Influential Introvert: Communication Coaching for Professionals with Performance Anxiety - Are You Choosing Alive Time or Dead Time?

Episode Date: April 30, 2020

We’re living through a global pandemic. It's okay to have down days and to be upset about the way things are. None of us want to be locked up in our house or to lose our job.   But if we wallow in that negativity for too long, that doesn't mean we're going to get extra days in our life, right? We're not going to get bonus months at the end of our life because we survived lock down.    Author Ryan Holiday has a podcast called the Daily Stoic. Lately, he’s been talking about Alive Time versus Dead Time, something writer Robert Greene told him about.    According to him, we can spend our time in one of two ways, passively (Dead Time), where we’re just zoning out and letting life happen to us, and actively (Alive Time), where we’re learning, trying new things, and consciously choosing how to spend our time.   As the Stoics taught us, we can't control what's going on in the world, but we can control how we react to it. You’ll never get today again -- will you make it matter? *** Hello. I’m Sarah, your host and founder of Podcast Launch Academy. Are you ready to launch a podcast that builds your brand and business, connects you to your global community, and grows your influence? Visit sarahmikutel.com to see how we can work together. Here’s a special treat for you: Use my Buzzsprout affiliate link to sign up for their podcast media hosting and get a $20 Amazon gift certificate. I’ve gotten to know the Buzzsprout team over this last year and love their customer service so much, I moved my shows over there.Do you ever go blank or start rambling when someone puts you on the spot? I created a free Conversation Cheat Sheet with simple formulas you can use so you can respond with clarity, whether you’re in a meeting or just talking with friends.Download it at sarahmikutel.com/blanknomore and start feeling more confident in your conversations today.

Have you been wanting to start a podcast for a while now, but something's holding you back? Maybe it's fear of putting yourself out there or confusion about the technology. I'm Sarah Mikital and on podcasting step by step, I'll break down how to podcast with a little loving motivation to give you the skills and the confidence you need to finally launch that show of your dreams. Let's get started. Hello, hello. I hope you have been enjoying this divine spring.

however you are able, wherever you are. Over the last few weeks, I have been walking around folks in and just marveling at how the nature just keeps on going. The tulips here are so red and lush and full of life and the birds are singing. The sun is shining and the waves keep crashing on the shore as they always do. They don't pause when there's a pandemic or when there's any other type of crisis and the world and it feels really good to be in this consistency and in this beauty. I've mentioned before on this podcast, but I'm a history lover and I have visited some pretty dark places. I think it is important to go and bear witness to things that have happened in our past that a lot of us don't really want to remember, but we need to remember. So I have been to

several concentration camps and death camps in Poland and in Germany. And every single time I've gone to one, the weather has been so perfect, it almost feels blissful, warm breeze, blue sky, leafy green trees, and the sun is just so bright, it hurts your eyes. But what really sticks with me is the birds chirping. When you arrive at these camps, before you get there, you kind of imagine that they're going to be almost black and white, bleak and cold places. And then you get there and the weather's perfect and life seems normal. And the birds keep chirping and singing and you're thinking, don't you know what happened here? And I find myself thinking, you know, I wonder if they were still singing during the war, during the death marches and force labor and evil experiments. And then I hope that

They did. I hope those birds did sing and give those victims trap behind those fences a little piece of normalcy by continuing on. I will never forget the Easter that I spent visiting a friend's family in the eastern side of Germany. I had been to Berlin before and enjoyed the city life there, but I hadn't been to the countryside out on the eastern side of Germany where they were under communism for decades. And I can't really remember exactly what I expected her hometown to look like, but I think it was again one of those situations where you're kind of thinking black and white, bleak, I don't know, destroyed maybe, but I didn't expect to find a normal suburb that you would find anywhere, but that is what I found. And, you know, a few decades earlier, this place

was on fire being raised to the ground. And now here I arrive and there's tulip in the garden and everything seems normal. And one day when I was there, my friend and I sat down with her grandmother who was 18 when World War II ended. And I was so curious about what life was like back then, but I felt very awkward asking the sweet old lady questions about that time. But I guess I kept tinting my interest over tea in her kitchen. And so she happily started to share some post-war memories and I don't think I had ever heard the German perspective from somebody who wasn't a Nazi or a concentration camp survivor and I don't know if I've ever heard these stories live, you know, from an actual person rather than on TV. And so my friend was translating her grandmother's

words and she told me that, you know, she was a teenager and the war is over and that when they knew that the Russians were coming. She and everyone else in the village packed into a train destination unknown to avoid being raped and or burned alive in their houses. And her mother nearly died after the Russians poisoned the water. So 26 million Russians, more than half civilians, died fighting the Nazis after Hitler betrayed their alliance. And so they wanted blood. Now, I know what you might be thinking, because I was thinking the same thing. Serves those Germans right after murdering millions of people, they deserve to suffer. And I felt the same way. The day before I was speaking to my friend's grandmother, I was in museum seeing skeletal

Holocaust victims. And so I at first was struggling to find compassion for these German people who suddenly found themselves on a crowded train. But of course, not all Germans were Nazis. And I think we all like to imagine that we would have been different from them. We would have been the ones risking our lives to save others. I mean, you hope that's true. And especially when we're young, we imagine we would have been the heroes. But the truth is, most of us are just average people trying to live our lives. I mean, there's a lot of bad things happening out in the world right now. And we're not getting involved in all these different injustices. So But back in 1945, my friend's grandmother, I think 1945, 1945, 1945, 1946,

my friend's grandmother made her way back to her hometown. There wasn't anything there. She was living in a stable and working at a bakery, just getting paid in bread. And it's really funny the things that people remember. So she said that toilets really confused the Russians and that they used them for sinks and to put fish in them. And when a fish disappeared down the drain, the soldiers would shoot up the toilet to try to catch them. And so this story made me laugh.

And then she started laughing my friend's grandmother. And she was just so jolly. And it's, I think, she didn't seem as traumatized as I felt for her. And these stories happened so long ago. They must have felt like they belonged to somebody else. Or who knows, maybe it feels like they just happened. and yesterday, or maybe both, I think that's, I think that's a common thing for a lot of us as well. It's just amazing to me what people can live through and how fast things can change, right?

And I think we're thinking that this right now, like, how long is this going to go on? When is life going to get normal again? And life can get normal pretty quick. but you probably know that after the Allies defeated the Nazis, the world wanted to prevent Germany from going on another murderous rampage. And so the country was divided into East and West, and the Soviets controlled the German Democratic Republic, the GDR, and France, Great Britain, and the U.S. controlled the Federal Republic of Germany in the West. And many in the East, to where my friend's family was. They didn't like being under communist control.

And so they fled to the West until 1961. The Soviets pretty much overnight put up the Berlin Wall to prevent that rain drain. And the families from then on who were living in the West, they could visit their eastern relatives, but they couldn't bring them back. And so they would have a visit with them. And then they had to say goodbye at this train station called the Palace of Tears. And so the Berlin Wall came down in 1919.

89 when my friend and I, my friend and I, we were kids in school and understood the significance of what was happening. But as new generations are born, what happened to their parents and grandparents that already feels like ancient history? It's just so shocking to me how fast things can change and how fast we can bounce back. Look at the children born to the children who survived the Bosnian War in the 90s or the kids in China being raised with tax. technology in cities where a generation or two ago their families may have been living in poverty on some rural farm. And they don't relate to the hardship of previous generations. And part of that is good and part of that is bad. But I think one thing that's important to remember is, you know,

there's resilience and there's hope. Humans are resilient. And, you know, we have hopeful. We're a hopeful species often. But, you know, right now I'm seeing, you know, it's quite common, prevalent even. To see people post on social media, it's okay to not be okay. And that's totally true. It's okay to not be okay. It's okay to have down days and to be upset about the way things are. None of us want to be locked down in our house. So it's okay to not be okay and feel that for a little while. But if we wallow in that negativity for too long, that doesn't mean that we're going to get extra days in our life, right? We're not going to get these months back. We're not going to get bonus months at the end of our life because we survived lockdown. I hear some people shouting, there are no silver linings

about this. But I just have a friendly reminder for these people that we're not biding our time right now until things get normal. Again, this isn't a dress rehearsal. This is our life. Our life is still happening. And every day that you spend in misery is another day that you're not going to get back. I think this is worth repeating. There are no bonus days. I'm seeing a lot of people saying that everything is on hold right now, but it's not. Life is marching on. Your life is marching on. And you can decide whether this is a live time or dead time. So author Ryan Holiday has a podcast called The Daily Stoic, and lately he's been talking about a live time versus dead time, and this is something that writer Robert Green told him about. So according to Robert Green,

we can spend our time in one of two ways, passively, which is dead time where we are just zoning out and letting life happen to us, or actively, which is a live time where we're learning and trying new things and consciously choosing how to spend our time. So it's okay, to be okay. We shouldn't feel guilty for seeking out the positives in a situation. One of my favorite sayings is don't ask why this is happening to me, but ask why is this happening for me? Or else we are just letting life happen to us and falling into victimhood. And we have more control over our life than that. At least we have more control over how we react to things. We can't control what's going on in the world outside, but we can control how we react to it. I've always been interested in

stoicism, and I confess, I haven't looked too deeply into this, but I really love the broad concept of it, especially since going to Athens, Greece, which is the birthplace of stoicism. This is something that I'm much more interested in diving deeper into. The Stoics, those philosophers, they had emotions, of course. Sometimes, you know, I think people often think that they were just cold and emotionless and tried to completely set themselves apart from the world. But that's not true. They had emotions, of course, but they didn't let them rule their life. They were mindful of the experiences that they were going through and acting conscientiously. And if anything, I think the Stoics loved and appreciated life more than anyone, because they were

especially conscious of our limited time here on earth and just doing it. good and feeling good while we're here and present and in the moment. So we can't control the chaos swirling around the pandemic, but what we can do here and now is just to make the most of it. And actually, much more than make the most of it. Let's try to enjoy this time. Whether we are on our own or in a house full of people running around, we're never going to have this time again. And as I said, we're not going to get extra time later on like, oh, you lived through quarantine, let me give you an extra two months of living. No, this is your life right now. So make the most of it, whether that means going for walks, making some new friends online, starting a business,

writing a novel. This is your time to do what you want with. My friend Caitlin is a mom with a really small child and she doesn't get the chance to go to many conferences and she was just telling me she has been so thrilled that now the conferences are coming to her online. She can participate in more things and she's loving it. There are plenty of different opportunities, plenty of different ways to get involved in different conversations happening online right now, tons of different courses to do, and it's also time for more real conversations. We've been moving so fast that we've kind of gotten lost touch with what really matters. I saw a very heartfelt video clip the other day of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. Having that realization, he was doing

some interview and he said, you know, I realize that the interactions between me and my kids have just become so superficial. It's just, hey, how are you doing okay? Do you need money? Like, very transactional. And now that they have more time to speak together, he's getting to know his kids on a much, you know, deeper level. And I just thought that was a beautiful perspective and something that we should all be mindful of. So this is our time to reset, to think about what really matters, and how we want to spend the rest of our lives. So I think it's really important that we've gotten this gift of reflection. So life is continuing on the birds are singing, the flowers are growing, the waves keep crashing, and it's up to you. Do you want to make this a live time or

dead time. Whichever you choose, you will never have this day again. So make it matter. That's all for now. Thank you so much for listening and have a beautiful week wherever you are. Thank you for listening to podcasting step by step. You are now one step closer to launching that podcast you've been dreaming about. But I want to get you even closer. I created a free guidebook for you with actionable worksheets called eight mistakes new podcasters make and how to fix them. To find that, head on over to sarah micotel.com slash fix. Do you ever go blank or start rambling when someone puts you on the spot? I created a free conversation sheet sheet with simple formulas that you can use

so you can respond with clarity, whether you're in a meeting or just talking with friends. Download it at sarahmicatel.com slash blank no more.