Elevate Yourself & Reach Your Potential | Robert Glazer | Modern Wisdom Podcast 236

1. 0:00 – 15:00

   You and I get…

   1. RGRobert Glazer0:00

      You and I get into a car accident, you know, this morning. You are enlightened, and so you're like, "Oh, I've got insurance. That could have been worse." You walk away. You go, you go do three podcast interviews, you have a great day, you meet a bunch of friends, all that stuff. You know, I'm, like, swearing, "Ah, damn freaking Chris, and one more thing in the world, and what could go wrong this year?" And I, I get into a fight with my brother. I don't do the goal thing that I said I wanted to. Like, we both experienced the same thing, right? How we chose to respond and react to that, we tell ourselves different truth. We tell ourself the truth that my day got ruined by a car accident. Well, that's not, that's not really the whole truth. The truth is, you had a car accident and that wasn't your fault, but you control what comes after that. (wind blowing)

   2. CWChris Williamson0:44

      What does the word elevate mean to you?

   3. RGRobert Glazer0:48

      Yeah, I mean, I, to me, elevate just means taking it to another level, and I think the important part of that an- and- and the way I look at it differently than, than maybe some others, I think when you talk about success versus achievement, but to me it's, like, really, like, w- to your potential, not other people's definition, not what other people think you should be doing, but how, how do you, within you, you know, raise your game to another level from, from the potential that lies within?

   4. CWChris Williamson1:16

      And you've looked at a framework to go around that. Obviously, you're a business owner-

   5. RGRobert Glazer1:21

      Yeah.

   6. CWChris Williamson1:21

      ... multi, multinational, international business for multiple years now, into the, uh, into the twilight of running a business, I think as, as many people would-

   7. RGRobert Glazer1:31

      Yeah.

   8. CWChris Williamson1:31

      ... was, would have said by this time. Not many people have survived as long as you.

   9. RGRobert Glazer1:33

      Or at least, or at least the teenage/adolescent years. Um, so...

   10. CWChris Williamson1:37

       (laughs) Yeah.

   11. RGRobert Glazer1:38

       Yeah, I, I, I sort of fell into this framework, um, by accident. So, uh, I had actually started a note to my team about five years ago, every Friday. It came out of, actually, a personal leadership, uh, event that I went to for a week that was hugely impactful, very focused on improving your morning, uh, things you can do in the morning, kind of think, reflect, read something positive, write. The reading positive stuff that I wrote was just way too rainbow and unicorny for me. Like, it didn't, it didn't do it for me, like... So, I, I had some stories and some quotes and some stuff that I saved, and I just started writing this note to my team every Friday at 4:00 PM. And it wa- it was something about, we were rem- all remote, and it was about getting better or improvement, and it sort of fell into a formula. And I wasn't sure if people were reading it, but I liked writing it. It was a good habit. And eventually, I heard from back, back from people that they were, they were reading it. They were sharing it inside the company. I told some other people around it. Eventually, I opened it up so people outside the company could join it, and there were a couple hundred thousand people within a few years signed up for it. So, what, what happened was, I, when I went to write a book, uh, our company had really grown. We had sort of tripled during that time period. Um, I was meeting a lot of interesting high achievers from all around the world, and I just d- this pattern analysis sort of came up, which was... I, I tried to write a compilation book called Friday Forward, ironically, which is the book I had just released, but no one would buy it. They wa- they said, "Look, you're not... No one knows you, and you can't write a compilation, and these stories are online." But the agent challenged me to, like, "What's the story behind the story?" And so, so when I actually started looking at how had I fundamentally changed my life in the last three years, what, how, what, how had we grown as a company? We always said we invested in people holistically. Why were these little notes having an impact on strangers I had never met? And what was common about all these high achievers that I would run into? Like, these four things, just... I mean, I had lists and cr- and then just, you know, g- you know, Punnett squares, and it just always came back to these four principles of, of... and this notion of they, people build capacity faster than others, and it was spiritual, intellectual, physical, and emotional. I just saw that pattern. And actually, from our company's standpoint, that's h- how, how we had been training our employees. Not, not... I mean, yes, there's direct training to what they're related to, but we had tried t- we were training them to become better overall, and we were getting the business benefit of that, and they were getting the benefit outside of work.

   12. CWChris Williamson3:58

       It's of- odd to hear someone in the business sphere use the word spiritual. I don't-

   13. RGRobert Glazer4:02

       Yeah, and I, and I... Look, I, I struggle with that word. I am not very religious. I, I tried to find 100 different words that might work for it, because... So, spiritual capacity is not religious, in my definition. It is, it is who you are and what you want most. For most people, I think it is being able to identify their personal core values, because I think that ties to their success everywhere. It ties to their success with their selves, with their family, with their business. And, and, like, we work with leaders in our organization to identify their personal core values, so, so that they can understand themselves as a, as a leader. I think most people, that is just the missing, like, rudder in their life, in terms of getting the boat going in the right... They might have a really nice boat, might be going really fast and look pretty, but it is like going to Antarctica and they want to be in Hawaii.

   14. CWChris Williamson4:50

       Everyone-

   15. RGRobert Glazer4:50

       And it's not till they get to Antarctica that they realize that really doesn't make them happy, landing in America.

   16. CWChris Williamson4:54

       Shit, I didn't mean to be here. I've got two, two threads open in my mind. First one was Greg McKeown, author of Essentialism.

   17. RGRobert Glazer4:59

       Yeah.

   18. CWChris Williamson4:59

       On this show, he told us a story about an executive he worked with who'd got to the top of a particular industry, a very well-known industry. Uh, 25 years he'd been working there, and found that when he'd made it... He was VC of Suning International Corp., um, multi, multi limited.

   19. RGRobert Glazer5:15

       Yeah. I think I know this story, yeah.

   20. CWChris Williamson5:16

       Yeah, and, uh, he found out that he, he didn't have a, he couldn't talk to his son. Him and his son had a very estranged relationship. His son was 18 or 20 or something, and his son wouldn't speak to him. Literally, the, the relationship had just devolved into nothingness. And he got to this peak that he thought he was going to, this destination, this Antarctica, and then, in Greg's words, he realized that he'd won the wrong game.

   21. RGRobert Glazer5:39

       Yeah.

   22. CWChris Williamson5:39

       And that avoidance of going incredibly fast in precisely the opposite direction, and that is the other part which is a mental model called direction over speed.... that if you're going in precisely the right direction, even very, very slowly-

   23. RGRobert Glazer5:55

       Yeah.

   24. CWChris Williamson5:55

       ... every day, you're making progress. Conversely, you can go incredibly fast. (laughs)

   25. RGRobert Glazer5:59

       You're up by two, two degrees and you're going-

   26. CWChris Williamson6:01

       Yeah. (laughs)

   27. RGRobert Glazer6:01

       And this is what we learned with the parallel lines and, yeah. I, there's a slide I show in one of my presentations on capacity building, and it has this beautiful house on a lake, right? And this is a similar thing. And I say to people, "You gotta be... If, if, if, if this house is your goal, you gotta be very honest with yourself about the why." Is the house to show yourself and the world you made it, right? 'Cause, 'cause then that might have one level of satisfaction. But if you say that it's this house that you have to have on a lake for your families and generations, and in getting the house, you lose your kids and get divorced-

   28. CWChris Williamson6:31

       (laughs)

   29. RGRobert Glazer6:31

       ... uh, you, you are not likely to reach your goals. I just don't think a lot of us, if it was really about family, if family was the why, then you should not sacrifice family in the pursuit of that house. You should actually vacation with the family and pick the land together and work on the drawings together. You should not go isolate from yourself from your family and make money. So, so I think that's... I, I, I came to understand at some point that, that long-term, the connection between spiritual and intellectual capacity, so intellectual capacity is like your operating system. How do you learn, plan, goal set, execute with discipline in service of, of what you want? Your long-term goals need to fulfill one or more core values in order for it to work, right? You have to be working towards something that actually fulfills a core, uh, purpose, or else it, I feel like you get to that hollow, that hollow ending.

   30. CWChris Williamson7:22

       Very much so. How do people find their why, then? Is that where we start? Is that the beginning of the, the MOT that we're, we're going through? The service that we're going through?
2. 15:00 – 30:00

   Yeah. It's, it's, it's,…

   1. CWChris Williamson15:00

      me the, give me the red pill on core values.

   2. RGRobert Glazer15:02

      Yeah. It's, it's, it's, it's not that easy to do. I've actually... I'm just finishing up a course on it, 'cause the thing I get asked about it the most, I, I, I put a couple, um, resources in Elevate on this and questions you could ask. But it's a process, um, that you go through. And it, it, it takes 6 to 12 months, but you start it. And I think you start with some questions, and there are some examples on there on, you know, thinking about the types of scenarios with you've been really ha- I, I, I'm gonna paraphrase a complicated process into simplicity, sort of how it's done, 'cause I've done this with now a bunch of different leaders, and it, and it works. Um, but you ask a bunch of different questions that, uh, uh... And you answer them for yourselves, that produce, uh, responses. Like, they're kind of best and worst. And, and you, you ask them a bunch of different ways, you create a bunch of different lists, and then you start looking across the list for the themes, because where was I successful? Where was I not? What are the characteristics of people I struggle with? Where do I not? You know, one of the, one of the... And you start thinking about those questions. You will start to notice patterns that will illuminate your core values. You know, one of the questions that, that I always say that that's the 101, the sort of 303. I don't know if you guys use that numbering in college classes, university classes, the advanced class-

   3. CWChris Williamson16:10

      (laughs) I have no idea what you're talking about.

   4. RGRobert Glazer16:12

      Sorry, yeah. So, 101 is what we call entry-level university courses, uh, here. So the, the advanced version is if you want to sit down right now, write what, what someone... you would want someone to say at your funeral for your eulogy about you and the impact that you had on their life. I did that exercise long before I did the actual core value work, and a lot of the terminology was in there. Because when you get that raw about what... how do you want to be remembered? What do you want people to think of you? It, it gets to your values and the impact that you want to make. Um, but, you know, I, I always say like, it... The analogy that I give with core values, I think we know our core value when it's crossed, right? And, and that's a lot of us. So, picture you're driving a really nice car through a tunnel. The lights are off. You hit the right-side wall. It goes kck, you know, all the stuff. So you pull the car off the wall, and, and, and you get in the lane, and then you hit the other wall, right? This is kind of how we make decisions when we don't know what our... It's like, once we feel the... it's crossed, we move away from it. But if that's a nice car, you'd really want the lights to be on, and the things to be painted, and saying, "I shouldn't get near that wall." And that wall is that job, that person, that relationship, because, because these are opposite values to myself. I, I talk about the big three. I think when you think about, you know, where you choose to live, who you choose to partner, your vocation or work. It... If you make those decisions not align with your core values, it's very unlikely to work. You can marry someone or be partner with someone who's different, different hobbies, interests, whatever. But when you get to the hard stuff, if your values aren't aligned, I think that's the... I don't think you're... It's not a clone. It's clearly the opposites attract. My wife and I are very different in respects. But when we get to the really hard, difficult stuff, we are philosophically, um, aligned on it. So that's the... That, that, that, that's the basics. I think you can have decisions in front of you and you should say, "I should do that. I should not do that."

   5. CWChris Williamson18:04

      I've heard you say that physical fitness, physical well-being is one of your core values. What are the rest of them?

   6. RGRobert Glazer18:11

      Yeah. So, so it's, it's... I'll just run through them quickly. The... Oh, oh, one of my core values?

   7. CWChris Williamson18:16

      Yeah, yours.

   8. RGRobert Glazer18:16

      Versus-

   9. CWChris Williamson18:16

      What are yours?

   10. RGRobert Glazer18:17

       My, my, my -- so, my core values are health and vitality, so that includes physical fitness. So, uh, find a better way and share it, which explains a lot of what I do. Self-reliance. Uh, one that I came up with that really is fitting, but it took me a while to get the right word, which is respectful authenticity. And then the last is long-term orientation. So, if I pick some activity that is aligned to all of those, or if I pick a parental activity, like, I am so happy and I'm doing well. If I do something that is- crosses a lot of those, then, uh, not so well. So, when you think about those first two, like find a better way and health and vitality, right? Every year I pick a fitness challenge or something new for me to do because I haven't done it, it- it's better way. And then it forces me to train and, you know, be healthy, and- and that's important. And so when we talk to our-

   11. CWChris Williamson19:03

       What was this- what was this year's?

   12. RGRobert Glazer19:05

       This year's is a half marathon, which I'm- is- I'm gonna have to do virtually.

   13. CWChris Williamson19:10

       Socially distanced.

   14. RGRobert Glazer19:10

       Yes. (laughs) But I'm working up towards that distance. Um, I've biked from London to Paris two years ago with a group. I've, uh, done Olympic triathlon. I've just- bunch of different, uh, stuff. But, um, it- it's interesting. Like, when we talk to our kids around, you know, we have family core values too. And when we talk to them around, like, not having a third cookie, you know, it is under the value of, because we talk about being healthy and that's not healthy. It's not a rule, it's a- it aligns to a value.

   15. CWChris Williamson19:39

       Are you familiar with Ben Bergeron from the-

   16. RGRobert Glazer19:41

       No.

   17. CWChris Williamson19:41

       ... CrossFit world? You would really, really enjoy his work, so-

   18. RGRobert Glazer19:44

       Oh, may- yeah, maybe I- yeah.

   19. CWChris Williamson19:46

       He's an ex-coach of Matt Frazier, fittest man on the planet. Uh, he has a podcast called Chasing Excellence, which is named after his book. And, um, I would highly- you and him sing very much from the same hymn sheet, especially with regards to the family values thing.

   20. RGRobert Glazer19:58

       Yeah.

   21. CWChris Williamson19:58

       Everything that he does is driven from his values. Uh, I- I think that's great. I- I spent a lot of time this year working on my core values, and it's really informed a lot of my direction. Um, it's helped me to lean into discomfort in projects because I know that it is truly aligned with the things that I do.

   22. RGRobert Glazer20:15

       Yeah.

   23. CWChris Williamson20:15

       As opposed to previously... Especially if you suffer with imposter syndrome, which we all do.

   24. RGRobert Glazer20:21

       Which all successful people do. You know, people who have gotten there for the wrong reasons don't seem to have it.

   25. CWChris Williamson20:26

       Yeah. We also- we realize-

   26. RGRobert Glazer20:28

       People who are lucky never have imposter syndrome. It's interesting. People who work hard never

   27. CWChris Williamson20:31

       (laughs) Well, I'll- I'll take that as a compliment in that case. Um, yeah, so i- it's really, really helped. So, everyone that's listening, if you haven't gone away and done that, um, get yourself a copy of Elevate. Otherwise, Chris Sparks, he has a Experiment Without Limits. Um, there's some great work- worksheets in that. Taylor Pearson also has some great worksheets. Um, some good ways to do it. So we've- we've spoken about the spiritual. Should we go into the intellectual next?

   28. RGRobert Glazer20:54

       Yeah.

   29. CWChris Williamson20:54

       Are those two kind of follow on from each other?

   30. RGRobert Glazer20:56

       Yeah, they- they actually go in a particular order, uh, for me. So let- let- uh, let me just- let me set the framework and then we can dive into each one just to make... I'll recast. So spiritual is your core values, kind of, you know, who you are and what you won't want. Intellectual capacity, as I- as I always say, it's about how you improve your ability to think, learn, plan, execute with discipline. So this is kind of growth mindset, being proactive, long-term goals, short-term goals, routine habits, accountability. It's kind of once you know what you want, how do you get it? Your operating system. How do you make your operating system better? Then physical capacity, kind of what it sounds. You know, health, well-being, physical performance, resilience, kind of embracing competition, really now I know- now I know what I want, I know I want to get it, and now I'm motivated to, you know, keep myself in good shape, uh, to get there. And then emotional is the last one. It's interesting, the hardest one for a lot of people. This is the world around you. So it's how do you react to challenging situations, your emotional mindset, and the quality of your relationships. So my analogy is that if- if spiritual capacity was designing the race car, uh, you know, intellectual capacity was building it, physical was sort of testing it on test track. Emotional is like, how do you do in that car when it's out on the road with the rain and sun and lots of other cars, right? Some cars will do better than their spec and some will do a lot worse. So emotional capacity is really interaction with- with the world around us and the things that we don't control.
3. 30:00 – 45:00

   Yeah. …

   1. CWChris Williamson30:00

      comes in quite well there.

   2. RGRobert Glazer30:02

      Yeah.

   3. CWChris Williamson30:03

      Much of the time when we have anxiety about anything which is approaching us-

   4. RGRobert Glazer30:08

      Don't know how to do it.

   5. CWChris Williamson30:08

      ... in the future, it's because of a fear of a lack-

   6. RGRobert Glazer30:10

      (laughs)

   7. CWChris Williamson30:10

      ... of capacity in order to be able to deal with it. Yeah.

   8. RGRobert Glazer30:12

      Yeah.

   9. CWChris Williamson30:12

      And then that's where procrastination comes. You think, "Oh, I, I'm really gonna struggle with that thing, that project, that conversation I'm gonna have." And then the deadline arrives. "I'll put it off. I'll find an excuse. I'll do it tomorrow. I'll-"

   10. RGRobert Glazer30:26

       Right.

   11. CWChris Williamson30:26

       "... delegate it to someone else." Whatever it might be. Whereas, as you've identified there-If you're moving towards that-

   12. RGRobert Glazer30:32

       People-

   13. CWChris Williamson30:32

       ... that goal-

   14. RGRobert Glazer30:33

       Right.

   15. CWChris Williamson30:33

       ... you're in, you're in control of it.

   16. RGRobert Glazer30:34

       Peop- people have solved these problems. I, I mean, I interviewed Patty McCord from Netflix, who's, you know, really kind of thought leader on the great culture but direct with people. And when she- we talked about, like, letting people go and something they really struggled with, you know, she, she would coach her mentees when they had to have one of these conversations, they haven't done it, she's like, "Call your voicemail-"

   17. CWChris Williamson30:52

       (laughs)

   18. RGRobert Glazer30:52

       "... have the conversation with your voicemail five times before you do it and listen to it," right? It wa- there was not a secret, it wasn't a hack, it was actually practicing it, doing it, like, knowing the framework how to do it, and it was very pragmatic advice on like, yeah, of course you're not going to be good at this if you've never had this conversation. That's why you need to practice having this conversation.

   19. CWChris Williamson31:13

       I wonder again whether this links back to the cerebral overly cognitive argument that I made a little bit earlier, that we presume because we see wonderful leaders that we guess are just bestowed with this magnetism, and they just flow in a room and everyone loves them, it almost makes us forget that it's a skill the same as anything else.

   20. RGRobert Glazer31:35

       It's a great... It- i- i- it's a great lie we tell ourselves. A lot of the stories in Friday Forward demystify... If you've ever listened to How I Built This podcast, you know my favorite part is all these super successful company and people, their worst dark moment where, like, they were almost out of business and, and they go on for a long time, you know, for a lot of people. We love to be like, "Oh, that company was an overnight success," right? Because that ascribes it to timing or luck. Or I don't think professional athletes get enough credit, you know, in cases where you say, "Oh, he's just so gifted," like, practices 10 hours a day. Like, if you want to be a professional speaker and you practice speaking 10 hours a day, you'd probably be a good speaker. I mean, most of these athletes, look, it's what they love to do, but they... The amount of work that they put in to practice things before they do them far exceeds anyone in the business world.

   21. CWChris Williamson32:21

       100%. I've been hugely on this flex recently, that so few people, even if you're fully aligned, your goals, your dreams, what you know you need to do, you've broken it down into the individual steps and you're committing yourself fully, being as present as you can. But think about how far from an athlete's level of preparation everybody else is, except for the, the total freaks within their industry, the Elon Musks of this world, probably a couple of guys at Google and Facebook, you know?

   22. RGRobert Glazer32:49

       Yeah.

   23. CWChris Williamson32:50

       You think, an athlete's optimizing his food, his rest, he's thinking about-

   24. RGRobert Glazer32:54

       He has three coa- he has three coaches and he has the best in the world, right? Yeah.

   25. CWChris Williamson32:56

       And he's surrounded by a team of people who are all on the same journey as him.

   26. RGRobert Glazer33:00

       Yeah.

   27. CWChris Williamson33:00

       He's sleeping thinking about what he's going to do tomorrow. He's waking up in the morning at the time that's prescribed, all of that stuff. So thinking like an athlete, no matter what your industry is, I, I'm, I've taken a lot of inspiration from that this year-

   28. RGRobert Glazer33:12

       Yeah.

   29. CWChris Williamson33:12

       ... trying to turn pro.

   30. RGRobert Glazer33:13

       Right. And who are the athletes that always disappoint, that people are, are, are, you know, regret signing?
4. 45:00 – 56:44

   Massively. A huge problem…

   1. RGRobert Glazer45:00

      that we control. So, so circumstances, uh, and then, and then, and then people. And, and I think there's also a piece that... Again, to resilience. There is that emotional side of resilience. Like, how do I... You know, how do I plan for the next thing I'm gonna do that I didn't think that I could physically do? Because what, what, what I think keeps people moving forward in that is, is being vulnerable, is getting out of their comfort zone. You know, I think that greatly increases their emotional capacity. People want to share. People want to be vulnerable. Th- th- they're just scared to. And when they do, the depth of their relationship... You know, two people have been having this superficial conversation for five years, aren't talking about the real thing that they want to talk about that would actually create the bond that they're seeking.

   2. CWChris Williamson45:45

      Massively. A huge problem amongst young guys, I think.

   3. RGRobert Glazer45:47

      Yeah.

   4. CWChris Williamson45:47

      Especially ones that are professionals, type As, trying to be overachievers. They, and I did for a very long time, I presumed that strength and confidence and bravado and courage and all of these things went along with not showing vulnerability.

   5. RGRobert Glazer46:04

      Yeah.

   6. CWChris Williamson46:04

      Whereas quite the opposite is true. That the people with whom I have the deepest relationships are the ones that I've been the most vulnerable with.

   7. RGRobert Glazer46:12

      Absolutely.

   8. CWChris Williamson46:12

      And it becomes so fulfilling. When you tell someone something which, in the wrong hands, could be quite catastrophic to you-

   9. RGRobert Glazer46:20

      Yeah.

   10. CWChris Williamson46:20

       ... that's really where you make a connection. And I think... There's a, a book that's up on the big shelf up there, The Lonely Century-

   11. RGRobert Glazer46:28

       (laughs)

   12. CWChris Williamson46:28

       ... by Noreena Hertz-

   13. RGRobert Glazer46:29

       Yeah.

   14. CWChris Williamson46:29

       ... uh, talking about this loneliness epidemic that we've got at the moment. And I wonder how many people are combating loneliness by trying to be overly confident, by thinking, "I am going to be the sort of friend that other people would want to be friends with." And the truth is that being more vulnerable and showing that side of you that is precisely the opposite of what you think other people want might be the quickest way-

   15. RGRobert Glazer46:51

       I, yeah, and I-

   16. CWChris Williamson46:51

       ... to make a connection.

   17. RGRobert Glazer46:52

       ... I think there's... Look, there's a lot of culture in this. There's a lot of gender history in this, particularly with boys. You know, I'm feeling like I... I mean, I, I've heard this story, you know, closer to home for you. I can't tell you how many times I've heard a story from a coach or a speaker, an Irish boy, you know, and his father, who just wanted to have a real discussion and give him a hug. And I... I mean, my friend Phil McKernan, you know, just talks about, you know, he wasn't... It wasn't till he was 45 that he and his dad said they loved to each other.

   18. CWChris Williamson47:18

       (laughs)

   19. RGRobert Glazer47:18

       You know, it just... It was this thing you didn't do.

   20. CWChris Williamson47:21

       Yeah.

   21. RGRobert Glazer47:21

       And they danced around it, and it was like, as a, as his son, it's all he wanted. You know, what... And, and I, I've just... I feel like I've heard... So there is a lot of... There are cultural implications in, in a lot of this stuff, but I do think generationally, it's, it's changing a bit, which is nice.

   22. CWChris Williamson47:37

       I really like the analogy that you drew between using the weather app. So, we've had a lot of Stoics on recently, including Ryan Holiday, and the weather's-

   23. RGRobert Glazer47:47

       Yeah.

   24. CWChris Williamson47:47

       ... a good example. Using the weather as, look, controllables versus uncontrollables.

   25. RGRobert Glazer47:50

       Correct.

   26. CWChris Williamson47:50

       The dichotomy of control. All this sort of stuff. But thinking about the fact that... I wa- I was laughing at how-

   27. RGRobert Glazer47:56

       (laughs)

   28. CWChris Williamson47:56

       ... your friends who like to look at the weather app, because I'm like, "How ridiculous. Why would you do that?" But really, everything on your phone is the weather app, apart from individual messages. Looking at-

   29. RGRobert Glazer48:08

       The news is the weather app, yeah.

   30. CWChris Williamson48:09

       Precisely.

Episode duration: 56:45