How to be better at life

I listen to a lot of podcasts, but few have had as great an impact on me as this one. I’ve written about my favorites as a tool for processing them myself, and also to make their wisdom accessible to people who won’t listen to them but might read, because they need or just want to.

The episode is called “Leading above the line”. It’s a conversation between Shane Parish and Jim Dethmer on The Knowledge Project podcast. I first started listening to it because even though I’m an individual contributor myself (and am quite content with that), I find leadership as a subject matter super interesting. I also think there are guidelines for good leadership that we can all apply to aspects of our lives in order to make better decisions and lead better lives.

But that is about 1% of what I got in the end. The other 99% is too important, too rich and valuable and mind blowing to describe and so instead of describing it, I’ll summarize it, sprinkling in a tiny bit of my own thoughts.

This summary is not structured the way the interview was structured. The original conversation went down rabbit holes that I picked apart and reorganized into an outline with a hierarchy that I found more accessible and made the information more digestible and memorable. Enjoy!

States of consciousness

The foundation of this conversation is a mental model we can call, “the line”. There is a line and at any given moment we are all coming from a state of consciousness above or below the line.

Above the line

When you’re above the line you’re open, curious, and committed to learning. You are present. You have a sense of trust — trust in yourself, trust in the environment, in the universe. You reveal to yourself and others, you are candid, as opposed to concealing what you’re thinking and feeling or any information you may have. You are in service of outcomes — in my work that means doing what is best for the product, not what I want to do because I want to do it. It’s putting the final feature, or whatever part of the user experience, first and foremost.

Below the line

When you’re below the line you are contracted, closed — close minded, your heart is closed. Your consciousness is in a state of threat, you’re defensive, and you are attached to proving you’re right — egoic defensiveness. You are reactive.

The best decisions are made from above the line. That’s where leaders do their most effective leading, where couples have the most intimate, authentic relationships. I’d add that that’s where we become better people who get more from and give more to the world, enjoy the world more and are happier.

OK, so there’s a line. How do you find yourself and what do you do next?

Acts of consciousness

After internalizing the line mental model, the first step in applying the theory is to cultivate the ability to find yourself at any given moment, ideally in the moment. After the fact is also a good first step, though. This starts with honing your awareness.

Awareness

Awareness is the ability to accurately see yourself, to be able to locate yourself in this moment: Are you above or below the line?

Lately at work, I find myself below the line far too often. I’ve written about how UX writing is not well enough understood as a discipline and that leads to UX writers in a defensive position, proving their worth and their right to a seat at the table. Defensiveness is below the line.

• Self reflection

The first approach to developing awareness is self reflection. Pause, quiet the mind a bit, slow it down to get some empty space, and turn your attention back on yourself. Then ask a question. One might be, “What do I want?” Notice what comes up and as that populates your consciousness ask, “What do I really want?” That is one way to work on developing your awareness in general. But what about in specific day-to-day situations?

Think about a decision you made or an interaction you had. At the time, were you coming from a state of consciousness above or below the line? During the interaction, was there any place where you got reactive? When you were more interested in control, or seeking approval, safety, and security than in learning? Even better is being able to ask and answer in real time, “In this moment, am I constricted and defending my ego? Or am I above the line and in a place to have a world-class conversation?”

• Feedback

A second approach to developing awareness is to create a feedback-rich environment. So the most basic version of that is to literally and simply ask for feedback from people around you, in your professional and personal lives. Remember, you’ll get exactly as much feedback as you’re committed to getting.

To get as much feedback as possible, identify your feedback filters . A feedback filter is anything that completes the sentence, “In order to for me to value your feedback, I would need you to…

…present it in a certain way? …be an expert? …agree with me?” Be honest about your filters and make a conscious decision about which to keep.

Next, collect the feedback. And most importantly, don’t get defensive. Don’t get reactive. Don’t let yourself fall below the line. To do that ask, “How it is true?” Not whether it’s true. And it’s okay to lean on other people for this. It’s okay to go to person B and say, “Person A gave me feedback, can you tell me how it’s true?”

A second way to get feedback other than asking other people for it is to notice your projections. So think about your feedback for other people. If you asked me about my feedback, there are people who I might tell them that they are didactic and cut me off in the middle of sentences in group meetings and I can’t stand it. But as they say in AA, “If you spot it, you got it.” I have to assume that this criticism is a projection of myself and ask, “How is this true about me?”

This is not the first time I’ve heard this idea. I actually think there is a Jewish Hassidish concept about it. And I even remember the first time I applied it. A good friend of mine in college and I would go together every week to services at a certain synagogue. After services there was always a lot of schmoozing and we always walked away complaining that the people were so self absorbed! They never actually asked either of us a single question. But oh shit, wait a minute, do we do that, too? For me the answer was definitely yes. It’s been almost 15 years since that revelation and to this day, every day, I am extremely careful to ask people, especially new people, questions.

Eating your projections is a great way to get feedback.

• Tools

A third approach to developing awareness is by using tools like the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory and enneagrams but the podcast didn’t dive into these to I can’t say more. (It’s almost two hours long so I’m totally fine with Shane being selective! If you cover everything, you’ll cover nothing.)

OK, so now you are self aware. What do you do next?

Acceptance

Use self reflection, feedback, and tools to become aware of where you are — above or below the line. Then ask, “Can I accept myself for being where I am?”

• Motivation below the line

It is easier to teach successful leaders awareness than acceptance. So many successful people are able to identify that they are acting from below the line, are aware that they are living life in a state of resistance, defensiveness, and contraction (which is exhausting) and yet consciously choose to stay there.

They are afraid of losing their “edge”. These people have achieved so much, motivated by the need to defend themselves, to prove themselves, to prove they are right, to win approval. Not accepting the current state of affairs, not finding peace in their reality, even revenge, is what motivates them. But if they realize that there are much richer sources of motivation above the line, they can let go of this toxic source.

• Motivation above the line

There are five levels of motivation, some below the line and some above, some leaving a toxic residue behind and others healthy. From lowest to highest:

Fear, guilt, and shame — includes anger and rage (toxic)

This is what I described above, the motivation that great leaders may be coming from, be aware that that’s where they’re coming from, and resist letting go because that’s their “edge”. Let’s say you buy into the idea that there is better motivation than this. How do you move away from this in order to make room for something else?

The antidote to fear is not courage; it’s acceptance. There is a terrified child inside of us, and just like with a real child, when the child is afraid, we need to be with that child, feel the child’s feelings. Only this will quiet the fear. Of course we can use our ego structure (the “adult”) to overpower the child. We can get the scare child to sit down and be quiet, but that will not calm them down on the inside, freeing them up to be receptive to other feelings, i.e., this will not get rid of the fear motivator so that we can shift to a more optimal motivator and become even greater.

So we start with acceptance that we are below the line, ask whether we are willing to shift, and if we are, look at our other options.

Extrinsic reward (toxic)

The second level is also toxic. You will always have to raise the stakes to maintain this type of motivation. It is not sustainable.

Intrinsic reward

Then there’s intrinsic reward. This is the first level that doesn’t leave a toxic residue. This includes authentic appreciation — every leader has probably experienced teams who are far more productive when they feel truly appreciated than when they are rewarded with a bonus.

Play

Here’s where we jump to less familiar and the most powerful sources of motivation. Think of a child at play — a 10 year old playing soccer or a 15 year old playing a video game. No parent has ever needed to cheer that kid on to motivate them for fear that otherwise they will walk away. The opposite! How hard is it to get kids to stop playing and come in for dinner?? When work feels like play, the motivation is sustainable and the results are robust.

Love

This is the ultimate motivator — love of what you do. I can honestly say that I love writing. I love it. I write for work and I write about writing for pleasure. I am passionate about it, I deeply care about it. I think about every aspect of it all the time, it is a core part of me. No one will ever need to motivate me to write and to write the very best that I can, to practice and to learn and to improve at every opportunity.

Now compare that to fear. Which source of motivation is the real “edge”? Which puts me in the position to make the best decisions, from a place of presence and not reactivity. From a place of openness and learning and putting outcomes first as opposed to being obsessed with proving I’m right all the time? Which motivator would you prefer your team tap into?

• Victim consciousness

In addition to motivators below and above the line, consider whether you are acting from a villain, hero or victim state of consciousness. If the answer is victim, shift away by accepting responsibility. You are not a victim. When you are not a victim you are in control of your experience.

Victim consciousness means believing that life is happening to me. If the weather is good I feel good, if it’s bad, I feel bad. If I am appreciated I feel good, if I am taken for granted, I feel bad. If a deal goes through at work, I feel good, if not, I feel bad. My experience and my feelings are controlled by external factors. To make better decisions, we need to move the locus of control back to inside ourselves.

We need to move from victim consciousness to creator consciousness. That means choosing to be responsible for my experience. The weather doesn’t upset me, I upset myself because I’m attached to beliefs about the weather — I’m attached to the idea that it should be warm and it’s not and I resist the reality in order to defend my beliefs. I am decidedly below the line.

But if I let go of that reactionary defensiveness, if I am instead open and present, I am less attached to my beliefs, there is no more distance between the beliefs and the external factors, and so I do not upset myself when they don’t match.

This only works though if I accept that no one causes my emotions — I do, because my thoughts create my experience.

Make better decisions

OK, so you understand the mental model of the line. You have mastered awareness and acceptance. You are ready to go out into the world and make better decisions, to be more successful, to achieve more and be happier. How?

You can only make intelligent decision by using all of your intelligences: emotional intelligence (EQ), body intelligence (BQ), and traditional IQ. The podcast focuses on EQ.

• EQ

First ask whether you are willing to develop your EQ. Many great leaders would say that only IQ, only data and an analytical thinking can lead to great outcomes. But if you buy into the fact that EQ is important, how do you develop it?

High EQ means using your feelings as powerful tools to make good decisions. There are five feelings:

anger, fear, sadness, joy, and creative energy.

All five are expressed in three separate channels:

body sensations, thoughts, and emotions.

So just to give one example — fear lets us know that there is something out there we may be better off steering away from. It may express in our body as tears or shaking. It may express in our thoughts as “Oh no! I’ve been here before! It didn’t end well.” And it is also an emotion.

My own experience with this concept is from a life changing Mindful Childbirth and Parenting course that I took when I was pregnant with my second child. We applied this concept to contractions in labor and how if we look closely, pain does not have to equal suffering. Pain is a body sensation but suffering is an emotion. And we usually turn the pain of contractions into suffering with our thoughts. Specifically, in between painful contractions there is a period of no pain. The transitional pain of labor is not the same as the pathological pain of injury — there are breaks when the pain almost completely disappears. And yet we suffer. Because we spend that painless time with thoughts of how horrible the last one was and oh no how will I ever make it through the next one?? We are reactive. But if we can be present, if we can notice that actually, this very second, I am not in pain, we do not have to suffer. However, this requires separating out our body sensations from our thoughts from our fears. This is not easy and not something you can suddenly tap into during labor — it’s a skill set we studied and practiced for many hours a week for many months before the moment of truth. I promise you, it helps.

Each of the feelings have their own wisdom to contribute to decision making and if we develop our EQ we can identify them and leverage their contribution.

EQ breaks down into emotional literacy and emotional empathy.

Emotional literacy

Emotional literacy is the ability to identify what you’re feeling in any moment and name it. Kids are really good at this.

Then, feel your feelings. Feelings are energy, sensations. They last less than 90 seconds, if you don’t fuel them with thoughts. So once you have a feeling — lately I’ve been dealing with anger in certain interactions at work — don’t fuel it by thinking “What an idiot! Who do you think you are??” but rather by isolating the feeling, taking a deep breath to help it run through the body, and let it leave.

If you don’t let it leave it gets stuck, calcifies in the body, and turns into a mood. I don’t want to be in an angry mood. That’s toxic and in a sense, punishes me for the other person being infuriating. But I don’t want to live from a victim consciousness so I need to take responsibility for causing my own experience and then I can change it, by not resisting the anger or fueling it with thoughts, but by just letting it pass through my body.

Five minutes later I may get angry again, but I can let it pass then, too — it only takes a minute. Not only do I otherwise risk it turning into a full blown mood, I also make myself susceptible to cognitive biases which certainly won’t help me make better decisions.

Emotional empathy

After emotional literacy comes emotional empathy: if you can’t feel your feelings, you can’t feel others, or allow your children, for example, to feel theirs. If you can’t identify and release your own sadness for example, when your kids is sad because they lost the game or weren’t invited to the party, you’ll dismiss their feelings and that won’t serve them. It’s toxic long term. Instead, be with them in their sadness and let it flow through you both together.

Conviction

Channel EQ into conviction. Conviction helps you succeed, but what is real conviction? People think conviction is enthusiasm and standing your ground in the face of naysayers. But no. Productive conviction requires tapping into all of your emotions — why do you feel some fear about a decision you are about to make? What is the wisdom that fear is coming to teach you? And once you answer all of the reasons it might not be a good decision — standing firmly above the line, open to learning and prioritizing outcomes over ego — and in the end, make that decision anyway… that is conviction that will take you places.

• Reveal

To make better decisions, develop your EQ and apply it when making decisions but also, make sure you are revealing not concealing, which only happens above the line. Two ways to reveal fully are to blurt and to assess integrity breaches.

Blurt

Let all stakeholders blurt out absolutely everything they have to say before making a decision. Anyone making a decision needs to get out all of their thoughts, feelings, data — whatever they’ve got. Withholding contributes to bad decisions. So blurt it all out and then double-check by asking yourself, “Did I say everything I had to say?” Don’t ignore any data points and emotions are valuable data points.

Integrity breaches

You can’t make good decisions on the back of integrity breaches.

So first of all, what is an agreement? Impeccable agreements are between you and yourself or you and others and include a clear who (another party or one’s self), is going to do what (I will or won’t do…), and by when? Make sure you want to make the agreements or you won’t do them, you’ll struggle, or you just won’t do it well.

People break a lot of agreements. We need to be clear about our agreements and whether we’ve broken them and whether we clean up the broken ones. Cleaning up means taking responsibility— not explaining or excusing. Just asking how to fix it.

Commitments are different than agreements. Commitments are like, “I commit to be candid in our relationship” — that’s a north star, to reveal and not conceal, but not an agreement with a who, what, and when. You need aligned commitments to end up with good agreements.

Good agreements that you keep, get you integrity. Integrity and blurting based on emotional literacy and empathy lead to better decisions and work best if they happen on a foundation of acceptance which first requires awareness. And all of it, ALL of it, needs to happen above the line.

Wow

It’s a lot. I’ll be marinading in it for a while. Would love to hear other’s thoughts!