Jay Papasan:
I’m Jay Papasan and this is The ONE Thing, your weekly guide to the simple steps that lead to extraordinary results.
Hey there, ONE Thing friends and family, our readers, our listeners, thank you so much for being there every single week. And this week, you’re in for a treat. I get to interview Dr. Robyne Hanley-Defoe, who insisted I just call her Robyne on the interview. And in my mind, she’s now Dr. Robyne. But she is a behavioral psychologist. She’s authored numerous books. She’s written specifically about resiliency and stress.
And we dive in together and address all kinds of topics around resiliency and stress. And some of the highlights I want you to listen for is the 90-second rule, how 90 seconds can save you, I think it’s six to seven years of discomfort. 90-second investment will get you back six to seven years of discomfort. The when-then rule, which plays very much into our ONE Thing thinking. And how to prioritize work and life. What’s the difference between how we show up at work and how we show up at home? Those are just a handful of the topics, but this was rich. It was real. She’s an amazing, amazing teacher, and she speaks to her topics with authority. I hope you’ll enjoy it as much as I enjoyed recording it with her.
All right, Robyne, you’re an expert on resilience, on stress. And when we think about our audience, the achievers out there, maybe someone’s listening to this on their way into work or on their way to solve a problem for one of their customers, they struggle with juggling a lot of things while trying to focus on their ONE Thing. And I just feel like if we can teach them something in the next half hour about how to recognize and build resilience and how to decipher between good stress and bad stress, that would be a huge gift to them.
Robyne Hanley-Dafoe:
I would love to dive into that with you today.
Jay Papasan:
So, one of the big things I learned from your book is that resilience is something that we can develop. So, before we even walk into that, how do you define resilience? Do you have your own special definition?
Robyne Hanley-Dafoe:
Yes, the working definition I work with resilience is, it’s this idea about what are the sets of behaviors and habits that we can do to create our comebacks, our bounce-back. It’s recognizing that it’s an everyday practice of ways that we can show up and be able to navigate all the different parts in our lives.
Jay Papasan:
The word resilience, like in the roots, isn’t it like having to do with bouncing back itself? The idea of bouncing back, it’s just like actually married to the word.
0:02:35
Robyne Hanley-Dafoe:
Yes, absolutely. And I like to think of it as comeback. So, it’s this idea that something has taken us off our course, whatever that might be, personally or professionally. And it’s whatever we need to do to engage the capacity to keep showing up, that keep trying, keep moving forward versus getting stuck or quitting or walking away from our big, bright futures.
Jay Papasan:
I love it. In our book, we talk about a balanced life is a lie. And one of the most Instagrammed quotes in the book is actually by the author Patterson. And he talks about life is as you’re juggling these balls and there’s family, integrity, relationships, and work. And the big breakthrough is realizing that work is a rubber ball. If you drop that one, then it’ll bounce back and the other ones might shatter and be broken. Well, first off, do you agree with that sentiment, that some things are more resilient, areas of our life are more resilient than others?
Robyne Hanley-Dafoe:
Absolutely. And one of the things that we talk about is this idea that, especially when we look at that work and our ways of providing our lifestyle, our livelihoods, the reality is there’s this pressure that this is what it’s all about. We have to be able to be engaged, 100% responsive to our customers, to our clients. But the reality is that we are replaceable in that role. And there are a few sacred relationships that we are not replaceable.
And I even love when folks say to me like, “Oh, yeah, but it would take five people to replace me in what I do because I’m so important.” It’s like, “Great, but you’re not replaceable but to the people where you’re not replaceable to, those sacred relationships, those are the ones we have to make sure that we are nurturing and we are minds on, hearts on, hands on with because when we go into seasons of storm, or uncertainty, or big stressors or the unpredictableness, those are the relationships that are going to matter the most. Those are the people that are going to rally around us.
People are going to move to other options, other people to work with, there’s going to be other people that they can connect to, but to that, you’re so not replaceable to those sacred people. So, we want to make sure we’re showing up. So yes, I love that analogy of the rubber ball versus the glass ball.
Jay Papasan:
My coach, Jordan Fried, he’s quoting someone else, which I can’t remember to give credit, but he says, you’re going to disappoint people. Disappoint the right ones.
Robyne Hanley-Dafoe:
I always say if you’re ever in a position where you have to pick between work and your family, always pick your family. You will never regret picking your family. And if we continue to make the choices of I’ll pick my family when I get safer, when I hit this milestone, when I have this much security, whether we have these, because we have this illusion of these like financial milestones as security blankets, that like I’ll be able to be safe then, and then I’m gonna show up for my family. What we often see is that when you maybe do reach that pinnacle where you think you are “safe,” the family won’t be there anymore because we haven’t looked after them. And if you get to the top and you’re by yourself, you haven’t done it right.
Jay Papasan:
No, no. And I hear that phrase, you said, “I’ll do it when.”
Robyne Hanley-Dafoe:
Yes.
Jay Papasan:
A lot of people say, “I’ll be happy when.”
Robyne Hanley-Dafoe:
100%.
Jay Papasan:
And so, they’re chasing some sort of goal attainment as a proxy for actual happiness. And the reality is, “Oh, I’ll be with my family when.” It’s that they’re just gonna move the goalpost on themselves-
Robyne Hanley-Dafoe:
Always.
Jay Papasan:
… in their nature. So, you just have to be methodical about it, doing it along the way.
Robyne Hanley-Dafoe:
Yes. And we refer to that in, from a behavioral perspective, as the when then trap. When I get here, then I’m gonna be okay. When I lose these 10 pounds, then I’m gonna be happy with my body. When I hit this milestone or this list of best of, then I’m gonna feel satisfied and established. And the reality is, as I said, the goalpost keeps moving. And what it really speaks about is that notion where we’ll never have enough of what we don’t need. And so, we have this kind of sense of chasing and hustle, and we’re doing it in an essence to try and earn our worth.
Jay Papasan:
The when-then trap, I love that. And it’s so easy to remember too.
Robyne Hanley-Dafoe:
And so, when you say it, it’s great little data, and there’s no judgment or shame. It’s like when you notice yourself in that mindset, that’s this beautiful invitation to just pause and be like, “Oh, I’m not on that right track right now, and I’m gonna readjust, I’m gonna recalibrate to get back on the right track.”
Jay Papasan:
So, I guess if I was gonna try to get us back where we started, because I went right down a path, that was all on me, but I connect the dots. If resilience is something that we can cultivate, you’ve already taught us that one of the ways we can cultivate it is by nurturing those close relationships, however we define family, whether it be our actual biological family or those close friends and partners, that those are the people that will pick us up when we’re down. But if we aren’t there for them when we’re up, they may not be around later.
Robyne Hanley-Dafoe:
Yeah, beautifully said.
Jay Papasan:
Yeah, so how do we become more present in the moment to realize, because it’s so easy, like we’re in a really tough market, there is more change happening in the world in the last few weeks as we sit here recording this. So, we have all of this change happening and it feels like it’s happening to us. How do we get centered, and then focus on building that resiliency in relationships and also in ourselves?
Robyne Hanley-Dafoe:
Yeah. So, I think the kind of the super skill that will make the biggest difference, so people get the best return on their investment, is actually slowing down, which might seem a bit counterintuitive, but what we know is that when we slow down, it becomes smooth and then it can become fast. And the idea of having radical clarity, what matters most and making it matter most. And we can’t do that while we’re on autopilot. We can’t do that when we’re in a state of distress.
So, if you notice that we’re in a state of distress, which means those high levels of cortisol, everything feels urgent, everything feels like that scarcity mindset – I don’t have enough time. I don’t have enough clients. I don’t have enough opportunity – when we notice we’re there, so often people are like, “Okay, well, I have to find a supplement, a new program. I gotta read a book. We’re all one podcast away from saving ourselves. I just have to find the right one.” There’s a sense that the answer is out there somewhere.
And my invitation in that moment is just get to the shore. Don’t worry about all the other stuff. You just got to get back to a place where you feel safe and solid and well-resourced. And then, you can start problem solving. From a neurological perspective, the parts of our brain that we need to be able to help us problem solve, critically think, plan, organize, those parts of our brain are not being activated when we’re in distress. We’re in that very old reptilian part of our brain. So, that’s just this idea of we’re just trying to survive. So, my invitation to folks is slow down, just get to the shore, whatever your shore looks like where you feel safe. And then, you can make some really great choices from there.
Jay Papasan:
That’s fantastic advice and the language, all of that. I’ll just tell the listeners, I promise I did not feed you any of that. It came straight out of The ONE Thing, like you’re talking to our people. And the challenge I think they have is they don’t realize it when they’re in that fight, flight, or freeze kind of mode. They’re like, they’re juggling their customers’ complaints or they’re leading a big organization. How do we make space intentionally? Because I would imagine if we’re in that mode, we can’t think rationally to like say, I need space.
Robyne Hanley-Dafoe:
Absolutely, yeah. So, this is where, on a couple of different levels, first, I think it’s helpful to notice, yes, we know the fight and the flight is activated and protect the freezing, as you said, but there’s also the fourth that most people don’t talk about, which is the fawning phase, where basically we feel like we just placate to our lives, just feel like this is the way our lives are, there’s no way out of it, so I’m just gonna basically roll over this is the reality I’ve created, I am stuck. So, that we call the-
Jay Papasan:
Like the learned helplessness state.
Robyne Hanley-Dafoe:
Yes, the learned. It is similar to a learned helplessness. But what’s interesting, it’s a reflex. So, our bodies and our brains, we don’t get to decide if we’re going to fight our way through a difficult situation or we’re going to placate a fawn. Like our body decides that this is what it’s going to do. And what I see is people are just in this repetition of this fawning response where they feel like, again, that there’s nothing they can do that’s going to make a difference. Where the reality is, there’s a lot of things that we can do to soothe that nervous system to get us back to a place of feeling well-resourced.
So, how do we do that? Number one is we need to have very good people around us. We need to have those trusted allies who can point out our blind spots and say, “Hey, do you know what? I noticed you’ve missed two of your son’s basketball games in a row. Don’t do that.” They call us out. And I think right now everyone is just, you know, they’re so blinded by their own circumstance that they’re not necessarily looking out for each other. But when you can create even just that one person that checks your blind spots for you, whether it’d be a partner, whether, again, a friend, or anyone who’s helping you stay in alignment with your values, all of the other behaviors are gonna fall into place.
Jay Papasan:
I love that. We have some kind of modalities for that in our culture here in KW and also around The ONE Thing. We talk about, you can have a peer partner. So, a practice partner. Just like going to the gym, because they’re waiting on you, you’re so much more likely to go.
Robyne Hanley-Dafoe:
Of course.
Jay Papasan:
And we call that peer partnership. And at the highest frame, we say, get a coach, or a therapist, which can be a mental coach in a different sense, to kind of call us out when we’re misbehaving.
Robyne Hanley-Dafoe:
Yeah, absolutely.
Jay Papasan:
I was going to say, you gave me another tool. I wasn’t aware of the fawning thing. So, just like when I think about our audience with that rollover, like I hear the language, I’ve been knocked overboard, we’re going through the rapids and I’ve been knocked out of the boat. That kind of helplessness we feel when we’re being swept through the rapids, that’s what I associate with that.
And the other half of them just put on their gloves and they go straight to fight. Like, those are their two instinctive postures that it’s out of my control, there’s nothing I can do, or I go to the fight mechanism. So, I interrupted you. I just wanted to call that out because that resonated for me, that extra, I don’t know, the alliteration, the F word that we get to use.
Robyne Hanley-Dafoe:
Absolutely. And that’s the F word that’s the effort that’s getting us in a whole whack of trouble right now, because we’re giving up our power and our control to make better choices. And it’s not the idea that we have to have everything figured out. It’s like, what is the next right choice? So, when we notice that all of a sudden we’re just like, “Oh, this feels like I’m stuck. It feels like I have too much responsibility. I have too big of a team to try and reimagine how I can show up in my life,” that just knowing that that is just a survival mechanism to try and get you through a season but we are ultimately, we’re the thinker, we’re not the thought.
So, we’re able to pull that back. And then, we can start working with knowing our controllables and deciphering our controllables, what is within our control and what is outside of our control and put our energy and our agency back where we do get to have a say in how we live these lives.
Jay Papasan:
Have you built or do you coach people to build rituals of quiet time? Because that’s a big thing for us. We focus on habits. Can we build the habit of like a little thinking time into our weeks so that we get that space? We wrote a line in the book that we’re constantly under stress, we’re going from task to task to task, we make decisions like people in horror movies. We run up the stairs and into the bathroom instead of out the front door. Is that actually true? I mean, that’s what I observe, is that under stress, we make really bad decisions.
Robyne Hanley-Dafoe:
Terrible choices. Yeah, the lizard has the wheel, literally, and they just wanna stay warm and not die. That isn’t the type of thinking that we want to get us out of those situations.
Jay Papasan:
That language of the lizard brain and all of that reminds me of parenting, like when your children are having tantrums, like, how do we coax them up into the prefrontal cortex?
Robyne Hanley-Dafoe:
Oh, exactly, absolutely.
Jay Papasan:
And so, we have to learn that either by building space. The other tool you gave us is having relationships to pull us out, to pull us to shore if we can’t get to shore ourselves. So what kind of rituals do you coach people to build?
Robyne Hanley-Dafoe:
Yeah, I love this question. There’s so many. And as a behaviorist, one of my positions is that the habits we have create the quality of our life. So, the habits that you have, like if you tell me your habits-
Jay Papasan:
The habits you have create the quality of your life.
Robyne Hanley-Dafoe:
100%. So, you tell me your habits, you tell me your top five habits, and I’ll give you a really good idea of what your life’s like.
Jay Papasan:
Heck yeah.
Robyne Hanley-Dafoe:
And again, so if your habits are a really dialed-in morning routine, after getting a good night’s sleep. Like when they talk about, “Oh, winners wake up at 5 a.m.,” well, you better go to bed at 8:00. Like, you know, like it’s just this kind of misconception about some of those grab pieces in our culture about quick fixes. But again, if you get a good night’s sleep, and that’s a habit, you care about your sleep hygiene, and then you wake up, and you have a few minutes of quiet reflective time, you make sure that you know how to make what matters most matter most.
And you get some fresh air, you get some daylight on your face in the morning. Even if it’s cloudy, the sun is still out there behind those clouds. Like, if you have these rituals and those routines, it’s going to change the trajectory of your day. If you start in the morning, and you wake up, and you’re exhausted, and you’re tired as tired, and first thing you do is grab a device, and you’re playing with some dirty digital dopamine, like that’s gonna set the course of your day.
So, I’m a big advocate of having habits that are so simple that they create this predictability in what your day looks like. And it’s also interesting too, Jay, because we know having good habits or habits that serve us, when things are going well, they’re easy to sustain. Like when things are going well, it’s like, yeah, I can wake up, I can do my morning ritual, I can do journaling, I can do all these things. It’s like, when your life goes to hell in a handbasket, where are your habits? What do we fall back on? So, again, encouraging people to get really transparent with what habits work for them that they can do consistently, because consistency is what compounds where you’ll get your better return.
Jay Papasan:
We like to say, find your intensity and your consistency. That people underestimate the value of just showing up a little bit every day over time. And it’s digging those deep, kind of, mental grooves in our behavior. So, like when we’re in the kind of panic that lives in their brain mode, we are gonna fall into our automated behaviors a lot of times.
And if those are things that we’ve programmed to serve us, then we’ve kind of done an end around on the panic mode. We’re gonna go to that place. And so, like everything you just said, sleep, morning rituals, like the most impactful habit we’ve ever curated among our listeners and our communities is goals before phones. As in that morning time, before we fall into our inbox, which is like a little time machine, you go in and you never know what time you’re going to come out. And social media is even worse. To just take a look at, what do we actually say yes to? And that kind of armors us, gives us a shield to carry into the rest of the day to start saying no to everything else.
Robyne Hanley-Dafoe:
Absolutely.
Jay Papasan:
I love it. Like you’re coaching people, like a foundation of sleep, so that our brain’s actually working for us.
Robyne Hanley-Dafoe:
Absolutely.
Jay Papasan:
And then some morning rituals to lay a foundation. Anything else that you would throw out there?
Robyne Hanley-Dafoe:
So, I think one of the biggest, kind of, pieces I would just caution with what can we do, and especially because there’s so much noise around that right now, is a lot of times there’s, again, hype cycles where we think we ought to be doing and we should be doing all these other things.
Like my favorite one I recently heard is somebody reached out on social media and said, “Hey, Robyne, what’s your take on hydrogen water? Should I be drinking it?” And I had this moment to pause. And I’m like, “Okay. Do you know what’s water made out of? The hydrogen’s already in there.
Jay Papasan:
H2O.
Robyne Hanley-Dafoe:
The H is already there and you can’t put more H’s into that molecule. So, again, being careful that we’re so… distress is so relentless right now that people are in a place of feeling really desperate and they just want it to go away. They just want somebody to fix it for them. The reality is there’s a lot of that noise. So, we want a strategy to kind of make that idea of getting through with some clarity. So, what’s going to make the biggest difference?
And the first kind of area that we can start with, that is stop stepping over $100 bills picking up pennies. Like literally we are scattered pennies right now on social media, what we should be doing, ought to be doing. We’re literally looking at a room full of pennies on the floor and there’s also $100 bills and people are stepping over $100 bills to pick up pennies because they’re not doing the basics. And the basics will give us the best return, whatever that is for you.
Jay Papasan:
I love that. And that’s the 80-20 that we preach, right?
Robyne Hanley-Dafoe:
Yes.
Jay Papasan:
They’re looking for all these little efficiencies and ways to optimize, and they’ve not actually done the thing to make themselves effective. But we’re gonna go a little deeper on this after the break. We need to take a quick break and we’ll be right back.
So, you look up and people are chasing, I call it fad surfing. I don’t know who originated that.
Robyne Hanley-Dafoe:
Yes, I love that. That’s good.
Jay Papasan:
Because for me, it was the cold plunge and then the sauna and all the things. And a lot of it, like we wrote in the book about truthiness. And these things that sound really true because they have partial facts built into them, but they’re all part of this silver bullet, kind of, syndrome where we’re looking for little silver bullets to take the hard work off. Hard work on the fundamentals, like, it’s just really, it doesn’t even have to be hard if we make it a habit.
Robyne Hanley-Dafoe:
Exactly.
Jay Papasan:
Like, are we just kind of getting in our own way when we’re chasing all these things?
Robyne Hanley-Dafoe:
100%. But I think it’s so helpful to recognize is that when we’re in a place of distress, we lose our capacity for critical thinking. We’re actually cognitively impaired when we are in a place of chronic stress to be able to make wise choices, which is why we need a brain trust of persons to say, “This is what we wanna be looking at.”
So to kind of think about, okay, what does that even look like? What could we be doing? The research shows, for example, that 7,000 steps a day, like if we can walk 7,000 steps a day, rain, shine, sleep, doesn’t matter what it is, consistently walk 7,000 steps a day, which works out to be a 30-minute walk and your regular movement, Jay, it decreases all cause mortality by 60%. Like we can take all the things, all cause mortality is basically everything that’s gonna kill us, and we can take away 60% of those risk factors if we just walk 30 minutes a day.
Jay Papasan:
I love that. And like, it’s good for your emotional health. I was sharing with a friend of ours, Anne-Laure Le Cunff, she’s runs Ness Labs, and she’s doing an experiment on 20-minute walks every day. And me and one of my coworkers have been doing 15 minutes. And we already get exercise but just getting up when you’re, like, in front of a Zoom and computer and moving your body.
Robyne Hanley-Dafoe:
Absolutely.
Jay Papasan:
It just kind of is a reset, it’s a massive reset.
Robyne Hanley-Dafoe:
Yeah. And I love this practice that we call habit stacking, where, so for example, you go for a walk or if I notice, for example, I’m starting to feel a lot of emotion, because we know emotion, if we tend to it, other than grief – grief is a separate emotion that we talk about. We always have to give that as our little kind of grief to the side – all other emotion lasts in our body approximately about 90 seconds if we process it in real time. If we don’t, there’s research that suggests it lasts for up to seven years.
So if you’re in a meeting, let’s say, and like a Zoom call and all of a sudden it doesn’t go well and you feel angry and you just jump to the next call, physiologically, that’s going to linger in your body for a very long time, which eventually-
Jay Papasan:
Wow. That pay me now or pay me later thing-
Robyne Hanley-Dafoe:
Exactly.
Jay Papasan:
… is, like, with giant, like, horrible interest rate on it.
Robyne Hanley-Dafoe:
Exactly. So if I know-
Jay Papasan:
90 minutes versus seven years?
Robyne Hanley-Dafoe:
Seven years, 90 seconds.
Jay Papasan:
90 seconds.
Robyne Hanley-Dafoe:
It’s 90 seconds. So, if you just, all of a sudden, got a piece of information and now, all of a sudden, you’re feeling angry or scared, or perhaps feeling a bit sad, if we just like take that emotion, and even just if it’s sadness, like even just like take 90 seconds, just breathe, hold our heart, and be like, “Yeah, that hurt, that’s disappointing, I’m scared or I’m sad,” whatever it is, and then 90 seconds, then move on, we’ve actually processed it, or what we call digested, essentially, those molecules of those emotions.
However, if we hold it and don’t process it, that’s going to start causing all of these health issues, which is why we’re seeing massive insurges of mental health and emotional health. And there’s lots of other factors, but that’s one that is within our control that we could think about. Or let’s say you notice you’re worrying.
Jay Papasan:
Is naming it important like you just said?
Robyne Hanley-Dafoe:
Yeah, 1000%. Absolutely.
Jay Papasan:
Okay. Why is that important?
Robyne Hanley-Dafoe:
Well, I think what happens is, you know, when you ask somebody, how are they feeling, and they say, fine, tired, good, and busy, none of those are actually emotions. Those are all just behavior states or outcomes. So, how are you feeling? Well, we know that there’s the four predominant, which is this idea of glad, sad, afraid, or mad. And we’re all variations. We’re feeling factories off of that for all intents and purposes.
So again, if I notice all of a sudden I feel angry, and what does anger do? It wants to push whatever it is away or break through. So, if I literally just push my keyboard away, and stand up, and just again roll my shoulders, take a sip of water, just take that 90 seconds to let it dissipate, and then move on, I’m going to have so much more reserves at the end of the day because my body’s not trying to catch up with all that emotion.
Jay Papasan:
It sounds like we all need to get a watch with a second hand.
Robyne Hanley-Dafoe:
An analog. Can you imagine? Like literally like-
Jay Papasan:
Well, even my little digital Apple, I got one that I have to wake it up every 15 seconds, because it goes away. You’re making me… when I was in college and graduate school, one of my thesis advisors was a writer named [Emil Doctorow?]. And he saw me rolling a cigarette because I was in that phase of my life.
Robyne Hanley-Dafoe:
I love it.
Jay Papasan:
And he said, I gave that up. Do you want to hear how? And I was like, sure. And I was kind of curious about quitting. I kind of knew that this was something I needed to give up. And he said, “Whenever you want a cigarette,” just ’cause I had a watch, he goes, “Look at the hand of the watch. And I’ve found that if you can wait 60 seconds, the urge is gone.”
Robyne Hanley-Dafoe:
Yeah, surf the urge.
Jay Papasan:
So he said 60, he’s probably, he’s not a scientist.
Robyne Hanley-Dafoe:
There you go.
Jay Papasan:
But that same thing, I’ve just waited out just a little bit.
Robyne Hanley-Dafoe:
Surf the urge.
Jay Papasan:
Yeah.
Robyne Hanley-Dafoe:
Yeah. And if I can add a piece there-
Jay Papasan:
Surf the urge
Robyne Hanley-Dafoe:
Just surf the urge.
Jay Papasan:
I gotta call out these little memorable phrases. I like that.
Robyne Hanley-Dafoe:
We call them Robyneisms in my little landscape where I just, I think I make up words.
Jay Papasan:
The when-then trap.
Robyne Hanley-Dafoe:
So, on that notion, and this is one that I find so helpful for people. There is nothing wrong with the impulse. You have no control of our impulses. And I’ve done this even with my boys when they were little, there’s nothing wrong with the impulse to punch your brother in the face, it’s what you do with the impulse that’s gonna matter. So again, you have that impulse to, whatever that be, again, that urge for a drink, a cigarette, whatever it is, or to shoot off a nasty email or just in frustration and fear, if we just like notice the urge, like, “Wow, I would really like to throttle that person, but I’m choosing to lean into calm because I know that’s a better strategy.” That’s what winners do.
Jay Papasan:
You at your son’s basketball game when they’re yelling overrated.
Robyne Hanley-Dafoe:
Yeah, actually earlier today, I walked into my boy’s basketball game and there was hundreds of people screaming at my son chanting overrated. And he’s not, by the way. Anyway, that’s a non-biased mama opinion. But in that moment, I-
Jay Papasan:
He’s on the national team, so he is rated.
Robyne Hanley-Dafoe:
There you go. So, he’s playing U-ball, he’s having a good go with his ball. But I remember that moment being like, “I am not involved enough to handle the situation.” And so again, even just recognizing our limits, right? I was like, “I am not involved enough as a human to be able to manage this.” So I had to distract myself, which is where technology’s for good, right? I started texting some friends, started scrolling, using it for good because I realized if I sat in this big motion and marinated in my misery of what that felt like, it wasn’t gonna serve me well. I was gonna make poor choices.
Jay Papasan:
And you might embarrass your son too.
Robyne Hanley-Dafoe:
Wildly, wildly. I can only imagine.
Jay Papasan:
I keep coming back to this theme, and I probably wanna end there when we get to the end of this about, because you just went to it again, is so many of the people that are leading organizations, they feel like they have to do it alone. That if they’re feeling that emotion, they feel like the appropriate response is to compartmentalize it. And they’re gonna put it in a little bottle. I didn’t know that was like a little, gosh, like you’re putting it in the ocean and it’s not gonna be found for all of those years later.
So, compartmentalizing and doing it alone are two things that we kind of instinctively go to that are absolutely wrong. We should address it in the moment. It just takes 90 seconds. I mean, you could just excuse yourself. It’s like, “I’m sorry, I need to run to the men’s room real quick.” You can fake whatever you needed for 90 seconds to address it. And also lean on other people. Who are your safe people that you can turn to and be vulnerable with? What’s the key to those relationships? I just feel vulnerable out there.
Robyne Hanley-Dafoe:
I love that question. For leaders especially, we have to ensure when we’re practicing vulnerability, because right now that’s kind of a bit of a practice that folks are talking about. Like leaders have to be vulnerable. We want to be vulnerable with the right people in the sense of, not everyone deserves your whole story. You don’t have to pour everything out to everybody. When you are talking to your team or your group, you want to make sure that what you are sharing is something that you have brought full circle and processed. Don’t share an active issue or an active problem.
So, if you’re in the middle of your own messy divorce, this isn’t something that you’re gonna table at your team huddle. If you, for example, like you said, “Hey, I navigated quitting smoking when I was in college or university,” great. That’s probably really far behind you, which when you talk about it, it isn’t triggering, it isn’t upsetting, and there’s wisdom to be data-mined from that. So, share with your team what it is that you’ve already processed. And that’s where we’re going to get really good traction because you’re showing solution. We’re not in the middle of the season.
When you are with those people, though, your chosen people, that we call like that allyship, your inner circle, that’s where you get to say like, “Hey, I’m not sure what’s my next right move,” or “You know me really well. What would you say as my coach, as my friend, as my GM,” so to speak, “what should I be thinking about, what should I be doing?” And another little practice I actually-
Jay Papasan:
What’s so funny is everybody’s using those kinds of prompts with, like, ChatGPT, but not with their close relationships.
Robyne Hanley-Dafoe:
Absolutely.
Jay Papasan:
Like, would you play the part of my coach for a second?
Robyne Hanley-Dafoe:
Exactly, 100%. Or as somebody who tends to move quite quickly through the world. I know in my own relationship with my husband, I’ll say once, like I actually have it kind of marked on the calendar to say, “What have you been trying to tell me for the last 30 days that I haven’t heard?” Like, what have you been trying to get into, like, on top of my-
Jay Papasan:
So, you’re feeling courageous in that moment.
Robyne Hanley-Dafoe:
Oh, 100%, right? And at first I was like, “Oh, you’ll have nothing to give me there.” Like, this is going to be a quick conversation. There’s always something, right? There’s always something. So, what have you been trying to let me know that I haven’t seen?
And another gentle invitation for our leaders is when somebody comes to you and their teammate is going through it, or they’re kind of going on in a situation, to just pause before they even start to ask them, what’s my role right now? Do you want me to listen, offer advice, or intervene?
Jay Papasan:
Yes.
Robyne Hanley-Dafoe:
Listen, offer advice, intervene. And when we worked with leaders to use that dialogue, the vast majority of people that came to them, whether it be through text, email, or chat, whatever, yeah.
Jay Papasan:
Listen.
Robyne Hanley-Dafoe:
Listen. And would you like to know what we would do 90% of the time?
Jay Papasan:
We want to go right in on our white horse and save the day and give them the answer.
Robyne Hanley-Dafoe:
Yes, save the day. We do. Even to the point, while they’re telling us their problem, we’ve already solved it. So, now, we’re just being polite because we’ve already reloaded our response. So, we’re just being polite, waiting for them to stop talking. And then, we’ll give them the solution, which means we actually aren’t listening anymore. Slow down.
Jay Papasan:
I had a friend that was doing improv, and he called that rehearsal dropout.
Robyne Hanley-Dafoe:
Yes. Love that.
Jay Papasan:
It’s where you’re having a conversation, and you can tell the person stopped listening to you, because they’re just waiting for their chance to talk.
Robyne Hanley-Dafoe:
Exactly.
Jay Papasan:
And we all recognize it when it’s happening. We don’t always recognize it when we’re doing it.
Robyne Hanley-Dafoe:
So true.
Jay Papasan:
So, active listening as a skill in leadership. I want to go, and this is me being vulnerable too, but there’s this idea of a lot of the people who build businesses, some of those relationships outside of their immediate family, they may have neglected. I think teaching them how to be vulnerable and when to be vulnerable with their teams is important. But if I’ve looked up and I’ve been building my empire for the last five years, and my village has not been cultivated for a long time, how can I reach out to those people and start that over again? How do I do a reset?
Because those relationships feel like they would be incredibly important. I know a lot of our leaders are parts of masterminds. They go find peers for that reason. How would you coach them, “It’s not too late,” I hope that’s the answer.
Robyne Hanley-Dafoe:
Yeah, it’s never too late.
Jay Papasan:
And go re-engineer. My coach says, “We’re going to re-engineer the village.”
Robyne Hanley-Dafoe:
I love that way of saying that re-engineering. To me, it’s all about relationship repair. prepare. And I look at it that we can’t necessarily repair the village all at once and we’ll want to go in with that high urgency to fix it all and get everybody back on track.
Jay Papasan:
All at once.
Robyne Hanley-Dafoe:
All at once. It’s literally one choice at a time. It’s one person at a time and even just to be able to say, you know, “I recognize that I didn’t show up how I would have liked to have showed up. I want to be able to respond to you better than I would have last year. And in this moment, is that something that you’re open to entertaining?” And if they’re like, “No,” great, move on to the next person. Don’t let that perturb you, but give the person the option, do they want to buy back in emotionally?
Because we have a relationship currency, right? We have a currency of investing in people in that return, and it needs to be reciprocated. So, what I encourage people to do is make sure that the people want to rebuild with you, because you can put a lot of energy chasing, basically doing CPR on a dead relationship. And so, ask for consent. Do you want to get this back on track? And if they say no, walk away. You did your part.
Jay Papasan:
You started with something we really value in The ONE Thing, which is, we call it accountability, but ownership of your part. It’s like, you started with, “I know I haven’t been there when I should have been.” And I found, kind of, like listening instead of going straight to the answer, it’s kind of like part of the magic formula-
Jay Papasan:
It’s the dance.
Robyne Hanley-Dafoe:
… to bring people back to the table, because what you’re doing is like, I see how I probably made you feel and I’m going to take ownership of that. And now I’d like to come back to the table and see if we can kind of reset the relationship.
Robyne Hanley-Dafoe:
Yeah, absolutely. That’s exactly what it is.
Jay Papasan:
I feel like I could talk to you for like 10 hours. I would love for you, if you would, our listeners each week, we try to give them a challenge, like a small bite-sized challenge for them. So, based on what we talk about today, what’s a 5 to 30-minute kind of challenge you could give them to try to take action on what we’ve been talking about between now and the next episode?
Robyne Hanley-Dafoe:
I’m going to actually give them an invitation that’s even simpler than that, if it’s okay.
Jay Papasan:
Oh, I love small dominoes.
Robyne Hanley-Dafoe:
One of my favorite practices, because what we’ve talked about at one way or another is all about connection. It’s about seeing the person in you and me seeing you seeing me. My invitation…
Jay Papasan
And not seeing ourselves.
Robyne Hanley-Dafoe:
Exactly.
Jay Papasan:
I mean, like, what is it I’m feeling right now?
Robyne Hanley-Dafoe:
That’s right.
Jay Papasan:
Yes, connection to ourselves and others.
Robyne Hanley-Dafoe:
Yes, it’s all connection. Yeah, self and other. And one of my favorite practices, and I’ve done this with my kiddos since they were little, and it’s inspired by Toni Morrison, which is when you reunite with your loved ones. So, when you come home from work today and you see those faces, or you see your team, or even your client, I just want your face to light up. Just have your face light up to be so excited to see the people that are in your life right now.
And as I said, I’ve done that with my boys and I did that just recently, and my daughter as well, my family, but just recently, yeah, Jax came home and he had a teammate with them, and I stopped what I was doing because I heard them, and I went to the door and I welcomed them back at home, and I got their updates, and we just had a little chit chat. And as the boys went around the corner, the friend said to Jax, he’s like, “Gosh, your mom is like the golden retriever of mothers. Like she just gets excited to see you.” And Jack says, at 16 years old, he says, “I love what it feels like to come home.” And if we’re doing that right, everything else is going to work out.
Jay Papasan:
Wonderful. Thank you so much for sharing with us today.
Robyne Hanley-Dafoe:
You’re welcome, Jay. Thanks for having me.
Jay Papasan:
Well, that’s it for this week’s episode. I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Dr. Robyne Henley-Defoe. I certainly still think about it months and months later, and I hope you will too. Next week, I hope you’ll tune in again. I’m going to do a solo episode. And for the last 150 weeks, I’ve been writing a newsletter called The TwentyPercenter and building an audience. I want to share the 16 and a half lessons I’ve learned around building an audience and I think those are gonna apply to whether you’re building it in a newsletter, on YouTube or some other platform. I think you’ll find the lessons are universally applicable to audience building in general. How do I build an audience for my message for my business? I’ll see you next week. You don’t want to miss it
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