Marty: Hello, everyone, and welcome back to not your typical leadership coaching with IFS practitioner, William Tierney, whom I will call Bill. I don't know why I said William just now. My legal name, but no, nobody called me William. And me, Martin Ketelhut, um, who just came out with a book on leadership called Leadership as Relation. You can find it on Amazon or Anywhere you buy books. Um, so we, there's, there's a phenomenon out there, which I'm sure that you can see if you just sit, take a minute and just sit back and look and it's, it comes up because Bill and I were talking about it as something I'm noticing in my life. Which is this this way in which we can settle for things at times. We get into for various reasons we'll talk about more we, we get a solution to a problem or a way of doing things that, um. It's supposed to be an answer, supposed to be a resolution. It turns out it leaves us somewhat frustrated, tolerating things that, you know, aren't perfect and settling for the status quo.

Bill: Yes, yes, yes. And for many of us, and for me for years and years and years. It was about the best I could do was to settle for less than what I wanted in what area just like I think it was every area. But yeah, we could be, we could certainly be specific relationships. Intimate intimate relationships. Significant other intimate relationships. Money. Yeah, we could land on any of those.

Marty: Yeah. Yeah. For me, it's in the area of socializing, a career, or even maybe earning mechanisms, because I'm, you know, it's not necessarily my career that I'm unhappy with, but the mechanism by which I, uh, seek to earn a living at it. And also, I think another big one for me is. There's this domain of my life I would call like adventure and beauty that I'm kind of, I would like to see that domain blossom more and I'm currently kind of settling for, you know, shorter, you know, Shorter vacations or lesser opera companies, things like that. Right?

Bill: Yeah. Well, the area that you're talking about now, um, sounds a lot like the category that I'll use many times as my individual clients, especially at the front end of the, of the coaching relationship where we're identifying. The changes that they'd like to make in their lives. I provide four different categories to use just as a starting place. And one of those categories is fun and joy. So when I hear you say adventure and beauty, fun and joy seems to kind of go together. Another one very closely related, a third of the four categories that I use. I call self care, which while the Venn diagram crosses over a bit on self care and fun and joy, they aren't especially one in the same. Right. Clearly. I mean,

Marty: um, you can't go out and have fun and joy if you haven't taken care of yourself, but I can see how, you know, some of that does overlap. You know, it's, it's not only Fun and joyful, but it might be imperative that you get a massage, you

Bill: know, right, right. And so the other 2, as long as I have mentioned the 1st, the number 3 was self care number for fun and joy number 3, excuse me, number 2 is relationship. And of course, that. That's broad. That could be any relationship. And then there's profession or occupation or avocation. I just call it profession. And so, yeah, in my life, I have compromised I have settled for and then ended up enduring and tolerating conditions in my life that really weren't very satisfactory and somewhere along the line. I learned that that made me a good person doing that.

Marty: So that's what kept you in that in that place was well, I guess I have to settle in order to

Bill: be good. A good person, I go to, I, I, if I'm, if I can do the opposite of being selfish, self centered and thinking about me, then maybe that's what it is that I'm driving it. Maybe that's who I'm trying to be. Um, no, I'm not going to put the, lay this all on the altar, pun intended, of Catholics, but I was raised Catholics. raised Catholic, and there seems, seemed to be, that's what I was picking up from what I learned in Catholicism, is that, uh, sacrificing would be rewarded in the next life.

Marty: And

Bill: so, sacrifice now, To be rewarded in the next life. God loves that. God loves to see a sack. Look, look, he loved his son sacrificing himself. So I need to sacrifice as well. So I think that's part of it for me. I wouldn't say that's all of it by any means something certainly worth exploring a little bit of. I

Marty: think what gets me in in this place of settling more often than not is, um, that I'm looking for support in something that, you know, I might not have expertise in. Or a part of it, I might not have expertise it, you know, like, I'm a good coach and I have a solid business, but I'm not really into the marketing, let's say, right? So, I hire somebody to help with the marketing, but they are not quite serving me in the way that I, that I want to be served. Um. And I can see how this has happened in these other domains that I mentioned already too. And so I think what keeps me there is this. Well, I thought they knew better and and yet here I am. So, it's a borders on a little bit of a martyrdom like, well, like, I'm, I guess I have to work with this kind of thing. Um, but just for 1 2nd, I want to go back before we go further when you were talking about these different areas. I remember, um, of life that people want coaching in, and I think that's very helpful, you know, to, to be able to say, well, you know, look at these areas, consider what might be, that's very helpful that you give people the, I remember, uh, I did, I did a book, did a book, it was a book called My Life in 5 Years. I have to look up the author's name. It was some sort of French name, if I recall correctly. And it's, it was all just like from page one to the end, it was all questions to fill in you right into the book. And she asked questions in about five different domains about the life that you see yourself leading. And so by doing the book, you create a vision, right of the future that you want to lead. And I remember thinking. At that time, and maybe this is just the rebellious teenager in me. I don't know. I remember thinking, well, I want to create my own domains, right? These yeah, I get that. These are suggestive and helpful and probably very popular. And I remember that. I mean, I even made a poster. Right. And I, each of my domains had a symbol and they, and they fit together in the poster. And so I'm sorry that I don't have this. I'd love to see that. Yeah. But, um, I, the reason I wanted to mention it is just so that our listeners. You know, use both use those, those standard kind of, um, breakouts of the domains of life to look at, but also be feel free, like, to create your own domain. So I agreed with Bill at the beginning of the hour when he said, oh, beauty and adventure sounds like that fits in, uh, fun and enjoy, which it does totally. Right. Those are my, the way I go for fun and joy is through beauty and adventure. Experiencing beautiful things and adventures. So yeah, that gives me fun and joy. Absolutely. Um, and I just want to leave the door open, you know, if you want to, if the listener wants to invent a door, that's also cool.

Bill: Yes. Yes. Oh yeah. There's a lot of different ways to label them. I love what you're saying there.

Marty: Yeah, and it, and it's important because it allows you to emphasize or to prioritize or to see things through the filter that you want to.

Bill: Well, I wonder if, is there a filter that you'd like to look through in this conversation? At settling a domain, a domain that you that you feel like you settle in. You've already mentioned that as much as you enjoy coaching, the marketing can be really challenging for you.

Marty: That has become the case. Yes. And this might be a topic for another, uh, discussion. Episode, but, um, didn't seem it didn't used to be that way. I don't I'm not even quite sure what has changed. So, like I say, this is a little bit off topic, but, you know, it seemed like I never really had to go out and do marketing before it kept itself going, um, through referrals, um, through introductions to natural networking. Um, and now it seems like, Oh gosh, I better do some marketing. What's going on here? So something, something has changed. And so I'm caught in a place that I haven't really been before in my life where, um, yeah, this, this new thing needs to be brought in called marketing. I mean, it's not new to the world, but to me

Bill: now, I, on the other hand, have always had to market. I've never had a period of time in my 14 years where the referrals just flowed in because what I was doing naturally organically without effort at all was bringing in enough business to satisfy what it was that I wanted. So, for me, it's, it's been, I've done things that I didn't especially want to do. We had a conversation about this last week. Of course, I always do what I want to do, but there were parts of me that absolutely did not want to be part of an, of a networking group, for example. Yeah. And yet other parts of me thought it was such a great idea that I started my own networking group. And by the way, it was very successful for me. And, and the, the, the networking group that I started back in 2000, I, I wanna say 2002 or 2003, it's still going. Mm-Hmm. and I was a member of it twice. When I first started in the group. I started as a mortgage loan officer. Mm-Hmm. . And I partnered up with an insurance agent and a real estate agent. And the three of us built the group. And, and we got it up to, I think at one point we had 45 people in the group ah, to Libra. And we were meeting for an hour and a half every single week. And, and during that time, I had, I and the other 44 members of the group had an opportunity to talk about who would, who, who am I? What do I do? What service do I provide, provide? Why would you want to refer me to someone that you know? And, and so we, we had an opportunity to, in a very structured way for an hour and a half every week for, As long as you were in the, in the group to, to, to bait, basically train your sales force to go out and sell for you. And, and it was very, very successful, but I. I always dreaded going. I always enjoyed being there and, uh, and then over the course of the next week, I would forget how much I enjoyed it. And I would dread things like that too. Right?

Marty: Right. Well, was there a settling going on there? Yeah.

Bill: Yeah. Yeah. I wanted, I just wanted to sit in my coach chair, coaching people. Yeah. Didn't want to have to spend any time networking. Of course, the, the, the reality of that is that until somebody knows, knew I was a coach, nobody would hire me. First, they had to know I was a coach. Secondly, they wanted to know how I coached. Third, they had to begin to believe that I could help them with, solve a problem that they had. This gets

Marty: this gets into an area. I now I'm hearing clients from the past in my memory saying, you know, well, yeah, I know I need an assistant, but if I get an assistant that I got to teach them how to do things the way I want. Yeah, like, like, being in a, in a, in a networking group that isn't giving you what you wanted out of it, or, you know, hiring a marketing person who isn't. Getting you the kind of results you want, or in the way that you want, or the kind of people that you want. There's plenty of them, but they're not that kind of things. So, um, this might be, you know, and I've, I've heard people say that about hirees like, well. You know, this is what I wound up with. Um, so this is I think this is good that we take this topic and and dig deep. So what from your perspective, do you think is it that it's it sounds like there's there's an initial I want something, but I wanted a certain way. That's that's the initial

Bill: place where the problem happens. Is that right? It is. In fact, I wrote down the word negotiation very early in the conversation. The word negotiation negotiation popped into my head and negotiation. Let's just imagine. I am looking for a new car. I don't know even why I want a new car. I just want a new car.

Marty: So

Bill: I might look in the paper. I might go online. I might jump in my car and drive to a dealership, park in front, and then just begin to walk around the lot to see if anything grabs my eye, so I can get an idea. Now, very soon I might find out that what feels natural and organic for me, in terms of making my decision about, number one, whether I even want to buy a car, um, doesn't really match my needs. The, the ideas of the people that are going to want to sell me a car. Yeah.

Marty: Mm hmm.

Bill: I'm walking on their lot, and I've worked for car salesmen, uh, car dealerships before I was a salesman for three years. So I know that dealerships spend a tremendous amount of money on attracting people to their lot. And the story that I'm making up right now, I'm just driven to a lot. I don't, I know that they're there. How do I know they're there? Maybe they've marketed, maybe they've advertised, or maybe they're just down a busy street and I drive by every day. But in any case, somehow what some decisions that they made put themselves in a position where I thought to go there when I thought about maybe buying a car. Now that they've invested all that, they want to make sure that they've got a system built that will capture the opportunity when it shows up. I happened to be the opportunity walking on the lot that day. So I'm going to be met by a salesman. And if I get lucky, I'll be met with an intelligent, personable, non pushy salesman, and if I'm not lucky, I'm going to have to be with somebody that I don't want to spend the next two minutes with, let alone the next two hours. If I ended up buying a car or four or six hours. So in this situation. Um, let's look at it from the dealership's perspective. They have built the best machine they can to get me there and then to capture the sale once I get there.

Marty: I

Bill: just want to buy a car, maybe. I just want to make a decision. Do I want to buy a car or not? And to make that decision, I think that what I need is just to be able to look around and see the cars. And maybe the next thing that will happen is if I see something I like, I'm going to want to have some questions answered about it. And so the negotiation begins. This car is red. I don't want red. I want blue. This car is a four door. I don't want a four door. I want to sit, I want to coop. This, this car is blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So now it's negotiating, but the negotiation starts in here, inside me, in my own thinking. I'm negotiating with myself. And, and it took this long in this conversation for me to get to internal family systems. Can you believe it?

Marty: I was just about to say something about that's hilarious.

Bill: So part of me wants red, and the other part wants blue, part wants a four door, the other part wants a coup, another one wants a truck, the part that says you've got no business buying a truck.

Marty: And then there are also parts that that, um, don't want to be a bother, uh, or parts that love to do research and parts parts that don't want to piss off the salesperson parts that they, um, want to surprise your wife with a card today. There's all these other parts going on to that are sort of meta. Not just about the car, but about the situation too,

Bill: right? Exactly. And in the IFS model, there is a central core essence that's fully resourced and wise that ultimately will make that decision and be influenced and persuaded by the preferences of those, all those separate parts and their concerns. And so internally, there's the very great potential of settling. If I've got, let's say 50 percent of my parts that, that say buy a car and 50 percent that say, don't,

Marty: if I'm

Bill: going to buy a car, the 50 percent that say don't are going to have to buy into the vision, or they're going to feel like they're selling, settling for, for what they don't want. That's already happening inside me. So it could be said that unless if I, unless I have good solid self leadership, unless I can provide my own parts with self guidance, wisdom and leadership, compassionate leadership, then I'm going to resent myself for every decision I make.

Marty: Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Parts

Bill: of me feel like I'm settling. So

Marty: let me just ask a question before you go on the word negotiation came up in a powerful way is, is that what you do with your parts? Or your parts do with each other before talking to the salesman, or is this a different process than that? It is.

Bill: It can be both. It can be both. So, having the conversation with the, with the salesman may reveal the, the internal conflict around this decision. I may not be aware of the internal conflict because I've been dominated by a part that said, let's go drive to the dealership. And there wasn't a whole lot of objection until the salesman showed up. And now parts start saying, whoa, whoa, whoa, we're just looking and those words might just come out of my mouth. Just looking buddy, leave me alone. I just want to walk on the lot. Can I just walk on the lot and look at the cars? I just push back real hard. And depending on the salesman, they're either going to say, okay, just let me know if you need your help. If you need my help. Or they're going to, they're going to say, okay, sure. What are you looking for? You know, they're going to keep the conversation going if they're really doing it. Because if they don't, the next guy on the lot is going to, the next salesman is going to grab me.

Marty: By the way, just anecdote. The last time I had to buy a car, which is oof. I don't know, might have been 7 years ago. Um, I went on a day when there was nobody there. It was weird. There was nobody else there except this 1, like, 17 year old. I mean, maybe it was 23, but he was really young. And no other customers, no other people working there. It seemed like maybe, maybe, you know, the janitor or something. And so it was perfect for both of us. And he, he sold me a car probably within 40 minutes. It was fast. It was, it was amazing. And he was pleased because he got a sale under his belt. And I was pleased because I didn't have to deal with the, you know, the more experienced ones and all their nuances. And so it was, it was unusual. Anyway, sorry, I interrupted.

Bill: Well,

Marty: no, let's

Bill: stay with that. So that day you did not settle.

Marty: No,

Bill: no, you're happy. You are happy with it. I still, I still have that car and it's paid for. So I'm still happy. Yeah, very good. So that's a great example of not settling. And I want to just suggest that that everything, everything Aligned for you. Your parts didn't object. All of your parts agreed that you needed a car. All of your parts agreed, agreed to that particular car and the price and the, and the experience of buying it. And that young man that you met that helped you, everything aligned and everything worked well. And that's great. That's great. Was that because you had internal leadership? It doesn't sound like you actually needed to use much of it. Like, like your parts were aligned with what, what self or your essence would have, have had you do. And that's, that's, that to me, the evidence of that was that you were satisfied.

Marty: Yeah.

Bill: Like you were settled, settling. You didn't have second thoughts. You didn't regret your decision. Settling happens when, when it feels like I have to make a decision and there's no options that feel good or right. A good example of that would be the many times that I, from my immaturity, my emotional, uh, lack of emotional intelligence, I would quit things, jobs. I would quit jobs just because I felt upset, because I felt criticized, because I didn't feel appreciated. Because I was frustrated and impatient. For whatever reason, I would just quit as a younger man. And I'd put myself and my wife and family in a horrible financial position. So then very soon thereafter quitting, reality would hit hard, like, Oh, well, how am I going to pay rent this month? How can, how am I going to put gas in the car, put food on the table? And so then from a place of fear and desperation, I would go out and try to replace that job. And, and was I only going to settle for what I want? No, no, I had myself in such a, such a position where I was going to have to settle for whatever somebody would give me. And I did. I often did that. So the reason I think that this, this conversation is so important is so that we can learn how to not settle. Even, even in those situations that like the one I just described to you, where I take a job that I really didn't want, I'm settling for something less than I actually want.

Marty: Right.

Bill: Right. We go back to last week's conversation where we're talking about, I only do what I want to do. Yeah. If I can get right with that in my own mind, if I can help my parts around the idea that yeah. This is the choice that I made, and even though it's not optimal, even though it's not exactly what I want, in this moment it's what I want, because, because I've got all this fear, and this takes care of my fear, gives me a job, and gets me busy knowing myself, that when I'm busy, employed, making some money, I'm in a much better position. To find what I actually want or to improve within the position that I just got to develop what it is that I want. So not, you know, settling for something is only. Disempowering and I would say negative or a bad idea when you stay settled,

Marty: settling, settling, you might, you might take the job because you really need a job knowing that this isn't going to be forever. It's, it's the best solution right now, and I'm not going to settle. I might move on in 3 months when I find something better. I just know that I need to do this now. Let

Bill: me give you an example of exactly that. Now, this happened 35 years ago, Marty. I, um, I really didn't want to go back to the grocery business. I'd already worked for the grocery business for 12 years. And, again, due to my emotional immaturity and lack of intelligence, I really had set myself up and I was absolutely desperate. Living in Spokane, Washington, um, I decided, okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna just go ahead and give myself back to the grocery business. They, they don't deserve me as a gift to them, but I'm going, I'm going to do that. And so I go to, around to all the stores that I, that I've never quit, never worked for, never quit before. And I say, hi, my name is Bill Tierney. I'm a journeyman clerk. I know exactly what I'm doing. You need me. When can I start? And they would say, yeah, sorry, we don't need any help. And we certainly don't want to hire a journeyman clerk. We're looking for minimum wage and people when we look and we don't need anybody right now. What they weren't saying is your attitude sucks and we don't want you around. You, you're entitled, you're arrogant, we don't want you. So big surprise, I wasn't able to find a job anywhere. And finally, 12 miles away from my house, I found a job with a Bins. They no longer even exist. And it was a box store, a grocery store, new concept at that time. And they said, the only position that we have is minimum wage. This is 1988, minimum wage at that time in Spokane, Washington, 3. 65 an hour. The equivalent of probably about minimum wage right now, 15, 16 here, um, and we can't guarantee you hours. It's going to be part time, on call. You might come in and work for an hour on the graveyard shift and if the truck gets unloaded and we have plenty of help, being the new employee, you'll be the first one to get laid off for the night. I was desperate, Marty, and I took it, and for the first week, I had the crappiest attitude because my belief, my mindset about that was I'm settling. This is

Marty: what I

Bill: want. I deserve so much more than this. I've been a store manager. It's kind of like that Will Ferrell skit on Saturday Night Live where he says, I drive a Dobbs Stratus. You don't, you don't know who I am. You can't talk to me. Have you ever seen that? Watch it if you haven't seen it. It's, it's hilarious. He gets mad at his daughter because she's back talking. He says, you don't talk to me that way. I'm, I'm a manager. I drive a Dodge Stratus. I mean, and they have this big fight at the table. It's amazing. And yeah, that was my attitude is that I don't take jobs like this, but I was desperate. So I took it. Um, a week later, I changed my attitude when I realized that the people around me could use my help, the night crew that I was working on. They didn't know how to hold a box knife. They didn't know how to stock a shelf. They didn't know how to think the way my 12 years of grocery experience knew how to think. So I started teaching them and I noticed that I felt better.

Marty: Yeah.

Bill: The more I taught them and the better I felt, more people came to me and asked me for help. And now the shift manager is noticing, Oh, wow, things are happening.

Marty: Good

Bill: stuff's happening. Why, why is good stuff happening? I didn't know he was watching me. And he come up to me after the shift and he said, can you go part time? Can you go, can I, can I lock you in for 20 hours a week? And I said, yes, please. He said, great. It means an extra buck an hour. So, and then two weeks later, word got out that I knew how to work in produce and I knew how to run the cash register. And they, they said, Bill, we've got a shortage during the day. And in produce, I know you're working at night, but will you fill in on produce? I said, absolutely. I will. I'd love to. And it means another dollar an hour. Now I'm up to 30 hours a week. And then the frozen dairy guy goes down. He ends up having to go to treatment. And they say it's a 40 hour job plus, but it would be journeyman wages plus an extra buck and a half an hour, which is, I don't know, whatever it would have been 10 bucks an hour now. And, and 40 hours plus overtime. Do you want it? Yes. And eight years later, I was still doing it. And. Loving it, you know, almost, almost every minute of that job, I absolutely loved it. So I settled at first, I had a shitty attitude at first about it, but as soon as my attitude changed, opportunity began to show up. And what I had initially settled for, I actually generated from a real positive attitude.

Marty: It sounds like whether it's in the negotiation, going into it, or whether it's once you realize. This isn't for me. I thought it was, but it's not. Or in your case, where at first it seemed like it wasn't, and then it became a good fit, that generating oneself to negotiate, uh, to reframe, um, to, to take responsibility for the circumstances, generating oneself seems to be the key to not settling.

Bill: Absolutely. And I believe that a part of that is getting clear about what it is that I want. I, if, if the measure of whether I'm settling or not can only happen when I find I'm dissatisfied. That's a real crappy way of going about selecting something and, uh, and, and being happy with it. Okay,

Marty: great. So there's, there's a preventative medicine

Bill: here. Yes, there is. So how do we get clear about what we want? And if you're like me and you come from a place of not ever learning how to get clear about preferences or even knowing it's okay to have them, then you may only have. what you clarity about what you don't want. Right. Okay. You're getting something. I'm going to pause here because I can tell you. Well,

Marty: I'm just underlining some notes that I had made earlier. Um, so for example, with regard to the marketing in the business, um, I think that's, that's what, you know, at first I, I go into it thinking, I don't know marketing, so I'll do what you say. Yes. And, and now I'm going, well, it's not quite working for me. Could we do it a little bit more like this? You know, so I'm negotiating, I'm generating myself, I'm being responsible. And, um, and, and like you say, giving him information, he needs to be able to better support me as my marketer. Yes.

Bill: Yes.

Marty: So yeah, having that clear idea in advance. Yeah, the, you know, if I had had that before, then I could have given it to him then, um, and, and we wouldn't be where we are now, but now is okay. Now we, now we're at the negotiating table and, and it's, it's my job to step up and make his work work for me.

Bill: And that's exactly what Meredith and I did. If you go back 10 episodes or so, you and I interviewed Meredith. Okay. And, um, I'll retell the story just a little bit because, because it fits so well here. I was the one that said I hate marketing. And, and I, and I said that because I had years and years and years of trying to make myself do what I didn't want to do in order to get business.

Marty: Uh,

Bill: and also being lost and not trusting myself to know what, what I might be able to do. You would hear me say, I'm not a marketing expert. I don't know anything about marketing and I can't afford to hire anybody that is an expert to do it. So I need to figure it out on myself and I hate it. I hate marketing. So then when I hired Merida, then we began to talk, she gave me, let's just say a half a dozen ideas in over the course of an hour. One of the ideas that she gave me, I, I ended up implementing. But in that first conversation, she said to me, why aren't you doing this? Have you thought of doing this? And I, and I had a clear objection to it. No. Yes, I've thought about it and it's been suggested before that I do that, but I don't wanna do that because of this, this, and this. And she kinda shrugged her shoulders and said, okay, it would work Bill if you would just do it, bill. I can't do it. Alright, why not? Why can't you do it? So we had a conversation about it and she actually helped me go re over the course of two or three conversations, she helped me to reframe it and it got to the point where I could see that I was. Putting myself in the way of success and I didn't end up compromising my integrity or my values in any way, shape, or form. It's just that some of the beliefs that I had that were stopping me, I found not to be true, that I had been accepting as the truth.

Marty: Yeah, yeah, right.

Bill: As a result of that negotiation with Meredith, who absolutely knows her stuff when it comes to messaging to the, to the niche client, to the target client, my niche, how do I get the message of who I am and what I do and how I help to them? What is, what are the words that I use? How do I go about building a system to, like, just on the car light, get the word out there so that people know I'm here, know where to find me, and know how to come into contact and into conversation with me. Now, how do I capture that business? All of that we walk, we walk through, talk through, and work through. And over the last, um, 10 months now, my business has never been better. I think that the reason is because I have found, uh, the perfect combination of my personality, my values, and, and the, and really the perfect language around how to, how do I describe what it is that I do. To help the people that I want to help.

Marty: I mean, I can, I, I can see how this, um, is also a question that people I, now that I'm listening in a new way, given our conversation, um, ask about their marriage, you know, even, uh, or, uh, you know, a group of people that they become associated with, like, you know, the rotary or a men's group or something like that, like, Oh, I thought this was going to give me what I needed. Like, Hmm, but there was no conversation from the beginning about, well, what kind what do you want out of this? What's the support you want? It's like, well, it looked good because all those, you know, those guys look successful and happy. Like, I want to be part of their group. Right? Um, or, you know, um. In the marriage, I talk about one in my chapter nine in my book, the guy in the, in the story, you know, he took this wife because everybody in his family said, Oh, she's perfect for you. Right. And and so he thought they were right. They must be right. They know me better than anything. And they love me. And so their choice must be the right one. And, you know, turned out she, she was right. She was attracted to the whole family because they were flashy and, you know, they had a lot of money and they were, um, uh, high achievers. And that's, that's what she was, you know, and that wasn't what that happened to be one aspect of his family that Peter didn't identify with, you know, he, he didn't, he grew up in that environment. But so anyway, a couple of miles down the relationship. It didn't work anymore because he wasn't looking to just impress her what there's achievements forever. Right? He wanted a real, intimate, mutually beneficial kind of relationship. So, you know, Here again, you know, it's, it's that the preventative medicine would have been a deeper conversation from the get go about what are you looking for out of being married to me? And what am I looking for out of being married to you? What's the future we see that would that would satisfy us both right? And that conversation didn't happen

Bill: setting up realistic expectations for both parties.

Marty: Yes,

Bill: this is what I want this. These are my we used to talk about this and accomplishment coaching that 1 year coach training program that I went through. What are the conditions of satisfaction

Marty: conditions of satisfaction? We're

Bill: talking about. We're talking about exactly the same thing. What is it that that I require in order to be satisfied in a marriage and a job and a career? Uh, one of the mistakes that I made for years and years and years, and I think this is very, very common, is that I, I believed that others were more expert on my life than I was.

Marty: Yeah,

Bill: therefore, I would defer authority to who I assigned expertise to.

Marty: Yeah, I would never probably say about my life, but about marketing or about, you know, investment or about there are things that I would say somebody I'm, you know, somebody who's got a career went to college for that probably knows more about that than me, not about my life, but at

Bill: the

Marty: well,

Bill: but here's what I'm

Marty: saying.

Bill: Yes. Yeah, I mean, I am no, I wouldn't sell myself as a marketing expert for anybody else, not by any means, but I've gotten a whole lot better at marketing because I've learned through my own experience how to market myself. I don't know how to market you, but I know how to market myself now, finally.

Marty: And

Bill: when it came down to making the decisions about what I would and wouldn't do in marketing, ultimately it came down to how does it feel inside of me to consider doing that? How does it feel to spend that kind of money? How does it feel to have that message going out? How does it feel to, to put someone on a mailing list, for example, under, under the, how does it make, how does it feel to make this offer to a, to a potential mailing list client? And if it didn't feel good or didn't feel right I could ignore it and make myself do it But it would it wouldn't have felt right it wouldn't have I would have felt like I was settling So I had to work through every one of those internal objections and working through that just simply meant Noticing there was a part of me that had a concern about doing that Going to the part finding out what its concerns were and then either finding a way to address that concern so the part could relax and allow me to be To take the next step Or listening to the part and saying, Hey, you're right. There's no way we can't do that. You're you're you part are holding that line for me. And I really appreciate that. You are thanks for screaming and yelling and not letting me do that. So if I am the expert in my own life, I'm the expert in my own business, I'm the expert in choosing relationships. For me, nobody, nobody comes anywhere close to being as expertise on me, my life, my choices as I am. And that might sound arrogant, but that's, in my experience, that is reality. I can go to a marketing person saying, here, here are my values. This is who I want to work with. This is the mess, basically the message. And here's my story and my history. Now, can you package that up for me, given the expertise that you have? Because you're the expert in marketing. I just am the expert in my own business. And when you put something together and put it before me and I say, well, that doesn't quite match. I, you don't get, you don't have the right to say, well, it better match because that's the way you're supposed to do it. I'm going to say, no, I don't care how you're supposed to do it. That doesn't match who I am. That's not the message I want to convey.

Marty: Well, how could that would you said that that could be seen as arrogant. It sounds on the mentally self caring. So I was struck when you said that.

Bill: Yeah, well, my experience in the world is that when I stand up and actually have some self esteem, the people that I grew up with would, would judge that as arrogant. I see. You need to be humble. You need to be submissive. Think about, think about how we are taught at school and during most. Most elementary school all the way through junior high and high school and maybe even college too. Um, we are taught how to be submissive, how to at least

Marty: our generation. I don't, I can't say about the next generation, but our, but it's, there's evidence that they're different. Millennials are a little different.

Bill: Yeah. Yeah.

Marty: But, but yes, we were, I was definitely taught, you know, I talk about that in my book in the section about listening. You know, like, my parents would say, well, you're not listening when I would disobey and it wasn't that I wasn't listening. I heard what they said. I just don't want to do it that way.

Bill: Right? Right. Right. You know, and at some point, you know, when is that? When is it when you declare it is so at 12 years old or 15 years old or 18 or 25 or whatever the age is at what point? Are you now gonna claim ownership of your own life? That's really the question It's not at what point do I have permission to own my own life? It's at what point will I claim it? What at what point do I declare it because at that point now I step into my power

Marty: And

Bill: i'm going to get some things wrong. I'm going to probably overreact to to The you know being influenced by others. I talked to a client earlier today who's making decisions In her life because she doesn't want to be controlled That's not a good motivation for making decisions

Marty: right

Bill: now. Let's work through the pain of feeling controlled so that you can come from a powerful place and make decisions not based on not being controlled, not based on avoiding something, but based on a vision and inspiration, a sense of purpose.

Marty: Right, which do and basing it on that puts you in control or, you know, at least you're not avoiding it's you're not in that. That's just a, that's a, a dynamic that doesn't even come up

Bill: by the way that word control. That's another thing that that can get a whole lot of pushback from people. There is very little that we actually have control over, but that which we do have control over. We need to have control over that would be ourselves.

Marty: Mm-Hmm, .

Bill: So, control's not a bad word there. Um, can I, and maybe the word isn't even control here, but, but can I, am I the master of my own domain? Domain is, is me. My life, my decisions, my choices, who I'm with, how long I stay on the phone with a person, what I do when there's a disconnection thrown in the middle of a conversation. I'm in, I'm in charge of what I do with it, whether I stay with it and try to work it out or, or, or leave it, accept the disconnection as, as a condition of the relationship that I'm in, I'm going off in a different direction here, remembering a conversation that I had earlier today and, and how this connection, we all want connection, we all need connection. In fact, it is fundamental to, to human existence, I believe, is, is to feel connection with other human beings. And when we lose that connection, we begin to feel some desperation. We notice it immediately that we've lost that connection. And so I'm, I've been looking for a long time at what, what causes that disconnection. And what I've, what I've come up with and, and came up with this a couple of years ago, and it seems to be true, is that anything, anytime, anything that's inauthentic is, is put into the space between us, there's a disconnection. Sure. That makes sense. To reconnect that, that inauthenticity needs to be addressed. And, and repaired.

Marty: So whenever we're settling, we're in, in, we're in an inauthenticity,

Bill: right? I'm saying this. Okay. Is okay. When it really isn't

Marty: right

Bill: now, I, I can say I am settling. It's okay for now. Now that's authentic, but if it's I'm settling and I'm a victim of this and this is the way it's always going to be in, this is the best I can do. That's inauthentic.

Marty: Gotcha. Yeah.

Bill: We probably need to wrap up. I think we've been going for 40 minutes or so, 45 minutes, maybe.

Marty: All right, another good discussion. Yes,

Bill: it was. I enjoyed it. That concludes another episode of Not Your Typical Leadership Coaching. We hope you found inspiration and valuable insights to fuel your leadership journey. Remember, true leadership is not about you. It's about empowering others. Take your insights to heart and cultivate a leadership mindset that will transform you from within. Thank you for joining us on this quest to leadership excellence. Don't forget to subscribe and stay tuned for our upcoming episodes where we delve deeper into the art of leadership. Until next time, remember that you have the power to lead with confidence and compassion from the inside out.