Michael Bungay Stanier || How to Begin

named the number one Thought Leader in coaching. Michael has a master's degree in philosophy from Oxford, a law degree and a BA with Highest Honors from the Australian National University. His latest book is called How to Begin. I invite Michael on the show because I'm a big fan of his work in coaching, and as I get more into the coaching profession, everyone seems to be talking about Michael. He's just such a good guy and he's funny and

really thoughtful about coaching principles. In this episode, I talked to him about how to begin When we set goals. The most popular framework that often comes to mind is the idea of smart goals. Instead of starting with what's measurable, though, Michael urges us to start with what's important. He shares his criteria for identifying what a worthy goal is, as well as advice for how to stay committed to that worthy goal. We also touch on the topics of coaching, empathy, change,

and community. So, without further ado, I bring you, Michael Bungay Steinier. How are you most of medium? Personal ughs. I've been looking forward to this for so long. Me too, actually, me too, and been wearing your shirt as well, astanding shirt. Thank you for it just for this occasion. Well, you know, I don't feel like I get trumped on shirts very often, but I feel like I've been trumped and I have nothing. I got my masonry cap to you. Where do you

live now? I live in Toronto, Canada, Like I'm Australian originally, but left Australia thirty years ago and wandered around England for a bit and then the US for a tiny bit, and then twenty years ago, twenty one years ago, I guess came up here. We're literally, we're literally like four days away from celebrating the Box of Crayons, the company I founded. It's our twentieth birthday on July fourth, So

I'm pretty amazed about that. Because I'm not a natural entrepreneur and I have a company that's somehow twenty years old and still doing good in the world. Is surprisingly wonderful. Yeah, huge congratulations. Tell people a little bit about what is Box of Crayons. So Box of Crayons is, it's a learning and development company that has a focus of helping cultures and people move from advice driven to curiosity lead.

And the way we practically do that is we give managers and leaders and contributors the skills to be more coach like in the way that they interact with the people around them and they lead their teams. For years, I had felt that coaching was this really powerful technology that just wasn't making much impact in organizations because it was all a bit woo woo and a bit touchy feely and a bit life coaching and a bit kind of unattached to the busy realities of a manager and

she's trying to make stuff happen. She doesn't have time for the come down and hang out in my therapy couch and we'll do coaching together. I was very driven to kind of unweird coaching and just make it an everyday way of showing up and being with each other with curiosity at the heart of it, love that you'd been at this game a long time, you know, and so like, let's go back to the fifties here, who did you train with? Who are some of your mentors

in the field or people that just inspired you? You know. Honestly, I got my first sense of what this is about when I was a teenager, because I would find myself in conversations with my teenage friends, and you know, they're full of the usual angst of teenagerhood, and I just would notice that I was a pretty good listener to people. I'd be, you know, sitting somewhere and be listening to

them unfolding their tailor vow. I had this moment going, I do not know whether this is helpful or not, and whether I'm getting everybody's way by doing this, or whether this is actually you know, helping move the things along.

So I went to my local youth crisis counseling someone called youth Line in Canberra in Australia, where I grew up, and so I got trained to be a crisis counselor as a teenager, so kind of a classic Rocharian training fundamentally being taught there's more to their answer than you think, and don't trust their first answer. It's just the start of a conversation. And don't rush in with advice, because being present to them is actually part of what's powerful.

And so I spent quite a few years in my university years doing crisis counseling and then moved into the water consulting. And that was when coaching was becoming a thing. You know. I was in London at the time. I was looking over the ocean and there's a rise of coaching in California. And of course if you're in London, you're like, it's probably woo wo hippie stuff. It's teptical, cynic called London is now. We don't really believe in that.

But I was intrigued and I started talking to some of my consulting clients as maybe I'm coaching you, maybe this is what this is. And then when I moved to Toronto in two thousand and one, I trained with CTI, the Coach Training Institute, and build a practice and then realized, funnily enough, I didn't actually love coaching. It was a real shock because I was like, oh my goodness, I really thought this is everything my life had been leading up to was this kind of moment of building a

coaching practice. But I realized I was I wanted to have a little more impact than that, and actually I'm better as a teacher and better as a provocateur rather than being a coach or at least having a coaching practice. So I shifted my focus a bit after that. Oh I love that, And well, you wrote this book The Coaching Habit, so you obviously love at some point teaching

coaching to other aspiring coaches. Yeah, well, well it was part of the mission to unwird coaching, and I was actually trying to teach coaching to people who weren't coaches. If you're only inner circle, and I was part of this for sure, where you're already a coach, you've already you've already subscribed to the faith, and you're like, I love coaching. It's amazing, I'm all in for it. I self identify as a coach. Well, there's everybody else. It's like,

I don't know coaching. It's a bit I don't get it. It's a bit black box, it's a bit mysterious. I'm not sure if it's really for me. And those are the people. I really wanted to write the Coaching Habit for people who had this very clear vision in my mind. It'd be like a person would walk into an airport bookstore. She would flip through the books there, she'd pick up the Coaching Habit and she'd go, oh, I could probably read this on a flight, and it would just say, look,

here's what coaching is. It's staying curious a little bit longer, rushing to action and advice a little more slowly. It's seven good questions and if you know how to start building that into a habit, so you do it more rather than less, actually going to shift the way that you lead and you interact with people. I love that in a way, you kind of put the source code of coaching there, Like do you ever fear all these coaches that aren't accredited at all, but they call themselves

coaching and charge like millions of dollars? You know, like they'll get mad at you. They're like you're making You're telling them it's too easy, you know, like you're kind of you know, like I'm the penn and teller of the coaching world. They're revealing the exactly It's like a I love that. Yes, it's like a magician saying, oh,

don't know, you know, we're supposed to keep that accredited program. Yeah, exactly. Well, I quite excited if that's what I'm doing, because I think there's a lot of I think there's a lot of artificial mystery around what coaching is. And at the same time, I think there is skills of being a coach that do take time, and they do take training, and they do take presents, and they do take experience

and nuance. And I can see the world of coaching the number of coaches shrinking and the quality of coaches increasing, because I do think there's a way that soon our AI is in our home. You're Siri or whoever will coach us. You know, I'll sit in my office and I'll go, hey, sirih, can you coach me? And Sirial go shaw, Michael, you know, it's been a week since you last as for coaching, But what's on your mind? And I'll go, oh blah blah blah blah blah, and

Syrial go right, yeah, you talked about that before. What's the real challenge here for you? Michael? And I'll be like, ah blah blah blah, blah blah, and she goes exactly and what else. And I think it can be script led in form by AI, because a lot of what coaching is is creating the space to think and the space to be heard. And you don't need super magic tricks for that. You need the discipline to shut up, to ask a good question, that shut up and listen

to the answer. And AI is excellent to that, and the discipline to try and be present with the other person. And actually AI can do that really well as well. And I think a lot of the time you don't really need a coach. You just need the structure of coaching to help you make progress. And I think there are times where you do need a wise guide, a wise teacher, a wise provocateur, and that's something that probably

AI can't get to. And I think there's a bunch of people out there trained or even you know, not formally accredited, who are wonderful coaches for that. Oh yeah, for sure. The human element is important. I don't know how the value you see of empathy in coaching. You know, some people kind of think you should keep your emotions out of it. Coaches differ so much and so widely in their own style, their own personal style. It's hard to kind of standardize humans. So my thought, I mean,

you can empathize at two different levels. I suspect one is you can kind of empathize with the situation. It's like, oh my god, I've been there, I've done it. I know what you Oh. It's awful, isn't it. And I don't think you need much of that because you know, most of the people I've ended up coach when I'm going to add hop gun coaching, I've never done something

like they did. I mean, one of the great culminating moments of my professional experience was we've been using our training in Microsoft and being a kind of key part of their shift from a know it or culture to a learn it or culture led by Sachan Adela and a few years ago at their big sales conference in Las Vegas, I coached their then head of sales on stage in front of five thousand Microsoftians if that's the

right work. It was great. It was so exciting. And so I'm just asking Jp some of these questions, and I'm talking about it because he talks about it freely on his podcast and stuff, so I know it's not quite confidential, and I've never been ahead of sales, and you know, I've done sales for my tiny company and I was terrible at it. So I'm like, I know nothing about the sales thing. I know nothing about what it means to lead an organization of one hundred and

eighty thousand people. But what I do have empathy for is the human being. And Martin Buber talks about two types of relationships. I hit relationships and I vow relationships. I hit relationships. You know, they're kind of more transactional and you kind of lose a little bit of humanity in the exchange. And I thou relationships when you're present to the other person. And I think that one of the things that coaching can do is to be empathetic and present to the humanity of the other person. So

I think that does involve emotion. And I'm you know, I'm classic over intellectual, straight white guy. I'm not actually that great at being connected to my emotion. But I really try to go you know that sounds hard, or that sounds exciting, or I'm thrilled or I'm disappointed, or I can feel how sad you are. That that doesn't require any expertise. It just requires a willingness to be human in a moment. I love it being human in the moment. That's a good title, book title. Maybe maybe

not a good book to I like it. A good quote, a good quote. Well, your your latest book is called how to Begin? Start doing something that matters. It's it's way, it's about way, way more than that. But he gets them in the door. It gets them in the door to begin, and then they realize, wow, this is also how to like finish as well. So let's talk about smartles in the field of positive psychology. Phrase smartkles is everywhere, right, Yeah, And you say sparkles are dumb, So I mean you

say that. What I know you mean is smarkles can be dumb. But can you can you elaborate a little bit more than that provocative statement, mister provocateur. I know I've got that whatever it is that wiring in my brain which is like how do I wind a little bit me too? It's like make them curious before you actually start teaching them anything. And I'm just trying to

raise some eyebrows. So I started writing this new book, how to Begin, and it wasn't meant to be a book about goals it was meant to be and other attempt to try and crack what does it take to change individual behavior, because you know that's the goal for so much of us, which is like, how do I shift and how do I be differently and act differently so I can I can grow as a person. And anybody who's tried any of that ever, which is like everybody listening to this podcast goes it's hard. It is

so hard to shift human behavior. I'm like, all right, I'm going to try and see if I can write another book to try and illuminate some corner of that. I wrote a draft of it, sent it out to some friends, and one wrote back immediately going, I've read some I've read sixty pages of your first draft. This is a terrible book. I don't even know what it's about.

And I've read the first sixty pages. And I was like, oh, but he said, look, there's one phrase I really like, we unlock out greatness by working on the hard things. And that felt resonant and powerful. We unlock out greatness by working on the hard things. So then the question came to me, like, so how do you figure out what the hard things are for you to put your attention to, not only so you can do the hard things, but that you can unlock your weakness as part of that.

And that's what took me to, well, how do you set the goal? How do you find the target for yourself? And then suddenly I went, you know what I've been talking about or being taught smart goals for the thirty years of my career. It's not just in positive psychology that this is the thing that's everywhere. Honestly, I'll go into a crowd and I go, what's the one word you associate with goals? And the crowd yells back in unis smart goals? And I'm like exactly, And then I

got well, who knows what this is the thing? Who knows what smart goals stand for? Because it's an acronym. One are the five words, And everyone's like um, yeah, ooh, and all sorts of words come out. And here's one of the things about smart goals. This is the kind of the surface irritation. Nobody can quite remember what the acronym stands for. It's like trying to remember the seven dwarfs you can make good progress, and four of them if you think you've got the fifth one. You have

no idea what the sixth and the seventh one. I don't know what back called. And the answer is bashful. By the way, that's the one nobody can ever remember. So one of the things about smart goals is, and I've seen the table of this, it's like three or four, maybe five actual credible alternatives for every single letter in the acronym. But here's the real irritation for me around smart goals. Most of what that is about is about tiding them up. It's about making them neat and making

them containable, making them specific, making them measurable. And there is a place for all of that. And when that is the place that you start. If you don't have the right goal, it doesn't matter how smart the goal is. I mean, I always say it's like polishing a turd. It just doesn't have to do that. So I wanted to give people a framework of how to think about a goal that actually was like, how do you find

the right goal? How do you find something that is important to you, important to the world to help you learn and grown. There's a place for tiding up once you get clear on what that goal is. But when you start with smart goals, You're you're you're starting with how do we measure this rather than what matters? I get the point that you were making, and I think, you know, it'd be good to outline for people what

a worthy goal is. You talk about thrilling, important and daunting, and as my mentor Abraham Maslill put it, what's not worth doing is not worth doing. Well, that's his version of you can't polish a turd and you know, get something better than a tur That's that's Maslow's version of it. Yeah, I love that. You know, I haven't heard that before, but you know, Drucker says the same thing. You know. It's like, there's the worst and doing really efficiently the

thing that should never be done at all. So yes, I So when you think about a worthy goal, I'm like, okay, so smart's not going to do it for me? What what what's my take on it? How do you how do you build a goal that has a resilience and a resonance and a power that will keep people going on it? Because one of the things that I need to be true about myself and trugue about other people that I bumped into or coached was there's a lot

of abandoned goals. There's a lot of I'm going to do this, and then you know, news resolutions are the most obvious case in point, but there's just a lot of kind of you know, there's a graveyard of good intentions that haven't been followed through on. So how do you create something that has a power and a clarity and something that has intrinsic and extrinsic motivation so that you're more likely to stick to it when things get hart? And so just as you said, I'm like, I think

there are three elements to it. Thrilling and important and daunting. So let me just explain what each of those are. Thrilling, really good place to start. It's like what lights you up, what gets you excited, what speaks to who you are now and who you want to be when you grow up? You know, what makes you kind of rub your hands together and go that would be pretty cool. I don't even really understan and what it's all about. I can feel the kind of quickening of my blood when I

think about that as a possibility. And it's a really great place to start. And one of the things about focusing on thrilling is it is a countermeasure against obligation, because a lot of us inherent our goals well, like you know what, whether it's an explicit thing like at work you're told what to do, or more often it's a kind of internally learned story. You know, when I'm this person at this age doing this thing, I really should be doing this, I really should be doing that.

It really this should be the next thing. And you're like, ah, my heart sinks a little bit when I think about it, but it feels like the thing I should do. When you start with thrilling, you're like, forget that, Just do the thing that makes you kind of you know, quickens your blood a little bit. But I don't think it can be just about thrilling, or at least the goals I want to help people set aren't just about what you want. I want them to in some way serve

the world, you know. Jacqueline Novograt's author of A Wonderful Could a Manifesto for a Moral Revolution. She has a ted talk about this as well. She has a wonderful phrase in this book. She says, what if we could give more to the world than we take? And I think that is a magnificent call to action. What could we give more to the world than we take that? I just think if I could help more people do that,

that makes our world a better place. Now, sometimes your goals are going to be in the context of the work that you do, and sometimes it's just in the context of the life that you live. But important is all about saying, how does this go beyond me and what I want? How does this contribute some way to the bigger picture. Now, what's interesting is thrilling and important have at tension with each other. They're not additive to each other. They're in a complex relationship with each other,

and the excitement is in the tension. The excitement is figuring out what's the best tension between them. And I think one of the things about a smart goal is they tend to be additive. Let's make it specific and measurable and additive, Whereas I always think more interesting systems are where you've got a few principles, that of trying

to find the right balance against each other. So thrilling and important, And then the final one is daunting and daunting is how does this keep you learning and growing? How does this take you to the edge of who you are and invite you further along the path. I mean, you know they saying you can't teach an old dog new tricks. You know, when I was younger, I was like,

maybe that's true. But now I'm like, now I'm kind of getting to be an old dog, and I'm like, damn it, you can teach an old dog new tricks. So I will keep learning and I will keep growing. And you know, you'll know the you'll know the literature better than me, which is that you know, one of the true indicators of aging well is a willingness to keep learning. So how do you keep growing? Because it's actually you can imagine a worthy goal which is thrilling

and important, but it actually is no longer daunting. It kind of keeps you busy, it keeps you fulfilled, but it also keeps you plateaued. You're no longer finding the of who you are and who you might be. Yes, And I think what you're looking to do is articulate a goal for yourself. And this is a big goal.

This is not just you don't have twelve of these, you have this is the goal that I want to put time and attention to and you're looking to fine tune the best combination of thrilling and important and daunting for you. Yeah. Yeah, I think these three can come apart.

What if you're a thrill seeker and you get bored really easily with something like, yeah, this is important daunting, but I've lost the thrill for it, you know, And yeah, that can be tough for a lot of people who say that they, Oh, I'm doing something important and darting. What more would I want? And they kind of they could feel guilty that it's not thrilling, right, you know

what I mean? Right, I do. And the other thing, if you're doing important and daunting but not thrilling, meaning it doesn't speak to who you are, I feel that that's a short path to burn out. I mean, there's a lot of people who are doing really significant work, you know, they're like they're making the world better. It's

they're stretching them and it is exhausting them. And because there's none of that kind of internal feeding that happens because they're being nourished by the work that they're doing, it is just it's just exhausting, and that's only sustainable for so long. Yeah. Yeah, well that's that's very true. It also gets at the harmonious passion versus obsessive passion distinction and positive psychology and vol I don't know. I

don't know that distinction. Yeah. Harmonious passion is when what we're engaging in really feels in wine with who we are, really passionate about it in a way that doesn't burn us out, and we know when to stop and we're flexible to move on to other things in life. But obsessive passion is something we do almost compulsively and like we have to do it, and it does lead to burn out very quickly. Yeah, yeah, that's really helpful. I didn't know the distinction, but I immediately shine some light

and stuff. I get that wonderful, wonderful And so you say the magic's in the drafting. Yeah, okay, what does that mean? What does that mean? Well? Look, when I wrote the Coaching Habit, I'll get to an answer here, but just a minor detail. In the Coaching Habit book, there are seven questions, and one of the questions is the focus question. And the focus question, So what's the real challenge here for you? And the power of that question is it says the first challenge that shows up

is never the real challenge. It's never the only challenge. So stay curious as to what the real challenge is because if you're able to go, look, I'm trying to figure out what's the real thing that needs to be solved or figured out or worked on here. That is the powerful intervention figuring out what the real challenge might be. And the key learning there is be patient, be curious, and don't accept the first answer as the real answer. And so often we get we get seduced into thinking

that the first answer is the real answer. It rarely is. I think the same can be said about goal setting. And I think one of the reasons that goal setting can be disheartening for people and a bit disappointing is often it's a one and done first draft. Okay, that's pretty good, and I'll go with that. And I'm a big fan of the you know, the so called where

you can use SFD so something first draft. You can use whatever word you want for the s you know, the family friendly one is stormy or I like an lermot he says crappy first draft, and that's what I tend to go with. It's like, look, a first draft. Just assume it's a crappy first draft. And I can tell you know, we are both writers, we've both written books. We know that, like, we're pretty good writers. And our first draft is always a bit crappy. It's always a

bit disappointing. This idea of trying to take what's in your brain and then you put it down on paper and you're like, oh my godness, that's nothing. That's nothing like the genius thing that's in my head. And it takes writing and rewriting to make it strong and tight and crisp and kind of resonant. And I just want people to go, look, your first draft, brilliant start, but it's crappy. And that's that's the paradox. Crappy first draft

is the perfect start. And I want people to say, look a second and then a third draft will shift your worthy goal. So you need to have some structures to actually go, here's how you work it and rework it to actually get a goal that is optimized for thrilling, important and daunting for you. You say, before you move on to action, you have to understand what it means to commit, And you're saying it's not just saying yes to worthy goal? What else is it? Well? How to

Begin book has going of three parts to it. The first part is about how do you figure out the worthy goal? So what scale do you play out? How do you find thrilling important and daunting? How do you move through a drafting process so you end up with something that feels pretty good for you? And if you get there and you're like, I've got with you all and I like it, it's kind of it's it's got

engine ticking over nicely. The temptation is to launch into action, and I think this is where sometimes we just move a little too quickly, and a pause and a reflection on what it truly means to commit can be really powerful. And you know, the work that's really influenced me on this is the book Immunity to Change. I don't know if you know that work. I've never heard of it.

So Bob Keegan and Lisa Layhy, who are educational psychologists at Harvard, and they have a debt in their work to a leadership writer called Ron Hypez who talks about technical change versus adaptive change. And this is my attempt to build on that work and try and make it a little more accessible and simpler to it. Here's the metaphor that I heard first from Bob Keegan and Lisa Layhey. Sometimes we're trying to make progress and we've got our

foot on the accelerator. What we don't realize is at the same time, we have our foot on the break. And until you actually go, how do I take my foot off the break? It doesn't matter how hard you're pumping the accelerator, you're not going to make progress. So how do you figure out what the break is and whether you've got your foot on the break or not? And what they're really talking about is do you understand

how committed you are to maintaining the status quote? Because I think one of the things that's become really apparent is I wrote this book and I thought, through my own knowledge of change and change management, is we are far more committed to the status quote than we realize. Even as we're frustrated, even as we're irritated, stressed, overwhelmed, railing against it, we're getting something from it. And there's a way that we're maintaining something that gives us something

in return. So this is what commitment means to me. You ask yourself two big questions. The first is this, you ive identified you're worthy goal. The first question you ask yourself is this, Let's say I said no to this worthy goal. You know, I walked all the way up to it, and now I walk back from that and go, I'm not going to do it. What are the prizes and punishments of that decision? What's the prizes? What you get from not taking on this worthy goal?

And what you'll discover is what you get is you get to maintain predictability and status and expectations of yourself and expectations other people have you, and the relationships and money and time. There's a bunch of stuff that doesn't yet put at risk. You get to maintain the way things are justice they are. But what the price you pay for not taking on your worthy goal is manifold. It's what you imagine the impact of your worthy goal would be. It's what I would get as being part

of the world around your worthy goal. It's about not having that impact that you dream of, not having that thrilling, important, daunting thing that you wanted to work on and that's really powerful and that doesn't get done very often. Which is this idea of how committed. Am I to the status quo? What's at risk if I take this on? And that's kind of the next variation of the question. Now, imagine fully committing to doing this worthy goal. You're like, I am up for it. I'm pushing all my chips

into the center of the table here. I'm going for, first of all, what are the prizes of doing Now, what's the prizes of pursuing this? And you can imagine that the impact and the nourishment and the success and the growth for you, but also what's at risk? What's at risk if you fully commit to this, and there will be a price that will get paid. There is stuff at risk, and a lot of it is how you see yourself and how others see you, and where you're putting your time and money and effort and energy.

And it's really about weighing up the consequences of making the choice. That's what I mean by making the commitment. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. My friend Mark Manson calls it about not giving a fuck so that you can have focks to give for the things that you care about. Yeah, well, I think that's exactly right. This is what I found so powerful about Ron Heifitz's work

about adaptive change versus technical change. Sometimes we're naive about how change happens because I think there are two types of change, technical change, or as I put it, talk about it in the book simple Change. So easy change is a kind of additive process. You know, you're like,

I need to figure something out. So you listen to a podcast and you watch a YouTube, and you read a book, and you practice a bit, and you're not that good to start off with, but then you do it again and you're better, and then you do it again and you're better, and then you get to where you want to be and you're like, you know what, I went from A to B and it wasn't too bad. I learned how to do that. And we do that

all the time. You know, we have a pandemic and then most of us go, all right, I've got to learn how to do stuff from home. So you learn how to set up a ring light, and you turn how to plug in a microphone, and you learn how to stare at a camera so you're not looking down that lends rather than off to the person. You learn all this sort of stuff and you adapt and your change. It's a little bit like downloading a good app on

your phone. You're like, this makes me a little bit smarter, a little bit more efficient, a little a little better who I am. But there are sometimes when you try and take on change, and frustratingly, even though you know how to do this in theory, in practice, you're like,

I just can't get going on this. And you've read the books and you've listened to the podcast, and you've joined Masterclass, and you've joined Creative Live and you and you've hired somebody, and you're like, I can't learn anymore and I'm still stuck. And you've got you've downloaded every app that's possible, and none of them are making a difference. And when you're dealing with that, you're really dealing with hard change. And hard change isn't additive. Hard change is transformative.

And it's sort of an app. You kind of need a new operating system, you know. It's kind of like you plus versus you two point zero, or present you versus future you. They're all kind of metaphors for the same thing, which is an adult development. You get to the top of your s curve and it takes something to take you to break through and leap to the

next phase of development. And when you're restling with a worthy goal and you're having this moment of commitment, you're actually thinking to yourself, this isn't just additive to its additive, I've already be doing it. This is going to be transformative in some way. This is unlock my greatness. By working on the hard things, I'm unlocking my greatness. So I've got to get clear about what's at risk here

so that I can take on what hard change really means. Yeah, some of this sounds a little solitary you talk also, So that's why I think it's important to bring the idea that you can't travel this path of self actualization alone, right, Yeah, what is the role of other people in this journey? I'm so glad you said that, because I think I'm

wired to be a bit solitary about this stuff. I don't know whether it's again, you know, I'm like, I've got the kind of loan mail here, kind of striding over to the offer on the horizon, which is like, I'm going to conquer the world by myself, And I'm like, it turns out every time I've had success, I've I've

had a lot of people around me. I mean, as I reflect on getting to twenty years at Box of Crowns, I'm like, even though I'm the founder of that, there are just I'm just one small dot of paint in that story, in that picture. There are so many other people whose energies and opinions and contributions have shaped what that is. You just can't do it alone. Rather than defining specific roles, because every worthy goal is different. It might be about your family, or your community, or your team,

or your business or your country. I mean, who knows what scale you're playing at, what level of change you're thinking at. Basically borrowed an idea that I take from North American indigenous wisdom, which is calling in the directions, And like that when they call in the directions at the start of a meeting, they caught it the north, or they called it the east and the south and the west and the north, and each direction has an energy and a color, and a totemic animal and an

archetypal energy and archetypal role. So East is calling in the fight or the warrior. It's about having backbone, It's about having boundaries, it's about drawing the line it's about pushing back South is about calling in the healer or or the lover sometimes, and that's about compassion and healing and shelter and renewal and vulnerability and messiness. When you call in the energies of the West, that's the teacher or the magician, so that's about learning and about knowledge.

And then when you call in the North, that's the ruler or the visionary, and that's about calling in ambition and looking to the horizon and a ruthlessness as well. I think, and I think it's useful when you think about your worthy goal, You're like, what energies do I already have for this worthy goal? When energies are worth me calling in? And partly it's about developing the capacity within yourself, but sometimes you just need people around you

as well to do that. You know, when I think about what I'm on work I on at the moment, I'm often quite good at visionary kind of ruler energy, and mostly good at teachery energy. But I'm a bit I'm a bit deficient and lover energy and warrior energy. You know, I'm like, I don't have the backbone that I would like to have. I don't have the compassion

for myself that I would like to have. So I'm like, I need some of those people around me to remind me of who I am, to make me feel okay about it, to kind of encourage me to be braver and bolder about the finding boundaries for myself. And I'm like, where do you get that from? And sometimes energy can be just in one person, but sometimes you want a collective around you going this is where I get this sense from, so that I can feel more complete in

the project that I'm working on. Yeah, I love that it's just you. An interesting cut to not have a lover or warrior energy. I have some of it, but I'm like, you know what's it's And I think you have your moments, but when you're doing something that is on your own edge where you're learning to be that

your vulnerability has become more apparent. And I'm like, oh, you know, there's just times where I roll over too easily, I say yes too easily, or or I don't ask for the help that I really need or I really want. And that's why I have people around me to kind of go Michael, I mean, I have a mastermind group. I've been part of for years, and I have a phase in every single project I work on where I'm like, it's hopeless, I can't do anything and it's so hard

and I'm making any progress. I don't even know what I'm doing. And after fifteen years, I go, Michael, you do this every time. This is exactly how you always are at this stage. Just be nice to yourself. And I'm like, oh, yeah, that's right, I do do that, and there that they're that kind of healer or lover energy for me just to go, Michael, just just calm down,

just be nice. Yeah, good good, good good. Well there's the oh there self compassion there that your friends can instill in you so you can and start internalizing its right hopefully. Yeah. Is there like a threshold here where like passed to some point of the journey that is qualitatively different, because I know you say that the journey is not straightforward. Is there a threshold at all of the journey where something feels different? Well? I think, I

mean it's a very archetypal question. You know, the hero's journey is all about it. You're so archetypal. You are so archetypal, darling sochetypal let me tell you, Well, you know, heroes journey is like the hero here's the call. She doesn't answer the call, she hears the call again, she finally answers the call. She crosses the threshold and she's and the commit and it's happening, and a journey has begun.

And I do feel that, you know, there's a bunch of writing which is like, the hero's journey is not the only journey, and it's patriarchal, and I'm like, you know what that's That might be true, but it's also a really good archetype and a really good pattern of journeying that lots of people recognize. And I do, and I do think there's a moment where you commit. There's

a moment where you cross the threshold. And now it gets interesting because now you now you face the doubts and the trials and the tribulations of taking on this worthy goal where you've got something that is on the edge of what's possible for you because you've chosen something thrilling and important and daunting, and you've fine tuned it to make sure it's all of that. And so you're like, I don't really know how to do this like daunting means you know how to start, but you don't really

know how to finish. So we have a community of people who are working on how to begin worthy goal, and tomorrow is our monthly meeting with them, and I'm coaching three of them around that. And I'm coaching them around this is the misery of being as part of the journey. This is when you're in the in the valley, in the shadow and you're like, I'm doubting myself. I'm trying to do too much, I'm trying to do too little.

And so I think the bigger answer here is the magic is actually in undertaking the journey, because you do all that work to set the goal, and then it's a little bit of almost misdirection because and you might know this research you probably do, which is if you spend too much time visualizing your outcome, visualizing your goal, it's actually demotivating because the brain is not that good at telling the difference between inside and outside. That's the

amazingness of our imagination. If you over visualize the success, your brain goes you got it. I can taste it. This is amazing. Everybody relaxed, Everybody stand down because we've arrived. Actually, the power is to notice the gap between where you are now and where you think the goal might be. So, yes, you're unlock your greatness by working on the hard thing.

It's not by winning the prize. And so now you start the journey and you're trying to navigate, and there'll be moments where you get somewhere and you're like, I need to pivot, I need to change direction, I need to tweak the goal. It turns out it's not that mountain at all. It's that mountain next to it over there. But it's a process of you're in the journey, and what I hope is more people stick with the journey. Now, there's obviously a place that sometimes you're like, it's not

a bad idea to abandon something that's not working. But if you've gone through the drafting and you've actually kind of optimized for thrilling, important and daunting, if you've found people around you, if you figured out how to travel so you're traveling in small steps rather than trying to do too much too fast, then there's a better chance for you to say, this still matters, So how do I keep going even though this is turning into a bit a difficult part of the journey. Yes, you remind

me of that was that was a good soliloquy. That one was good. No, you remind me a little bit of Gabrielle Odingen's research n YU. She calls it when you fantasize too much about something, she calls it indulging. She calls it the indulging stage of the goal attainment. Yeah, and you got me thinking about her research on that and her model. You must have heard of her WHOOP model. I don't think I have. What's the WOOP model? There we go that you're like archetypal disco dancer, and that

is a very small ven diagram overlap. I'm loving that. Well, I'm a hip hop hip hop The answer, I don't know about disco anyway. That should that should? I asked? That's true, that's true, that's a fair point. That's I'm not I'm not in my hip hop gear right now. I do suggest that our listeners google the WHOOP model of goal attainment, because it's a whole thing that you

can even download the app. WHOOP stands for wish outcome app obstacle and plan wish outcome obstacle and plan, and the wish part is the emphasize is important not to get too stuck on that stage where you start to think that you've obtained it already by indulging. So anyway, that's you know, that's h she's doing great work and it seems very much in line with what you're talking about. Okay, Well, what's like kind of in here with the end of the journey? Which I want you to set me straight

that I shouldn't even say such words, right? Is there ever an end to the journey? How should we be thinking about the journey and thinking about the actual moment of goal attainment? Is there ever such a moment? Can you can you kind of help me think about this in a way? Well, look, I don't. I don't touch on that so much on the book because truly in the book, I'm like, can I get you? Can I get you going? Because how how the journey plays out,

you know, it can depend on a lot. But I think if you're lucky, you you do get to cross it across the line and say that I'm done. Like writing the Coaching Habit Book was a worthy goal for me. It took me years and I finally got the book out in the world, and that was a moment and I came really close to, you know, ignoring whatever advice I give other people, which is, damn it, jim, stop and celebrate, stop and actually go well done well. And actually there's just there's so much to be said in

terms of don't just celebrate the big final finish. But it's like, keep celebrating the small milestones along the way, because it is it is no small thing. You're both doing the work, you're unlocking your greatness and you've reached something. And if some people are wired like me, which is like quite future oriented, and I come close regularly to miss missing the celebration, I'm like, oh good, but who

cares onto the next thing? Never be satisfied, and if you want to call them back, the bigger journey never ends, at least I hope not. Which is like you're constantly going what's thrilling, what's important and daunting from me? And you live a life where you're on that edge going I'm exploring who I am and what this world is and how I contribute to the world. But I do think that you know, Kevin Kelly, founder a Wired magazine

and a great writer and thinker. Really. He has a blog post from a while back at kk dot org which is figuring out your death date. It's like, here's when you die, and you can do it with kind of actuarial tables, and he'll tell you roughly kind of actually specifically, according to actuarial table, statistically, this is when you die. And that's interesting. But I thought what he said that next was most interesting, which is each big

project takes about five years. Now, according to my death date, I've got about twenty one years left. It's like September twenty forty three is when I'm allegedly up for it. So I'm like, okay, it's twenty one years after. That's like four big projects. You know, she's carefully Michael. You know you've got some big things ahead of you. What you want to do that feels that right combination of thrilling, important and daunting. Oh man, well, I wish you all

the best luck of the world needs it. The project you've done so far are really great. And you say, you say, quote lean Locker greatness by working on the hard things, not by winning them. So I hope you keep working. That's my coaching session for you today. Well, thank you. I'm writing it down. Thank you, write it down, take notes, and I'll hold you accountable. But it was a real honor for me too, as someone who's trying to get more in the coaching world myself, and I'm

creating this form of coaching calling self accusation coaching. I'm really learning a lot from you, and I really appreciate your your humility and curiosity. It's really wonderful. Thank you so much for being on my show today. You know what, it was a thrill to be on the show. I've been wanting to be a guest here for so long, and so this is a culmination of something important for me. So I'm going to go ahead and celebrate this. Thank you. But was it daunting? What was it daunting? It was

a little daunting. I mean I've done a lot of podcasts, but I felt more daunted by this podcast and I have for any for quite a while. I was like, you know what this is this? I want to show up as best I can for this podcast. Good. So we got the trifecta thrilling and dating wonderful. Thank you. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Psychology Podcast. If you'd like to react in some way to something

you heard. I encourage you to join in the discussion at the Psychology podcast dot com or on our YouTube page The Psychology Podcast. We also put up some videos of some episodes on our YouTube page as well, so you'll want to check that out. Thanks for being such a great supporter of the show, and tune in next time for more on the mind, brain, behavior, and creativity.