The Long and The Short Of It

Episode 128 - Trust Your Self

Transcript:

Pete: What is up, legends? Thanks for tuning in to this week's episode. Just wanted to stop by with a quick reminder...it's Pete here, by the way, but I hope you figured that out. I wanted to stop by with a quick reminder about the upcoming Big Ideas Lab. This is a six-week intensive workshop designed for people like you (yes, people like you), changemakers who listen to this podcast and have an idea in their head that they'd love to get out into the world, maybe in the form of a keynote, maybe in the form of a TEDx talk, maybe in the form of a workshop. And it is the third time that Jen and I will be running this workshop, and we would love to see you over there. So applications are open until the 15th of March, which is very soon depending on when you're listening to this, and the session will start on the 22nd of March. The website to find out all the information that you need, and to apply for a spot and/or for a scholarship is thelongandtheshortpodcast.com/bigideaslab. For now, please enjoy this week's episode.

Jen: Hello, Peter.

Pete: Hello, Jen.

Jen: I had an aha moment recently that I would love to unpack with you about a topic that has come up a lot on this podcast. You and I have talked about trust a lot, and Seth Godin has actually talked about this particular element of trust a lot. So, the topic for today is trusting your self.

Pete: Oof, yeah. This is like the work, I feel like, of all human beings. So, this will be juicy. This is The Long and The Short Of It.

Jen: Okay. Okay, okay.

Pete: Enlighten me, please.

Jen: So I was having a conversation with my coaching pod last week, and the question came up of, "How do you learn to trust your self more?" And for some reason, my brain just started connecting dots in a completely different direction than it ever has before. And so, my aha moment came when I think I landed on something I hadn't thought before. Which is, trusting your self to take a risk, or to do the emotional labor, or to make that scary phone call, or whatever it might be, or even to implement a creative practice, trusting your self is not only about the lead up to the event. "Do I trust myself enough to instill a creative practice? Or do I trust myself enough to have the words for the phone call?" Trusting your self is also about the ability to dance with the unforeseen consequences on the other side of the risk. "Do I trust myself to be able to handle whatever comes on the other side of that phone call, whether it's good or bad? Do I trust myself after I've implemented the creative practice to do something with the work that comes out of it?" So it's not only trusting yourself leading up to something, it's trusting that you'll be able to handle what comes next.

Pete: Oh my gosh, my mind is melting. So many thoughts. Firstly, fun fact, did you know that I'm scared of phone calls?

Jen: Wait...what?

Pete: I don't think we've ever talked about this on the podcast.

Jen: No. Okay, okay. Put a pin in that, because that's a whole other episode.

Pete: A separate quirk. Maybe it's like you and massages. Me and phone calls? We don't jive. So, I mean, there's so many things to say other than that quirk...a couple of high-level reactions. One is, my initial response to that question before you gave that beautiful context was, "How might we trust ourselves more," maybe because it's one of the words of my year 2021, it was "Practice." So, we need to practice trusting ourself. And it's almost like we have to prove to ourselves, and show ourselves, and give ourselves evidence that it'll be okay. If we trust ourself, everything will be okay. However, the "everything will be okay," is what you described. It's, the thing that we think won't be okay is what happens after we've trusted ourself. And I've heard before, I'm sure many of our listeners have heard before, when people say, you know, "There's a fear of what other people think. There's a fear that it might not work." But then there's this fear that it might work.

Jen: Mm-hmm.

Pete: Or this fear that you'll be successful, like fear of success. And I feel like it's never quite clicked on what that feels like, or looks like, or why that's a fear. And I feel like you're just about to create a big aha moment in my brain about this. (No pressure.) But I feel like that's what we're talking about here.

Jen: I don't know if this is specifically related to that...but there is a thrill in almost being there, as opposed to being there. And this is something I experience so frequently with my acting clients. That they're in pursuit of this dream role, and then they're in callbacks, and then they're in final callbacks. And it's that like, "Oh, it's just out of my reach," that is so exciting. But they literally don't know what they would do if they actually get that job. Like, "What would I do if suddenly I was able to raise the bar on my own career? I don't know who I am in that space. I don't know how to exist in that space. I don't know how to interact with other people in that space." So it's that thrill of like, "I'm so close, but I don't have to deal with it yet."

Pete: Mmm. Yeah, ooh, that's juicy. It's almost like the thrill is the surface-level thrill of achieving a goal. "I said I was going to do this thing, or I wanted to do this thing. And the thrill of almost achieving it is almost separate to the reality of what happens once I have achieved it."

Jen: I'm writing a book on pursuing goals, as opposed to setting and reaching goals. Like, pursuing goals. And this is just circling right back around some of these ideas for me, that it is the pursuit that is so thrilling. And maybe the fear of success is actually the fear of not knowing what to pursue.

Pete: Oof, yeah. The fear of the pursuit being over.

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: Or the pursuit, as you know it, being over.

Jen: Yeah. Which is (sidebar) why I think it is so important to have a longer view, or a bigger vision, or something more infinite to be working toward. But that is a whole other episode.

Pete: It certainly is. We say that a lot. And it's funny, my brain just went to successful investors. And I guess, in this case, the measure of success being you made a bunch of money, because that's what investors are trying to do often. And there is countless interviews and examples I've read and heard from billionaires and hugely wealthy individuals who don't stop once they get, you know, wealthy. Because the outcome, the wealth is like, that's the, maybe, the achieving of a goal. But that's not really the thing that's driving them. The thing that drives them is, it's like a game for them. The practice of deciding on who to invest in, how to create leverage, how to, you know, make money, essentially, that's the pursuit for them, not necessarily the outcome of, "Oh, now I have like offensive amounts of money." And like, because I think for many people, you might say, like, "Haven't you got enough? You're a billionaire. Like, wouldn't you just stop?" And it's like, no. Because they're not chasing the outcome, necessarily. They love the practice, the thrill of, "I'm just going to keep winning this game, or keep playing this game, or keep showing up in this game."

Jen: Mmm. Yes. I want to just ping back to this experience I had, oh gosh, it was a little over a year ago. So you know, Seth Godin invited a bunch of the Akimbo alums to the office in Hastings, and he made us lunch. It was so nice. And then he talked about what became The Practice, but at that time was called "Trust Your Self". That was the working title of the book. And he made a point to explain that "trust your self" is actually three words, not two words. It's "trust your self" as opposed to "trust yourself". And, interestingly, I had written a blog post (which I'll pop in the Box O' Goodies) a couple years ago about the universe. Like, "Trusting the universe," which is a phrase that I hear a lot of people say, when I actually think part of what they mean is, "Trust myself."

Pete: Mmm.

Jen: "Trust that higher version of myself, the future self, the wiser self." Like, "The best version of me, trust that." And so I'm thinking about this idea of trusting your self before you engage with something is trusting your present self, right now. It is the you that already has everything you need to move forward with this thing, whatever the thing is. And that trusting your self after the risk is trusting your future self. And we've done episodes about future self where we've talked about expressing gratitude for future self, or trying to set yourself up for success. But I'm not sure that we have ever actually touched on trusting your future self to know what to do.

Pete: Yeah. I'm trying to wrap my brain around this thought about this. Because I feel like we (me, and maybe our listeners) have a tendency to, like, we have this future version of ourselves that is wiser, and older, and smarter, and has everything figured out. Like we have, like most people can almost conjure up that image of like, "Oh, there's the smarter, more equipped version of me. And I'm so wise." And I don't know if this is contradicting what you're saying or complimenting it, I still haven't worked it out. But I actually think what we struggle to do is trust our current selves that we can get there. Which is maybe counter to the idea of trusting our future selves. That when we're there, we'll be okay.

Jen: Okay. I'm, wow, my brain is just exploding in a million different directions. So, listeners, if you've been listening for a while, you know I love planning. I love thinking long term, and envisioning many scenarios, and like trying to connect with all the potential obstacles. And this is reminding me of (I don't know if we did an episode on this, or if this was just like a random comment in an episode) talking about knowing that you're going to encounter a dip when you're doing meaningful work. And that one of the ways to get through the dip is to decide ahead of time what you're going to do when you're down there. To actually have thought it through, to assess your skills, to assess, like, "Who's on my team? Who can help me work through this?" Instead of going down into the dip and being like, "Forget it. Too hard down here. I quit." And I wonder, isn't part of that trusting your self?

Pete: I mean, you talked about the dip, which immediately brought to mind Seth Godin. So he did a podcast recently on the Tim Ferriss show, which was really quite a compelling conversation. He talks about things I hadn't heard him talk about before. And Tim Ferriss asked him a question, I think, or highlighted a great...he was like, "This is a great question." Which, it is. And that is, "What would you do if you knew you couldn't fail?" And in like typical Seth Godin fashion, he was like, "Actually, Tim, that's the wrong question. The right question is, 'What will you do knowing you will fail?'" And...

Jen: Yes! That's exactly the question. Yes!

Pete: Right. That was my reaction too. That's what we're saying. What you're saying with the dip is, "I know this is not going to go to plan."

Jen: Yes.

Pete: Like, we know. We might have a desired outcome. We might have a goal and be like, "I hope I can get to that point." And we need to acknowledge that it's not going to go in this perfectly beautiful linear fashion. It's not going to be a smooth path. It's not going to go to plan. So, what will you do? What can you commit to before you start, knowing that. Knowing that you might fail, or trip up, or fall over, or hit a dip, or, you know, take a left turn. That's the question, I think, to get super like curious about. And it's a very uncomfortable question. But I think an important one.

Jen: Oh my gosh, I feel like that question is the complete summary of everything we've been talking about so far. Thank you so much for sharing that. This is making me think of something my college students used to complain about to me, with some of the classes they were taking. That some of their teachers would reply to things with, "Just trust the process. Just trust the process." Like they would get frustrated with something, and the reply instead of like, "Here's something helpful to you," is just, "Trust the process." But I now realize that maybe the more helpful reframe of that would be, "Trust your self in the process." That it's not actually the process you're trusting, even though maybe the process is trustworthy. But the process might be fixed. What you're trusting is your self to move through that process, knowing that failure might lie ahead, knowing that success might lie ahead, knowing that you might have to confront your fears to move through it. Trust your self in the process.

Pete: Yeah, wow, I feel very called out. I've said that a lot to people, you know, in workshops, or...well, especially in workshops, to, "Trust the process." But you're 100% right, "Trust your self and navigate the process," is really what we're trying to help people see. So you mentioned the word "thrill" earlier, which I actually wrote down. Because there's something thrilling about all of this trusting ourself. So I know we're talking about like what happens when you're on the other side, and how we might trust ourself when we get there. But I wonder if there's something in the thrill that we get as a result of leaning into it as well?

Jen: Oh, yes. Because once you are on the other side of whatever that thing is, there's a new sense of what is possible. There's like a new sense that, "Oh, if I made it through that, what does it look like to raise the bar for myself?"

Pete: That's exactly the three words that I was writing down, "raise the bar". That's what it means to raise the bar. Is, you get to the other side and go, "Oh. I just crossed that bar that I'd previously set for myself. Now I'm going to raise it."

Jen: And that's exactly what we were talking about earlier. Is that we don't know who we are when the bar has been raised, because we've never been there before. And so, of course, it's a challenge to trust your self. But all of the life that you've lived up until this point, all of the skills you've acquired, all of the people that you know who care about and support you, they are part of what makes up you and self. So, raising the bar doesn't mean suddenly losing everything that you've accumulated. It's like using that in a new way. So, trusting your self at this new level.

Pete: And that is The Long and The Short Of It.