Escaping the Grind: A Tale of Burnout, Transformation, and Embracing Choice with Eric Nehrlich

Caught in the relentless hum of the everyday world, many of us teeter on the edge of burnout, questioning if the path we're on is truly ours to walk. Eric Nehrlich, a sage in the realm of executive coaching with a distinguished tech pedigree, joins us to recount his awakening from the depths of Google-induced exhaustion to a life rich with intent and choice. His upcoming book, 'You Have a Choice,' echoes through our discussion, unlocking the shackles of self-doubt and reframing the narrative around the male struggle with loneliness and self-worth. Together, we explore the profound impact of conscious decision-making on our careers and the untapped leadership potential that lies within.

Transitioning from professional fulfilment to the tender landscape of the heart, this episode also addresses the intricacies of personal evolution and the pursuit of love. Reflecting on my own transformation from a solitary existence to marital bliss, I share the pivotal shifts in self-perception and vulnerability that can lead one down a path of deeper connection and happiness. The notion that mere toil doesn't equate to success is dismantled, and we invite listeners to examine the outdated rules governing our behaviour in the office and our intimate relationships.

Finally, we set our sights on the cornerstone of personal transformation—taking ownership of our journey. By sharing narratives from my coaching practice, including a senior executive's battle with a stagnant work environment, we illuminate the power of transitioning from bystander to architect of our own narratives. And as we pull back the curtain on strategic productivity—inspired by a Google executive's masterful work-life symmetry—we underscore the message that change is achievable and essential for those seeking to wield their inner potential. For those ready to carve out their path, my platform, toobanytrees.com, offers the tools and guidance to begin this life-altering expedition.

Key moments:
06:43 Breaking Free: Eric's Personal and Professional Evolution
09:52 Coaching Insights: Identifying and Overcoming Blockers
17:35 Helping Others Recognize and Escape Their Cages
19:49 The Inspiration Behind the Book
23:13 Real-life Applications and Client Stories
28:35 The Importance of Vulnerability and Communication
32:12 Valuable Advice and Life Lessons
34:58 Final Takeaways and How to Connect

How to reach Eric:
Website: https://www.toomanytrees.com/podcast
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nehrlich/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/generalist

Chapters

• 0:00 Discovering Choice
• 9:38 Navigating Change and Finding Love
• 15:50 Overcoming Pressure and Self-Sabotage
• 21:03 Empowering Change Through Personal Responsibility
• 32:29 Strategic Productivity in Daily Life

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Just allow me for just a moment here to paint a picture. Every day you arrive at your work let's say 8 am it starts like any other day emails to answer, you know, there's tasks to be completed, project deadlines to hit. Oh, and don't forget, there's that HR stuff that we have to get, we have to address between a couple of teammates and just maybe not getting along. It's a typical day, isn't it? Lunchtime comes around and there you are eating at your desk again, only for you to notice that it's three in the afternoon and you've hardly got anything completed. And the next thing you know, it's dark out and you spent 10, maybe 12 hours at work. And for what? Well, my friends, that is what we're going to engage in today's discussion, because that question lies. In that question lies an answer, it will.

Speaker 1: 0:43

We may not realize that we've been making all along and it's called a choice. And before we get into all that, I know that today's never been more difficult for us to be men, and it's because of that that it can be so challenging that some of us have a real pain that we're dealing with, and it's a pain of loneliness and it's a pain of unworthiness, and it's masked by our anger and our resentment. It's all because we're uncertain and afraid to take that next step. So if you're tired and fed up with where your life is at, then I'm going to encourage you to start your hero's quest. It's where you can become more, accomplish more and live more than ever before. Just go to memberstheawakenedmannet and start your quest today, and with that, let's get on with today's episode.

Speaker 2: 1:29

The average man today is sleepwalking through life, many never reaching their true potential, let alone ever crossing the finish line to living a purposeful life. Yet the hunger still exists, albeit buried amidst his cluttered mind, misguided beliefs and values that no longer serve him. It's time to align yourself for greatness. It's time to become a revolutionary man. Stay strong, my brother.

Speaker 1: 1:58

Welcome everyone to the Revolutionary man Podcast. I'm the founder of the Awakened man Movement and your host, alan DeMonso. Let me ask you a question, maybe a couple here. Is your current career fulfilling you, and what choice are you making that requires you to keep pursuing this career? You know, if you're like anybody else, we start our careers with great aspiration and then one day we realize it's turned into perspiration. Yep, we drag ourselves to the job every day and it gets harder and harder to do that. We've become what we said we never would be, and that's that cog in the wheel. Well, today my guest shares how he found himself in a similar situation, was able to turn his life around into something that's meaningful and purposeful for those that he works with and he serves. So allow me to introduce my guest.

Speaker 1: 2:44

Eric Nerlich is an executive coach who draws on 20 years of experience in the tech industry to help leaders and have more impact. He loves to identify and challenge mindsets and habits that hold his clients back from their next level of leadership. Man, I just love that part. Can't wait to talk about that. And he's publishing his first book this fall. It's called you have a Choice, which he wrote to share with what he's learned in his career and his coaching with a wider audience, google and eventually leading business strategy and operations for the Google search ads product team hey, maybe you can get some help there. And a chief of staff for six years. So welcome to the show, eric. I'm looking forward to this conversation.

Speaker 3: 3:32

How are things, my friend? They're great. Alan, Thanks so much for that kind intro and I'm excited to be on the show and talk about these topics.

Speaker 1: 3:38

Absolutely, Absolutely Well. You know this here work that we do at the Awakened man and on the Revolutionary man podcast, we always talk about everyone and all of us being on our own version of our hero's journey, or a hero's quest, as we like to call us. So tell us about that time in your life when you knew things had to change. What did you do about that and how did it shape the? How that experience shape you into the man you are today and the work that you're doing.

Speaker 3: 4:01

Yeah. So for me, that low point was around this time in 2011. So I'd been at Google about three years at that point and I had this experience at Google where they just kept giving me more work to do, and I'd never actually had that happen before. I was like I would get good at a job, I would do it for a while, I'd get bored, I would leave, and at Google I would get up to speed on a certain set of responsibilities and take me six to 12 months and they'd be like oh, you got that, here's some more work. Oh, you got that, here's some more. And here's some more, and here's some more. Oh, and we would love for you to do this too, and soon enough.

Speaker 3: 4:45

I'm working 90, 100-hour weeks on a regular basis doing that for three years 8 am to midnight pretty much every day. Sometimes I would take a Saturday afternoon off and I felt I had to do it. I'd been told this is what it takes to earn a promotion. I'd been told I need to do everything my manager says to earn a good performance rating at Google, and all my life that's what I do. You give me an expectation, I exceed it. So here I am and I'm like I got nothing more to give, like I am falling apart.

Speaker 3: 5:07

And the breaking point for me was Q4. 2011 was really hard, and I was just working just god awful hours and I was like, okay, I'm looking forward to Christmas. I'll take a week off, spend it with my family, enjoy that time off. And I wake up Christmas morning with 103 degree fever. My body just completely collapsed and I was in bed for a week sick. And I'm like okay, this is not okay, like this is not something that I want to keep doing. And I don't know what it was that week, but for some reason, this voice appeared in my head. It's like you could do something different. And I was I'd never considered that possibility Like no, you just have to do it. Given work, you do the work. And this voice kept on nagging me and eventually, when I went back to work in January, my first one-on-one with my manager, I was like I'm not working that hard anymore. They're like what does that mean? I'm like I'm destroying myself. I'm not willing to do that anymore. And they said well, if you can't handle the work, I'm going to find somebody that can. I was like okay, I understand. If you can't handle the work. You're not getting that promotion. Your performance rating is getting slashed. I'm like I accept that. So that's what happened. They slashed my performance rating, they took away half my team and my worst possible outcome had come true. I'm like I have definitively failed at the expectations I've been given.

Speaker 3: 6:22

But the really bizarre thing was I didn't feel crushed, I didn't feel useless, I didn't feel valueless. Instead, I felt, almost for the first time in my life, I felt free. I had this rule in my head I have to do everything my manager says, and I've just changed it. I have to do everything my manager says, unless I'm willing to accept the consequences of not doing so. And that moment was when I first realized I have a choice. I was like, oh, that was a choice I was making. I was choosing to do everything my manager said, but I could just not do it. And there's consequences and I can live with the consequences, and my whole life since then has been really pushing the limits of that. What else can I do that I thought I couldn't. So that's been a lot of things.

Speaker 3: 7:04

I traveled internationally to India for the first time by myself. I was like can I do this? I could. You know, I went bike camping. I was like I'm going to do a six day bike camping trip down the California coast. Turns out I could do that too. I ran a marathon, I started doing a hundred mile bike races and, most importantly, I've been hopelessly single my whole life and now I'm happily married with two kids.

Speaker 3: 7:24

All these things arose out of this realization that I had been the one keeping myself trapped. I'd been the one building the cage, holding myself in with what I thought I had to do, I must do. And once I started questioning those cages, my whole world opened up. So now I work as an executive coach and help others see the cages they're holding themselves in and start going like what about that? Can we move that? They see that wall there, let's just move that a little bit. See what happens. Like Ooh, I've never touched that wall. Like yeah, let's, let's try it, let's see what happens. They're like huh, the world didn't end. What else is possible?

Speaker 1: 7:59

That's incredible. I was just writing down a ton of notes there, and when you first started off talking, you know describing your journey there at Google the first thing I thought talking about well, you know, giving you more work to do, more work to do and I the note I wrote down was if you want something done, you give it to a busy person, because, for whatever reason, we figure out how to get it done. And that you know. And really, if, if our goal in life is to, you know, climb the corporate ladder, so to speak, then that's what we do and we lean into that. And you know, sometimes that's really successful.

Speaker 1: 8:47

But after a while, the next to recognize how things, how you've been, these programs have been playing and while they have served you on one side, really what was happening? It was called their service. And the other thing that I really enjoyed about your story is when, when you went back and you talk to your manager about, yeah, I'm just not going to work that hard anymore, I'm still going to do my job, I'm going to show up every day, I'm going to put it in Honest Day's work, but it's not going to be 90-hour weeks. You were okay with the consequences, and so you spent that time. I would imagine you spent that time understanding that decision, that choice and how that was going to play out and that you were going to be okay with it. And so I just want to finish summarizing what you had said that you made the comment about you recognize I was the one building the cage, and how often do we make it about something else in life? Right, that it's somebody else, it's my boss.

Speaker 1: 9:38

And then we talk about relationships on this podcast, too. It's my marriage. Right? I can't do this because you know it's just something going on in my marriage, and really is it. It could be a part of it played a part, but it's probably not the whole totality. So tell me a little bit more about what common blockers you're finding, now that you're coaching and inspiring leaders and helping mentor them. What kind of the common blockers are they having? Are they similar to what you described, or are there other things we should consider?

Speaker 3: 10:08

A lot of it is similar to what I described. I think I want to really emphasize one thing you said, though, which is these rules had worked for me at one point. They made me successful. That's why I built them, that's why I wrote those programs, because they worked.

Speaker 3: 10:24

When you're in school, working harder and exceeding expectations gets you lots of good things gold stars, a's admissions, all the things you want. When you're an individual contributor, same thing gets you all the good things. So it's like people are like oh, why don't you just stop doing that? It's like because it works, and that's what makes it so hard to let go, and that's, I think, the really hard part about all this is change. It means letting go of what once worked for you, and boy is that scary. So when somebody comes to you know, the one of the taglines I've been using for the book is like this is the book for when working harder isn't working, because if you're working harder, doing the same things you've always done and it's not getting you the results you want, working harder is not going to solve the problem. It's time to stop and look and reflect and say is this behavior that once worked still working? Is it serving me? Is it getting me what I want? And if not, can I put it down and try something else?

Speaker 1: 11:23

And I just love that part. I just made a note there. Working harder is not the answer, is what I just jotted down and and I think about that because, as guys, and especially if we have a bit of a you know a type personality and we're real go getters that we just think to solve our problem I just have to do more I can do more of this or more of something, and while that's while that's okay in the gym, you know, to improve our physical fitness, there comes a point when doing more isn't the answer anymore.

Speaker 1: 11:50

It's about recalibration, I think is what you're talking about. Right, it's really about recalibrating and looking at well, what is it that I want for my life and how, how do I want to shape it? And so I'd like to to go to another point that you talked about there being hopelessly single now being happily married and talk a little bit about that paradigm, that cage that you had built, and how you were able to find the door to open that up, to allow your life to change.

Speaker 3: 12:15

Yeah. So I grew up as kind of scrawny nerd and, you know, I just assumed nobody liked me and the feedback I got from girls when I was young was very much confirmed that. And so you get that for enough years as a kid, as a teenager, it's like, well, that's just who I am, I'm this scrawny word that nobody likes, and I mean you can't see me, but I'm now six foot three, 210 pounds, like I'm not the scrawny nerd anymore, but my self-image had never caught up to that. And Self-image had never caught up to that. And, more importantly, because my self-image hadn't caught up, when I would go on a date I didn't believe I was likable, I didn't believe I was lovable, and if I didn't believe it, there's no way the girl in front of me is going to believe that. Because they're like this guy, there must be something wrong because he does not believe himself. So Every like all my dating experiences went horribly, which just confirmed the idea I had in my head. And that loop continued for, you know, 30 something years, 40 years, I don't know a long time. But here's the fun thing. I mentioned that flight to India.

Speaker 3: 13:14

So, like this year, after I burned out and I, like, had this choice, I did a few new things. I learned to snowboard, I went on this bike camping tour. I went traveling to India for three weeks and I remember on this bike camping tour I went traveling to India for three weeks and I remember on the flight back from India it's a long flight, I have plenty of time to think and I had my journal. I was writing like I have a new superpower If I decide I really am going to do something, I will figure out how to do it.

Speaker 3: 13:36

And clearly, the answer of like what should I figure out how to do? Was dating, like I'm going to work on dating next year and the key insight I developed in that year. First of all, I was like, okay, I'm just going to go on a lot of dates, let me just do it a lot exposure therapy and figure out what I'm doing wrong. And I figured out the main mistake I was making was I was looking at the first date as like is this woman in front of me going to be my life partner and the love of my life for the rest of my life?

Speaker 1: 14:02

That's a lot of pressure to put on a date.

Speaker 3: 14:04

And once I was again, that was the rule, that was the mindset I had. Once I changed that to, I just have to decide do I want to go on a second date with this person and then a third date? I was like, oh, that's much easier, I can do that, and that made dating so much more fun. It turned out I was like, oh, I get why people enjoy dating. Now I'm, you know, 40, what? 39 years old at this point, like took me a while, but you get there eventually. And then the next part was so I got to that point where I'm like, oh, I'll go out on the next date, next date.

Speaker 3: 14:31

And then, like I went out with a girl for like two or three months and it fell apart horribly. I'm like, okay, that happens. And it happened with four women. I'm like it might not be the women, and that's when I went to therapy and untangled some stuff from my own childhood and my thoughts about how relationships work and all this sort of thing and we can go into. I'm happy to talk about that, I just don't want to. So you can follow up if you want.

Speaker 3: 14:58

But after I went to therapy I was like I started to figure out, like what do I actually need in a relationship? I was like I started to figure out, like what do I actually need in a relationship? So I had like this long list of things I thought I wanted in a partner, and when I worked with a therapist, we came with, like what do I actually need in a relationship? Which was not at all the same as the list, and a few months after that I met my now wife, who we have, on the surface, absolutely nothing in common.

Speaker 3: 15:19

She grew up in communist Bulgaria. We have never we. We have very little overlapping interests, and so there are a lot of ways in which we should never work as a couple and we comment on that regularly. But at the core, she had the character traits and the values that matched mine, and so therefore, even though we're different in so many surface ways, we work beautifully and it turns out it makes parenting easier because we're alive, we're like this is what we want for our children, and it doesn't matter what activities do in common If you can't agree what's important. So that's a little bit of my story. I'll let you riff from there.

Speaker 1: 15:51

Yeah, absolutely what I really like about what you're describing. There is really the recognition that, instead of putting all this pressure on and I think we tend to do that at times, I catch myself being really bad for that, especially as the younger version of me If I couldn't do it perfect, then I didn't want to do it, or I'd be extremely critical about the outcome or the result that I had produced on something. And so when I heard you telling your story, I was thinking of that. And how many times do we do that in other aspects of our lives where we have this big, you know, big, hairy, audacious goal on something that puts so much pressure on that? Really, that that's is it. Ultimately, that might be where you want to be. Yeah, you're looking for a life partner and have family and all that, but does it have to be at the first date? You know, you know we start a business. Is it going to make a million dollars the next, you know, the next day?

Speaker 1: 16:44

Probably not Are we understanding the position we're putting ourselves in and when we set ourselves up for failure that way, it's understandable why we tend to want to quit the things that we're become passionate about because we have the wrong paradigm.

Speaker 1: 16:59

And so that's really the takeaway that I'm getting for that and from your story, is that when we think about another aspects of our life, it's that pressure and how we framed it right, and, as you were talking about earlier, about the, you know, working with clients and having them, they don't see that what's going on. And that really leading me into my next question I was just thinking about, you know, because our lives are all shaped by our history, right, and then we put meaning and stories around that you know, and then we have, and so we live our lives along this meaning path of something that's happened Meanwhile we don't recognize that there's blind spots there. And so what would you say to somebody that you know you're working with them, that having this blind spot, or helping them understand it so they can realize that how they're, how they've created this cage for themselves?

Speaker 3: 17:47

Yeah. So I guess I'll use a real example, one that I'd have the permission of my client to share, because I share it in the book. But I had a client who was promoted to his first C-suite position in a startup and he's a leader, he's supposed to be in charge of his domain and he had a really hard driving, aggressive ceo which is natural because that's what ceos are like and he could feel himself shutting down in front of the ceo and not standing up for himself or his team. He's like comes to me, like what's going on? I'm like okay, how do you feel in those moments when the ceo is talking to you and you're like I, I don't know what to do? And he's like Ooh, I feel small, I feel scared, like okay, what are some other times in your life that you felt that way? And he stopped and he was like I feel that with my dad Ah, isn't that interesting.

Speaker 3: 18:38

Like, yeah, I was the peacemaker, I was the one that had to make things work. Among all the siblings, I was the middle child Like I have to make it work. Okay, do you think that's what's necessary in this position with your CEO? He was like no, it's like, and I mean, it's not quite as simple as that because there's years and decades of conditioning. But once that pattern was brought into his conscious awareness, he could work on it. He could pay attention to those reactions and ask himself like do I want to show up like that or do I want to show up like the confident leader I can be? And again I revealed he had a choice. And once he saw that he had that choice, he made a difference for him.

Speaker 1: 19:17

Yeah, absolutely, I was just the note I wrote down. As we talk about in our programs with our group, mentorship and the and the heroes quest is that we always are looking for those self-sabotaging behaviors. Those are those programs that are playing underneath, that have been playing so long that we just they're not conscious anymore, and I think that's why it's so great that there's coaches such as yourself and the mentorship work that we do to help us get outside of ourselves, to get outside of our head, to recognize these blind spots. And so I'd like to get into more about your book and talk about you know. How did the book come to be, what was the goal for the book and what do you hope that it'll do for people?

Speaker 3: 20:00

Yeah, I mean the book came to. I've always wanted to write a book. That was, you know, I was a big nerd growing up, like I said, so that was like always on my bucket list. But talking about you were mentioning previously like that sense of perfection, like I have to do it right, I was like, oh, I'm not ready to write a book, I'll never be ready to write a book, and so it always was a future thing. And then I realized over the past few years that I was saying a lot of the same things to a lot of my clients same mindsets, same experiments, same stories and I'm like it feels like there's something here, like if I'm using a script that's pretty similar for a lot of my different clients, maybe I could write it down, and even that made it felt. It was still a little fuzzy for a long time, but I eventually sat down and tried to figure out like, okay, who am I writing this book for? And when I reflected on it, the answer was my pre-burnout self. I'm overwhelmed, I'm stuck, I don't know what to do. How do I get out of this? I can't. You know, working hard has gotten me here. How do I stop that Like? And do I lose everything if I stop working, like all these kinds of questions. So that's kind of.

Speaker 3: 21:03

The original target of the book was somebody who feels stuck in their life and is not feeling satisfied. Like literally the first line of the book is like how do you feel about your life? If you love it, this book isn't for you. Keep doing what you're doing. If not, let's talk. And that's like that's how I start the book, cause it's like that's how I start the book, cause it's like that's really the thing. It's like so that's kind of the idea of the book is to lead people through a lot of what I try to lead people through in a coaching arc to identify the ways in which they are keeping themselves stuck. They're building their own cages and taking responsibility for that and recognizing they can make different choices to change the situation.

Speaker 3: 21:40

And really it's returning the local, you know the situation and really returning the technical term is locus of control to the person of saying nothing's going to change until my boss changes or my situation changes or this changes and all these things outside of me. When the world changes, then I'll be ready. It's like no, we're going to start with what you control, which is your own actions. So, instead of doing what you would normally do, do one thing different. Let's do an experiment, just one thing, one thing you could do one thing this week, try it.

Speaker 3: 22:13

And that's kind of the ethos of the book is I just try to get people to try a different thing, see what happens, learn from it, and then the whole world can change. Like the world changed. When I had that conversation with my manager, I said I'm not going to work this hard anymore. When I had that conversation with my manager, I said I'm not going to work this hard anymore and I got a new result and it wasn't what I thought it was. I was like oh, I actually don't feel terrible about this, I actually feel great about this. Oh, what else have I not been exploring?

Speaker 1: 22:33

Well, it's such a profound change right, making that decision, and thank you for explaining how the book came to be and how what folks can look to get out of the out of it, and I think it's such a great point that you're making is about really taking opportunity to take responsibility for our lives. We may say that we do that, but when we when, again, I go back to these, these self-sabotaging, these behaviors, some framed also, for I believe it's also framed around some limiting beliefs about we have, about that, that's that story component that stays there and keeps us trapped, and so it's great to see that you've got you've got a, a tool now for us to be able to work through, to give us that opportunity to change our paradigm on some things, and so I'm sure you must have, you must have interviewed tons of people to find the best stories, the best pieces to put in the book. So what characteristics did you or did you find, though, in finding effective executives that you've been able to put into the book?

Speaker 3: 23:30

Yeah, I mean I wouldn't say I went out and did interviews. I mostly took stories from my existing clients, but like one story I use in the book is an example where very senior executive was struggling with her boss, her VP, and was complaining about her boss constantly. And she was like every session she'd be like my boss did this, she's not supporting me, she's not backing me up, she's not doing this. And I'm like okay, and what are you going to do about it? She's like no, my boss needs to change. Why won't she change? She should support me.

Speaker 3: 24:00

Like okay, how long have you been working for her? Two and a half years. And has she shown any signs of changing in those two and a half years? Like, no, what if you plan for a world where she doesn't change and stop waiting for her to change and do something different? She really didn't like that answer.

Speaker 3: 24:18

Really not a lot, and so, but eventually, after a couple months of me repeating that message, it got through and she was like okay, I would try, I would have this conversation and not wait for her to take action. Like great, go do that. And she was like, oh, I can just go have that conversation without waiting for a VP. I'm like, yeah, you can, and that sense of agency kind of built on stuff. She realized, oh, I could actually go look for another job if I hate this job. I could mobilize allies that are, you know that work around this VP Like there's all sorts of things she could do. Once she took away the block that the thing that needed to change was the other person, I was like that's never gonna happen. I mean, it may happen, it'd be great if it happened, but you can't depend on it. So live in this world, the one where she doesn't change, and then see what happens.

Speaker 1: 25:05

Yeah, and that's a, you know, I, I, I can, just, I could just imagine that that cover how that conversation went in the, in the, in the look on her face, Cause I get a similar one when I, when I asked my guys to, you know, when it's the accountability check-in and it's asking them to to do something different, and because it's scary, you know, and that's why I talked about you know that really the hero's quest is that we may not want to admit it out loud as guys, but we're really afraid.

Speaker 1: 25:30

We're afraid of lots of different things depending on what stories we've told ourselves and how our upbringing has affected us, and so we I think people in general are afraid to make a change because we don't know if we can handle it. I think, in the end, that's what it boils down to and the reality of it is is that the kind a change because we don't know if we can handle it? I think, in the end, that's what it boils down to and the reality of it is is that the kind of change that we're asking people to do isn't, isn't going to be life threatening?

Speaker 1: 25:51

We're not asking the jump off of off a cliff without a parachute, although it may feel like that. It's truly just taking a step, one step down a staircase, and then, as we do that, then they get an opportunity to see that life is okay, we can survive.

Speaker 3: 26:07

Yeah, and I'd love to build on that, because it does feel that like jumping off the cliff kind of thing. Literally it's activating the same circuits in your body. It's the fight or flight, the survival instinct, the adrenaline, the cortisol, all that's getting activated. So it literally feels like you're being attacked in those moments because your identity is under threat. Your life, your physical life isn't under threat, but your identity is under threat and that is that activates all these circuits. So one of the things I talk about in the book is like recognizing that moment happens and that's you can feel it. You can feel yourself constrict and get into a fight position or like getting ready to run and it's like okay, don't do anything in that moment. Like stop, slow down, take a deep breath. Funny, funny story.

Speaker 3: 26:52

I've been working on this with my almost five-year-old son and every now and then I mean I'm not perfect either. So I like lost my temper recently and I started yelling and he's like daddy, don't yell, calm temper. Recently and I started yelling and he's like daddy, don't yell, calm down, take a deep breath. I'm like child, you are so right and in this moment I really don't want to hear it.

Speaker 3: 27:10

But I guess the point I wanted to make was like, in terms of waiting for the other person to change, like let me tell you, this often happens in marriages Like I'm going to change when my wife changes. Like yeah, that's not good, that's not going to be a very effective tactic. It turns out and I've learned through my own work and with the partnership with my wife it's like, yeah, when that difficult conversation needs to happen, I need to have it, otherwise I'm just building up resentment and getting mad at her that she's not changing, when I haven't even told her what I don't like. So got to just say, hey, this bothered me when you did that. Can we talk about it? What can we do differently? How do we handle this differently and treat it as a team exercise we're on the same team tackling the problem rather than like I'm fine, she needs to change, because boy, does that way lead not to great places yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 1: 27:56

That's when the, the boxing gloves come out and things that just things just go, go spiral downward really fast and when I think I like what you're saying. I think when we come have that chance for a hard conversation, a crucial conversation, find that the that are the, the reciprocal, the person who's having that conversation with us they tend to relax a little bit because they don't, they recognize that it's not all about them. They have their part owning it. What you're really saying is you're asking your clients to men and when we're in a relationship, to own our piece of that, and when we do that, doors open for us and we get more progress, we get changed. Things that we're really looking for had end up by happening, because we probably through that conversation, you realize, yeah, there's things I can do differently because she has a different perspective and understanding of what's happening, and that's it's all about having that conversation.

Speaker 1: 29:02

So thank you for for using that as an example yeah, it's.

Speaker 3: 29:07

It's about being vulnerable, and I mean that that word gets thrown around a lot, that it's like this hurt me and this is why it hurt me. Here's my history, here's the situation, and sharing that creates a different relationship. It's not like. I know you're not intending to hurt me. You're my wife, you love me, but here's why it did hurt, because this is my history and this is what I'm the baggage I'm bringing in here.

Speaker 3: 29:28

And I read this book called Us Getting Past, you and Me, by the marriage therapist, terrence Real, and he has this wonderful line in there Like the functional move in the relationship is to give your partner a chance to come through for you. You got to give them a chance. If you don't give them a chance, they can't come through for you. So every time I feel like, ah, I'm not going to, I like I'm just going to be angry about it. It's like, nope, you have my wife chance to come through and you know what she does. I give her the chance, she's going to come through every time to give her the chance.

Speaker 1: 30:00

Yeah, totally agree. Hey, thanks for writing, for talking about. You know reading different books. So I'm curious as an author now and you know, and coach and mentor, you know what was a book that really impacted your life and what was a lesson from that book that really helped you? You know form some of your personal philosophy in your life and your life's mission.

Speaker 3: 30:21

Oh God, that's a hard question.

Speaker 1: 30:23

I have so many.

Speaker 3: 30:25

As you can tell by my background, I love books. I have a lot of books. I guess I mean this isn't like a maybe a life changing one, but the one that comes to mind is Radical Candor by Kim Scott, and it's a leadership book, but she talks about you can care for people and you can challenge people and you can do both. So what she talks about in the book is if you care for somebody but you don't challenge them, she calls it ruinous empathy, like you're so nice to them that they don't actually find out what the reality is. You're not actually showing them what's happening because you're not challenging them.

Speaker 3: 30:57

And that's the quadrant I spent most of my life in, because I'm like, well, I don't want to make people upset, so I'm just going to not talk about the hard things.

Speaker 3: 31:04

And the lower right quadrant is like when you challenge people but you don't care about them, and she could just call it that obnoxious aggression, and I'm like, well, I don't want to be that, so I'm going to be over here. And she's like no, you can do both. You can care about somebody and challenge them directly. And I was like, oh, that's powerful, that's interesting and it seems so obvious when you put it that way, but I'd never seen that framing before and it's really. I mean, it was good for me as a coach honestly to realize like, yeah, my job is to challenge my clients while also caring deeply for them, but recognizing that the thing holding them back are these limiting beliefs that you mentioned, and if I don't point them out and challenge them and say like you are doing that thing again, they're not going to advance. So that's one example of like a mindset that's been super helpful to me.

Speaker 1: 31:52

Love that, like just that, have been super helpful to me. Love that. I just made a note that what'd you call it Radical Candor?

Speaker 3: 31:56

Yes, I'll make sure, kim Scott.

Speaker 1: 31:59

Yeah, it looks like this Awesome, perfect, perfect. Now, obviously, as being a coach and a mentor, you're, you know, some times where you're offering advice and you're helping people along, but let me just flip the script on that.

Speaker 3: 32:19

And let me ask you, what was the best piece of advice that you've been given and how has that served you? I have like two that come to mind. I'm trying to decide which one to go with. I guess I'll go with so when I was in that time, when I was working too hard and starting to burn out, I had another guy that I worked with, a director at Google, who was remarkable. Not because he had a huge impact, which he did, he was strategic. He was trusted. The executives up to the CEO and CTO or CFO trusted him at Google to get things done.

Speaker 3: 32:39

That was the impressive part. The impressive part was that he left work at 6 pm each day and I'm like you are being extremely effective and impactful and you are not working crazy hours. How, how do you do that? He said well, I do the most important thing first. If I don't get to the second thing, that's okay. It wasn't as important and it seems so obvious. It seems so simple. But if you, you know you. In your intro you mentioned what it's normally like, where it's like you get in, you do emails, you do meetings, you're chit-chatting, you're doing this, you're doing that and all of a sudden'd be 6 pm. I spent my whole day fritting away doing emails and meetings and that's why I was working till midnight, because I actually had to go do this one thing that took several hours. And he didn't do any of that. He just like, didn't respond to emails, didn't go to meetings. He would, just would do the other stuff. He was just explicit about his priority and what was most important and that's what made him effective.

Speaker 1: 33:42

And I love that and I've heard that in different framework as well about just when you get done that one thing, your priority then the next thing you do is your new number one. You're always focusing on that one piece, and I think that's why executives get into, that's how they get into that C-suite. They just they've figured out how to maximize their productivity. They figured out how to do things, and we can do that whether we're sitting in the C-suite or we're sitting in the father's suite at home and meeting our families right.

Speaker 1: 34:15

We still what's the most important thing that we're doing in the moment, and I think when we frame our lives that way, it makes a lot of sense. So thank you so much for offering that and sharing that with our guests.

Speaker 3: 34:26

Yeah, and I think the sorry. Just one more point there this idea of productivity can mislead us in ways Like I have to be producing something, I have to make something, and it's like sometimes the most important thing is like I'm sitting here and listening to my four-year-old tell a story. That's the most important thing right now. And yeah, I have emails to response and I do this and this is like no, put down the phone, be here now. And I have to remind myself of that all the time. So I'm just sharing that because that's my particular bugaboo. Like I have all these things I could be doing. Like no, the most important thing is be with your family.

Speaker 1: 34:55

Yeah, absolutely For sure. You know, Eric, of everything that we've spoke about today, maybe there was something we didn't get a chance to touch on. What would be the one takeaway you'd want our listeners to have?

Speaker 3: 35:05

I guess the one I would say is something like it doesn't have to be this way. If there's some area of your life that's not going the way you want and you're feeling stuck about it, you're like I don't see how this can ever change. I want to promise you that you can do something different, even if you really are stuck. You can change your mindset, your belief about it. You can accept it and say, yeah, this sucks and I'm still here and I'm going to be okay with it. So the most extreme example of that is a book called Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. You're nodding your head? So you know it. He was a psychotherapist that was in the Nazi concentration camps. He controlled nothing about his life. He was being beaten, he was starving, but he found his sense of meaning.

Speaker 3: 35:45

I am doing surviving so I can reunite with my wife and so I can publish my work. That is what I'm going to do and I'm going to find a way to survive, because that's important to me and that's obviously a very high level of difficulty. I'm not saying we should all be that level, but on a day-to-day basis it's like what am I trying to do here and what's important to me what's the value I want to live and how do I show up in that way, in this moment? Again, just one moment right now is the one we control, and I'm going to show up differently. Instead of holding that resentment, I'm going to talk about it. Instead of being scared of taking that first step, I'm going to just pick up the phone and have a conversation. Whatever it is, there's something you can try differently, and I'm good Most of the time. It's the thing you're scared to do, and I wanted to just try it because I bet you on the other side of that fear is something amazing.

Speaker 1: 36:36

I totally agree, absolutely. And, and what I really like about what you're, what you said there is that we call it purposeful action here. What's the? What's the intention? What are what is the action that I'm taking today? Is it being done with purpose or is it just another, you know, cog in the wheel aspect that we're not really thinking about? So thank you so much for for sharing that with us. And so we spent a lot of time today talking about choice, our opportunity that we do have choice to recognize that we are the builders of our own cages, and so, whether we recognize that or not, you know, that's what happens in the when we start to work with coaches and mentors such as yourself. And so if men I work here with men so if men are interested in getting a hold of you and participating in your programs or getting a copy of the book, what's the best way for them to do that?

Speaker 3: 37:24

So my site is toobanytreescom and toobanytreescom slash book has all the information about the book. It's an allusion to the saying you can't see the forest for the trees Like. You get stuck among all the trees and you can't see the forest, and so my job is to help you get out of the trees and look at the big picture, see the forest and see how you might be getting lost among the trees. So too manytreescom, that's the best way. You can also follow me on LinkedIn, but my name's hard to spell.

Speaker 1: 37:59

So just go to TooManyTrees, fair enough, I'll make sure all that information's in the show notes so folks get an opportunity to reach out with you and connect. And when was the book coming out? Or is it out now?

Speaker 3: 38:05

It's out now. Yesterday was launch day, so it is now available on Amazon Right on Perfect.

Speaker 1: 38:10

We'll make sure we put a link to the book in Amazon as well, so folks can have a quick access to it. So thank you once again. Our Eric loved our conversation today and really appreciated having you on the show.

Speaker 3: 38:21

It was a great conversation and I really loved it and loved the things we explored. Thanks for the great questions.

Speaker 2: 38:33

Thank you for listening to the Revolutionary man podcast. Are you ready to own your destiny, to become more the man you are destined to be? Join the brotherhood that is the Awakened man at theawakenedmannet and start forging a new destiny today.