Greg Voisen
Well welcome back to Inside Personal Growth. This is Greg Voisen, the host, and Jennifer Garvey Berger is on the other end of the line all the way in France. And we're going to be talking about a book that she has authored. She's authored many. Unleash Your Complexity Genius: Growing Your Inner Capacity to Lead. And Carolyn Coghlan was her co-author on this as well, I want to make sure that she gets a shout out from us as well. Good evening to you, I'll say because for you it is in here. It's bright in the morning. How are you doing juniper?

Jennifer Garvey Berger
Doing great. Thanks for having me.

Greg Voisen
Well, it's a pleasure to have you on the show, it's always good to have authors that are talking about something that's very current. And this one is definitely something that's very current and that people, you know, need to know more about. And I'm gonna let them know a little bit about you, Jennifer. She believes that leadership is one of the most vital renewable resources in the world. In this topsy turvy time, when uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity are raging, we need a new form of leadership for new air. While it might be in the natural to experience the swirling currents of change, as threatening force to be survived and inconvenience, to be managed, those who lead us into the future see complexity as the natural state of the world. And that's what Jennifer does a good job of speaking about. She designs and teaches Leadership Program coaches, senior teams, support news ways of thinking, you as I said, we're going to be speaking about this book. And we also have another book that I'm gonna mention is Well, Jennifer supports executives, one on one leadership coaching over the decades, she's developed growth edge coaching approach supports clients to find their current growing edge and make choices about how they want to develop, well, you have a wonderful background. And for those of you who want to learn more, just go to cultivating leadership.com, that's cultivating leadership.com, we'll put a link to that in the blog as well. So Jennifer, let's just kind of start this off, you know, at the website. So for my listeners, please go to the website, because there's a huge team of people that are consulting and coaching leaders. And you state that you help organizations thrive and complexity and your kind of bag has been to steady complexity, you know, and how it works. This obviously comes down to the individual within the culture of the organization, knowing what to do to make things better during complex times for themselves and for the culture of the organization. You stated in the introduction of the book, that complexity tends to trigger us and makes us anxious and afraid. And that's the, for me right now kind of the key in the world is this anxiousness. The prevalence of fear that normally doesn't lead us anyplace good. Now, let's face it, given the complex times we live in now, and how did you help individuals better cope and respond to challenging times like we're living in, especially leaders inside of companies?

Jennifer Garvey Berger
Yeah, I mean, this, this point, you're making that fear doesn't tend to lead us to very helpful places are super important, right? Yeah. And, and very often, people don't even notice that they're afraid, right? They noticed they have to do things, they noticed that they're kind of maybe stressed that they're talking faster or moving faster than they usually do, or whatever. But this kind of low level of fear that comes from our nervous system, they don't so much pay attention to right as fear or even discomfort, they just feel it as busyness. And so the first thing we have leaders do is notice, because you can't really change anything until you begin to notice where you are. And so the first way we help leaders is to get a handle on what's going on for me right now. What's going on for us right now, what is the challenge that we're facing? What is our habit about handling a challenge like that? And what new tools might we have that might be more useful? Give them given where we are,

Greg Voisen
yeah, and the tools, we're gonna get into them, the gyms that you have created in this book, but you know, it's the makeup of our bodies, you know, the way the brain works, the amygdala, the way that we're connected and wires wired. For centuries and centuries, you know, I've talked to social biologists about this, it's almost like, we wait to the last minute, before we actually do something about something, right? It has to get to this point, of almost catastrophic, and sometimes it's as individuals and companies, right? companies realize that, okay, we're losing money every month in and month out, month in and month out, but we haven't cut the team. So just like what, you know, the Facebook guy did pardon me, I can't remember his name right now. But, you know, he lays off 11,000 people, all of a sudden, like, boom, here's 11,000 People go, we see moves like that happening, you know, inside corporations, and you're wondering, well, you knew this was rubbing up to this, you know, it's like, all of a sudden, you're gonna make a move like that. And those decisions, so that's really about making better decisions. We don't have a tendency to have that DNA kind of wired into us or doing.

Jennifer Garvey Berger
Know, we are, in the last couple of books I've written, I've been exploring the ways our, our neurobiology handles complexity. And the thing that I've found in, in studies from, you know, just across neurology, neuroscience, psychology, behavioral economics, in an all these different fields, what you see is that the human system was designed has evolved to basically ignore or fight against or be completely stressed out by complexity, right? And you can see that from most of our history, that was probably a good idea. Does that tendency help us make complex business decisions? It does not. It is not, it is not a gift to us, it is incredible. If what we need to do is run or fight our way out of a challenge. Boom, we are deciding whether to lay off people when we are deciding what new strategy to take on when we are trying to come to terms with something we've done that has been problematic in some powerful way. When we're wrestling with social issues, you know, all these things actually activate our anxious nervous system, our sympathetic nervous system, our activation system, and that doesn't do a great job at making the kinds of complex decisions you're talking about.

Greg Voisen
Yeah, your, you know, your research, the research, you've read and studied, I'd say every time it follows that course. In other words, it's that's the outcome is that it's not that great. And I and I was just recently on with Dan Bittner, the guy that wrote the blue zones, and he has a new book out the American Blue Zones cookbook, and you know, we got to talking about applications to change behavior. And he said, he said, I don't want this to be a buzzkill. But the research shows that no matter what app you put on your phone to meditate with or to, or to change your diet or to whatever. We see a precipitous decline at seven months, meaning around seven months, is the time when people drop off these things, yet their phones are loaded with them. And I said, Well, that's really interesting, Dan, and he said, Yeah, but the flip side is, if you change the environment, in which people, so like you, you went to France look at it, things are a little slower. People have bike paths. They're eating healthier. They're eating organic. No, he said, so we lower the BMI in a city by 3% by coming in and changing the environment, not by filling their funds with apps that you've got to do this, or you're gonna get 10,000 steps or you're gonna do whatever you're going to do. And I thought the approach was in it was kind of an eye opener for me, you know, to say, we've got to do this at a much higher level at a governmental level. We've got to change these things in the world. Before we as Human beings are going to kind of follow the path. You know what I mean? Any comment on that? Because that's, you know, inside of a corporation, it's almost the same thing. It's its own biosphere, right? It's its own culture. And I guess if you're not changing the environment, maybe a lot of times what you're doing is you're wasting a lot of time.

Jennifer Garvey Berger
Yeah, I think this, this question about at what level does change happen? People have these different theories, you know, like people have a theory that changes all individual or changes about willpower, or changes about intelligence, or changes about motivation or changes about you know, like, there are all these theories, if we can just provide willpower, intelligence, motivation, apps, whatever it might be, people will change. But as you say, Change is a complex and interactive process, that has something to do with culture that has something to do with environment that has something to do with identity that has something to do with psychology that has something to do with biology. And I just don't think we're ever going to find the one size fits all way to make change happen. So

Greg Voisen
well, in his case, it was demographers that studied regions to find out where people lived over 100 years old, right? Everybody knows that. But the point of it is, is that they found commonalities, obviously, in this community, strong sense of community, a different diet, and 90%, plant based, mostly organic, you know, so if you follow the list down, you sit there and you go, wow, that's, that's really supporting me, because that's all I can get. Right? So that's, that's what I'm going to eat, I'm going to walk I'm going to do these things. You know, you've authored so many books, such as unlocking leadership, mind traps, changing on the job, simple habits for complex times. And most of the books are about thriving in complexity or making life simpler. Now, you've chosen to have a simpler life by moving where you've moved, you're living in the southern part of France. A much simpler lifestyle, not everybody has. Well, I wouldn't say they don't have the choice. They haven't made that choice. What is it about the way complex systems work? That is so counterintuitive for us to comprehend, because you're steady your body of work as an individual, and I don't know how you got here. But you're really interested in how we can figure out how to work with complexity, you know, and how it can be our friend versus being our foe?

Jennifer Garvey Berger
Yeah, that's exactly right. This is exactly right. So when you talk about context, I have moved to the southwest of France. But I bought a house with 10 friends, and we live in community here. So I'm not sure that I simplified that much to be honest. When you have to make a, you know, a decision by committee for everything, it's not necessarily a simpler life, but it is a very interesting and, and, you know, a life filled with growth and laughter. Yeah. And I think that the, I think the thing is, our body automatically tells us that complexity is kind of wrong or bad or scary. Then our organizations reinforced this by saying your job as a manager is to control things, and to predict the future and to deliver on the future that you predicted. Right? And it reinforces that trend, that complexity is our enemy in some way. Actually, complexity is just it’s a life force. You know, it is a piece of what it is to be alive and mortal, and interdependent with the land and the other humans and the atmosphere. You know, this is just. And I think we can think about it as, you know, a force that's threatening and dangerous and we need to kind of segmented as much as we can get it out of here as much as we can. But I think this is always a losing battle, and particularly as the complexity of the world just advances and advances and advances. I think if we looked at complexity as off force that we could understand harness play with I surrender to make use of, I think we would have a really different relationship to what it means to be human and alive right now. And it, I think it would be a more helpful relationship. And I think we would potentially be able to solve bigger problems.

Greg Voisen
Agreed. And I'm not saying that everybody is running from complexity, but what I would say is they need and we're going to talk about it better ways to be in relationship with it. You know, there's a, I think, this is my humble opinion, opinion, you're kind of going through life, and you don't feel like you want to have more complexity, just like you said, moved in with all these people. And it hasn't been really more simple. But you've had this wonderful experience of community, right? So there's some tradeoffs there, maybe it did get a little more complex, but the whole support structure, and that's something that I think your research probably ferrets out that, you know, if I do get in a complex situation, and I have a lot of community of support, people around me, the other managers, the, you know, the upper line people to help me through it. It's so much easier. And you speak in the book about the difference between complicated versus complex challenges. And I thought this was really interesting part, can you speak with the listeners about the differences and why complex challenges are much more difficult to solve? or predict?

Jennifer Garvey Berger
Yeah. So this distinction comes from a variety of places, the teacher I study most, this distinction is Dave Snowden, who's a complexity theorist. And the, this isn't a distinction between two kinds of systems that are predictable, that run the same way every time. And systems that are not predictable. In complicated challenges, you have something that's tricky, it's hard. And yet, with the right expertise, the right experience, the right education, you can figure it out complex, complicated challenge is, you know something as daily as having a car that works to get you to where you need to be something as innovative as creating a rocket to the moon, or SpaceX or whatever it might be. But all of these are kind of engineering problems, you can break the problem apart into segments, you can hand the segments to different experts, and then you can kind of reassemble something that ought to work well, in this case and across contexts. Complexity is not like that. Complexity is a kind of entangled mass, where things actually change what's going on right now in such a way that you can't imagine what's going to happen next. You know, traffic is a complex system, it seems like everybody should be driving, kind of at the same speed and in the same place. But suddenly, traffic snarls in reasons that you can't really understand, you can't really predict, you can't necessarily know that they're going to snarl that way. Again, we're finding that who gets COVID is a complex challenge how COVID operates in our body is a complex challenge. There are patterns, some people get very sick, many people don't get sick. If you're immunized, it has one feature or another. But it's not predictable. You can't know if you're one of the ones that's going to be in this category or that one or that one. And that's because there are so many features at play. Where did you get it? How were you exposed? What time of day? Was it? How rundown was your body? How strong is your immune system? When were you last exposed? All these questions. And these questions kind of interact with each other to mean that while you can study patterns across a population, you can never predict any one particular thing. And, as you say, solving a complicated challenge. We know how to do that humans have gotten incredibly great at doing this. Getting the right kind of studies the right kind of understanding, though, right humans to or computers to parse apart the information and then put it back together into some excellent solution. complexity will always be unpredictable, but it's definitionally unpredictable. And we will always need another path to addressing complex challenges than we have to Addressing complicated ones.

Greg Voisen
Yeah, just the whole complexity theory. And, you know, you talked about Snowden, he mentioned the book, you actually mentioned his book in your book. You know, I have friends that actually do this, this is, you know, this is their fun is study complexity, you know, a gentleman wrote a book called Open boundaries, where, when we're in these systems, like working at a big corporation, which has all these moving parts and pieces, and no matter where you are in that, in, in that big matrix, right, it does get daunting. And so you stay, that uncertainty wreaks havoc on our systems, financial, political, social, but the first stress system that a leader must deal with is their own nervous system. And I would agree, because, you know, being able to keep our composure, during challenging times and stress, I happened to be, you know, an advocate of the Eastern theory and meditation, and most of my listeners are, and they understand, and mindfulness practices and, you know, all kinds of things. What does complexity do to us inside? And how can we better understand how to cope with it better? I think that's the key, you know, I'm, I'm headed back to go meet Richie Davidson, the guy who did all the studies with the monks and studying how their brains work under meditation at the University of Wisconsin, and I feel so honored to actually go do that. But the reality is, that's not everybody. You know, as a matter of fact, it's a very small segment that's able to actually take this thing called meditation, and actually make it a regular practice that makes them better able to cope with life. Yeah,

Jennifer Garvey Berger
so this question about how is it we can engage notice and engage with our own nervous systems? This is what meditation is all about, right? How do I engage with my own nervous system, my whole thought system as a system that I can kind of look into I am it and I can also see it. This is one of the keys to being able to handle complexity gracefully, I think and to be able to use it as a, as a force to play with is that we have to see what it does to us. And then we have to have a relationship to that. That means we can say, well, I'd like to change this like to I'd like to change something about this in this moment. I wonder what I could do to make that possible. Otherwise, we are very often traveling through our lives as passengers on the river have complexity, and not actually steering very much.

Greg Voisen
That's so true. And you know, I think what happens is, if people can learn mindfulness meditation practices, it makes it so much easier. You stated that one of the core paradoxes of complex system is that a lot of effort can have little or no impact. I think that's worth repeating. Because most people think a lot of effort will have huge impact. And that's a conundrum for most people, because they're used to efforting a lot to get something done with their, whatever the goal is, right? Speak with the listeners, if you're worried about slow, going slow to go fast, a concept that April Rennie talks about to in her book called Flux, who was just on here and some of the benefits of this strategy.

Jennifer Garvey Berger
You This is one of the I mean, it's one of the incredibly frustrating things about complexity, right as anybody who's tried to, you know, do a culture change initiative or launch a new product that you were sure was going to be spectacular. That's not actually spectacular in the marketplace, or whatever it is, whenever we want, or build trust in a team, and is put a lot of effort into building trust in a team. All of these are emergent phenomena of complex systems. And the bad news is it's not a put one unit in get one unit out kind of an exchange in complexity. The good news is it's not a put one unit in get one unit out kind of exchange in complexity, right. So this thing gives as it takes away. So the question is, I think, for certainly for me is what are the many small experiments we can try, that might have this incredibly outsized impact? While you know, not costing that much, instead of doing as you say, efforting, to try and force a system to do a particular thing, which, in a complex system often has a kind of perverse fighting back effect. And so this, this

Greg Voisen
was about, pardon me for interrupting you. But what about you, you just mentioned 15 minutes earlier that, you know, your managers are expecting you to get something done. So you have this pressure, let's just call it and it's, it's real pressure. There, the managers or the upper management is not saying, Well, you can go ahead and wallow with this problem. Which if you did wallow, you probably make a better decision. Okay. They're saying we want you to get something done. Right. In other words, we need something to happen a lot of times, they don't even know what it is that they think should happen. But they have this expectation of you. Right? It's like the expectation of the outcome, you talked about it in the book, that is one of the challenges at any level in an organization, be it that it's there. You know, if you look at the blue Buddhist philosophy, it's like, don't get attached to the expectation of the outcome. Right. But that seems to be a hard one for corporations to kind of like uptake, put it into their pipe and smoke it and say, this is the way we're running today. So what advice would you have for the people that are in the ranks and files that are listening to this, or they're at the upper management level, and they're the ones directing the people in the rank and file to do things that maybe actually wallowing would be a better option?

Jennifer Garvey Berger
Well, I think anybody who's, you know, who, who faces a lot of responsibilities and a really busy job, and then they go away on vacation, and they actually don't look at their email. And then they come back to whatever, 20 million emails, right. And as they go through them, they see problems arise and fall, arise and fall, they see problems come and, and somehow fade away, like over the course of their work kind of study of their inbox. I've had so many leaders come to me and say, you know, Jennifer, when I am away, my people solve things that when I'm there, I think they absolutely need me for. And so this is a piece of the of the challenge is our action urge to do something often injects us in a way that expands our energy without actually adding very much value. And so this idea of going too slow to go fast. First, has us pause and see what's actually going on? How much am I motivated by my own anxiety? How much am I motivated by my reflexes? And how much am I actually able to put my hands around this challenge? And then, you know, the, the approach we tend to teach is about experimentation. How can you make small experiments and learn. And we have leaders and organizations all over the world who are trying to take this more experimental approach where they try multiple small things, and then learn from what the system does with those multiple small things. We hadn't. We had one organization we worked with that were was trying to have a culture change, where the organization was quite siloed, as many organizations are, and they were trying to break down some of those silos. Excuse me, and did in order to do it, they were having programs and they were having, you know, all kinds of initiatives, all kinds of all kinds of stuff was going on, there was quite a lot of a lot of push in the organization. And they were now learning about experiments and complexity. And so they were playing around with this fundamental question, what kind of stories are people telling right now? And what kinds of stories would I like them to tell more of and what kinds of stories that I liked to tell fewer of, and then we're hearing that a lot of the stories people were telling were about how those people over there were idiots. Annoying, money grubbing, self-centered, what, uh, what you know that whatever negative stories we imagine about people who are in a different silo from us, and they had these stories mutually going back and forth. And one of the experiments was, okay, I'll give you 100 bucks to go out to dinner. With one of those folks, I'll pay for dinner for both of you, or lunch, you choose the meal, I'll pay for it, you go out to dinner, I don't care what happens, just try that. And they invested like, whatever, four months and three grand in this experiment. And most people didn't take them up on it. Most people are like, I want to have dinner with him, even if you're gonna give me a nice meal. But some people did. And those some people started to like each other better started to collaborate more started to talk about work more started to tell each other Oh, no, you, I think you've got that wrong about those folks. I'm, I've been out to dinner with a bunch of those folks, I spend time with them. I, you know, I saw problems with them. And suddenly this, the culture started to shift in this $3,000 experiment of take some somebody you don't like out to dinner? And didn't have to work that way? No, they were trying other things too, at the same time. And those other things probably had some kind of an impact, too. The question is, can you find these small, relatively low investment attempts, and then learn from them and see how the system changes?

Greg Voisen
Yeah, it's almost like a, I don't wanna say you, you bring the light, where there's darkness in there, right? Because of the way somebody may think about someone, but then you start the light starts to shine brighter and brighter and brighter. You know, the darkness says serve the light. So what is interesting, and I remember this comment, and it kind of goes along with it. The people of diversity that you're asking them to interact with, the other people are saying, well, I don't like them or whatever, because they're different. I remember Steven Kotler has been on the show about six times talking about hacking flow, and the creativity inside of organizations and creativity and innovation in general. He said, Well, if you want to be innovative, his comment to me was, once you read something different. And I was like, well, he says, Well, you know, I read Architectural Digest, people wouldn't think that I would read Architectural Digest, he said, but the reality is the fact that you've stimulated your brain by pushing it to read something that you, you know, you're normally commonly understand, it's almost like going to dinner with someone different, right? You're saying, wow, this person is a magician, musician. I don't like musicians. I'm like, whatever, you know, but I'm gonna go anyway, because I'm gonna go with an open mind and learn this. The same thing with reading Architectural Digest, he said, what happens is it breaks the code and your creativity emerges, your innovation emerges, you become more engaged. And I thought, it's a great way for people to do that. So just like you said, you know, go spend 100 bucks and go to dinner with somebody that you don't maybe care pick that's in some other silo inside the company, or read something different or force yourself to do something different. Because it is going to have you help you solve problems differently as well. And you know, you introduce something called, these are the gyms, genius engagement moves, which allows us to become aware of what is happening in our nervous system and begin to make intentional shifts. Can you speak with the listeners about the gyms there's a lot of them in the book. So I will, I will say, we'll apply some of them maybe the most important ones here that you would like to talk about. You have many so what Just pick that the most successfully used with an impact on our nervous system and dealing with complexity. So one of them, I would think, humbly, is just before you're taking action, take a breath. You know, just take a big deep breath in. And wait, don't just react, you know, because that's, we have a tendency to do that, we want to find a solution quickly. So we're just boom, we're gonna say something, put our foot in our mouth. Any others that you want to give us that we that the listeners could apply and apply immediately? Let's say they're working in a corporation today, and they're going, Wow, I could really use what you guys are talking about.

Jennifer Garvey Berger
Yeah, so one of my favorite is to see whether there can be more laughter in your life. So one of the complexity geniuses, one of the things that makes us great at complexity is laughter. It's great for our body, it's great for our connections, it's actually a socially generated phenomenon that comes from and enables trust, and bonding. And, and lots of people have this idea. Oh, yeah, there's no laughing at my work because I am in a serious business, or there's no laughing at my work, because my colleagues are not funny. And it turns out that laughter is really rarely about what's funny. It's about the sense we make of it. And it's about what we're trying to signal to one another. And so the a couple of gems in that space, that have really changed my life are, first of all, offer your laughter as a gift to others. Right. So think about your laughter as a kind of social glue, that makes things cohere, that makes groups feel more together, and see whether you can feel more free and open with this gift of laughter. So this is one of them. And then even if you

Greg Voisen
can't Wow, could even if you can't laugh, how about smiling? Yeah, for sure. Just changes our neurology. Yeah, there was a guy that just did a TED talk about smiling. And it's like, it makes so much difference. I mean, you're not gonna laugh, at least.

Jennifer Garvey Berger
I mean, this is it, you're actually changing not only what happens in your blood, when you smile, or when you're there, but also what's happening in the bodies of the people you're with. I mean, that's extraordinary to be able to have that effect on people. That's amazing. And the other one and the other Geminus laughter space, is how can you find ways to take what was heavy and hard and laugh at it? We call it an irony practice. And I used to, I have a several coaching clients who use this irony practice, and we spend the first few minutes of our session together, just going over things that in the moment, felt awful, heavy, serious, difficult the board meeting, in this terrible presentation where I screwed up the slides, you know, all these difficult, hard, grueling things. And then we, we laugh at it, you know, we say, Oh, can you believe that? This happened to me, and we find that actually laughter emerges from those times, like laughter is the reconceptualization of difficulty in just something that's hilarious. And often the hardest things become hilarious. Not all the hardest things. But many of the hardest things become hilarious if we just treat them that way. And then as we face other hardship, it's easier for us to face into it without this kind of heavy, serious, somber thing. Complexity responds very well to play, to lightness, to exploration to co creation laughters like that.

Greg Voisen
Those are great bits of advice, because I think, you know, people, we've talked many times incorporation about being more playful, you'll be more creative, you know? Yeah, for some reason. You know, the words oftentimes bounce off the wall, because the culture has been so ingrained there when somebody new comes in and says, you can do this now, people are hesitant to do that. Because before they were reprimanded for it, right? And it's now you have to break through Oh, man, they're allowing me to have more autonomy. They're allowing me to be more playful. They're allowing me to do you know, I remember reading Yvonne Shannara Woods book, the guy who does Patagonia, he knew, as always, for him about having a culture where people had this autonomy, he would tell the guys who were working in Santa Barbara will go surfing in the middle of the day, do whatever you're gonna do, and then come back and go back to work. It's not like, I have you chained to this desk for eight hours, they don't want you to change to this desk for eight hours. But many of these organizations, they have been in comp ensconced with this kind of thing, it's like, you're gonna be here eight to five, you're gonna grind it out. And that's the way it is. And it's hard for them to make the move. But some of the things in your book, and I'm going to point that out, these gems will certainly make dealing with it a lot easier. So please get the book. Now your gems help in creating conditions for new solutions to emerge? You mentioned that one of the beautiful things about complexity is that we cannot make things happen. We just talked about that a minute ago. What advice would you give a leader about learning to let go of their biases and beliefs and become a receptacle for new creative solutions. And please speak about the idea of you would have non attachment to the outcome. I think a big part of this is the attachment to the outcome. And if you're really going to let go of biases and beliefs and really let go, which I don't know, how many people know how to do that.

Jennifer Garvey Berger
I don't think I think it's a practice, you know, like all of these things that we're talking about, I'm not sure we arrive. But this this question of, can we release our preconception or preconception comes automatically from an assumption whether we notice it or not, that the future is going to be kind of like the past, if we even have a preconception it comes from our past, right? It comes from what we know, it comes from how it's been before. That's what preconception is, we are, we are noticing it before it happens. And I mean, you just imagine all the things that are eliminated, if the thing that we want is something that's happened before. This is a this is a world so quickly changing. We can count on what's happened before. And maybe we don't want to maybe we want a new thing to happen. Maybe this is the point. And so I think when we begin to practice, something like non attachment to outcomes, right, where we say I want to go that away, I want to help people in these ways, I want to create a business in this direction, I want to help make knowledge more available or help make the world more sustainable in its use of energy or whatever your goal might be. If, if you leave, if you leave, I want to go that way without thinking in exactly this way. Or at exactly the speed or with exactly these milestones, then you allow space for margins, and for happenstance and serendipity to arrive. And you allow space for the creativity of others to influence the direction that you actually take. And so I think it's this

Greg Voisen
you also give more room for presents.

Jennifer Garvey Berger
You do you learn from what's going on right now?

Greg Voisen
Exactly. You know, I had this thing told me a long time ago you live in you live in the dead pasture. Imagine future but you have a hard time staying in the now. Call it Eckart Tolle, whoever you want to call it. But the reality is, is that that presents that we need to get to is how we really solve these complex issues. We don't solve them by going Well, yesterday was a real day. I'm gonna drag it all in and tomorrow's got this and I'm worried about what's gonna go in there. You really solve these by staying in the Now that may sound trite to a lot of people but please, from my humble opinion and experience in the 980 authors I've interviewed, it does have a huge impact on if you can stay there. You know, one of your gyms is to lead into humility, right? And then hubris you state that we should think of the smallest moves, that might shift the conditions that are creating our version of our reality. There's underlying our version of our reality. What's the best way to move the ego out of the way? There's a lot of this is attached to ego, I have a job on vice president this division. And remind us that solutions are co-created with the universe, when we are open and receptive to listening.

Jennifer Garvey Berger
Again, first, we have to notice that the ego is in the way, right, which is why this work about self-awareness and what's going on for me is so important because otherwise it doesn't feel like ego. It feels like something else, right? Because the ego is always back there, like pulling the strings, right? And so noticing that our ego might be getting in the way and asking ourselves a question, like, in this moment, how is it getting in the way, as opposed to like, Am I one of those people whose ego gets in the way? Yes, you are? Yes, you are a human person, your heartbeats, right? Your ego gets in the way sometimes. And so paying attention, noticing, and then finding ways, you know, laughing at yourself. And the things that looked so bad earlier in the week is an ego bashing way, right? It's it frees us listening well to others, is another way that we free ourselves up to co create and to be with one another. And this other thing that you're mentioning is getting out of the heavy stories of what has been what should have been what should be next. Anything with a showed in it? And noticing what is what, what is now what is now what are the patterns right now? And how can you start to mess around with the patterns of right now? And amplify the ones you like, and dampen down the ones you don't like, what everything we have is right now.

Greg Voisen
Yeah, it is. And it's a hard thing for people to grasp because we have time. So when you wear a watch, and you look at it, it's on your clock, you know, it's you're reminded everywhere you go of time. It has a difficult time staying present. And I will say that the biggest thing that I've seen in modern world has just been the distraction of the cell phone. There isn't any one device in my humble opinion, that's distracted people more than the cell phone. You know, we've had we've had people fall off cliffs taking pictures themselves. And, you know, I'm not certain that would have happened if you had a Brownie camera or not. Right. So you know, you recounted Jennifer, reading Robert Keegan's book it the life changing book, you called it in your book, in over our heads. Your epiphany was that our emotions were constructed by us, and that we can control and construct emotions. I couldn't agree more. But on the other hand, I think there might be people listening and going, Yeah, okay, I get it. But I don't know how to speak with our listeners about the importance of this book for you. And how knowing we have control our emotions can be one of the biggest game changers in our lives. Yeah,

Jennifer Garvey Berger
I think I've come to believe that we have control over the stories we tell ourselves about our emotions. And so this this question of, I feel angry. I feel angry you I feel angry at you for these reasons, right? This is almost entirely story, a little bit of sensation, I have a feeling that happens in my body there is you know, a different cocktail of chemicals coursing through my veins, different cocktail of neuro hormones coursing through my veins. Relatively briefly, right like that. That actual physical sensation is quite short. Everything that makes an emotion last is the amplification of our stories. And understanding that our emotions are really about the stories I'm telling myself. I've been writing this week, a blog about the phrase the story I make up about this is because actually, I'm not sure there's a more helpful phrase to put at the beginning of a sentence than that, when you're dealing with them with an emotion, like I'm super hurt, that my friends did this thing without me, right? You get it. And then when you talk to them about it, the story I make up about this is you didn't care about my feelings or the story make up about this is that you didn't consider me or the story make up whatever the story is that 98% of its value to rile me up if I can put the phrase the story and make up about it is, and this I think helps us understand our emotions are the result of our stories, as opposed to our emotions are the result of the actions of others. Our emotions are the result of the stories we tell ourselves about the actions of others. And understanding that little hook, and being able to tell myself, oh, I'm making up story about this. And this is why I'm enraged, making up a story about this, this is why I'm hurt. Liberating, totally, in a way, almost nothing in my life has been liberating.

Greg Voisen
More liberating than that, yes. You know, I got a degree in spiritual psychology. And then I came to the realization about MSU, making stuff up. You know, we just have a saying in the university, you don't have to believe everything you think. And the reality was, is that there was a bumper sticker actually made, I think I still have it here. Because we make these stories up. And then we believe the stories we made up, and then they become a belief about it, and then some believe against that other person or whatever. And it can be so insidious, because there's no foundation for it. It's something that I made up, it's maybe a comment, we took wrong from somebody and took it to heart. And it really, they really didn't mean it that way. Right? Because we never checked back in. So I think that's one thing. And I think it's so valuable, what you said, to understand that the stories you make up can have such a huge impact on your life. I remember Byron Katie being on the show, wonderful woman, and she is to put people up in front of the audience. And she'd asked him two questions. And I don't know if you remember her or not, do you remember Byron, Katie? Their name is super familiar. So very famous. She got very famous on asking these questions. The first question was,

Jennifer Garvey Berger
Is it true? Oh, yes.

Greg Voisen
Then she says, Is it really true, right? Because people would make up the story about their mate, Oh, he's so bad, or she's so bad, or they're horrible, or whatever. And she'd sit in the audience chair to chair like this. And she just say, Oh, is it true? And they go, Well, maybe, well, maybe it's maybe it's not really no one I started thinking about, maybe it's not so bad as I made it up to be. And then she'd say, it's really is it really, really true? Go? Well, no, not at all. You know, it was it's just this really interesting way to say, I asked people, you know, you might want to ask yourself, Is it really true? Because the reality is most of the stories you make up are made up? They're not true. Right? There's something you made up. So in conclusion here, your books filled with great stories, research, practical experience for dealing with complexity. What are the few ideas that you would like to leave listeners with that they could navigate complexities in their life with if you were, leave them two or three things that you think from a combination of our 48 minutes here on the Zoom call that you could actually make that happen?

Jennifer Garvey Berger
Oh, two things. Okay. The first thing, the research I did for this book helped convince me that we have a lot more agency to effect the conditions of our lives than we think we do. And that making moves to live more peacefully and complexity is actually delightful. And is filled with things that don't feel like difficulties but feel like joy. And I think the second thing I want to say is one of the most joyful is how we connect with other people, and how we could be more intentional and thoughtful about solving for that love and connection with other folks, and how much that makes complexity bearable.

Greg Voisen
I'd say that second one is really important. Because we're at a point in our history where if you look at the divisiveness that's occurred worldwide, because of the stories we made up about somebody else, that we've This is self-imposed, and divisiveness. It doesn't need to be that way. I'm not saying we need a Haight Ashbury love fest, and let's all go smoke pot and you know, have a great time. What I'm saying is, if just little by little you'd make if anybody out there listening would make one small step toward making a connection with another person, I think it would make a huge difference in the world to try and bridge, whatever it is, you're attempting to bridge, just like you said, go take them to lunch, go do whatever. I mean, I know my nonprofit compassionate communications foundation, I go out and give $100 gift cards to people on the streets that are homeless. And I make my attempt to bridge that I have to do that with every individual that I hand a card to, I don't know who they are, many of them have mental illness I've got to overcome. But I've also got to learn how to work with that subset of the population to help find more love and compassion for them, no matter who they are. And I think that's true inside of a business, if you would think about that individual out there, and that they have emotions and feelings and concerns and upsets. And all they want to do is be heard, you said listened to, but I'd say heard. Same thing. And with that, I want to let all our listeners go to Jennifer's website, and we'll put a link to that. And that website is cultivating leadership.com. We're also going to have her back on the shelf next month for this book, simple habits for complex times. So Jennifer, thank you so much. Have a wonderful holiday season enjoy France and the countryside and drinking wine and being with all her great friends there and the community that you build. Sounds like a wonderful life. Namaste to you in everything that you're doing to help the world heal and heal these companies and the people inside of them. Bring more light.

Jennifer Garvey Berger
Thank you so much. Thank you for this great conversation. I hope you have a wonderful day.

Greg Voisen
All right, thanks.