When the World Feels Uncertain with Jim Herrington

When the World Feels Uncertain with Jim Herrington

Eric: [00:00:00] We’re looking for someone to label as the bad person. Um, and we’re passing up on our opportunity to expand, evolve, learn.

Jim: There are three stages of brain development and everybody gets to the first stage, but there’s actually work that has to be done to get to the second of the third stage. And, and it’s the work we’re talking about,

Rob: I think of when it comes to anxiety.

Saying to somebody who’s gone through an anxious moment to reflect now on that moment, in some cases, they’re like, I don’t wanna relive it.

Hey, and welcome back to the Living Richly podcast. We are, uh, so thrilled to have you here with us. Uh, we’ve got a, a special guest. Jim Harrington is back with us again, and we’re gonna be talking about. Just the uncertainty in the world today and how that shows up as anxiety and some of the struggles that we might be facing.

And we wanna really kind of unpack that and we couldn’t think of a better person [00:01:00] to have on the show to talk about anxiety when everything around us seems to be just swirling and uncertain than, than this guy. Uh, a hundred percent. Jim, welcome back to the show. So great

Jim: to have you here today. Thanks.

It’s glad I’m glad to be here. I love the work you guys do and I appreciate every opportunity to engage with you.

Eric: Well, not only engaged, you have influenced us, uh, and influenced me probably more than not, probably more than any other human being. In terms of my, my, my leadership philosophy, my life philosophy, uh, I’ve often said, how many times have I said to you, if I could be half the coach, Jim is, uh, I’d be doing well.

So yeah, I think it was about four times. About four times in the last week or something. Yeah. Uh. But Jim, I mean, we’re living in a crazy world right now. Like, uh, I mean, we’re, we’re gonna be talking about anxiety today and we’re gonna talk about what we mean by that. Um, uh, but what’s it like for you? I mean, uh, uh, currently, I mean, we’re on this side of the border.

I’m wearing my Canada proud shirt, right? Elbows up, right. Um, [00:02:00] uh, we’re like, this is tariffs and political unrest and political, financial instability. There’s all kind. What’s it like for you down there?

Jim: It’s, it’s very similar. It’s, uh, um, uh, lots of anxiety. Lots of uncertainty. Lots of insecurity, uh, that, that are coming in lots of different ways.

And the fact that, uh, like for instance, tariffs. You have people who are for those and who are against them. And so not only do the tariffs create uncertainty, but then the anxiety between the parties who see things differently just adds to the level of anxiety.

Eric: Yeah, a hundred percent. And, and let’s maybe start off by defining what we’re talking about here when we talk about anxiety today.

’cause we’re not so much talking about a ’cause there is like a mental health condition, uh, diagnosed anxiety. I don’t think that’s what we’re talking about today. Can you, can you give us your definition of what we’re going to be discussing today when we talk about anxiety?

Jim: Yeah. So as the neurosciences have studied more and more, uh, how human [00:03:00] beings react, one of the things that we would recognize is that your brain is designed to, um, uh, to, to look out for threats.

When it experiences a threat, anxiety is the response. Uh, there’s, there’s two kinds of anxiety. There’s acute anxiety, which is somebody points a gun at you, a kid who can’t swim, falls in the pool. Um, there’s some life threatening thing. And what you don’t do in that moment is call me and say, Hey Jim, my house is on fire.

Have you ever had that happen? Like you just. In an instant, even if you do the wrong thing in an instant, you get into action. Your brain bypasses the prefrontal cortex and goes to the amygdala and you do something. Yeah. Well, that’s, that’s acute anxiety and that’s a god-given response to real threats.

Right? Part part of the way humans are designed is that there’s also a thing called chronic anxiety, and chronic anxiety is when you feel threatened, but there’s no real threat to your life. And whether it’s acute or [00:04:00] chronic, you do the same thing. You bypass the thinking processes and just react, uh, and.

Uh, and so when we talk about anxiety, we’re talking about this sense of threat and an instinctive response to that that occurs like blinking or breathing.

Rob: So we’ve got those two types of anxiety, and you’re right, the response in both cases. We’re shifting right out of that, that thinking mode into a reaction.

Uh, what are the typical reactions? I know that you’ve shot talked to us, that there’s probably four kind of main themes that we would react. What are those?

Jim: Right, so, uh, the first one is conflict. The second one is distance. The third is an over under function reciprocity. And the fourth one is projection.

And so conflict, I, we get in, uh, Eric and I get into a conversation and the anxiety shows up. And on the mild end of the spectrum, I just say, Eric, you’re, you’re wrong and I’m right. And I want you, I love you. I want you to be right. Like I’m right. That’s on the mild end of the spectrum. And then as it intensifies, it becomes, you know, verbal [00:05:00] fisticuffs.

It becomes physical fisticuffs. It, it becomes violence. And so. On a continuum. Distance is the exact opposite of that. Uh, uh, Rob, you and I get some anxiety going on and something happens and I feel anxious, and all of a sudden I’m smiling at you. But I internally, I’ve not, I’ve gone away. Nothing about our conversation is authentic.

I might, you know, be nice to you, but, but there’s no real conversation going on and on the continuum. It goes from, from that inauthenticity to I move away from you to I move out of the room to I move out of the relationship. So again, on a continuum.

Eric: So, so Jim would, uh, uh, would, uh, giving someone the silent treatment is an example of distancing.

Jim: It’s of extreme distancing. Yes. Yes. And the, I always like to make this distinction, so I’m, I’m in general a conflict or when I get anxious and Betty, my wife is in general of Distancer and people have always thought she was a better person than I was because my conflict is on full display, you know, when I’m anxious, right.

Her [00:06:00] conflict, she smiles and says, can I pour you some more tea? People think, oh, what a nice person. But the thing you have to see is that in both the conflict and the distance, what happens is we quit being able to have an authentic conversation. We can’t work on whatever the problem we’re working on, and, and so though it looks different, it has the same impact in relationships.

Eric: Right. And over time, because things aren’t being actually resolved, uh, then this is the stuff that builds up, uh, the resentments that build up, the bitterness that builds up the, the just the baggage, right? That accumulates over time, the residue.

Rob: These become patterns. Uh, when I’m anxious, I curl up in a ball and cry.

Where does that, where does that, which one does that fit into?

Jim: Uh, well, uh, so the first thing that I would say is it’s not, I don’t think quite so important that you’d be able to say, curling up in a ball is a certain one of these four responses. So much as these four [00:07:00] responses give you what you want is to learn to see anxiety.

Right. And so like however you name that, what that does is it brings an automatic response. I’m holding my hand behind my head. It brings an automatic response that’s having impact on how you show up around here, where you can see it. Right? And once I can see this, then I have access to changing something that as long as it’s on what we call autopilot, it just does what it does.

And you be who you be. And I know that’s not good English, but, but that, that’s what happens. Now lemme do the two other. Pieces right quick over under function is the third one. Distance, conflict, distance over under function. So w we would recognize that you have to have two people. Uh, you ever have a office or a business where somebody doesn’t get their work done, and so somebody else just does it?

Four of them, right? Never.

Rob: Never.

Jim: You have an over function or an under functioner in the emotional process. The over functioner is the person [00:08:00] who gives up what they want or need in order to take care of the feelings of the other person. So Eric, Eric and I disagree with each other, and I realize that I get anxious.

I have something I wanna do, but I don’t want him to be anxious. So I give in to him and, and I’m, he, I’m I, I’m over-functioning because I’m responsible for his feelings. I’m trying to be responsible for his feeling, and he’s under-functioning because he is allowing me to do that.

Eric: Yeah. And, and like the over-functioning is like one of my go-to moves, right?

Yeah. Oh yeah. It’s, it’s what I’m working on. Conti. Yeah. Option for leaders. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Jim: What’s the fourth projection? And projection is where I get anxious with you, but I put on a happy face and then I go home and talk to my wife about it, and I unload the anxiety with her. And she knows your, your, your business partner.

And so she runs into him and, and offloads her anxiety to him, and then he goes home and talks to his friend and, and, and anxiety just ripples through the system. [00:09:00]

Rob: The, uh, first time that you introduced this model to us, you then said, there’s two responses to, to all of this. And I remember the first time hearing it thinking, is that clinical?

Is that the, is that the clinical response? Because basically they are, uh, the first response is go ahead and share.

Jim: Anxiety makes you stupid. I’m always very quick to say, I’m not saying you’re stupid. I’m saying that anxiety does something to your brain that as the sense of threat goes up, your capacity to think goes down.

And when that happens, all your values and beliefs and convictions are over here. Here’s what I know about leadership, but I can’t get access to that. And so what you do is you do what you learn to do. We call it a first formation in your childhood and adolescence. You develop some habits that when you got anxious, when you didn’t feel safe, then you figured out how to survive, right?

You did conflict distance over under function or projection, and that worked for you as a kid, [00:10:00] right? You’re here, you’re an adult. That worked. Um, and, uh, and so, uh, and so, so when you get like this, then what happens is you revert to those deeply held habits that are just so deeply ingrained.

Eric: So, so in many ways, like when, uh, when we’re anxious, and again, we’re describing in many ways, anxiety is.

And na, it’s like a natural energy between people. It’s like it’s always going to be there. Uh, it’s just most of the time it’s invisible. We’re not seeing it. We’re not recognizing what’s going on. And what I’m hearing you say is that, that it’s almost like our fight or flight mechanism, right? Right. Is designed to save us, hijacks our higher brain functions.

Exactly. And prevents us from thinking clearly. I, uh, recently saw a study, um, uh, where they were saying that your amygdala. Not, not only where the, the source of your fight or flight sort of response, it also stores emotional memory. And when it is triggered, um, when that fight or flight is triggered four times faster than you [00:11:00] can blink, it’s already sending messages to your brain about what to do.

So we talk about like. We’re, we’re talking about this why? Because living richly is all about taking control of your life, deciding instead of drifting, choosing instead of coasting. But I think a lot of us get stuck in automatic behaviors and patterns where we’re just repeating basically childlike patterns, childhood patterns that we use, to your point, to survive in those moments.

And we’re repeating the same behavior now.

Jim: Yeah, what your brain does is exactly what you described. And in that nanosecond, what it does is it looks to the past and says, well, how have we responded to this kind of threat before? And seven to nine seconds before you can even register the threat. It’s pouring chemicals into your body to get you ready to do what you’ve always done, right?

And so if you can, if you can disrupt that, you have access to something. That you don’t have access to, like if you’re just on autopilot doing what you’ve always done. [00:12:00] Um. That’s the work and, and it’s the work. Like wouldn’t it be great if you could listen to a podcast like this and say, oh man, when I get anxious, I, I over function.

I’m gonna stop doing that. What, what would, did it be great if it was that easy? Right? Right. I’d write a book, get, we’d all get rich and, and move to Tahiti. Right. But there is this very important emotional intelligence work that has to be done. Where, first of all, you just grow your capacity to recognize, like you both described, some of the ways that you do that when if you, if you can’t recognize it, then you can’t disrupt it.

Once you can recognize it, you can begin to disrupt it. And again, it would be nice if you could just magically disrupt it. But those habits are the brain, just the way it functions, there’s work to disrupt it. And then that over a period of time. And at simultaneously, there has to be some clear sense of how I [00:13:00] want to show up.

Like if this, if this is a reactive response in my values and convictions and beliefs, if I were actually fully living out of those, how would I show up?

Rob: In your experience, so with your experience right now, when we, we, we kind of opened the show talking about we are, we’re in an anxious environment right now, as you mentioned, economically, politically, so many different ways.

How are you seeing it show up? Uh, and, and again, that response that it makes us stupid, uh, how is that, um, or act stupid? How, how does that, how is that showing up right now from your experience with all of the uncertainty that’s going on globally right now?

Jim: Well, I mean, I, I like at a, at a high generic level, what you see is a lot of reactive responses.

Rob: Yeah.

Jim: Yeah. I mean, whether you’re for our current president or not, how many times since they got started have they made some decision and then come [00:14:00] back and said, oops, that was just, that was just a, that was just an, a reactive response. Uh, and, and then. So, so then me and my friend see that differently.

And rather than recognizing that, we just see that differently. What we do is we react and make the other, the enemy. So you’re wrong and I’m right and you’re, I’ve, I’ve, I’ve got to somehow either overcome you or I’ve got to just get away from you. ’cause I can’t stand the being in the presence of those kinds of differences.

Rob: Yeah, I, you know, he said thinking, uh, in Canada here, one of the things right now is, you know, uh, by Canadian for sure, but also, uh, don’t travel to the states or anything like this. And, and, and I know Wendy and I, back in February when all of this was just starting, we had already booked a trip. I mean, we were heading to Florida.

We had some training we were going to, there was some, some family stuff we were doing. I was surprised at the number of people you go back to conflict as one of the, [00:15:00] uh, reactions to anxiety. The number of people who would wanna almost get into arguments with me, uh, on social media because we were going to Florida.

Right?

Jim: Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I, I think one of the things that’s always important to point out is going to Florida for you could be a reactive response. It could also be a principle decision. Right, right, right. If it, when it gets like this, you can’t get to your values. But if you can get back to here and ask, okay, if I’m living outta my guiding principles, outta my values, outta my beliefs, what would I do given these circumstances?

Uh, now you only, you know when it’s a guide, when it’s a reaction because that’s all internal, when it’s a re reactivity and when it’s, uh, when it’s principled decision making. But the point I wanna make is externally, it can look the same. Internally, if it’s reactive, that’s gonna be problematic. If it’s principled, that’s gonna give you a different outcome.[00:16:00]

Eric: Right, right. I, I mean, we’ve talked about this before and often when I explain this concept, uh, why it’s so important for leaders especially, um, uh, whether that’s in the world of business or, or elsewhere, uh, to be more aware of these dynamics and start by recognizing where it shows up in their own life is because the, the vast majority of us are too emotionally reactive.

Uh, right. So we, uh, and, and our, our, our frustration tolerance, uh, is far too low. So it means. It doesn’t take much for us to become frustrated. Frustrated, frustration is a form of anger, right? Life doesn’t show up the way we want it to. The easier we’re triggered and the more emotional we are, the less we’re going to access principled value-based decisions.

We’re just another domino, sort of in the chain of events that are falling into patterns of behavior that we’ve repeated many, many times before. If we can, as we work the do the work of becoming more present to this. And hopefully [00:17:00] become less emotionally reactive and more tolerant to frustration. We become a leader that is much harder to knock off center, so we’re able to access things that the average person can’t in moments where we really need to be thinking at a higher level.

Jim: Perfect. Exactly. And what you did was just gave expression to the second thing that we always say. One is, anxiety makes you stupid, or me stupid. And anxiety is contagious. Right? And so, so as the, as the leader of the organization, I like, normally I’m a gregarious, engaging guy, and you come into a meeting and I’m real quiet.

I’m, um, I’m distancing and that makes, and so people are going, Hey, what’s going on with the gym? And is it, is this a safe place today? And, and one of the, the long-term byproduct of that is that you don’t get your best decisions. Right. We, we try to figure out, so what is, what’s going on with the boss? What does he want me to do?

What does he need me to do? Or it, it, one of [00:18:00] the over-functioning patterns is, boss, I’m gonna do what you want me to do, I think is a stupid idea, and so I’m not gonna be very committed to it, but I’m gonna do it because it’s gonna make you happy. That’s an over-functioning response. Uh, and you can get the outcome of, if, I think it’s a bad idea, but I’m gonna like, do just enough to get it checked off my list.

Uh, and that’s just one example and sometimes it goes underground and it becomes, um, uh, the, the culture becomes one of cynicism and like it’s not safe here. And at a very, the bottom level it becomes toxic. And all of that is the, is is in the level of contagiousness. Uh, about about. Anxiety being contagious and about how much anxiety there is in the system.

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It’s time to stop reacting and start leading. Go to rhapsody strategies.com and let’s make it happen together. I mean, I, I’m, I’m hoping our listeners are finding this really interesting and fascinating. I, I wanna encourage those that are watching this right now, listening to this right now to think about the last time.

You did something, said something when you were emotionally reactive, only to live, to regret it. Decisions that were made, conversations that were had were after the fact. You were like, what the fuck was I thinking? Right? Exactly right. And uh, and I can tell you the person that remains more grounded. We’ll always win the argument, right?

And if there’s an argument to be won, if, if that makes any sense because they’re accessing something that in that moment you can’t. So we all find ourselves saying things, doing things, deciding things that often after the fact we find hard to explain. [00:20:00] But really what’s happening is that anxious response is taking over.

How does one, I remember you saying something. We, I use it, uh, uh, with my clients, but I want to hear it from the master himself, um, place as a person can look to start to get present to what their default responses are.

Jim: I think, uh, one of the things that I say when I’m coaching somebody is I want you to, I want you to learn the 2, 4, 2, there’s two kinds of anxiety.

There’s four ways it shows up. There’s two reasons I’m, it makes me stupid. It makes us stupid. Uh, I want you to, I wanna, I joke and say, I wanna call you at two o’clock in the morning and say, wake you up from a dead sleep. And seven, tell me what the 2, 4, 2 is. Third. Yes sir. Two kinds of anxiety, four ways it shows up, blah, blah, blah.

I don’t do that to like, for any other reason. Then information doesn’t transform. But if you don’t have the information, then you, you like. What this does is it gives language to naming a part of our experience. It [00:21:00] mostly operates at the, at the subconscious or unconscious level. I think that’s a beginning place.

I think a second place is to begin to create spaces where you can reflect on what happened. Like most of us just run through our day from thing to thing to thing to thing. And then at the end of the day, we go to bed and we can’t go to sleep because there’s all this unprocessed information. Uh, and so carving out time, and you don’t have to do this for your whole day, but like if every couple, if, if regularly.

Daily or every other day, you took a place where there was a breakdown, a conflict, something didn’t go the way that you wanted to. And, and when I’m coaching, I’ll say, okay, so if the options are conflict distance over into function or projection, what did you do? And sometimes there’s a, well, it could have been like when I ball up at a, at all the bed and, and you know, start crying.

Sometimes they, well, it could have been this, let’s think about that. Or it could have been this. But the more you do that, what you’re doing. So there’s this neurological principle that [00:22:00] says that neurons that fire together, wire together. That’s why your automatic response happens is they’ve been firing together for 20 or 30 or 40 or 50 years.

And so when you do that reflection after the fact, what you’re beginning to do is you’re beginning to plow some really hard ground, or you’re beginning to make some new brain grooves. And because your brain can’t often tell the difference between imagining. And actually having an experience, just imagining, I can see that I over functioned in that moment.

And then imagining if I had shown up outta my beliefs and values, how would I have shown up? You’re doing two things. You’re kind of applying some ground in the, in the gray matter, and the second thing you’re doing is you’re giving your brain experience with, oh. This is a possible response. And I’ve always thought that was unsafe, but maybe it’s not so unsafe.

And the more you do that, the more your brain begins to think maybe this is possible. And so, and then the third thing is, and this is like [00:23:00] the coda gras, the thing that like when you make a little progress, the thing that really makes change is when you show up anxiously in a relationship. We call it a do-over.

You go back to that person and you have a conversation that said, here’s how I showed up. It’s not the way that I wanted to show up. Here’s how I wish. Here’s what I wish I had said or not said. Here’s what I wish I had done or not done here, or here’s how I wish I had said what I said. And that’s like brain work on steroids.

The imagination is good work, but that’s like brain work on steroids. And the more you practice that with a kind of humility, you’re just growing your capacity to disrupt that automatic response and increasingly have the capacity to. Uh, respond out of your values and your beliefs. Yeah,

Eric: I absolutely love that.

It’s like the first part, uh, where you’re imagining it, that’s like a knowledge based exercise. Right? Exactly. We’ve exactly, we’ve got tremendous value because I’ve always said that you need, if, if you [00:24:00] knew what you needed to act differently, you’d. Probably be doing that already. Right? Exactly. Exactly. EE every client, and we’ve used this, we use this model.

You, you taught it to us, we embraced it. It’s been so helpful in our own personal growth journey. We use it with our clients. I, there’s never been a client that hasn’t said, oh my God, I never saw it like that before. That the, the, in the information alone is like all of a sudden makes the invisible visible.

And now at least I can label it. Uh, but there is nothing like, it’s like. If, if imagining is knowledge based practice is, I would call that wisdom. That’s where you’re putting the knowledge into practice, right? And, and,

Jim: yeah. And let me just add one more piece to that, that is at the heart of our work and heart of your work.

Let me make it a a, a pitch for you guys. Actually. Where you really make progress is you get some information, you go practice, and then you reflect with a coach, right? Like, you can reflect for yourself, but there’s some stuff going on in your brain that you, there’s some things you can’t see, you reflect.

So somebody comes to me and they’re, and, and they’re [00:25:00] telling me about an experience where they reacted. And I’ll ask questions like, so what was said that got you triggered? And what if you had said this and how would you like to have shown up? And that conversation, that safe conversation opens up some new self-awareness that I didn’t have in the moment.

And then we’ll say, so go back. Practice that, and that information practice reflection cycle, uh, is, is where you get the most bang for your butt.

Rob: The, the power of reflection, uh, shows up. Uh, we, we speak about it so often in so many different ways, uh, here with living richly, the power of reflection, uh, to trans, to really be a tool to transform how you think, how you act, all how you feel, uh, is so critical and yet is something that so many either don’t practice.

Practice or they want to avoid. And I, I think of when it comes to anxiety saying to somebody who’s gone through an anxious moment to reflect now on that [00:26:00] moment, in some cases they’re like, I don’t wanna relive it.

Jim: Right, exactly. Exactly. Right. And, and that’s exactly what we do. Yeah. And that’s why, that’s why, uh, the rabbi, uh, Edward Friedman says, uh, in one of his books, he says, if you’re gonna grow your emotional intelligence, you’ve gotta increase your pain tolerance.

Eric: Wow. Love

Jim: that. I don’t know anybody who wakes up in the morning and says, I hope I get to have some pain today. Right, right. Uh, and, and, and by letting it be in the, in, you know, in the, like in the rear view mirror makes it a little safer than in, in real time. But the more you do that in the rear view mirror, the more it becomes, you become conscious of it in real time and can, can respond in a different way.

Eric: Okay. So, um, I’m, I’m 54 now. Oh,

Jim: wow. He has gotten old. I’ve gotten old, haven’t I? You should, Jim.

Rob: There’s more gray in my view now, Jim, I was gonna say, you should see the gray in his beer. He, we have to Photoshop it out of every picture,

Eric: out of every picture, out of every video. Uh, we’re using AI to do that, thankfully.

[00:27:00] Clean me up at the, uh, uh, in Postproduction. I think, I think you were about 29 when I met you. I, I was, I was really young when we met, so we’ve known each other a very long time, but like. What would you say to someone? You were talking earlier about, you know, the, you know, neurons that fire together, wire together, those established patterns of thinking and behavior that go back for many of us decades that were established when we were very young in our first formation, those early years.

And then reinforced, reinforced, reinforced, um, uh, what would you say to someone, say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.

Jim: That’s just bullshit.

Rob: No, really. Could you, could you, no. Tell us what you really would like you to fair what you think about.

Jim: Well, when I, when I was in my twenties, you know what, what we all thought out of the neurosciences was that when you, that there was one stage of brain development for adults, and when you got to be 18, 20, 25, somewhere in there, you were fully formed.

And you might get wiser through life experience, but your brain never developed anymore. Today it’s [00:28:00] just common. And the neuroplasticity is a term that’s, you know, common in the, in the, uh, the, the, the cultural, uh, conversation. Some guys at Harvard, uh, Keegan and Lehey have written a couple of different books that talk about how there are three stages of brain development and everybody gets to the first stage, but there’s actually work that has to be done to get to the second and the third stage.

And the, and it’s the work we’re talking about. Uh, and so I would just say bullshit. It’s, it’s hot. I’m, I would say it’s hard. It’s hard to teach an old dog new tricks. I, I had a coaching call this morning with a guy who’s faced a really hard, uh, work environment, and one of the questions that I asked was, I said, so you’ve said that you know what you ought to do, but do you wanna do this?

Hmm. I said, I’m not like, I, I don’t have a dog in this hunt. If you say no, it’s okay. Like there are a lot of people that live their, their life at the first stage of brain development and they stay there all their lives and, and their life works out for them. But if you want to grow your capacity as a [00:29:00] leader, you’ve gotta do the, the brain development work that we’re describing here.

I mean, it’s one piece of what we’re describing. There’s one other thing that I wanna say, uh, and it is that all anxiety is not created equal. And so I grew up in a home with a lot of trauma. And we know so much about trauma today that we didn’t know. And so, uh, I, I think that’s a slower, more intentional and sometimes requires some additional, like, there’s the world of trauma therapy that’s out there today that sometimes somebody who’s really been, uh, I, I have a client that, uh, who, who was repeatedly raped by her father when she was like 9, 10, 11 years old.

She wanted me to coach her and I said, I’ll do that. But I wanna, I, you know my, I don’t give advice very often, but I have a counselor friend that I wanna recommend to you and I want, I want you to think about the possibility of doing some EMDR therapy, which is a form of trauma therapy, and do some of that so that you’ve kind of.

Clean some of that out and then come back and let’s do some of [00:30:00] this work together. And she’s actually, that was about a year ago, and she’s actually back here and we’re doing that. If you grew up in a home, um, even, even great homes, you know, parents, uh, have blind spots and do things that hurt us. And, and that, that all, I mean, uh, impact our, our development.

But depending on where you are on that continuum, uh, the, the more on the traumatization end, just the more challenging that work is gonna be. More intentional, you’re gonna have to be.

Rob: And I love that your, your reference in there because really what, when you first, uh, kind of came into the Rhapsody Circle, it was to teach us and to help us to understand family systems dynamics.

And, and, uh, I can’t help but think that getting a better understanding of how family systems dynamics affect anxiety or our response to an anxiety. I mean, they’re tied together so closely, are they not?

Jim: Family systems. So let’s be clear. Uh, family systems is a generic term. What we use is [00:31:00] what’s called Bowen Family Systems Theory.

Yes. It was named after a psychiatrist who lived in the fifties and sixties and seventies. Who, uh, who is everything that I’m saying to you, he articulated first. He’s the, he’s the one who said, when we have a problem in, in, in the family, what we do is we say, who’s the problem? And send them to the doctor or the psychiatrist.

Rob: Yes.

Jim: And he did a research project where he, uh, got eight families who all had schizophrenic children. Got them onto the National Health Institutes, built Houses housing on their grounds and studied the family. And what they discovered was if they focused on the anxiety on the schizophrenia of the child, actually symptoms went up.

But if they focused on the anxiety that was going on between the parents and got that to go down, symptoms went down. And so he was the one who named the four ways that Anxiety shows up. He’s the one who named the, uh, the, you develop the language that we use around two kinds of [00:32:00] anxiety. All of that is Bowen Family Systems Theory, and we have a, on our podcast, on our blog, on our website, we have a five part podcast series for anybody who’s interested in like a deeper dive into that conversation that they can find and, and listen to.

Eric: Yeah, absolutely. And we’ll put, uh, we’ll get that from you, that information from you, put it in the show notes. Uh, I mean, let’s face it, like we do this in business all the time. And, uh, it was Ray Dalio of Bridgewater fame. Uh, he made his fortunes in the world of finance, uh, uh, still a major influence in that world to this day.

But he talks about, he developed a simple model that in most organizations when, when in a, when a business is not achieving its goals or it’s not getting the traction that it wants, it needs to look at. The machine of the business itself and say, what’s going on here? And that machine he explains, is built on two legs and the leg on the left, he always illustrates it on the left, the leg on the left is the way that the system is designed, the design of the machine itself.

The other leg, the right [00:33:00] leg. He always, that one’s always on the right, is the people. He says, wise leaders, when things are not going according to plan wise, leaders don’t make the mistake of going right first. They don’t go down the right leg first and try to find someone to blame. They ask themselves, I wonder what it is about the design of our system, the design of our machine that’s contributing to this problem.

I know where you’re going, right? Well, listen. ’cause when we blame people, and, and so this is true, we do this, we do this in business, we do it in our lives. We look for someone to make the scapegoat. We look for someone to blame. And we may feel righteous. We may feel vindicated, we may feel, uh, uh, placated by blaming someone and putting it all on them.

But what we fail to do is we, we pass on our, we pass on our opportunity to evolve because we’ve not. Ask the wiser question first. What is it about the machine? What is it about the design? So in our personal relationships, we, again, we’re doing the same thing. Often [00:34:00] we’re looking for someone to label as the bad person.

Um, and we’re passing up on our opportunity to expand, evolve, learn, become more, learn more, say more, uh, because we’re doing the quick, we know we’re just looking for someone to blame. And again, anxiety is what’s often driving that.

Jim: Exactly, exactly. Uh, for North Americans to kind of have this, pull yourself up by your bootstraps mythology.

Uh, when I first heard, I think it was a little back, back when I was in graduate school that I, I, I read a book by Rold Ber, where he said, systems will do things that nobody in the system thinks is a good idea, was a person. It was the first time that I’d heard that we’re more shaped by the systems that we’re in than we are by our individual choices.

Wow. Uh, and so I, what I hear you saying is look at the systems first, the processes, the procedures, how to, you know, from a systems [00:35:00] perspective, uh, often the, the individual behavior is being driven by, like, I’m, I’ve got a client right now where they don’t have an accountability process for their, for their small company, and that shows up.

With employees who aren’t doing what they ought to do or who’re not getting good feedback about their work or not getting some performance improvement plan. And, and what this law owner has done four times now is fired guys because they couldn’t do the job. And I said, have you ever considered that your system is producing that outcome?

And he said, what does that mean? Right, right. And we talked about accountability as part a subsystem of the overall system and that that was missing. He began to like, he, he, he was coachable and he began to take that on and we’re, we’re in. We’re still in the middle of that conversation, but he’s doing the work.

And, uh, I think is, it’s, it’s, it’s shifting his understanding of the individual responsibility and the impact of a system.

Rob: I think it, I, [00:36:00] it, that’s why I love that you, the, the language around Bowen’s family system. We are so quick to, when we’re anxious or when everything is falling apart, to blame ourselves, to blame others, to go to people.

Here’s a system, another system that we need to look at and go, what about the system needs to be understood or fixed, uh, in how we show up, how our family dynamics, were all of those things that will help us, uh, get so much further along than, and if the reflection needs to happen, it’s reflecting on that in order to, rather than just right away blaming people, blaming myself, blaming the other people around me.

Yeah.

Jim: We have a, uh, on our, on our website, we have a, a, a document that uses the metaphor of two feet walking. And, uh, recently, Patrick, Len put out a little five minute video that says what we say in two feet, walking in five minutes. And what he says is that every organization has systems and, and, uh, that, that we would call smart [00:37:00] research, uh, uh, uh, RR and D finance.

Uh, uh, strategy, all that kind of stuff. And he said the other side is what we call health. And, and, and he says the research is, is showing increasingly that if you’ll work on the system and work on health, that it’s not an either or. It’s a both and, but what we tend to do is just work on this rather than working on both.

Eric: Let’s, um, I love that. Let’s, let’s talk about how this shows up at the personal level. Like we’re, we’re talking about leadership in organizations, but, uh, ’cause I think, again, our tendency is to Dalio’s point, his model was, um, a business type of analogy, obviously. Uh. But I, I think we do the same thing. As I mentioned earlier in our relationships, when things aren’t going right, we look for someone to blame, as opposed to ask ourselves the, the important questions of, I wonder how I am contributing to this issue.

I wonder if how I’m showing up is, uh, and I know that the hard work that I, uh, and I could, that I could [00:38:00] continue to do. ’cause my tendency was when things got. Tense, uh, like distance, uh, conflict not so much, but distance definitely, or overperforming were my defaults. Um, and the overperforming was off all often driven by, um, over blaming myself for what’s happening.

So taking all the blame, uh, in saying, well, if only I was a better person, if only I was a better father. If I was only a better husband, this wouldn’t be a ca if I was a better leader and I would then take on. More than I needed to, which didn’t help the problem either. You taught me a very important concept, and I believe you shared it with us when you were first on our show a while back.

I was looking back at old episodes when you, you were together with us, and so this is like your third time, I think, on the show. Um, so if you make it to five Jim and we’d let, I’m, it’s very likely to happen, you’ll get a special robe just like they do on Saturday Night Live. You’re very kind. Uh, it’ll be a bathrobe.

Yeah. [00:39:00] It’ll be definitely a bathrobe with a Canadian red maple leaf on it. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. And I’ll wear it proudly. Right, right. But you taught me this concept, the difference between being responsible to someone and for someone. Please talk to us about that.

Jim: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, so, uh, let’s go slow, uh, in a system.

What we tend to do when we get anxious is look, find a, a, a scapegoat and get that, fix that. Anybody who has real experience with actually changing any, trying to change anybody else, you can use your power and authority in an organization or as a parent to make somebody do something. But it’s compliance.

It’s not like them actually. So when you can shift from the problems out there to, the problem is in here, not like I’m a bad person, but like I’m contributing and I wanna see what I’m contributing. And, um, uh, when I can see what I contribute, I have a whole lot more impact on being able to take care of me.

I mean, make, make, make the change [00:40:00] that needs to be made. And so when I make change. Part of what’s so hard about changing systems is that even dysfunctional systems will push back and say, don’t do that sometimes violently in a family system. Uh, and so I began to make change and, and I can tell that you feel really badly.

You’re mad, you’re sad, you’re scared, uh, and what I wanna do is I wanna take care of you. I wanna fix that. And, uh, what Bowen Family Systems Theory teaches is, I’m not responsible for how you feel. And the first time I heard that as a guy who grew up in a Baptist church in South Louisiana, I mean North Louisiana, it was like, that is bullshit.

That’s nothing like I’ve been taught all my life, right? If you love Jesus, this is what you do. Uh, and but over time I came to believe that what was being said was true. And what helped me was to say, um, so. I’m not responsible for how you feel. [00:41:00] I’m responsible to you telling the truth, being aware of how the impact of my behavior, uh, learning to communicate in a way that is more helpful to you.

Another phrase that’s similar to that is, I care for you, but it’s not my responsibility to take care of you. It just made a world of difference in this over-functioner who would work 80 hours a week and, and ignore his family, and then come home and find out that things weren’t well with the family and start over-functioning there.

And you hear me say that was a 10 year change. It, it was not a quick change, but that’s the way that we say that is. I’m responsible for me being the best self that I can be. And the language that Bowen uses is I wanna define myself and stay connected, right? And so I define myself by by, by being authentic about what I think, what I feel, what I need.

And as calmly as you can. Like if you’re yelling what all of that, then that’s not very helpful. But if you can calmly [00:42:00] states that stuff and at the same time. Uh, I’m learning to stay connected. Well, I I’m not just doing deep listening to say back. So, Eric, what I hear you saying is, but I’m actually getting inside of your head and getting, uh, like a compassionate, empathic response.

And when I can hold those two. Intention is the most mature place to be, right. Most people will either define themselves at the expensive connection Yep. Or they’ll stay connected at the expense of, of, uh, of self definition. And so there’s this lifelong process if you know where you’ve got to get the one that’s not your go-to, you’ve gotta increase that.

Um, and all of that is about me being responsible for me and for my growth, and recognizing that my growth is gonna have impact on you. I’m responsible. But I’m not responsible for you. Absolutely

Eric: love that. Yeah. Um, I, I love and I, I, I’ve heard you talk about this stuff so many times. I’m always learning new stuff every time we chat about it.

And, and I’m [00:43:00] sure we could talk about this as we prepare to kind of, uh, bring the show to a close in a few minutes. I’d like us to come back perhaps to the current times that we’re living in. They are exceptional times. Uh, there’s an. We, we, we have never been more, more polarized, even here in Canada. The, the, the, the, the polarization is crazy.

Um, uh, the anxiety is an all time high. There’s fear in the markets, there’s anxiety in business. There’s all this apprehension about what’s taking place. What advice would you give just to any listener about how to better manage in all of this uncertainty?

Jim: Yeah, I try not to give advice, but I can tell you what I do.

I think there’s two things. One is in the same way that anxiety is contagious. Calm is contagious, and so the more calm, the more authentically calm I can be defining myself and staying connected. That, and particularly if I’m the leader, then wherever I have [00:44:00] influence that helps to calm the systems that I’m in.

I think the second thing, and this is the place that people get really anxious, Stephen Covey did this thing about circle of influence, circle of concern, uh, and like for me, I just have to remind myself today, I’m really concerned about what they’re doing in Washington. There’s two or three places that I have some influence, right?

I can, I can write a letter to my, I can vote, I can write a letter to my elected representatives. I can, I, I, I’ve, I’ve protested in the streets recently here in Houston, I’ve been in a peaceful protest. Those are the things that I have control over that I can do. What I’ve gotta do, and I’ve growing my capacity to do this, is not, uh, um.

What’s the word I’m looking for? Uh, dwell on all the stuff out there. That’s bad stuff and that scares me and makes me anxious, but I have absolutely no control over it. And so for me, it’s looking at my circle of influence and trying to be a, uh, an increasingly calm presence in those places where I [00:45:00] calmly define myself and stay connected.

Wow,

Rob: that’s so good. Uh, Jim, we asked this question the first time you’re on the show. We asked you this question to wrap up the, uh, the episode and it was around what does living richly mean for you? Uh, I wanna ask it again, but, uh, in the context of all that’s going on, uh, right now, this week, what does living richly, uh, look like for you?

Jim: I got asked this question, a similar question last night at a, at a meeting I was in. I, I think what living richly for me is, is grow just this ongoing journey of growing my capacity to be a wise, mature leader who has a capacity to define himself and stay connected, especially with people who see the world differently than I do.

Uh, it’s, we, we, we talk pretty regularly about. That being a developmental process, right? Uh, it can be hard for me to define myself and stay connected with somebody that I love. [00:46:00] Uh, and so I do that, and then I begin, I, I, I, I, I move to, here’s, here’s somebody who annoys me, and I start working on that. And then here’s somebody who actually disagrees with me, and I work on that.

And here’s somebody who actually. Uh, uh, uh, is opposed to me. And, uh, and so like for me, living richly is a lifelong journey of growing my capacity to be defined and connected even with my enemies, even with the hardest people in life, uh, to deal with outta my Christian faith. I think the apex of what Jesus teaches us is love your enemies.

And that’s not some, uh. Esoteric emotional feeling. It’s actually being able to be with them and respect them and be kind to them and listen to them without giving up myself. And I’ve been growing the, I’m 72, I’ve been growing that capacity all my life, and I’m still working on it. That’s what, that’s what it, uh, what it looks like to me.

Eric: Absolutely love that. Uh, Jim, thank you so much for being thank you on the show with us again. Uh, [00:47:00] uh, you continue to inspire and influence from afar. Uh, you’re so kind fans. We are big fans of yours, and we’re so glad that you’ve taken this time. Thank you for your influence in our lives, and, uh, we wish you all the best and, uh, living richly nation.

Thanks for tuning in again this week. I hope you, you’ve been taking all this in, uh, and asking yourself. How can I begin to apply some of this? I think putting your best energy towards the things you can control versus wasting a lot of your best energy on things beyond your control is, is a message that I think we can all take away from today.

Uh, so thanks for tuning in. We really wanna encourage you. We’re giving away a free, uh, guide. Uh, love this, uh, call strength under stress, how to lead without losing yourself, even if the pressure never stops. Uh, just you can download it by going to the link on the screen. Uh, it will also be in all of the show notes and the episode notes.

Uh, that’s a free resource that we’re making available to leaders, so make sure to avail yourself of that. And of course, go to Living richly.me where you can find out about our Facebook group, our the Living Richly Nation and the 15 Day Life Vision [00:48:00] Challenge. Thank you so much for continuing to support the show, and until next time, get out there and live your best life.