The One You Feed - Michael Bungay Stanier

Episode Date: October 26, 2016

Please Support The Show by Donation   This week we talk to Michael Bungay Stanier about habits Michael Bungay Stanier is the founder of Box of Crayons, a company that helps organizations do less Good Work and more Great Work. He’s the author of several books, including The Coaching Habit and Do More Great Work. Michael has written for or been featured in numerous publications including Business Insider, Fast Company, Forbes, The Globe & Mail and The Huffington Post. He was the 2006 Canadian Coach of the Year. He was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University and holds a Masters of Philosophy from Oxford, and law and arts degrees with highest honors from the Australian National University.  In This Interview, Michael Bungay Stanier and I Discuss... The One You Feed parable His new book, The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More and Change the Way You Lead Forever The way that the question, How do you stay curious for just a little bit longer? Can transform the way you show up in your life How feeling safe can help us access our highest selves The power of sitting in the ambiguity of asking a question rather than jumping to the feeling of certainty of telling someone an answer The Karpman Drama Triangle: the victim, the persecutor & the rescuer The heart of the Victim role: There's only one way to do this, but you don't like the way it's being done. The best coaching question in the world: And what else? That the first answer someone gives you isn't their only answer and it's rarely their best answer. It's a great self-management tool for rescuers because it keeps you from jumping in, it allows you to stay curious a little bit longer It's a great question for the victim role because it helps give them other options Most people only consider two options before making a decision: should I stay or should I go? Asking this question can give you a third option The five essential components to building an effective new habit That 45% of our waking behavior is habitual The 95% of our brain activity happens in the unconscious brain Since it's inevitable that when building a new habit you will "fall off the bus" or fail, it's important that you have a plan for what you'll do at that point How do you hold yourself firmly but compassionately accountable when it comes to changing your behavior? The kickstart question - a good way to start conversation with anybody: What's on your mind   Please Support The Show by DonationSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

One of the things that can lead to a richer life is a willingness to stay open-hearted to it. 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, 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 Know Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like

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Our guest on this episode is Michael Bungay-Stanier from Box of Crayons, which helps people and organizations do less good work and more great work. Michael has written for or been featured in numerous publications, including Business Insider, Fast Company, Forbes, and The Huffington Post. His new book is The Coaching Habit, Say Less, Ask More, and Change the Way You Lead Forever. If you value the content we put out each week, then we need your help. coaching habit, say less, ask more, and change the way you lead forever. goal is to get to 5% of our listeners supporting the show. Please be part of the 5% that make a contribution and allow us to keep putting out these interviews and ideas. We really need your help to make the show sustainable and long lasting. Again, that's one you feed.net slash support. Thank you in advance for your help. And here's the interview with Michael Bungay-Stanier. Hi, Michael. Welcome to the show. It is so good to be here. Thanks for having me.

I'm happy to have you on. Your latest book is called The Coaching Habit. Say less, ask more, and change the way you lead forever. And the book really is a lot about the sort of questions that we can ask other people and the questions that we can ask ourselves that lead us to a richer way of life. So we'll get into that in a minute, but I'd like to start like we always do with the parable. In the parable, there's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson. He says, 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 grandson stops and he thinks about it for a second. He looks up at his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. I love that you've structured your podcast around that parable. And it's such a wonderful kind of ritualized doorway to invite people through to start a conversation. sure people have expressed wisdom far beyond what I can get to in terms of just that dichotomy of feeding kindness versus feeding hatred or self-obsession, whatever it might be. I wanted to give it a twist. So you can pull me back from this and just go, all right, Michael, that's a disastrous metaphor. You have another go at it. But, you know, part of what

we stand for at Box of Crowns and through the book and the like is really just helping people rethink how they show up in their lives. And the choice we're presenting people is, how do you stay curious for just a little bit longer? And how do you give advice or in other words, be certain and be closed? How do you resist going to there just a little bit longer? And I'm not sure curiosity and certainty have quite the moral weight of be kind and be generous. But I do think that one of the things that can lead to a richer life is a willingness to stay open hearted to it, to be curious about it. And really, the essence of being curious is to be willing to ask a question or two, and not rush to the

certainty that you know what's happening, the certainty that you know you're right, the certainty that you're right and they're wrong. And a willingness to stay open to that conversation, I think, is just another one of those wolves that you can choose to feed or not feed in terms of how you live a good life. Right. And I really like that in the book. It's really where the book starts off to a large degree, which is about talk less and ask more questions. You know, let people come to their own conclusions and everything that you work on them with is going to be a lot more effective. And I certainly saw some of myself in that of cases where I could ask questions more and not, as you said, rush to the answer as quickly or what I think the answer is. And I really like the way you talk about how particularly people who work in a job, you know, we tend to think of ourselves as being valued for our ability to have the right answers.

Right. That's true in a job, but it's true in life as well. I mean, you know, when I put on my head about who I was thinking about writing this for, the first person, the first type of person was probably a busy manager, somebody who works and is doing their best to do a good job and do great work. But, you know, truthfully, I'm like, I'm trying to write a book that actually works if you're a human being and you interact with other human beings. And the thing is, certainty is really comfortable. You know, our brain is wired to love certainty. You know, there's a great neuroscience and we call I call it the neuroscience of engagement, which is how do you keep people engaged, you know, in a conversation you're having with them in a way of working with them. And to know that you need to understand that, you know, five times a second,

the brain is scanning its environment and asking one fundamental question. And the question is, is it safe here or is it dangerous? And, you know, the brain is all about survival. So it's like, is it safe? Is it dangerous? Is it safe or is it dangerous? If it feels safe, you could say that it's much easier to access our higher natures. You know, our brains think better. We're more generous, we're more assuming positive intent, we're more better to live with the ambiguity. If it feels dangerous, we move into the amygdala and to fight or flight into that lizard brain, you know, where like everything's black and white, the assumption is you're probably against me rather than for me.

And there are various factors that drive the brain's reaction to any environment you know makes it feel safe or dangerous a place of risk or a place of reward and the four factors and the way i think of them are tribe in other words are we is it you versus me or is it you and me um expectation and that's connected to the certainty piece, like do I know what's about to happen or is the future unknown? Rank is, am I more or less important than you? And autonomy is, are you making all the choices or do I get to make some choices here? And that second factor, the expectation or that certainty piece, it actually makes us feel safer if we know what's

happening, if we're in control. The problem is it can make the other person feel less safe. So part of this more, what do you call it? I guess I'd call it a more grown up life. You can choose your own labels on it. It's a willingness to give up a degree of certainty in service of a bigger win, which is perhaps a deeper connection, another person feeling more welcome, more honored, more respected, more empowered, all of that sort of stuff. But willingness to sort of sit in the ambiguity of asking a question rather than have the clarity and certainty of giving advice, even though your advice isn't nearly as good as you think it is. Yep, I agree 100%. Before we go into what some of the questions are, there were a couple things

early in the book that I wanted to touch on. And the first one was, you talk about something called the Cartman Drama Triangle. It's fantastic. It's such a great dynamic. It actually fits beautifully into the parable that you start the show with. So the Cartman Drama Triangle, created by Stephen Cartman, he studied with Eric Byrne, and Eric Byrne is one of the founders of transactional analysis.

And if you've never heard of TA, transactional analysis, it's a slightly dated therapeutic model, I think, from the 60s, 70s. And it gives us language that might be familiar to some folks here. You know, it gives us like adult-to-adult relationships and parent-child relationships, which is interesting enough, but it does feel very therapy-esque and kind of West Coast stuff. and when i first read into it i wasn't that excited about ta but then when i came across the drama triangle i was like oh this is good this feels applicable to life and the basic way the drama triangle works is to say look when things get dysfunctional

and things always get dysfunctional you know it doesn'tal, you know, it doesn't have to be, you know, it doesn't have to be a car crash, but, you know, when relationships just go off the rails a little bit, three basic roles play out. There's the victim, there's the persecutor, and then there's the rescuer. Victim, persecutor, and rescuer. All three of the roles are equally dysfunctional and, you know, people, what I like about it is people immediately understand what the three roles look like and sound like. You know what somebody playing the victim role looks like and sounds like. They're kind of whiny, annoying, you know, my life is so hard sort of thing. It's not my fault.

It's your fault. They did it to me. The persecutor is that finger waggling, shouty, I'm right, you're wrong. If anything gets done around here, it's because of me. The persecutor is that finger waggling, shouty, I'm right, you're wrong. If anything gets done around here, it's because of me. If it doesn't, if it fails, it's because I'm surrounded by turkeys. And the rescuer is the, oh, don't worry, don't fight. Let me take it on. Let me jump in. Let me fix it. Give it to me. Right. And, you know, I mean, the rescuer sounds a little better than the other two, Eric, but honestly, it's just as broken a role as the other two. And there are advantages and disadvantages to both those roles or three of these roles.

And you can kind of guess what those are. You know, the victim attracts people, has no responsibility. But the price you pay is you annoy everybody and, you know, you feel like you have no power. You can't change anything in the system, and so on. And the truth of the matter is, we bounce around and we play all three of these roles all the time. Right. I mean, Eric, I'm sure you're like, oh, yeah, I can. There are times when this is happening, and I'm in this role, and this is happening,

I'm in another role. And even in a single conversation, you can be bouncing around and playing all three of the roles. But we do tend to have a default role, one that we most identify with. And if I got your listeners to write down the role they think might be the one they play most often, victim, persecutor, rescuer, my bet is that everybody listening in, or at least 95% of them, will have just written down the word rescuer, because it's the one most people go to. And what's powerful about that is that people suddenly see in that rescuer role what's not

working for them. So, you know, you ask me, so how's it going being a rescuer? And they're like, well, I'm exhausted. I'm overwhelmed. I have my fingers in too many other pies. I'm not getting my own work done. I'm realizing that rescuers create victims and rescuers create persecutors. So the kind of unbalanced, the dysfunction that's showing up in some of these relationships, you can track back to my own behavior. And when people see this, they're like, ah, all right, forget this whole coaching thing. How do I get out of the drama triangle? And I'm like, exactly. How do you get out of the drama triangle? And one of the most powerful ways is to actually stay curious, to ask questions, to be supportive like that. And it's one of the,

it's not the only way, but it's one of the core ways of shifting out of the drama triangle by getting a little more curious. And asking people questions so that they can solve their own issue. Yeah. You know, and different roles have different questions that work particularly well. I mean, as an example, if you find yourself playing the victim role, and at the heart of being the victim role is this insight that there's only one way to do this, but you don't like the way it's being done. So you're feeling stuck.

You know, you can't do much about it. This is the way forward. I don't like the way forward. But one of the best questions, and this is the second question in the book, is we call it the best coaching question in the world. It's called, and what else? And what else? And I know that it feels pretty small and simple to be the best coaching question in the world. But the reason is, is this insight that the first answer somebody gives you is never their only answer. And it's rarely their best answer. The other powerful thing about it is that it's a great self-management tool. So this is great for rescuers who like to jump in and fix things. It keeps you staying curious longer by asking simply, and what else? So asking,

and what else, to untangle the victim role, it creates options. And when you have options, it's much harder to stay stuck in the victim role. Does that all make sense? I mean, I know this is a bit theoretical, perhaps. So I just want to make sure it feels grounded for people. Yeah, it does for me. And, you know, that idea about and what else you quoted from a book that I love, which was the Chip and Dan Heath book about making decisions and, and that idea that most people only consider two decisions in most cases, like if you're in a relationship, but should I stay or should I go? That's the, that's the, that's the degree in which we consider and that adding a third option to things makes your, your likelihood of success so much better. And I

just have, when I read that, that was just a big light that went on for me about always asking, you know, and I think the question and what else gets you there, you know, it, well, I don't know whether I should stay or should I go? Well, you know, is there another option? You know, what else? Yeah, I agree a hundred percent. I think that's such a powerful question, both for ourselves and for others. The statistics behind this are pretty cool. And I mean, I love that you love that book. Those Heath brothers, they just write good books. They're really good, yeah.

And the statistic is this, you know, most decisions, there's a study done in organizations, most decisions were these kind of binary decisions. Is it this or not? And the failure rate's really high. It's like more than 50% failure rate based on that decision criteria, which if you're wondering if that's good or not, is a worse decision rate than most teenagers. And you know, honestly, there are a few people who make worse decisions than most teenagers. You know, their brains are completely regrowing. So you're batting lower than that. That's not that great. Adding just that extra option and what else is one of

the driving forces for that drops the failure rate from, I think it's like the mid low fifties down into the low thirties, you know, 30%. So really makes a big difference to how successful your outcomes are. Yeah, I agree. I think the drama triangle, yours was not the first place I came across it. But when I did, I immediately recognized how powerful it was. And I think it is that inclusion of the rescuer as that third piece that really completes it for me. Because I think I tended to see things more, you know, victim, perpetrator or persecutor or whatever the word we want to use is. But the rescuer is a great addition. And the fact that it can be dysfunctional in its own way was a big learning for me because yes, I fall into the rescuer category for sure.

Eric, it's a great insight and worth almost lingering on just a bit because most people get the first two, the victim and the persecutor. But if that's all you have, you just have two people at loggerheads. And it feels like those roles don't change. It's just me versus you. By introducing that third role, the rescuer, it becomes this much more dynamic and more subtle way of understanding the bouncing around that goes on. Thank you. 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? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Brian Cranston is with us today. How are you, too? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park.

Wayne Knight, welcome to Really, No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman. 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 signed Jason bobblehead. It's called Really, No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. So here we are week two in our donation campaign and things are off to a pretty good start. Our goal is to get to 5% of our listeners, which my public radio friends tell me is impossible. But we can do this. We can do this, but we need your help. Is to get to 5% of our listeners, which my public radio friends tell me is impossible. But. We can do this. We can do this.

But we need your help. We're better than public radio, right? We don't even have commercials. Well, we do now. Well, yeah. Yeah. At least our fun drive is for like, yeah, we're going to keep this brief. The long and short of it is the show costs money to make.

It takes an enormous amount of time. We've been paying those costs out of our pocket for about three years now. We really need your help to keep this show going. Our goal is always to bring you high quality content week after week that enriches your life. So please consider being part of the 5% that we need in order to keep the show sustainable. Chris, tell them where to go. We'd love you to go to oneufeed.net slash support. And there you can see the Patreon page and make a donation on any level you wish to. And we really need your help. Thanks. Great rewards too. Yep. One of the things that you focus on is saying, Hey, look, here's all these questions that you can be asking, but in order

for any real change to happen, you actually have to remember to ask them. And the best way to remember to do something or to do it consistently is to build a habit. And we talk a lot on the show about habit and behavior change. A lot of the coaching work that I do with people is very much focused on that. And so you had a whole section in the book about making habits. And I wanted to just spend a little time on that because that's one of my favorite topics. And you say to build an effective new habit, you need five essential components, a reason, a trigger, a micro habit, effective practice, and a plan. Can you just walk us through those at a relatively high level? Sure. I want to do that, but I want to turn the tables for a bit because I love that you're a fan of habits.

I knew you would be in behavior change. But let me ask you, who do you look to as kind of the key people who have smart things to say about habit building or behavior change? I'm just curious to know who might you have referenced before? Who do you kind of think is saying interesting things in this space? kind of think is saying interesting things in this space? My partner here, Chris and Kim Kardashian are really the main people, the main people that I turn to. So I don't know about Chris, Chris, whatever. Yeah, Kim Kardashian. Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. Just got something there. Yeah. You know, I think probably some of the same people that you've looked at, like B.J. Fogg. I think James Clear is an amazing writer about habits.

We've had both those guys on the show. Charles Duhigg wrote a good book about it. You know, there's been a variety of different ones over time, but those are the top three that come to mind. Yeah, fantastic. Well, that's useful because that provides context to me, just setting out the insights I want to share and have it. And, you know, I feel like I stand on the shoulders of giants or maybe I just stand in the shade of the giants because, um, cause I think, you know, the first thing is about making the white, the language in the book is make a vow. In other words, do you know why you are doing this? Um, it's really hard just to create a habit because in theory that

it's a good thing. You've got to find some sort of, you know, emotional human real connection as to why you are up for the painful process of behavior change. And I love a name that you haven't brought up, Leo Babauta, Leo Zen Habits. I mean, he's just such a nice guy and massively successful blog. I mean, people should check out the Zen Habits blog. And his book called Zen Habits is a beautiful book. I mean, beautifully crafted and thoughtfully written. So he's doing something really interesting in this field. I mean, he's got that great book, the Zen Habits book, which is terrific.

But he's also developing an app. That's his latest project to help drive behavior change through an app that has the same elegance and kind of precision that his writing and that his books have. And that's where I kind of got clear on the importance of this vow, the setting, the reason he talked about it in the context of giving up smoking and how he tried many times, but until he connected that he was doing this for his wife and his children rather than for himself, he just kept trying and failing. So that vow, really important part of it. And honestly, the Charles Duhigg book is where I kind of first hooked into that. Although speaking of hooked, there's another good book by Nir Eyal. odd name n-i-r-e-y-a-l

it's called hooked and his book is about how people in silicon valley basically develop these gadgets and these apps and these technologies that kind of sucker us in you know why do we want to check facebook all the time so coming at habits from a kind of slightly darker place perhaps but both of those guys talked about the importance of the trigger. And the inside is this. If you don't know what sets you off, it's impossible to change your habit because you're already halfway through it before you realize you're doing it again. So you need to have the discipline to pull back and go, what's the trigger that sets

off this bad behavior? And therefore, how might I either avoid the trigger or identify a new trigger or repurpose this trigger to set up the next habit? You know, BJ Fogg, of course, one of the things that he's brilliant for is this whole insight that if you're going to define a new habit, make it a small habit, make it a short habit,

make it less than 60 seconds. Because if you make it any bigger than that, it's a more complex action. And your big brain and the power of the status quo will more likely kind of hack your best intentions to try and change your behavior. So B.J. Fogg's key insight is this whole thing about if you define a habit, make it 60 seconds or less. In his writing and his work, he often talks about flossing and trying to build a flossing habit, which most of us have failed at. Which is ironic because he has no teeth, I think, last I checked. That is ironic. I didn't know that. No, it's a little known.

I think he has one. One tooth, Chris. It's a little known fact. There we go. That one tooth. That's his thing. He just, you know, the start of his habit was floss one tooth. Clearly, that worked really well for that one tooth, but not for the rest of them. But, you know, another example was like, instead of going, I'm going to go for a run in the morning.

Because I know if you're like me, come the next morning, you're like lying in bed going, I'll just, I'll just, I'll go for a run tomorrow morning, but this morning, obviously not this morning. And he'd say, look, define your habit, not as go for a run, but to put on your running shoes and step out the door. And I think that idea of starting small, whether it be, you know, 60 seconds small, or, you know, very small has so much power and in my experience works so well. And yet we're so hesitant to do it. The reaction I get from a lot of people is, well, I should be able to do more than that. Like I can do more than that, or I'm never going to get in shape putting on my gym shoes or, you know, so I think it's, it's, it works so well. And yet there's a lot of resistance to it, just given that it's a longer but more certain path.

This is the problem with our brain, is that it has convinced us that we're much smarter and more rational than we actually are. You know that saying, the brain is the most important organ? Wait, who's telling me that? You know, the truth is, we are this kind of twitchy responsive animal that isn't nearly as smart as you think we are i mean this whole insight that and this is from the doohic book that i think it's 45 of our waking behavior is habitual right in other words you don't really think about it we just react and we respond and really our rational brain what it's doing most of the time is just confirming the decision our unconscious brain has already made for us i mean this stuff is very disconcerting if you look

into it which is like you know our unconscious mind decides about a third of a second before our conscious mind is aware of it what we're about to do so as you reach forward to scratch your nose or pick up your coffee cup or grab a pencil to write down a note, your unconscious brain's already made that call. And then your conscious brain goes, yeah, okay, I've reviewed that, carry on. So you would think, that's why our rational brain goes, come on, look, I'm an intelligent adult. I'm a fully grown man. For goodness sake, how hard is it for it to get me to go to the gym? And the answer is it's hard. Our habit tracks run deep and they run at an unconscious level. That's what a habit is. It's unconscious action. So it's you against your

unconscious mind. And not only is 50% of your behavior habitual, but I remember reading a study that said 95% of your brain activity happens in the unconscious part of the brain. Right. So there you go. Now you understand the odds. It's 5% versus 95%. No wonder you struggle. The rider and the elephant, right? Right, exactly. Back to the Dan and Chip Heath metaphor. So the other thing that you point out in the book, and I think it'll be thing we'll we'll say on habits and and move on although we could have the rest of this conversation and more on it is um right you you talk about the one that's been floating around

there forever which is such a big myth which is that it's 21 days to build a new habit i know really annoying and uh and you know for a while my line was somebody's just made that up and now it's on the internet so now it never goes away to die and that's partially true but i actually found the origin of that just recently or fairly recently and it's uh it actually dates back to the early days of plastic surgery where a plastic surgeon noticed that it took about three weeks for somebody to get used to a new nose after they had their nose operated on. And somehow, weirdly, that's got corrupted over time to if you do it for 21 days, it becomes a habit. Now, to everybody listening, you know as well as I do, just from

your own lived experience that that doesn't work. It just depends on you and it depends on the habit and depends on where you are with your life. The most recent number I've read, if you had to have a number, is that it's more like 64 or 66 days. But the truth is, it's like, don't even set yourself a, I should have this under my belt by 21 days. It's like classic, you show up, you do the habit. You show up, you do the habit. You show up, you do the habit. And you keep, you do the habit. You show up, you do the habit. And you keep doing it till it is truly a habit. You know, you don't have to think about it. It just becomes the way you act. I also think on habits that take a significant amount of time and effort.

That, yes, they do become relatively habitual in that our resistance to do them is a lot less. They're much, much easier to do. But I think these things like going to the gym every day or going to the gym, you know, five or six days a week, something that takes a significant amount of time, regardless of whether it's habitual or not, and having it be habitual makes a huge difference. It's still not always easy just because of the how crammed our lives are with stuff and how how volatile our schedules can be. And so I think the idea that like, well, once I get to that point, you know, I'll never miss again is is probably a little delusional. But there is certainly a point where the at least I've noticed the level of resistance most of the time, you know, goes way down.

It's it's much easier to do than it was in the beginning, but it's, you know, I wouldn't exactly call it autopilot. I love the way you put that. And the experience or the metaphor perhaps that works best for me is it's like meditating. The thing is, you meditate for 40 years, you're still not that good at it. You still get distracted. You're still kind of, you know, your mind wanders off until you realize. And look, I'm just a bad meditator. You know, I try and do it. I do it a bunch of days in a row, then I forget.

I sit down on the cushion. I spend the whole time thinking about stuff. And I'm like, ah. But part of the way of being gentle with yourself around that is it's the waking up and realizing you got distracted again is the very point of meditating. It's actually the moment of coming back that makes meditation work. And I'm sure there's a thousand meditators listening to this who are about to write angry emails to you and me about this. But for me, anyway, there's just something about it's the waking up to realize it's time to come back again is where the learning

slowly happens yeah and likewise with this whole habit stuff you know it's a the bigger the thing is you will fall off you will fall off the bus or the train or whatever vehicle you want to make your metaphorical habit in fact i make the point in the book or whatever vehicle you want to make your metaphorical habit. In fact, I make the point in the book, that's one of the final things, which is what's useful is to have a plan, to know that you're going to fall off the rails and go, so when I do fall off, what's my best guess about how I will fall off and how will I get myself back on the rails? Because of course I'm going to fall off off that's the nature of habit building you fail until you get back and make it more like autopilot yeah i think that's the key

insight to long-term sustainable change is knowing how to be flexible and and and having a plan and knowing how to keep it going even when it's not perfect. You know, the B.J. Fogg uses a great example that I like. He talks about, you know, that in his life, you know, he thinks of a, you know, a habit as like a plant, right? And there's times in his life where he's just, you know, watering the plant and giving it plant food and, you know, talking to it and doing all kinds of stuff. And then there's times like if he's on the road traveling where his goal is simply just not to kill the plant, you know, like, have your neighbor stop buying water at least twice this week, so the thing doesn't die. So that when I get home, I can, you know, and I think there's a lot that's really, for me, that was where a lot of things in my life sort of turn,

turn the corner from being something that I do for a little while, and then I stopped for a long while, then I do it for a little while, and I stopped for a long while into something that I do, you know, 90 plus percent of the time, you know, year after year was really recognizing that like, okay, I'm not going to stick to this perfectly. So what do I do when I can't? And how can I, how can I just keep the habit alive enough that when I'm, you know, when whatever the current challenge I'm facing is resolves, I can kind of step, you know, step on the gas again. That's a bunch of metaphors about plants and cars. And your show is based on that metaphor, right? Which is about the wolf you feed. And, you know, there's an obvious way about kindness or hatred that you can, you can fit that in.

But for me, some of that more subtly shows up in this conversation, which is how do you hold yourself to account when you're trying to build a new habit, when you're trying to be disciplined? And it can be very easy to be really hard on yourself to feed the other wolf. And, you know, it's one thing for us to be thinking about our behavior as we interact with others, but it's true for ourselves as well, which is like, how do you hold yourself firmly, but compassionately to account? Um, and I do think that's a choice of a wolf to feed because your, your other options are you cruelly hold yourself to account and you beat yourself up or you kind of let yourself off the hook too easily. And there's something in the middle, which is that compassionate accountability,

which can be a very powerful, gentle, persuasive way to be with yourself. Thank you. 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? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Brian Cranston is with us today. How are you, too? Hello, my friend.

Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman. 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 signed Jason bobblehead. It's called Really No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We're fairly far into the interview, and we've not even gotten to any of the questions yet. The conversation is far more interesting than the book. I mean, the book is fueling the conversation, but it's good to talk around this stuff. Yep. So let's go into the questions a little bit here for a few minutes before we

wrap up. So the first question is called the kickstart question. And what I love about it is I think it's a great way to start conversation with anybody. So why don't you tell us what that first question is and why it's so effective? So let me start by saying that, you know, the purpose in writing this book was to write the shortest book I could that would still be useful. I don't know about you, Eric. I know you read a lot, but I find that too many books, either in the self-help world or the business world, feel like there's an awful lot of oh god i know i read them all the time so yes i know yeah and i'm like wow you've honestly if you if i if you're if you're a tough editor on this what you'd have is a half blog post somehow you turned it into a 220 page book um filled with dated stories about Southwest Airlines. So I'm like, ah. So part of the goal for me was like, okay, how do I write a book that is short, readable, beautiful, and practical?

And I went through all sorts of versions of this. I mean, this was the book that almost killed me. I wrote four bad versions of this book before I finally got to writing a good version of it. Anyway, and one version was like, here are 168 questions that I think are awesome. And I was like, wow, that's just a terrible, terrible book. It's boring. It's overwhelming. How can you use that? And all this to say, I ended up with seven questions because I tried five and that wasn't enough. And I tried nine and that felt too many so seven felt about right and you're right the kickstart question is the first one in the book and it comes from an insight that we spend too much time in conversation talking about the stuff that's

not that interesting or not that boring and we're kind of like this is the warm-up that's going to get us to the real conversation but sometimes the real conversation never gets there and it's not to say that you know so-called small talk is a is a bad thing because it's the time when small talk is exactly the thing to be doing you know sharing stories about you the love of your life your kids the sporting team whatever but um there are also times where you're like, let's have a conversation about something interesting, something personal, something kind of a little deeper. And in the workplace setting, it's even more urgent

because people are so busy. They don't have time for the chit-chat, really. If you're going to have a conversation, let's make it a real interesting question about something that matters. And so this kickstart question, this is the longest ramble to a question ever okay there is can i ask you what's on your mind michael yes thank you thank you and of course everyone listening and that is the question what's on your mind um which is both uh it's power i think lies in it it's open you're you're inviting the other person to talk.

You're not setting their agenda for them. But it's also implied in that is a, but let's talk about something that matters, that you're excited about or worried about or waking up at four o'clock in the morning about. Let's talk about that. Yeah, I think it's a great question. I've heard variations on it about like,

you know, how to engage in conversation with people, you know, that gets you past the small talk. And I've heard variations on it about like, you know, how to engage in conversation with people, you know, that gets you past the small talk. And I've heard things that I'm like, I can't see me ever walking up to somebody I don't know that well and saying like, what are you really excited about these days? Or, you know, like those are just strange, you know, but what's on your mind is a little bit more, you know, a, I think in, I can see in the work setting or coaching setting, how effective it is. And I also think it's actually a question that you could use, you know, with, with people in the world and in, and not get quite the same strange looks you might, it might be a slightly strange look, but certainly not like, you know, what are you fired up about these days, Bob?

I know. I'm like, okay, now I'm anxious. What if I'm not fired up about anything? That's right. And who are you anyway? And why are you asking me this question? What's in your mind does have a kind of, it doesn't have a judgment built into it. It's just a curiosity about what's going on for you. And, you know, honestly, if you walked up to a stranger and went, hey, what's on your mind? They're actually still going to think you're slightly odd. But, you know, I got introduced to somebody the other day, somebody who wanted to chat about something. And after we did the usual, hey, it's good to talk to you. I'm glad to meet you. Wonderful that Laurel introduced us. I was able to go, hey, so what's on your mind? And it was a way for us just to go, bang, we're into the real conversation now. And so the next question we talked about briefly, and let's just throw it into kind of what's on

your mind, that conversation happens. And then, you know, and instead of jumping in with advice or solution or, or whatever, then it's, and what else? So this is bringing that. You can, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I want to say that the seven questions are there and you could almost follow them one by one and kind of go through the arc of a conversation but they're really not designed necessarily as a script like that that you know you have if you've asked what's on your mind you must ask and what's the real challenge for you or what you want. You know, it's like you can go where you want. What I want for people is more about the can you stay curious just a little bit longer? Can you rush to action and

advice and solutions and opinions just a little bit slower? It's not to say never give anybody advice because that's ridiculous and impossible advice, you know, suggestion. But it's to say, how do you stay curious a little bit longer? And, you know, if we're into a conversation, and this conversation I had with this woman just a day or two ago was exactly this. I was like, so what's on your mind? And she's like, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And I was like, oh, great. What, anything else? And she's like, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Okay, anything else? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It was like this kind of rush of stuff that she'd been thinking about. Some of it was, I'm going to say, kind of trivial. Some of it was more profound.

Some of it got into kind of self-identity. Who am I in this world? And what then happened is rather than me getting caught up in it, because I knew a bunch of suggestions about a bunch of the stuff that she brought up. Some of it was productivity stuff. So I had to be a bit more productive. Some of it was, do I hire a coach? And I know a bunch of coaches, so I could give her advice on that. So it's part of me twitching with the kind of the desire to be useful to this person and give her the best bits of advice I could. But there's other parts of me going, every time you do that, Michael, you kind of end up, A, sucking the life out of the conversation,

and, B, your advice isn't nearly as good as you actually think it is. So why don't you just slow down the Russians? And what I literally asked her was, after those and what else questions, which are the second question in the book, we literally went right to the third question in the book, which is the focus question. And I was like, wow, with all that stuff going on for you, what's the real challenge here for you? And that's the focus question. What's the real challenge here for you? And the way it's expressed like that is actually a deliberate choice. And it's not a kind of accidental collection of words.

Because I want to demonstrate how you can increase the power of this question. The least powerful version of that question is, what's the challenge here? And if I'd asked her that, she would have kind of looked at me slightly oddly and repeated one of the things she'd already told me. Right. Because you're going to get an initial reaction. I could have asked her, what's the real challenge here? And she would have kind of scanned the things you'd already told me and probably come up with something. So that's a better question.

But I asked, what's the real challenge here for you? And for you, swings the spotlight away from the challenge and swings it onto the person who's dealing with the challenge and it just makes for a more powerful more personal more learning conversation because now we're not trying to fix something so much as we're trying to help understand how this person is entangled in the problem that they're wrestling with and getting to what's kind of driving them. So you get to a deeper place that much more quickly by what's the real challenge here for you. And those last two words for you are part of the sort of secret sauce here. Yeah, I think that those make a big difference. And I love the way the questions, you know, one through seven, there is, like you said, it doesn't have to be a script, but there's,

there is an order that you can, you can do them in. And I just really found it a very helpful way to look at conversation with people and how to increase the depth and effectiveness of our conversations. Right. And the magic, of course, is to come back to that and what else question, because you go, okay, so so wow a lot going on here what's the real challenge here for you and then you go okay to whatever their answer is you go okay anything else anything else a real challenge here for you okay is there anything else all right so let me ask you again what's the real challenge here for you and you know in a not very long period of time you know kind of drop down a level or two

to a more intimate, more personal, more vulnerable, more useful conversation. Yep. I agree. I really liked the way it was laid out. It was an easy read. There wasn't any fluff in it. So as someone who has to read multiple books a week, I appreciate that. And, you know, I've really enjoyed the conversation also. And thanks so much for coming on. My pleasure. You know, Erica is a great conversation. It is such a powerful metaphor, a great story that you start and you invite people in through that lens. And I do think it sets up for just a great, interesting conversation like the one we've had. So thank you very much for having me. My pleasure. And we will have links in the show notes and everything to

the book, to your website. You've got a great download that lays out some of the advice on habits from different people. And I'll make sure I link to that also because I found that really good and useful. Perfect. Thank you. All right. Take care. Brilliant. Thanks. See you. Thank you. See you guys. Bye. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a donation to the One You Feed podcast. Head over to oneyoufeed.net slash support.