The One You Feed - How to Lose Regret and Choose Fulfillment with Marshall Goldsmith

Episode Date: August 19, 2022

Marshall Goldsmith is the only two-time Thinkers 50 Award for #1 Leadership Thinker in the World. He has been ranked as the world’s #1 Executive Coach, a Top Ten Business Thinker for eight years, and was chosen as the inaugural winner of the Lifetime Award for Leadership by the Harvard Institute of Coaching. Marshall is the author or editor of 41 books, that have sold over 2.5 million copies, translated into 32 languages, and listed as bestsellers in 12 countries.  In this episode, Eric and Marshall discuss his book, The Earned Life: Lose Regret, Choose Fulfillment But wait, there’s more! The episode is not quite over!! We continue the conversation and you can access this exclusive content right in your podcast player feed. Head over to our Patreon page and pledge to donate just $10 a month. It’s that simple and we’ll give you good stuff as a thank you! Marshall Goldsmith and I Discuss How to Lose Regret, Choose Fulfillment, and … His book,  The Earned Life: Lose Regret, Choose Fulfillment The every breath paradigm in learning to lose regret Understanding the importance of asking for helping Some of the barriers that hold us back Differences between being comfortable and being fulfilled Problems that arise when we are too attached to outcomes The 3 A’s:  action, ambition, aspiration How both finding meaning and enjoying the process leads to happiness Obligations and how they relate to our values The practice of daily questions that takes 3 minutes Remembering that aking change is easier when you have support The value in asking”Did I do my best to….”questions as they force you to take responsibility How it’s more challenging to make the effort in our personal life than our professional life Marshall Goldsmith links: Marshall Goldsmith website Twitter Instagram Facebook By purchasing products and/or services from our sponsors, you are helping to support The One You Feed and we greatly appreciate it. Thank you! If you enjoyed this conversation with Marshall Goldsmith, check out these other episodes: Conscious Leadership with Eric Kaufmann Mimetic Desires in Everyday Life with Luke BurgisSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Our default reaction in life is inertia. Our default in our life is not to be engaged, it's not to be happy, it's not to find meaning. It's inertia. We tend to do what we've been doing, go where we've been going, say what we've been saying. Welcome to The One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized

the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think, ring true. And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other

people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really No Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor, what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you? We have the answer. Go to reallynoreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The Really No Really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Marshall Goldsmith. He's the only two-time thinkers50.com number one leadership thinker in the world. He's been ranked as the world's number one executive coach and top business thinker for eight years. He was also chosen as the inaugural winner of the Lifetime Award for Leadership by the Harvard Institute of Coaching. Marshall is the author or editor of 41 books, which have sold over 2.5 million copies, been translated into 32 languages, and become listed bestsellers in 12 countries. Today, Marshall and Eric discuss the book, The Earned Life, Lose Regret, Choose Fulfillment. Hi, Marshall. Welcome to the show. Thank you so much for inviting me.

I am pleased to have you on. We're going to be discussing your latest book called The Earned Life, Lose Regret, Choose Fulfillment. But before we do that, we will start in the way that we always do, which is with the parable. In the parable, there's a grandparent talking with their grandchild and they say, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love. And the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops and thinks about it for a second, looks up at their grandparent and says, well, which one wins? And the grandparent says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off

by asking you what that parable means to you and your life and in the work that you do. Well, you know, I thought about that parable and I thought about one of my clients. In my job, most of what I've learned, I've learned from the people I'm supposed to be coaching. In theory, I'm supposed to teach them, but in practice, I always learn much more from them than I teach to them. One of my great coaching clients is named Alan Mullally. Alan was the CEO of Ford, CEO of the year in the United States, ranked number three leader in the world. Stock went from $1 to $18.40. He also had a 97% approval rating from every employee in a union company, an amazing man. When I read the parable, I thought about Alan. It's a great lesson he taught

me. He went to Ford, and the culture was very dysfunctional. It was a lot of what you would call the negative elements of the wolf. And he basically sat down with people and said, how are we going to act? And they described behavior. And then he said, option A, starting today. And by the way, there's no looking back on the past or blaming others. But he said, starting today, this is the way we're going to act. Option A, act this way, or option B, leave. And it is amazing. In essence, when you starve that bad wolf, it kind of goes away.

And, you know, he said, for example, no destructive comments about people, no putting people down, total transparency, no hiding things. He went to, you know, and after that, and he had a couple people he had to fire out of 16. Not bad. He fired two out of 16. But 14 of the 16 people that led the company to bankruptcy turned the company around. And a lot of it goes back to that wolf parable. I love that answer. Let's jump into your new book. You call it The Earned Life, Lose Regret, Choose Fulfillment. And I was talking with somebody that I do some work with recently, and they describe themselves as having a regret-focused personality, right? So lots of regret. Talk to me about, at a high level, how do we start to lose regret? Yeah, one of the things they talk about in the book is called the every breath paradigm. Every time I take a deep breath, it's a new me. And I think a good way to lose regret is

to think back to those previous renditions of yourself and think about all the gifts they've given you today. Think about the good things they've done and think about how hard they tried and then thank them for what they're doing well. And you know, whatever mistakes they've made, let it go, forgive them. The regret we feel is kind of an anger at the previous version of ourselves. And don't carry around that anger at the previous version of yourself. They were who they were. They were who they were. They did who they did. They may not have been perfect, but they did who they did. And by the way, without the mistakes we made in life, we would never have got the learning we got from the mistakes. So, you know, if you're pretty good with where you are now, whatever happened, thank them. Yeah. I think that idea of we're not the person we were

five years, 10 years ago, you talk about that with coaching clients, both in a positive and a negative sense, right? In a sense of, okay, you're not the person you were five years ago, so you don't need to feel bad about yourself, like what that person did. Right. And you also can't continue to think you're the person who succeeded five years ago or you're the person who was a good person five years ago. Like, you've got to be that person today, right now, this breath. Exactly right. And that's the problem a lot of ex-athletes have. One of the people who's inspired the book is Curtis Martin, National Football League Hall of Fame, number five rusher ever. And he is a guy who's done a great job post-career. Many former athletes are still living back in that past, you know. And the guy sitting there getting drunk at the bar is not the

same guy that won Super Bowl III. They're very different people, and you can't live in the past. It's a kind of vicarious living. In the same way, you shouldn't live through other people's life, like the Kardashians or other athletes or TV stars or whatever. When you live in the past, it's a form of vicarious living. It's not you. It's not you. You're trying to relive somebody that's not there. Yeah, I think that's really profound. And you talk about how Buddhism really influenced that every breath paradigm. Share a little bit more about where that model came to you. Well, I've read about 400 books on Buddhism, and I'm not a religious Buddhist. I'm a philosophical Buddhist. So I don't have metaphysical beliefs about Buddhism.

They're more philosophical beliefs. My philosophical school of Buddhism is Buddha was brought up rich, or the parable of Buddha. They're more philosophical beliefs. My philosophical school of Buddhism is Buddha was brought up rich, or the parable of Buddha, he was brought up rich. And his father always thought he'd be happy if he had more. So he kept trying to give him more, more, more. And he lived in a bubble. And he was able to sneak outside that bubble three times. The first time he learned, you know what? You get sick. People get sick. Not so good. Second time, people get old. And third time, you die. Old, sick, die. Buddha thought, well, that? You get sick. People get sick. Not so good. Second time, people get old. And third time, you die. Old, sick, die. Buddha thought, well, that's not so good. Old, sick,

and die. He said, this more thing isn't working out for me. Then he went out and tried to have less. He starved himself. But you know what? It didn't work either. Finally, one night, he realized I can never be happy with more. I can never be happy with less. There's only one thing I can be happy with, what I have. There's only one time I can be happy now, and there's only one place I can be happy here. Well, to me, that's kind of the essence of Buddhism, and it's very non-Western philosophy. The whole Western ethos is you will be happy when. When you get the money, status, BMW, condimentum, achievement, you will be happy when. Well, you know, there's one book that has the same ending, and they lived happily

ever after. Unfortunately, that type of book is called a fairy tale. That's not the real world. That's not the real world. In the real world, we're restarting over and over and over. And the essence of Buddhism is a lot of people feel like, well, that's impossible. That says they have to be happy forever. No, it doesn't. That's the opposite of what it says. I am also a philosophical Buddhist and have read a lot of books, and I love your summary there. It's really good. I read something the other day. We often talk about community. You talk in your book a lot about community. We're going to get to that in Buddhism. They call it the Sangha, which says we are brothers and sisters in sickness, old age and death, like you just said, like that's the thing that we are all going to face. And that is the common denominator that every single human we encounter is our brother and sister in that. I agree. And we are humans. And I think just accepting that's important, you know, not trying to be perfect and not trying to be something that we're not.

Everyone I coach is a human. In fact, the book, The Earned Life, was inspired by 60 people. My friend Mark Thompson and I spent every weekend with 60 amazing people. And we had six hours of meetings, and they rotated who was in what group. And we did it for almost two years. And these were incredibly, incredibly impressive people. And they talked about their lives. And these conversations are kind of what led to the book, The Earned Life.

And they really liked that idea of having a little community. You know, there's no saying it's lonely at the top. It used to be lonely at the top. Today, it is lonelier at the top. It is way lonelier. Social media, people making fun of you, going out. People are afraid to say much of anything today. One guy said, it's really nice. One hour a week, I can get to be a human being. Yeah. You said, if I can leave with you only one piece of advice to increase your probability of

creating an earned life, it is this, ask for help. You need it more than you know. And you know, that's a key part of my coaching. My coaching is all about teaching people to ask for help, not just from me, but from everyone around them. So you ask, you know, you want to be a better husband, you know, ask your wife, how can I be a better husband? You want to be a better partner? How can I be a better partner? You want to be a better wife? Ask your husband, how can you be a better wife or a better father, a better friend, better manager? So yeah, a key to my coaching process is asking for help. And we've been brought up to believe that asking for help is a sign of weakness, especially when you're

in a leadership role, that if you ask for help, it's a sign of weakness. One thing I'm very proud of in the book, The Earned Life, if you read the first six pages, those are people I'm coaching. And one thing I'm proud of is 30 years ago, no executive would admit to having a coach. They would have been ashamed to have had a coach, embarrassed to have had a coach. Well, these 30 people are great people. I'll say, you know, I need help. I ask for help and it's okay.

I mean, how many of the top 10 tennis players have a coach? 10. Yeah. Well, it doesn't mean there's anything wrong with them. Right. Just trying to get better. Right, right. Yeah, I was also struck by that as I was reading it, you know, how many people you actually name.

And what I was struck by was not how impressive they were, which they are, but it wasn't that. It was that these people who are kind of at the top of their fields are all willing to say, I was coached. And you make a point in the book that I thought was really great, which is when we're in a leadership position, we say, it's okay to ask for help. It's okay not to know. But if we never do, we're modeling that it's not okay. Even though our words say it is okay, if we never do it, we're not modeling that it's okay to do it. I have a funny story in the book, and you can't make this up. I was about 28 years old, I think, and IBM was the most admired company in the world. And they got the survey, and the survey said, you know what?

The managers aren't doing a great job of coaching people. So then they gave this big training program that spent millions of dollars in training, and a year later did another survey and did absolutely zero impact. Zero impact. Same exact scores. Then I asked the managers, does your boss do a good job of coaching? No, no, no, no. Ask the manager, does your employee ever ask for coaching?

Nope. Ask the employee, do you ever ask your manager for coaching? Nope. Then I looked at the performance appraisal system. You can't make this up. The definition of a top performer was performs effectively with no need for coaching. The manager says, do you need any help? No, boss.

I perform effectively with no need for coaching. Again, I was 28. You know what I thought at age 28? God bless America. I said, this is the most admired company in the world. And I'm a 28-year-old kid, and they're doing something this dumb. I've got an easy job. Let's talk a little bit about barriers that sort of hold us back in our choices and actions.

You list a number of them, and we're not going to have time to go through all of them, but I thought this was really helpful. So if we look at we want to do this, we want to do that, but there are some things that get in our way. And so I thought maybe I would just pick a couple and let you just speak to them briefly. And the first one is really the first one that you list, which is just inertia. Right. Talk to me about inertia.

And, you know, our default reaction in life is inertia. Our default in our life is not to be engaged. It's not to be happy. It's not to find meaning. It's inertia. We tend to do what we've been doing, go what we've been going, say what we've been saying. And in many ways, the more successful we become, the more inertia is a danger. Why any human or animal will replicate behavior that's followed by positive reinforcement. Nobody gets more positive reinforcement than corporate executives, right? Every day, people laughing at their jokes, pretending they're smart. And what happens is then we just tend to do the same things over and over because they get

positive reinforcement. And we don't stop and ask ourselves, I'm successful because of, and I'm successful in spite of. And everybody I work with, including me, we're all successful because we do many things, right? In spite of doing things that are dumb. And I've never met anybody so wonderful. I had nothing on the in spite of list. So very important not to get lost in inertia. Another thing about inertia is it's very hard when you're comfortable.

One of the biggest challenges in life is comfort. When we get comfort, it's very hard to be more. And one of the things I talk about in the book is the best coaching I ever got in my life was people said, you can do more, you can be more. And sometimes I was doing fine. I was doing fine. I didn't have a problem as such, but I was challenged to be more. So inertia is really hard when you're successful and really hard when you're comfortable. Yeah. So talk to me about the difference between being comfortable and being fulfilled, right? Because on one hand, if going back to what we said in the beginning, I can only be happy right here, right now with what I've got.

That's that, right? And we're also saying, hey, comfort stands in the way of a deeper fulfillment. Talk to me about how you think about determining like I'm comfortable and I'm fulfilled versus I'm sort of comfortable and I can actually do more. It's a really good point because sometimes we confuse two terms. I think one is happiness and peace and the other is achievement. And one of the great guys in the group was Safi Bakal. Safi wrote a book called Loon Shots. He started four or five businesses, made lots of money.

He got a PhD in physics from Stanford. And he finally realized that basically happiness, peace, and achievement are independent variables. peace and achievement are independent variables. So he said, it's great to achieve, but he used to think, after I achieve, I will be happy. And he finally realized happiness and achievement are independent variables. He said, you can achieve a lot and be happy, and you can achieve nothing and be happy. You can achieve a lot and be miserable, and you can achieve nothing and be miserable. Because he always thought, I will be happy when I achieve something. And to me, that's a key theme in the book. I would say the key theme in the book is never become ego attached to results, never become ego attached to outcomes. And what happens is for two reasons. One is we don't control the outcomes. I didn't cause COVID. You didn't cause

COVID. We don't control the outcomes. But didn't cause COVID. You didn't cause COVID. We don't control the outcomes. But number two, what happens after we achieve the outcomes? What do you want then? More, more, more, more, more, more, more. So the Buddhist term is the hungry ghost. After you achieve the outcome, how long does that make you happy? Back to Safi. I said, you know, Safi, you already got a PhD in physics from Stanford.

You've written bestselling books. You're worth millions of dollars, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Exactly how much do you have to achieve in order to be happy? You're already a 99.999. Do you really think going to a 99.9999 is going to make any difference? No. Another guy talks about in the book is Albert Burla. Albert's CEO of Pfizer. So a few months ago, I said, Albert, how's it going? Albert said, well, good. He came up with this cure for COVID, very nice vaccine, very, very good. And then we got a new pill and profitable and CEO of the year and employee engagement high. So I said, Albert, what's your problem? He said, I have a huge problem. Next year. Next year. Well, if Albert's value as a human is he has to do better than last

year, he might as well cash it in. He's not going to do better than last year. Michael Phelps, 25 gold medals. What do you think about doing after winning the 25th medal? Killing himself. Killing himself. Why? Couldn't beat last year. Well, very important. Never place our value as a human on some outcome. It doesn't mean, though, you don't strive for outcomes. It doesn't mean you don't strive to achieve. And it doesn't mean you don't strive to be better. Those are good things.

Problem is, when we think those are going to bring us peace and happiness, they don't. Yeah. And I think that idea of don't get attached to outcomes, but commit yourself to action is a beautiful idea and deeply difficult. Deeply difficult to actually make that happen. So this might be a time to transition to what you call the three A's because I think the three A's address this a little bit. And the three A's are action, ambition, and aspiration. Action we can leave alone for a second.

It's pretty straightforward. Talk to me about ambition and aspiration, the difference between the two, and how that might play into what we're just discussing right now. I always try to, when I use words, just to not make any pretense that my definitions are good or bad or better than someone else's. So when I use these words, it's a definition for me. Yeah. So just so we know what I'm talking about. So for me, our aspirations represent the answer to the question of why. They're a deeper purpose and they do not have a timeline. It's that deeper purpose. It doesn't

have a timeline. It answers that question, why. Ambitions do have a timeline. That's achieving specific goals, which are usually time-bound. And then our actions, which I will talk about. Actually, what we're doing now are day-to-day activities. And assuming that you have a middle-class income or above, assuming that you have people you love, and assuming you're healthy, well, if you can align your aspirations and your ambitions and your actions, you pretty much won the game of life. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast,

our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts?

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And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really No Really. Yeah, really. No really. Go to reallynoreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast or a limited edition sign Jason bobblehead. It's called really no really and you can find it on the I heart radio app on Apple

podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Give me some examples of some aspirations just so we can give people some ideas of what we're talking about. One aspiration might be helping humanity, which is certainly a wonderful thing. But we can go off the tracks on any of these by what I call over-weighting. An over-weighting aspiration is the human service leader who sincerely loves humanity but can't stand human beings. And by the way, I've met many of them. They truly love humanity, they just can't stand human beings. They're really good at this broad thing. And then some people are very good living in their heads, very high level aspiration. They don't really achieve much. And they often miss joy in day-to-day life. Most people are the opposite.

In the history of our species, most people have been lost in the action phase. You know, our ancestor didn't have anything. They lived from day to day. They didn't have any high levels of much of anything. They were trying to stay day. They didn't have any high levels of much of anything. They were trying to stay alive. And it was very hard. Most human beings today live in the action phase. They play video games. They watch TV.

They do what's in front of them. People listening to this podcast, people like Coach and you, our problem is we get stuck in the ambition phase. We get stuck in achievement. Anyone listening to this podcast is an achiever. Anyone who buys a book is an achiever. A small percentage of people buy books, right? And so, you know, a person who buys a nonfiction book is almost by definition, uniquely an achiever. A person listening to your podcast is almost by definition,

uniquely an achiever. People like Coach, you mentioned this, they're all achievers, right? Well, we fall into the trap of addiction to achievement. And a lot of ways we can go off the tracks. One is the classic politician who starts out with high aspirations, wants to do what's right to save the world. And they get so well, I've got to get elected. And then pretty soon after they're getting elected, these results corrupt them and the aspiration is lost. A very common example is people who become so addicted to achievement, they forget to enjoy life. They just forget to enjoy life. And I like the story of the marshmallows, the marshmallow research. Walter Mischel from Stanford, give the kid a marshmallow. They say, the kid, well, kid, you eat one, you get one. But if you wait, oh, two for you. So the kid waits,

they give him two. Now, allegedly, they have this longitudinal research that shows the kid that eats one ends up being a loser. Kid that eats two gets a PhD from Stanford, something like that. But the bottom line is delayed gratification is good. That's the whole point of that. Delayed gratification is good. What they didn't do in the research, though, is take the kid that ate two marshmallows and say, kid, wait a bit. You get three if you wait a little longer. Wait some more. Four, five, ten, fifteen, a thousand. The story ends with an old man waiting to die, sitting in a room surrounded by thousands of uneaten marshmallows. Sometimes you got to eat the marshmallow. Yeah, I think delayed

gratification, like many things, like we talked about in the beginning, the Buddha finding sort of the middle way, right? If you only delay gratification, you just, you spend your life waiting for something, working for something. And if you only do what you want to do in the moment, I've been down that road and it turned me into a heroin addict, right? So it did not work out, right? So it's that middle way. Talk to me about if I am able to divorce ambition and I'm able to look at ambition and go, okay,

it's not going to make me happy. Right. Why do you think we still pursue it? Well, to me, if our focus on achievement or ambition is connected to a higher aspiration, it's a great idea. Why? It gives meaning and value to our lives. And, you know, my daughter Kelly and I did some research on this and we studied happiness and meaning. And it's very similar to what you just

said. If you just focus your life on pursuing happiness, this is where addiction comes in. What you're getting is short-term gratification. There's no meaning. There's no long-term benefit. But it's not just drug addiction. It could be video game addiction, social media addiction, any form of addiction. And that's a real danger. On the other hand, if you do nothing but do things that are meaningful but don't make you happy, well, you're a martyr, you're a victim. And what we found out is people are much more satisfied with life simultaneously do things that produce happiness and meaning. If you're achieving, yet you're achieving something you enjoy the process of doing, If you're achieving, yet you're achieving something you enjoy the process of doing,

and two, you're achieving something that the results are meaningful to you, you're winning. So achievement is a great thing if, and I qualify that if, if the results of what you achieve are meaningful to you. And again, nobody can define what's meaningful for you but you. And two, if you enjoy the process of doing it. So, okay, like you. You're doing this podcast. If you think, yeah, I kind of enjoy this podcast and I think it's meaningful. Guess what?

Yes. Well, you know, good job. And you try to do a good podcast. That's a form of achievement. I don't think that's negative at all. It's very positive. On the other hand, if you said, if I have X number of views, I'll be happy. Doesn't work.

That's where you go off the rails. That doesn't work. Absolutely. Because you know what? What if you get X number of views? What happens next year? You need X times 20. Exactly.

It never ends, that game. You know, it's like you said, the hungry ghost game. Okay, I got us a little off track because we were talking about barriers holding back in choice and actions, and we talked about inertia. Let's talk about our programming locks us in place. This is one of the most common things I deal with in coaching. When we say, that's just the way I am. That is just the way I am. And you know what?

As long as we say, that's just the way I am, one of two things are going to happen, both assuming we want to change. Let's say you think I should be X, but Y is just the way I am. Well, number one, you dramatically decrease the odds you're going to change. Number two, though, even if you do change, you won't feel authentic. You're going to feel like a phony. So I coach somebody and let's say they get feedback that says they're a bad listener. And I'm the guy's coach for a year and he gets feedback. Then it says he's a good listener. If I don't help him understand his identity and programming, you know, he's going to feel on the inside like a phony.

He's going to think, well, that's not the real me. See, the real me is a bad listener. Well, the real me is this real me stuff is kind of a myth. There is no real me. Right. As you go through life, this real me is drifting along through life. That me is always changing. So I think very important that we look at programming because our programming often influences how we are and who we are. And then we start saying, that's who I am. That's the real me. But I always challenge people. I say, do you have an incurable genetic defect? If you have an incurable genetic defect, there's absolutely nothing I'm going to do about it.

That's okay. If you do not have an incurable genetic defect, guess what? You can change. People say, I can't listen. I look in their ears. You got something stuck in there? Why can't you listen? Yeah, yeah.

You say in the book, I love this question. Whose life are we living when decisive parts of it imprinted during our formative years by people we love have already been created for us, right? It's this idea. And I think it really is. There is no real me, as you say. It is a completely conditioned thing. And we're able to make some decisions about what we allow to condition it. I do some coaching work, not on the level you do, but I like to think of it as tendencies.

You have a tendency towards something. some coaching work, not on the level you do, but I like to think of it as tendencies. Yeah. Right? You have a tendency towards something, and it's good to recognize your tendencies because we want to change them, but that's about as far as we want to identify with it, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's why I call these psychological testing, these tests people take can be useful, but they can be dysfunctional. Yes. To me, I love your word tendency. can be useful, but they can be dysfunctional.

Yes. To me, I love your word tendency. If you take the test, it says I have a tendency to be too assertive. Fine. But if you say I am too assertive, then it starts doing more harm than good. I agree. I always have such a mixed relationship with those things. Like, okay, it's helpful to get some insight, but I don't want to start thinking of myself as being a certain way.

I want the certain way that I'm aiming at to be based on aspiration, as you said earlier, or values. Would you say that values and aspirations are linked or similar? Yeah, I would. And again, I don't talk too much about semantics. Depends on the definition. The way I define it, yes. The next one, I love this one because I think, boy, as an adult, this question is such a big one. And you say one of the reasons that we don't do the things that we want that holds us back is we are undone by obligation.

Right. And what I love that you say in there is that the beauty of obligation is it directs us to keep our promises to others implied or explicit. We could say that it allows us to uphold our values. The misery of obligation is how often those priorities conflicts with the ones we've made to ourselves. Boy, is this a tricky area. Anybody who's got aging parents or young children will say, yes, boy, this is tough. Right. It is tough. And, you know, I talk about my friend Mark Tercik in the book. Mark was the managing partner of Goldman Sachs. He was there when they did the IPO.

He made a zillion dollars. And then we're walking around the lake. He's talking about life, and he has an opportunity to be the CEO of Nature Conservancy where he gets paid nothing. But who cares? But he's sitting there worried about what his partners may think at Goldman Sachs. I'm going, number one, they don't care. But number two, why do you care? Live your own life. You're not living their life. Live your life. You know, yeah, so many of us, we're not

living our own lives. Yeah. And I think it's so challenging. And I love what you say in the book, which is that there's just no answer to this, right? You say it forces to prioritize our responsibilities. It's a gray area with few norms to guide us beyond the golden rule and do the right thing. Right. My mom is aging and not well. How much time should I devote to her? Right. I want someone to tell me three hours a week and you're a good son.

Yeah. Right. But it doesn't work that way. It just doesn't work that way. And so these things bring us up against and into really having to look at our values, our aspirations. And then, you know, the thing that I think a lot of us miss is that we are living according to our values. I value my children. They're the most important thing. But we don't connect to that value often enough in our mind. And so we get into, I have to. When really, we don't.

We're choosing to, and we may be choosing to in a slightly unconscious way. And so the more conscious we can become and say, the reason I'm doing that is because X. I think it reconnects something inside us. You know, one of the things that I like about, I learned from Carol Kaufman, I'm going to see her next week. She has one question she taught me. Now, as I said, I've read 400 books on Buddhism. The listener, skip the 400 books. Skip the eight-day mindfulness retreat. This one question, all you do is get a little card.

You carry this question around with you everywhere you go. And the card says, am I being the person that I want to be right now? That one question. That's it. To me, she's got now? That one question. That's it. To me, she's got it. That's Buddhism. That's engagement, mindfulness, the whole thing. Am I being the person that I want to be right now?

And you know what? If the answer is yes, you don't need to read the 400 books. Skip the 400 books. You don't need to take a course on mindfulness. No, skip that too. Just be that person you want to, you know, it might be the person I want to be now. Yeah. When you're at home, it might be in the father I want to be. It might be the son I want to be. Yeah. And nobody can answer that for you, but you. And that answer is yes. You're heading in the right direction.

I love that question. My version of it is, you know, who do I want to be in this situation? So we've talked about some of the things that get in the way of our choices and actions. We've talked about making sure that our aspiration or ambition and the actions that we're taking are synced up. I want to talk about daily questions. Daily questions is a practice that you have put in place. I mentioned I was a recovering addict and I got sober at a 12-step fellowship. And we have something called a 10-step where, you know, we take daily personal inventory, right? Yeah. And it's a similar thing.

So talk to me about daily questions. Well, the daily question process, I'm going to teach everyone, if they don't know it, something that takes three minutes a day, costs absolutely zero, and will help you get better at almost anything. Oh, that's quite a deal. Yeah, well, many people are skeptical. Three minutes a day costs nothing. Call 1-800-MARSHALL. Sounds too good to be true. Half the people start doing this quit in two weeks, and they do not quit because it does not work. They quit because it does work. This is hard to do. Get out a spreadsheet. Write down a series of questions that represent what's most important in your life. Seven boxes across, one for every day of the week, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. And every question has to be answered with a yes or no or a number.

Fill it out every day, and you get a report card at the end of the week. And I will tell all your listeners that report card at the end of the week might not be quite as beautiful as that corporate values plaque you see stuck up on the wall. I've been doing this for 25 years, and you do this every day. You know what you learn very quickly? You learn that life is incredibly easy to talk, and life is incredibly difficult to live. You know, one of the things on my little introduction, you failed to mention an incredible quality I have, the ability to screw something up every day. You didn't mention that there on the intro, but I'm always impressed myself with my incredible gift of screwing something up pretty much every day. Well, the hard thing about this process is you get to look at it every day. And you know what? It's not that pretty. It's not that pretty. And my daughter, Kelly, I'm very proud of her.

She had a PhD from Yale and she's now a full professor and chairman of the marketing department at Vanderbilt here in Nashville. Kelly taught me the value of active questions, which I love, especially active questions that begin with, did I do my best to? Now, why is that so important? If I ask you, are you happy? And you say, no, you'll blame the environment. No, I'm not happy because I had to work too hard. It's too hot. It's too cold. Something out there. If asked you, did you do your best to be happy? There's nobody to blame. You got to look in the mirror and say, I didn't even try. Well, the six questions I recommend everybody ask every day. Number one, did I do my best to set clear goals today? Not did the company give me goals? Did I do my best to set

goals? Well, you've got these aspirations. Are your goals. Did I do my best to set goals? Well, you've got these aspirations. Are your goals connected to this thing you want to be? Number two, did I do my best to make progress toward achieving those goals? Achievement. Did I do my best to be happy? Now, in one of my books, I talk about three medical doctors I coach. Jim Kim, simultaneous PhD in anthropology and MD from Harvard, who went on to be president of World Bank. Raj Shah, head of the USAID and then Rockefeller Foundation. John Nosery, head of the Mayo Clinic.

Three medical doctors. All brilliant. I ask him this question individually. How would you do on an average day? Did I do my best to be happy? They all had the same answer. Never dawned on me to try to be happy. Never thought about it.

Now, they're all medical doctors. Did it dawn on you you're going to die? Did they cover that in medical school, that death? Yeah, they covered death, right? I said, you think that's a silly question? He said, it's a great question I forgot to ask. So did I do my best to be happy? Did I do my best to find meaning?

Did I do my best to build positive relationships? And did I do my best to be fully engaged? Every weekend over COVID, by the way, all these people had to step up and say, here's my scores, here's my scores. And you know what? I didn't see anybody getting perfect scores. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like

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And you can find it on the iHeartRadio app on Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. You said most people will quit within two weeks because this works, meaning it makes you take a really hard look at yourself. Right. How do we deal with the fact that maybe our scores are really low and we start to spiral into despair over that versus it being motivating or empowering? What's the thing that causes feedback like that, on one hand, to drive us forward, and on the other hand, to weigh us down? Yeah. One of the questions is that I do my best to be happy. So if you're driving yourself into despair, you might want to raise that score a little bit. So the whole goal of this process

is not to make you miserable, right? So I'm very big on be happy, don't be miserable. I don't deify misery at all. So, you know, this is hard. It's hard to look in the mirror every day. Now, I have someone call me every day for almost 25 years to make sure I do this. Somebody asked me, why do you have someone call you every day? Don't you know the theory about how to change behavior? I wrote the theory about how to change behavior.

That's why I have someone call me every day. My name is Marshall Goldsmith. I got ranked number one executive coach and leadership thinker in the whole world. I have to have someone call me every day to make sure I do the simple stuff I teach. Why? I am too cowardly to do any of this stuff by myself. I am too undisciplined to do any of this stuff by myself. I need help. I need help. And it's okay. Who are we kidding here? You mentioned it already. Everything in that book is hard. It's not hard to understand. You ever hear me say anything is hard to understand? I'm a simple guy. None of it's hard to understand. It's just hard to do. Yeah. I think what you said there is so critical to underline yet again, which is we all need help. You know, I look at how many

people are trying to make real changes in themselves on their own. Yeah. This is a theory and it's only a theory, right? But I look at the difference. I see some people who recover. I've had people say to me, it was easier for me to quit heroin and quit smoking cigarettes. And I go, oh, that's interesting. Could have something to do with the drug. It could have something to do with the habit. But here's one thing that I see that's a clear difference. When you quit heroin, you went to a meeting every single day where you were supported by people and you had people that you called. And when you quit cigarettes, you tried to do it all by yourself. It's a great example because it's hard to do any of this stuff. But why don't people hire me? They could do it on their own.

They would. Twyla Tharp's the world's greatest choreographer. She had the same personal trainer 27 years in a row. Now, the trainer's not teaching her anything new. Trainer's not giving motivational speeches. Trainer just makes sure she does the stuff. Pau Gasol's in the book. Pau's a great guy, great basketball player.

And he got hurt, and he had to work really hard to try to make it back to play basketball and go to the Olympics. And he had his personal trainer living in his house. Why? Why do you have a personal trainer living in his house? Well, he knows he's supposed to work out. He's not going to do it by himself. We all need help. And that one thing I think we over-exaggerate is this macho willpower crap. Somehow we're supposed to have all this willpower, macho, I don't need others, I can do it on my own. All of us have got this crap. We've been saying I'm going to do this for the last 20 years. We haven't done it yet.

Yeah. Well, if you haven't done it in the last 20 years, you really believe you're going to do it next week? No. You need help. Let's take executives out of the game for a minute. Let's talk about the average person. Yeah. They've got a middle class job.

They've got a couple of kids. Yeah. And they're trying to get in shape and they're trying to develop, say, a mindfulness practice. Right. And they're just having trouble doing it. Where does someone like that, do you think, effectively turn for help? Well, you know, it's a very good question. And my stuff applies equally well to somebody that's at the top, the middle, at any level, at any age almost.

I mean, hopefully that book is not so complicated that a smart 10-year-old couldn't read it. I have no illusion that my stuff applies just to these high-level people. My stuff applies to anybody. I think the key though is, let's take the daily question process. Look, you can pay somebody five bucks an hour to do this or 15 bucks an hour, whatever the minimum wage is, and call you every day. You can have a friend call you every day. Like I've done both. Sometimes I've hired people. Sometimes I've had a friend. It doesn't matter. You just need somebody to remind you every day. So that's a process. You don't have to have a lot of money to do that. You don't need some fancy coach. You just need

some human being. I've had people do that with me who were not fancy coaches. They were basically administrative assistants. But you don't need a fancy coach to do that. On the other hand, they're providing this equal help as a fancy coach. And the other thing is learn from everyone around you. So I teach my clients to learn from everyone around you. All right, let's say you want to be a better father. Getting in the habit of asking your kids, how can I be a better father? You don't need to be a rocket scientist to do that. You don't need lots of money to do that. I really don't think I teach people much of anything that a quote normal person can't do. Agreed. I don't think the concepts are challenging at all. I think what I find is I know a lot of people listening to this show will say,

I don't have anybody in my life who really listens to this sort of thing, who's into these kind of ideas. I feel kind of alone and I know I need help, but I'm not really sure where to go. I'm not sure really what to do. You know, I can't hire an executive coach. Like, you know, that's not in my budget. And so I'm kind of asking for that sort of person. Maybe it's just me. From my experience in life, I've had great mentors. And my mentors have been my heroes. Basically, I just wanted to grow up and be like

them. And I have this program called 100 Coaches, where basically I adopt people, I teach them all I know for free, and the only price is they get old, they do the same thing. And that is in honor of the people who taught me all they knew for free, and they didn't charge me any money. I think you just find somebody you admire who's a good person and you say, look, I really respect and admire you. If you don't mind, would you give me some help? They might be surprised how many people would help them. Agreed. I think it is asking and being willing to know that not everybody's going to say yes. And if they don't, it's fine. If you ask a few people, somebody's going to say yes. I mean, any salesperson learns that early on in their career. I certainly learned it getting guests on this

podcast, right? Like in the beginning, I just asked all kinds of people and most of them said, no, like, who are you? You, you just started a podcast. What is a podcast? I mean, you know, all kinds of stuff, but enough people said yes. And then, you know, here we are eight years later. There you go. So it, it is being willing just to say, OK, I'm going to ask. And if I get a no, I'm not going to take it personal. I'm just going to go, all right, that person is not able to let me move on to the next. Talk to me about why did I do my best to why that's the format? You alluded to it briefly.

And secondly, what's a way of being somewhat impartial in that? And what I mean by that is some of us tend to overestimate how well we do things and others of us tend to way underestimate, right? Some people are like, I'm the worst person in the world, right? No, of course you're not. And other people are like, I'm amazing. And it's like, well, you're all right. You know, we're all in the middle somewhere. Again, back to the, why ask the question, did I do my best to? I went to a presentation at the National Academy of Human Resources. And they had the head of HR from all these big companies. And three of them were asked to talk about everything they know about employee engagement.

I'm a member of this, so I'm just sitting there listening. I'm the next speaker. I'm just randomly there, by the way. And I talked about employee engagement. I said, they talk about importance of empowerment, training, fairness, blah, blah, blah. It's the same lecture I'd heard for 30 years in a row. Same speech, right? Nothing new.

Then they said global employee engagement is an all-time low. I'm thinking, wait a minute. If you all know so much, why is global employee engagement all-time low? Then I realized something. 100% of the dialogue was, what can the company do to engage you? It's not exaggeration. 0% was, you have any responsibility at all for your own life. Well, I thought, wait a minute, you're missing something. I fly all the time. American Airlines, 11 million frequent flyer

miles. One flight attendants, positive, motivated, upbeat, enthusiastic. One's negative, bitter, angry, and cynical. Same plane, same uniform, same salary, same employee engagement program. What's the difference? It's the inside. I thought these people are missing half the equation. I talked to my daughter, Kelly, and she said every question on employee engagement is a passive question. If I ask you, are you happy? And you say, no, you're going to talk about why.

The environment. It's hot. It's cold. Blah, blah, blah. If I ask you, do you have meaningful work? Well, no, they make me do trivia. Do you have clear goals? No, they don't know what they're doing. When you ask, did I do my best to, you got to take responsibility. You have to take responsibility and look in the mirror and you

can't blame other people. That's why it's hard. By the way, let me give you the hardest possible question you can ever ask yourself every day. Number one, you write the question. Why is that hard? You can't blame the idiot that wrote the question. Number two, you know it's important. Can't say it's trivial. And number three, all you have to do to get a high score is try. You don't even have to succeed. Did you even try? Why is this question so hard? Nobody to blame. I wrote the question. I know it's important. And I didn't even try. That's me. You got to take responsibility. And so I think, you know, it's that what's my daughter and I discussed that. Her ideas led to that whole concept of active questions. Now you had another question, which I now can choice between two questions at once. Forgot the second one. The question was, given that we may have a proclivity to either be too hard on ourselves or too easy on ourselves, what's a way of thinking about, did I do my best to? To me, it works either

way. You know why? Basically, all you're looking at is broad direction, number one. And number two, most of us won't ask the question at all. It's not a matter of subtleties here and there. Most people won't do this. The average person quits in two weeks. They won't do this at all. It's not a matter of subtleties here and there. Most people won't do this. The average person quits in two weeks. They won't do this at all. If you do anything vaguely like this, you're going to win. Whether you have a low self-image or a high self-image, you're going to get better. And so I wouldn't overanalyze it. Most people don't do it at all. And if you just take a few seconds and think, like that question that Carol came up with, am I being the person that I want to be right now? Am I being the person I want to be right now?

Just ask the question. Yeah. Maybe sometimes you're ranked too high, too low. The reality is in life, we don't ask the question at all. Yeah. If you just ask the question, you're going to do better. Right. Because just even thinking about it every night for a little while orients you in that direction.

It's the same thing like I've done a practice where I try and take like one beautiful picture every day. Not a great picture, but just find one beautiful thing and take a picture of it each day. What that does is I'm now looking for beauty. So if I'm asking myself, did I do my best today to, I don't remember, engage well in my relationships? You had a better phrasing of it than that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now I'm thinking about my relationships and how I'm doing in them, right? It's an orientation question.

It's interesting. Of the 60 people in our little group every weekend, I'd say more than half of the dialogue was not about work. More than half the dialogue was about home. This stuff's actually harder at home, I think, than work in many ways. At work, you're structured, you're professional, you're organized, you plan. Like you, you did questions, you studied this in advance, you did some homework. At home, we're often much less professional and we screw up more. So let me give you a table. One of the guys in our group is a basketball star. One of his areas, did I do my

best to be present with my wife? Present, you know, mindful, present with my wife. Well, it was good. Every week you got to get up. It's like alcoholics and armors. You got to get up every week and say, here's how I did, right? Oh no, my wife's very upset with me. She said I was checked out. But then he said, Marshall, I was tired, very tired. I've been working out all the time, very, very tired. So I said, how tired were you? Oh, exhausted, so tired. I said, you know, I paid $1,000 one night.

My son paid $1,000 to watch you play in the National Basketball Association Championship. And you were running up and down the court like a banshee. And a coach called timeout with two minutes to go. Did you go to the coach and say, you know, coach, I'm tired? I'm tired. He said, I have never told a coach I am tired in my entire career. So I said, you think your wife is impressed? Well, this stuff is often harder at home. It's harder at home. I agree. It sure is. I mean, and just the way work is set up, we're incentivized and the whole structure supports giving more effort than home. And we often think when we get home, not sitting there snoring, looking out the window, acting bored. You're being a professional. At home, it's harder.

Yeah, it sure is. It sure is. Is there anything you would like us to cover that we haven't that you feel is important based on the things we've been talking about? Yeah, I'd like to finish with the best coaching advice in the world. Are you ready? Yes. Because you're right. We're running out of time. Take a deep breath.

Everybody listening, take a deep breath. Take a deeper breath. Now imagine that you're 95 years old and you're just getting ready to die. Right before you take that last breath, you're given a beautiful gift, the ability to go back in time and talk to persons listening to me right now. The ability to help that person be a better professional, much more important, have a better life. What advice would that wise old person who knows what mattered in life, what was important and what wasn't, have for you that's listening to me right now?

Whatever you're thinking now, do that. In terms of performance appraisal, that's the only one that matters. That old person says you did the right thing, you did. That person says you made right thing, you did. That person says you made a mistake, you did. You don't have to impress anybody else. Some friends of mine interviewed old folks who were dying. Three questions.

Said, personal, professional. On the personal side, three themes. Theme number one, three words, be happy now. Not next week, not next month. That great Western disease, I'll be happy when. Be happy now. Number two, friends and family. Never get so busy climbing the ladder of success.

You forget the people you love. And number three, you got a dream, go for it. Business side, not much different. Have fun. Do whatever you can do to help people. Then go for it. You may fail, at least you tried. You know, and if I look at my, why am I talking to you?

Well, pretty simple goal. Let's imagine you and I have this talk and some people listen. Maybe a few people have a little better life. Maybe help some other people have a little better life. You know what? Very, very good call. Indeed, indeed. That is a wonderful place to end. And Marshall, I genuinely appreciate your time. Thank you. Thank you very much. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a monthly donation to support the One You Feed podcast. When you join our membership community with this monthly pledge, you get lots of exclusive members-only benefits.

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I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really Know Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor, what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you? We have the answer. Go to reallyknowreally.com

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