The Long and The Short Of It

Episode 410 - Grown Up Sh*t

Transcript:

Pete: Ah. Hey, Jen.

Jen: Hi, Pete.

Pete: I'm sighing already and we haven't even started.

Jen: Yeah, what's happening?

Pete: Well, I've got something for you that...a few things have happened in the last week that have made me think, "Huh, this is some grown up shit." Have you ever had that thought?

Jen: Oh, yes. Oh, you've been adulting, have you?

Pete: Right, adulting. I have. I have. Sometimes (a lot of the time), I forget that I'm an adult. I forget that I'm a grown up. And then, every now and then, the world has a way of reminding me. And I feel like I've been reminded multiple times in the last week. And I don't know, maybe you can help with some grown up shit?

Jen: I'll try. This is The Long and The Short Of It.

Pete: So, I mean, first and foremost, everything is okay, I should say. But, you know, there's grown up stuff that happens in one's life. There are things that are realities in my life that are pending in the next twelve months. So, I don't know, there's just a bunch of decisions, adult conversations...nothing that no one listening to this podcast, I'm sure, hasn't experienced before. But for whatever reason, recently, I've just sort of almost looked over my shoulder and gone, "Wait, is there a grown up in the room to help me with this decision?" And then, you go, "Oh, wait, that's me."

Jen: "I'm the grown up."

Pete: "I need to be the one to make the decision. Shit. So, what do I do about that?" So, I don't really know what my question is. Other than, do you relate to being faced with tricky situations, tricky conversations, tricky decisions that, I guess, impact other people? That's probably a big part of it. And how do you navigate adulting? How do I be an adult, Jen?

Jen: Oh my god. Yeah, I feel this so hard right now. Actually, I was watching the sunset with a bunch of other moms the other day, and we were talking about when you have big life things that you're faced with, that you have to actually take a hold of these things and steer the ship, make decisions. And one of them said, "When you have a big life decision to make, this is what you do. You grab a coin."

Pete: Oh, shit, that doesn't help.

Jen: And she said, "And you flip the coin."

Pete: You just flip it?

Jen: "And it's not that the coin is going to tell you what your decision is. It's that when you see what the coin has landed on, your gut's going to tell you what the decision is."

Pete: Ooh, your reaction. I like that. That's a good twist.

Jen: I really liked that.

Pete: Yeah. Because if it's like, "Heads, I'm going to buy a new house. Tails, we're going to stay in our existing house," and then it lands on heads, and you're like, "Goddamn, I don't want to buy a new house," you're like, "Oh, there you go. There's the answer." Yeah. Right, right, right.

Jen: Right. So, I enjoyed that. But Pete...I cannot believe I'm saying this on this show, but I'm going to say it.

Pete: What, what, what?

Jen: Later this week, this group of mothers and I, we're going to go visit a witch.

Pete: What? A witch?

Jen: Yes. There is someone in the area where I am right now who does these witchy services of clairvoyance and fortune-telling, and things like that. And similar to the coin not having magic powers but having the magic powers, I feel like this experience is going to be similar. Where it's like, your reaction to what someone tells you about what they see in you is the point.

Pete: Damn, that's good. Your reaction.

Jen: Right? So I don't know that I'm recommending that to everyone, but I'm going to try it. Because I have some decisions to make coming up, where it was my confusion about what to do that made one of my mom friends suggest this. And she was like, "Well, we could always go to the witch." And I was like, "Let's go."

Pete: "When in doubt, let's go to the witch." I love it.

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: Try some stuff. Well, I mean, the thing I like about this is, and I say this and I know this about leadership, that no one really knows what they're doing. Everyone is an imposter and we're all figuring it out, to some degree. And we have skills and capabilities and tools in our toolkit that we picked up over time, as leaders. And I know this to be true. But the older I get, the more I realize, "Oh, every adult is feeling the same way. Everyone is also just bumbling their way through. No one has a sound, perfectly poised way of navigating these decisions." Which, I just find that relieving because it makes me think there's no right answer here. There's no guru to talk to that will tell you what to do. However, I love your point that there is something to pay attention to, which is how you react if someone does have some advice or some thoughts for you. And maybe, just maybe, you already know the decision. You just have had an unwillingness to accept it or you haven't voiced it or someone hasn't voiced it to you, and your reaction will help you determine it. So, I don't know. I find that relieving, to know even Jen Waldman hasn't got all of the things figured out. That's nice.

Jen: Oh, gosh. I've got very few things figured out. Another sort of like decision making motto that has been really helpful to me and very helpful to a lot of my clients is: You can't land a plane when there's another plane on the runway. And part of adulting is making room for other things to come in. And that can be really, really hard. I mean, I face this with clients often, in two particular contexts. One is people in long-running shows, who are ready to move on but are afraid. And so, they keep the runway blocked. And you can't land another plane when there's a plane already there. And then, the other is with clients who are in actually dysfunctional relationships with their representation. And they're like, "I know I need to be with someone else to represent me in my work. But I'm so afraid of going solo that I think I'm just going to stay where I am." And it's like, okay, well, you can't really land another plane right now. So, that's the decision you're making. I've heard you say this many times. The decision is not to decide.

Pete: Yeah. If you're not making a decision, that is in and of itself a decision. On this topic of decisions, I think one thing I'm calling myself out on recently (without needing to get into specifics) is outsourcing the decision or trying to outsource the decision. So if I'm talking to someone that is a friend or maybe someone I've hired as an expert to help me with something, I'll be trying to get them to tell me what the decision is. And if they're good at what they do, which they usually are, it's like, "Well, I can't make that decision for you. I can just present you with the information." And I'm like, "Goddammit, Jen, could you just make the decision for me? Because that would be so much easier." So, it's like an accountability thing that I'm trying to avoid. Again, this idea of I look over my shoulder and go, "Well, where's the grown up making the decision? Oh, wait, that's me." It's me.

Jen: Right. It's me.

Pete: It's me.

Jen: It's me. You know, Pete, something that just came up for me in the example I was giving about clients who might be in a truly dysfunctional relationship, the reason I had to use the word "truly" is because most of my clients who have talked to me about having issues with their representation are not in a dysfunctional relationship. They just are too afraid to have a conversation. And so, the adulting part of it is saying to the person you're working with, "Hey, can we sit down and talk about how we're working together and see if we can make it better?"

Pete: Oh my god. That is such a brilliant example of an adulting thing to do, is to have a difficult conversation. And my god, that is a thing I observe in leaders all the time. A difficulty, an unwillingness, a fear of navigating difficult conversations. I observe it in myself too, by the way. I'm not immune to this, by any means, which makes me think. I recently shared with you and listeners in an episode that I'm a student again. And I've been taking part in this really cool leadership program. And we're about four or five sessions in now. And what's been interesting is at the end of each sort of session or towards the end of each session, we've taken it in turns, sharing a challenge. And the other people on the call have helped everyone with the challenge. So to remind people, in this cohort that I'm in, we've got like two professional sports players, one an elite European soccer player and one an elite AFL Australian Rules footballer. We have a lawyer at the absolute top of her field in family law, in England. We have a guy in a start-up, working construction. We have a PR agency lead. And then, we have me. So the point is we have a very diverse range of people that, in theory, have nothing in common. And after the fourth person shared the thing they wanted feedback on, I couldn't help but say to the group, "Isn't it wild that every single challenge we've had so far has been about having a difficult conversation?"

Jen: Wow. Right?

Pete: And so, it was like, you know, the lawyer was like, "Oh, I've got this really tricky thing I need to do." And I was thinking of like, "Oh, well, what have I got in common with this? Like, how could I help someone that's at the top of a field in law?" And I was like, "Oh, you need to have a crunchy conversation with someone. I get that." The elite sports person was like, "There's someone in our team that's not necessarily like pulling their weight. And so, we need to have a conversation." And it's like, "Oh, yeah, that's a difficult conversation." And so, my point is, I feel like they're all versions of needing to adult or needing to be the grown up, needing to be the leader. And it's universally true, no matter where you are.

Jen: It really, really is. And sometimes, that conversation we know we need to have has become so good at camouflaging and disguising itself that it is like appearing as something entirely different than what it actually is.

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: Like just going back to my clients with their agents, I have had clients come to me and say, "I really think I need to leave my agent. It's really not working." And I'm like, "You're with the top agent in New York City. Like, it's impossible to imagine what is better than what you have. But you have disguised the fact that you just need to have a conversation with so much other costume jewelry that you can't even recognize that the problem is you have never told them what you want for your career. That's the actual problem. It's not that they don't get you. It's not that they don't want to help. You haven't told them yet." So yeah, just adulting is communicating.

Pete: Is it ever. It's so true. It's deciding. It's communicating. Yeah. And then, being willing to move forward based on that. My wife sent me this text the other day, because we were navigating some decisions and whatever. And she wrote me a text that just said, "Chop wood, carry water." And I was like, "Goddammit. I needed that reminder." Do you know this quote?

Jen: Yes.

Pete: Yes. So this is an old, I think it's a Zen proverb. My wife has, in a former life, done her yoga teacher training and is very influenced by yogic philosophy. And so, I think that is what brought this to mind for her. And so, she, every now and then, sends me these really useful reminders. And this one, "Chop wood, carry water," I just love because I went back and I was like, "Wait, I've read a book about this quote before. What is it again?" So, I went back and looked it up. And it was essentially that in the context of Zen Buddhism, I think it was, even if you've attained enlightenment, you still need to show up the next day, chop wood and carry water. But the same is true with the other side of it, which is even if some horrific thing has happened to you, the world keeps rotating, and you still need to show up the next day, and chop wood and carry water. And that if you can adopt that like posture of showing up for the mundane things, there's like a groundedness in that. There's a reminder in that. That whilst things might feel adult and huge and overwhelming, there's also still always the mundane. Which is actually, can you find beauty in that mundane? That's sort of how I go back to it. So I was like, "Yeah, we can make this big decision. And then, we'll just go back to chopping our wood and carrying our water. And it'll all be okay." Like, there's something beautiful in that.

Jen: Yeah. But also, what a great wife.

Pete: She's the best. Yeah.

Jen: She's so cool. Today, one of my clients, when I asked, "How are you doing with your work," he said, "I'm appropriately whelmed." And I liked that a lot.

Pete: Wait. So not over, but not under?

Jen: Not over, not under. "I'm appropriately whelmed."

Pete: Oh, I like that. I like that. "I'm just the right level of whelmed."

Jen: Yep. Just right.

Pete: Oh, that's good.

Jen: I think there is something to be said, Pete, for recognizing that our adult life doesn't fit snugly under one umbrella. And as we continue to grow up, we'll continue to need new skills, and continue to evolve, and have different concerns and priorities. And even though we've been adults since we were (I guess, depending where in the world you live) eighteen, twenty-one, whatever is considered an adult, twenty-five, whatever that is. Adulting at twenty-five requires a different set of skills than adulting at fifty. And adulting at fifty requires a different set of skills than adulting at seventy-five. And so, we may be experiencing some version of imposter syndrome, where it's like, "Maybe I'm not a very good adult." But maybe what's really happening is you just haven't done this kind of adulting yet.

Pete: Yeah. This is a new circumstance. And also, there's I feel like the cognitive dissonance, maybe, of looking at adults in our life and thinking, "They've got it all figured out. So when I've got a young family, I'll have it all figured out, because my mom and dad had it all figured out." And then, the more I get older, I'm like, "Oh, no they didn't. No, they didn't have it figured out. No one's got it figured out."

Jen: Nobody knows what they're doing.

Pete: We're all just big kids trying to navigate this ridiculous world. And just like, you know, no one knows what they're doing. And those that pretend like they do are just pretending like they do.

Jen: It's so true.

Pete: So, I don't know. You know? There's some grown up shit. But I think what I take from this is everyone's got some version of that, that they're navigating. There is no right way to navigate it. There are things you can do, like remind yourself that everyone's a bit of a fraud. Everyone's a bit of a fake. Everyone's a bit of an imposter. There are things you can do, like remind yourself to chop wood and carry water, and find simplicity in the beauty. And there are things you can do, like when in doubt, go see a witch.

Jen: And potentially flip a coin. And that is The Long and The Short Of It.