Welcome to the Potential Leader Lab. I'm your host, Perry Maughmer. And today, we're gonna talk about the quote, above all, do not lie to yourself. So it comes from a larger quote, which which I'll give you right now from, Fyodor Dostoevsky, from his novel The Brothers Karamazov. And the whole quote is, above all, do not lie to yourself. A man who lies to himself and believes his own lies becomes unable to recognize truth, either in himself or in anyone else, and he ends up losing respect for himself and for others. When he has no respect for anyone, he can no longer love, and in him, he yields to his impulses, indulges in the lowest form of pleasure, and behaves in the end like an animal in satisfying his vices. And it all comes from lying, to others and to yourself.

So one of the things that I'm, I guess, fond of saying when I work with folks is the number one priority is that we have a profound relationship with reality. And that kinda ties back into not lying to ourselves. We don't have to do anything. We don't have to achieve anything. We put these things in front of us and then we create these kind of elaborate stories to get out of having to do them. And we lie to ourselves about why we do things, why we didn't do things. And the fundamental question we have to answer for ourselves and in organizations and families is really answering one question. What do I want most versus what do I want now? And it's a really important question because oftentimes, it's challenging to make the decision that supports what we want most versus what we want now.

Right? And we sometimes give up that choice. And that's a challenge because we have to maintain that power of choice because that's how we define ourselves in the world. It's it is only about what we do, not about what we intend to do. So we have to never relinquish the power to choose our actions. Because if we relinquish that power, we're lost. And we can't lie to ourselves about what we can and can't do or somebody stopping us from doing it or make up some story in our head about other people preventing us from achieving something that we've stated is really very important to us and something we want most. Actually, I've heard research, it's a while back, that the space between effort and reward is a sign of maturity. Right? If we can stretch out delayed gratification, if we're able to put work in for something that's not we're not gonna get the return on for, you know, 6 months or a year.

Can we stick with it? Can we play that long game? And it this goes back to I think it was around 1970, 1971. And Stanford, did this test called the marshmallow test, which I'm sure everybody's seen the video and heard about. Now, it now, later on, I will I'll tell you it's been statistically invalidated. They can't replicate the they cannot replicate the results. And there is some there are some things in there about socioeconomic status which which kinda delayed things and kinda screwed things up. But the reality is this, they they tested 600 children in the following way. They put them in a room and they put them, put a marshmallow in front of them. And they told the kids, and I think the kids were, you know, 4, 5, 6 years old.

They said, look, we we have to run out for a second. If you don't eat that marshmallow, when I come back, you get 2 marshmallows. Right? So, delayed gratification. Now, if you wanna see something fun to watch, just Google marshmallow test 19 seventies. It's hilarious to watch the way that the kids try to occupy themselves and not eat the marshmallow. Right? They're they're pushing on it. They're squishing it. They're pushing it aside.

They're they're looking different directions. I mean, they're trying everything. Now some of the kids just pop in their mouth. They're done. They're like, okay. I'm out. I'd rather have 1 than wait on 2. But of the 6 100 children who participated, 67% failed.

They failed to last, I think I I don't think it was very long. I think it was like a couple minutes they would come back in. Now, what's interesting about that is then they followed all of those kids. It was a longitudinal study. And theoretically, the results were that the kids that did that were able to delay gratification ended up doing better on SATs and, you know, blah blah blah. Successful in life. Now, they have replicated some of that with newer experiments. They just can't replicate the exact same score.

And I'm not saying this is an end all be all. I'm just saying it's it is an example of how what we want most versus what we want now is a struggle for all of us. And the easiest place to see it, quite candidly, is just, you know, our diet. Right? I mean, nobody would tell us that what they want most is to be morbidly obese or out of shape. Right? Yet, we succumb to what we want now, which is maybe a donut or a beer or, you know, a second helping of whatever wonderful thing we're eating. I mean, that's the if you just think about it at that level, we face that struggle multiple times every day. Do I eat this? Do I drink that? Or is that getting me and and essentially, you're answering the question for yourself, is is this behavior is the is the decision I'm getting prepared to make moving me closer to or further away the thing that I want most? And if the thing that I want most is to be the my the healthiest version of myself, then I would make probably very different decisions during the course of a day. Now take that same example and apply it across your life with all the things you say you want most, with all of the goals that you set for yourself.

And think about, are all of the decisions I'm making every day moving me closer to those things or further away from those things? Because what we experience today is actually the echo of our past actions. So whatever today we have was determined days, weeks, months, years ago. The things that we decided 6 months, 8 months, 10 months, 12 months ago, we're living with today. So here's the kicker. If we want a different future, then we have to do something different today to generate a different future later. But that means we have to make a different decision today and tomorrow and the next day and the next week and the next month if we wanna see those things pay fruit and bear fruit later. And here's the challenge. The challenge is is that bad decisions, the echo comes back much quicker.

Right? Because if I go out and have too many, beers or too many old fashions, that echo comes back really quickly. Like, I'll know for I'll I'll know pretty quickly that was a bad decision. But good decisions that move us substantially towards the things we want most take much longer to echo back to us. If we make a a good decision on what to eat today and tomorrow and next week and next month, we may not see any measurable difference right away. And that's what's challenging for us because making a material impact on the things that we want most, oftentimes, isn't readily viewable to us in the moment, even within 24, 48 hours or maybe even a couple weeks. I mean, if we're if we're saving for retirement, I mean, think about it. If you're if you're if you set up a 401 k and you wanna put 3, 4, 5% of your income in there and you have a goal that you wanna reach, even the first, you know, 5, 6, 7, 8 years, it's not you don't look at that account and go, oh, I did it. You look at that account and go, that's it? Like, that's all that's in there now? And so it it you have to stay the course.

There's this great book. I just love the title. It's actually I forget who wrote it, but it's called A Long Obedience in the Same Direction. And it's it's a religious book. Right? It's about faith, and I think maybe a Catholic monk wrote it. But I love the idea of the saying. If we establish a long obedience in the same direction, and we just stay with it, and we don't lie to ourselves. Because that's the most destructive thing we can do, is create a story in our head about why we can't do something, About how some somebody else's actions stopped us from doing something.

I mean, let let's take an let's take another example, something that I work with people all the time. Let's take let's think about your own development, your own personal slash professional development. And let's say you wanna become better at leading. You know, the act of making the world a better place for those you care deeply about. Do we understand that leading is an activity? It's a verb. Never a job, a title, or role that you occupy. And it's always it's it's you always frame it as something you do, not something you are because you can evolve and get better at it. And why who do you wanna do it for and why do you wanna do it? Do you establish those things? Do you have clarity around who you're doing it for? Because my experience is, if we set out for these kind of big challenging goals that we wanna accomplish and we only want them for ourselves, oftentimes, that's not enough, juice.

None of energy. But if we want them for somebody else in our life that we care about, if it's gonna if it's gonna help other people, then there's actually some some folks nowadays that that have that research that says, it has to fulfill both. Like, it has to be almost something that that moves us forward, that gives us some kind of dividends, some kind of return on the investment. But then, if you wanna kinda amp up the the energy around it and the commitment, if it's for the greater good. You know? If it's impacting the greater good for other people and we get something out of it, it's like a no brainer at that point. We're we're gonna do it. Right? And think about how much how much are you willing to invest? How much of your time do you spend on your own development? Everybody I work with a lot of people, and they all say they wanna get better. Right? They all say they're they show up.

They pay money to do things. But how much time are they actually working on their own development? And this isn't just this isn't just getting at getting at bats. Let's call it that. This is about focused feedback and reflection and about doing things differently, not more or doing or working harder at it. I mean, is it on your calendar? Is it reflected in your, you know, I use a a an old term or is it reflected in your checkbook? No. Nobody has a checkbook anymore, I don't think. But some people will know what I'm talking about. And so, if if you wanna know what's important to you, just look at those two things.

Look at your bank account. Look at your calendar. Those those are your 2 biggest resources, time and money. Where are you spending them? And if you wherever you're spending them, that's what's important to you. See, this is where we go. Don't above all above all, don't lie to yourself. Because if we have the story about how things are important to us, but then we look at our calendar and we don't see anything that mirrors that commitment on the calendar, And we look at our we look at our bank account and we see all the spending we're doing, and we don't see any of those resources going towards the thing that we say we care most about that will be meaningful for us. If if there's nothing on the calendar, nothing in in our bank account that substantiates that, then how important is it? Really? If it's on if it's in not reflected in either one of those areas, if I haven't spent any of my time, I haven't set aside any of my time for it, and I haven't set aside a budget for it, How important is it? And are we lying to ourselves by just saying, continuing to say, yeah, it's important.

You know, it could be family. It could be development. It could be our health. It could be any number of things that we say, those are things that are very important to us. And this all comes down to, you know, commitment versus interest. Because when we're interested in doing something, we do it when it's convenient. When we're committed to doing it, we take no excuses, only results, if we're committed. But sometimes, again, do we lie to ourselves? Do we say we're committed when we're truly only interested? Because when things get challenging, do we do we plow through? And if we think about Mark Murphy's book called, Hard Goals, you know, his his acronym I like I like actually, I like his acronym hard goals better than smart goals.

They stand hard stands for heartfelt, animated, required, and difficult. Now, I like that order because I think the first hurdle that you come to with heartfelt is dramatically important. And these are the three statements that he that he puts forth and says, okay, score these and see how high you rank. Number 1. Something inside of me keeps pushing me to achieve this goal even when things get in the way. That's number 1. Number 2, when I think about this goal, I feel very strong emotions. That's number 2.

Number 3, I mentally own this goal. It doesn't belong to anybody else other than me. And even if somebody else initially gave me the idea, it's a 100% mine now. I own it heart and soul. If you score those things really high, the likelihood of you doing that and achieving that objective, that goal, is probably pretty high. Because if if those three things exist, if I own that goal and something inside of me keeps pushing even when things get in the way, and if I feel a strong emotional pull when I talk about it, then the likelihood of me achieving it is probably pretty good. Now, the the ARD part of hard is animated, required, and difficult. And you do the same thing.

There are questions for each of those things. And you think about, okay, if all of those things line up and it's it's heartfelt, it's animated, which means I have a clear vision of what it looks like, it's required. I I have to do it, and it's difficult. Because difficult's important, because we do things that stretch us. And we go back to the the concept of flow. You wanna be somewhere just north of maybe 5 to 10% above your capacity when you're doing something new, and that is actually stimulating and drives you to do it. Because if it's too easy, if it doesn't if it doesn't task you, if it doesn't put you in a state of what I'll call positive stress, then you're probably not gonna do it. And if it's if it's far exceeds your capacity, you're gonna become frustrated and not do it.

So there is a sweet spot there of difficulty. But if you're able to if it's able to score high on heartfelt, animated, required, and difficult, then there's less friction for me to get the thing done. I'm it's pulling me with it. I don't have to push myself. If I score low on those things, then I've gotta I've gotta create a bunch of internal effort to get it done. And not that I can't do it. It's just gonna be far harder than it should be, and it might take me longer. And, quite honestly, it might just fall to the bottom of the list sometimes when I'm looking my to do list because there's nothing that I look at and go, I can't wait to to do this.

And again, are are we getting are we making decisions every day that move us closer to or further away from our goal? And then when we talk about lying to ourself, I shared with you about Dostoevsky. Here here's what Nietzsche said. You know, Friedrich Nietzsche said, the strength of a person's spirit would then be measured by how much truth he could tolerate. Or more precisely now think about this. More precisely, to what extent he needs to have it diluted, disguised, sweetened, muted, or falsified? The strength of a person's spirit will be measured by how much truth he could tolerate. About ourselves, not about other people. We always make this about other people. The best thing to do is make it about ourselves.

How much truth about ourselves can we tolerate? About our own behaviors. When somebody asks you about a goal or about something that we're you're going after, can you can you honestly say, yeah, I take complete responsibility for that. I've just decided not to do it. I'm lazy. Other things got in the way. I chose other paths that were far easier, and this one, I just haven't gotten around to yet. Or do we construct an elaborate story in our head about the people and the things that got in the way to justify the way we're feeling? I have a close friend of mine who says, when you play the rationalization game, you always win. Because we can, believe me, we can rationalize the hell out of anything.

We can make up some stories now. You know, we all know that. And here here in lies the rub. At the base level, our brain is working against us in this whole effort. Alright? A, just remember, don't believe everything you think. And and we're gonna talk a little bit now about how the brain works. Because the brain is wired initially, the brain is wired for one thing as it's, I'll use a term from Star Trek, its prime directive. The prime directive of our brain evolutionarily is to keep us alive.

It's survival, and that function trumps every other ability that the brain might possess. Number one thing, are we safe? It's gonna keep us safe. Now what's funny about that is all the stuff we're talking about, your goals, your personal development, your professional development, your growth as a human, None of that's safe. Those things are risky to do, and they create risk in our brain, so our brain's actually fighting us. It's gonna give us every reason that we can possibly think of to not do those things. So it's between you and your brain, it ain't supporting you. It's not helping you in this effort. Now since it is focused on survival, the next thing is it's gonna conserve energy because it wants you to have plenty of energy in case things go south and you have to, you know, fight, flight, or freeze.

Right? So it's conserving energy and keeping you safe because you wanna have energy in reserve. So, again, when you're expending large amounts of energy, your brain's your brain's putting a governor on that. It's like, hey. Maybe we shouldn't do that. Like, let's not get let's not push ourselves too hard. And the primary way that our brain conserves energy is basically, if you wanna call it our cognitive biases. You know, there's about a 180 of them that have been identified. The the patterns, the shortcuts that our brain uses to make decisions.

And then what happens is these patterns become habits because we do them over and over again. And to be honest, your brain doesn't distinguish between a good and a bad habit. All of us can attest to that. Right? If we've ever done anything that isn't good for us, If we smoke or drink or eat or, you know, do those things when we have a habit of doing something, like when we get if we have a habit that when we get stressed, we eat. Or we have a tough day at work, so we go home and have a glass of wine or an old fashioned. That's a habit. Our brain doesn't tell us it's a bad habit. It's just a habit.

So you gotta think about this. Now if and if that wasn't bad enough, our brains are actually they refer to it as cognitive misers. Right? That was, a a saying or a term coined by, Suzanne Fisk and Shelley Taylor in 1984. And it describes the ability and tendency of the brain to problem solve in the most simple and straightforward ways rather than utilizing more sophisticated and effort extensive ways. And by doing this, again, the brain conserves energy. So it's looking it's kinda like Occam's razor. Right? It's like saying, okay, if there's 3 solutions, the easiest one's the best. That's the way our brain defaults to.

So our brain is looking for the simplest, easiest answer, and not the one that truly helps us solve the problem in front of us. Again, it's looking for a shortcut. Conserving energy, keep us safe. See, it all connects. Shortcuts to thinking, conserve energy, We need energy to run because we might have to flee in order to stay safe or we might have to fight. So, again, it all ties back to your brain's wired to keep you safe. That's it. That's its prime directive.

So we have a general inability, by the way, to even be alone with our thoughts. We don't like to sit quietly with ourselves, and I'll tell you how much we don't like it. They did a study. The authors they were based at Harvard out of University of Virginia. And what they did is they put people in a room for 6 to 15 minutes and asked them to do nothing. Just sit in the room for 6 to 15 minutes. No phone, no computer, no task, no puzzle, no paper, no book. Just just sit.

Sit quietly with yourself. And, they ask him they then they ask him afterwards if they you know, what how people liked it. And by and large, they said, well, they didn't like it at all. And they and it's funny. They actually said they had a hard time focusing. Like, they're sitting in a room by yourself, and generally, people said, we had we had a hard time focusing. Now and this is just, I guess, funny. They actually put a machine in there where somebody could shock themselves by pushing a button.

So they're sitting by themselves and they're like, hey, you know, I guess if you get bored, you can push that button and shock yourself. Now they gave him 15 minutes, and here's what happened. 2 thirds of the males ended up giving themselves shocks to avoid being alone with their thoughts. Now that's now that's after they removed some of the data because one guy actually shocked himself a 190 times in 15 minutes. And then a quarter of the women also gave themselves a little jolt. So just think about that. I mean and and I'll have to go back. What was it? 2 thirds of the men and a third and a quarter of the women.

2 thirds of the men, a quarter of the women, each preferred to shock themselves than to just sit quietly with their own thoughts. And the the the author said the following, being alone with their own thoughts for 15 minutes was apparently so aversive that it drove many participants to self administer an electric shock that they had earlier said they would pay to avoid. So before this started, people said, oh, I paid not to get shocked. And then they left them alone for 15 minutes, and they're pushing the button. The the brain is a difficult thing to control and most of the time, we just rather avoid the trouble of trying. So we just let it run wild. And it is not making decisions based on our best interest and and coming to terms with what we want most. It is very much about what what we want now.

Your brain is not wired to help you achieve what you want most. And then beyond what the author said, the results indicate that although we complain that we're persecuted by things like smartphones and emails, we actually relish the distraction. We like the distraction. We talk about how we're inundated with emails and phone calls and texts and all those things, But the reality is, we like it. Because here's the thing, if we didn't like it, we turn it off. I mean, we turn off off notifications on our phone if we didn't like the interruption, but most people don't. The the the phone's pinging all the time. You know? It's but how many people feel their phone buzz in their pockets when it's not in their pockets? How many people have felt that and and said, oh, my phone oh, wait a minute.

My phone's over there. Why is my why is my pocket buzzing? And I think and for me, this all brings up a quote from Blaise Pascal who said, all human evil comes from a single cause, man's inability to sit still in a room. All human evil comes from a single cause, man's inability to sit still in a room. Above all, don't lie to yourself. It's tough. But if it was easy, everybody do it. Alright? So what do we do now? Oh, I don't know. Here here are some things.

Here are some ideas. Here are some thoughts. Remember that whatever you pay attention to affects your life. Whatever your attention goes to is how you're gonna live your life. Whatever you pay they the term pay attention. There is a cost associated with it. So whatever you pay attention to is gonna impact your life. The other thing is don't boil the ocean.

We can do nearly anything, but we certainly, most certainly, a 100%, can't do everything. But we have a tendency to think we're gonna do it all. Right? And I think part of that is we just we just wanna be busy. Right? We think that we have this kind of achievement culture, this grind culture where we have to keep pushing and pushing and do more and do more. And there's this there's a great quote, and I forget who said it, that my goal is not to get more done. It's to have less to do. But we have to be able to sit quietly with our own thoughts and figure out what is important. Right? What is meaningful? What do I want most? That's what we have to figure out.

And that what's the priority, which until the 19 fifties was not ever plural? Priorities. Because by definition, a priority cannot be plural because it is the one thing. And so what more than anything matters to you, even if there are a couple of them? And do those things stay at the top of your list? Is that the frame through which you look at the world? And do you end up saying no to many things so that these things stay at the top? Because if you're saying yes to things, you are saying no to other things. Because the more you say yes to, the less you're actually gonna get done. Very successful very successful people in organizations say no far more than they say yes because they don't lie to themselves. They know they have constraints, and they're actually liberating constraints. That's what constraints do. They liberate you.

Because if you know you have a limited amount of resources, you'll be very selective as to where you put those resources because you can't do everything. And if you have 1 or 2 things that are ultimately the most important thing for you, you're gonna estimate you're gonna figure out how to say no to a ton of things. The second thing is or the third thing is don't believe everything you think. Learn about the cognitive biases. Now you need biases so you can exist. So you're not gonna get nobody can walk around with absolutely no bias whatsoever. Here's the goal. Constantly, consistently update your biases.

Be aware of them and continue to update them. Learn new things so that you can update your biases. It doesn't mean you won't operate with them because you're gonna need them to survive. You can't everything can't be a novel issue that you have to solve every day. So you are gonna use shortcuts. Just make sure you can discern when to use them and when not to use them. You shouldn't use them on everything all of the time. Some things are gonna take long, and they're gonna and they're gonna be hard to figure out.

And there's no there's no shortcut. There's no hack. There's no way around it. The next thing is challenge your inner critic. We all have them, and my way of doing that and my recommendation would be keep a journal. Because sometimes, I'll just say, getting your crazy out on paper helps you deal with it. Because I don't know if you've had this experience, I sure have, where I'm having these thoughts and I'm actually I think I'm thinking. Like, I'm I'm constantly I'm going through the, you know, this and that and I consider and and I think it's rational.

It sounds rational in my head as it's banging around in there. And then the minute I share it with somebody or write it down, suddenly, I'm I think to myself, well, that makes no sense whatsoever. Like, why the hell would I think that? When you say it out loud, it sounds different. When you write it down and see it outside of your head, it looks different. So keep a journal. When you get into a sticky situation, write down your thoughts. Make sense of them. The 2 last things, one is focus on other people.

C s c s Lewis said, humility is don't think less of yourself, but think of yourself less. And oftentimes, if we focus on other people, what we're doing to help other people, it changes our behavior. Brain imaging research has actually revealed that compassionate acts, like giving money to charity, activates the brain pleasure centers in the same way as eating sugar. Right? So doing something for other people actually is uplifting for us. And then, finally, the the easiest well, I won't say the easiest. The the most satisfying, the most meaningful, I think, not easiest, is just be grateful. Think about what you have, not what you don't have. Money and success can bring a temporary boost to your spirits, but the only way to achieve lasting happiness is develop an attitude where you're focused on compassion for yourself and others.

Just be grateful. Think of everything you have. And then think of the things that you want most versus what you want now. Here here's the formula I use. I try to make that decision just 50% of the time or better every day. I think success is just being able to ask yourself that question when you're faced with the decision. When somebody says, do you wanna go to happy hour? Ask yourself, is this action getting me closer to or further away the thing I want most? Here's the wonderful thing about it. There's no bad answer.

There's no wrong answer. Just own it. Like, own that decision and and keep your power intact. You can make whatever decision you want. Nobody's judging you. Nobody should judge you as long as you own the decision. As long as you maintain the power of making the decision, you act in good faith to yourself. Just never act in bad faith as Sartre would say, which is pretending that you don't have the option.

Because, actually, life is just about where you understand that you always have a choice even if it's not the choice you want. You always have a choice. So I hope this hit home. I hope it resonated. I hope some bit of it was useful. I will tell you that most of the time, to be honest with you, I'm just talking about the things that helped me. I'm talking about the things that I struggle with, the things that I see myself. And I hope that sometimes when I share them, other people think to themselves, yeah, that that might that might be something I wanna think about too.

So I hope there's something helpful here. And, take care of yourself and take care of each other. Offer each other and yourself. Start with yourself. Offer yourself some grace and have some humility, And then offer grace to some other people too because we need it. Alright. I'll see you back in the lab soon.