Change

Bill: Welcome to another episode of the Leadership Coaching Podcast. My name is Bill Tierney, and I'm a results coach and certified IFS practitioner, and my co host is Dr. Martin Kettlehut. And Marty, who I refer to Martin as Marty, others refer to him as Doc, and uh, Marty's an, an author. He's also a, an exec, well, what do you call it? A leadership coach. Yes.

Marty: So a lot of my clients are in leadership positions. Yes.

Bill: And, and are, some of them are executives and,

Marty: Yes.

Bill: and, um, Marty has recently written a book, uh, Leadership as Relation. And today, we've talked about a couple of different things that we might talk about. And we landed on change. We could all use a little change.

Marty: Well, from time to time, I think almost everyone wants to make a change. Not always, right? Some things you'd like to stay the same. Sometimes you're not, you know, ready for a change. You need things to settle. But at some point, almost everybody Wants to make some change.

Bill: Yes. Yes. Well, and when they hire us, if they don't want to make some sort of a change, then it doesn't make any sense why they'd hired us in the first place.

Marty: That's true.

Bill: Interestingly, I have found over the last few years since I've been practicing using IFS and that I apply that to my coaching clients, uh, I do get clients that are not consciously aware that they're coming to me for change. very much. I actually need to help them to realize that that's why they're, they're, they're working with me. They think that they're coming to me to learn how to use IFS so that they can heal and not suffer so much. Now that's a change. If they're suffering and they don't want to suffer so much, that's a change. And as far as I'm concerned, that's an adequate coaching objective.

Marty: Yeah.

Bill: But I'm also interested in knowing if you didn't suffer so much, What might be possible. So, but the topic, I think what we're going to talk about today is, is what blocks change, what prevents change when we want it, uh, what motivates change? Why do we want to change in the first place? And what's the secret sauce? How do we, how do we actually change?

Marty: Well, one of the things that got me into the, you know, like it went off like a light in my, my soul when I was in first moved to New York city in 1998. Anyway, um, and I read this book by Anthony de Mello. Um, who is a Indian scholar of theology, um, and there's an institute with his name on it at Fordham University in the Bronx. And um, and I found his, his writing, you know, he writes very aphoristically to see, you know, like three pages that are really intense and then a new topic. And so the chapters are short in the, in this first book that I was introduced to, he's written a number of things. Mostly other people. Took the notes and wrote down what he said. He really didn't sit down and write much, but anyway, in this book, it's called awareness. Yeah, it's it's beautiful. And one of the things that really caught me and like I said, had me think I want to become a coach is that he says that, um, as long as you, you've got an agenda of change for some other person, like, I'd really like to get him to be more polite to me, you know, or I, I really like to have her, you know, be more enthusiastic about her job, whenever we're trying to get somebody else, even if we're not. You know, um, physically or, you know, overtly explicitly trying to get them to change. Sometimes it's just in our head going around and around where she would be this way. That's when they don't change. There's there's an energetic resistance, right? When, you know, somebody wants you to be different. Think about it. You immediately dig in your heels. I'm definitely not gonna change now, right? Because he wants me to. And even, even if, you know, in the end you do come around and you conform or whatever, for better or for worse, there's going to be that initial because it's an identity thing, right? And DeMello says it's, If you really want to help people change for the better, then what you want to do is you want to really understand them thoroughly, no agenda, just understanding, like really hear them out, really get behind the scenes in their brain to, to see why they think the way they do and act the way they do. And then he says, you'll be, you'll know that you really got to the bottom of understanding somebody. When they start to change, it's, you know, so it's a whole different approach. Right. And, um, that, that got me, I was like, wow, if I, if I can provide a deep enough listening for people, they'll change the way they need to most naturally of their own accord. And, uh, that, that was one of the big impetuses for me to go into this field.

Bill: Listening is the key, you concluded,

Marty: It's the name of my company.

Bill: right? Well, that's great. That's a great, uh, great origin story the, for your concept, for your business, for your idea. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and as I'm listening, I'm listening through the lens of internal family systems and parts. And, that's exactly what it is that I do with my clients, but at a deeper, a slightly deeper level, or I would maybe not deeper, but hidden to a level that's typically hidden. So I'm listening, of course, to my client, but I'm listening with the awareness that what I'm listening to is probably being influenced by one of their parts. And, um, in the IFS model, we, we call this, um, um, implicit direct access. So we're directly accessing the part, but not explicitly. We're just having a conversation with the other person. But as facilitator of the model, I'm asking questions and interacting with the person knowing that they're under the influence of one of their parts.

Marty: Right, right.

Bill: The part of them is influencing how they answer and and in in a, you know, 10 minute conversation. What can happen is that the client can move from. One part to another to another I might encounter 20 different parts that show up in a single conversation So I might feel like I know the person Better after that 10 minute conversation and I do I do But they aren't the same person 10 minutes into the conversation that they were one minute into the conversation

Marty: true. Right.

Bill: So the beauty of IFS is that if we can pause You And if the client is in awareness and agreement that what there is to do is to pause and focus on one part at a time. So as coach, if I have permission to say, okay, that's a good place, I think that's, can we jump in there? Can we go in there at that point, at that trailhead with that particular part? Can we, can we get curious about that part and really understand that one? I was just in a group this morning and, and we actually were talking about this, this very thing. Everybody that's in this group, it's a women's recovery group, and everybody that's in that group wants something to change in their lives. For some of, for some people it's I want to stop drinking. For others it's I want to feel better given that I'm not drinking. I want to, I want to suffer less. For others it is I have so much anxiety that I'm not able to support myself in the way that I have in the past. I want to have a career. I want to have a profession. And I, and I can't do it because of all this anxiety. So I want to change. I want to feel more relaxed and comfortable inside and not feel all this anxiety all the time. So what we were talking about is exactly this, so you, you're here for change, but when we're applying the IFS model, our goal is to simply get to know our parts, build relationships with them so that they trust us, because eventually if they trust us, they may be open to knowing what we know. Such as hey, it's 2024. 1993

Marty: Uh huh. Uh

Bill: when that horrible thing happened and you and this part of you went to an extreme place to prevent what happened in 1993 or whatever the year was from ever happening again, it went to an extreme and now here we are 31 years later and the part still doing the same thing, even though everything's changed. If we were to just go to that part right at the beginning of the conversation and say, Hey, wait, you're way off. Hey part, you are way off. You're reacting as if it's 1993. It's 2024. Wake up, come on, change your strategies. The parts, as you say, the parts going to say, You don't understand.

Marty: Right? Mm hmm.

Bill: You don't get it. You don't understand what's at stake for me here. I am so invested. You want me to change? You haven't even stopped to recognize how devoted I've been, how hard I've been working to protect my, my host, the client. So this, this interest, this compassion, this curiosity, absolutely critical. That's the portal. It's what opens the door to being aware of what's actually happening. And with awareness, and that's why he called it that, why de Mello called the book Awareness, with awareness, now we can begin to open the possibility of change. And the tricky part is we have to hold that agenda very loosely. Remember it there, but let go of it as we're getting to know the person that we're trying to help change.

Marty: Mm hmm. Well, I think that part, that delicate piece, I think there's, there's detachment and trust going on that allows for that. Like, um, if, you know, if I let go of this. Agenda of mine to change, whether I'm, whether I'm, you know, the coach or IFS practitioner, or if I'm, you know, the person whose part is on, you know, being examined or spoken to, Like if you zoom out, what's happening is that there's a possibility here of getting back in the flow, getting back into the way, you know, the free, rich self. Right. And so it's like, Detaching from the way things should, you think, you think things should be, but also trusting, like, if, you know, if I go into that realm, that it's going to work out, that it's going to be better. I mean, that takes trust.

Bill: That's right. That's right. The, uh, you were referring to self. One of the phrases that I came up with this morning, I was telling you earlier that I spent about 45 minutes this morning trying on a practice that I learned about. In this book that I'm listening to, the road less stupid.

Marty: The title cracks me up.

Bill: Yeah, it's great. Well, he was obviously pretty wise about naming his book that because it grabbed some attention without being too offensive. It's a business book. It's certainly not an IFS book. I would say it, I'd recommend it for leaders, especially there's leaders in business. But the things that he's recommending and telling about, they're designed to be used in business. I just want to give you the name of the author here. Let me open it up. It looks like it's I think it's Keith Cunningham. Uh, the idea. Here's what he says. He spends no less than two, no more than three days a week, spending 45 to 60 minutes, uh, in the mornings, answering a, an important question, whatever that is for him. How do I increase sales? How do I get my sales team to take on the new software? Uh, what, what's, what's going on that I'm not getting the results that I want? Just any, any question at all that, that seems important to answer. And, um, and, and as I was doing that work this morning on the question, I wanted to explore. What is the, what are the messages in the book that I'm writing? What are the messages I want to make sure come through to the reader. And as I'm writing about it, I came up with a phrase that I probably now will use in the book, which is ease of being. So when you were talking about self, I thought of that phrase. Yeah. We want to, we all want to get back to ease, not ease like I'm lazy and I don't want to work hard, but ease of being.

Marty: It's important that you added that caveat because I think there's, there's almost an unconscious abhorrence of ease. It's, uh, this is very suspicious. This is too easy. We, we better check this out, right, because we, we've we're so convinced that it's. it's. going to have to be hard. If it's not hard or expensive, then it couldn't be very good.

Bill: If it was easy, everybody be doing it. Right.

Marty: That's what people say. Exactly. Right. Yeah.

Bill: And this is hard. So if this is about being, it's not about doing, so it's easy to do. is one way to use the word ease or easy. My ease of being means that I'm not having to try hard to be me. I'm not having to try, trying, I'm not having to try hard to be who it is I think you want me to be, for example.

Marty: And that's where Demelo said, that's why then you get freed up in our relationship because you've given me this freedom to be, and I just, you know, I become part of nature, then I'm not an ego against the world anymore. I've been accepted and gotten for who I am. I'm free to be. And so I get back into the natural me, the natural flow, right?

Bill: Yes. And in that flow, there is ease of access to resources I otherwise don't have access to.

Marty: Within and without.

Bill: Exactly. Yes. Wisdom, for example, clarity, confidence, Not acted, not performed, not confidence that's performed, um, even creativity that, that just is, is flows easily. One of the things I'm learning as I'm writing my book is that when it starts getting hard, I need to stop, I need to get up and walk away.

Marty: Yeah,

Bill: When it becomes difficult, not because I'm lazy, but because I'm trying, I'm trying to be creative. There's, those don't, those two don't seem to work very well together, effort and, and creativity.

Marty: I I even, um, like sports, uh, and other sort of physical oriented coaching does the same thing. Like, whoa, if it's, if it's feeling hard, then we gotta change your swing because it, it should, it should feel good and natural. And if, if it's feeling hard, you're probably doing some damage there. Oh my

Bill: let's get back to, we are, we're talking about this, but let's name what we're talking about. We're naming, how do we go about changing? And I, and when I say change, I'm not talking about temporary. We don't, it's not like changing the oil every 5, 000 miles, we have to do it again. I'm talking about how do we, how do we bring about permanent lasting change that doesn't require ongoing maintenance? That's my goal. Okay. Thank you. I remember, very young man, I'd been smoking for two or three years, and I realized, this is stupid. This is so expensive. It's really, my clothes, I've got holes in the upholstery, burn holes in the upholstery of my car, in my pants, in my shirt. This is ridiculous. What am I doing? And it's, and I'm drunk, and it's New Year's, and the car I'm riding in, I roll down the window and I throw a pack of cigarettes out the window. Isn't this just a horrible story so far? It really is. The next morning, and I swore, I am never going to smoke again. That's the dumbest thing I've ever done. The next morning, I jump in my car and try to remember where I threw them out because I'm broke . I got no money and I can't stand that I haven't had a cigarette. It

Marty: Oh my god, I'm sorry to laugh, but Yeah.

Bill: and I'm wanting to smoke again. When I finally did quit smoking, I smoked for 20 years. Before I finally quit for good. And I think difference was that I was operating, it made sense to quit smoking. Not only did it make sense, I was highly motivated to do so. And I had a plan. And the plan fortunately worked for me. So there's a lot of elements. I wonder if we can poke that apart, pull that apart. I changed permanently, I'm 69 years old now, so This year I celebrated 30 years without a cigarette.

Marty: Is there a getting yourself moment where, where acceptance and understanding and deep listening to yourself provided that sort of emancipation from the cigarettes? Can you see?

Bill: I could say yes to that. I think I had some self awareness at 39. I was still a little boy

Marty: So,

Bill: my maturity level.

Marty: so you said there was motivation and a plan.

Bill: Yes. Let me tell you this story. Uh, I'll try to make a brief, you know, how hard that is for me. So please help me out. If I, if I go too long, we've only got maybe another 11 minutes here before we have to end the conversation anyhow, but my daughter was born. And one of the first full sentences that she spoke to me was daddy stopped smoking.

Marty: Oh my goodness. Really? uh,

Bill: And, uh, or daddy don't smoke, something like that. And I was already, you know, this is in the early nineties.

Marty: general says,

Bill: Right. She just didn't like the smell. She didn't like that, you know, having to be careful around my hot ash on my cigarette. You know, she just didn't want me to smoke anymore. She couldn't be near me. She couldn't connect with me when I was smoking. You know, uh, anyhow, that's the way I understand it, and it just pierced my heart when she asked me, she didn't ask me, she, she, it was a, it was a clear request, stop smoking, and I really wanted to stop, for her, my wife, who had been badgering me, oh, you smell like, oh, you smell horrible, that's so expensive, why do you, that's so stupid, that you're smoking, you know, none of that, it's like you said earlier in this conversation, stop And there was parts of me saying, Oh, F you, you, you just quit smoking three months ago. Let's see how you do long term. And then you can tell me to quit smoking. But anyhow, when my daughter, my little baby girl said, daddy, don't smoke, that pierced my heart. And I'm now motivated to stop smoking. And self awareness began when I realized, wow, this is impossible. This is so hard to do. God, this is hard to do. I cannot. So a new piece of awareness showed up when over the course of four years that it took me to quit, I realized that I felt relief the moment I decided. So I would quit for a period of time. And would want a cigarette so bad and I was working in the grocery business at the time. Some somebody would go outside and have a cigarette on a break. I would go join them and stand next to them and then and want a cigarette and try not to smoke one. Finally, one day I just went in and bought a pack of cigarettes. And what I noticed was the moment I made the decision to smoke again, I felt the relief I was looking for from the cigarette.

Marty: Hm.

Bill: Wait a minute, I haven't smoked yet and I feel the relief. What's going on here?

Marty: that is very interesting. Yes.

Bill: Yes, it is. It

Marty: about the smoking actually.

Bill: Yes, I got that. That's what I got. So, was I fully self aware in the deep end of the pool? No. But I started getting little tidbits. Like, I want to. I'm highly motivated to. I realize it's not about the smoking. It's something, it has something to do with the mind. So, and I wasn't, I wasn't very advanced yet in my, my personal development. I was at the pharmacy picking up a prescription for my family, waiting, and I get a pamphlet. And it's from the American Cancer Society. And I think it said, like, 21 days to stop smoking. So I read it. I had time to read it. I read it. There was no cell phones at that time to scroll through. And it gave me a plan. Start cutting back today. How many cigarettes are you smoking? Cut back so that on your quit day, 21 days from now, you don't have any cigarettes left to smoke. And that's exactly what I did. And by day 21, I didn't have a cigarette. And this is so weird. I have never wanted a cigarette, not for a moment, ever since then. After smoking for 20 years.

Marty: So there was a structure that also you could, you know, like a bridge across from smoking, non smoking was his 21 day structure.

Bill: Yes,

Marty: That's very helpful as well.

Bill: it was. It was a, it was a project. It was a project design that I followed a plan.

Marty: Um, and, and there was a motivation or an affinity for not being a smoker because of the. Well, at least the things that your daughter and your wife were saying.

Bill: Well, and society too. I mean, by the, by the nineties, if you smoked, you were the scum of the earth. And I mean, at least that's how I felt

Marty: Yeah, yeah. No,

Bill: I am. Yeah. Yeah.

Marty: And, and, was there any accountability around it? Or did you just do it on your own?

Bill: I didn't, if there, I suppose there was accountability because I wasn't keeping it a secret. I was telling people I'm on my way to quitting smoking. But it didn't feel like I was under any pressure. It wasn't that like I want a cigarette, but I told everybody I wasn't going to, so I'm not going to that that wasn't there at all.

Marty: So that's, we could talk on another episode about the difference between pressure and accountability, but, but, right? It wasn't pressure, it was accountability. go

Bill: ahead and take a moment and make that distinction. So you've got a clear understanding about the difference right now as applied to me and not

Marty: Well, it's the same, and we could just, for purposes of this conversation, pressure is having an agenda that somebody should change.

Bill: Uh, right. And and I'm if I'm the one that the other person things should change. Now I feel the pressure. Yeah, got it. Whereas accountability, how would you define that?

Marty: Well, easefully being with somebody, sorry, I'm trying to use that phrase, but it's got to have an ease in it and being in it, but it's supporting somebody and accomplishing what they want to.

Bill: So we're talking about compassionate accountability as opposed to shame based accountability.

Marty: of course. Yes.

Bill: Yeah, yeah, there it is. And I don't, I can't say that I had either, either of those. I, I wasn't being, I was being shamed by somebody, but it certainly didn't help. Yes.

Marty: um, this, this piece about the motivation is really interesting to me, too, because it involves something akin to having a, having a vision. Like, I want to see myself with my daughter and she's happy to be with me and isn't, you know, it doesn't turn her off. Like, there's a vision of you in the future that was so compelling. Right?

Bill: That was there for sure.

Marty: I, mean,

Bill: I, I could imagine myself not stinking, not smelling like cigarette smoke as I walked in, not leaving the dinner tables to go out on the deck and smoke a cigarettes and then come back in smelling horrible,

Marty: right. Right.

Bill: not spending the money on the cigarette, not feeling like I had to run out every, you know, 90 minutes to have a cigarette when I was working. Not smoking back in the milk cooler where i'm supposed to be stocking milk and not smoking

Marty: Right.

Bill: Not feeling that guilt. So there's a lot of knots there. But but And that was a list of everything I didn't want which is very useful Especially if you can take that same list and turn it into what do I want? I want to smell good I want to have my time back. I want to have my freedom. I want to have choice. I want my health I want connection with my daughter I want to feel good about it.

Marty: I mean, I'm also just giving up cigarettes is a great example because it's hard. And, you know, if you're really, you know, addicted to the nicotine, it's a tough one. And so it's great, I think, to use that example. Um, and I'm relating it to probably a less difficult example. Yeah. Maybe not. A change in my life, the biggest change in my life was that I left, you know, a life as an academic, which I was very adept at. I was very at home in academia, but there were two, there were two things that weren't getting fulfilled in, in my vision of the future in academia. One was that I was going to make a difference in the world. And people's lives and, and also not in some abstract way, but like measurable difference. And also, I didn't want to always, you know, be alone in the library, grading papers and reading books. So I had a vision of being more working with other people and that we would produce results that, Made a difference in the world. And, and so that was what allowed me to let go of and change into a business person.

Bill: Yeah, so you were motivated, you were inspired, you had a vision. Yeah, wonderful. And as hard as that was, what was hard about it, just curiously? Mm

Marty: Well, it's, it's being, putting yourself, you got, you got friends, you got community, you got, um, you know, people who can write letters of recommendation for you and all those kinds of connections. And then boom, boom. Now you're in a new world. Nobody knows who you are. You don't know how to behave in that way. Like it's, it's very disorienting.

Bill: hmm, mm hmm. I, yeah, well, and you didn't mention it, but I'm imagining that security was something you had to let go of. That, that, that had to be really hard to let go of, the security of academia. And the uncertainty of being self employed Generating your own income by people saying yes instead of no to your services.

Marty: That's right. That's a big difference. That's a Big

Bill: Big difference. I can see how hard that would be. And, and, and the, the identification too. To think of myself as a coach took me about three years. I was, I, I had been a mortgage loan officer for 12 years at that time. I'd been an insurance agent for two and a half years before that and that took some getting used to. I'm, I'm an insurance agent. Uh, I never did, used to call myself a real estate agent because I only did that for six years. But I was in the grocery business for 21 years, so I thought of myself as a grocer. I played the guitar starting at 10 years old, so part of my identity was I'm a guitar player. I sang in a band. I'm a singer in a band. That was part of my identity. So to be coach or any role that I might take on. Dad, when, when my daughter was born, I was 24 years old. It took me a while to identify as a dad. I'm a dad now. What does that mean? How does that supposed to feel? Cause I don't like how it feels. I kind of like how it feels, but you know, I don't like all the burden of responsibility and oh, I love her. She's so wonderful. But I'm a dad? Yeah, it's so strange. Sometimes change happens as a consequence of actions and choices that I've made, then I have to catch up to it. Other times, I want to deliberately change, and it requires some elements that I would say include self awareness, motivation, and self care.

Marty: Awareness, motivation, inspiration. That's great. There's that captures the, the mellow thought, you know, that getting yourself or being gotten, then the vision part that we've talked about. And sorry, what were the three again?

Bill: would be the third one.

Marty: And what was the middle one?

Bill: So, inspiration,

Marty: Inspiration, right? That's that future that, you know, that you see,

Bill: the vision, right? Motivation, what, what, how much pain am I in that this will stop? And how much, what, how much possibility do I imagine? That, that, that vision, that inspiration is what drives the motivation. Anyhow, there's more elements to that, to it than that. We talked about things like accountability,

Marty: but I think that that that's, you know, if, if, if there are people listening to the podcast and they're like, wow, I'd really like to change this. There you got, you know, accountability, self awareness, inspiration, and motivation. Like,

Bill: motivation.

Marty: you know, get, look at those four things as a start. I bet you'll, you know, you'll start to. Down the road to change.

Bill: I've got a group in nine minutes, so I'm going to have to end. Usually we aren't up against such a hard stop, but you and I had such an engaged conversation before we hit record. We're running out of time early. This one's going to go about 32 minutes. I really appreciate our listeners. If you've enjoyed listening to us, please subscribe. Hit the like button and, um, and then please share with other people and they can listen as well. Uh, if you're watching on YouTube, this is also available on Apple and Spotify and iHeart Radio. So you can just listen in your car or do what I do when you're running, out running or exercising, put on the headphones and you can listen. So thanks for joining us. Thanks for listening. And until next episode, thank you, Marty.

Marty: See you next time.