The Long and The Short Of It

Episode 209 - Act As If

Transcript:

Jen: Hi, Pete.

Pete: Hey, Jen.

Jen: You're still sitting across from me.

Pete: I am. How many episodes will this go on for?

Jen: I know, this is so exciting. It's going to be such a bummer when you're back down under.

Pete: ...on Zoom.

Jen: But for now, I've got you here in New York City, and I'm wondering if you have ever had the following experience. I had a prospective client with whom I was speaking about a particular topic, and I said something like, "Oh, and yes, I talk about this all the time on the podcast." And they were like, "Could you send me some episodes where you talk about that?" And I was like, "Absolutely." So after the call, I go to our archive...literally never discussed it before.

Pete: Yeah, and you're like, "Where's that episode we recorded?"

Jen: And I was like, "Oh my gosh, I guess I don't talk about it on the podcast."

Pete: Oh, interesting. Maybe we talk about it before we've hit record.

Jen: Yeah. And I definitely talk about it in my classes. So, it is time for us to discuss acting as if.

Pete: This is The Long and The Short Of It.

Pete: Okay, Waldman, acting as if.

Jen: So the context in which I was sharing this with the client, we were talking about moments of feeling less than, experiencing impostor syndrome, etc. And I said, "Oh, well, I like to use, 'This is my new normal.' Acting as if the new opportunity is one that you will expect to come around again and again, rather than leaning into that scarcity mindset of, 'This is my one and only chance, and everybody's going to figure out I don't know what the heck I'm doing.' And instead, adopting this mantra, 'This is my new normal.'" Turns out, never discussed that before.

Pete: But we have, at some point. I've written...one of my blogs is called The power of 30,000 readers...Even if you don't have them.

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: I'll pop it in the Box O' Goodies. I wrote that, I want to say like four years ago, and it's one of my most read posts. And the whole point of it is this idea of acting as if. I can't believe we haven't turned this into an episode before, alright.

Jen: I know. Or like, maybe I missed it in the archive. But I used that very handy search feature you added to our website, and I could not find it.

Pete: Alright, so how do you think about this? Tell me more about your approach to #newnormal.

Jen: Well, in my line of work, my clients are not on a very traditional ladder-like trajectory. There is no such thing as a promotion. There's no like climbing the ladder. Everything is basically going back to base camp and starting the climb over and over again.

Pete: So wild, I've actually never thought about it like that.

Jen: Oh my gosh, it is completely wild.

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: And so sometimes, my clients will experience what in other industries would be like skipping four or five rungs on the ladder, and just wake up one day with an opportunity to go in and meet with the most powerful person in their industry overnight.

Pete: So all of a sudden, you're talking to the CEO of a company kind of thing.

Jen: Right, but like the artistic equivalent.

Pete: Right. Right, right, right, right, right, right.

Jen: And then they will have that moment of panic, of like, "Oh my gosh, who do I think I am?

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: "Like, I've never had an opportunity like this before. And if I go in there and I blow this, like, that's it." So instead, one of the mantras we practice together is, "This is my new normal."

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: "I am the kind of person who meets people with this level of status in the industry. And not just in the context of this upcoming meeting, but I now will assume this posture of, 'This is my new normal,' from the moment I wake up to the moment my eyes close at night. When I wake up in the morning, I am the kind of person who interacts with these kinds of people. When I get my coffee at Starbucks, I am the kind of person who...", so it's just a powerful way to step into your own shoes.

Pete: Yeah. You know, what I think is wild about this is when you do this exercise, which I've done and I've had clients do, of, "Okay, what's the thing you're working towards?" Say, in this example, it's like getting a particular role on Broadway. "Okay. And then, what does your day look like when you're in that role?"

Jen: Right.

Pete: And the thing that I think is so wild, which is why this is so powerful as a mindset exercise, is the day they usually describe is totally within their control.

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: Like, "I go to yoga." And, "I walk in Central Park." And you're like, "You're able to do those things right now."

Jen: Right.

Pete: "These are not limited to you being on Broadway." So yeah, I really like the...it's like the breaking down of what your day would look like if/when you achieve this thing. Because, you know, too often we put positive habits/positive change behind something that we need to achieve first, like, "I will change, but just first I need to get that role."

Jen: Right.

Pete: Or, "I will meditate, but first I've got to be the CEO of the company, and then I'll start to meditate." And it's like, "You could start to meditate right now." It's a bit of a basic example, but this whole idea of, yeah, the habits that you have when you're in that dream role are able to be cultivated right now.

Jen: And you know, what's interesting in the artistic example I'm giving is, the people on the other side of that meeting tend to not like being put on a pedestal.

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: Like, no, they're seeking artistic collaborators. So, they're...they need people who can confidently work with them and assert ideas, as opposed to like, "I'm not good enough to be here." Well, that's not helpful.

Pete: Right.

Jen: That's not helpful to this project.

Pete: Well, also, I imagine for them, they're like, "Oh, okay, so I'm going to spend a lot of my time boosting this person's self-esteem."

Jen: Right.

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: Right.

Pete: Yeah, which is not necessarily the best use of their time.

Jen: You know, I have a private online space for the folks at my studio. And years ago (like it was probably seven or eight years ago, maybe longer), I recorded this video where the gist of it was, "I've never been qualified for anything I've ever done." And to this day, people keep bumping it in there, because the idea that it's on you to step into the possibility is a very powerful idea. But it can feel so scary because, you know, so much of our pursuit of opportunity is based on, "I'm going to put my CV together, and I'm going to send my CV, and my past is supposed to prove my future."

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: And I like this idea of kind of letting that go and leaning into the idea that in order to move to the next step or to move up or to raise the bar or whatever, it's going to require you doing something that you haven't done. Which, I guess means that you're not technically on paper qualified to do it, because you've never done it before. But you can act as if you are the kind of person who does that thing.

Pete: Right. This is where I think, for me, impostor syndrome is a good thing, which I've talked about on this podcast before and on the TEDx stage. And the reason I say that is because of just what you said, which is, it's the sign that you're doing something that you've never done before, which is a sign that you're growing and stretching into new areas, which is great. And so, you reminded me of two things. One is, there's a famous entrepreneur, Naval Ravikant, who founded AngelList, which is a very, very successful company, and he's now an investor. He has been on record in saying that, "If I'd always done what I was 'qualified' to do, I'd be still pushing a broom somewhere."

Jen: Right.

Pete: Which I think is a really powerful way of thinking about someone at the top of their game investing, you know, has said and experienced some version of this. And then the other thing is, this is quite random, but I was on LinkedIn the other day and the LinkedIn page....so the person running the social media account of the LinkedIn company, on LinkedIn had done a post that said, "If you meet all of the key selection criteria for a job, then you're overqualified."

Jen: Right.

Pete: And I thought...I'd not heard it said in that particular way, and especially not by a company like LinkedIn, who's, you know, created this professional platform to help people get jobs. And I think that's quite an aha moment for a lot of people.

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: Usually the opposite happens, is, you talk yourself out of applying for a job because you don't meet all the key selection criteria. This is flipping that and saying, "No, that means you're overqualified."

Jen: Wow.

Pete: "These are the things you'll grow into. We hope that you meet some of them, of course, but not all of them is required." Yeah.

Jen: This is reminding me of one of the experiences I shared in this long-lost video, where I've never been qualified for anything I've ever done. When I was applying to be an artistic director at this particular theater, the final round of the selection process included me speaking to a select group of donors and subscribers. And I thought, "Okay, well, I'm completely unqualified to do this because I've not been in this particular position before, so what I need to do is write out an entire speech." So I wrote it out on like little index cards, and I was like, "Okay, now I'm qualified because I've written out the speech." And when I arrived at the event, I was like, "What am I doing? I'm pretending like the position is more important than what I actually know how to do. All day, every day, I speak extemporaneously. So I went into the bathroom and I threw away my note cards, and then I went and I did what I know how to do. It was just, the context was different.

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: And what happened? I ended up getting that job.

Pete: Oh, interesting. That reminds me of the story I've told on this podcast before, when we first met and you asked me to ask you as many hard questions as possible.

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: And I brainstormed, in a panic, as many questions as I could possibly think of. And then, our mutual friend Kirsty Stark said to me, "What are you doing? Just show up and be Pete." And I was like, "Oh, right." And I scrunched up my bit of paper and threw it in the bin, and we had a great conversation. And so I'm now, in this moment, trying to think of, what's the takeaway there? Is it like, go back to the skills that underpin these things? Like the skill of asking questions, for me, it didn't matter the context, really.

Jen: Right.

Pete: It's still the same skill. And for you, the skill was still the same, was speaking exemporaneously. I really love that word, and I feel like I always say it wrong, "exemporaneously".

Jen: "Extemporaneously".

Pete: Is there a "t"?

Jen: Yeah, that's why.

Pete: "Extemporaneously."

Jen: That's why.

Pete: Right, there's a "t". That's why it sounds like I'm saying it wrong, because I am.

Jen: Well, and your point also applies to my clients, who...they're singers.

Pete: Right. What's the skill? Yeah.

Jen: Whether they're singing for us or singing for the most powerful person in the Broadway industry, they're still amazing singers.

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: So you've got to show up with the thing that is your gift, and also open yourself to the expectation that you have now stepped up the bar.

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: That, this raised bar is now where you're at.

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: This is the new normal. You're not waiting to nosedive down.

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: But that's where you're going, up and up.

Pete: Love that. So, "I have the skills, and now I'm raising the bar on said skills."

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: I mean, I think about this a lot recently in the corporate world, when you've got people and companies moving from whatever the last two years was, whether that was for most people at home all the time, to like some version of hybrid, where they're in-person sometimes and at home others. And I have conversations with leaders almost every day about like, "How do we set up our leaders for success? What do we do? We've never done this before. Like, no one knows what they're doing." And so for me, I've been like going back to, "Okay, what are the skills required to be an effective leader?"

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: "The same skills that were required three, four, five years ago." And you know, I'm biased in that I think it's around empathy, and curiosity, and humility, intentionality, and these kinds of things, these real skills. And I'm just realizing now that the same methodology applies here for corporates and leaders. Hmm. Okay. So the other thing is, I mentioned a blog post that I wrote, at the start of this episode, The power of 30,000 readers...Even if you don't have them, which was me writing a reminder to myself that if I imagine, i.e. act as if, I have 30,000 people reading my blog (which I do not) then I'm more likely to show up and consistently deliver a blog on a Sunday because I'm pretending, I'm acting as if 30,000 people are waiting with bated breath on everything that I have to type (which is so not true). And I just think that whole idea is like, can we intentionally put ourselves on the hook by acting as if?

Jen: Right. Yeah, I've found that to be a very powerful tool as I'm helping my clients with their websites.

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: Many artists now choose to have a website that represents themselves and the work that they do. And many of the first drafts I look at, I'm like, "You are expecting that only the people who have interacted with you so far are going to your website?"

Pete: Ah, yeah.

Jen: "What about the new fans? What about when someone recommends you for a job, and someone you've never met goes to your website? Instead of trying to give us a snapshot of your past, I always think of the website as the portal to the future. Like, show me where you are going and take me with you, as opposed to, 'Well, these are the things I've done, so these are the only things that are allowed to live here.'"

Pete: Right. "But actually, I don't want to do these kinds of things anymore."

Jen: Right.

Pete: "So, why are they there?"

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: Oh, that's really good. That reminds me of, you know, a Seth Godin, "Pick your clients, pick your future." Which is like, if you decide that this is the kind of person you want to work for, these are the kinds of clients you want in the future, then pick them and start communicating to them as if you are already working with them, not based on the other clients that you've worked with in the past if they don't align. Hmm. So, the other thing...actually, I said this idea, "Puts us on the hook," just before. I said this to someone the other day who I'd never met before, and they said, "What does that mean, being on the hook?"

Jen: Oh, interesting.

Pete: How do you describe that idea? Just as like, in case anyone's listening, like, "What are they talking about? Do I hook myself to the wall, or like what's happening?"

Jen: I will find the origin of the "on the hook" phrase and put it in the Box O' Goodies, because it's very interesting. But essentially, what I think it means is, "Commit and hold yourself accountable."

Pete: Yeah, accountability. That's how I think of it, yeah. Keep yourself accountable to the thing that you want to do. Yeah, and sometimes that requires external accountability. But other times, it's by committing to acting as if.

Jen: Mmm-hmm.

Pete: Yeah, you're putting yourself on the hook in the way that you show up every day. Hmm. Mmm-hmm, mmm-hmm. Alright, so this started off as an episode that we realized we'd never recorded and have thought about this idea before, but I'm feeling like a fresh little aha/bit of momentum as it relates to this idea. I think I could use some acting as if in various aspects of my life. What do you make of this? Does this feel like refreshed for you?

Jen: Yes, because I had never connected the dots in quite this way. That part of what gives you the confidence to say, "This is my new normal," is knowing you actually have the goods to back it up.

Pete: Right, you've got the skills and opinions.

Jen: Right.

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