Good Life Project - Roundtable: On Anger, Vibrations and Competence

Episode Date: March 9, 2016

Today's Good Life Project Roundtable™ features guests-in-residence Emiliya Zhivotovskaya, MAPP and and Bob Gower.Emiliya is a leading voice in the world of positive psychology and the science of flourishing, and is the founder of the Certificate in Applied Positive Psychology program, which is the largest in the world. In a past life she was a party entertainer and knows pretty much every group dance ever invented.Bob is a deep systems-thinker, author of Agile Business, organizational-dynamics consultant to some of the largest companies in the world. He's also an ex-cult member, and that comes out in interesting ways in the conversation. They'll be our guests-in-residence for the next three weeks, so buckle up.Our three topics in this episode:Is anger always bad or is it all about how you work with it?What's the deal with vibrations and energy, Is it real? Can we feel it? Can we harness it?Warmth and Competence, which matters more and why?It's fast-paced, fun, utterly unscripted and at times a bit raw, but always good-natured and very real. Enjoy! And let us know if you like this format, over on social media. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot if we need him! Y'all need a pilot? Flight Risk. This is Jonathan Fields with this week's Good Life Project Roundtable.

So that's a format where I have guests in residence. And we go around the table and we each throw out one topic and jam until we're, well, pretty much done jamming. My guests in residence today and for, actually for three weeks now, are two dear friends of mine. We have Amelia Zivotovskaya, who is a scientist. She has a master's in applied positive psychology, runs the largest certification in applied positive psychology program in the world. And it's just a stunningly brilliant mix of deep academic and scholarship, and also a pretty soft metaphysical side. And she blends it in a way which just makes you think. Also joining as a guest in residence for today and for three weeks now is Bob Gower. Bob is a deep systems thinker with a strong background in philosophy and agile development for those in the sort of technology world. He's worked with teams at the highest

level in some of the largest organizations and also startup entrepreneurs. He also has a background in cults and in all sorts of worlds where people influence others to make decisions. And that comes out in a lot of really interesting ways in the conversations over the next couple of weeks. So really excited to share these conversations with you. I'm Jonathan Fields. This is Good Life Project. Hello, people of Earth. Hello. Hanging out today for a roundtable with my guests in residence, Bob Gower and Amelia Djiboutowskaya.

Whoop, whoop. Was that good? It was amazing, Jonathan. I keep practicing. It was amazing. We've only known each other like a dozen years. It was perfection. My goal is before I die, I want to know how to like totally pronounce your name. So we actually say it for real.

Like if you were like pronouncing it to like somebody from Ukraine. Zhivotovskaya. Oh, I like that better actually. Yeah. That's pretty cool. Cool. Not even going to attempt it. My goal eventually to be like Madonna.

Just it's Amelia. It's Amelia. Drop the last name altogether. One day like Madonna, just it's Amelia. It's Amelia. Drop the last name altogether one day. Well, you have the Amelia.com already, right? I do. So we're hanging out. This is a round table format, which means we rock and roll, we go around the table and we each throw out a topic and we jam on it until it's unjammed or completely over jammed, whichever ends up happening first. Bob. Yes. Would you like to start? With a topic?

Yeah. So, yeah, I would. I've been thinking a lot about anger recently. And I've been watching the election cycle. And it occurs to me that the two dominant figures in the election cycle right now are angry white men. We may or may not agree with donald trump or bernie sanders but they're both like their public display is kind of angry there and it seems to me that there's an undercurrent of anger in the culture that they're giving some kind of voice to and it gets me thinking about uh having seen brene brown and john ronson who wrote

the psychopath test and so you've been publicly shamed and they were talking about how shame has no place in true transformation and I think there's a real close connection between being angry at somebody and wanting to shame them so my question or my topic really is is anger constructive constructive, potentially? And if so, how? Like, what makes constructive anger different from non-constructive anger? So, Amelia, our resident master's in pli-positive psychology slash pursuing PhD in mind-body science, what do you think of that? I think that all emotions are beautiful and they are what make us human. And the problem with the emotion comes when we don't

know how to work with it. And it's, I think it's so interesting, the use of anger and how, how is it used? So when it's a personal experience, you can't, it's human to experience anger when you believe that your right is being violated or someone is harming you or someone that you care about or something that you care about. And I love my friend Deb Giffen's statement that anger plus love equals determination. So if you think of the emotion as just neutral, like anger is just anger. It's a physical, physiological response of protection. It strikes up the sympathetic nervous system,

releases cortisol and adrenaline through our body. It's meant to activate, meant to do something through that experience. But it's a matter of how do you work with it or what do you do with it. So you can use that sensation that you get and use it to be determined towards something, towards a change that you want to see happen in the world. Many people don't know how to work with their experience of anger, even just the experience of stress. Stress releases chemicals into your body and the best way to use that chemical is

to actually complete the stress cycle. So you get these chemicals released in your body. We were supposed to move them out of our body. They weren't meant to just hang out and just sit there for a long period of time. So I think that anger is all about what do you do with it? Same thing with any emotion. If you get stuck in sadness, it becomes depression. You get stuck in worry, it becomes anxiety. What about getting stuck in a positive emotion like joy? Does that also have a downside? I think it does. I think if you get stuck in joy, you are really, really afraid that maybe someone will take the joy away.

Or it's like nobody move, nobody breathe, nobody do anything different because my joy level might change. From a positive psychology perspective, mental health is about movement and digestion and how well can you dance between those polarities. And I think that people, maybe these politicians are using anger to show how determined they are and they think that they can pull people to rally with them. But we know that the negative is more attention-getting than the positive. That's the news cycle. I mean, if we didn't have that bias, then it would be interesting if somehow, so we know that we have a negativity bias and we go towards things that are negative. It would be fascinating. If we were somehow wired so that we had a positivity bias, you know, the nature of all mainstream media would be that it would be positively slanted,

because that's where the attention would go. And then that's where the advertising dollars would go. You know, but the fact that it's not, it's not a reflection of the media. It's a reflection of like the innate human bias towards negativity. So it it's almost like in a weird way we're slamming the media for giving us sort of like the thing that we most you know are drawn toward like forgiving us the light that we're most drawn towards not that it's a good thing that we're drawn towards it but i mean it's really interesting to when like the way you describe emotions amelia and i kind of think of them whether it's anger whether it's joy whether like whatever it is as like everything has some energy and not like a metaphysical type of energy but like there's like an energy behind stuff and it's almost like you

know there's a there's a zero line and the energy can be sort of like anger has in my mind like a plus energy like you're adding energy to the ecosystem whereas depression in my mind, like a plus energy, like you're adding energy to the ecosystem. Whereas depression, in my mind has like, it's almost like a negative energy, like you're taking energy out of the ecosystem and making it so like, you literally don't have the energy to act to remove yourself from it. Whereas, so it's interesting, because it gets back to what you're saying, Bob, which, you know, when I look at anger, you know, because I see see it as an emotional state that adds energy to the ecosystem, the question to me becomes, okay, which goes back to what you were take that energy and actually harness it for constructive action rather than destructive action? What I think we're seeing a lot is that, like, people are pouring massive amounts of anger, you know, like energy into the ecosystem right now. And a lot of it's being harnessed for destruction rather than positive.

Yeah. I was thinking about, so if we had a, if we were a species that was positively biased, we probably wouldn't. There's a huge evolutionary cost to that, right? Yeah, we'd probably be dead. Yeah, we'd probably be extinct, right? Yeah, sad to say. That poisonous thing, maybe it's not poisonous. It's probably not poisonous.

We'll just eat it. Yeah. That's why I think it's about recognizing that the permission to be human is all of the life experiences, all the emotions that we have, just knowing how to use it. I'm just good with all of humanity. You know, I don't have a clear answer to that, but what I do know is that I know what works for me, but it doesn't mean I do it. You know, I know that movement, that if I

get outside, it's a reset for me. If I go into nature, it's a huge reset for me. If I go and move my body, it's a huge reset for me. So it's like taking's a huge reset for me if i go and move my body it's a huge reset for me so it's like taking that i think but for different reasons i think nature almost dissipates the um the energy of the anger whereas exercise actually utilizes it like it's an alchemy where it transforms the energy into movement so i think it but i think both of them bring me back to that zero state, or I'll do them until I'm back there. And I think also just a precursor to that is a persistent stilling practice. I think also it stops me from going there in the first place, or going so deeply there in the first

place. So the need for a reset isn't as strong. What about you? So I use my body to guide me. And so even just talking about anger, I can actually feel this intensity kind of like boiling, like building up in my throat energy. And they actually did an interesting study on emotions. And I love where you're talking about adding energy versus taking it away. They had these body maps on a computer screen and people had a mouse and they were asked to think about an emotion and click on the body where they felt they would either getting the emotion added or taken away. And depression and they used a color gradient from blue being taking away energy, like emptiness, and then red being really dark and adding. And so with depression, it was a lot of blue energy kind of like down and in the center and outward, whereas anger was like orange and red. And it was more in like the upper chest and third area and in people's hands, which I thought was interesting.

How do I deal with it? I feel like I have to get the energy out. And so I will frequently write letters to the person or to the thing. And like I just I need to get in front of a keyboard and type as fast as I can. And I need to literally alchemize the energy. And oftentimes because it does get in my throat, I have to make sound. So I find myself like either doing like lion's breath, like which I'm really glad you guys are far away from the table that I didn't just like expose you to that or, or literally like screaming. I have to make sound to let it out because otherwise I can literally feel it just, just, I don't want to say eat away at me because it doesn't, but it, it, it just can't, I not as focused and still, and then I can do the still practice afterwards, but I just,'t, I'm not as focused in cell. And then I can do the still

practice afterwards, but I just, I need to move it out of my body. And I find that typing on a keyboard, just make sure there's no, that you don't put the email address in the recipient, you know, or just like blank word document and just get it out of my mind really helps me. I love it. It's funny when you're saying that, it reminded me of years ago, one of the first retreats we ever ran was at this center, like a couple hours outside of New York City. And when we were looking at the place, we noticed that it was this older structure, but some of the windows seemed to be like really new and double reinforced. I think I was telling us that they had a large regular group that would go there and hold this retreat every year.

And a big part of what would go on is they would like, sometimes for hours, they would just have these like, you know, they would wail and have these primal screams and they had to actually install, you know, like special sound insulated windows because their neighbors, like up the mountain mountain it was so loud where like they got all these complaints and the police would come but there's i guess there's a whole school of like therapeutic thought that says like this incredibly it works but doesn't i feel like i learned from you amelia that also that you can um kind of normalize that for yourself like so

if you're like acting out like the the idea of catharsis may not be as cathartic as we think it is right the idea of just letting it out that we actually accustomize ourself to getting angry yeah i think the big difference is um experiencing anger and expressing anger are two very different things so i think people misunderstand that you know, anger to move your anger doesn't mean you have to express it necessarily, but being able to experience it is different and asking yourself, what do I need at any given point to experience this or to work with what life is giving me anytime that we get into like, whether it be it's, oh, my experience is, oh, I do this for catharsis or I do A, B, and C.

When we start to just act remotely or rotely from that perspective, I think that's when we kind of get stuck. It's like sometimes it'll be good to be cathartic and sometimes it'll be good to go for a walk and sometimes it'll be good to do other things with it. I mean, what I find is I try, like I used to, my anger used to run me a lot of, ran a lot of my life and ruined a lot of my relationships. And one of the things I realized was that I kept kind of going back into, I kept kind of like hitting that, like being the mouse, like hitting that pedal again. For whatever reason, I seemed to enjoy it. Like I had to admit that I got some kind of hit of enjoyment out of it for one. And then I began to like methodically remove all the opportunities to get angry out of my life. So I, you know, if people, you know, it's kind of like Marie Kondo, the, what is it? The magical art of cleaning up or tidying up, right? So does this item bring me joy? You know, I started saying, does this relationship bring me joy? Does this job bring me joy? Does this thing, you know,

and I just kind of like, if it didn't, I let it go. And then I wonder, is that, is there a week? Cause I have a very like pleasant life right now. Like I'm really, really happy with my life at the moment. And sometimes I wonder, well, like, well, I could have been more effective if I was like leaning into like really difficult situations that pushed my buttons. And then I was able to manage that. And then this is also like the classic artist, you know, like illusion or delusion or a conundrum where it's like, if I get happy, am I still going to be able to do great art? Or it also like the classic artist you know like illusion or delusion or a conundrum where it's like if i get happy am i still going to be able to do great art or it's like the is this source of great art only like my deep and profound suffering if i get rid of my one of my devils when my angels leave too yeah yeah yeah and i'm not a believer in that but um certainly a lot

of people are that's funny i think that's one of my next topics as well as this is right along all right so we'll circle back to that yeah So why don't we zoom around to Amelia? What's on your mind? Well, my topic was going to be around vibration. So I love that we started in the conversation around anger. The way I've been experiencing or experimenting lately is thinking a lot about energy medicine, thinking a lot about energy medicine, thinking a lot about vibration and some of the things that we, science is starting to help us

understand better. Like even your, your statement around being in nature, there's this idea that everything that lives pulsates and vibrates and nature has a frequency. The sound that we're making right now has a frequency, and how do we understand energy and vibration, and how do we harness energy and vibration? And so I've been thinking about energy medicine as modalities. I've been thinking about the research that shows that nature vibrates at the same healing frequency that your physical therapist might use in a vibration wand if you've torn.

Is that the Schumann resonance? Something like that, yeah, the Schumann vibration. And so it's like, wow, that's interesting. And that's maybe one of the reasons why I feel so healing to be in nature. And I've been thinking about that combined with Kim Cameron's work on positive energizers in the workforce, like actually measuring who are the people that are net positive, they add energy to the ecosystem, versus the energy vampires who are net negative.

I don't know any of them. Never. Well, you blocked them all out. You eliminated them entirely. And even if you knew them, you wouldn't be angry about it. Exactly. So I've just been thinking about how do we harness energy and vibration and all the different spectrums of vibration that we can produce as human beings and that we can also be antennas for as human beings? How do we work vibration?

So for the woo-woo listener and for the un-woo-woo listener, take me there. Because it's funny. So I know that we've known each other for a long time now. And I know you're this kind of astonishing and inexplicable blend of deep academic scholar. At the same time, completely and utterly open to the unexplainable. So when you talk about vibration, what do you actually mean? I mean vibrations of different energy waves. So we've got light vibration.

We've got sound vibration. We've got just this idea that everything that lives vibrates. Everything that lives pulsates in some way. We've got vibrations in our heartbeat. Your heart is producing a magnetic energetic wave that is emitting from your body, and it goes out into the world. And at the same time, we've got microwaves, and we've got telephone vibrational waves. So I guess it was too vague and saying, in harnessing vibration, I think what I'm thinking of is how do we work our own energy.

And so when we're looking at our own vibration we're looking at thought vibrations like every thought that you have is aspiring at a particular resonant frequency and which is measurable outside the body yeah yeah yeah exactly which would surprise a lot of people yeah so the ones that i spent a lot of time like dabbling and playing with is different eeg frequency of like brain. I spent a lot of time playing around with heart rate variability as a, as another body wave. And, um, and then I'd laugh because I mean, thank you for the acknowledgement of my ridiculous wooboo-ness with my desire for all things measurable because, and then at the end of the day, what I really rely on is like we, I, that we as human beings are little antennas. Like I don't

need an instrument to tell me how I feel when I'm with someone that really energizes me. And I can feel this dread of like, I just don't want to be in a room with this person. Oh my gosh. And so, so knowing this, like how do we, how do we become more masterful of our own energy and also working energy? And, and even, even the energy of our room and our work spaces how do we how do we work it so that we feel really like we're thriving if you we all have that experience with too much stuff like that is very loud energy around us versus we're quieting space and that creates a certain energy whether there be light or sound that we're picking up on what are you thinking

about well first i was thinking about it's nice to be in this room with you guys. And so I was thinking about, I heard Ian McKellen, the actor, speak a little while ago. And he talked about the difference between being on stage and working without amplification. And the primary difference is that it actually creates a vibration. I'm creating a vibration of the air right now, which is then hitting your eardrum, which is then entering your body. And so it's a much more intimate experience than say the people, the listeners on, you know, in their car or whatever, listening to this podcast now who are hearing with, the building technology, we're in 10 countries on five continents right now, and there are only 50 of us. It's a small team, but we're very, very distributed. And we all got together in Costa Rica back in January. It was the first time that this team had come together after many of them working together for eight years or nine

years, the company has been around. And i think getting to have that sort of physical experience of somebody is largely about that vibration in some way and it fundamentally alters the remote experience that you have from the person even being together with them briefly for a little while now when i see somebody on slack or on email or on github or something you know one of these you know sort of digital mediums that we use i have a really really different experience with that person. I think it's because I've been in their vibrational presence, I guess. Yeah, I mean, it's interesting because the thing that I key in on with that is our awareness.

You know, that if all of these things we emit, you know, a wide variety of actual measurable electromagnetic frequencies and waves outside of our body that are perceived by other people within a certain range from us. So like you, I guess the assumption is that that would be A, perceivable, and B, it would in some way affect you, you know, even if it's something you couldn't see. So Bob talks and we hear him, so we know he's talking, right? But Amelia thinks of somebody dear to her who's in pain for a moment

and something inside of her changes and her heart flutters or tenses or speeds or races and that sends something out. But I can't see what's in her mind, but can I sense that something just shifted because something changed in her heart which somehow radiated out into the space? And I don't know the answer to that,

but part of my question is can we actually perceive that as human beings? We can measure it with super sensitive devices, but are we actually as sensitive as those devices as individuals? Or do we have to focus our attention? So I know when I'm sitting in a coaching session with a client who has my undivided attention, I'll notice really subtle shifts of their emotions, which I recognize I'm perceiving through body language, through tone of voice, and then things that literally are just energetic. I feel in my body what they might be feeling. And do we need to be attending to it in order to perceive it? So if you're listening to Bob and my mind wanders and I think of someone else who I

might be feeling sad about, but you're not attending to my emotion, you're not focusing on me, would you be feeling it anyway? It's interesting. Well, don't you think? I mean, I feel like humans, we're all in many ways natural mind readers. I mean, the idea that when we're babies, like being able to be attuned to your mother's emotional state is a core survival technique, right? And then being attuned to yours as well. But as we get to adults, we start to discount all of that like i may walk into a room as a facilitator and feel like oh everybody's fine because nobody

said anything but if i go one layer deeper and i'm like well what's how does my body feel is my the hair standing up on the back of my neck do i feel like there's something unexpressed that needs to be expressed in this room and i you know i deal with like technology people who aren't good at expressing emotions stereotypically and perhaps for real as well. But, you know, like I find that the more I stay attuned to that and the more I'm willing to kind of lean into that and say, okay, what do I have to address that's not being addressed right now that I find that things tend to go better? Like the more I admit that maybe I can read somebody's mind, even though it sounds kind of crazy. But I think that's what we're talking about. I think our body is picking things up.

It just hasn't hit necessarily. We have to let it hit the conscious level. And I guess there are things that we can do also to alter. I mean, it's like Amy Cuddy's work on presence, you know, that they're simple changes in posture somehow alter the way that we bring ourselves to the world in a way that's perceivable like whether that's in terms of waves or just you know like a hundred micro physiological and physical observable tells that we don't even know we're observing um and i guess you can't really separate those two so amy had something it's just great that you bring this up i'm in the middle of her book right now and i've gone back to some of her other her previous work and one of her

articles from harvard business for you i read from a couple years ago, she talks about this matrix, the warmth versus competence, the two by two thing, right? That was going to be my topic. Was that going to be your topic? So I can move right into that. There you go. It's, yeah. I actually just, I gave a talk to a bunch of technology people last week, and I finished with this because we were talking about building up teams that move faster, essentially. And I was like, we have to have trust and respect and as technology people we always lead with competence we're always answering the question can you handle this

can i handle can i can you make this thing happen but we're never really answering the question because we don't necessarily believe we're not as woo-woo as as some people um but uh is you know do i care about you do you know am i able to care and i and one of the what i the thought i left the topic the conversation with is like we have to lead with warmth you have to answer that question first otherwise nobody's able going to be able to receive that yeah can you be competent and that's why don't we just kind of like dive into that a little bit more because that was you know that was what amy's research was around which was sort of like this balancing act between warmth um or slash likability and competence and you'd like we'd like to think that when we go to hire somebody you know or when we're going to work with somebody

you know like we want the best person in the world but what she was essentially saying is that you don't get to competence and that's for those listening, it's with a P, not confidence, but competence until you get past warmth. So competence doesn't really matter until you actually trust somebody, until there's a sense of warmth, like there's rapport. And what's interesting is when I read that,

I was like, well, yes and no. So a couple of years back, I had throat surgery. And as soon as we realized that there was something going on, and that I was going to need to have surgery, my first response was, I could not care less about the bedside manner of the woman or man who's about to cut my neck open. All I care is that they're the best in the world that what they do and i went and i tried you know i looked for the best person that i could find so i think it's interesting in that

i don't entirely agree with the warmth slash competence thing i think it's it's relevant to the sort of like the nature of the of of the task that's being sought after but do you want them you want them to care though? Like you would want them to, like you wouldn't want them necessarily be psychopathic or sociopathic, like unable to have empathy towards you as a human being. If they were the best at the world at cutting something out of my neck, I think I would rather have that than somebody who wasn't that good, but cared a little bit more about me.

Yeah. I don't know. I have to think about that, but it's when, when like, I think about it but it's when when like i think when this it's a matter of stakes to me yeah the higher the stakes get in a weird way i feel like the less warmth matters and the more competence matters would you say it's about locus of control meaning if you're thinking about who you want to hire then i I understand that, you know, no matter how great you are at your job, if I don't want to be in a room with you, I probably would want to figure that out first,

but you can't cut your own throat open. I hope you wouldn't want to. And, and so you're going to leverage firstly, the control that you do have, which is to choose the person who's going to, to do the best job, but But the nature of the relationship is different than it would when you have control over the- Yeah, I have no doubt that that plays into it. And by the way, it turns out that the best guy in New York City and one of the best in the country also happens to have a wonderful bedside manner.

So I ended up with both. But I had that same gentleman walked in and the doctor basically had what's sort of commonly known as like the classic, you know, high-level specialty surgeon approach to just pure, this is just, you know, mechanical. I don't think it would have changed my willingness or desire to work with him. Yeah. I mean, I had a hip surgery a few years ago, and my surgeon had no bedside manner. I think I spoke maybe, you know, less than a half hour total time with him

before he actually cut me open. And I had a lot of confidence in him, basically, because of it. But I also wonder, in that case, we're also looking at the surgeon as the only person responsible, but there's a team of people that sits around the surgeon. And what we do know is that if someone's making somebody else feel unsafe, then we're actually lowering their cognitive functioning.

So if that surgeon is behaving in such a way, even though they're really good mechanically with cutting, are they good at also inspiring and focusing and creating a team that's actually also going to hold you and be responsible for you? Yeah, and I think that gets back to what Amelia was saying also. It's sort of like building on the locus of control and also that like is this a are we looking to develop a long-term working relationship um because yeah at that point if somebody's you know like i want somebody who buys into my my beliefs and my values and my vision and my culture

and and um i'd love to have the highest level of competence but i'll take that person first and then train competence if I need to. It reminds me of the trust equation that you could actually map out trust based on trust equaling credibility plus reliability plus intimacy divided by self-orientation. So it's kind of an interesting thing to plop something like that in. So if you happen to know that this person has low bedside manners but is really, really good at what they do, their self-orientation is not all that high. Like you kind of understand that this is just the way the person is. They still have my best interest in mind. And they're credible in that they can do what they're doing. And they're reliable.

They're able to do it. And therefore, I don't need that much intimacy from them. I trust this person. But if someone else is not recognizing that their low bedside manners is, you know, them being focused on themselves rather than focusing on the patient, then that's going to start making them not trust their surgeon and can affect everything from their healing to other things. And when we go into something in a state of stress, our body just doesn't heal as quickly as it does when we trust. I think that our own understanding of it and our own expectations, we can talk about it as, is it kindness or do you like the person? What was, I forgot the matrix. It's the matrix, the two by two was warm warm and confident so i think that you know the warmth is trust if i were to just substitute the word warmth with trust it's like do i trust you and part of that trusting is that intimacy that warmth that you bring me the positivity that you bring me it's like do i trust you or not yeah and it's trust and it's but likability

plays a big role in it also it's interesting too i think from um the perspective of somebody It's like, do're a newbie, right? So some people will get really arrogant and try and fake competence and end up actually sort of like lessening their warmth and their competence and then wondering why everybody's running from them. It's because like you're incompetent and you're an idiot, you know, but you're trying to position themselves as being like the opposite of both. And then some people will come and they'll be like, look, I understand. I'm green. It can take me years to actually be really good. So, but that doesn't mean that like I can't do anything. What that means is that if I know that trust and likability and warmth actually is a really important part of bringing people into my orbit and working with me long enough so that they can actually help me

develop the competence that will then become like a leading draw for them to want to hire me. You know, you can think of it as, okay, if I understand that this is the dynamic, when I'm new at something, I'm trying to build a practice or a business, warmth and likability matter, you know, on exponentially more at that point. So if you really focus on developing that focus on understanding human beings and social dynamics and cultivating a sense of deep caring and attention and warmth and presence, you know, it can really make up for a lot. But then what I what I see happening so often is that as soon as the competence level starts to rise to a point

where someone's like, yeah, I got it. They start to realize that that's a big enough draw that they pull back and they don't really want to do the work on the warmth side anymore. And then things change and they wonder why. I don't know if either of you guys are experiencing. I don't know. I feel like the older I get, the more I realize like everything seems to happen in subtext, which I think is kind of what you're talking about.

Like anything that matters to me me like that really matters to me and even i mean even my earning potential like all happens in the subtext of the of the conversation i think i always was in my early younger days and earlier in my career i always thought well no one again like the same thing no one has said anything therefore it's not a problem i tried that in relationships as well that didn't work out work out so great and now i realize like like i pay so much more attention to i guess it's vibrations i don't know but it's like how do i feel in this person's presence how does this person feel to me when i think about my wife i'm like do i you know like how does how does she feel today do i does she

feel like she needs anything even if she's not asking for it? And you kind of like lean into that and give that, I don't know. Might be one of the reasons, though, why you're so happy in your life right now is because of that other-centeredness that you bring into the world of not just the ultimate depression is a me-centered universe, but being other-centered and attuned to the world around you, present and mindful of other people, shifts how we feel. Do you hear what you're saying, John, that once some of these people you've seen in the business world start to become competent, they start to lose the other bit, the kindness, that confuses the heck out of me,

because then it was like, what are you doing in the first place? I think that if someone pursues something that they want to do and as they become really good at it, they lose that sense of kindness. They're possibly just not being mindful or self-aware enough to watch it impact them in the first place. Why are they doing it? So this is something I wonder about a lot. And I don't actually think it's that. Here's what I think. I think we've talked about this a little bit, and I'm still working on my theory behind this.

But on a very simplified level, my sense is that people are wired on a spectrum between maker and helper. And the thing that sparks you is somewhere along that spectrum. And if you're wired on the spectrum more towards the maker side, then being of service to others is nice. It lets you build something, it lets you create value, and it lets you actually turn that into a living, but it's not what you wake up for. It never has been, it probably never will be. What wakes you up in the morning is what Richard Feynman famously said, the kick of figuring the thing out. So you learn how to play the role of the helper and you step into cultivating the practices that let you become pretty good at it. But it's not really your

nature. And the moment that you realize that you don't have to exert energy to continue doing that, you start to pull back and go into the cave. You see this with a lot of artists and craftspeople too, who go out and do all the work to build their career. And the moment they can go back into the cave, they do. I don't know if that's valid or not. Do you see the opposite with the helpers? The helpers that have to figure out a way to make something from their desire to help? Yeah, I do actually. Same dynamic. Yeah, just reversed. They couldn't care less about the actual thing. They just want to serve.

But they force themselves to care about the thing because they know they can't serve effectively without it. It's really interesting. It's something I've been playing with. And so the service people are focused on the person that they're serving rather than on the thing that that person's making. They're focused on the relationship rather than the help.

Yeah. And your classic tech entrepreneur is a maker. Whereas your classic private practice professional is a server or a helper or at least more more on that spectrum very often is there going to be a fields typology index there's coming there actually is something in the works which deconstructs it on a lot more levels but yeah i've been working with this for a while now because i've seen the dynamic so many times now and tried to reverse engineer it that I think there's something deeper going on. It makes me kind of tickle inside because reminded of how we see the world not as it is, but as we are. So as someone who's a helper that makes things because I love to help, I'm like, how could anyone ever stop wanting to help when something is made?

Like I can't even wrap my brain around it, but it makes so much sense that somebody would have it and the joys in the creation process for some. Because, and I've bumped into this with entrepreneurs when we teach them step one is figure out like who's the persona, who are you serving? Because as a marketer and a language creator, everything gets so much easier

when you can identify that person and the maker can't because they just don't care. So you have to teach them how to identify that person so that they can understand how to then create a conversation with them and how to care about them, but it doesn't come naturally. Well, I think I just figured out where I sit on your spectrum based on... Yeah, I mean, because I've organized my life as a maker right now you know like i i've you know i my whole day is the reason we're doing this i said the afternoon would be better for me is because the mornings are maker time for me almost exclusively now and i've have to train myself to actually make things that people

you know like think about this is for this person rather than this is just an interesting knot that i'm trying to untangle or explain for myself. Yeah. So why don't we come full circle here, wrapping up part one of our round table with our guests in residence, Bob Gower and Amelia Zhivitovskaya. Said not the Ukrainian way, but close enough. You can find these guys, where can they find you, Amelia? You can find me at Amelia.com, E-M-I-L-I-Y-A.com. And Bob? BobGower.com, B-O-B-G-O-W-E-R. Awesome. And these guys are our guests in residence for a couple more weeks.

So we will be back with another conversation next week. Hey, thanks so much for listening to today's episode. If you found something valuable, entertaining, engaging, or just plain fun, I'd be so appreciative if you take a couple extra seconds and share it. Maybe you want to email it to a friend. Maybe you want to share it around social media. Or even be awesome if you'd head over to iTunes and just give us a rating. Every little bit helps get the word out, and it helps more people get in touch with the message.

I'm Jonathan Fields signing off for Good Life Project. If you're looking for flexible workouts, Peloton's got you covered. Summer runs or playoff season meditations, whatever your vibe, Peloton has thousands of classes built to push you. We know how life goes. New father, new routines, new locations. What matters is that you have something there to adapt with you, whether you need a challenge or rest.

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