Our default reaction in life is inertia. Our defallow in your life is not to be engaged. It's not to be happy, it's not fine, meaning it's inertia. We tend to do what we've been doing, go what we've been going to say, 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. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Marshall Goldsmith. He's the only two time thinkers fifty dot 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 forty one books which have sold over two point five million copies, been translated into thirty two languages, and become listed bestsellers in twelve countries. Today, Marshall and Eric discussed the book The Earned Life, Lose Regret, Choose Fulfillment. Hi Marshall, Welcome to the show. Thank you so much for inviting me. I am neased 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 grandparents, says, well, which one wins, and the grandparents 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. 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 named Alan malually Ellen, was the CEO of Ford, CEO of the ear in States, ranked number three leader in the world, stock went from one dollar to eighteen forty and he also had a percent approval rating from every employee in a union company. An amazing man. So 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 and there 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, is no looking back on the past or blaming others. But he said, starting today, this is why we're gonna act. Option A, act this way or option B. Leave. 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 after that, and he had had a couple of people he had to fire out of sixteen. Not bed he fired two out of sixteen, but fourteen of the sixteen 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 described 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. One of the things they talked about in the book is called the every breath paradise. Every time I take a deep breath, that'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 versions. So 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, ten 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. 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. That's 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 has 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 three. They're very different people. And you can't live in in the past. It's a kind of vicarious living. In the same way you shouldn't live through other people's lives 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 four books on Buddhism, and I'm not a religious Buddhist. I'm a philosophical Buddhist. I don't have metaphysical beliefs about Buddhism. They're more philosophical beliefs. And my my philosophical school of Buddhism is Buddha was brought up rich, or the parable of Buddha. He was brought up rich, and his father started to give you happy if he had more, trying to give him more and more and 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 THO, that's not so good, old sick and dies that 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 didn't work either. Finally, one night he realized, I can never be happy with more. You 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, 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 etho says, you will be happy when when you get the money status BMW, condiment 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, 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 that's impossible. That says I have to be happy forever. No, it doesn't. That's the opposite of what it is. 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 songa Right. But I heard a description I love the other day 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 Earned Life was inspired by sixty people. My friend Mark Thompson. I spent every weekend with sixty 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 they Earned Life, and they really like 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 lonely er at the top. It is way lonelier of social media, people making fun of you going out and people are afraid to say much of anything today. And one guy said, you know, 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 in 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 coach 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. As your husband, how could be a better wife or a better father, a better friend, better managers? 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 the leadership role, that if you ask for help, here's a sign of weakness. One thing I'm very proud of in the book You Earned Life. If you read the first six pages, those are people that I'm coaching. And one thing I'm proud of is thirty years ago, no executive would admit to having a coach. It would have been a shame to have had a embarrassed to have had a coach. Well, these thirty people are great people, and I'll say, you know, I need help. I asked for help and it's okay. I mean, how many of the top ten teddors players have a coach? Ten? What does mean a thing wrong with him? 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 twenty eight years old, I think, and IBM was most admired company in the world. And they got the survey and the surveys said, you know what, the managers aren't doing a great job of coaching people. So then they gave us big training program that's a millions of dollars in training. And a year later did another survey and did absolutely zero impact, zero impact, same exact scores. Then I, as the managers, as your boss, do a good job of coaching? No, no, no no. As a manager, does your employee ever asked for coaching? Nope? As employee, do you ever have asked your manager for coaching? No? 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. So the manager says, you know, do you need any help or go No, boss, I perform effectively with no need for coaching. Again, I was twenty eight You know what, you know what I thought at God Bless America. I said, this is the most admired company of the world, and I'm a twenty eight year old kid and they're doing something is dumb. I 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 gonna 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 defallow in your life is not to be engaged, it's not to be happy, it's not fine, meaning it's inertia. We tend to do what we've been doing, go what we've been going, and say 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, and corporate executives right every day, people laughing at their jokes, you know, 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 at work with its including me. We're all successful because we do many things right, and it's by 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 talked about in the book is the best coaching 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 to what 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. This is 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 Sofia Safie wrote a book called Luon Schatz. 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 or 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 or 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 has 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 number two, what happens after we achieve the outcomes? What do you want? The more? More and more and more and more and more and more and more. So the Buddhist term is the hungry ghost. After you achieve the outcome, how long does that make you happy? Back to Safie, I said, you know, Safie, you already got a PhD in physics from Stanford, You've written best selling 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. Right, you're already a ninety nine point nine nine nine. Do you really think going to a ninety is going to make any difference? No. Another guy talks about in the book is Albert Berlow Albert ce Fiser. So you know, a few months ago, is at Albert, how's it going? Albert said, we look good? You know, it came up with this cure for COVID very ice, vaccine, very very good. And then we've got a new pill and profitable. And see over the year and complay, engage, but high, so said Albert. What's your problem? He said, 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 gonna do better than last year. Michael Phelps gold medals. What do you think about doing after winning the medal? Killing himself? Killing himself? Why couldn't be it 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 it. 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 his 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 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, is to not make any pretense that my definitions are good or bad or better than someone else's. So when I use these words, and there's a definition for me, so just so we know what I'm talking about. So for me, our aspirations represent the answer to the question why there are 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 mound. And then our actions, which it we'll talk about, are 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. Give me some examples of some aspirations, just so we can give people some ideas of what we're talking about. What 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 overwaiting and overweighting aspiration is the human service leader who since crely loves humanity but can't stand human beings. And by the way I've meant 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 and day to day life. Most people are the opposite, and the history of our species, most people were lost in the action phase. You know, our incestor didn't have anything. They lived from day to day. They didn't have any high levels, so much of anything. You were trying to stay alive and it was very hard. Most human beings today live in the action phase. You know, 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 buys a nonfiction book is almost by definition, uniquely and achiever. A person listen to your podcast is almost by definition uniquely an achiever. People like Coach you mentioned this, ayre 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 got to get elected, and then pretty soon after they're getting elected, these results corrupt them, and the aspirations 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 Mutual from Stanford give the kid a marshmallow and say the kid, will kid, you eat one, you get one. But if you wait too for you so kid waits at him to Allegedly they have this longitudinal research that shows that kid it needs one ends up being a loser kid that needs to 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. Well they didn't do in the research though, is take the kid did 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 sit in a room surrounded by thousands of uneating marshmallows. Yeah, sometimes you gotta eat the marshmallows. 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, why do you think we still pursue it? Well, to me, if our focused on a chief men or ambition is connected to a higher aspiration, but 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 a short term gratification, there's no meaning, there's no long term benefit. But it's not just drug addiction, 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. And too, 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 the results of what you achieve are meaningful to you. And again, nobody can find what's meaningful for you but you, and too, if you enjoy the process of doing it. So okay, like you you're doing this podcast. I think you 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 num reviews, i'll be happy, doesn't work. That's where you go off the roads that doesn't work absolutely. You know what, what if you get extra reviews, what happens next year? You need X times twenty 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 lox 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, as long as we say it'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 why is just the way I am? Well, number one, you dramatically decreased the odds are going to change. Number two, though, even if you do change, you won't feel authentic. You're gonna feel like a phony. So I coach somebody and let's say they get feedback that says they're a bad lister, and I'm the guys coach for a year, and he gets feedback then and says he's a good list. If I don't help him understand his identity and programming. You know, he's going to fill the inside like a phoney. He's gonna 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. Any there is no real me 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 meat. Well, I always challenge people, I say, do you have an incurable genetic defect? If you have an incurable genetic defect, there's abolutely nothing I'm gonna 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 meat, as you say, it is a completely conditioned thing, and we're able to make some decisions about what we allow to condition it. You know, I do some coaching work, not not on the level you do, but you know, I like to think of it as tendencies. Right. You have a tendency towards something, And it's good to recognize your tendencies because you know we want to change them. But that's about as far as we want to identify with it right now. And that's why I call this psychological testing. These test people take can be useful, but they can be dysfunctional. Yes to me, I love your word tendency. If you take the tests it says have a tendency to be too assertive. Fine, But if you say I am too assertive, then it starts doing more harmon and 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 a 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 some depends on the definition 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. 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. It is tough. And you know I talked about my friend Mark Tsik in the book. Mark was the managing partner of Goldman Sex. He was every when they did the I p O. He made his billion dollars. And then we're walking around the late he's talking about life and he has an opportunity to be the c 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 sucks about number one, they don't care. But number two, why do you care? Is it live your own life? You're not living their life. Live your life? You know? Yes, so many of us were not living our own lives. Yeah, And I think it's so balen. 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. 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. 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 gonna see her next week. She has one question she taught me. You know, as I said, I've read four hundred books on Buddhism. The listeners, skip the four hundred 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 gotta 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 four hundred books, skip the four you don't need to take a core zone mindfulness, No let's skip that too. Just just be that person you want to you know, it might be the person I want to be. Now when you're at home. Am I being the father? I want to be? A mind as a son I want to be And nobody can answer that for you but you. And then answer is yes, you're head 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 syncd up. I want to talk about daily questions. Daily questions is a practice that you have have put in place. I mentioned I was a recovering addict and I got a sober and a twelve step fellowship, and we have something called a tent step where you know, we take daily personal inventory, right and it's a similar thing. So talk to me about daily questions. Well, the daily question process. I'm gonna teach everyone if they don't know it something. It takes three minutes today, caused absolutely zero and will help you get better at almost anything that's a creat deal. Yeah, well, many people are skeptical. Three minutes today, nothing called one marshal. It sounds too good to be true. After people that start doing this quit in two weeks. And they do not quit because it does not work quick because it does work. This is hard to do. Get out of spreadsheet right down a serious of questions that represent what was 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 answer yes or no or 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 plastic stuck up on the wall. I've been doing this for twenty five 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 fail to mention an incredible quality. I have the ability to screw something up every day. You didn't mention that they're on the intro. But I've always impressed myself with my incredible gift of screwing something up pretty much here every day. Well, the hard thing about this process is you get the 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 pchief from me all 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 again with did I do my best too? Now, why is that so important? If I ask you, are you're 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 I ask you, did you do your best to be happy, there's nobody to blame. You gotta look in the mirror and said I didn't even try. Well, 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? And did I do my best to set goals. Well, you've got these, you know, aspirations. There are your goals connected to this thing you want to be Number two? Did I do my best to make progress towards achieving those goals? Achievement? Did I do my best to be happy? Now? In one of my books, I talked about three medical doctors I coach Jim Kim simultaneous PhD in anthropology and m d from Harvard who went on to be president World Bank, Ross Shaw ahead of the U. S a d. And then Rockefeller Foundation John Knows already head of Male Cluding three medical doctors, all brilliant. I asked him this question individually, how would you do on an average day? Did I do my best to be happy? I had the same answer, never, don't know me to try to be happy? I never thought about it. Now they're all medical doctor, I did it. Don't know you're gonna die? Did they cover that in medical school? At death? And? Yeah? They covered death? Right? I said, you think this silly question, I 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. You said, most people will quit within two weeks because this works, meaning it makes you take a really hard look at yourself. 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 and 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. One of the questions that I do my best to be happy. So if you're driving yourself into despair, you d 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'm not 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 called me every day for almost twenty five 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, as I have someone called me every day. My name is Marshall Goldsmith, rank number one executive coach and leadership thinker in the whole world. I have to have someone called me every day to make sure I do this simple stuff I didach 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 getting here? You mentioned it already. Everything that book is hard. It's not hard to understand, you ever hear me say anything it's hard to understand. I'm a simple guy. None of it's hard to understand. It's just hard to do. 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 does people hire me? They could do it on their own. They would. Twilight Thorpe's World's Greatest Choreographer. She had the same personal trainer twenty seven years in a row. The trainers on teacher or anything new. Trainers not given motivational speeches. Trainers make sure she does the stuff. Pal Gasol's in the book Pals Are Great, a great basketball player, and you know he got hurt and he had to work really hard to try to make it back to play basketball to go to the Olympics, and he had his personal trainer living in his house. Why why do you have personal trainer living in his house? Well, he knows he's supposed to work out. He's not gonna do it by himself. We all need help. And that one thing I think we overexaggerated this macho will power crap. Somehow we're supposed to have all his 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 gonna do this for the last twenty years. We haven't done it yet. Well, if you haven't done the last twenty years, you really believe you're gonna 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. They got a middle class job, they've got a couple of kids, 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? You know, it's a very good question, and my stuff applies equally well to somebody that's the top the middle, at any level, at any age. Almost. I mean, hopefully that book is not so complicated that a smart ten year old couldn't read it. I have no illusion at 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 fifteen bucks an hour. What are the minimum wages 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 know, just need some human being. I've I've had people do that with me. You were not fancy coaches. They were basically administrative assistance. 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 learned 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. Get to haven't of asking your kids how gon to be a better father? You don't need to be a rocket scientist 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 the show will say, I don't have anybody in my life who really listens to this sort of thing, who's in 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 surely really what to do. You know, I can't hire an executive coach like you know that 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 want to grow up and be like them. And You'll have this program called hundred Coaches where basically I adopt people, I teach them all and know for free, and the only price is I could only do the same thing well, you know, and that is an honor of the people who taught me all they knew for free and didn't charge me any money. I think you just find somebody you admire who's a good person, and you just 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, agree. I think it is asking and being willing to know that not everybody is 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 is being willing just to say, Okay, I'm gonna ask, and if I get to know, I'm not going to take it personal. I'm just gonna 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 too. 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 what we do things, and others of us tend to weigh underestimate. Right. Some people are like, I'm the worst person in the world right now. Of course you're not. And other people are like, I'm amazing, and it's like, wow, you're all right. You know, we're all in the middle somewhere. Again, back to the why asked the question, did I do my best to? Yeah? I went to a presentation at the National Academy of Human Resources and they at the head of HR from all these big companies and three of more ass have talked about everything you know about employee engagement. I'm a member of this so I'm just sitting there listening. I'm the next speaker. Random, I'm just randomly there by the way, and I talked about employee engagement and said they talked about importance of empowerment, training, fairness, blah blah blah. It's the same lecture her for thirty 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 wise, global employee engagement all time low? Did I realized something? One of the dialogue is what can the company do to engage you? It's not exaggeration? Zero percent? Was you have any responsibility at all for your own life? Well that, Wait a minute, you're missing something. I fly all the time American Airlines eleven million frequent flyer mouse. One flight attends positively motivated, up beat, enthusiastic, one's negative, bit or angry and cynical. Same plane, same uniform, same salaries, 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 of employe engagement is a pass your 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 trivial. Do you have clear goals? No, they don't know what they're doing. When you ask, did I do my best to You gotta 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? Was that hard? You can't blame the idiot that wrote the question. Number two, you know it's important. I can't say it's trivial. And number three, all you have to do to get a high scores 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. As me, you gotta take responsibility, and so I think you know it's it's that what's said? My daughter and I discuss said she. Her ideas led to that whole concept of active questions. Now you had another question, which I now has enjoys me 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 are 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 live at all. If you do anything vaguely like this, you're gonna win. Whether you have a low self image or a high self image, you're gonna get better. And so I wouldn't overanalyze that. Most people don't do it at all. And you know, if you just take a few seconds and think, I 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 to ask the question? Maybe sometimes you rank too high too low. The reality is in life we don't ask a question at all. If you just ask the question, you're gonna 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 that you had a better phrasing of it than that. Now I'm thinking about my relationships and how I'm doing in them right. It's it's an orientation question. It's interesting. Of the sixty 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 is actually harder at home. I think that work in many ways. At work, you're structured, your professional you're organized, you plan like you you did questions, You've studied this in advance. You know you did some homework. At home, we're often much less professional, and we screw up more. So let me get a table. One of the guys I group as 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? It was good. Every week, you gotta get up. It's like alcoholics in ormers. You gotta get up every week. It's years how I did right. Oh, no, my wife's very upset with me. You know, I'm uh 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, Ory, Oh, exhausted, so tired. I said, you know, I paid a thousand bucks one night, my son paid a thousand bucks to what you pay in the National Basketball Association Championship. And you were running up now the court like a banshee and a coach called time out with two minutes ago. 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 say, you think your wife is impressed well, And 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, now it's our turn. It's time to turn it off. Right now, I can relax, We'll like, right now, you're paying a you ask good questions. Your present I mean, you're not sitting there snoring looking out the window. Acting board. You know you're being a professional at home is harder? 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, I'd like to finish with the best coaching advice in the world. Are you ready? Yes, because you're right and we're bunny at the time. Take a deep breath. Everybody listening, take a deep breath. Take a deeper breath. Now. Imagine that you're years old and you're just getting ready to die. Right before you take that last breath, you're getting 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 to have a better life. What advice with that wise old person who knows what matter in life? What didn't was important? What wasn't half of 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 it matters. That will person says you did the right thing. You did that Percison, you made a mistake. You did you know I'd be impressed anybody else. Some friends of mine interviewed old folks who are dying. Three questions, said personal professional on the personal side. Three themes team number one three words, be happy now, not next week, not next month. A 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've gotta dream. Go for it business side much not much. Theyone have fun. Do what we're can do to help people, then go for it. You may fail, at least you tried. Yeah, and if elegant, my why am I talking to you? A 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 Marshal, 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. It's our way of saying thank you for your support now. We are so grateful for the members of our community. We wouldn't be able to do what we do without their support, and we don't take a single dollar for granted. To learn more, make a donation at any level and become a member of the One you Feed community. 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