This is Later with Lee Matthews the Lee Matthews Podcast. More what you hear weekday afternoon is on the Drive. Simon Cinek is misnamed. I'll explain why in just a minute. He's written best selling books including Start with Why and New York Times best selling leaders, Eat Last, and The Infinite Game. His podcast can be heard on the iHeartRadio app and everywhere you get podcasts called a Bit of Optimism. That is why I say he's misnamed. Simon,
You're not a cynic at all. I think he can be optimistic and cynical at the same time. Okay, I'll beat the future bright, but sometimes it's a cynical That's one thing you and I have in common. I always try to look a little on the bright side, even when there are darker things. I would prefer to focus on what AI can control and b I can control for the positive absolutely. You know, people call me naive because I say that I'm an optimist. In find myself as an optimist. But
I think people confuse optimism and blind positivity. Blind positivity we think everything's good all the time. That's not healthy. But optimism is the undying belief that the future is bright, and we can be in a dark tunnel. Things can be difficult and hard. But optimism is it sounds like, you know, hey, look, these are hard times. It's going to be difficult. I don't know how long it's going to be like this, but I noted that if we stick together and help each other, we're going to get
through this and come out of this better than we went in. That to me is what optimism sounds like. Yeah, that positivism that you the blind positiveism you described. They made a movie out of that. It was called Pollyanna. If you remember it, Yeah, yes, you want to bring her. Not helpful, But at the same time, we are living in a very negative world, and we have negativity no matter where we turn, and it's now infiltrating the palms of our hands. The very palms of our
hands have a device where negativity rains. You know, it's really funny where we live in a world now, where where we used to sort of give our opinions. We used to like read the news and be angry or sad, and we'd call a friend and invent that sadness or anger. And now we read the news and we go online and we vent our anger and we express our sadness. And people no longer react to the news. We're now online reacting to each other's reactions, and it's this like vicious cycle that it
can't go well. And nobody's ever read a comment on social media. And but you know what, I'm going to change my mind, said, no one ever, right, no, But you can change what goes into your mind. You can also change how you react to that. For instance, I have people call my program all the time, and they emailed me and bombard me with messages, Oh my god, look at this. The last one that I tackled was about some articles regarding artificial intelligence and how oh all
the bad things that can happen as a result of artificial intelligence. And I made a lot of jokes about it because it is a little funny artificial intelligence really, but I also looked at Wow, can you imagine an electronic micro device that can actually hunt down and devour cancer cells without hurting other sales because it can learn what is good and what isn't good and cure cancer. I
mean, that is on the horizon. As a result. Look like so many things, these things have positives and they have negatives and it's about amplifying the positives of mitigating the negatives. But putting any kind of technology out there unrestricted, I think is a dangerous thing. I mean, we can see what's happened with sort of unrestricted Internet. We still have Internet laws from nineteen ninety six governing how the Internet should be used in the responsibility of it.
So I think we have to just like implement these technologies responsibly. But as you said, we can choose to have a doomsday approach to it, or we can choose to be polyanna about it, neither of which is helpful. There is a balance somewhere in there well, and you can be cautious of the negativity but also cautious of the positivity. I think. So I'm in Cynic with Us and he is the best selling author and host of the podcast A Bit of Optimism on the iHeartRadio app but everywhere you get podcasts. I
see you are a trained ethnographer. What is that? That's correct. Ethnography is a discipline within anthropology, and really simply it's the opposite of a focus group. So like a focus group is like you bring people in to your space to ask some questions. Athnography is going out to study people in their natural environment. So it's the answropologist. It should be uncomfortable, not the
people coming to talk to them. And so that's all it is. And I learned to sort of observe the world I lived in, and that's what I studied in college and it's definitely served me. Well, where do you get your positivity? Do you have that in your family? Or are everybody in your family kind of optimistic? I think we're pretty I mean I've always been happy to go lucky with a kid. I don't know. I think
my mother dropped me on my head when I was a baby. Maybe you know, it's I just like I said, there's not a naivete and there's not a naive pay to it. It's just this. It's just I just believe the future is bright, and but it's it's I also believe that the way you stay positive and the way you stay optimistic is true friendship that I
don't think anybody has naturally sort of the unlimited wells of positivity. I think when you have people in your life who care about you and who have your back, and you feel like, no matter what, you're never alone. I think that's what that's what makes us optimistic in the world. And so if to be optimistic, I think you have to like nurse nurse your friendships, be there for your friends, to ensure that your friends will be there for you. I think that's all it takes to be quite honest. Well,
and there's a little bit of belief too. You have to have people who believe in you, or at least people you believe believe in you absolutely. I mean, like if you if anybody needs the courage to make a difficult, difficult decision or to stay optimistic, all you need is one friend who puts their hand on your shoulder and say, you got this. I believe in you. You got to do this. And it's amazing the courage that we can find. Simon Senek is with us. The podcast is a
bit of optimism. How do you approach people who do come to you with lots of negativity about well, well, for instance, it could be all right if this happens. How do we handle it positively? So it's number one is I don't fight with people. I don't want to convince them that they're wrong. I don't want to convince them that you know, they have
to see the world differently. It's about listening and so developing those human skills, including listening skills, to make to give somebody the space to feel heard. And what's amazing is when somebody is in a bad place, they're negative, they're you know, approaching a situation, you know, in a certain way. If I just let them feel heard at that point, they can
come around themselves and or they're open to advice from others. But it's really all about letting people feel heard first, which is a skill unfortunately a lot of us need to learn. Oh I know that so well. I know that so very well. One of the things I say on this program is is when I'm doing all the talking, I'm not learning anything. It's true, true, I know the feeling. I know the feeling, but it's you know, you just look at the world that we live in today.
You know, we're all shouting at each other, but nobody's listening. And it's the amazing power of listening. I didn't think people realize that when you give somebody that. And I talk to people about like I shouldn't have to listen to them, they should listen to me, And like, well, that's never going to happen. Yeah, so one of you has to go first. And in my world, the person who goes first, I call that person the leader, because that's what leaders do. They lead the way,
they show us how to do things. They lead by example, and it's the leader who listens first and creates the space where conversations can actually happen. Simon Senek a bit of optimism. We all could use it. Get it regularly on his podcast, heard on the iHeartRadio app and everywhere you get podcasts. Now, go out and have a great day. Simon Sinnek,
thanks so much, you too. Thanks for listening to Later with Lee Matthews Lee Matthews podcast, and remember to listen to The Drive Live weekday afternoons from five to seven. An iHeartMedia presentation