Eric Kaufmann

just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Eric Kaufman. Eric guides leaders to make better decisions and achieve better results.

He has consulted for hundreds of leaders, including executives and teams at Sony, Tea, Mobile, Genentech, Alcon Labs, and Tara Data. He is the founder and president of Sagatica, Incorporated and serves on the board of the San Diego Zen Center. His new book is called The Four Virtues of a Leader and shares practical ideas and tools that help deepen

a leader's ability to be efficient, effective, and deliberate. Before we get started, I wanted to let you know that we are now accepting donations as a way to support the show. If the one you feed brings value to your life, now is the time to let us know. Head over to our Patreon campaign page at one you feed dot net slash support and consider making a monthly donation. You'll get some pretty cool rewards in return. Every listener and every dollar or makes a difference. It's what will

keep the show going and growing. And again, that's one new feed dot net slash support from me and Eric. Thanks for your kindness. And here's the interview with Eric Kaufman. Hi, Eric, welcome to the show. Thank you. Eric. I'm delighted to be on the show with you. I'm happy to have you on the show. You wrote a book, it's called The Four Virtues of a Leader, And as I was telling you in the conversations before the show, I got way more out of the book than we're going to

cover in this uh relatively short interview. So nice job. It's really well done, and I'm excited to talk more about it. Thank you, Thank you appreciate that. So our podcast, as you know, is based on the parable of two wolves, where there's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson and he says, in life, there are two wolves inside of

us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like need and hatred and fear. And the grand said stops and he thinks about it for a second. He looks up at his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in

the work that you do. I love that parable. I remember hearing it years ago, and maybe I should start by saying when I was I was about twenty two years old. You know, I went to college, not unlike many people, but perhaps unlike many people, ended up flunking out after the first year. And it wasn't for lack of intelligence or capacity, it was for being totally distracted. Um I came here from overseas. I I got swept

up in all the excitement over southern California. The reason I'm sharing this is app I got into meditation as a way to attempt to harness all this energy inside of me. And by age twenty two, I've been meditating for three years, and I had this revelation that there are these forces within me that are pulling me in opposite and often conflicting directions. And uh, I'm sharing this with you because I was twenty two years old. Was nine, I got a tattoo, long before it was popular to

get tattoos of a Roman mythical animal called pan. You're probably familiar with pan, right, it's got from the waist down it's a goat, and from the waist up it's a human. And I got that My life is this tension. The reason I wanted a tattooed was for this constant reminder of the tension between the impulsive nature of the

goat and the aspirational nature of the human. And I asked a tattoo artist to put a flute in one hand and a serpent in the other, and the flute captures sort of the creativity, the transcendent aspects, and the snake was really all about this transition and continuous pulse

rather than a singular direction. So it's been meaningful to me for a long time, this inner tension, and I think that in my work as as a as a leadership, as an executive coach, as an author, as a teacher, it's one of the most fundamental elements of what it means to be human is to be negotiating that tension. Yeah,

I couldn't agree more. I think it's always there. And one of the things I like about the parable a lot is that it sort of makes it clear that those things are always going to be there, and that's just part of the human condition. There's a wonderful zen teacher, Elizabeth Hamilton's, and she wrote a book called Taming Your Parrot, which is a great, great conversation of itself, right, But she introduced me to this idea of the many means,

the many means. And I've come to think about the parable of the two wolves is perhaps two wolves is very allegorical, not enough. There are two wolf packs, right, you know, And I mean I can be concurrently excited and frightened, which seemed to beat the economists I could be loving and angry. So these tensions are coexistent and multiple.

So your book talks about the four virtues of a leader, and you start off by framing leadership around the concept popularized mainly by Joseph Campbell, but but pretty endemic to lots of things in our culture of the hero's journey. So, in what way is being a leader or in what ways can being the leader be like going on the hero's journey? There are three elements I'm really focused on in terms of the hero's journey, and as soon as

I described them, I think you'll hear their relevance to leadership. Right. The first one is that the hero is somebody who is going after significant prize. Right, So the significant prize is can be saving the village, it can be rescuing the damsel, it can be getting the treasure back from the dragon, whatever the mythical stories are, right, But there's something significant and going after. That's the first thing, so

there's a motivation as a drive. The second is that inevitably the heroic journey is really about strife, challenge, difficulty, struggle, sacrifice, risk, all those things that are inherent in that, and that there are allies and helpers and teachers and mentors and foes. You know, there's all these characters that show up along this journey of of risk and sacrifice, and neither of

those is sufficient to make it a heroic journey. The third element, which is so critical, is that the hero then finds the prize, overcomes the challenges, evolves as a human, and then returns back to the village, to the town, to the community, and shares the good, shares the treasure. That's my aspirational view of leadership. Right, It's somebody who's willing to go after a prize. I don't care what the prize is. It's not up to me to decide

or to judge. But it's something beyond the comfort zone. It's something not ordinary. And in that process they're going to struggle and strive, and there's going to be difficulty. There are allies and foes, and then there is a prize to be one which is shared back with the community. That's my aspirational view of leadership. And there's different ways that it falls out, but but I see those as

very as very mirror images. One of the other what that just made me think of with the hero's journey is a conversation that comes up a lot lately, which is really balancing in a spiritual life, that idea between contemplation going within and then service outwards. And what I just heard was that the hero's journey really is a metaphor for that, that the interior practice is for a purpose of them taking it back out and using it to serve. I just hadn't thought of applying it in

that in that scenario before. Yeah, I actually liked it. You're highlighting that because I think it sometimes gets lost on us. That. So I lived for many years a very contemplative life, and as a matter of fact, I was very contemplative, and I you know, I finished college, I went to work at large Fortune one companies, but I was really doing that all in service of the spiritual pursuit. And the spiritual pursuit was about me, my clarity,

my compassion, my focus. And it culminated in a year that I spent in a silent retreat in a mountain cabin that I built in New Mexico. And what was so revealing was that as I went into the deepest, most solitary experience of my life, I had this revelation that I really needed to grow through contact and service, which blew me away, right. I was unprepared for that. I thought I was going to be more contemplative, sort

of the intuitive revelation, call it what you will. Was communicating, connecting, collaborating, dealing with the vicissitudes and challenges of service and all of difficulties of kindness and relationship. It's a very powerful aspect of what it means to be a hero and

a human and a leader. Yeah, and that's one of the things I've said recently to several people, and probably on errors that if you ask me what the most surprising thing I've learned, you know, we've done a hundred and forty five of these or forty six of these at this point. I think that the most surprising thing to me was how often has been pointed out how important the external world is too. I think I read

a lot, a lot of Buddhist books. I was reading one earlier today, and it was it was saying that you know, all happiness comes from within, and while I understand the direction that that's going, and I think that the interior journey is a significant one, and that's missing and most of our culture, I think for those of us that have pursued us spiritual path, sometimes that's where we focus too much, and we don't focus enough on the importance of the world around us and how much

the world around us can be part of our spiritual journey and lead us further down it. Yeah, it's fascinating to bring this up. Eric, insomuch as there's a term that some of my teachers, he was called spiritual bypass. And I can tell you that I did not realize that for ten eleven, twelve years, I was using this intensive spiritual, reflective meditative process to avoid the real stuff. And but I was avoiding it in the most noble way. Right.

I could sit there and meditate, and I could have these somotic experiences and and and transcendent cosmic bliss consciousness, but I couldn't really maintain a decent relationship. And and it was easier for me to relate to the cosmos than it was to relate to a girlfriend or friends or co workers. And that became sort of a catalyzing

element for me spiritually. I felt like I was spiritually attuned but an emotional moron, And so I avoiding and found profound learning and constant challenge you know I have. I mean, I've been married for seventeen years, our daughters a sixteen and fourteen. I've been running my business for eighteen years. Everything I've done over the past seventeen eighteen years has been very external, while I still maintain my practice. But it's both and it's the two wolves in fact

working together that's really fighting one another. So this is the part of the show that we sometimes have a sponsor announcement as a way to raise money for the show, and one of the things that we wanted to try was to see if we could support the show via donation. We'd love to get to a point where we don't have to convince you to buy other people's things. We'd rather just ask you to support something that we really

believe in, which is this show. One of the questions you might naturally have about a donation campaign is why. And I think one of the things that we don't really talk about much is that the show does take a considerable amount of time and money to run, and so we've been doing it as a passion project for almost three years now. I think we've got about a hundred and fifty close to a hundred fifty episodes now that we put out a brand new one every single week.

I don't think that either Chris or I are especially comfortable asking people for money. For money, that's a good point. As far as asking other people for money, it's not something we're entirely comfortable with. But in order to keep the show going, to continue to grow it, to continue to add new things, we need to start bringing in a more regular income. So in order to do that, we've started what's known as a Patreon campaign. It's a way for people to a monthly donation, and on that

site you'll see a couple of things. You will see that there are various reward levels, so depending on how much you pledge, you get different rewards. The other thing is there are goals that are set and so we've set up several different goals all the way from simply being able to cover the costs of the show up to us being able to produce a second episode per week.

So if the show is important to you, if it's added value to your life, if it's taken days that we're crappy and made them better, if it's done any of that, we could really use your help that's right. So go to one new feed dot net slash support and you can check everything out, the donation levels, and if you give a thousand dollars a week, I will personally fly out and give you a hug. I probably don't have time to do that, but that would be great. Now he'll do it, He'll do all right. So here's

the rest of the interview with Eric Kaufman. Let's talk for a second about leadership. So it's obvious what leadership is if you're the executive of a fortune there's some very obvious elements of leadership. But where does leadership play into life for people who maybe aren't directing a large group of people in a professional setting. What are other examples of leadership that we could be striving for in our day to day life. So I coach CEOs of

Fortune one companies. I was on the phone today with the president of a Fortune one company. I assure your leadership is not that obvious at any level. But I hear what you're saying. You know, it seems obvious to us looking at them, saying, oh, there's a person leadership position. My definition of leadership is organizing and influencing people to achieve meaningful outcomes. So the meaningful outcomes or whatever is meaningful.

My wife was a remarkable leader of the PTA my you know, the parent Teacher association my daughter's school for years, and she made some real difference in the school's experience in the community, for the students, for the teachers. Rabbis and clerics and ministers are are leaders in their spiritual community, parents and leaders in the home. I think anyone who's who's organizing and influencing in order to make something happen

is stepping their feet on a leadership path. And so it's a very limiting notion to the discussion of leadership. And I think you're absolutely right to point it out, to pretend that it's only the purview of some chosen few. Yeah, I think it has more to do with an attitude and a willingness to both be challenged and make a contribution. Yep.

And in the you know, a lot of the consulting work I've done in the corporate world, you can find people who are not the managers or the directors, but you can tell they clearly are the leaders of a team. You know. There there is definitely ways that people have um influence and and organized to create meaningful results, even if they don't officially have the title. Yeah, the title is convenient because then what you have is authority. But

authority doesn't always translate into influence. It can translate into persuasive powers or punitive powers. But to organize an influence, to have people elect, choose, commit themselves, that's leadership. Yep. So you ask four questions around leadership, and uh, let's see if we can get through each of these. Again, as I said, I could talk for way longer, but let's start with the very first question, which is what

am I creating? And you say something in there that I really like, because I believe this is true, and it's one of those things that has felt sometimes to me at odds with the spiritual idea of not wanting anything. And you say, our minds are designed to move towards something. We are wired to create, form and accomplish. It's an inevitable human experience that we are channels of concepts and ideas,

of spiritual visions, of love, of passion. We are the conduits and that love, that creativity, that energy, that passion by whatever name, and it means. And I don't mean that it has to be ecstatic or sweep your way of be overwhelming. But each and every human is in touch with this basic experience of energy that moves through us and wants to express itself. And that unstoppable, inevitable force that we can taste and feel is channeled and the unique expression that is who we are at this moment.

And so we're always creating. We are always affecting the world around us. I don't mean that we are the shapers of the universe, but I mean through our speech, through our actions, through our choices, through our relationships, we are shaping the environment. And so what am I creating is the first question. And it's not meant to be contradictory to no mind or big mind or presence or surrender. It's simply an aspect of what it means to be human is to create, and to create intentionally, I think

is where mindfulness and skillful living becomes so powerful. Yeah, And I think that it is an interpretation of the for noble truths that people often take about Buddhism, which is that you just shouldn't want anything, or you shouldn't have any desire. And I think that's a it's a not great interpretation. I've always wrestled with it because I agree to I think that we are designed to move

towards something that we are wired like. That seems as fundamental to me as part of human nature as anything else. It's as fundamental as a sexual order to reproduce. Right, there's this unstoppable force at wants to replicate and express physically, emotionally, intellectually, spiritually. This is my thirtieth year in a zen practice. I don't take it as Buddhist saying don't want. They're saying that the the instruction was not to get attached right,

the force. The one thing is simply is it's a force. The attachment is unskillful living. And there are two different things. And so the characteristic that goes with what I'm creating or asking the question of what am I creating is around focus. And one of the things that you talk about is I'll go and read it here. You say unintentional actions are driven by impulse, habit, and history, not by choice. Leaders on the hero's journeys strive to act

from choice, not from scripted habit. It's a call for awareness, you know, it's not just I'm not promoting or proposing or inviting people to just be hardheaded, stubborn insistors on my way or the highway. I'm proposing that we are on the spiritual path and the human path called to

wake up. And part of awakening is awareness, and part of awareness is recognizing the distinction between the impulsive, unexamined habitual sort of mother, father, church and state conditioning and the deliberate practice mindfulness, meditation, spiritual practices of every tradition are an invitation to live deliberately, to live compassionately, to live in aware life. And that's that's the same invitation

with focus. You describe focus, you say it's a fragile flower, and you say it's fragile because we have to overcome three hurdles in order to remain focused. Biology, psychology, and geography. Can you walk us through those real quick? Yeah? I mean, you know we're back to the wolves right that are that are holding these are so. I know you have two wolves in the parable, but the biology, psychology and geography are are just more wolves in the pack. The

biology distraction, as it were, is is our body. I'm hungry, I'm thirsty, I'm horny, I'm itchy, I'm sleepy, I my mom, I'm right. We identify this physiology, and it's difficult to stay focused when you're hungry, thirsty, and tired. That's just sort of biological. The psychology is everything that has to do with the learned schema, the belief system that we

hold to be true, and the capacity for believing. How focused we can be, how much control we have, how much capacity we have, how much you know, the term locus of control, This idea of whether I'm internally oriented or externally oriented. That's that's part of psychology. And then geography matters too, because the space we are spatial. We are people in spatial relation to our environment. So by geography, I mean the environment. Right. If my if my room is a terrible mess and I have a hard time

concentrating in the mess, that's going to affect me. If there's noise around me, that's going to affect me. If the air conditioning is blowing and it's too cold, that's going to affect me. So there are these constant, constant features of internally sort of at the thought level, at the physical level, and then externally what's around us, And so learning to navigate through that gracefully as part of what it takes to really be in a focused state. Excellent.

So let's move on to the next question, which is courage. Well, that the trait is courage. The question is what am I avoiding? And one of the things I thought was really interesting was you make a distinction between fear and anxiety. It's uh interchangeable. I think in our culture we talk about fear and anxiety. But the distinction from me is and it's it's not an insignificant one. I think it's

important for many reasons. But the distinction in particular is when I considered biological and the other one is psychological. So fear is a physiological response to the perception of threat, and of course perception is a large modifier there. But but it's physical, you know. So when I stand um in front of a of a raving, barking dog, that fear is just a biological survival impulse, right, It's it's scary. Anxiety is psychological. Anxiety comes from our remarkable capacity to

time travel in our minds. Right. I can only be anxious in anticipation of something, and largely it's the imaginary components that I add on to it. So if I'm going to go speak in front of an audience, right, a common one a lot of people can refer to. I do a lot of keynote speaking. I mean, that's a significant part of my business, is stepping in front of audiences and speaking. And every time I'm about to

go out there, I have this right. I'm not sure how that comes off an audio, but you know, my chest kind of you know titans, and my my belly flutters around, and that's anxiety. That's psychological. That's me thinking they're gonna like me. It didn't think I'm stupid? Am I well prepared? Am I going to be funny? You see? That's all stories I'm making up in my mind, projecting into the future, and so they can be dealt with similarly, but they're distinct from one another. What does courage mean

to you? What is your definition of courage? In the book, you say that you know, the goal of becoming fearless is um this isn't your words exactly, but mostly foolhardy, because it's just you know, as humans, we're going to have fear and that courage is a different thing. Yeah, No, I think fool hardy is probably cleaning up what I

say about fearlessness. You know, I think because I pursued being fearless for years, right, I mean, I was a young spiritual warrior, and I was bought into this notion that I've got to be fearless as a way to live a full life. And it's such a bunch of bologna. As far as I'm concerned, I think that courage is walking toward what you'd rather run away from. So I'm not proposing eliminating the fear. Eliminating the anxiety. You don't

have to get rid of it. It's really about recasting the relationship with that anxious state, and a willingness to gently, consistently or or intensely and in large lips however, but it's moving towards what you'd rather run away from it. And one of the great barriers to it, it's not just how we think, but how we feel. I mean, the feeling of anxiety in the body, the physical, manifest somatic experience is mostly gross, and so we want to

avoid that. And so the sweaty palms, the dry mouth, palpitating heart, the breathing, the blah blah blah, that's what we're avoiding as much as anything. So the courage is simply moving towards it rather than away from it. You say that courage is an aptitude for doing something that frightens you. How do you build that aptitude? Because lots of people don't have it, including myself or all of us in certain circumstances. So what's a way you can

build courage? There are a number of ways to build courage. The first one doesn't require any action, but requires awareness. And so I propose again that you've already begun to be courageous when you're willing to embrace or be present to the very physical experience of fear. So what do I mean by that? I have to give up presentation. I want to ask for a raise at work. I'm

going to ask somebody out in a date. I want to ask, you know, my my wife to do something that historic we haven't done, about how we've managed finances in the house, whatever it is. Right when I think about doing that, I start getting anxious, right and then and then I go into this motive, Well, maybe I should just avoid it in whatever way I avoid something. M simply sitting there for two or three or four minutes and breathing into those sensations and facing actually embodying

that anxiousness. I'm at some level it sounds so inconsequential, but if you think about it, it's already an act of courage because you're facing it, you're not running from it, right. You know, I'm not just saying, oh, forget it, I'll go shopping, I'll go to the gym, I'll just work harder. I'm actually gonna be present to it. So that's one. The other is I invite people to really just look

at courage as an incremental process. I don't have to conquer public speaking, but what would a ten movement in that direction look like, what would look like, what would look like? Because courage is much like a muscle, much like any skill, right, I mean, I learned to juggle. When I first on to juggle, was mostly just you know, the juggling balls on the ground, and then over time

they took more time in the air. And so I think courage is, you know, first of all, feel it, be willing to be present to the sensations of it, then listen to the thoughts of it. What am I saying to myself? Then incrementally move it towards the thing that you're avoiding. I mean, there's so much more, but you know, these are practical pieces anyone can apply now. And this idea of feeling, going into the body and being willing to feel those unpleasant sensations is the first step,

you say, simply put, we cannot think our way to courage. No, because the primary issue with anxiety, right, which is most of Look, we're not dealing with fear. Most of them with anxiety, we call it fear. But I mean, how often are we really facing you know, rabid dogs or or or dangerous car chases? Right, For the most part, it's in the office, is at home, it's with family, with friends. Those are anxieties. Those are stories that we

make up in our head. We take them to be true, and then we get anxious, so fearful about what possibly could happen. And so it's the very mind that is engendering, that's creating these these phantasmic, orical, scary situations. So we can't entirely trust the mind to reverse it. We need to use it skillfully. But let's start with the body. Breathe, get real present to it. Um certainly, if you're familiar

with the pasta tradition, right. Some of the some of the more embodied Buddhist meditations are being present to your body, what are you feeling, what's going on? And then being present your mind. What am I thinking? I'm thinking I'm not good enough, I'm thinking I can't do this. I'm thinking we can first be in the body, then in the mind, then in the world of action. Action sort of leads us into the next question. The question is what am I sustaining? And the characteristic that you tie

to that is is grit. And I love something you wrote here. I'm gonna I'm gonna read it because I really think it's something up very well. You say, discipline isn't a transactional experience. It isn't a one time application that fulfills its purpose and then has tossed aside. Rather, it's an attitude and approach, a trait common to leaders who are on a hero's journey. As such, it remains

a lifelong process. Uh. First of all, Eric, I really appreciate your pulling out these quotes because when I hear am I thinking, I really like this, So it's great, Yeah, yeah, when when, yeah, when I'm writing the book I'm sort of in the process of writing and editing, but then to hear it back on pieces like that, I'm energized to still like what I wrote. So thank you for

doing that. Yes. So, discipline, you know, comes from the word disciple, right, Disciples are followers and learners there there there are people who are there to study and understand, and so you know, discipline is a lifelong process of the choice by choice, the moment by moment choices that I'm making. Um, if you think about this person has got such good discipline about their exercise, well, yes and no,

they've been doing it for ten years. But for ten years, every day they've they've asked themselves, do I want to You know, I have an option. Do I go to the gym? Or do I stay in the bed longer? Do I go for iran? Or do I go to the movies? You know, whatever it is? And it's the two wolves, right, the discipline is really discipline is really learning to negotiate the two wolves, which one both are howling. Actually that's not entirely true, because oftentimes the impulsive wolf

howls louder than the aspirational wolf. And discipline is about learning to listen and be seduced by the aspirational wolf. Yeah. I mean, I think you know the thing I've heard saying before. I probably won't get exactly right, but you know, discipline is trading what you want now for what you want most. Oh. I like that. Yeah, it's important because what you just said, I think is really indicative of one of the things that's real for people who have grit, right,

this virtue called grit. It's towards something, there's some purpose, there's something that is appealing at tracting important valuable that to your I love what you said. It's it's what you want now versus what you want most, because it's not even what you want now versus what you want later, right, but what you want most. And I think one of the that's why to me, this hero's journey, this leadership construct begins with committing to some prize. What's the prize.

The prize could be, you know, a more open heart. The plot of the prize can be a more loving relationship. The prize can be you know, whatever it is that you don't currently have in your comfort zone, and that becomes the purpose magnetic pull that allows you to make a choice in the moment do I go for comfort or do I go for purpose? Because I think that's what discipline ultimately comes down to. It's comfort versus purpose, Right, And I think you know, I study behavior change and

habit change and coach people in doing that. And one of the things that's happened over the last X number of years is people have really said, hey, this isn't about willpower and motivation, and they focus on of the other skills that are important. But I think one of the things that gets lost in that is connecting back to your original motivation, connecting back to your focus, to your vision um. I do think that that is an important piece to work into any any behavior change program

is periodically remembering why am I doing this? You mentioned Buddhism a couple of times, So, uh, the dedication in my book is my triple gem, right, my wife and two daughters. But but there's an original triple gem that I'm ripping off here, right, and that's the Buddha of the Dharma and the Sunga. Right that the three components of what the Buddhist said with the three foundations or

gems of Buddhist practice. The reason I'm bringing it up is to your point, the way I translated is the Buddha is the vision of what's possible, right, that's the that's the sort of the ultimate aspirational state. The dharma is the practices and disciplines and and and exercises that you do along the way in order to attain that. And the Songa is the community of collaborators, teachers, and allies that help you when you clearly have run out

of juice or or motivation. And so I think the notion that we just have a great community and great practices without vision flies in the face of some very ancient wisdom. I think vision, practice and community are what holds it together. Yes, let's talk about procrastination. I love the way you said this because I think it describes one aspect of procrastination in a way that I've been looking for the words for. And you say procrastination means

to put something off. That's fairly obvious. It's the next part. It's a choice often made at the edge of conscious thinking. And and that rings so true for me in procrastinating and people that I work with about how it's almost not even a thought, It's like it just lingers out there. What you're supposed to do sort of gets pushed to the peripher peripher I can't even say that word, you know what I'm trying to Yeah, the edge, Yes, it's better.

You know. I have a long history with procrastination, so I've had a wonderful laboratory of examination. Uh. I remember early on, I lived in in a spiritual community for many years, and we'd get up every morning at five to meditate, and you know, we were self self directed, so that the alarm clock would go off at five, I'd quickly hit the snooze button, you know. And then I don't know if you know that they had seven

minute snooze button, so I'd hit the snooze button. In seven minutes we'll go by, and I'd I'd leap out of bed, going, oh, what an idiot. I can't believe I blew it right, And and it occurred to me these two wolves, right, the one the wolf of comfort and the wolf of guilt. Uh, sort of barking. But I think procrastination unconsciously. In other words, I can put something off intentionally, but that's not procrastination, that's just skillful

use of time. Procrastination is a form of avoidance. Right, it's and and and it's a subtle one and we rationalize it um. But there's there's some there's some poor choices, and there's some anxiety playing at there, and it's it's at the edge, at the periphery of consciousness. And so what's the take to bring it into the forefront. Can I look at it? Can I understand it? Can I feel it and then make some choices about it? Yeah? I agree. I think that it's we talked about it

very early on. It's that awareness to be aware of that we're even making a choice. And and earlier we talked about habitual patterns. I think that's a that's a classic example of the habitual pattern is to sort of avoid something without really even being fully conscious that you're doing it. I think there's a nagging feeling of like something doesn't feel good, but that's about as conscious as it gets. A lot of times. This is to me

where meditation, you know, practices are so critical. Those nagging feelings, those sinking feelings, those I mean, everything you were describing is physiological, right. The nagging feeling is an actual tension in the chest. For me, the sinking feeling is kind of a ball of lava of some kind in my gut. Those are messages. There's something going on that there's a wolf speak, you know, but it's not the wolf speak of the impulsive wolf. It's a wolf speak of the aspirational.

And so learning to listen to those nagging, heavy, sinking, whatever feelings in the body. That is where meditation is so powerful, not just to calm the mind, but to really bring your attention to the physiology and listen to that somatic wisdom and be informed by it, because that's the quieter wolf, that's the wolf that needs to be fed. So the last question in the book is an unusual question for a leadership book. The question is what am I yielding? And the trait that you put with it

is surrender. So how does that play in the leadership It seems counterintuitive. It's not the surrender of the military style that says that I'm weak and unable to prevail. It's the spiritual surrender that says that I'm willing to let go to yield. I mean yield, not as in like dollar yields on an investment, but yield doesn't let go. Right, What am I willing to let go? Because I love the expression. I don't know if I coined it, if

someone else did, but I like it. Um. Sometimes leadership moves forwards in plant steps, and sometimes it moves towards in leaps of faith. And I think that that leap of faith is so central to our ability to evolve, to our ability to lead, to our ability to influence, because there comes a point where the logic path is not clear, the step is not obvious, the competency isn't there, the learning hasn't yet happened, and there's got to be

a willingness to let go, to surrender. And a lot of what we have to surrender is safety on the one hand, and this very strong, almost impossible attachment to our identity and ideas and leaders who are truly great leaders. See. I think what we've done in our political system is we've made flip bloppers seem like they're idiots. And sometimes flip flopping is bad, but I think about somebody, sometimes

it's a sign of mature evolution. Right. You think about it, if you're fifty years old and you have the exact same opinions and ideas that you did when you were eighteen, because you're not flip flopping. I think you've missed the boat man. I think that same thing myself, like it's it somehow has become a sign of of weakness. Whereas you know, I think if we looked at people who aren't politicians, we would we would say that's it. That's

a sign of strength and a flexible mind. Yeah. And I think that the leader, the human, the mother, the father, the professional who's willing to surrender and say, you know what, what I've done upntil now has worked, It no longer works. I had a conversation today with another executive and incorporation. He said, I've done this for twenty two years and I'm done. It's no longer fitting me. It's time to move on. That's a powerful statement. That's a scary statement.

But there's a surrender, there's an acceptance that you just have to let it go. And I think from a leadership perspective, it's profound because what allows is it allows for adaptability and innovation and space for other people to insert their contributions. And I think in a similar vein is the idea of focusing on what you can control and letting go of what you what you can't control. Because one way to drain your courage, your grit and everything else is to get so sucked into what you

can't control. There's the old Stephen Covey idea of circle of influence versus circle of concern. Yeah, and the serenity prayer. Rights grant me the courage to accept the things I forget how it goes you accept, courage to change yep, and the wisdom to know the difference. And I think the wisdom to me much of this. I mean, my company name is Sagatica. I derived it from the Latin word sagacitas, which is where sage and sagacious comes from wisdom.

And really, my my passion is about developing executive wisdom, and wisdom is exactly that. It's the ability to skillfully apply these various virtues and to live a life that's both meaningful to me and a contribution to others. Excellent. Well, I think that's a great place to wrap up. As I said, I've got pages and pages of highlighted things and questions, but I think this is a good place to stop. So thank you so much, Eric for coming on,

thank you for writing the book. I'd encourage listeners as always to check it out if you do want to buy it. I realized recently that lots of people are buying books that we recommend um but you can go to our website and if you do that, we get a couple of pennies for each one that you buy. So it's a good way to support the show that I think most of you didn't know about. So find the show notes for this and there's a link to Eric's book out there. Thank you, all right, I really

appreciate the time in the space for this conversation. Okay, bye, bye bye. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a donation to the one you Feed podcast. Head over to one you Feed dot Net Slash Support. You can learn more about Eric Hoffman and this podcast at one you Feed, dot Net Slash Eric