Welcome to the Potential Leader Lab Podcast. My name is Perry Maughmer, and I am ecstatic to be here. So today, we're gonna call we're gonna talk about the cost of evolving. Now the reason we're gonna talk about this is because I created a framework that was initially it was you know, we refer to it as the E3 Framework, and it is Explore, Experiment, Evolve. Now I'm gonna get back to that in a little bit. The the order of which I put those words because I did. I told you just now the order they were always in. Explore, Experiment, Evolve.

Those were it was kind of it made it was, lyrically good. Explore, Experiment, Evolve. It flowed off the tongue, and we'll we'll revisit that in a second. But I wanna talk to you about the cost of evolving, Because recently, I figured out there is a cost, and there is a dark side to it. And and I and I thank, Nate Riggs for pointing it out to me. He and I were talking, and I'll share that conversation with you here in a minute. But I I wanted to first share this this quote from, Miyamoto Musashi. And the the quote I ran across was, the purpose of today's training is to defeat yesterday's understanding.

The purpose of today's training is to defeat yesterday's understanding. And that really resonated with me in both a positive and negative way. Now so so let's get back to the cost of evolving. So the purpose for today's training is to defeat yesterday's understanding. So if we if we think about that's the context on which we're gonna talk. Now I chose words very specifically for the everything I try to for everything that I do, because, well, a, I was an English lit major in college, And so words matter to me. I like I like to make sure I have the right word, because I believe that it's it's powerful to have the right words, and that we should language is a very wonderful thing that we don't spend enough time with. So I don't like the word change, I do like the word evolve.

And for me, the couple reasons, change connotes something that needed to happen, and it happened to you, where to me evolving takes time and consideration and can be internally driven. So so not natural selection biological evolution. But if we want to evolve as a person, to to me, that means that we've we've identified something that we wanna spend time addressing. Because we recognize that behavior isn't a light switch. There's there's no there's no hack. There's no easy way. There's no shortcut to evolution, and I'm using evolution in the terms of personal evolution. But to me, when somebody I I don't know.

I actually, it's it's hard to get a positive reaction to the word change, especially if you're going to tell somebody they need to change. And again, back to change is usually something that's thrust upon us from some external stimuli. It's somebody or something has been identified as needed to change, whereas I view evolution as more as a personal choice. I've decided I want to evolve as a human being, as opposed to something I have to change. And also change connotes to me, and this is all my framework. Right? It's all the way I look at the world. But when I see change in organizations, when I see people talking about change, small to large scale changes, it's very hard to find positive reaction to that. Again, because most people didn't sign up for the change, they don't understand why the change is gonna happen.

They may or may not even agree with why the change is gonna happen. And to me, evolving is something from the inside out, and you create something new in the process. Where change is more external, where we're gonna stop or start doing something, and it doesn't necessarily lead to changing who we are at the core. Now I also wanna address another word in here, your transformation, because I'm not big on transformation either, because it it it's something that happens large scale in a short amount of time. Like and I think that's part of the challenge we have as a society, is we want things to be easier and we want them to we wanna have a hack, we wanna have a pill or a shot, or any of those things where it makes it easier. I don't have to do the work. I understand completely why people think that way. I just don't think it's sustainable.

And I do, at my at my very core, believe that most meaningful things we do should have a cost associated with them. And the reason I believe that is because research would tell us that humans, part of being happy, there's a there's a formula for happiness that Arthur Brooks recently came up with, and one of the three components of it is satisfaction. Well, satisfaction is gained when we overcome something, when we achieve something of meaning that was challenging. That's where we get satisfaction. And so if we strive to make things easier, we're gonna strive to make things less satisfying because we're not working for them. And and so I I think with a lot of especially when it comes to who we are as a person, we always wanna grow. I think that people, by nature, want to grow or evolve. I use the term evolve.

You can say grow as a alternative. But evolution for me means that we're picking and choosing the things that we wanna address slowly over time. Now that's hard to do. I get it. It's it takes patience, and it takes effort. And it also means that we're not gonna work on 20 or 30 different things. We're gonna pick something and kind of focus on that and and go back to it over and over again until it becomes second nature as part of who we are. Now, the hardest part of this is other people allowing you to make those choices.

Because once we get to a certain point in our life, we kinda occupy a space for everybody else, you know, where this person or that person, and there's labels attached to it, which are also dangerous. And to do something different impacts other people. Because now if you start evolving, it's gonna create a challenge for them because now, you're not the person and you don't fit in that box for them, and now, they might have to evolve as well and that might be a little challenging for them. That's okay. Not saying you should or you shouldn't do something. But the reason for all this is because and this is where I'm gonna ask the question of where there's a cost to evolving, is when when does what we believe turn into dogma? Now dogma, by definition, is a principle or set of principles laid down by an authority as incontrovertibly true. Now, we're gonna down the rabbit hole. Incontrovertibly is impossible to doubt.

That's the definition of incontrovertibly, impossible to doubt. So if you think about the things in your life that are incontrovertibly true to you, Those things are now dogma. Now dogma is not thought. It's a replacement for thought. And so if I circle back around to the cost of evolving, if I wanna evolve as a human, at what point do things become dogma that I stop questioning? Now I don't question them because they're necessarily wrong, but do we routinely go back and question the things we believe? Because most things, we don't believe them because they're true, they're true because we believe them. Outside of gravity, you know, math, generally account generally accepted accounting principles, most science. Of course, that's a whole another conversation about who's gonna believe science and who's not. But there are many things that we believe that are true, and even even science, the things if we wanna say the things that we believe that were scientifically proven a 100 years ago versus now, those have changed.

So if you think about I'm not saying that nothing is true, but is there for for each of us, we have to define when we stop or if we should stop questioning what we believe. Now, we're all about questioning what other people believe. We have no issue with that. That, we're really good at. We'll question other people's thoughts up and down, but typically, we don't question our own. And the other part of this is is we don't also respond very well to people questioning what we believe. And there are things like your political views, your religious views, any number of different things. We've got to a point where we don't like to be questioned.

We've lost the capacity for many things. Among them is discussion, debate. We can no longer be disagreeable. We can't we can't disagree without being disagreeable. And that's a problem. And that all stems from our our willingness to allow rigidity to set in around our belief systems. And I'm I mean, everything we believe. How to take care of your kids, what what's right, what's wrong, what neighborhood to live in, what this represents, what that represents.

All of these things, we start we start getting more rigid and more rigid and more calcified in our belief system, because we're not evolving. And that leads to a host of different things. I mean, how think about how many things that you take as true that aren't anything other than a belief or an opinion. I'm not saying you can't believe or have an opinion about something. That's absolutely not what I'm saying. I will posit to you that you should be careful in stating your beliefs or opinions as facts, as things that are incontrovertibly true. Because once you start stating your opinion as an incontrovertible fact, that leaves the other person involved in your conversation, as far as I can tell, only 2 options. They can agree with you, or they can be wrong.

Now, I would guess that most people listening here don't like either of those options. But that's oftentimes what we do in many, many conversations we have during the course of a day, even for things that are blatantly opinions. Opinions about how something should be done, about why something should be done, things about how how should we order the groceries today? How should we pay for the groceries today? Check, credit card, cash? I mean, think about the number of think about the number of times that you individually get aggravated during the course of a day by any other human. And it's typically about a difference of opinion, but it's because our opinions become calcified into dogma. And now they're not questionable because they're incontrovertibly true. They're beyond question. Once we get to that point, where does that leave us? Do we respond to people when we're questioned? Do we respond with curiosity or anger? If we're not if we get angry and we're not curious if we're not curious, we we're not open to learning because we can't be, because our mind's made up. I already know what's right.

I already know right and wrong. I know what to believe. I'm right. You're wrong. I'm done with this conversation. It's we've kind of moved away from the opportunity to openly debate with each other, and debates not a bad word. To have discourse about topics. To be curious.

I was I was working with a group the other day, and and I told them I said, the easiest way to never get yourself in that situation is just always maintain curiosity. If somebody comes to you with an opinion or a thought or an idea, if you can maintain a state of curiosity, you will not get angry. And I don't know what the downside is. See see, that's the other part of this is if we question why are we so why is it so easy to make us angry? Why is it so easy to start an argument? It wasn't always this way. It used to be we could sit and talk. I I have a one of my, Vistage members. It's it's actually pretty awesome. He he comes we do one to ones once a month, and he'll come in and and he's he's done a he's had a wonderful career.

He's in a great place. He's, you know, he's probably probably 2 or 3 years from retiring, and he's he's doing wonderful. You know, family's great, works great, they're they're growing at the organization. It's a really, really large organization. There are challenges just like any place else, but it's not it's all first world problems. And so we routinely spend, I don't know, 30 minutes, 35 minutes, sometimes 45 minutes, talking about the world. And here's the kicker. We're on different ends of the spectrum, let's say.

Our belief systems do not align, but we have great conversations because we're curious with each other. I asked him questions about the things he believes, and he asked me questions about what I believe. And the the most amazing thing about that is, we find commonalities a lot of the time. We don't we don't necessarily agree on everything, But here's the other part of this, and and this changes the world forever for everybody. That if everybody would do this one thing, we would have a different universe to live in, and that is this. We have to accept the fact that every human we interact with is acting logically according to their mind. That whatever the person's doing in front of you, beside you, around you, the people you work with, your family members, I don't care, the people at the grocery store, it doesn't matter. But their actions are completely logical to them.

Just imagine if we if we did that. If no matter what happened, if no matter what happened at work, and somebody came in, or some some, client or customer comes at us, we get an email, if we just stopped and said, well, I I don't necessarily see how this happened, but I know that this is logical to them, so I'm gonna ask a few questions. And to me, that translates into empathy, which, by the way, is what I think is really lacking in our society today. I think we've moved so far away from having any amount of empathy, which is essentially our ability to imagine someone else having a different opinion or emotion, and it's being okay. There's 2 parts to it. Right? I understand how you feel, and you have the right to feel that way whether I agree with it or not. It's literally understanding that other people are gonna have a fundamentally different world view than you are, than you have, because of the way they were raised, or the where they where they were raised, or how they grew up, or what school they went to, or, you know, insert change, insert issue here. But there is no right or wrong world view, because if there is, that's what causes the problem.

Everybody has a right to believe whatever it is they wanna believe about whatever it is they're believing. It doesn't mean you have to agree with it. But if we if we believe that they're being illogical, that enables us to take the next step, which is to then insert our capacity over top of them because we are logical, which I know that you know this, that's not true either. Because we imagine that everybody else is an idiot and we're the only intelligent person in the idiot in that scenario? Talk about a lack of humility, which is by the way the other challenge I think we have is we have no empathy and no humility. We lack humility. Now, back to the original statement about the cost of evolution. If if we continually evolve, and this is what Nate brought up to me, it the downside, the dark side of that is when are we ever done with stuff? Because this is my life. This is how this is this is how frustrated I get for myself.

This is why I behave a certain way, because to me, there's always a better way. And there's always a way to iterate. And what I believed yesterday might not I might not believe today. So I'm on the I'm on the end of the spectrum where this is just constantly running, And it presents a host of challenges for me. A huge a huge challenge for me when it comes to delivering services to people and helping them. Because I never settle in on one thing and go, okay, that's done. I can use that. It's it's repeatable.

I'm always looking for how do I tweak it? How do I make it better? Oh, there's a new book. There's a new podcast. There's a new blog that I heard this. I read that. Now I gotta incorporate that. It's it's relentless. It's, it's really exhausting at times, And I've experienced that a number of times over the past 7 or 8 years. Now, I've never been able to put my finger on it like this, and it's what's amazing is that I, you know, I did create Explore Experiment of All about of my own out of my own experience.

Right? Now but I didn't realize at the time the negative impact that it was having. You know, I looked at it when, oh, this is awesome. This is a way for people a framework for people to look at things, which it is, but there has to be limits to it. There has to be more to it than just that. And and by the way, that's one of the reasons that I changed the the structure. I changed the the order from explore, experiment, evolve to evolve, explore, experiment. And that matters to me because if you look at the first step, on one hand was explore. On the other hand, evolve.

And so if I say go out and explore, that means everything's an option because exploration is just that. It's your that's the activity is the goal. You don't even you're not even saying I'm go I'm seeking. I'm not seeking, I'm exploring. Seeking would indicate I have something I'm trying to find. Exploring is, I'm going out into the wild and figuring out what's out there. I don't even know what's out there, so why do I know what to look for? That was my problem. That's what I did all the time.

Now if I change that to evolve, explore experiment, and if I start with evolve, then I I have a target. I have a reason that I'm doing it. I have I have I've drawn a line in the sand and said, this is the thing that I want to evolve. Now I can go out and explore and experiment because they're serving the evolution. As opposed to, I'm gonna go out and explore and experiment, and then whatever happens then I'll evolve later. Now I'm far from there, and this is part of the process. But I am, a, beginning to understand the impact on me and those I care about when it comes to this. And in parts of my life, there's nothing wrong with it.

But there are some fundamental challenges for me in other parts because there's only so much of that you can do at one time. It has to be measured. It has to it takes time. You can't start 20 different things and pick 20 different things to evolve with. You really wanna be intentional and and do less. Do less things that are more meaningful. Not my strong suit, and that's okay. I'll get there.

Because it's a journey. Nice process. I don't just get one I don't get one at bat, but I have to but I have to be clear, and I have to I have to bring people around in my world that can help me with that, because everybody needs help. This is a life as a team sport. You know, living as a team sport, evolving as a team sport. We're meant to interact with other people. We're social by nature. Now, and I don't mean social from the standpoint of, you know, going out and partying and all that.

I mean social in that we're meant to work together. Again, not one of my strong suits. I've taken a number of different personality assessments and on none of them have they ever said I'm collaborative. And that there's a cost associated with that. And I have to learn different behaviors. I'm okay with that. I look at it as an opportunity. And it's a process and it's a it's gonna be something I work out for a while.

And I'm never going to I won't say I'll fundamentally ever evolve out of who I am, but I wanna be able to flex in and out of certain things, because of the opportunity it presents for me and others. To be more collaborative, to listen better, to be able to be part of a team and be a great teammate and a participant as opposed to either you're doing it or you're not doing it. And so I'll leave you with that. Just think about your own evolution. What are the things, the few things, and I'm not gonna give you a number, but you can few can mean whatever it can mean to you. But what are the few areas that you really wanna focus on evolving that would be meaningful for you and those you care most about? Because that's for me, that's what leadership is about. It's about creating a better world for those we care most about. And so if if you know those around you well, and you and you want to evolve for them, to serve them better, and to create a better world for them, and to move beyond yourself, and to transcend yourself in the service of others, what's that require? Because it it can't require comfort.

It will require discomfort, and that's okay. But we also have to we also have to have stages. Right? We have to be able to one of the things I think we need to do after we evolve, we we evolve, explore, experiment, and we move through some evolution. We have to have time to retreat. You know, strategic retreats are great because you cannot keep advancing, advancing, advancing. You can't win that way. At some point, you retreat to gather resources so you can move forward and advance again. You can't just keep advancing, advancing, advancing.

And so again, that's part of the process that I'm working on for myself, and part of the framework is being able to share with people. These are the things that you can do in between. It's not just a constant march forward, a relentless, you know, march towards success. It's about the journey. So think about what you wanna do to evolve, and think about the dogmas involved in your thought processes. And do you have any incontrovertible truths that aren't? And what would what would it mean to those around you? What would it mean to your part of the world if you were curious all the time? Even when you did get triggered, even when you did get upset or worried, but you still maintain curiosity, you still ask people about what they were talking about to find the similarities. Because maybe you learn something. Because if we're if we're still the same person that we were 5, 10, 15, 20 years ago, if we still believe all the things we believed 20 years ago, what does that say about us? And I've I'm not gonna get the quote exactly right, and I forget who said it.

But it was, essentially, if if if you're not embarrassed by who you were 12 months ago, you're not paying close enough attention. So go out and evolve, and chop down some dogmas of your own to show other people it's possible because that would make the world a better place for those you care about. I'll talk to you soon. See you back here in the lab. Bye.