The Chris Cuomo Project - Cuomo On The Couch: What? So What? Now What?

Episode Date: February 16, 2023

In a candid, unfiltered talk from his living room couch, Chris Cuomo explores a method of managing pain in crisis by analyzing what you observe, ascribing meaning to what you see, and deciding what you’re going to do about it. Follow and subscribe to The Chris Cuomo Project on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube for new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday. Need to hire? You need Indeed. Visit Indeed.com/CCP to start hiring now. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, everybody, and welcome to another special edition of the Chris Cuomo Project, Cuomo on the Couch. Ah, simple genius. Please subscribe. Please follow. Thank you so much for wanting more of these. But what I'm going to talk about today can be summed up in three words. What?

So what? So what? Now what? So simple means so much as I learned and I want to relate because I hope it works for you better than it works for me. Support for the Chris Cuomo Project comes from PrizePix. I got to tell you, there's a reason PrizePix is America's number one fantasy sports app. Three million members. Why? Easy, plenty of action if you're into DFS. And it's just you against the numbers. You pick more than or less than on two to six player stat projections. And if you're any good, the winnings will roll in.

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best-selling sheet is a bamboo set, okay? Temperature regulating. G gets softer with every wash. I'm not kidding you. All right. Now, so if you go to CozyEarth.com and you enter the code, enter the code Chris, and you can get up to 35 percent off your first order. CozyEarth.com and the code is Chris. is Chris. And again, thank you for giving me this opportunity. Thank you for seeking out News Nation more and more, 8 and 11p on weekday nights, Eastern. You can find it at the top of my Instagram and social media pages. There's a button there. We need more of you. Thank you for doing it. I appreciate you. And this is all coming from a point of appreciation, not instruction, not instruction. The comments that I'm getting about, thank you for teaching. Thank you for showing.

Learning, failing, flailing, often on one knee. Literally my emotional posture, Greg's gonna get upset at me for moving. My emotional posture most of the time is like this. This is how I feel most of the time. On one knee, trying, you know, like I want to get up. It hurts when I do. And I'm just here. That's how I feel most of the time. Why? Depressed, depression, mistakes, regrets, counterproductive, doesn't help you get to a better place. If life were a written test, you would ace it, okay?

Once you've done the reading and you've thought about it and you've lived enough, but it's not, it's a practical exam. And so many things go so wrong so often. And if you're like me, I harp on them. Nobody likes to make mistakes. I'm haunted by things that happen. there's an indulgence, there's a self-indulgence in it. And that's kind of perverse. It's kind of backwards. Why?

Because, well, if you want to be indulgent, you should be doing things that like help you get to a better place or at least forgetting about the bad place. But there is comfort in self-loathing, in worry, in anxiety, being concerned, worried, fearful of what you don't know but you think could happen, the yet-to-occur future, worrying about it in the present. Now, if you've done any work on yourself and on these ideas, you know all of that is just negative, useless thought. But there's something satisfying in it. So when the bad thing happens,

I knew it. I knew it. I knew it was going to get screwed up. I knew it wasn't going to happen. I knew this would happen. I knew this person would do this and say this, and this wouldn't happen. That wouldn't happen. There's a comfort in that because you're not let down having had your hope stolen from you. Yes, that's true. I am that. So what does that mean? That means that I just know what is supposed to work and I know my own experience with it. And I think it's important that more of us say, I tried that diet. I gained nine pounds. Oh, I took that and I wound up getting a blood clot. Or I did this and my mood went crazy and that it's not an easy fix, that not everything is going to work out and there's going to be struggle and

there's going to be pain and there's going to be suffering and that life is pain management. Oh my God, this is so dour. This is all so bad. No, it's realistic. Now the question is, well, if you accept that, life is pain management. Okay. Well, just, we got to focus on the management part. See, that's where I screw up and I'm sure many of you do as well. How do you manage it? That's where beauty comes in. That's where love comes in. That's where your joie de vivre, if you know, that love of life and you want, why? That's the balancing because there's going to be pain. There's going to be disappointment, but there's going to be pleasure. There's going to be disappointment. But there's going to be pleasure. There's going to be triumph. There's going to be ups, right?

So the management, it's the management. How do we do that? How do we do that in crisis? Because anybody can live when it's easy, right? Anybody can win the lottery well. It's what you do with it eventually when all these other things start to come up as a result of that fortune. Now what? That's where the horror stories come from, right?

So, a story. My brother-in-law says to me that he met with Norman Lear. Now, I love Norman Lear. Just turned 100. Why? All in the family, the Jeffersons, all these TV shows that were so formative to my childhood and understanding different societal dynamics. I was a TV kid, watched TV all the time. So he is like a huge, a hero for me. Like, how did he knit? Like, I want to interview him so much.

How did he knit all these different cultures and different things that he couldn't have lived? And where'd that empathy come from? And how'd he get it? So my brother-in-law knows him and is talking to him about coming on the podcast and he brings up what has happened for the last couple of years with my brother and me. And he looks at my brother-in-law and he says two things. So what? Now what? And my brother-in-law relayed this to me and I was like, wow. Yes. Yes. So what? Now what? That's it. That's how simple it is. That's the way that you examine everything. Norman Lear is a genius. So then I start working on explaining this to other people when I realize that that is getting me personally nowhere. Why? I'm going to pause on that, okay? Let me explain it first, and then I'll explain why it hasn't

worked for me as a way of hopefully getting you to a better place, because it's an amazing tool. So I look up where Norman Lear wrote that, right? So I can distill his genius for you as a concept that we should try in our own relationships, our own lives, with our own events. He didn't write it. It turns out that it's not just so what, now what? It's what, so what, now what, and that they are cues of something called liberating structure, which is what helps specifically in team or group organizational dynamics in terms of how you can use groupthink, what they call a scrum, to your advantage so it's not just noise, and it's a processing mechanism for a team to work through problems and find solutions. And it draws its

inspiration from a Greek, the Greeks, always great thinkers, Chris Argyris, A-R-G-Y-R-I-S. And he had something called the ladder of inference, okay? What, so what, now what? So what is where you observe? Okay, that's the data thing. What is this? What are we dealing okay? What, so what, now what? So what is where you observe, okay? That's the data thing. What is this? What are we dealing with? What's the problem? What's the deal? What happened? So what is how you ascribe meaning to that? What does this mean to you? Now, that's going to come to your personal predilections, your wants, your not wants, your values, your concerns, your wants, your not wants, your values, your concerns, your culture, your circumstances. Okay. So what? Well, it's so what if this is a rental car and I already signed the agreement. So the fact there's a scratch on the side of it, it is what it is. It's going to be picked up by

the insurance I have there versus I don't have insurance. This is my dad's 57 Chevy. And now what? You know, those are two different so what's. And then the now what is, what are you going to do about it? So in an organizational place, this is a way to organize group thought, right? So that everybody's working off the same cues and you can be collaborative. However, however, in reading about it more, it works absolutely as well on the individual basis. Why? Because, sure, it helps to hear other people's perspectives on things. But at the end of the day, for better and for worse, the only opinion of who you are

and what you do and how you feel that matters is you. Why for better and worse? Well, for better because when you're evaluating how to get yourself to a better place, that's a good thing. That you don't need 10 different opinions. And you probably shouldn't have 10 different opinions. Because you've got to figure out what matters to you. Well, now for worse, what does that mean? Well, what if you're me?

And in an almost constant negative headspace and negative self-talk, driven by self-loathing, insecure, fear, really, and not just anxiety, fear. Like, I know exactly what I'm afraid of. I lived it. So, and may live it again. You know, who knows? Who knows? It's such a crazy world that I have subjected myself to willingly. I want to live this life. myself to willingly. I want to live this life. So it works as well for you personally as it does as an organizational method, which is what it is. Look, no shame in my game. I've been using AG1 for over five years. Why? It works, it's easier, and it's less expensive. That's why. Since 2010, they've been getting their formulations right and tweaking their formulas. Why?

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Plus, price is going to vary based on product and subscription plan. What, so what, now what? Now, if you think about that, it works with everything. Not in terms of making it go away. Things don't go away, okay? There is just time and what happens with time. Well, that's the same thing. More time passes, things go away.

Not always you can dwell. You can be stuck. You can repeat. You can create habit. So, no. But the passage of time is the significant mechanism that is not controllable. Time will pass. What will you do with it?

Right? Challenge opportunity. It's not just semantics. Time will pass. What will you do with it? Right? Challenge opportunity. It's not just semantics. This thing happened. Well, what am I going to do? Now, sometimes there's an obvious thing, okay? You got hit. What are you going to do?

You're going to defend yourself. That's your decision. You're either going to crawl up at a ball and decide to be a victim, or you're going to defend yourself. Hopefully, you choose the latter. up at a ball and decide to be a victim, where are you going to defend yourself? Hopefully, you choose the latter. But in terms of examining things that can seem overwhelming, this is an amazing set of cues. It's so simple, yet so powerful. So you have a fight with your partner, and it's about, they're always familiar, right? I mean, unless it's like existential,

they're always familiar. You've had this fight before in different iterations, different forms. Well, what is it? What did we fight about? What happened to me? What is it that I'm feeling? And the answer is going to come, right? I'm angry, I'm scared, I'm hurt.

In my case, I'm hungry. Okay, so what? Now, so what doesn't mean forget about it. No, the opposite. So what? So, well, it matters because this always happens. She said it wouldn't happen again. He said it wouldn't happen again. I needed this. It mattered. It'll never happen again. I'll never get another chance. What do I do now? My whole life is off track. This person is gone. This opportunity is gone. This hope is gone. Okay. So once you come to grips with what something actually means to you, and now I just gave you only the negative ones, right? Because that's where I'm coming from. But just as much within that process of examining it, you will come to see that it is never

what it first presented itself as. Why? A friend of mine told me that it was, we had a mutual friend and one of his famous sayings or what he believed was, nothing is ever as good or as bad as it seems in the moment. Why? Because time gives perspective. Okay. And if nothing else, there are nexts. Okay. So this is your highest score in this video game until the next one. This is your biggest love until you have a bigger one, if you do.

So there are nexts. And that works both ways. Oh, this is the worst thing that's ever happened to me. Okay, but if you're thinking about it and dealing with it, it's probably not the worst thing that's ever happened to you because that's the one where you got coins on the eyes and it's over. So short of that,

that's where the truism comes from. Life is good. What about when you're broke? What about when you're addicted? What about when you're in pain? What about you're hurt? Life's not good then. No, life is still good because it's better than the alternative, which is death. Now, when you don't accept that anymore, now we're in a dark place that is beyond simple recognition in our conversation. God forbid you get into that place. If you do, if you feel even a whiff of that in your life or you know someone else's, get them help

because they are now beyond their own capacity. Once the willingness to live and feeling that you don't belong here anymore, you're not a value to anyone anymore, it would be easier to be gone, that the pain you're feeling is enough that you'd rather feel nothing ever again, that is leading you in a dark road.

You need help. You need help. But for everything short of that, and that is, you know, for almost all of us, the overwhelming majority, you go from what to so what, and you will get perspective on what it is. It's not as bad.

It's not as good. Now look, forget about good things. You don't need to do that, this process with good things. That's why you don't learn as much from good things in your life as from bad things. Because there is no real analysis that goes with it. Very few people fixate on positive outcomes to figure out what to learn from it

to repeat the good things. Some people do, some coaches do, right? And in sports, try to figure out which plays work and so you can keep doing them. But most often in life, we're creating adjustments and reactions to negative things. So what winds up giving you perspective on what that thing is, whether or not it's the end of the world, what it's really shaped, why you really feel that. That can benefit from another voice, an outside voice. Be careful, be careful whose counsel you seek. Why?

Well, first of all, people talk. It's hard for people to keep quiet about things. Two, what makes you think they know any better than you do? Three, they could be wrong or see it in a way that doesn't work for you. So be careful. Your gut is a powerful thing. It can lead you astray sometimes. And if it's in an obvious way, you have a reasonable

person that you care about and knows you around you, that can be very helpful. A professional help, immensely helpful. They're trained in understanding what a sober mind and psyche will observe and process in a given circumstance where maybe you're not in that state. So you go from what, okay, what this is to what it means. Now, once you get what it means, you're ready to do something about it, which is the critical step. Now what? Okay, this was wrong. I got to fix it. And here's how. Now, maybe that means figuring out how, talking to the other person about how. Or I can't feel like this anymore.

And here's what I'm going to do not to feel this way anymore. But it gives you something to do that is affirmative and active in the process of positive change. Now, in doing my research, you could use this thing to come to some diabolical set of initiatives to go after people in vengeance and all these other things. Yes, yes, yes. But that aberration is, you know, that the exception does not disprove the rule. The rule is when you're struggling, process can help. We've talked about this before.

This is an excellent process, this liberating structure. Liberating, why? Because it frees you from being locked in place or seeing only things one way or not being able to see them as anything more than what they are in the moment and not knowing what to do and not knowing your why. So it is a really excellent thing. And I learned it indirectly from Norman Lear,

but it goes well beyond him into organizational thinking. And at first that was like, that was a little antiseptic to me. It was like, oh, organizational thinking. There's no romance to that. I mean, that's not philosophy. Sure it is. Sure it is.

In fact, figuring out ways to have teams, groups, organizations move towards a solution together. I mean, that's huge. That's what we're getting so wrong in our society right now. So why would I look away from that? Instead, I look deeper from that? Instead, I look deeper into it and it's a great process. What? So what? Now what? Go through the steps of seeing something for what it is, figuring out what it means to you and why it means that, and then what you're going to do about it. okay? And it could be anything from, you know, how you look or feel, your physicality,

to how you deal with a conflict, how you deal with an unknown, how you deal with an aspiration or a goal or a want that you can't shake. Break it down. What is it? So what is it about really? What are the assumptions that are going into this? What are the different aspects and feelings and whether they're cultural or personal biases that I'm playing into this that makes it what it is to me?

And then once I figure that out and boil it down, strip away maybe some things that are artificial in it. Now, what do I do about it? And that third part is very important, but only if it is preceded by the other two, so you're coming from the right place. You have the right momentum behind you. Now, to what I delayed. I suck at this. I know to do it, but I don't do it enough. You know, when you believe that you deserve to suffer, you know that old expression, whether you think you can or you can't, you're right. Okay, maybe a little too simplistic, but not too far off.

If you decide that you want to feel a certain way, it's going to be hard not to. You know, you know, when you're a kid or you're dealing with a kid and they're like, and you can tell that the crying is kind of now manufactured, that they're just staying stuck in the moment and you tickle them and they're like, no, no, no, no. Right. You know, and then they start to laugh. Okay. Okay. Okay. And now they move on. That doesn't end when you're not a kid anymore. And sure, it can get more complicated, but because we make it that.

You choose how to feel. And of course, all the stimuli matter. You know, smack. I'm angry. No, be happy. Not so easy. I just got smacked in the face. But what the smack means

and how you're going to react to it is on you. And I struggle with this all the time. And I choose to wallow rather than swallow. Yes, I read it. that emotion and then use it as fuel to get to a better place, a better strategy, a productive thing, something that can actually make a positive difference. But you got to want to make a positive difference, which means you got to believe in better for yourself. And that is the key to the work that I'm trying in therapy right now. And it's really hard. It's really hard. And it's really not even outcome specific. If everything that I'm most worried about in my life right now resolved itself favorably with my kids, my personal life, my mother, my kids, my work, physically, emotionally, if everything that I'm worried about or working on or, you know, wanting one way or another was satisfied, would I be happy? Well, only if I did the exact same

thing that I need to do in the midst of all those things that are unresolved, which is decide that that is my perspective on it. And that is my choice of how to feel. And those choices are made easier with process. if you take the process seriously and you do that work. And it's so hard and it's so easy not to and just make an excuse and fall in on yourself. So the tool works. What, so what, now what? You can look it up for yourself.

Liberating structures, ladder of inference. But only if you do the work and only if you believe in better for yourself. And I hope you do. Thank you for joining me on another special episode of the Chris Cuomo Project. Cuomo on the couch, situated as I am. Subscribe, follow. Please check out News Nation.

Let me know what you think of it. And where are your independents? That's what the free agent merch is about. What? This is over. So what? Now you can get on with whatever else you were doing and you're better equipped to do it because you've got a new process. And now what? Whatever you want,

the choice is yours. See you next time.