're trying to find the problems. And it's much more experimental. Try this and see if this works. Let's try that and see if this works. And as you're going, it's much more scientific actually, because you're actually asking questions as you're going, falsifying your assumptions as you're moving forward with, with whatever intervention it is. And you're actually learning something as you're growing and as you're fixing. Instead of being stuck in a management mindset, well, everything's got to halt, everything's got to cease until we can find this one thing that needs to be fixed. And it's— you are rarely ever the one thing that needs to be fixed.

I just moved in my chair. I had goosebumps when you said that thing, because I think it just landed really well. And what you said was that when we look at life in a complex system, then there are more options. There are different ways of fixing a problem. There are different different paths to success. There's a different definition of success for each person, and there's no— and that's why you cannot automate human beings, right? Because they're amazingly, beautifully complex, and you cannot— Like, I was talking to a coachee last evening, Madden, and he was saying, Utkarsh, why don't you give me a solution? You've spoken to like 100 people, blah blah. And I'm telling him that if I were to do this coaching session with you again next week, you will— you would have evolved as a And I would've changed as well. And so, a very different solution might emerge for us in that moment. And I'm now able to connect that back to how complex human beings are. We are not complicated, we are complex. Right.

And which is why I think the advice I mentioned earlier about just the way we go about life and asking questions and pursuing the things that make you curious is really how you grow a complex system. system. See, a complicated system that's set in a mechanistic way, like you just gave an example, they want solutions to problems. Give me an answer, tell me what to do, and I'll do it. And they're serious and they're sincere.

Yeah.

Like, just tell me what to do and I will do it, you know, kind of a thing. But the problem is we are constantly changing. We're constantly evolving. I mean, we have so many mental biases and cognitive biases and logical fallacies that, you know, we think that the future and the world is going to be the same as it is now. That I'm going to be the same as I am now. So therefore it's, that's very complicated system thinking. I am who I am. My personality doesn't change. My outlook doesn't change. My experiences won't change. That's all baloney.

Hmm.

You know, in a week from now and 6 months from now and 5 years from now, I will not be the same person, you know? And that's one of the things that you can't, you can't live that, believe that if you think the world is complicated. You know, or at least treat it as complicated. Because here's the other real hard part is a lot of your listeners, you know, they'll hear, oh yes, that resonates. That makes sense. Right. But then they're still going to go about living life as it is, as it's complicated. I'm still going to expect the same things I've always expected. I'm still going to want people to give me solutions. I'm still going to do my job the same way I'm going to do it. And it requires a dramatic shift in thinking that can't happen overnight, doesn't happen overnight, but can happen.

What you said there was like the big question that was arising for me was that, okay, you and I are speaking, we have that growth mindset, we have that openness, we have that understanding. And so, we're trying to move from looking at this as a complicated system and as a complex system. And I was about to ask you, but how does one shift there? And the answer that's emerged for me, and add to that, Matt, is that curiosity is what takes us from being complicated to understanding what complexity looks like.

Correct.

That's so beautiful. And for someone who's listening, who's completely alien, new to these 2 ideas that you and I are speaking about, what else would you recommend?

Experimentation. So this is what I tell my students in particular, and I work almost exclusively with doctoral students. And so what I tell them is the importance and the value and the significance of iteration. And we don't like iterations, but you can't, because we're coming from a complicated framework of if this solution is this fix, then it should be the fix, right? Put it in there and then just let it go. We're a well-oiled machine again. We're firing on all cylinders. That's really not how it works. So I tell my students, you have to become comfortable with iterating. In other words, try something, tweak it, try it again, tweak it, try it again, tweak it, try it again. And that's That's what iteration is. It's, it's a process. It's a gradual build.

Hmm.

This is what I've tried. This is what worked. This is what didn't work. So let's tweak this intervention and try it again. Same thing with writing. I mean, you could use writing as, as a great metaphor here of your first draft, second draft, third draft, fourth draft. In most normal situations, your fourth and fifth draft is way better than your first draft. You know, and you know, there's always exceptions to the rule. That's also what makes a simple system complex is there's no standing rules that always work every single time. So, but that's okay. We can handle that anomaly every once in a while. But generally you write, you put your ideas down, you actually see it, read it, hear what you're thinking. And you thought, well, that doesn't make any sense. That's not right. Let's, let's change this and add this. And it's a little bit better. And then you read it again. Oh, I changed that. That affected this thing way down here. And that means that this can't be true if I added this new thing. So you tweak it again, iterate. And then over the course of several iterations, you get the product that you want. Same thing's true with our personal development. But when we're like, back to your question about, you know, your 8-year-old self talking to you is this idea of, were you true to yourself? You know, well, what, what do you mean? Did I do everything that I dreamt I would do when I was 8? No, but I did try to keep true to myself and making sure that whatever it is I was pursuing or chasing, I made sure I got joy out of it and made sure that that was something that, that, you know, I could undo if I needed to. And that's the other thing that's so horrible about a complicated mind system mindset is you can't fix the past. You can't undo mistakes.

Right.

And in a complicated system, mistakes are always bad.

Okay.

In a complex system, mistakes are always good. That's, that's really, really important because in a complicated system, you're punished and penalized for mistakes.

Yeah.

In a complex system, mistakes are a reward for effort and you learn and then you, you adjust for the next time. And mistakes reveal some of the weaknesses, some of the flaws in your assumptions or thoughts. And it actually improves the process, makes you stronger, makes the system stronger. It's what Nassim Nicholas Taleb called antifragility.

Love that.

And a complex system has antifragility built into it.

Yeah. So, so powerful. But is there a, is there a danger here? And where I'm coming from is playing the devil's advocate. And so just this understanding that life is so complex, what agency do I have? Can I really do something about it? Can I act? Can I, can I gather the courage to take the next step? Do you, do you see that challenge arise?

Yeah. That's why iteration is so important because if you, if you do certainly, because that's what we do when we are migrating from the complicated mindset to the complex mindset, those are the exact questions we ask. And so what I think is important in this process is as you're migrating, because like I said, you can't just make the switch overnight. You might philosophically make the switch overnight, but practically through life, it takes some time. So while you're making that, that migration, you need to allow yourself to iterate. So an iteration by definition comes in small doses, small changes. I'm not trying to become, you know, a superhero overnight and change everything and become this totally different man overnight. It's going to take a lot of small things. And again, another— I just mentioned Antifragility. Another great book that kind of helps with this is James Clear's book Atomic Habits. You know, these are just small, tiny iterations that you make along the way, which are very easy to absorb. And what's beautiful about the iterative process, if you fail, it's a small fail.

Hmm.

And it's nothing that's going to derail you, derail other people, but it's a gradual tweaking process. So yeah, so those people who don't feel like they have any agency or don't feel like, you know, this is a monumental task to take, It kind of is, but the beautiful nature about the complex system, it's the, you know, within the complex system is the famous, you know, theory that the chaos theory, the butterfly effect, you know, if the butter and the way it originally goes, I think is if the butterfly flaps his wings in Austin, Texas, it causes a tsunami, you know, in Singapore or something like that. Right. Think about that distance and how many small things had to change and so much so that you can't even really trace it back. to its origin. And this is what a complex system does for us. It's these small changes are non-consequential in and of themselves, but when, but when they compound together, you actually do become a completely different person over the course of the process. It's just not overnight.

Sometimes I feel like it's all such clichéd wisdom, but it's clichéd because of a reason. It's, it's, it just all makes sense and still it sometimes becomes so hard to put into practice.

You know why? And I've had, and I've battled this myself. The reason you're absolutely right, first of all. And the reason for that is because we have such an affinity for staying in a complicated mindset.

Yeah.

And it really is a different mindset. We're trying to make complexity make sense for us in our complicated system that we've, that we've grown up in. And it's like the fish in water, you know, it's the old fish walks by or swims by to, hey, how's the the fish, boys? And they look at each other and say, what's— or how's the water, boys? And they look at each other and say, what's water? You know, we're in a complicated system and we don't even know we're in it. So it's a paradigm that's in us. And to come out of that paradigm feels like a fish out of water. We're going to die if we leave it. That's why it's so hard to make sense of it because we're trying to make sense of a system that doesn't work in the existing system that we're in.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Beautiful. This moment, Matt, you and I are speaking, this moment could have been a butterfly effect of something that might happen decades ago. Where did this journey for Matt begin?

Oh my goodness. That's a great question. So for me, it began when I started to realize, back when I was doing my dissertation, this is early 2000s, that I was looking at human behavior through the lens of leadership behaviors that people do in different contexts. And what I began to realize is that there are people who, well, let's go back to industries, whether it's retail, government, education, whatever industry you're in, there's usually a specific set of behaviors, leadership behaviors or something that make you successful in this industry that's kind of nuanced. And idiosyncratic to this particular industry. And that's fine. But I wondered, are there behaviors, are there thought processes, are there things that we do from a leadership perspective that work or that we use no matter where we find ourselves? If I were to change industries, would I need to learn a completely brand new set of leadership behaviors and skills? Of course, the answer is no, because there's some leadership behaviors and skills skills that I'm going to use no matter where I'm at and no matter what setting or industry I'm in. So that's what I began to study. What are those behaviors from a leadership perspective that stay with you regardless of industry or context? And through that, I didn't coin the phrase. Originally, I thought I coined the phrase, which was really cool. Then I found out, like everybody, nothing new under the sun, all those kind of things. Somebody else coined the phrase decades before I did.

But contextual.

intelligence. And, and that's what I'm talking about there is how do I navigate all the different systems or industries that I find myself in? This is what led me to believe, wait a second, everything's connected. You know, leadership is leadership. And yes, there might be some very specific nuanced skills or technical skills that I might need to have for this industry.

Mm-hmm.

But generally thinking, if I can critically solve problems and critically think and communicate well, I'm going to be able communicate well generally, again, when things are normal in multiple situations, multiple contexts, it's then when I begin to realize these things are, they're not isolated. They're not complicated. They're actually interconnected. They're complex. So I need to learn to navigate complexity by thinking about these things different way. And like I said, all of a sudden that opens up a quagmire of different things now that are at my disposal and option. If I think, okay, I was raised in, in, uh, my background is athletics. Athletic training. Okay. In the United States, it's sports medicine. In Australia, it's like sport physio. And, um, so here we have our own separate discipline for that. So I have an athletic training education and background. So everything that I learned was about sport and injuries and orthopedic and all those kinds of things within the sport industry. And I found out very quickly that, well, the skills I learned here also work over here, just because I learned how to communicate and had crucial or difficult conversations with coaches. for example, their star athlete is injured. You gotta tell the coach, hey, so-and-so can't play today, you know, or, you know, in this big match or, or big meet or something like that. That's hard news to break to people. You can think of it as, well, I know how to talk to coaches and break hard news to them. Or you can say, you know what, I have a skill set of being able to communicate in difficult scenarios no matter where it's at. I could do the same thing in politics and real estate and government, you know, whatever it might be. And we get so myopic and so narrow focus of this is I do, we fail to recognize that the things you do has value beyond who you're doing it for. And that's when I began to realize, wait a second, this is not as complicated as we think it is. Complex, but it's certainly not complicated. And so that's where it began for me.

Amazing. As my team and I were researching about you, we thought it was at the Vulcan Grip. What's the story there?

What's the story Say the, the, what's the, what story? Say it again.

The Vulcan grip that you and your dad used to play with.

Oh my God. The Vulcan death grip.

Yes.

Yeah.

So I was— You can go back a few more decades.

Yeah, that was, that was even before that. That was also a great profound moment. And, and I wouldn't have been able to coin it in that phrase then, but now I can because of what I learned. Yeah. The Vulcan death grip was amazing. So my dad was a huge Star Trek fan, you know, the original Star Trek from the 1970s, you know. And, and so Mr. Spock, the, the Vault from the planet Vulcan, his, his right-hand man, you know, his, his second in command, had this technique that he would do called the Vulcan nerve pinch, right? So he would grab the, the brachial plexus on a, on a human or whatever, right there in the neck. And he would pinch that and it would cause you to lose numbness and, and stuff in your arm and make you feel you know, like you're going to pass out kind of a thing. So it's a, it's a great story. So my dad always thought that was so fun and so interesting. So we would practice that on each other all the time, you know, the Vulcan death grip. And it was a game in the house, my sisters, my brother, all of us. And one day I came home from school and I, you know, wanted to just go out and play. And my mom was there to tell me I couldn't because I didn't do my morning chores. And so I had to do those and that kind of thing. So I got an attitude with my mom. And my dad was home in the, in a different room. I didn't see him. And he's usually never home. When I came home from school, he was still at work. But today, for whatever reason, I don't even know to this day, he, he was home. And, uh, so he heard me, uh, backtalking my mom. He came running around the corner and boom, and gave me the Vulcan death grip. And all of a sudden he has my full attention, right? So he walks me over toward the wall again. He's not like in a rage or he's not angry or anything like that. So I don't wanna make this sound like it abuse scenario. It wasn't at all. He just grabbed me right there on that nerve in our neck that we practiced with as kids forever, walked me over to the wall, calm as could be, and got right down in my face, nose to nose. And he says, don't you ever talk to my wife like that again. And I remember thinking, who's your wife? I mean, I don't— the person that I'm having an issue with right now is my Mom, you know, and I, and obviously I knew it, but I didn't know it.

Right.

It's like, I remember thinking, my goodness, my mom and your wife are indeed the same person. And so as I was having that realization, I remember playing a couple other thought experiments in my head. It's like, you know, if this happened again and it was my grandfather who was home, he would have said, don't talk to my daughter like this. If it was my uncle, uncle who was home, he would've said, don't talk to my sister like this. And all of a sudden I had this epiphany. Now I'm a kid, I'm like 12 years old or however old I was, you know? And so it, I didn't all like come solidify for me in that moment, but I remember thinking, boy, that's strange and weird that this one person has 4 different identities, mom, sister, daughter, wife, and then whatever else.

Yeah.

And friend and all the other things, you know? And, uh, that's really, you know, when I trace it all the way back to that That's what I was trying to make sense of when I was a kid, this complexity thing. And it's true for all of us.

Amazing.

You know, we all bring— and this is why having a complex mindset is so important because every time I engage, just like with your client you were talking about earlier, if we meet next week, you might get a different Utkarsh, you know, Utkarsh. Sorry, I'm getting excited, so I'm not speaking clearly. Clearly, but because I love this stuff, but you're going to get a different person because right now I'm thinking about my dad roles, for example, you know, I've got these going on and, and you're getting the dad version of myself. Well, this is what I would tell my sons, but then a week later, I'm, I'm, I'm my, my employee self or I'm this self and all those. And we, we bring all of these identities with us everywhere we go, even on the same day sometimes.

Yeah. Yeah.

You get different. And so that's where I think it's so important for us to begin to realize the complexity versus complication and what that really means. It's neat to say, oh, that's a cool philosophical thing to just explore intellectually, but you can't leave it there. I'm a big fan of the statement, ideas have consequences. And so when that's the case, it's like, okay, I can either entertain this as a neat thought experiment, complex, complicated, all that, or I could really see, okay, if that's true, which I believe it is, then that has to change something down the road. These ideas have consequences. And so it has to play out and mean that I behave differently. I think of myself differently. I present myself differently. I solve problems differently, et cetera.

Yeah. Love this conversation. As we come now to the closure, let's take you to the 80-year-old, the 8-0-year-old Matt. And if that 80-year-old Matt comes back to this present Matt, and gives you one piece of advice, Matt, on how to lead the rest of your years, what would that 80-year-old say?

I have answered this question before for myself in my journal, and it's stop pursuing what you think you like and just follow where your questions take you. You know, going back to that pursue being curious thing, you know, just go where your questions take you. And as you follow where your questions take you, you will discover more about yourself. More about life, more about the people around you, and you ultimately will become a better person for it. And oh, by the way, you'll learn as you go.

Beautiful, beautiful. To everyone who's listening at 52 minutes approximately, let's listen to the 80-year-old Matt's advice: stop pursuing what you like and go where your questions take you. If the ideas of this podcast made sense, then they need to change something in you moving forward. So spend that time. Understand that there's a butterfly effect happening in our lives all the time. Be present with it. Be intentional for it. Remember, you're not going to change your life in one night. It's going to take time. Put in that, in that work. You might be 25 years old right now, so you won't understand compounding fully. Maybe it'll take 20 more years because I'm still working on it. But compounding is a superpower. Move from that state of things being complicated to this being a complex system that we are a part of. And what will take you there is curiosity, experimentation, and iterations. As you go on this journey, don't become a stuffy adult. That's the last thing you'll want with yourself. Don't become a stuffy adult. Have some fun. Don't take yourself too seriously. Chill out a little bit. Life is a spaghetti. Just eat it, enjoy it, savor it. You don't have to untangle it. You can zoom in and zoom out. You'll find the challenges. there, but just have fun. And remember, the 8-year-old Matt told us, just true, be true, totally beautifully true to who you are. And that's where the magic lies. Thank you, Matt, for this powerful and wonderful conversation. Truly appreciate your presence here.

Thank you so much. It was a ton of fun for me.

Amazing. Amazing. If you're a podcast listener or on YouTube, if this made sense to you, keep it to yourself. Because there are people who are not ready for this kind of content, this kind of wisdom? If you think they are, if they are in your network, then send it to them. Put your name in the comments, put something that resonated with you because we want to read that. We want to feel that you're engaging with it. And yeah, just take a moment to go back, listen to it again, take some notes, and make sure that you change something about your life. This is Utkarsh and Matt signing off.