Bill: Well, welcome to another episode of Not Your Typical Leadership Coaching with Dr. Martin Kettlehut.

Marty: Hello.

Bill: And myself, Bill Tierney. I'm a results coach and an IFS, a certified IFS practitioner. Marty, in addition to being a coach, is an author and just recently released a book called Leadership as relation. I've messed that up so many times. I wanted you to say it leadership as relation and it's available on Amazon and anywhere you can buy books. I think it's right. Yeah, that's today. Just before we hit record. We, we, as we always do. Um, and we have a list that we can draw from, but as you pointed out, Marty, let's talk about something that's, that's up for one or both of us. Okay. And the very first thing I said to you when I saw you pop up on zoom was I'm, I owe you an apology. The reason I owed you an apology was because I, I was running late. I sent you a, I went to send you a text message saying I'm going to be about five minutes late in signing in today, which is great. Nothing wrong with that. But then when I went to send you that text, I realized there was another text that you had sent me last Friday, which I had seen, but didn't respond to immediately. And then it just never got responded to. And what did you say when I said, Hey, I owe you an apology and here's why. Okay. Uh, I don't remember exactly what did I say? Well, you said, yeah, I was wondering about that. Oh, that's right. That's

Marty: good.

Bill: I made some things up about what was going on that you didn't respond. Precisely. Yeah. And that's what we do. When, when there's, when the communication is dropped for any reason, we have a tendency to make stuff up. Of course we do. What, you know, we want to explain things to ourselves. And usually it's not good. I'm guessing the things that you told yourself were at least some of them are probably not very empowering. That's exactly right. That's exactly right.

Marty: Yeah. Well, I mean, this, this is a something that we've mentioned from a lot of different angles. Over the life of this podcast, and it's what Terry Goss calls the human predicament. We're always looking for, you know, what's endangering or what could be improved or what's, um, not quite right about us so that we can, it's important to survive and take notice of that and do something about it. So it is, it's an, you know, it's an evolutionary and. Early evolutionary, like, it's not, it doesn't use the frontal cortex. Actually. It's more amygdalo. Um, in our, in our evolution, but, but it's there and it's automatic

Bill: and leads to tremendous problems, even though it's there and it helps us to survive, or at least that's the reason we have that capacity in the 1st place. The capacity to be able to make stuff up to tell stories to kind of problem solve and piece together the puzzle is so that we can survive. And yet when we piece together the puzzle and then respond to it as if that's the truth that often can be problematic. Right. That's right.

Marty: Yeah. I just, it's, it is important to know that, you know, it's, it's part of us. It's not bad. It has its function, sometimes it will save your life, or it'll alert you to something that's not life saving, but very important. Um, and so the thing is that, you know, these powerful machines we've got up in our heads, we've just got to keep it in perspective. Like, okay, notice all that's what I did. I noticed all the reactions like, oh, does this mean bill doesn't like me? Does this mean that I'm unimportant? And does, what is all these things that I. Made it mean along the lines, we've been saying, and then I thought. Okay, we're now actually, this comes this isn't thinking, but this is spirit or higher consciousness or something stepped back from all of those self incriminating, um, interpretations and said, wait a minute. We don't know what's going on. Let's hold abeyance until we know more and then we can act on it.

Bill: Yes, well, that and that would require, the ability to recognize how important it is to have a space between stimulus and response. And then within that space to be able to wisely guide ourselves into a response that would leave open the possibility that maybe the story that we've made up about what's going on is not accurate.

Marty: Mm hmm. Mm hmm.

Bill: For years, I didn't know how to do that. I didn't, I, there was no space for me. I, and I know we've talked about this in other episodes, or, uh, you may recall where I was in my second marriage and my second wife suggested to the psychologist that maybe Bill's depressed and needs to be on antidepressants. Do you remember this story? Yes, I do. And, and of course I resisted, uh, I shouldn't say of course, and I resisted because I don't like being controlled. And I, and I also didn't don't like the idea that I, if we have a problem, I'm it. So let's fix bill that didn't, that just didn't fly very well for me. And yet I acquiesced and, and when I did, I got such great benefit from it. And when I stopped doing the antidepressants. The benefit remained, which was there now, I recognize that there was a space between stimulus and response. Something out there happens, and then I instantly react to it, or something out there happens, and I pause in a space in between my reaction and, and the stimulus, and get a choice. I had, I get to choose About how I'm going to respond

Marty: about

Bill: two different things here, but they're, they're directly related. One thing is I dropped the ball on communications. Like I did with you last Friday, the other side of that, let's call it a mathematical mathematical equation is the result of that is that you were impacted by it. And now we could continue the mathematical equation, because had you reacted to that in a way that that reflected your, your hurt or your story that you made up about it.

Marty: And

Bill: that might have created an, an additional piece of drama that, that there was to deal with. If neither one of us knew how to pause.

Marty: Yeah,

Bill: in between stimulus and only responded. Chances are we wouldn't like each other very well.

Marty: Right? And you see a lot of that

Bill: TV

Marty: and in the news. I mean, it's it's it is it is by far the standard way of being, you know, it's not extraordinary in any

Bill: way. It's more stimulus reaction than stimulus response. And response means I am responsible. I'm able to respond because I've paused long enough to measure my response, to decide. How do I want to respond to this? Do I want to go with my negative, disempowering story about how the person doesn't like me or what they meant by that? Or do I want to do something different that might be informed by reality instead of my story about reality?

Marty: Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Yes, right. Right. Mm hmm. It's good. It's good. I think I'm inclined to just take sort of take a pause in the conversation right there because that we want to practice taking these pauses in our thinking so that we have space between, you know, what's happening and our response that, you know, just get in the practice. I'm just going, Oh, okay. What do what do I, I, the true me self. Okay. How, you know, what, what does it say to this rather than, you know, just having that automatic reaction that does not create anything new in the world, but just perpetuates whatever conflicts are there.

Bill: Right? Right. So how do you practice it for me when I. First one on antidepressants, by the way, I was about 42 years old at that time. I did I'd had that much experience of Reacting to whatever happened out there without any kind of pause or space inside 42 years of it And that 42 years was packed with a lot of trauma a lot of hurt a lot of disappointment a lot of discouragement a lot Of crazy things happening in my life and in the world. So 42 years of programming Um, now was, was interrupted by the chemicals, apparently that, that were mixed together in that antidepressant pill that I took. And somehow the effect on me was that I noticed a space that I'd never seen before. I noticed that I had some choice, I had, I had a choice to make. It wasn't just simply reacting, but not everybody's going to have that experience, whether they are on antidepressants or not. Not everybody's going to have that. How long have you known that there was a space that you could pause in,

Marty: you know, when you ask that question, the first thing that comes to my mind, and I think I trust it because of that is, um, when I was a student at the, the, so I'm already, I'm already, um, 30 ish years old is when it was, I was living in New York City and, and, Um, I took a course at what's called the school of practical philosophy. Um, they also have, they exist elsewhere besides New York city, but that's where I encountered them. And basically it's a course in meditation. It's called the school of practical philosophy. You start out learning a lot about what, you know, ancient Eastern, as well as more modern Western philosophy. Thinkers have thought about meditation and about the mind and how to create space and all of this. And by the end of the course, they've got you practicing meditation and 1 of the thing, and I'm sorry, I'm making this a little bit longer story, but we had monthly, we had to have a sit with the teacher just privately and the teach, the teacher would watch us Go into meditation. And there's, you know, you wonder like, well, what is there to watch? Just somebody sitting in a chair, but you can tell if you're an experienced meditator, you can tell if somebody is actually dropping in, or if they're just sitting there thinking, you can tell. And, um, And there are other things that I'm not even aware of that he that my teacher was checking during that time and I remember that this was a very good discipline, you know, like, like taking a test in school you like you cram and you memorize and you, you know, get your mind clear and you get a good night's rest like it's, it's good exercise to have to be have your meditation checked because you got to do it right. Well, basically, and so it makes you focus. And I remember this is the answer to your question. I remember in those moments with the teacher watching me meditate that, you know, thoughts would come in like, Oh, my God, am I doing this right? How silly is this? You know, what's she thinking? Sometimes it was a she and you know, all of these thoughts and I'm like, wait, that's not meditating. And so I, you know, it was a, it, that was where I first stuck to the mantra. And that space opened up between what I was thinking and, and my just pure awareness. Right. And that, that I remember it was the, it was the most ecstatic. Peaceful feeling at the same time to just see, like, oh, I've got all these thoughts, but I'm doing the mantra because I'm being checked on my meditation here. That's when that space opened up for me

Bill: and you were in your early 30s. It sounds like you said, so you, you got to a little quicker than I did. Uh, it was 42 for me with the presence and then really another 2 years beyond that, before I recognized that without the help of the antidepressants. I still have the ability to do that. And, um, you said something really important there, uh, that I haven't, hadn't really considered. One is, there's the, there's the thing that happens out there, the stimulus. And then I've been talking about and then there's the response and the space in between, but there's another element of it. You said that you noticed you're thinking and it's actually thinking that can be that thing that happens out there.

Marty: Yeah.

Bill: Happening in here. It's still a thing out there that's happening to that inner potential of an inner, inner awareness.

Marty: Exactly. Right. It's, it's, it, and it's that ability to see our own thoughts as objects rather than the truth or ourself.

Bill: It's just one more thing that we could just react to, or we can respond to our thoughts. That response could simply be, thank you.

Marty: Right. Or. A lot of times the, the. We were taught in the school of the, a good practice is to say, as the ancients did in Sri ti, not this, not this. Mm-Hmm. Yes. To the thought. To the thought. Like, no, not that I want the piece, I want the, the deeper understanding what the perspective, I want the intuition, not this. Mm-Hmm. . I practice that in everyday conversation, you know, like when. When the person happened yesterday, a person hold out into my late from the side street into my lane and was right in front of me at going like 20 miles an hour and I'm coming down a 45 mile an hour road and like all kinds of whoops. All kinds of thoughts jumped into my brain, right? And I was like, okay, this is a great occasion for netty netty, like, just not this. I'm just not even going to go into this. This isn't important. This isn't something for me to get riled up about or cause an accident because of just netty netty to the whole thing.

Bill: Yeah, I mean, I've been thinking about a particular client that, uh, that I spoke with who said, I am just terrible at communication. And I started telling you a little bit about this before we hit record. And, um, so I said, why do you say that? What's the evidence that you're terrible at communication? And so she gave me an example that, um, her husband had sent her a text at work. She's very busy at work. She sees the text, realize that it deserves more of an answer than she has time to give it right now. So she tells herself, I'm going to, I'll respond to it later. But because of the nature of text messaging, once you've looked at them, that little dot that says you have a text message to read disappears.

Marty: I have the same problem, so I'm laughing at myself here.

Bill: Yeah, so now I've looked at, or she's looked at the text, And it's gone away. It's still in the, it's, she can find it just like, just like an hour ago when I texted you to say I'm going to be five minutes late today, I didn't remember at all. It was nothing, nothing in my brain at all. Nothing in my memory that, that I had seen a text from you that I needed to respond to until I pulled your contact up to send you that text to say I'd be five minutes late. And there it wasn't. Oh shit. Did I respond to that? Did I even read it? And I realized I didn't, I didn't, I mean, I scanned it quickly, but it required, like my client, it required more of a response than I had time for, apparently, last Friday when you sent that. And so I never got around to responding. Now, with my client, I said, you know what? All right. There's a couple of things that I can do that we can do in this conversation here. I can offer you a couple of ideas on, you know, structural things that you could do so that you don't forget an important text again in the future. Do you want to talk about that?

Marty: That's one way to

Bill: go about it. So we did that and we came up with a couple of ideas and you and I both agreed. On that, one of the things that, that, that came up in that conversation with her, it was exactly the same thing that you and I both do. If I see a text often that I don't have time to respond to, I will just copy it and paste it into an email to myself where it will remain in my inbox, no matter how many times I look at it until I've actually completed it. And that's what you do too. It sounds like.

Marty: Yeah, something like that. Exactly.

Bill: The other idea that we came up with was, uh, I know on Apple phones and maybe on some of the other phones as well, there is an app for taking notes and to copy and paste in any, you know, 10 hour period of time while you're working, any texts that you want to get back to later, and then get in the disciplined habit, if you can remember to do this, of opening up that, that note at the end of the day and respond to every one of those texts. She agreed that that might be a good method as well. Um, and I said, okay, well, problem solved and we still had 55 minutes left in the session. A little bit of an exaggeration, but we still had a lot of time in the session. So I just waited and she said, but that doesn't, that doesn't really get to all of it. Oh, okay. Tell me more. She said, well, my, my husband reacted as if I intentionally ignored him. Now we have something else to talk about, and that is, without the structure, it's not, it was not malicious. She didn't intend to ignore him, but even though they have a great relationship, they're, they have a really good communication most of the time. Occasionally, this sort of thing will happen, and when it does, he will respond from a place of insecurity and make up that she doesn't care. Similar to the things that, that you said you made up about me. Uh, he made up about her and then it, it creates this tension between them. So then when he says, why didn't you return my text? Or, and I think that's the way it goes, she's, Oh, I forgot all about it. You forgot, huh? And so there's this tension between them and it takes some work to get it back to breaking even again, at least.

Marty: Sure.

Bill: Back to connection again.

Marty: So that's

Bill: something else I think that needs to be talked about here is that when, when we do have a breakdown in communication, of course we can find some way to fix that so that it doesn't happen again in the future. But in the meantime, when we drop the ball and we don't communicate, and that could take many, many, many forms, how do you, how do you clean that up? How do you, how do you make those repairs?

Marty: By the way, before I answer that there's another example, I just of what we're saying earlier about the need to have pauses and so we can get in practice of seeing what's going on in our own mind. We have so much going on, all of us have so much going on that, you know, we're, we're trying to structure it so that we can have even more going on. Right. And I just, you know, like, I just want to. Not necessarily pass judgment on that, but just notice what we're doing here. You know, um, maybe we could be more in the kind of communication we want to be if we weren't so rushed, you know, smashed up against 1 event to the next. Okay. Enough of that soapbox. Um,

Bill: actually, no, if you don't mind, Marty, let's stay there for a minute. I think that that's really valid, what you just said. And I'll tell you what it makes me think of is recognizing that this is, this has been the most amazing, successful, busy year for me so far. As of this recording, we are wrapping up July, 2024. I've had a breakout year this year, seven consistent months. I've done more coaching than I've ever done in the 14 years that I've been coaching. Wow. By far. Stand out, no comparison.

Marty: Of

Bill: course I love that.

Marty: Not more collectively than the last 14 years, but this year compared to any year in the

Bill: past. That's right. Thanks for that clarification. Yes. Yeah. I can take any one of those previous 13 years and compare it to this year. Seven months that I've completed so far this year exceeds all but one of those full 12 month years.

Marty: Gotcha.

Bill: Yeah. And it's been great. What a fun, fun game. I think you've heard me say that just owning a business can be just hell and tortuous, or it can be a fun, fun game. And I've had both this year. It's been a fun, fun. What a great game to play. I've got a scoreboard. I keep track. I'm just so excited about finally figuring some things out about how to reach my target clients. Uh, I've had a lot of help with that and things are gelling and I just am so delighted about that. However, given that I do have a limited capacity like everybody I know, what, what this very full and busy year has done is pushed me to using much, much more of my capacity than I'm, that I'm accustomed to. And I haven't answered the question. Am I using too much of my capacity? Or do I just need to learn how to how to operate at this level of use of my capacity? I haven't had a

Marty: great question. It's a really important question. Yeah.

Bill: But what I have done as I, as I've leaned in the direction of, I think I may be using too much of my capacity because there doesn't seem to be a lot of room left for relaxing. And enjoying and connecting and restoring.

Marty: Yeah.

Bill: So what I've done is some adjustments in my schedule have taken a little while to catch up. I can, you know, I began making these adjustments about four weeks ago and starting, I think it's next week. I'll begin to enjoy the benefits of that where I'm cutting back on the number of days that I offer sessions and the number of hours that I'm offering them. And I'm building in a break in between the, in the middle of every single day. So that I have time to breathe more deeply and to do things like returning text messages that I otherwise might, might miss. In other words, I'm not packing so much in.

Marty: I am.

Bill: I can't.

Marty: Next week you have two days off. I know.

Bill: Yeah, that's right. You and I are traveling. Uh, yeah, I'm looking forward to that. Yeah. So, so that, that structurally is important. Number one, to recognize like in the game, the inner game of tennis, the book I'm listening to right now by W. Timothy Galway, um, excellent book, highly recommended. And I'm not even a tennis player. Um, start with what is soul. What's actually happening? Well, what's actually happening is I'm doing, working this many hours and I have this much time, uh, outside of work and I'm feeling overwhelmed. That's where I started. That's what is so, now what do I want to do about that? And what I did was make some adjustments to my schedule. I'm continuing to make some adjustments to my schedule now because I realized just how valuable, important it is for me to have room to breathe fully. Time to spend fully connected and engaged and present in, in whatever I want to give my attention to, other than this fun, fun game and work. So I'm glad you brought that up.

Marty: By the way, if I might, I think that's exactly where the, we want to go with the answer to the question. What do you do when you make these kind of bad communications or or miscommunications, but your client start with what? So start with what? So, like, what actually

Bill: happened? So when she went there, this particular client that I'm talking about, she said, there's more to it. I said, Oh, great. Let's talk about that. She said, the truth is that the text that I received from him triggered me and I didn't want to respond from, from being triggered. So ironically, she was responsible enough to know that if she responded from the trigger, it was going to start a fight, it was going to create tension and disconnection between her and her husband. Right.

Marty: Right. Right.

Bill: So what she did instead was she said, I'm going to pause and give myself time to, to really give this attention when I'm not in the middle of trying to work

Marty: very good,

Bill: very good, except what, except he's still hanging out there on the skinny branches. Exactly. And she forgot to respond, respond until she got home. And then he said, what, what's up? Why did you ignore me?

Marty: Mm hmm.

Bill: So that's, that's. An important piece. That's one of the reasons I would wait to respond to a text is because it requires more of my attention than a, just a real quick, yeah, gotcha, or thumbs up or a heart or something like that, just to show that I've read it and I'm responding and just get it off my plate deserves, wow, that's great news. Man, oh man, how excited you must be that you shared that with me. Thanks so much, which is what was appropriate for how I felt when I read your text.

Marty: On Friday and so it's going to be really good news to him. The husband when he hears what so here is that there was there's more to this than wanted to discuss and and and it actually triggered me a little. So I didn't want to respond in that way. So I'm glad you brought it back up. I'm sorry. I didn't respond immediately. And now let's talk about it. Yeah.

Bill: Yes, exactly so. And, you know, if it's a highly skilled couple that's, that's very well skilled in communication and, you know, assuming the best about each other, even though parts might show up if it says, Oh, she doesn't love me or he doesn't love me or they don't care. Those parts can be led. In a, in a, in a wise adult way to just relax a little bit and let the adults work it out. And then those parts will watch as the adults do work it out and lovingly find their way back to connection again.

Marty: I think that that's that knowing that there's a connection back to Which to get to get back to is, is so important, even if you're talking, even if it's a stranger, there is a back to connection to get to, even if it's a stranger, I would submit and then there's a whole spectrum of, you know, acquaintance, friend, lover, intimate, there's a spectrum. But, I think one of the reasons why we, we become bad communicators is because we have this view. It's like a, um, zero sum, like communication is a zero sum game. And if, and if you know you are right, then I'm wrong or kind of thing. Or you know, if, if I owe you an apology, then you are king and I'm servant. Like, it's just we, we have this. Hmm. And that is to completely forget that we're, we are connected. We are whole we are. You know, self, all of us, and, and, and if we don't know that going into a relationship or even just a conversation, then there's going to be this zero sum feel to it.

Bill: Very well said, and now that reminds me of another client from about a year or so ago, uh, who discovered in one of our IFS sessions that he had a part that had taken on the belief from an experience that he had with his father, with a series of events throughout his childhood, that I If he disagreed with his father, his father was punitive and disconnected from him. So what he learned was agreement equals connection and approval. Disagreement equals disconnection and disapproval. And that really got in there.

Marty: So

Bill: now, uh, as I recall, he had something very important to be talking about with people and he could no longer just comply and shake his head and act like he agreed when he didn't.

Marty: Um,

Bill: and found that it just really stirred a lot inside of him to consider actually saying, no, in fact, I don't agree with what you're saying. I hold a, I hold a different position than you do. He could rarely get himself to do it. And when he did it, he came, came at it with so much force that it usually alienated the other person.

Marty: I see.

Bill: In other words, the fear of breaking that rule. And, and risking disconnection, rejection and disapproval was layered over by a leather jacket holding part, wearing part that, that showed up with anger. No, I agree. I feel this way. And it's almost like, go away. I know you're going to go away anyhow. So here's my parting gift to you, F you, I disagree. I never want to talk to you again.

Marty: So

Bill: obviously that's a big problem in someone's life, and it's a great thing to bring to coaching. And what, what he discovered in that conversation was it was a very young part of him that was still reacting to dad and that his adult life had demonstrated to him once we got talking about it, he saw that in his adult life, it was clear that people actually in the world, there are people that are capable of disagreeing and staying connected, that that is a real possibility in conversations. That amazing. Yes. Yes, it is. But I want to make the point from that client and actually several clients that have come to me with those kinds of dilemmas that if we are programmed, if we have taken on beliefs that. Make it unsafe to disagree, to be our own persons, to say what's on our mind. If we've learned that it's gonna be painful to tell the truth, that's gonna, that's gonna take a real toll on our ability to, gonna be, it's make it very difficult to communicate effectively. Because dishonest communication is really poor communication, almost as bad as no communication, maybe worse.

Marty: Well, this is another, I think the 2nd thing that I would say in answer to your question, like, how do we do, you know, repair when, when the communication has gone bad besides, besides, um, getting what's actually so about it, which often, you know, once we know that it pretty much fixes itself, but, but, um. coming from commitment, like asking yourself, like, what am I really committed to? Like, not what's going on in my head, but what am I committed to here, right? This is my wife, like, or this is my spouse. Like, I'm, I'm not, I'm not committed to making them feel bad. I'm not committed to being alienated from them. What am I committed to? And when you can come from that place, it shifts everything.

Bill: I would say even, you know, I'm not even committed to making them feel good. I'm committed to staying connected. I'm committed to loving them. It could be that, right?

Marty: Or it could be, you know, I don't care what anybody thinks. I'm committed to the design of this architecture project. Yes. Yeah. And whether they like it or not, I think this is a, this is a, an important thing. Architectural idea to get out there in the world. I just started the novel Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. And that's what the main thing

Bill: with boy. That's a great novel. I bet you. It's been 30 years since I read that.

Marty: Wow. I don't I don't think I'm going to like it, but but I, I think I should read it. Um. Parent that this is just a quick parent that because my book is about a reality of relations and hers and Rand's reality is one of individuals. So, I feel like I need to know where she's coming from, so I can speak to individualists, but I don't plan on liking this book. Anyway, we don't plan on it. That's another example of like, I can see my mind doesn't plan on liking it, but I have a commitment to understanding.

Bill: She's a great storyteller. And before we end here, I think we need to bring that in is that the stories that we tell often are the winners of what we end up doing in terms of our response or reaction. If we simply go with our stories and don't go back to what is actually so here's this is a maybe a dumb example of this, but I put in the sprinkler system in this house that I live in with my wife when I moved in 10 years ago, like for fires. No, no, for the, for the land, the landscape in the backyard. Oh, in the lawn, okay. And when we, when, when I first moved in, there was nothing but dead grass back there. No gardens, nothing, nothing, nothing. No trees, nothing. Uh, a space, uh, about 50 by 50. So what is that? 200 2500 square feet. And so, um, for the first couple years we just used, uh, manual sprinkler sprinklers, and it was just so time consuming and inefficient. So finally saved up some money, bought the equipment, uh, and materials, and put in a sprinkler system, which I designed myself. Hmm. Pretty proud of myself until I found out that it didn't work very well, because it wasn't designed well. I didn't, I didn't really do the research. I, I was the typical do it yourselfer who just thought, I can do this without, and I'm just going to make it up as I go along, which I did. And I mean, it looked like it was working just fine, except that now there's brown spots. And now my wife wants to add a back garden. And now we want to end, add a, Raised a bit, and now another raised bit, and now another raised bit, another side garden. Well, there's four stations back there, and every one of them are designed for lawn. You don't put water on lawns the same way you put water in gardens. It requires a lot of different considerations. Now, all these years later with all these modifications, the entire sprinkler system needs to be redone. I didn't really deal with what was so then, and now I, this is an unsolvable problem until I start with what is so now. So earlier this week, I took out some graph paper and a, and a long measuring. Tape and, uh, make notes. What sprinklers are where and how far apart are they and and what area do they need to cover. And I'm humble enough. Finally, I've been beaten into humility to to go across the street to my neighbor who's constantly taking care of his beautiful lawn over there and asked him for help. Ah, so what is so actually requires a little bit of humility for me sometimes. Like I got to let go of my

Marty: story about what is so all of us. All of us. I mean, I, I know that. The last time I was asked this line of questions in a coaching call by my coach, I could not get the two peeled apart, like how I felt about it. And the, and the, the facts, uh, no, the fact is he insulted me. That's not a fact. That's an interpretation for sure. But I just couldn't get it at first. So you're right. It's, it's, it's, it takes humility.

Bill: And how would you define humility? I'm asking because I love it. I have a definition I love. Well, then I'd love to hear that first. Yeah. Good. Let, let, let me not put you at a disadvantage. So mine is knowing who I really am.

Marty: That feels like it would pretty much cover it. I was going to say something along the lines of, uh, not coming from ego, which it's sort of like The flip side of what you said, it means the same thing in a way.

Bill: Yeah. Yeah. If ego is the false or shame identity, absolutely. That's not who I was. Ego.

Marty: Ego could be any random thought that happens to be going through your head. Like, that's all, that's all ego, right? And, and that those thoughts are Come and then going from, I want to stab that mofo in the back, which you don't, which you would never do, to aren't I the most wonderful being ever to have been placed on this planet, which is also BS, you know.

Bill: Always enjoy our conversations, Marty. I, I, uh, sometimes think, you know, we should be more prepared and maybe some of the listeners think the same thing, and maybe they're right if they do. But, but the fact is that we show up with an idea or a list and then we just have conversations and generate them from our past, our experience, our work with our clients, and I, if, if people enjoy these conversations half as much as I do, then great. But I, I just love the conversations that you and I have. It always just activates a lot of positive, fun energy in me. And I just appreciate you so much.

Marty: Oh,

Bill: it goes both ways. Thank you. Thank you, Marty. And we'll talk later in the week. Thanks for listening. 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.