Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: You don't charge enough for your services. What do you mean you don't have imposter syndrome? You're like backing into deals that nobody would ever take. And that's imposter syndrome in essence, because you're not saying, hey, I'm good enough to do this. I came across the idea of writing down I am and then filling in the blank with what you wanted to become.
[00:00:20] Speaker B: Hey there billionaire. Yep, I'm talking to you. If you expect to live another 31 years, you're already a billionaire. Not in money, but in the real measure of wealth, time. That's because 31 years is roughly a billion seconds. But most of us waste time in ways we'd never waste money. The currency of time billionaires is micro moments. The 90 second to 15 minute gaps hidden between the structured parts of your day. This podcast is about reclaiming them with quick research backed ideas to help you feel more creative, productive and alive. Welcome to Time Billionaires. Let's make your next micro moment count.
This is a two part episode. If you want to check out the first part, listen to the previous episode of Time Billionaires. Well, you're also reminding me that language is powerful and the value we ascribe to it is powerful. In English, we only have one way to say I am. And whether that's a permanent fixed personality trait or a temporary state, I am cold or I am kind, we only have one way to say it. But other languages have multiple temporary and permanent states. In Spanish have two different verbs and they don't mix them up. And so the idea that they could change and be fluid is clear in some languages. And how we tell ourselves the stories so it both shapes our reality and reflects what we're actually hearing back. And so being intentional about what we say I am and how we ascribe it, I am, is this temporary or is this permanent or what can I do to achieve this goal? Is huge. But the other thing that came up, that's huge. Yeah, go ahead.
[00:01:59] Speaker A: No, I was supporting you and saying that is huge.
You finished your thought. I was fascinated by.
[00:02:05] Speaker B: It is not assuming we know the intent of a question or the answer.
So this amazing thread started, if you recall, by my asking if you could give one piece of advice to your 31 year old self, which I almost didn't even ask because I thought you had already answered it earlier. And so assuming that I knew what you were going to say because you had answered questions that to my mind could overlap in the answer would have kept us from this insight. And I Even hear this in some of the early career folks that I have mentored or coached formally or informally is. Oh, our, our stakeholder came and asked if we could do blank ascribing value to what that meant quickly. If I say no, I have to explain. We don't necessarily know why somebody's asking. It could be a fleeting question. It could be really important. And so not assuming that whatever your answer is is something to be ashamed of or you know, why they're asking or how important it is to them without clarifying is huge also to ourselves.
[00:03:08] Speaker A: Yeah, and I'm hugely guilty of assigning meaning to questions people ask that they didn't intend. And it's a, not a good trait. Can I ask, do you mind if I continue interviewing you? Because it's again, I find you eminently fascinating.
I, I may have asked you this before. Was one your parents a teacher or professor or something like that?
[00:03:29] Speaker B: Great recollection. So something interesting about both my husband and myself is that our fathers are lawyers and our moms are in education.
So my husband, my mother in law was a kindergarten to third grade teacher for 33 years and my mom helped high school students find college scholarships and then later some college students find grad school scholarships.
[00:03:49] Speaker A: That is great. And so that explains, you've got the, I mean this is a compliment, the mindset of a lawyer in the sense that you analyze concepts and then because of the side of your DNA that comes from your, your mom and your, your husband's mom, you know that, that ability to say things in ways that simplify and clarify, which is the gift of a teacher.
Really interesting stuff.
One of the things that you and I both see and agree on is the power of that statement I am. And how it can dictate our lives.
Viktor Frankl, who wrote the pivotal book Man's Search for Meaning, for those of you who are not familiar with him, he was a Holocaust survivor and he came out of it and he was a psychologist, psychiatrist. And he, and he realized there's stimuli and response. There's stimuli and response. And between those two things is a space.
And what we do with that space can dictate the outcome of our lives.
And so a way to sort of put this into more granular terms. If we have a stimulus that affects us, we have two ways to look at it. We can either look at it as a negative that's going to hold us back or look at it as a positive. That's that space between the stimulus and the response that can help you sort of Formulate your life. My stimuli in early childhood was a mom who self medicated with alcohol. God bless her, may she rest in peace. But. But I had a choice. I could either and I remember very specifically the moment in my life, I was in seventh grade and I went, okay, I got two choices. I can either take this bad thing that's going on and let it hold me down or I can start looking at the positive side. She's a very loving woman. She's a great mom when she's sober, God bless her.
And so there's that positive things, at least I get half the time. She's the most amazing mother you could ever have. And that's better than a lot of people. So changing and framing up the things that happen in our lives as a way to propel us forward is a really important part of being a fulfilled human being.
[00:06:10] Speaker B: Yeah. At the very beginning of our conversation, you talked about how in any given moment. I forgot how you describe it. You're safe.
Viktor Frankl talked about that too. Of he could be hungry and in a concentration camp and have diseases, but at any given moment he had control over his mind and feeling safe there. And something else that I didn't expect from him to. I learned from this really awesome book called what Would you'd Do if youf Weren't Afraid? By McCall. I'm forgetting the author's last name, but she quotes Viktor Frankl. And I didn't realize this, but supposedly one of the ways that prisoners in Auschwitz would decide to end their time there would be by running into an electric fence, which I think we can all understand. When you're facing the horrors that surround you, that may seem like an easier out.
And supposedly he was talking to a fellow inmate, someone who was there who was planning to. And he said, I have nothing left to live for. My family's dead, my children are dead. What is there left to live for?
And Frankl asked him, well, what does life need from you? And I think that flip of what am I doing? This focus on ourselves, what am I getting? What am I achieving? Is very egocentric and sort of isolates us from the collective. And when we ask what do I want to do, Achieve, accomplished, get from life, there's a lot less control, there's a lot less focus on the things that actually make us unique or happy. What does life need from me? What do I have to contribute? Is a more inspiring question that inherently detaches us from the results, the outcome and the ego. If I want to get a certain promotion and I don't. It can feel like an ego bruise. But if I want to have the biggest impact I can at this company, there's nothing stopping me and I don't need anyone else's permission to do that.
[00:08:00] Speaker A: I love that idea. And I'm reminded of a statement that was about how the one that, you know, they do studies and they say the one thing that genuinely makes people happy is not receiving, it's giving. And if so, it's that same concept of what does life need? For me, that's the giving side of it instead of what am I getting from life. And we can see it in our politicians and other people who want, want, want, and take, take, take. And it's the people on the other side of that spectrum that are at peace, whether it's the Dalai Lama or the Pope or anybody else, where the, that they are giving, having a life of service and that that life is treating them well. I did remember one of the things I wanted to talk we're going to about, we're going to get into the, for those of you listening, we're going to get into the deep end of the pool. But this is all science based.
So one of the things in the book Better Guidebook to a New and Improved you that I work on is the four M's. And the four M's are mindset, mentoring, management and marketing, which is personal branding. But on the mindset side of the equation, I'm a big believer if you change your thoughts, you change your actions. And if you change your actions, you can change the outcomes in your life. And so everybody, every great spiritual tradition goes to change your thinking and that will change your life. And so I started exploring that and found out that thoughts, we all have thoughts, create neurotransmitter. A neurotransmitter is all those things we've heard of, adrenaline, dopamine, all these sort of neurotransmitters, which are essentially hormones that go into your brain. Those actual neurotransmitters have an electromagnetic charge to them.
So when you think something it creates, it gets the neurotransmitters to kick into high gear. Those neurotransmitters have an actual electromagnetic charge to them. Now stay with me on this for all of you listeners out there. The electromagnetic energy is used by birds to navigate how to fly south. So we know animals can pick up on electromagnetic energy. We know that humans can too, because they've done scientific studies and it's in the book about how we pick up on electromagnetic energy.
Why am I saying this? What point am I trying to make when you and I talk about I am statements.
And that what we tell ourselves, we become.
If we tell ourselves things that are. If we have thoughts that are giving, loving, sharing, compassionate, empathetic, that creates the neuro, that makes the neurotransmitters get produced in our bodies. Those neurotransmitters, as I've mentioned, have an electromagnetic charge to them. My premise is, is that humans can pick up on that energy that you're emanating. And that last statement is the one thing we quite have, haven't quite proven yet. But if we know that thoughts create effectively electromagnetic energy and that humans can pick up on electromagnetic energy, the only thing we don't know is can we pick up on another human's electromagnetic energy? It's why we sit around and say that person walked into the room and lit up the room.
And a materialist, somebody who only believes in, you know, there's cause and effect, would say, well, that's just because they, their posture was better or they were smiling. We've also all had that experience.
[00:11:46] Speaker B: They're charismatic, they're tall, their face is symmetrical. Right. Like, yeah, we've reduced it to things that we can point to. Right?
[00:11:53] Speaker A: Yeah, that whole reductionist thing, it's like data.
And where, where we're falling short is. And I get it, science hasn't quite proven this yet. No, we actually are picking up on their energy. They're emanating an electromagnetic energy that we are picking up on and it's positive and we're feeling good because they're in the room with us. Or we've all had the opposite experience. Somebody walks in and sucks the energy out of the room. That's the same thing. So, so I know we went into the deep end of the pool there and there's, there's some, you know, speculative commentary there about electromagnetic energy, people picking up on it. But every one of your listeners and people watching this right now are sitting around going, yeah, I kind of have felt that before. And I was wondering what that's all about. Well, what it's all about is your thoughts create neurotransmitters. Neurotransmitters have energy. People pick up on that energy. So if you have good thoughts, that energy goes out and you get good energy back.
And that's a lot of the fundamental premise of the book is how to. How to harness positivity. Love, giving, charity, empathy, all those great things, and using it to become the best version of yourself.
[00:13:05] Speaker B: I Love it. I can't wait to read this book. This will be great. Yeah, I think for a lot of people the critical thoughts feel more true out of a habituated really a trauma response. Right. If we think we're deluding ourselves by saying we're capable of things that seem too bold, well, we heard that somewhere. So choosing to believe the opposite really can just be that.
As Tyler and I talk about the traits that we want for our daughter, creative confidence was the very top of his list. And that's something I think he thrives in and I have not for most of my life. He truly does believe and has been true. He can figure anything out. He is confident that he can go build a skate ramp or a company or software or design something. And it's true he can because he believes he can.
That's learned the idea that I am bad at painting I will never. That's also taught to ourselves. And it can feel protective of or realistic to put our energy towards something more promising or more likely to say I am bad at I will never, I'm not. That's also a choice. And so you're not deluding yourself to say you're capable of any number of things. If something genuinely doesn't interest you, fine. Don't put your energy there. But if it does, just follow that directionally. I heard this analogy. The way we plan our lives really should be more like headlights. A car driving at night, we can see as far as the headlights. So the directionally right next turn or next step is the one to take. The idea that we can have a perfect map of how to get to the east coast from the west coast in our brains is not the way to plan a road trip. And that's not the way to plan a career. And that's one of many reasons I like the critique of a five year plan. Well, I had a 20 year plan and the only way to really stick to that is to ignore better opportunities or learnings that come up on the way. If you're actually being curious about what's in front of you, the directionally right next step will lead you somewhere better than saying, here's my plan. This is the age I go to law school. This is the age I have my first child. Well, that's just not going to be reality.
[00:15:05] Speaker A: Can you tell me when your book is coming out? You have so much great stuff. That whole idea of the headlights and you focus.
[00:15:16] Speaker B: My idea. Yeah, I heard that from someone, but thank you.
[00:15:19] Speaker A: That's okay. You're articulating it and you're sharing it with your listeners and all that sort of stuff. But that whole idea of, you know, just focus on, on what's in front of you and, and do the best job to get to the next 100 yards and all that sort of stuff is so good because then it does open you up to the opportunities that may show up unexpectedly. I love that I, I almost to a fault have this, you know, the whole land thing and all mapped out. Part of it is literally I just want to know what direction I'm headed and then let the wind sort of guide me a tiny bit on all of that. There is a, there is a great. The Alan Watts, who's a great thinker, talks about wu wei, which is a Taoist tradition of wu wei is doing by non doing. But his way of expressing it in a, in a way that Westerners can understand was, was to say wu wei is the art of sailing rather than the art of rowing. And I think personally I'm too much of a rower and I'm trying to work towards being a sailor. What does that mean?
Focus on the rudder, focus on the boat, focus on the hull, focus on the sails, but don't worry about which direction the wind is blowing. Just let the wind guide you where you're supposed to be. And again, I'm a work in process like all of us are.
That's something that I'm still working on, but I'm try. I got that little yellow sticky sitting right here to remind me, hey, it's the art of sailing rather than the art of rowing and kind of letting go a tiny bit in order to accomplish that.
[00:17:01] Speaker B: I think it's beautiful. I think a lot of us have had the feeling of getting something, some achievement arriving somewhere we thought would make us happy and it doesn't. And that is crushing and it feels like a personal failure. But it is really, to your point, the absence of wu wei being too much of a rower versus a sailor trying to grab at a result, thinking it'll solve some problem or make us feel complete. But no, it doesn't. There's nothing external that we need. Yeah.
[00:17:28] Speaker A: Who was. There was a famous swimmer in the most recent Olympics and he'd won more gold medals than anybody and, and he came away and they said, you know, how's it going? He said, Michael Phelps, I think, said this.
The saddest day in my life was the day after I won all those gold medals. And he said, because now I had no, nothing I was shooting for. I thought getting to the Top of the mountain would be blissful. And it was the saddest day of my life. So that goes back to chopping the vegetables. When you are in the moment chopping the vegetables and loving that process, that's life.
And the food is the added benefit that comes after it. But the being in the moment of making the food is something that is. That is more fulfilling sometimes than the actual food is.
[00:18:18] Speaker B: Yeah, it is. Spanish has a word for this. South American Spanish, as I understand it, la solando, the trip when the journey is more important than destination. We don't have a succinct way of describing that in English, but I think it was Anne Lamott who said, if you're not enough without the gold medal, you won't be enough with it. There's no external achievement that could make us feel like enough if we don't already.
[00:18:41] Speaker A: Oh, wow, that's big, too. If you're not enough before the gold medal, you won't be enough after the gold medal either. That's great. My sister, in my journey, my sister is a very wise person.
And two thoughts cross my mind. One is she said something brilliant to me. She said, you know, Jamie, you need to work on you yourself and get comfortable being you before you should be introducing new people into your life. My late wife passed away and there is a new person in my life. But Ashley, my sister, was saying, get, get, get you worked out and then you'll be a much better partner moving ahead. Which has. Has been the truth. And I did a lot of work on that. The other thing Ashley said to me once, and this is in a lot of the speeches I do, it's a slide that says, when we move towards comfort, our world shrinks. When we move towards discomfort, our world expands.
So, Rebecca, I'm going to suggest you go get some paints and take a look at some of those Van Gogh paintings. And I bet you could do them on the fly more capably than you ever thought possible. But that's pushing. The point I'm trying to make, of course, is that's pushing the limits. That's making you feel uncomfortable. It would make, you know, anybody feel uncomfortable. But my sister, her point is that's. That's where life grows, is when we are moderately uncomfortable, we are expanding our lives as opposed to getting more and more comfortable and our lives shrinking as a result.
[00:20:23] Speaker B: So true. Yeah. When you have a chance to expand your life, it will get more comfortable and more interesting over time. Yeah.
Thank you, Jamie.
Thanks for spending this micro moment with me. If you found it valuable, share it with a fellow time billionaire and give us a rating to help others discover the power of micro moments. For more ways to reclaim your time, check out timebillionaires.org and follow me. Rebecca Shattucks on LinkedIn. See you next time, Sam.
