A Secret to Rise Above Microstress

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Robin Dunbar popularized the idea of the Dunbar Number. You’ve probably heard of it. It’s the hypothetical number of people we can manage to maintain at any given stage of life. There are roughly 500 people we might recognize in the grocery store and smile and say hello, 100 we would invite to a wedding, 50 to a party, 12-15 over for a barbeque, 5 we call close, and 1.5 we will confide in. 1.5 because women often have two, and men frequently have one.

It turns out that if we can strengthen the relationships with the 500 more tangential people in our lives, we can build resilience to the micro-stressors in our lives.

You know what stress is. Stress is your partner loses their job, your child gets sick, you get a cancer scare. Or your house burns down. Sorry, that was a bit extreme. But extreme is often what we think when we think of stressful events. We overlook the micro-stresses in our everyday lives.

Microstress is a last minute edit from your client on the project that’s overdue. It’s realizing no one is picking up the boys after soccer practice, and you might have to rush over to transport six kids around town. It’s when your screen sharing app fails in the middle of your presentation. It’s when you can’t find your keys and you’re already late for the interview.

Microstressors are small, often overlooked stress-inducing events or interactions that occur in everyday life. They may seem insignificant on their own, but their cumulative effect can be substantial.

Because here’s what happens next: The 1st degree stressor is you pick up the assortment of kids at practice, and run around town for 40 minutes, yet then discover you don’t have the right ingredients for the meal you planned. You had an enjoyable evening of cooking planned with your family. So this makes you irritable, and you inflict a 2nd degree stressor on your partner with those vibes. The 3rd degree impact is you stay up late to work on the client’s last-minute changes, which disrupts your sleep, so you skip your morning workout. Not to mention the somewhat alarming emails you imposed on your colleagues at 10:30pm. So it goes.

“I’ve been just trying to get through this week for the past two years.”

Where Does Microstress Come From?

Miscommunication, tech glitches, interruptions, decision fatigue, social media notifications, and so on, all provide cumulative micro-stressors throughout the day, which impact you and everyone you interact with later. And these are just the stressors that affect your personal productivity. Rob Cross and Karen Dillon, authors of The Microstress Effect: How Little Things Add Up–and What to Do About It, also identify those kinds of stressors that deplete our emotional reserves such as toxic people or a constant impulse to care for the well-being of others.

And there are the microstressors that challenge your personal identity such as being asked to do tasks that don’t align with your values, or attacks on your personal identity or self-worth. Here’s a diagnostic tool to try to help recognize where it’s coming from.

How Do You Combat Microstress?

When we think about overcoming difficult moments in life, we often think of the personal attributes, or fortitude, people possess. It’s true that mindfulness, intentional breaks, exercise, healthy diet, and adequate sleep are all quite effective at alleviating stress and promoting well-being. Definitely do those things, but also recognize that they are personal, often isolated, and subject to our own willpower, discipline and habits.

But if you ask people the role of others to overcome adversity, you get different answers. It’s not just close friendships that matter, but a variety of relationships, especially those formed around shared interests such as cycling, religion, singing, tennis, or activism. These connections often involve individuals from different professional, socioeconomic, educational, or age backgrounds, enriching our lives with authentic interactions and broadening our perspectives. The activity itself feels like the primary pursuit – your exercise class, book club, or volunteer group – but the hidden benefits of these social interactions are surprisingly powerful.

In their research, Rob Cross and Karen Dillon point to these social groups to provide the strength to “rise above” microstressors in our lives. Specifically these social groups provide empathy, perspective, humor, and help us see a way forward – all in a way that closer ties, such as involved colleagues or family members, might not recognize because of their proximity to the stressful event.

Go join a singing group. Yes, a singing group. Robin Dunbar claims that the combination of endorphin release and speed-to-friendship made singing clubs the most effective means to create a sense of belonging and community. He found similar results with dancing groups and rowers.

So there you go. Put yourself out there.

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We just released a new series of courses on Embracing Curiosity for Career Growth. It includes valuable ideas how to overcome the small obstacles and micro-stresses that slow us down. You can find our catalog of high-impact courses here. And if you want something more tailored, you can learn about our custom work here.

My book Small Acts of Leadership, is a Washington Post bestseller! You can grab a copy here. And if you want to learn to apply some of these ideas and be an effective coach for your team, we wrote a course on that too. It’s called Coaching Skills for Managers.

We Can Have Unified Voices in Divided Times

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How does it happen that we can escalate from conversation marked by civil respect to one filled with mockery and derision? How do we bridge the gap between listening and disdain? And once we have demonized others, how do we get back to seeing the good in everyone?

Leading up to World War I, the media in Germany and England reflected a delicate balance of admiration and rivalry. They perceived each other as competitive yet civil rivals, eager to outdo one another in both business and sporting events like sailing races. Though diplomatic tensions simmered, they remained largely respectful.

However, with the outbreak of the war in July 1914, the tone of the media in both nations underwent a dramatic transformation. The English portrayed the Germans as barbaric “Huns,” amplifying stories of alleged atrocities such as spearing infants and hanging clergy. In contrast, German media cast the British as treacherous colonial oppressors, eager to dominate weaker nations. The hardships inflicted upon Germany by the British naval blockade, initiated in August 1914 when British ships began patrolling and mining the North Sea to block supplies from reaching German ports, became a focal point of their reports.

Even the arts became a battlefield of sentiments. The German poet, Ernst Lissauer, penned a song titled “Hymn of Hate Against England.” It rose to such popularity it was nearly as recognized as their national anthem.

Surprisingly, despite the mounting hostility in the media, the general populace in cities like Paris, London, and Berlin harbored a belief that any conflict would be fleeting. They optimistically predicted that the war would conclude before the New Year. After all, their frame of reference was rooted in recent history—conflicts like the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 that lasted just seven weeks, and the more drawn-out Franco-Prussian War of 1870, which spanned less than a year. This sentiment was reflected at kitchen tables across Europe, where parents comforted their soon-to-be-soldier children with assurances of their return by Christmas.

Yet, by Christmas Eve 1914, a swift end seemed impossible. The front line sprawled for five hundred miles from the Belgian coast to the Franco-Swiss border, with over 100,000 soldiers entrenched, sometimes mere meters apart.

On this tense night, Officer Walther Stennes recalled a surprising development:

German and British troops on the Western Front, Christmas Truce of 1914. © IWM

“On Christmas Eve at noon, fire ceased completely – on both fronts. Initially, there was apprehension. But as hours passed, it became clear this wasn’t a prelude to an attack.”

Private Albert Moren of the Second Queen’s Regiment noted,

“It was a beautiful moonlit night…and they sang ‘Silent Night’. I thought, what a beautiful tune.”

Marmaduke Walkinton of the London Regiment shared,

“We began to pop our heads over the side…and then we saw a German standing up, waving his arms, and we didn’t shoot. The understanding gradually grew.”

Those small gestures of trust quickly grew, German Josef Wentzl recollects,

“What I had still believed to be madness several hours ago I could see now with my own eyes. Bavarians and English, until then the greatest of enemies, shook hands, talked and exchanged items.”

They traded gifts, chocolates, cigarettes, and stories with one another, and enjoyed impromptu kickabouts of soccer. In northern France, near the village of Fleurbaix, soldiers from opposing sides gathered in no-man’s land to hold a joint burial service. They stood side by side to bury their fallen comrades. With Germans on one side and the English on the other, officers at the forefront and every head bared in respect, they jointly laid the deceased to rest. Together, they sang, ‘The Lord is my Shepherd’ in English and ‘Der Herr ist mein Hirt’ in German, their voices harmonizing in shared grief.

However, this fleeting moment of shared humanity was not to last. Commanders, uncomfortable with the truce, acted swiftly. George Ashurst, a British soldier, reflected the sentiments of many in the trenches: “The generals behind must’ve seen it…‘Course that started the war again. We hated the sight of the bloody generals.”

The Christmas Truce remains a poignant example of humanity’s potential to transcend even the harshest of divides. In the throes of war, soldiers, mere meters apart, found a shared sense of humanity, if only for a brief moment.

We possess the capacity to truly listen, to assume the best in others, and to recognize our shared humanity. Let’s commit to reaching out, understanding that we are all here together, striving for the best and uplifting one another.

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Our company Mindscaling, is busy building powerful online micro-learning experiences to drive the human change that propels your team. You can find our catalog of high-impact courses here. And if you want something more tailored, you can learn about our custom work here.

My book Small Acts of Leadership, is a Washington Post bestseller! You can grab a copy here. And if you want to learn to apply some of these ideas and be an effective coach for your team, we wrote a course on that too. It’s called Coaching for Managers available over at UDEMY for Business.

We Actually Can’t Stand Cruelty

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Here’s a common scene: The grown-ups are upstairs chatting, maybe having drinks, relaxing, while the kids are playing in the basement, in the yard, elsewhere. The parents are having a moment.

Someone remarks, “Oh, it’s like lord of the flies out there, but they’ll figure it out,” and the adults nod appreciatively. Because yes, kids behave just like the characters in Lord of the Flies, and lacking structure, rules, or social expectations, kids are savages, and life is inherently nasty, brutish, and short.

That trope, borrowed from William Golding’s 1954 book gets repeated everywhere. It makes me crazy to hear it. Golding was a disaffected addict writing horrifying fiction. Don’t believe it. As Peter Conrad writes in his review of Golding’s biography, “Golding called himself a monster. His imagination lodged a horde of demons, buzzing like flies inside his haunted head, and his dreams rehearsed his guilt…” He spent his latter years deeply regretting the novel.

I believe our natural state is to assume best intentions of others, and support and comfort our fellow humans. And even when we are taught to be cruel, are we reluctant. Yes, we can be deeply tribal and protective of our own. But even then, we hesitate to hurt.

Consider that throughout historic battles and wars, military leaders often lament that their soldiers aren’t cold-blooded killers. Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, one of the most prominent and successful British commanders of the Second World War, wrote home “The trouble with our British boys is that they are not killers by nature.” In the U.S Air Force during WWII, less than 1% of fighter pilots were responsible for 40% of the planes shot down.

One of the most compelling pieces of evidence that we really don’t like hurting one another comes from research about the 1863 Battle of Gettysburg during the Civil War. Of the 27,574 muskets recovered on the battlefield, 90% were still loaded. Since most of the time spent managing a rifle involves priming with gunpowder, loading with a shot, packing with a ramrod, and setting the trigger with a percussion cap, it seems crazy that so many rifles were not discharged. If it takes a second to fire, and minutes to load, most rifles at any given moment on the battlefield would not be ready to shoot, right? What’s going on?

But wait. About 12,000 of those muskets – nearly half of the rifles recovered – were double-loaded. Thousands of rifles were even triple-loaded. But these soldiers were trained and drilled. They knew muskets fired one ball at a time. What’s going on? Well, loading a gun is a perfect excuse not to fire it. And if it was already loaded, well just load it again. Look busy. Do anything except attempt to kill someone.

According to Army psychologist, and Lt. Colonel Dave Grossman, “The obvious conclusion is that most soldiers were not even trying to kill the enemy.”

It’s not danger, per se, that we are avoiding. It is specifically harming others that we simply cannot abide.

We love dangers and thrills. Our society actively seeks out physical danger through activities like rollercoasters, recreational drugs, rock climbing, white water rafting, scuba diving, skydiving, hunting, and countless other exhilarating, and sometimes stupid, behaviors. However, facing aggression and hatred from fellow citizens is an experience of a profoundly different magnitude.

We’ve all encountered hostile aggression, whether on the playground as kids, in strangers’ rudeness, in malicious gossip, or in hostility at work from bosses and peers. In all those cases, we’ve known the stress it causes.

At our core, human beings yearn for connection, understanding, and community with one another. Though cruelty and violence sometimes arise, they are but brief shadows cast against humanity’s inherent pursuit of compassion.

Lead with kindness and compassion. All we have is each other.

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Our company Mindscaling, is busy building powerful online micro-learning experiences to drive the human change that propels your team. You can find our catalog of high-impact courses here. And if you want something more tailored, you can learn about our custom work here.

My book Small Acts of Leadership, is a Washington Post bestseller! You can grab a copy here. And if you want to learn to apply some of these ideas and be an effective coach for your team, we wrote a course on that too. It’s called Coaching for Managers available over at UDEMY for Business.

What if We Are Actually Hard-Wired for Kindness and Compassion?

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Remember the book, “Lord of the Flies”? You probably read it – or at least heard about it – in high school. The story plays to our darkest fears of human nature. “Lord of the Flies” a fictional story based on the idea of “veneer theory.”

The idea behind veneer theory is that human civilization is like a thin veneer or layer on top of a more primal and savage nature. According to this theory, human beings have an inherent capacity for violence and aggression, and it is only through the rules and norms of civilization that we are able to suppress these tendencies and create a peaceful society.

Published in 1954, “Lord of the Flies” sold slowly at first, until taking off and eventually selling tens of millions of copies. It won a Nobel Prize in 1983. Translated into over 30 languages, the book tells the story of a group of boys who are stranded on a deserted island and the ways in which their society devolves into chaos and violence. “Lord of the Flies” is known for its exploration of human nature and the darker side of humanity.

It was written by William Golding, an Englishman who grew up in a middle-class home and then served in the Royal Navy in World War II, where he witnessed the horrors of war. These experiences had a profound impact on his writing. His works often explored the darker aspects of human nature. Or as Golding put it, ‘Man produces evil as a bee produces honey.’

Yeah, well, Golding was also a reclusive, brooding alcoholic, who once divided his students into opposing gangs and encouraged them to fight each other.

While his fictional narrative certainly grabs your attention, just like a good Halloween movie, the premise doesn’t hold up. It’s just an alarming and exciting story that makes you stop and pay attention. In the British news, that’s called a “marmalade dropper.” As in, “That crazy ass story about Will Smith slapping Chris Rock at the Oscars made me drop my marmalade!”

We’re attracted to conflict, but it’s more unusual than we realize because the media knows we’re triggered by negativity, and feeds the beast within. And now that AI and user algorithms have taken over your feed, they know EXACTLY how to pull your chain, because every click and scroll surrenders that much more control.

What’s that old parable about the internal battle between the good wolf and the bad wolf? The good wolf represents bravery, generosity, and love. The bad wolf represents anger, hatred, and greed. The child asks his wise grandfather, “Which one wins?” and the grandfather replies, “The one you feed.”

Remember, there’s no such thing as a small act of kindness. Every act creates a ripple with no logical end. – Scott Adams

Every day we are actively creating the world together with the stories we tell ourselves and each other. We believe what we choose to see in the world. I choose to see that people are innately good, prone to assuming best intentions, and quick to lend aid and help in times of calamity and adversity. History is full of stories of disaster altruism:

  • On September 11, 2001 immediately after the plane attacks into the burning Twin Towers, thousands of people were descending the emergency exit stairs, knowing that the building was on fire. They cleared the way for firefighters to ascend, and helped each other in an orderly and polite way. One survivor reported, “People would actually say, ‘No, no, you first. I couldn’t believe it, that at this point people would actually say, ‘No, no take my place.’
  • During World War II, people throughout Europe risked their lives to protect and hide Jewish refugees from Nazi persecution. These individuals demonstrated incredible courage and selflessness, often at great personal risk.
  • In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, many people from across the United States traveled to New Orleans to provide aid and assistance to those affected by the storm. This included volunteers from all walks of life, who donated their time, money, and resources to help others in need.
  • In 2011, following the devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan, many Japanese citizens organized to provide aid and assistance to those affected by the disaster. This included volunteers who traveled to affected areas to provide medical care and supplies, as well as citizens who opened up their homes to those who had been displaced.

Ok, yes if you look for it you can find hoarding, pillaging and “shortage psychology” too. During the Great Depression in the 1930s, competition for jobs and resources was fierce, with many people struggling to make ends meet. This led to a rise in crime and antisocial behavior, as people competed for limited resources and opportunities.

More recently, during the COVID-19 pandemic, competition for resources such as medical supplies and personal protective equipment (PPE) has been a significant issue. Remember the run on toilet paper? The world shut down on about March 13, 2020 and by March 23, 70% of grocery retailers were out of toilet paper.

Crises can bring out both the best and the worst in people, depending on a wide range of factors, including cultural norms, resource availability, and the nature of the crisis itself. Yet, what if we are actually hard-wired for kindness and compassion?

What if a belief in our innate generosity is exactly the kind of idea that has the power to change our communities, our society, and our nations, for the better?

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Recently I wrote about Mindscaling’s big project to convert Faisal Hoque’s book, LIFT into an interactive learning documentary. You can see previews of that elearning project, and his important new book here. Our company Mindscaling, is busy building powerful online micro-learning experiences to drive the human change that propels your team. You can find our catalog of high-impact courses here. And if you want something more tailored, you can learn about our custom work here.

My book Small Acts of Leadership, is a Washington Post bestseller! You can grab a copy here. And if you want to learn to apply some of these ideas and be an effective coach for your team, we wrote a course on that too. It’s called Coaching for Managers available over at UDEMY for Business.

Overcome Adversity Without Fighting It

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Hello and welcome back to my newsletter! Last time I was thinking about how the world is moving fast enough as it is, and we should stop telling each other how incredible busy we are. After all, we become the stories we tell ourselves. Be careful what you wish for, and all that.

This week I’m thinking about Faisal Hoque’s new book, LIFT. We recently finished a big project with him to create a learning documentary about his new bestseller LIFT. The book is about the rapidity of change, misinformation, and what we can do, each and every day, to make sense of the world, to uplift each other and transform our families, communities, and world into a more positive, and vibrant future. Here are some previews of the learning documentary course we made for him.

If this all sounds a bit optimistic to you, read on. Here is a recent interview with Faisal on how he finds that optimism, and what the path forward might look like. Take. this to heart – we need all the positive collaborative and vision we can get these days.

Shawn: Hello Faisal, and thank you for your new book. In my mind, it’s a blueprint for how all of us can confront the uncertainty and chaos around us, and make sense of the world in a positive way. How did you start on this journey to understanding adversity and overcoming it?

Faisal: It is our human nature that when we face adversity, we fight. It’s our very nature is to get ready for a battle when we are confronted. But accepting the battle means that you have to accept your current situation. And you have to prepare accordingly, because most of the current situation is not actually in your control.

One great learning I have had is from a book by Randy Pausch called “The Last Lecture“. Randy Pausch was a Carnegie Mellon professor and he gave his last lecture after he found out that he had cancer. And what he said is that it is his ability to accept the battle, and his ability to look at things from a negative point of view, and prepare for the challenges that he’s going to be facing that actually made him optimistic.

It’s the plan of action in the face of adversity, that allowed him to be prepared for the challenges that he would be facing. So when all hell breaks loose, it’s that mentality of being prepared which allowed him to deal with his adversity.

When all hell breaks loose, it’s that mentality of preparation which allows us to deal with adversity.

And because of that mental approach, he lived a very fulfilling life to the last day of his life, precisely because he accepted his battle that he was going to die from cancer, with the recognition that whatever he did, in the time he had remaining he was determined to share this message of making a difference with realistic optimism and determination. And he inspired millions with his message in “The Last Lecture”.

So it’s an example and a learning of how you accept a very bad situation and yet come out of it without thinking of the outcome, but instead focusing on what you can do on a daily basis, the kind of changes we can make daily to make a lasting impact, while dealing with adversity.

So you live and lead the best of your life when you have plans in place. Overcoming adversity is not fighting the adversity. It is accepting the adversity and working towards a plan that allows us to overcome the challenges that we are facing.

It starts with acceptance, not with fighting.

Shawn: That’s a powerful message about personal transformation, and making a dent in the world. But what about our collective efforts, and enlisting whole communities to join a particular mission or objective?

Faisal: The best thing we can do about controlling anything is controlling our mind. Our mind manifests what we see and how we react and what we do. So what happens is that when a collective group of people thinks positively, the chance of their collective success is a lot higher than it’ll be otherwise, right?

So this way of guiding your energy kind of helps you, how you behave, how you take actions and how you react to things. Every reaction that you have from your thought process makes things better or makes things worse, right?

Guiding our energy in a positive way, in a calm way is the path forward to deal with any kind of change, and to enroll others in our vision and mission. This takes a sense of fluidity to deal with changing circumstances, and it takes calm persistence.

Guiding our energy in a positive way, in a calm way, is the path forward to deal with any kind of change.

Let’s use water as a metaphor. Water is very soft and very fluid and it wears out all the rocks in the river and it somehow weaves in and out of whatever the obstacle that’s in front of that rolling fluid water.

So if you look from that as a metaphorical point of view, if we’re fluid and we’re flexible, we can kind of like weave through ups and downs of life and ups and downs of changes. And that flexibility allows us not just lead ourselves but also lead other people in a flexible and in an adaptive manner.

When we are flexible and we are taking a softer approach and we are not reactive, we are more adapting to situations. That calmness allows us to be more resilient because when you’re calm, you think better. So that energy that we are reflecting inside and out is what makes the difference in the enduring power of our social influence.

Here is a short teaser from the learning documentary series we built for the book. Learn more here.

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Our company Mindscaling, is busy building powerful online micro-learning experiences to drive the human change that propels your team. You can find our catalog of high-impact courses here. And if you want something more tailored, you can learn about our custom work here.

My book Small Acts of Leadership, is a Washington Post bestseller! You can grab a copy now.

And if you want to learn to apply some of these ideas and be an effective coach for your team, we wrote a course on that too. It’s called Coaching for Managers available over at UDEMY for Business.

Be Who You Needed When You Were Younger

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Hello and welcome back to my newsletter! Last time I was writing about how a practice of gratitude helps us make better decisions for our future self. Basically, you should try to make daily choices in the interest of Future You. It’s sounds obvious, but you can read more here about why it’s hard to do. 

This week I’m featuring a conversation with the fabulous Brook Raney, founder of One Trusted Adult. We were in the studio yesterday recording content for a brand new online course Mindscaling is building for them. We got into a discussion about how to become the kind of person we needed when we were younger. Once the course is done, we’ll send along some snippets of the beautiful course. In the meantime enjoy a brief interview with Brook!

Shawn: Brook, so grateful to work with you. You wrote a book called One Trusted Adult, and then you started a company called One Trusted Adult. What brought you to this work?

Brooke: Well, my mission began one afternoon as I sat in an auditorium filled with students and educators and listened to the third prevention program in a month—suicide prevention, substance abuse prevention, and bullying  prevention. All of them ended with the same sound advice: If students had a worry, concern, or question, they should seek out a trusted adult. 

After hearing this message for the third time, I had to stop and wonder: Did the students in that auditorium see me and my fellow educators as the trusted adults these programs advertised? And did the adults in the room, me included, embrace this role and do all we could to build relationships of trust with our students?

Even if we do view ourselves in this role, are we adults trained and prepared to be the trusted adult our young people need? Do WE have the skills and the capacity to support what these prevention programs are prescribing?

Since that moment, I’ve learned through my research that young people who can name a trusted adult INSIDE their home as well as a trusted adult OUTSIDE of their home are LESS LIKELY TO bully or be bullied, suffer from depression, or abuse substances, and MORE LIKELY TO be able to turn toxic stress into tolerable stress, and remain calm in the face of challenges. They also build key capacities, such as the ability to plan, monitor, and regulate behavior, complete tasks they start, show interest in new things, volunteer in their community, participate in physical activities, and engage in school and be available for learning. 

Shawn: In your work, you emphasize the importance of creating healthy boundaries with youth, and that sometimes these boundaries can get blurry. What do you mean by that?

Brook: Yes, building healthy boundaries creates opportunities for everyone to grow. But sometimes adults can blur those lines even with the best intentions. Here’s an example – at a summer camp I run we have a rule where at meals campers sit at designated tables and camp counselors at other tables. This is so that each can have time to process, chat, catch up, and so counselors can get some important details on the schedule. This was a shared and declared boundary and all of the staff worked together to uphold it. 

One summer, a new counselor didn’t see the importance of the rule, and chose not to uphold it. She allowed her campers to come over to the counselor table and braid her hair, put stickers on her hands, and give her pictures they drew. As they did this she looked at me and mouthed the words, “look…they love me!”  I then asked to speak to her privately. I shared my observation that she had centered herself in the experience of the campers. Instead of being on the outside, facilitating their experience, she had made herself so integral that they couldn’t operate without her for even 20 minutes. She immediately recognized that her desire for their admiration had clouded the important work of educating, empowering, and supporting them that she was there to do. 

It’s a small simple example of how sometimes leaders can have the best intentions, but instead hinder the growth of the youth they are working with. We have found that those who are fueled by the admiration of young people (being liked and loved rather than trusted and respected) are far more susceptible to boundary blur than those who name sources of strength and affirmation from their personal lives. In other words, when we seek to gain, heal, or be affirmed by and through our interactions with young people, we have lost our way. From here it is easy to slip into unhealthy power dynamics, inappropriate relationships, oversharing, or savior syndrome. 

Shawn: Other than go out and buy your book, what’s one thing people can do now to start on the path of becoming a trusted adult?

Brook: Well, one of the first things we can do is change our assumptions. Don’t assume young people have Trusted Adults in their lives. Instead, ask them to name them. I met a teacher once who was really struggling with a student who sat in class every day with his hood pulled up and his head facing down. When I asked her if she thought he could name a trusted adult at school she said, “Of course he can! He has me, his advisor, his coach, the school psychologist… he is surrounded by trusted adults!” I said, “Great! But why don’t you ask him?” The next day she did… and he answered, flatly, “No.” He told her he couldn’t name anyone who he’d describe as a trusted adult.

Join me on this mission, and let’s ensure that every young person on this planet can name an accessible, boundaried, and caring trusted adult. And when in doubt, just try to…. Be who you need and Be who you needed

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Our company Mindscaling, is busy building powerful online micro-learning experiences to drive the human change that propels your team. You can find our catalog of high-impact courses here. And if you want something more tailored, you can learn about our custom work here.

My book Small Acts of Leadership, is a Washington Post bestseller! You can grab a copy now.

And if you want to learn to apply some of these ideas and be an effective coach for your team, we wrote a course on that too. It’s called Coaching for Managers available over at UDEMY for Business.

You Are More Influential Than You Think

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Hello there! I have a new-newsletter I’m publishing over at LinkedIn. It’s about how we show up, interact with people, and make a difference every day with small changes. I will post it here on my site, but you can also subscribe over here to receive it on LinkedIn. Enjoy!

Most of us walk through our daily lives thinking no one really pays attention to us. At the sandwich shop, standing in the grocery checkout line, attending the same weekly meeting, or watching the middle school soccer game, we often think we don’t have much influence over people and circumstances. Sometimes we even think we’re invisible.

Yet simply being present and sharing an event, a meal, a checkout line, or a meeting – even if you don’t say anything – will deepen the experience for everyone and make it more memorable.

Showing up can change the outcome of events, influence how other people think, and even change the way you think.

When two violins are placed in a room
if a chord on one violin is struck
the other violin will sound that same note.
Know how powerful you are.
Know you can make music in the people
around you, simply by playing your own strings.
   – Andrea Gibson

The truth is that people are paying attention to you more than you are aware of. But the other strange truth is that people aren’t paying attention to what you think they’re paying attention to. If you are having a bad hair day, wearing the wrong shoes, or worried about your complexion, that’s not what other people are noticing at all. Other people don’t really care about the t-shirt you decided to wear or the zit on your forehead. At least not in the way you think the t-shirt is ridiculous and the zit is enormous.

Studies show that when you are watching a movie with someone else, attending a high school sports event, or just sitting in a meeting with other people, your mere presence with others intensifies the experience and makes it more memorable for everyone.

The reason is that when you show up, others will tune their messages and ideas to you to reflect what they think you want to hear, or try to influence you. When you attend that weekly team meeting, your boss is tuning her message to the group taking into account that you are there and listening. In this way your mere presence is affecting the outcome of the dialogue and events to come. Your presence is affecting what other people say.

We also tend to underestimate how much other people will ruminate on conversations and interactions other people have with us. When we leave a meeting, or a conversation, we often think about the friend, the boss, the colleague that we just met – what they said, how they made us feel, who they are – but we don’t often think that they are likely doing the same thing.

Meanwhile, they are reflecting on their conversation with us. This is something called the thought-gap bias. We tend to underestimate how much others are thinking about us after we leave an interaction. We think about them, but we don’t consider they are doing the same thing.

It happened to me just this morning. I was walking my dog in the forest and bumped into my friend Dominique. We started talking about this idea, and the notion that we have more influence than we believe. She told me a story of walking into a Goodwill store and discovering a beautiful, lightly-used set of Calloway golf clubs that would be perfect for her son.  She chatted with the clerk, asked about her day, and then inquired how much for the golf clubs? The clerk said, “How about six dollars for the set?”

Dominique was stunned. The golf clubs were worth hundreds of dollars. She asked, “Why would you let them go so cheaply?” The clerk said, “Because you are the first person today to be nice to me.”

You have more influence that you think. Use your superpowers for good.

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Our company Mindscaling, is busy building powerful online micro-learning experiences designed to drive the human change that will propel your team. You can find our catalog of high-impact courses here. And if you want something more tailored, you can learn about our custom work here.

My book Small Acts of Leadership, is a Washington Post bestseller! You can grab a copy now.

Why You Should Talk About Your Positive Actions

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You know what the bystander effect is. It’s a social phenomena in which people fail to intervene or act on someone else’s behalf because no one else is doing anything. Your boss has a ridiculous idea but you don’t say anything because no one else does.

Imagine, for example, you are sitting in a waiting room with two other people. You glance up to see a young woman hobbling toward the glass door of the waiting room, on crutches with a cast on her foot. She struggles with the door, greets the receptionist with a wince, and is asked to wait her turn to be called. But all the chairs in the waiting room are taken. What do you do? Do you help her with the door? Do you offer her your chair?

This is a real study by David DeSteno and his colleagues at Northeastern University. The other people in the waiting room are actors, including the receptionist and the woman with the cast on her foot. Everyone is watching what you will do, how you will act in that moment.

I like to share this scenario in my presentations, and ask the question: What percentage of study participants do you think stood up, and offered help? People always guess a high number of 60%, 70%, 80%. Everyone has high hopes for humanity. I tell the audience the actual number is 15%. At which point people groan and sigh, and insist they would have done something. Well, maybe.

And you know who Dan Price is. He’s the guy who slashed his personal CEO salary to give at least 70K a year to every employee in his company. He was ridiculed, scorned, and called a fool. Pundits said he would be broke within the year, and his employees “on bread lines.”

That was six years ago. Recently on twitter he posted:

6 years ago today I raised my company’s min wage to $70k. Fox News called me a socialist whose employees would be on bread lines. Since then our revenue tripled, we’re a Harvard Business School case study & our employees had a 10x boom in homes bought. Always invest in people.

  • Dan Price, CEO of Gravity Payments

Dan is a special guy, but he’s not unique. There are lots of people all over the world doing good things right where they are – at the intersection of their skill, passion, and impact. One important difference is that he is talking about his work. He’s vocal about his impact. He didn’t just provide a minimum salary to his employees and quietly watch the results. He has been an outspoken public defender of his actions in the news, and social media.

It’s important to not only do the thing you believe in, it’s important to talk about it. Not in a self-important yay-me humble-brag kind of way, but instead because you understand the power of your actions to be a force for good, and inspire others. That’s how your movement starts. That’s how the tribe is built.

For example, in the United States less than 20% of the population is either doubtful or dismissive about climate change. Over 80% of the population is alarmed, actively concerned, or at least cautiously accepting that it’s happening. In the other words, the overwhelming majority of Americans have some degree of education, concern, and personal experience with climate change. But they still don’t talk about it.

Many of us still don’t talk about it because that small minority can be expressively vocal in dismissing the science. The critics are loud, and we sense their population is bigger than it is. We are uncertain about the views of the person we are speaking with. What if we offend them? What if we say something that contradicts their belief system?

So we say nothing, but maybe we do something – something we understand is a nudge, a gesture in the right direction. We make a personal high impact, low cost, life change to adjust our carbon footprint. We travel less on airplanes, or eat lower on the food chain. Those changes cost nothing. Maybe we even spend a little money on electric vehicles or a home energy audit.

And it’s true that even if you do those things and you get your own family CO2 footprint down from the average 16 tons a year to 12 tons a year, it still won’t make a difference on the planet. Your own personal carbon footprint is less than .0000000003% of the 43 billion tons a year that the world emits. It’s less than a rounding error.

Still reading? This is why it’s important to talk about your actions. Because while what you do personally on climate change might be negligible, talking about it with your family, your neighbors, your community, and demonstrating your commitment through your actions inspires others to act.

I used climate change as an example, but it could be anything you care about that moves the needle toward a kinder, more livable world. It could be bullying, suicide prevention, humanitarian relief, or dog shelters. The point is that if you aren’t a bully, that’s great. But a more powerful gesture is intervening a bullying event you witness, and explaining why. Or adopting a rescue dog, and then communicating with your friends and family why it was important to you.

Our actions are invitations to change. Our actions are demonstrations and assurances to others of how to behave in the face of uncertainty.

Are you stuck? Trying to figure out what you want to do? Or paralyzed by too many choices? Here is a sample lesson from our new series Making It Happen: How to Figure Out What You Want

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Our company Mindscaling, is busy building powerful human and digital learning experiences for companies of all sizes. My book Small Acts of Leadership, is a Washington Post bestseller! You can grab a copy now.

In other news, our son and I bicycled across America with two other dads and their teenagers. We published a new book about it called Chasing Dawn. I co-authored the book with my cycling companion, the artist, photographer, and wonderful human jon holloway. Buy a copy. I’ll sign it and send it to your doorstep.

Keep up the Fight

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Remember on March 13, the scenes of Italians singing together from their balconies while on lockdown. Throughout the city graffiti everywhere proclaimed “andrà tutto bene” (everything will be alright). Six weeks earlier, on January 28 throughout Wuhan citizens leaned out of their apartment buildings and chanted together “jiāyóu” (keep up the fight).

Remember 2012 Hurricane Sandy, when New York was under water. On October 30, Mayer Corey Booker tweeted “Police have reported ZERO looting or crimes of opportunity in Newark. And ceaseless reports of acts of kindness abound everywhere. #Gratitude.”

Remember immediately in the wake of 9/11 in New York City, hundreds of people spontaneously formed the “Bucket Brigade” to remove debris in search of remains.

At the time Hurricane Katrina hit the gulf coast it was the deadliest storm to hit New Orleans since 1900. Although in the wake of the storm there were indeed stories of looting, rioting, hoarding, and even violence, a powerful study conducted in 2008 revealed that acts of prosocial generosity and caring far outweighed the negative behaviors. Conditions were especially dire for the 700,000 displaced survivors because only 26 days later Hurricane Rita hit the same geographic area stalling rescue and relief efforts.

Yet even in that incredibly adverse environment, tales of human camaraderie, altruism, generosity and care are numerous. Read this harrowing personal account: “There is nothing that I had ever witnessed in the United States to which I could compare the scene outside the New Orleans Convention Center.”

Or read this perspective from a medical worker on the front lines: “Our group received an offer of special rescue, which we did not accept until each and every one of our patients had been evacuated.”

It goes on and on. And if you’re reading this and thinking, “Yes that’s heroic and comforting but what about the looting, the hostility, the selfishness, the scarcity thinking…” I say the more good we see in the world, the more good we create in the world. The more love, charity, and kindness you witness in your community, the more you will create it yourself.

Got it? And now a word about blind optimism, and irrational exuberance.

U.S. Navy Admiral James Stockdale was captured by the Vietnamese, tortured over twenty times, and imprisoned for eight years during the Vietnam War. During that time he observed that those POWs with a deep sense of pessimism and dread would lose hope, succumb to their conditions, and eventually die. But he also observed those who were wildly optimistic eventually became overwhelmed with despair, and false hope.

“You must never confuse the faith that you will prevail in the end… with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they may be.”
– Admiral James Stockdale

According to Stockdale, “The wildly optimistic were the ones who said, ‘We’re going to be out by Christmas.’ And Christmas would come go, and Christmas would go. Then they’d say, ‘We’re going to be out by Easter.’ And Easter would come and Easter would go. And then Thanksgiving, and then it would be Christmas again. And they died of a broken heart.”

Those who persevere in the face of daunting obstacles are those who have a sense of realistic idealism. They have the ability to visualize and identify an ideal outcome, yet also an ability to realistically face challenges, including the unexpected challenges which will surely arise.

Another trait of those who possess realistic optimism is they lift other people up. During the depths of despair during their incarceration, James Stockdale used an alphabetic communication code by tapping on the walls of the prison cells. In this way the prisoners were able to communicate and not feel completely isolated in captivity.

Our world view is not simply a fixed condition of our situation. We have the power to choose our reaction to this current dystopian madness, and also to decide whether or not we have the ability to make a difference.

Things are sideways, yet remember that this pandemic is temporary. It won’t last forever, it’s not someone’s fault and you can make a difference in someone’s life each and every day simply in how you show up with discipline and faith that we will endure and see each other through.

  • Our company Mindscaling created a course on resilience with the fabulous Jen Shirkani. Message me and I’ll send access to the course. No charge of course. I just hope it helps us work through this.
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    Our company Mindscaling, is busy building powerful human and digital learning experiences for companies of all sizes. My new book Small Acts of Leadership, is a Washington Post bestseller! You can grab a copy now. Have a meeting coming up? I love to work with groups large and small. Let’s talk.

    In other news, our son and I bicycled across America with two other dads and their teenagers. We published a new book about it called Chasing Dawn. I co-authored the book with my cycling companion, the artist, photographer, and wonderful human jon holloway. Buy a copy. I’ll sign it and send it to your doorstep.

    A Little Mindfulness Goes a Long Way

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    You walk in for your appointment.

    You greet the receptionist. She says, “Just have a seat. We’ll call you when we’re ready.” You turn around and there are three chairs, two of them already occupied by people reading a magazine or looking at their phone. You take the empty seat and wait.

    A few minutes later a woman on crutches, with a clunky orthopedic boot on, comes hobbling down the corridor toward the waiting room. She struggles with the door, enters, looks around, and seeing no empty chairs, she slumps against the wall, wincing in pain.

    What do you do? Do you stand up and hold the door for her? Do you offer her your seat? Of course you do, right? That’s what any conscientious and thoughtful person would do. In fact, when David DeSteno and his researchers asked people what they would do in that circumstance, the overwhelming majority said they would stand and offer their seat.

    Then they staged the experiment, with an actor on crutches and actors in the other chairs instructed to ignore the injured woman. Initially, they picked 19 people to go through the experiment. The participants thought they were in a room waiting for the experiment to begin, but the waiting room was the experiment. Of those 19 people, only 3 actually stood and offered to help. Three. That’s 16%. The researchers were so surprised they repeated the study and got the same results.

    I know. It’s appalling. But in his research, DeSteno admits that they stacked the deck a little. Since the other actors were told to ignore the person on crutches, they had set up a classic bystander effect in which it’s hard to act against the behavior of those around them.

    But still, 16%? That’s pretty disappointing. Then the researchers added just one change to the experiment. The next group of research participants were asked to engage in eight weeks of meditation training before they entered the waiting room. For eight weeks participants met regularly with Buddhist master Lama Willa Miller who offered instruction and guidance in meditation practice. Lama Miller also provided audio recordings for participants to practice at home.

    That’s it. That’s the only difference. All participants had no prior meditation experience at all. Half of the participants meditated regularly for eights weeks. The other half did not. The results? Fifty percent (50%) of the group that meditated acknowledged the woman’s distress, stood up, engaged her in conversation, helped her with the door, and offered her their chair.

    DeSteno has been researching the impact of regular mindfulness practice on human behavior for years, and what he has discovered is that simple meditation and mindfulness leads consistently to empathy and compassion for others. That compassion for others leads to a sense of self-control, willingness, and ability to make a difference to others.

    In short, then, our research suggests that mindfulness’s most profound benefit may not be the one that’s most often touted—adapting to a stressful, competitive, even unkind 24/7 world. Instead, meditation might fundamentally alter how we treat those around us.
    – David DeSteno, Ph.D.

    Don’t be put off or intimidated by the idea of meditation. You don’t have to get into the lotus position, invoke a deity, and unlock your third eye chakra. The basic ingredients of meditation are simple and readily available – even in the midst of a crazy day. You need only a quiet place, focused attention, relaxed breathing, a comfortable position, and an open attitude.

    Grab a copy of David DeSteno’s book here. It’s packed with research and ideas on the power of leveraging emotion – not just sheer willpower – to live a more connected and fulfilling life.

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    Our company Mindscaling, is busy building powerful human and digital learning experiences for companies of all sizes. My new book Small Acts of Leadership, is a Washington Post bestseller! You can grab a copy now. Have a meeting coming up? I love to work with groups large and small. Let’s talk.

    In other news, our son and I bicycled across America with two other dads and their teenagers. We published a new book about it called Chasing Dawn. I co-authored the book with my cycling companion, the artist, photographer, and wonderful human jon holloway. Buy a copy. I’ll sign it and send it to your doorstep.