SP3 Special Edition Agile Brain:Autonomy To Flow

We explore how autonomy enables immersion and why true success is a byproduct of meeting core emotional needs, not a shortcut to status. Stories of lottery winners, creatives, athletes, and leaders reveal why skipping foundations backfires and how failure becomes fuel.

• autonomy as permission, resources, skill, and influence
• immersion as real employee engagement and deep work
• flow state conditions and practical workplace fixes
• failure as essential to mastery and learning
• power paradox and healthy team-based success
• redefining success beyond status and comparison
• agile brain assessment, coaching, and action planning
• inclusion, safety, and authenticity as precursors to focus

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Chapters

• 0:00 Setting The Stage: Material Motives
• 4:37 Autonomy Before Flow Before Success
• 7:54 Lottery Wins And The Cost Of Skipping Levels
• 13:28 Identity, Possessions, And Immersion
• 18:49 The Agile Brain Assessment And Coaching
• 23:49 Autonomy At Work And Creative Flow
• 29:39 Conditions For Flow And Real Success
• 34:14 Failure As The Engine Of Growth
• 39:29 Power, Teams, And The Power Paradox
• 45:29 Engagement Reframed: Needs And Inclusion

Transcript

SPEAKER_02: 1:12

Welcome to a special edition of What's on Your Bookshelf with your host, Denise Russo.

SPEAKER_00: 1:18

Hello, everyone. Welcome back. It's another episode of What's on Your Bookshelf. My name is Denise Russo. I'm here for a special edition series with my friend J.D. Pincus. Dr. Pincus is the author of the Emotionally Agile Brain, Mastering the 12 Emotional Needs That Drive Us. And we are in our third episode today, which is in the second part of this really good and important book that I highly encourage you to get a copy of because we're only able to touch on the highlights of these sections during our show together. JD, thanks so much for being here with me today. So we were uh talking a little bit off camera about the section that we're going into, but maybe we start today simply by bringing us up to where we've come from so that people will understand how to best invest their thoughts into this next section. So uh in the beginning of the book, you talk really around besides the acknowledgments, which are always so fascinating, I find in any book about the people that were behind the scenes that helped make things become a reality. But then you talk about uh around what are motivations in our life. And so when we got into the section last week, which was really around the motivations of self and that self-centeredness, not being self-centered in a negative way, but centering in yourself helps lead us into how our self blends into the material world. I found it fascinating. You just shared a story with me about people that are trying to find success by things like playing the lottery, which I would love if we started with that story because it may help frame for people how success isn't always tied to things that are within your own span of control. And sometimes success can be fleeting if it isn't grounded in the foundations of the motivations we have in this material world.

SPEAKER_02: 3:22

Yeah, uh it's a it's a great sort of really specific, you know, crystallization of the point. Um, it's kind of like uh in the in the self-domain, if I try to go, you know, basically skip over my need for safety and my need for authenticity and go right to self-actualization or to fulfill my full potential as a person, uh, there's a name for that. That's that's the Dunning-Kruger effect, uh, which is this concept that people who really don't have much skill at all uh and don't really have uh any mastery tend to overestimate their abilities tremendously. And it's only with the beginning, the humbling work of trying to actually achieve mastery that you realize how much you don't know. Uh and then you know there's that steep decline. Uh, and then slowly over many years and decades of work, you begin to kind of climb up the other side where you begin to feel, oh yeah, okay, I I do have some mastery of this. Uh and it's the same in all the the domains, but we're gonna focus on the material domain today. Here we have the example of you know, starts with autonomy, the need to basically feel that I have permission, I have ability, and I have control uh and influence in order to make things happen in the material world. So if I here I say that we're all toddlers, you know, we want to know that we have permission and ability uh to use the toy, make it do what we want, uh, and it work, it's you know, use the new software, use the machine, uh, make it do what we want. We have permission that we're trusted to do it. Only when we do that, uh have that can we begin to become immersed in play, immersed in work, really get into it, you know, lose sense of self. Um, you get into that flow state that Chuck Mahaly talks about, where you know time passes and you have very low self-awareness, self-consciousness, and that's where really great work is done. And then that inevitably leads to success. Um, but imagine if you tried to skip autonomy and immersion, go straight to success, which is essentially what happens when you win the lottery, right? You didn't do anything except pay for a lottery ticket, and suddenly, boom, you've achieved material success. Now, the problem with that is you you've been sort of you haven't earned it, right, in a in a conventional way. Um, I think for a lot of people, that's a very disconcerting thing that happens because it's at first it seems like all your dreams have come true. Uh, unfortunately, for a lot of lottery winners, they end up with higher levels of depression, anxiety, even suicidality. Uh, because what they've done, in essence, is to destroy their social networks in an instant. Um, the people that they knew they they now are suspicious of, maybe they're just after their money. Uh, they typically will move out of their community into some big fancy house where they feel like they don't quite fit in because they didn't really earn their place there. Uh, they may not have the same educational levels as the people around them. It's like it's like you've basically just created an alienation system. Uh, and and that is, you know, kind of tragic, really. And uh, you know, I think for people who are, you know, there's people who are better equipped to win the lottery than others, you know, people who already kind of have self-actualized and and are, you know, kind of know you know who they are and what they're about and what their needs are. Uh, because then, you know, the sort of material gifts you can apply to focusing on the meeting your needs in different areas and and uh you know hopefully maintaining your social ties. Um but I think it's a good example of why it's so important to not skip levels. Uh you know, it it it's uh there's I think you know, sort of from Greek tragedy to modern novels and and literature, they all speak about people basically skipping levels in in all the domains and and what goes wrong when people do that. The sort of you know hubris of wanting to be suddenly recognized. Uh um what's that that play about uh uh the kid uh who who pretends he was friends with another student who uh uh Evan Hansen, that's what it was. Uh yeah, the one who commits suicide, and this guy pretends that he was his best friend in order to get recognition. You know, it just it it they're all like you know tales of uh you know, sort of um warnings, you know, cautions against uh doing that kind of thing. You you gotta you gotta you gotta work your way up, you know, foundational, experiential, aspirational.

SPEAKER_00: 8:01

I've worked with celebrities for a lot of years and not indifferent to the lottery winners. I imagine this also happens with a lot of athletes. So you've got celebrities that are uh entertainers as well as athletes that sometimes come from a humbler beginning, then amass this incredibly obnoxious amount of wealth that don't know how to handle it. And I've seen time and again celebrities that, like you suggested, they either have mistrust or they don't fit into these environments where people that have maybe legacy money have come from. And I what I really appreciate about this chapter is that it's about our tendency to project ourselves into our possessions, which reflect and reinforce our identities, rather than the section I was sharing with you off of our microphone that really resonates with me, which is about immersion and finding the things where you really have a deep passion for wanting to make a difference in your life and in the lives around you and in the world. And so maybe that's part of the transcendence, I suppose. I'm really excited to get to that section of the book as well. And so, as we're talking into this chapter or this section of the book today, you were mentioning to me that although the motives of the material world is the basis for this section, that it bleeds into the self and the social and the spiritual. So, what is the best way for a reader to understand the book, to understand their agile brain assessment, and to be able to really take action into understanding their subconscious emotions that may help them to shift?

SPEAKER_02: 9:50

Yeah, it's a good question. I think um that's sort of what I was getting at with sort of you know who is in the best position to win the lottery. You know, it's somebody who's aware of what their emotional needs are. And this can be a revelation to people, you know, that that uh and the technique that we use is designed to kind of keep you off balance a bit, and it's very rapid, it's image-based, and it it produces a profile that tells you, okay, you know, uh if I just told you rationally what I thought my needs were, I'd come up with a completely different list than what this assessment reveals. Uh, I think once you have that awareness of, you know, I'm really looking for more of a sense of inclusion, I'm feeling excluded right now. Uh I want to feel more cared for and caring. Uh, I want to feel, you know, that I'm living in an ethical system and that I want to have a kind of higher purpose in my life. You know, once those things are revealed, now I can act on them. Now I can make a plan. And I think that's where it intersects with coaching really nicely, that that by identifying the unmet needs and you're working with a kind of trusted advisor who can help you get there, that's when the sort of magic happens. And and that uh, you know, it it it you can do this on your own, but I think you're much better off doing it with someone who's a you know trusted guide who can who can lead you there.

SPEAKER_00: 11:07

So we have an opportunity for listeners to be able to take the agile brain assessment and then qualify for a debrief session with a coach like myself or others. So I would encourage you if you're listening to this episode, if you would like a complimentary assessment and a discovery call about your results from your assessment, please reach out to me. Zach has ways in our show notes for you to contact us. And uh, we'd also love for you to get a copy of this book, which is The Emotionally Agile Brain, which will help you really take a deeper dive into understanding a lot of this. Uh, for this part of the chapter, one of the things that I found interesting was about autonomy because I can really resonate with this part. I have uh always liked to play instruments that are one note at a time. For example, I think I shared with you I was a music major in my undergrad and I played the clarinet. I attempted to play the trumpet. I'm I'm a one-note person, and my daughter can play the piano and the guitar, and I know you're a guitar player. So I'm not that. Um for me, autonomy though, means that you know it's not as fun to play your instrument by yourself. There's something really I think fascinating to me about the piano and the guitar, where multiple notes at the same time can be playing. Playing my clarinet in an orchestra uh is also much more enjoyable for me than just sitting in a room and practicing by myself, which is not at all uh as fun as being a part of a bigger group. And so I noticed here though that it talks about how your need for autonomy, when you get that satisfied, then there's a greater likelihood for your need for immersion. And so what I took from that was from a work perspective. So I am an introverted person by nature, even though most of my friends would say, Denise, take another test, because that's completely but I am. I like to work alone, I like to think and process, I like to spend time by myself, and I like to also um not have a lot of constraints, which you get into in the chapter around creativity. And I think that in a work setting, if you're a creatively minded person and you don't have autonomy, you feel pressure of having like a thumb put onto you where you can't be your authentic true self. And so when we're talking in the book here, I'm in page 101 for those that might be following along, you talk about flow state, and when you're describing this in terms of autonomy and how to reach your flow state, I find that being somebody from learning and development side, JD, that if you're trained to do whatever, play an instrument or be at work, and you have the resources to be effective in that thing you were trained to do, meaning again, if you're talking about work, you can be trained to do your job, but if you don't have the resources to do your job, that's an obstacle. And then from there, if you aren't given the authority over your work, which could be an obstacle, and if you are not absorbed then in the process, you don't have immersion, you don't have autonomy, right? So for me, to have that flow state, you have to have all those elements. You have to have the enablement, the engagement, and the empowerment in order for you to ultimately get to what you would define as success, right?

SPEAKER_02: 14:39

Yeah, exactly. I think it's interesting. They didn't see the sort of bigger picture. So he talks a lot about you know getting into a flow state and and you know, what are the conditions that allow for that? And he, you know, through experimental research, found that it was like the combination of being challenged uh a little bit, but not too much, you know, getting continuous feedback, um, you know, all I all of these things, like not having uh interruptions, um, sort of losing awareness of of time, like all of these things were really important to kind of facilitating the flow state. But you really didn't talk a lot about that earlier stuff, which is the foundation, which is you have to have autonomy, which is you have to have the resources, you have to have the permission, which means you're trusted to do the thing, uh, you have to have some basic skills, uh, you have to have um some some a bit of power in terms of you know, you've been given the sort of autonomy, which is a bit of power, and then you can then influence how this thing works and the people around it, how they work with it and with you. So there's a bit of sort of power, influence, you know, permission, uh, you know, capability, skill, all these things coming together to give you your autonomy. If you don't have those things, how are you ever going to become immersed? And I think anybody who sort of manages creatives, you know, would would necessarily know this, that that there you cannot be heavy-handed with them and say, you know, you must fit this formula every time. You know, this is my formula and go be creative. Uh, it it doesn't work. You know, it's it it's it's the way these things naturally flow into each other, that you, you know, to be your authentic self in an immersive state is sort of the ideal, you know, sort of synthesis where you can really get into it and you're no longer being self-conscious, which ironically makes you more able to access your true self because you're not thinking about it in the third person. It's not like a looking glass self, like where how do other people see me? It's really I've now freed myself to really be myself. Uh, and that's when the magic happens, and that's when really great, you know, products of you know, artist artistic products, but also you know, commercial products are are created.

SPEAKER_00: 17:06

You talk in the book about how if you lose yourself in your work and play, then that is success. And that's about releasing the self-consciousness. And this relationship between immersion and success is so important, I think, professionally and personally. You talked about self-doubt, restrictions that are placed on you and by others. I was speaking with a colleague this week, and yeah, he's leading a really important project at work. And there is a person on the team that is really, really good at one part of this project and really doesn't have the wherewithal and the will and the interest in this other part of the project. So this colleague of mine has found himself in a very frustrating position where he needs this other person to do the whole piece, but the person just doesn't feel it. And so they're missing that part. And so one of the things that you shared in here, which is if if if I think of that person who's not really succeeding, isn't that they're not succeeding because they don't want to? Not likely, right? Not people don't set out to do a job and not want to do a good job at it. I think most people, in fact, I remember years ago I was working for AirTrain Airways, and I remember telling, we we hired a lot of college students or people that were just uh exiting college, and I remember telling them in orientation that there will become a day when you perhaps don't remember the excitement that you feel today on your first day. But it often seems to me that when that happens in somebody's career development, it's because of uncertainty or or lack of clarity or or leadership. It's not because the person intentionally set out to not be successful. And if you're gonna grow, growth is uncomfortable, right? I remember I learned a lesson years ago that was relating to a seed under the ground that's getting ready to grow and come out of the dirt, and how easy it would be to be for that seed to say, no, I'm comfortable here, it's dark, I'm safe, there's no predators, there's no wind, there's no rain, there's no discomfort of bursting out of this pod that I'm in. But if you don't, you're not fulfilling the purpose for what you were planted for.

SPEAKER_02: 19:34

Exactly. Yeah, and that's really well put. I think that's it. I mean, you have to get uncomfortable. And and I take it even further. I I think the only way to grow is to fail. Uh, and and we think about this in terms of our model, like the top, the aspirational level of the material domain is the the desire for more feelings of success and the desire for less feelings of failure. Uh people should not be so afraid to fail. I think you know, that failure, and and you hear this all the time, but I don't think it really sinks in, you know, that that you know, the number of times that people have had to fail in order to succeed. Uh, and you know, the story of Abraham Lincoln's, you know, political career and and and you know, all these kinds of stories of you know, the numbers of setbacks, the numbers of failures leading to that success that people remember you for, it would never have been possible if you didn't fail and fail and fail again and again. In my own experience, I feel like I can't learn anything without failing. Uh, you know, like it really I could I could learn something, but until I'm sort of got been given the autonomy, you know, and I try to immerse and I try to get that going, and that's when I fail, that's when it registers. I'm like, okay, that that doesn't work because of XYZ. And that's when the learning actually, you know, is cemented.

SPEAKER_00: 20:58

So I have a mentor that years ago said to me, failure isn't final. And to not be afraid of failure, I think people quantitatively think of the word failure as something bad, but you were mentioning even a historical figure. So let's even just say Thomas Edison. How many times did he have a light bulb that he wasn't happy with? And so it wasn't about failing, maybe, it was that he was striving for something beyond the existence of what was. And maybe that's what makes creative people a little bit different because he just wasn't settling for where he stopped. And I imagine that whether it's him or Walt Disney, if they could awaken their uh ability to be alive and see where their original dreams have now led. Like obviously, we have light bulbs now that with a remote control or your telephone, you can change the colors. And if you were Walt Disney, you would have no idea what has happened in Orlando or across the world in other countries based on this dream, which just started with animation of a small character. And so I think that one of the things that you shared in here as well is just about how this is that maybe this gets to transcend it. So I don't want to give spoilers for people around what that means about going outside of yourself. But when you think about um your ability to keep going when you stop, it's sort of like when uh the NFL in the Super Bowl, when the team wins, they always say to the MVP, Well, what are you gonna do next? And the guy says, I'm going to Disney World. But the other guy, the guy that didn't win, also didn't fail. But that guy is gonna do the hard work. They're gonna go back into the locker room, they're gonna look at the tapes, they're gonna see, did we fail? Or did the other team just succeed more? Because couldn't there be a difference that you didn't fail? It's just that the other team happened to be stronger or smarter or better. It doesn't mean that you can't become those things.

SPEAKER_02: 23:04

Exactly, exactly. And a lot of the a lot of the time, you know, when the Super Bowl, it's because you know, some key player is injured, you know, that that that team loses on that particular day, you know, which is not something that's controllable. And and the truth is, I think for all of the emphasis on being the winner uh in this culture, I think if you really talk to the athletes themselves, like there's a great deal of of uh honor and self-respect that comes from making it that far, whether you win or lose, you know, like making the team, making it to the playoffs, making it through the playoffs, making it to the game, and they get rewarded handsomely for every one of those you know micro uh you know successes. Uh there's a great scene in um Fever Pitch, uh, which is uh I think Jimmy Fallon was in it uh with Drew Barrymore, and he plays this guy who's like an obsessive Red Sox fan, uh, you know, with season tickets, goes to every game, you know, and they lose an important game and he's completely crushed, you know, and he goes to the bar across the street in Fenway, and there at the next table are a whole bunch of Red Sox players who are laughing and having a great time. And he's like, How can you know, it's because they have a completely different perspective on it, you know? It's not they're not a fan, they are a player, you know. And it's a different world and it's a different set of expectations, and it's a different, you know, you judge yourself very differently, and you know things that the fan wouldn't know.

SPEAKER_00: 24:32

So I really love that you brought this example up because I often use movies in my leadership development trainings or even with coaching because there's something that you can draw from those stories that is, I think you can put yourself in the shoes of the story of the character. That was actually a really cute movie. Yeah, it's a cute movie. Um, you talk also about uh autonomy and power in this section, and I want to go there where you mention about how um there's this there's this idea of team is important, even if in the autonomy to be successful there needs to be a team aspect. But in this section, you talk about how power sometimes can have this negative uh result. And in like you were talking about in the story with Fever Pitch, is that you've got this aspect of somebody who feels like they're part of the team and they're not, they're the fan. You've got the people on the team, and in fact, we just mentioned about the Super Bowl. I feel like the speeches from the MVP and the coach of this last Super Bowl were all around teamwork of the team. It wasn't about self, and yet there are a lot of self-centered leaders in business and in sports. So, talk to us a little bit around this idea around power and autonomy, and how could you have both in a successful way?

SPEAKER_02: 25:57

Yeah, exactly. I mean, I think the the sort of uh you know cautionary tale is the power paradox, which is this concept that the thing that leads you into a position of power, uh, which is you know having good relationships, having a strong team, having people trust you, all those things that get you there uh can be immediately eroded by the experience of power, you know, if you're not mentally equipped for it and you're not sort of aware of your needs in a balanced way. Uh, and I think uh the power paradox is essentially that you know getting there uh destroys all of the foundations that you had uh for getting there in the first place. And that's why you see a lot of people who are in positions of power just sort of suddenly sort of flame out in really spectacular ways uh because of that paradox. Uh and I think the antidote to that is basically as you build your autonomy, you are building your personal power. Uh and when you immerse yourself in your work and you're doing it as by yourself or as a team, you are kind of letting that kind of become like an organic force uh where there's increased trust, not decreased trust. You know, you're you're letting the team take credit, letting individuals on the team take credit for the things that they contributed. You're not hogging the spotlight. You know, and that the the success ultimately in an ideal state is a team success where no one is taking credit, you're certainly not taking credit. The the the uh you know, material success that's achieved is not something that is uh tied to your ego. You know, it's about a material success, but then immediately the next question is, well, what can we do with this? And there that's what I was sort of starting with. That that I think the normal response is, well, how can we grow further? How can we share the wealth? How can we do, you know, pursue a higher purpose with this success? So uh I think that's the antidote, you know, to uh, you know, what is it? Um uh uh absolute power corrupts absolutely. You know, uh if you if you have absolute power, uh and you see this now, and sadly with a lot of authoritarian leaders, they're basically creating conditions of absolute power. Nothing good ever comes from that, you know, nothing that never leads to you know a higher purpose, it never leads to sharing the wealth, it never leads to growth, um, because it's so corrupting, and there's so many people you know clamoring at the at the edges, trying to get a little piece of it that it becomes a self-sustaining uh cycle that that is uh ultimately doomed.

SPEAKER_00: 28:39

It almost seems like then you go from here and have to go backwards, back to the self, because if you don't know yourself, then you can't grow yourself. And if you have self-esteem issues that are suppressed, for example, it seems as though those things you talk about later in the chapter that like an example of somebody with suppressed self-esteem issues, that it can manifest as narcissism, which you imagine a narcissistic person comes across as someone very confident, but yet you mentioned this, I think, last episode, even that that's just not the truth.

SPEAKER_02: 29:15

Exactly. Yeah, no, uh the if you think about it that way, it's sort of narcissism, psychopathy, Machiavellianism, the dark triad all kind of go together because you don't really feel secure in yourself. And that's why you have to put up this facade that I'm the best and I need all the rewards because you know, I I need to fill a hole within myself, you know, to basically convince myself that I matter. And Machiavellianism is basically that attitude, you know, uh directed at other people, that I'm going to treat you as tools. And I point this out in the chapter too. I say that you know, the term human resources and human capital has a kind of a dark side to it, like that it's that's not a healthy way of looking at people you work with, you know, that they are resources or capital that I can deploy. You know, they're they're people with feelings and and ambitions, and then if we understand their needs and their sort of you know, the full spectrum of their needs, we can help them evolve. And it's a sort of virtuous cycle where we're all growing together and achieving you know success as opposed to you know uh command and control. So uh yeah, I think the the you know the narcissism, the Machiavellianism, and the psychopathy all go together because they all are based in a delusion, you know, that that I can somehow force my will uh on the world and I will and good things will come from that, you know. Um if you don't have a personal army, that's that's probably not going to work out for you.

SPEAKER_00: 30:53

Well, I love how this segues into the section second section of this part where you talk about immersion, because this may seem like a uh a thought that's unrealistic, but I think that actually if people could follow this, life would be so much better. You say In the book, in the world of work, immersion typically involves finding a rhythm of activity that is self-perpetuating and mildly pleasant and is broken off only reluctantly until one has reached the end of the task. I highlighted that because it made me think that even though that seems a little bit mundane in a way, it's actually really revolutionary to think that if you could find the place that you can be good at something that you like doing, around people you like working with, doing work that matters, you essentially would have less reason to be power grabbing or not fulfilling something that you're trying to find somewhere else. And if you could be in that state of flow and be immersed in the work you're doing and do things that actually matter, wouldn't it then seem to be that if everybody else also was that same way, that you would get a lot more done and you would have whatever success looks like at the end of the definition of it?

SPEAKER_02: 32:11

Exactly. And I think that's a thing that the uh business world has struggled with conceptually for a really long time. And um the the sort of center of plate here is the concept of employee engagement, that if people are truly engaged at work, then they will all those good things will happen, right? They'll achieve success, they'll they'll achieve recognition, they'll get they'll grow as a people, they'll find a higher purpose. Uh but the problem is the definition of it, the only definitions that actually are distinctive to that concept are immersion. It's it's just about being absorbed in the moment, being completely focused, you know, not distracted. Uh, it doesn't really speak so much about the conditions that lead to that, which we've touched on, which is basically off, you know, uh autonomy and empowerment, you know, basically getting the tools, the resources, the permission, the capability, and the skills in order to get yourself into that position. Um, and because it's been so poorly described and focused in the literature, I kind of stepped into that and said, you know what, if we actually look at all your concepts, they really do just restate this model that there's you know, psychological safety is a precursor to engagement. Uh, authenticity is a precursor to it. If you have engagement, you're more likely to achieve your full potential, you're more likely to achieve success, you need to have autonomy to achieve immersion. Uh, and then there's the whole thing about it needs to be an inclusive environment. That's important for psychological safety. It's sort of like the foundations around this. Justice is important, equity, the sort of DEI concept that we have an inclusive, uh, equitable, fair place that doesn't reward people for the wrong reasons. You know, all of that feeds in ethics, purpose, caring, you know, recognition, all of it works together as a system uh that produces this sort of phenomenon of uh employee engagement, which to me is nothing else, nothing other than you're meeting your needs, right? The the environment is created, the leadership, the culture, the priorities are all channeled toward helping employees meet their needs. And if that happens, you get immersion and you get success, but you get all those other benefits as well.

SPEAKER_00: 34:25

I have to say, because I know that we're even over our time and still have to get to the second, the third part of this chapter before we go for today. I have so many highlighter marks in this part of this book that I could spend several more hours talking with you about it. But before we get to the next section and end our time together today, I have to ask you how in page 123 you talked about optimal experience. And you don't have to grab your book because you'll know what I'm talking about. Because I want you to pronounce this psychologist's name that has like 100 letters in his name.

SPEAKER_02: 35:04

So it's Mihali, check and mihali, uh, which some people pronounce checking mihai, which I don't think that's actually how you pronounce it. But uh uh, you know, it's it's I've heard from different people at different times, you know, people who had worked with him. So I I'm I'm pretty confident in my pronunciation. But uh uh just mi high, checking mi high doesn't seem right, but but some people stand by that. Uh he was a great guy, he he died recently. Uh he he really was a profound thinker and you know looked at um very similar to Maslow. He sort of looked at people who were really uh successful performers. Uh the way you know Maslow was focused on self-actualizers. He was focused on people who are really good at what they do, you know, whether it's you know skiing or or art or whatever it is, and kind of looked at, you know, how do they prepare? How do they what does that moment look like? And and that's where a lot of this research came from, uh, to kind of you know identify you know the conditions. And that's so important. And I can't believe that this isn't like mandatory, you know, you know, HR training for for managers, that you must give people these conditions if you expect them to get into that flow state. And that flow state is the essential ingredient toward success. Uh, you know, how many people have you know overscheduled meetings interrupting other meetings, uh, you know, uh you know, loud areas that you know you can't focus or concentrate, you know, the email is you know dinging and the phone is ringing, and uh, you know, you've got 20 different channels to keep track of. You've got Slack and you've got you know Outlook and you've got Teams, and uh that basically destroys any opportunity for flow to take place. So it's an important thing, and people need to pay attention to it.

SPEAKER_00: 37:01

I'm really excited about the work that you'll be having coming in the future, and I'm really hopeful that I get to be a part of it in terms of the emotionally agile workplace and teams. And so I'm gonna give some practical concepts from this chapter with those of you listening, specific to your work environment and exactly what JD was just talking about. So basically, this is a guide that comes from the principles of Mahali Check and Mahali. I'm sorry for mispronouncing it, but maybe you were this close, right?

SPEAKER_02: 37:32

That was that was how I pronounced it. Somebody else may disagree.

SPEAKER_00: 37:36

So so here's the very basic gist. And if you are a people leader, if you are HR, if you are a teammate, if you are even somebody who has a business but you work with partners, here's the gist and take this for what it's worth personally. And I would even suggest that you take this as a journaling exercise. Do you know what to do? Do you know how to do it? Do you know how well you're doing it? Do you know where to go from where you are today to tomorrow? Do you have freedom of distractions to do your best work? And those five steps JD outlined in this book, and it seems so simple and yet not applied by a lot of people. And if you're really looking for whatever you would think of as success, there's some really great exercises, even at the end of this part of the chapter, where you share with the reader to reflect on your personal need for immersion. I again, I think I highlighted the whole entire thing. There's one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. There's nine amazing coaching questions at the end of this part of this section of the book where you simply ask us to think about do you often find yourself completely absorbed in what you're doing to the point where it seems to fly by? And I was like, yes, but only when I'm doing this. Do you feel your environment supports deep engagement? Yes, but not when it's this. And so this is a really, really, I think, practical, but living out loud book, which is what we say, what's on your bookshelf is about, is living out loud the pages of the books on our bookshelf, where you can take these principles, all this research, all the information that JD, you've supplied as the author, but all of the appendix information and the people that have given you the wealth of knowledge to craft this book so that we can elevate our own potential with our emotions. And when we get to the last part, because I know we're almost out of time, this was it was only my least favorite part of this chapter because it was like I found myself not getting a good definition for myself of what success is, in contrariness to the way society defines success. Because Western society will say success is about your job title, how big your house is, if you're keeping up with the Joneses, how much money you have, and not all the things you exchange success for. And so I would like to just touch before we run all the way out of our time on the fact that if success is an exchange for things that you called out safety, authenticity, autonomy, immersion, then is it really success, because aren't you just trying to fulfill those other parts?

SPEAKER_02: 40:32

Yeah. So to me, it it's another one of these examples of the sort of you know uh um fractal relationship of the needs to each other, that when you fulfill one need, you're actually helping fulfill the others. So if you were imagine a person who has you know fulfilled their need for safety and authenticity and they're growing, they're they're self-actualizing, they're autonomous, they're immersing themselves, they feel included, they're caring, they uh are recognized, they feel justice, ethics, purpose, but they don't have success. I think that's really hard to imagine because that basically they have achieved success. You know, they've basically achieved fulfillment in all those other areas. Uh and and I think it it's almost impossible not to consider that person successful. Uh, and I think it it's a funny thing, you know, in our measurement of it. We're basically what we're looking for is unmet needs. So if you're settled in a particular area, it doesn't mean you don't have that need. It just it just means that you have met that need, right? So there's a lot of people who have met their need for success by virtue of the fact that they've met their needs for you know other aspirational needs, other needs across the model, uh, and and that that's the best way of looking at it. That it's not about you know uh having a uh you know imported car, a big house, you know, vacation homes. Like like those are those are signs and signals in a way, the more someone is drawn to that, the more of a hole inside themselves they're trying to fill, you know, using those things as distractions, using those things as sort of badges to kind of tell the world I am successful as opposed to really feeling it inside. So I I think it's just one of those things where um, you know, they I that one of the things I talk about in the book is this this um Dark Horse project uh that Harvard did, looking at people who had uh sort of unexpected massive success, you know, and and they found these two characteristics is basically a passion for you know long-term commitment to growing themselves, so internally, sort of you know, uh achieving their potential, and interestingly, not caring how uh how they're doing compared to other people in the fields next to them. Like they really didn't care, you know, how their competitor was doing. They didn't monitor them, they didn't think about them, they didn't, you know, benchmark against them, they just kind of forgot about them and said, uh, this is what I want to do. And that's what leads to success. And I think there's a really important lesson in that, that it's it's not about keeping up with the Joneses that leads to that kind of like really profound success. It's about paying attention to what matters to you. And what matters to you is probably the needs that you need to fulfill. And I I think back to the where we started, you know, that really successful people are people who have met their needs across the across the board.

SPEAKER_00: 43:33

I highlighted that whole section about the Dark Horse project, so I'm glad that you brought that up. I think that where I'll close for my comments for today is that you end this part of this section by saying that there are real consequences associated with what drives you. And whether it's that thing that's that internal focus or that passion that you have internally, or not having the external focus like you just described, which is not comparing yourself to others. Next week we're gonna dive into the motives of the social world, which is really working with others and living with others, right?

SPEAKER_02: 44:09

Yeah, absolutely. That's it's a fascinating thing. And it's funny how uh in a lot of models that are out there, they'll talk about things as socio slash emotional, as if they're one and the same. You know, all of these are emotional needs. I think the social needs are the poster child for emotions, right? When you say emotion, you think of the heart, right? It's like it's like the poster child, but it's not the only. It's very emotional. It's it's extremely important, but it's not everything. But we're, you know, it'd be fun to talk about it, nevertheless.

SPEAKER_00: 44:40

Awesome. I'm excited for that as well. So, with that being said, we are going to close for today. But before we do, is there anything else I've neglected to share that we need to share?

SPEAKER_02: 44:52

I don't think so. I think we've covered uh a lot of ground. So uh this is great.

SPEAKER_00: 44:57

Awesome. Well, JD, thanks for being with me today. And listeners, thanks for joining us. If you've enjoyed this episode, please share it with others. Share your comments about what you're learning with us. Join us next time, and this has been another episode of What's on Your Bookshelf.