The One You Feed - Todd Henry

Episode Date: August 19, 2015

This week we talk to Todd Henry about developing your authentic voiceTodd Henry teaches leaders and organizations how to establish practices that lead to everyday brilliance. He is the author of three books (The Accidental Creative, Die Empty, and Louder Than Words) which have been translated into more than a dozen languages, and he speaks and consults across dozens of industries on creativity, leadership, and passion for work.His book Die Empty was named by Amazon.com as one of the best books of 2013.His latest book, Louder Than Words, is about how to develop an authentic voice that resonates and creates impact. Bestselling author Tom Rath called it “…one of the best guides to living a meaningful life I have ever read Our Sponsor this Week is Emeals.Try eMeals risk free for 14 days. Head to EMEALS.COM to sign up today—it only takes a few minutes to solve your dinnertime dilemma. Simply choose a food style and you’ll be ready to experience the power of planning with your 14-day free trial.With eMeals, you’ll never again have to ask yourself, “what’s for dinner.” That’s EMEALS.COM (Remember to tell them you heard about them from us when you check out.)  For Detailed Show Notes Visit our WebpageSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

There's going to be a gap between what we're capable of doing and what we wish we were capable of doing. The only way to close that gap is through intentional effort. 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 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 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 today is Todd Henry, founder of Accidental Creative, a company that helps creative people and teams generate brilliant ideas. We have interviewed Todd once before, and he's back with a new book called Louder Than Words, Harness the Power of Your Authentic Voice. And now, here's the interview with Todd Henry. Hi, Todd. Welcome to the show. Thanks, Eric. It's great to be here.

Excited to get you back on. You were one of our very early guests, which I was very appreciative. And your episode was one that we liked so much. It's one of the very few that we've ever re-aired. So this will be your third appearance, although two are technically the same interview. So I'm happy to have you back. Well, it's an honor. And I have to tell you, as a fan of the show, it's been so amazing, wonderful, beautiful to watch how the show has grown and occasionally envy inducing, because as you know, I also have a podcast and I'll open up the homepage of iTunes and I'll see the one you feed right there at the top of the main page on iTunes.

I'm like, how is he doing that? It's amazing. So congratulations on the success. Thank you. I appreciate that. So you've got a new book coming out called Louder Than Words, Harness the Power of Your Authentic Voice. And the book is really about how we find, you know, what I got from the book was, and I think it's a theme that comes up a lot,

but that in order to be our best selves in life, whatever arena you want to cast that into, work or family or creativity, that we've got to really find that authentic part of ourselves. And you've got a lot of things in there that are about diving into how we do some of those. And we'll cover some of those things here as we get into the interview. But let's start with the parable of the two wolves. There's a grandfather who's start with the parable of the two wolves. 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 and 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, particularly the work you're doing right now. This is a great question. And it'll be interesting. I can't remember how I answered this the first time. So it'll be interesting to go back and compare my answers the first time and the second time. Um, I, for me, I think that means, uh, right now do not fear trepidation and step into the step fully all in to the path that's in front of you. I think it's so easy, uh, very often, Eric, to, to embrace life as if you're

pushing a wall forward, right? You have your arms spread and you're moving the wall forward a couple of inches at a time. Um, and, and you're trying to do everything. And so you're making a little bit of incremental progress in a whole bunch of areas rather than stepping fully into the path that's in front of you, following where your intuition is leading you and going all in and making a decision. And so I think for me, when you feed the bad wolf, you're feeding trepidation, you're feeding fear, you're feeding the narrative that says you're an imposter, you're feeding the narrative that says, who are you? You're feeding the narrative that says you don't want to miss out on something else. So why don't you hedge your bets? You know, we live in a culture right now that is afraid to

commit to anything, anything. And I mean, even social engagements, because something better might come along, you know? And so I just, I feel like right now, one of the things that we have to, as a culture, we have to stop feeding is indecision. And we have to instead step boldly in the direction that our intuition is leading us. That's a great way to start off. And one of the things I love about your work is it's sort of a consistent clarion call, you know, against mediocrity, you know, against going through the motions, which is so easy to do in today's world. Well, and I think ever in time, I think it's a human thing. It's, it's the default, you know, is to kind of do the easy thing. If we're, if we, if we're not motivated else, elsewise, that's not a word motivated otherwise.

Well, it is, it is easy to slip into mediocrity. And, you know, as we, as we discussed, I think on the last time I was on the last episode, um, you mediocrity comes from the two words, medias and ochris middle and rugged mountain, right. And to be mediocre is to stop halfway up a rugged mountain. And I think it is our nature as humans to settle in, to seek comfort, to seek stability, uh, to seek, um, uh, a sense of, of, um, wellness and, um, safety. And, and ultimately, you know, I mentioned comfort before. I think the love of comfort is often the enemy of greatness in our lives. And it's so easy to settle into that for days, weeks, months, years, and then to look back and realize that you've built somebody else's body

of work. You have lived according to the whims and wishes and objectives and priorities of everybody around you. Or maybe you've just followed opportunity, but you've never stepped back to ask, is this really where I should be going with my life and with my work? And so as a result, you end up very far from the place you initially wanted to go simply because you didn't have a sense of who you are and of the through line that should be guiding your work. And so I think that's profoundly sad. And that, you know, there are people who I believe have built really great bodies of work, Eric. Everybody points to and looks at them and says, wow, look how amazing that is. And I think that they look at it and say, that is, that's not me. That's not who I am. That

doesn't represent me. I built somebody else's body of work. And I think that's profoundly sad. And your book really gives, gives some approaches to making sure that we're building our own body of work. And, you know, one of the things that you say early in the book that I really, really like, and it gets to that giving up halfway up the mountain, you say, you know, that people believe that if they were truly on the right path, everything would fall into place easily. Yeah. And this is a great myth of our age because we look at, I call them the unicorns, the people who just come out of the womb amazingly gifted. And we think, well, I want to be a unicorn. But the reality is that 99.99999% of us are not unicorns. That's not who we are. We have to work to build a substantive platform of expression if we want to have impact in the world. You know,

we have to work to refine and develop our voice. Uh, and, and the reality is too, for a lot of people we point to and call them unicorns, they didn't just, you know, success didn't fall in their lap. It may appear that success fell in their lap, but they also had to work for years to cultivate and develop that compelling voice. Um, you know, Jimi Hendrix did not come out of the womb, able to rip off amazing guitar licks, you know, uh, he had to develop that over time as well. Um, he had a natural talent, you know, an opportunity met that talent and that's great. But, you know, we have to be careful not to fall prey to this narrative that says, well,

if it's not easy, then it's not worth doing. If it's not easy, then it's not the place I should be. And I think that that myth oftentimes, Eric, keeps us from exploring paths where we could have a substantive contribution and we might actually be able to develop a resonant voice. And the reason we don't do it is because it's hard. And the reason nobody else does it is because it's hard. So maybe that's the very place where we could actually build something of substance if we have the persistence and the grit to do it. Right. And you go on to talk about an interview that you saw and I saw, which is one of the favorite things I've seen in a few years. And it's the Ira Glass interview where he talks about, you know, that we, we, as, as creative people, we, we have good taste. We can see what's out there. Like, I love that thing. And when we start, we're so far away from that.

I think you call it the aspiration gap. Right. Yeah. And I love the way he described this because he put perfect language behind a concept that I've been seeing and noticing and talking about for a long time. But I love that he talked about that specifically as the gap, because there is a gap there between what you see your heroes doing and what you are capable of doing at that point in time. And the reality is all of us as people who want to express ourselves, who want to create

things, whether it's business or we want to write or we want to design something or make art or whatever it is, there's going to be a gap between what we're capable of doing and what we wish we were capable of doing. The only way to close that gap is through intentional effort. And we have to go through specific phases of growth over the course of time. We have to embrace the process, right? We have to step into the process. And there's a way that we can actually formalize that growth, which is great in order to close that gap. But the funny thing about it, Eric, is that the gap is always going to exist.

Right. Because when you get to the place where other people are looking at you and saying, wow, how do you do that? That's amazing. You're thinking, well, that's not amazing. Look at what this person is doing. And all of a sudden now there's somebody even higher up the curve than you. But I think as you grow, as you get better at what you do and you grow in your capacity to express yourself, I think that you begin to recognize that's just a part of life. Life is going to be a constant climb up the mountain. It's going to be a constant climb toward the peak. And the only way we lose is if we settle in, if we stop growing, because you don't stay static at that point.

Actually, if you stop growing, if you stop climbing, then you start dying. And so we have to embrace that continual climb if we want to continue to develop our voice and create impact. Yeah. I mean, there's so many things in there that you just talked about. I think that, I don't know why we get the idea we should start and be good at something right away. We had Carol Dweck on who's got that concept of the growth mindset versus the fixed mindset. And that's, that's exactly it, right? If we have a fixed mindset and, you know, I had a fixed mindset in regards to playing guitar for years, you know, I started and I was just terrible. And I thought I couldn't do it. And then I finally started again, and still had sort of a fixed mindset around, well, I can get a little bit better at this. And it really took to a certain point where I went, Oh, you know what? Something like playing the guitar or so many things in life is such a broad spectrum. There's so many ways to your point, to have your own voice that it doesn't matter if I can play that solo exactly as fast as that guy, because I've got, if I, if I approach it in the right way and with the growth mindset,

I bring something to it. That's uniquely mine Absolutely. And also, I think one of the important questions we often don't ask is, why do I want to learn how to play guitar? Right? Or why do I want to learn how to write? Or why don't, you know, I, as a young musician, I mean, I'm, you know, I was a musician in my, in my former life, actually, I was a professional musician and played music full time, you know, in my early twenties, as I now call them my misguided twenties, right. But, uh, you know, as I played music full time, um, you know, I will fully confess, I was never in love with music. It was never something that was just in my blood. I just, you know, I woke up thinking about music, thinking about how I could be better at what I did. It just wasn't in my blood. Um, and you know, I look at, I compare that to my son who's now 12 and he's learning how to play guitar and he is obsessed. He's obsessed with, uh, the music of all of these great sixties rock bands, right? And who influenced who and what kind of guitar they were playing, what kind of, uh, you know, amp they were using and the techniques they were using to record and all this stuff. And, you know, he's, he's learning all of these amazing, um, riffs and licks on the guitar and emulating all these people. He's really deeply into it. And the love of, of music just

pulses through his, his veins. It's a fundamentally different thing that's going on with him that went on with me. I think the reason I wanted to learn to play guitar is because I like the attention, right? I like that I could get up on stage and play music, but that's not going to get you very far, you know? And I think that is why it's so important that we really drill down on and figure out who am I, what do I really care about? What is my identity? What is my sense of the value that I want to create in this world? And what is it that drives me? I think that's why it's so important because that fuel is going to be necessary when things get hard. You know, when you get halfway up the mountain and you want to quit, and the only reason you're doing this is because you like the attention, it's

going to be easy to settle in or it's going to be easy to compromise and do the things that will get you the quick fix that you're looking for, but don't actually contribute to the body of work that you want to build. It's so easy to settle in when you don't have a sense of who you are and what it is that really fuels you. How do we do some of that deeper work to find out who we are? Because I think a lot of the people that I hear from and work with that listen to the show say, hey, I have a desire to do something that resonates deeply with me, that matters to me. But I look at my life and I don't see that passion standing right there. I hear follow my passion, but I don't know what that is. And I

don't feel it. So what are some things that people can do? 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?

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It's called Really? No, Really? And you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. In a real discovery way to start to find out like, well, where, where, where is my authentic voice? Who, who am I? What are some exercises people can do there? Yeah. So there are three kind of areas that I looked at in louder than words, um, that, that seem to be markers of an especially resonant voice, right? And I call these the elements of the voice engine because they seem to drive compelling resonant voices. And those three things are identity, which is who are you? What do you care about? What is the substantive change that you want to make, right?

Vision, which is how you're shaping your work and ultimately you want your work to go. And so the answer to really the question you need to answer there is where am I going with my work? And then the final element is mastery. And mastery is about developing a sense of ownership of the skills that you need to completely dominate in order to put that out into the world. You can have a sense of identity and a sense of vision, but you don't have a sense of mastery. You're going to be incompetent. People aren't going to pay attention to you, right? So you have to have mastery of skills as well. And so to answer your question with regard to who are you, there are a couple of exercises that I give in the book. One that I use very often is what I call the 50 notables. And this is really just a way of looking at your life and doing some excavation and figuring out what's already there. Where are the clues that you've been ignoring in your life? We all have little points, little markers of resonance in our life that we gloss over because we simply don't pay attention to them.

And so I encourage people to pay attention to those moments when you are especially resonant with others or when the outside world resonates with you in a deep way. So I'll give a couple of examples of ways that you can do that. The first is to ask yourself, when am I moved with compassionate anger? Meaning when do I feel a need to step in? I'm not talking about road rage. I'm not talking about, you know, somebody cut me off in traffic or somebody stepped on my shoe. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about compassionate anger, meaning when in my life do I feel the need to step in to make something right? You know, a sense of justice overtakes me. Compassion means to suffer with, right? So when do I feel a need to step in and make something

right? That's a great marker of something in you that wants to come out, that wants to add value to the world. I mean, another one is when are you moved emotionally? When do you cry? I mean, for me, I'm moved by the stories of underdogs, right? The stories of underdogs profoundly move me. And so I spend a lot of my time working with underdogs. It's really hard for me to say no to an underdog client who approaches me because I love the stories of underdogs. When I watch underdog movies, I am regularly moved to the point of tears or I have things, I have something in my eye, right? Like I'd never admit that I'm crying, but I'm moved to the point of tears because

so when in your life are you moved emotionally? Go back and look at 10 or 15 or 20 examples of when you're moved emotionally in your life. What gives you irrational hope, right? What is the thing that you're obsessed with that other people point to and say, why are you obsessed with that? That makes no sense whatsoever, but you just can't get it out of your mind. What are some examples of the kinds of problems you've been obsessed with in your life that you can't get out of your mind? So once you collect a set of these examples, you can begin to look for a through line. You can begin to figure out, okay, where in my life do I tend to be moved with compassionate anger? Where in my life do I

tend to be moved emotionally? Where in my life do I tend to become obsessed with solving problems? And you can begin to plot those and notice patterns and begin to see the places where you are naturally drawn. And the places where you're naturally drawn are the places you are most likely to be resonant in the marketplace. Because when we talk about authenticity, I'm not talking about just putting yourself out there. Hey, accept me for who I am, right? You should because I'm being authentic and doing whatever you feel like. Authenticity is about putting skin yourself out there. Hey, accept me for who I am, right? You should, because I'm being authentic, um, you know, and doing whatever you feel like. Authenticity is about putting skin in the game. Authenticity is about investing yourself in something to the point that other people recognize that you rise and fall based on

how your work is received or the quality of your work and whether it resonates. And people recognize that you're not just paying lip service to something, you're actually putting yourself into it fully. And once you have the set of drivers, of points of resonance in your life, you can use as fuel, it makes it a lot easier to put yourself out there and to confront the inevitable fear that's going to come when you are stepping into the unknown. One of the things that you say late in the book, and I really like this, you said that when, because you've interviewed lots of amazing people, and you said if you had to define those people or describe those people in two words, the two words you would use were action and patience.

Yeah. And, you know, I think most people would say, you know, hustle, or they would say diligence, or they would say, you know, forward thinking or innovative. That's not really been what I've noticed. What I've noticed is that they are actively patient, meaning they are moving in the direction they believe is right, but they are also patiently observing and redirecting based upon what they see. I think when we are young and we are inexperienced and we're new in our career, we're new in whatever it is that we're doing. I think that, uh, we just

want to charge up the mountain. Um, it's kind of like you, you watch races sometimes and you see, you know, young and experienced runners will take off. They'll just go bolting out of the starting blocks and you think, wow, they're, you know, 30 yards ahead of everybody else. And then after about half the race, you see, they start to fall back in the ranks and then they finish in the back because they spent themselves completely, uh, early on. And a great runner in a race knows that you have to pace yourself and you can't be drawn off course by the people around you. You have to run your own race and you have to do that. Yes, with hustle, you have to be active.

You have to be moving, but you also have to be patient and you have to spot opportunities when they come and be ready to take advantage of them. And if you're spending yourself completely, you're not going to be ready to take advantage of that opportunity when it presents itself. And one of the things I've noticed about very successful people is that they're very active. They're moving in the direction they believe is the right direction, but they also have disciplines in their life where they step back and they look at patterns and they try to recognize opportunities when they present themselves so that they can take advantage of those opportunities. They're not just running headstrong in the

direction they believe is right full out all the time. Instead, they're patient enough to recognize that all opportunities don't come at once and you can't succeed by sheer force of will. That you also have to be able to step back and to build disciplines, to build white space into your life so that you can recognize those opportune moments to act meaningfully. One of the things I've always liked about your work is you talk about some of those practices that we do. Some of them are related to how we tie everything together, meshing things together. But you have a section in the book, you say, practice every day with the dailies. So what do you mean by that? And what are your dailies? So in ancient times, monks would have this set of practice. Even to today, they have this set of practice. And even to today, they have the set of practices they call the dailies, which is a set of rituals and rhythms

and things they engage in on a daily basis in order to keep the monastery going. And, you know, I do a very similar thing in my life. I know other people do this as well. I have a set of practices in my life that happened every day, you know, come hell or high water, I'm engaging these practices. Now, I will say that there are different rhythms for different times of my life. So for example, if I'm on the road, my dailies might look a little different than when I'm in the office, but there are certain things that happen every day regardless. I have a little index card. Actually, my index card for last month is right in front of me. And I have a slot for every day of the month on that index card. And then on the left-hand side in the left column, I have a list of practices that

are what I consider my dailies. I have personal dailies and I have business dailies. And next to every one of those dailies for each day that I engage in that daily, I mark it off in that little slot assigned to the day. And I just kind of go. And so I can see at the end of the month, how many days did I engage in this practice and how many did I fail? Um, and so there's some things, for example, on the weekend, I don't do my business dailies. Um, on the weekend, I don't, don't do certain other dailies, but I keep track of my reading. I keep track of how much I'm writing. If I'm reviewing my projects, if I'm exercising, if I'm talking with my children is one of my dailies, make sure I have a meaningful

conversation every day with, with my kids, um, and with my wife, right? Um, did I meditate, um, for, for business? I keep track of on a daily basis. Did I create content today? Because as you and I both know, if you don't create content, whether it's for a client or for public consumption or whatever, if you don't do that one day, it's not a big deal. If you don't do it for two days, not such a big deal, but then pretty soon two days becomes a week, becomes two weeks, becomes a month. And pretty soon you're just out of the habit. And so for me, you know, I have to create content every day. And Mark, when I do, um, did I do some kind of business development activity each day? I try to make sure I'm engaging in biz dev of some form or

fashion. And I also keep track of what I'm reading, the books I'm reading. So I go back and I look through these cards, these little index cards of dailies, and I can see over time my patterns and how I've developed and how I've sort of grown in my capacity to do my work and to shape my voice as I've become better and more diligent about engaging in these dailies. It's pretty neat to see actually how it's just become a part of how I think about my day. Now it's almost mindless. I don't even have to think about it because I've just do these things habitually over the course of time. Yeah. I use coach.me to do something very similar in keeping track of, and I used to use a different

program that would give you points for the things you got done. And it was, I always found it amazing that if I would go back and, or I would hit a period where I'm like, I'm not feeling real good or whatever. I would look at, you know, I would look at my daily points and go, well, no wonder, you know, like I can just see, I can see it in the numbers that I haven't been doing these things that I do on a regular basis that I've determined are really important in supporting me and keeping me in a mentally and emotionally strong place. Right. And, and, you know, people might say, well, what does this have to do with developing my voice? Right. What does this have to do with the point of the book? And I would say it's everything, everything to do with it, because your voice isn't just what you care about. It's not just what you say. It's also about how

people hear you, how they receive you, how they interact with you. And if you're not staying in game shape, if you're not staying battle ready and you can't take advantage of opportunities because you've not been doing these little things, you have, you only write when somebody's paying you to write. if you only engage in certain kinds of behavior when you're at work, but you never do anything outside of that to develop your relational skills, to develop your capacity to communicate, eventually you're going to become decreasingly effective. So it's about staying battle ready, staying in game shape. I gave a talk about six months ago on Coronado Island,

just outside of San Diego. And as we were kind of driving this little slip of land that goes out to the resort where I was speaking, my driver said, well, that's the Navy SEAL training facility there. It's where they do buds and sort of all of the, some of the training stuff. And he said, you'll see SEALs out there 24 seven. They're out there running the beach. They're out there working out. They're out there staying battle ready. So my driver said that one of his friends was stationed there and that they have to be 24 seven working out 365. They have to be in shape because they never know when they're going to be deployed. They never know when they're going to be sent into battle. And he said, they have to stay battle

ready at all times. And I thought, wow, what a great metaphor. I mean, obviously most of us don't, you have those kinds of life or death circumstances we deal with on a daily basis, but what a great metaphor for those of us who want to stay ready to engage meaningfully with our work. You know, we have to, in a similar way, have a set of disciplines, a set of practices in our life that help us stay sharp and to stay battle ready so that we can engage at a moment's notice when we're called to do so. they consume as far as information and how much they process it. So if they just spent a lot more time processing what they read versus just reading, what a big difference that would make. Absolutely. One of the things you say in the book that I thought was a really interesting concept, and you say it's deeply ingrained in the human condition to simultaneously crave recognition and camouflage. These two forces battle within us and then paralyze us. we also something inside of it also drives us to want to stand out, to want to be recognized for our work. And I think that, you know, you talk about the good wolf and the bad wolf, right? I think in many ways, these forces fight within us. You know, we want to be recognized for being

substantively different from everybody around us. But the moment that we step out and we become recognized, we also realize that that's maybe the most dangerous place for us to be culturally because, you know, everybody loves to shoot arrows at the person who rises above the pack, you know, in many ways. And so, you know, I think that we have to recognize that it is a struggle that we each have to deal with in our own way, but we have to continue taking small steps on a daily basis in the direction of our fear, stepping out, you know, uh, into dark places and, you know, step by step by step into our discomfort. That's how bodies of work are built. And that's how we find our voice. You know, nobody wakes up one day and says, Oh, that's it. I've, I've, I've found my voice. Um,

that's why I don't use the phrase, find your voice in the book. I talk about developing your voice because it is a lifelong process. Developing your voice is something that happens over time through intentional effort, diligence, discovery, and like I said, active patience. One of your recent podcasts, you talked about something that I bring up a lot on the show because I'm kind of fascinated by it. And you talk about comparison and competition. I think that that ability to, that process where we compare ourselves to others can be one of the most poisonous, I think, things that we have in our life. I think the quote is, comparison is the thief of joy.

But you also talk about some really useful ways to use comparison. So can you talk a little bit about the ways in which we can use comparison positively? Yeah, I think if you're comparing as a form of benchmarking, that can be very helpful to us. You know, so we talked before about the aspiration gap and how we look at people that we admire and we want to be like them. We want to produce like them. We want to create like them. Um, and, and that can be helpful as a form of motivation. But if we allow the scales to tip and all of a sudden it becomes demotivating because we don't think that we could ever possibly close that gap. That's when comparison can become

destructive. Um, go back to the, to the merit, uh, the metaphor of running a race, your eyes, when they begin to veer to the side, will lead your body off course. So you tend to run in the direction you're looking. That's why you don't see many runners running with their head over their shoulders or looking to the left or looking to the right for very long. Because if you do that, if you look 30 degrees off to the right and you're paying attention to the person three lanes over, then your body is going to start following wherever you're looking over the course of time. And that's what comparison and competition can do to us. So comparison is a form of benchmarking. It's fine. What can I learn from this person? What are they doing that I admire? How can I apply that to my life? How can I emulate? We talked about the

phases of growth. We didn't really go into that before, but one of the phases that we go through as we develop our voice is emulation, which means finding somebody else who's already doing what we do, we want to do well, and then emulating them, building disciplines in our life where we are trying to copy them, trying to be like them, emulate them as we build our skill set, right? And so that's one way that comparison can actually be helpful to us in our growth is if we use it as a form of benchmarking, but it can also be paralyzing if we use it in a way that if we begin to look at other people and we begin to allow our expectation escalate to the point that we become paralyzed, that we don't act because we don't see how we could possibly close the skill gap. So we have to be careful, right, to use comparison, to use competition in a healthy way, but not to let it cause us to veer off course or to fall prey to the cursive peripheral vision. Yep. And back to that idea of the fixed versus growth mindset. One of the things in the interview with Carol that really struck me was that she says

that people who are in a fixed mindset are unable to draw inspiration and motivation from people who could be mentors or role models. They've got this fixed mindset, like this is the way I'm at, this is the way they are, and they're better than me. Whereas with a growth mindset, you do exactly... I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really Know 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.

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I could try this, you know, and we can change. And so it's, we seem to keep coming back to that, that core theme there of, you know, being willing to close that aspiration gap. Absolutely. Along a similar line, you talk about that every creative project has a U-shape to it. And you use the metaphor of a canyon. And I think that applies to a lot of different things in life. So could you describe what that U-shape is? Yeah. So this came out of a great conversation I had with Lisa Congdon, who's a brilliant artist.

She said that one of her art school instructors told her that every creative career and every creative project has a U-shape. Meaning, I applied it to an example of walking through a canyon, right? So imagine that you're going to walk through a canyon to the other side. And so you can see the top of the canyon on the other side, the plateau, you can see your destination when you start and it's a beautiful day and the birds are chirping and the sun is just coming up over the horizon. And you're excited to venture into the canyon and get your objective on the other side. But as you begin hiking down the canyon, the trail becomes less and

less clear. And pretty soon you can't see your objective anymore because it's obscured by trees. And as you get to the bottom of the canyon, you start to question, am I going the right way? Is this the right path? Did I lose my sense of direction? You can't see the sun because you're in the bottom of the canyon. You don't know which direction you're really going. You're kind of operating by muscle memory or you're just sort of doing the best you can do. And at that point, it's really easy to give up, right? It's really easy to lose hope, to lose perspective, and to convince yourself that this is a really bad idea.

But then you push through that, those doubts, you begin climbing up the other side and pretty soon you can see your objective again and you get really excited. And finally you, you know, crest on the other side just as the sun is going down on the other side. And I think that's what it feels like to do any kind of meaningful creative work. There's always going to be extreme hope at the beginning and everything is so clear. You can see where you're going, see your objectives, but as you get in the midst of the work, it's nothing but frustration and depression and confusion and self-doubt and all of that. And what happens to us, unfortunately, Eric,

also often is we think that we're alone in that. We think we're the only ones who ever went through that. And we look at our heroes, the work of our heroes, and we think, oh, well, they never experienced that. I mean, they just came out of the womb able to create brilliant work. No, those brilliant pieces of work that we look at were the result of this same process of self-doubt and comparison and all of these things that we do when we're in the bottom of the canyon. And the key is to continue pushing through. The key is to continue moving in the direction that we set out on and not allow that to paralyze us. Now, sometimes we realize that it was a bad idea to begin with. That's an entirely different conversation for a different time. But what I'm talking about here are those narratives and the forms of fear that

crop up when we're in the bottom of the canyon that make us feel alone, that make us feel like we're the only one, the only one who's ever been through this before. And in those times, it's important to remind ourselves of why it is we do what we do to begin with, the value that we want to create, the ultimate end that we're aiming for, and to continue pushing up the other side of the mountain until the end becomes clear again, our objective becomes clear again, because everybody's going to go through that mud in the middle. But when you persist, if you continue pushing through, then eventually your objective will come back in sight. Well, I think that is a wonderful place to wrap this conversation up. So thanks so much,

Todd. It's been a pleasure to have you on. I'm always happy to see new work from you and to have you on the show. Thanks, Eric. And thanks for the great work that you do. And thanks for taking the time to inspire all of us on a regular basis through your podcast and your other work. Thank you. Thank you. I really appreciate this. All right, you too. Bye. Have a great day. Bye. You can learn more about Todd Henry and this podcast at one you feed dot net slash Todd to.