Hello, everyone. My name is Joanne Lockwood and I am your host for the Inclusion Bytes podcast. In this series, I have interviewed a number of amazing people and simply had a conversation around the subject of inclusion, belonging and generally making the world a better place for everyone to thrive. If you'd like to join me in the future, then please do drop me a line to jo.lockwood@seechangehappen.co.uk. That's S-E-E Change Happen dot co dot uk. You can catch up with all of the previous shows on iTunes, Spotify and the usual places.

So plug in your headphones, grab a decaf and let's get going. Today is episode 92 with the title Listening, not fixing, and I have the absolute honour and privilege to welcome Greg Wasserman. Greg describes himself as the head of community, partnerships and growth for an AI startup called Castmagic. When I asked Greg to describe his superpower, he said he is a gladwelling superconnector, someone who spreads ideas. Hello, Greg. Welcome to the show.

Pleasure to be here. Great to join in with your audience.

Thanks, Greg. We've chatted a bit on slack via the cast magic community, so I kind of feel like I've known you before we connected today. So absolute pleasure to finally meet you logically, physically, virtually, in person, whatever. So, Greg, reading through the show notes, you pulled together ahead of this, and I put out the title listening, not fixing. So what does that mean to you? Why is that important to you?

I mean, there's so many ways to think about this, and I think we have a fix it culture and if we now take a step back, how did I actually get to this point of a fix it culture? I guess if we get raw, and this is what I love about the show is a year ago I entered a programme for rehab. Truly was not wanting to be here. This is the first time I'm joyfully sharing this message with your community because I say joyfully because it is a message that I think others need to hear. Because I was in a dark place and I got there because we have a fix it culture. I grew up in an amazing hoUsehold. Love my family, unbelievable parents, showed nothing but love. And the problem we have is the lens that we look through is not necessarily the lens that other people are intending us to look through. And no one actually understands that.

So if you're like, everything was done with love, doesn't mean that it can't hurt. And so if we have a fix it culture, the fix it culture is we ourselves are in discomfort when someone shares a problem we want to fix that, we want to solve that. So instead of understanding that a person is just sharing that, they are in a position to feel comfortable with you, and they're like, I'm just sharing this now. We also don't, as a society, say, hey, I want to share something with you. I don't need you to respond. I just want you to listen. Maybe as a society, we need to start doing that as well. So there's a duality to this.

If we can start training people to go, I want you to listen, and the other side to go, what do you need me to do with this information? I feel we will start improving as a society. Then people will actually feel that they're being listened to, they're heard their validation. There's more validity there. So if we take my story, like, I grew up, and a lot of what I went through was this feeling of not being good enough that anytime I said something, it was met with, well, have you thought with this? Whether it was a parent, a teacher, a friend, it was always, how do I give you a solution? Or the other side of that is, it's a me too. Like, oh, I've been through this. And so now the other side doesn't feel validated. They're like, well, now, all of a sudden, the story I'm telling you is one that you are trying to create connection with. But instead of actually creating connection, I'm now catering towards you because you are feeling like you have this connection with me.

And so if we can stop and actually start listening and understanding from a human standpoint, that people just want to feel validated, they want to feel understood, that we don't need to be quick to give them a, here's how to do it, or here's how I would do it. Here's what I think you would be doing. And so through all of that, the lens I put my life through was I was never good enough and that I couldn't do anything right. And then you've also have, like, a perfectionist mindset. So if we are always thinking about, well, have you thought about this? Then it's like, oh, what I must be doing was wrong. So how do I do something better? Or you have a better idea, or my idea is not there. So from society standpoint, we start creating this culture, fix it. Perfection of not good enough.

And that is a core of ultimately, after years of not knowing why I was so unhappy and why I was not living a fulfilled life for myself. Yeah, a year ago, I didn't want to be here and someone was able to help me and cheque me into a programme and I'm now so grateful and have so much love, but also an understanding. And every time I tell my story to people, I'm like, I want you to start and pause and learn that. Ask the question, are you sharing this with me because you want me to respond, are you sharing this to me because you want a solution? Why are you sharing this? And if we actually take that moment back and do that, the other party is going to go like, wow, I feel seen, I feel understood. This is going to help me. And if you look at that from the workspace standpoint and who your audience is, it's like that changes the game completely. You now have an audience inside your company that feels even more validated. So I'll kind of pause there because that's a lot.

But, yeah, that's kind of why listening, not fixing, is a key piece for me.

Thank you for trusting me to tell me that story. That's really powerful. And if you don't mind, can I ask you, can you trace back the root of this? Was it to your childhood, your parents, your educational system, your peers? What led you to believe you were never good?

I mean, I guess I would go with my parents in this one. So I'm a big Brene Brown fan and I always remember this story from one of her books is when she was sick, her parents were loving and amazing parents and they took care of her, right? And they did all the things you would expect a good, nurturing family to do, to take care of their child when they got sick. They didn't do that for themselves. So the lens that Brene saw was sickness is a weakness. And that's why I go back to the story of, like, when your parents are doing something out of love, or someone's doing something out of love, their thoughts are, I'm doing an amazing thing. I'm trying to help you. I'm doing such a great job. But the lens that another person puts on things may not be that perception is changing their reality.

And we have to remember, perception is each individual's reality. So for me, it was. I mean, my father tomorrow would have been his 75th birthday, passed away a couple of months ago. He grew up in a broken home, didn't have a father himself, and he did an amazing job in raising us. But if we look at generational, he was your standard male who knew three emotions. I got happy, angry, sad. So I didn't grow up understanding that. I didn't know until this year, what dysregulation was holding space, feeling regulated.

Like words that are now becoming common. Most of us don't know that. Why am I anxious? Why am I feeling what I'm feeling? I couldn't tell you that I'm dysregulated now. I can tell you that. So back then, it was understanding that my parents were just doing their best to protect me, being the protective parents that they were, or they were in such discomfort. I have a problem. Great. How do I solve this? Because they're problem solvers.

Like, we are in a fixed society and we want to solve things. It was never of. So, yeah, the answer to your question was probably going back to that of, I didn't feel good enough because anything I did was. It was too scary. So there was the worry. Have you thought about this idea? There was no validation of like, you're good, I trust you. It's more of how do I protect you from the world? Or how do I ensure you don't have pain? When reality pain is a good thing. Like, you need the bitter and the sweet.

You need some of those things. So if we're not allowing people to feel discomfort, to learn from mistakes, we're actually doing a disservice to them. So, yeah, that's, I think, the answer to your question.

Yeah. A buz phrase we hear at the moment is psychological safety. And one of the elements there is learner safety. So being able to learn in a safe space, and a key part of that is being able to make mistakes. So if you're not in an environment where mistakes are learning exercises, mistakes are valid, the mistakes are okay if you believe you can never make a mistake. I guess that is the root of perfectionism, to a point where perfectionism is a problem, not just high achievement, it holds you back. It stops you being good enough. You have to be better than good enough, and everything has to be perfect, which we know is unachievable and unattainable, and also you're chasing something that is unhealthy, sometimes 100%.

And that's what I ultimately was trying to do. I had a perfectionist, fixed mindset that if you have that as a double dose, it doesn't lead to happiness. And then back to your intro. I'm ahead of growth. I'm in a revenue role. My career has been revenue. I love talking to people. So back to my superpower is life is about time and relationships.

I love opening up a conversation with someone. I don't know where it's going to go. But let's open that up now. That goes into a sales mindset of going like, look, eventually I could sell to you, but also I can help you. If I don't have a solution, maybe I can help you and connect you to someone else. And so if you look at it from the sales mindset, salespeople are rejected a lot. You have to build thick skin. So if you have a perfectionist mindset, a fixed mindset, you're already torn down and you're going into a profession where you're getting torn down even more.

Yeah, it was a recipe for disaster until I was able to get help and realise it.

Yeah, I feel that pain. And my wife works with me, she does my business development. She call it sales, call it engagement, outreach, Linkedin emails, and often I'm having to reinforce and amplify and boost her when she has a bad day. She's had too many no's, too many rejections, or someone won't pay the asking price or something like this, and she gets all kind of, like, flustered and angry and lock herself for the toilet for ten minutes and shout at the wall. And I just step in and give her a hug and say, it's okay. Every no is closer to a yes. Keep going, you're doing great, you can do this. So I get it that you want validation, you want gratification, you want those brain chemicals to hit you and go, yeah, I'm winning.

And when they don't come, you go to that downward spiral, don't you?

Yeah. And I think it's also an understanding. So if we look at it from a sales culture and a fix it culture, and just a culture of not understanding people's values and what's important to them. So if we can do a better job of understanding those things, especially in the sales culture, but I think it is a corporate world as a whole. Most people move up in their career because they were good at what they did. But as you know, as a leadership coach, just because you were good at that job doesn't mean you're good at managing people, doesn't mean you are good at coaching people. Those are very different skill sets. So if you look at the sales community, I crushed my numbers, so, great, you're going to move up into a sales manager role, because if you did well, maybe you can teach all these other people how to do it.

That doesn't work that way. And you're not giving that person actually the understanding of going like, hold on. Is what I'm doing a good thing? You're probably perpetuating a perfectionist mindset, or work hard, just overcome it. Just make more dials and go do these things. We have to take a step back and actually be able to have those vulnerable conversations, which most of us aren't doing.

Yeah, I think it's got a name, isn't it? It's called the Peter Principle. So you're promoted to the point of incompetence and then you get stuck there. So what happens is you're really good at what you do. You stand head and shoulders above the people around you, so therefore you're candidate for promotion. So you get promoted to the next level. If you stand out at that level, you get promoted to the next level. You get promoted until at one point, you no longer stand out. And you're now incompetent at doing that role without the investment, because everyone thinks you're a high achiever.

Everyone thinks you can do all this. And you're so right in what you say there is that we need to invest in our leadership. And leaders aren't just great technicians. There are skills and competencies that leaders should have and can be trained. Leaders aren't born, they're not created like that. Leadership is a learned skill. Yes, you can have some natural talent, natural flair for it, but you can learn this. You can learn emotional intelligence.

You can learn to listen. As you said, learn to listen without having to respond. Sometimes it's so difficult, though, isn't it? Someone tells your story. You were telling me your intro, and I so wanted to respond to you. I so wanted to dive in there with empathy. I so wanted to go. And me as well. And, oh, yes, I've had that experience to try and validate what you're saying.

But as you say, the power there is not to listen to respond, listen to acknowledge, listen to ask you how you feel about that, how you can drill down in that. Not for me to go, well, that's happened to me as well. It's a me too thing, isn't it?

Yeah. I hate that we have the Me too movement, but I'm like, this is a different me too movement that I think is actually, if not more, or an equal playing field of, like, hold on. We are damaging us as a people by me doing this, by trying to build connection when you're not really building connection, you're just. I don't know.

It's hard, though, isn't it? You've taught me something really deep. And my natural reaction, and most people's natural reaction is to either use sympathy or empathy as a kind of a feedback mechanism to show I've listened and to acknowledge you and validate you in some way by saying, I get that because I've done this. And what you're saying is when you're in a certain status where you were, you don't need someone to fix you, you just need someone to go, wow, that's so powerful, Greg. Tell me more, or let's dive into something like that. What more do you want to share? How else can I listen to you and hear you without trying to come up with any answers? Because we want to fix each other, don't we? That's the trouble. We do want to fix each other.

I think the biggest phrase I learned during my programme was thank you for sharing those little words. Literally, just then allows the person to go like, you heard me, you understood I was sharing something that is either difficult or I'm going through a pain or I'm in pain. It could be a simple frustration with work. Going back to your scenario, it's like I'm beating down, I'm getting all these no's and your response is you've got this. It's like, okay, the next call is just going to get you to a yes type deal. It's like the motivation they need, but it's understanding then is that what they need? Is the person actually coming to you and saying, I'm sharing this with you so that you can boost me up? Or am I sharing this with you so that I just can share this? And I trust you and I love you and I just want to share this with someone because I'm beating down and I know this is a feeling that will go and it will pass, but this is where I'm at right now and I'm kind of asking you to sit here with me as opposed to boosting me up, but until we actually go, thank you for sharing that. Are you looking for me to respond? Are you looking for me to do what? We don't do that. And once we start doing that, my God, what power of that is going to be amazing.

Yeah.

Have you heard of an expression called Rubber ducking?

No.

I can't remember which company it was, but one company, they had this kind of guiding principle that you could not ask for help from your manager, from your colleagues unless you discussed your problem with a rubber duck on a shelf. So you'd have people, or in the office, they'd stand in front of this shelf with a rubber duck on it and they'd explain their problem. And they'd have a conversation with a rubber duck. And obviously, nine times out of ten, just saying it out loud, just bringing it out of your head into the open, is enough for you to go, right, I've got it now. I've got the ideas. As you said, I've let the frustration out. I've expressed it somehow. And as you say, sometimes it's just the need to say something with somebody else in the room so that you're heard, you're listened to, and that frustration hasn't gone nowhere.

So I completely get that, and I do it as well. I have a bad day, and I want to scream, but if no one hears me, it's not a scream, is it? If a tree falls in the woods, does it actually make a noise?

Yeah.

I want someone to acknowledge and go, okay, I heard you. Great. And then we can feel acknowledged. I think that's the acknowledgment of my frustration, my pain, my challenge. Whatever it is, you can't fix it. There's nothing you could say. It's just.

And that goes to if we allow people to sit in discomfort. I'm learning this. Sitting in discomfort means there's change. And so if you can just accept discomfort, then that's a great thing to move and change.

Do you have a lot of people say to you where you're so brave or you're a real inspiration and sort of giving you hero status?

In the last year, friends and family continue to just use the proud of me. Proud to have chosen a different path than I was originally thinking of taking, and proud of where I am a year later, since I was there, I don't know if it's hero status. It's more of, like, just being able to engage with them on these deeper levels that I couldn't. That was the biggest thing. Even my mom, no one knew where I was. No one knew the depth of my depression, because you hide it really well. That's what we do. As society goes back to your water cooler conversations of, like, how are you doing? I'm fine.

How are you doing? I'm fine. And you walk away, and it's like, no one actually has the conversation of going like, no, I'm having a shit day. It's like, now I got to sit here and listen to you tell me about your shit day. Fine. No, we'd rather. And that's the irony of this, right? I want to fix it, but when you tell me I got something else to do, I'm like, well, I don't want to listen to this. So we have this weird societal issue, and I think when we can start having those vulnerable conversations, we'll do it. And so I think that's where my friends are coming from, of understanding.

Like, you're actually trying to do things. You're trying to make a change, not only yourself, but help others. And that's why I'm so honoured to come on here and talk to you about this topic, because I feel we're missing this.

Yeah, I hear what you're saying there. When we're with our friends, our family, whatever it is, and the conversation about, how are you doing? The expected answer is, yeah, I'm okay. Having a tough week. Things will be okay. Don't worry about it. And then you say, how about you? And they go, yeah, metre.

Yeah.

Similar sort of thing. Yeah, life goes on. Yeah, we're getting there. And that's the kind of superficial level we're kind of comfortable with. And as you say, once it goes down a notch into, actually, no, I'm not okay. I've got some real things going on. Can you listen to me for five minutes? It's like, okay, we're getting deep here. Are we? This is a bit of bro love.

Is it? What are we doing here? How can we take this to another level? It's like, uncomfortable. What do I say? And it takes a very special friend, colleague, family member who give you that time and move into that space for you to truly listen 100%.

Like I said, it wasn't until a year or so ago I learned the phrase like hold space. We don't know how to hold space. No one's taught holding space for someone because we continue to have that bro love superficial. Like, you're good, I'm good. Cool. Let's go drink a beer. And everything's good, right? I don't know. Which is also probably why most of my friends are females, because I'm like, oh, I can have these deep conversations as opposed to men.

We're not really talked about. We're not told these things. One of my favourite books that's helped in my journey was Lewis Howe's mask masculinity. And it's like the nine masks that we as men wear. Most of us don't even know it. So I try and tell every friend, especially if you're in the education space, if you're a teacher, go read this book, because you'll start understanding what's going on at a psychological level with those kids in your classroom, because that's where it's all starting. And then if we can go into the adult level and if adults start reading that and the HR world start reading that and sales managers and leadership start, then we can start identifying certain things. So once you start seeing patterns, you can't unsee them.

But we're not trained on it.

What it's like in corporate America, but certainly in the UK, we're doing a lot more around mental health, first aid, training people to have those listening conversations, to cheque in on people to understand. I mean, I've lost probably three or four people, all men actually, over my life, who have taken their lives for various reasons and nobody can understand why. There was no sign. They were just getting on with life. And then one day they weren't and there was a friend who lived in Australia and his wife came home and found him. He'd hanged himself on the pergola in the back garden and nobody had any clue. He just went home from work early and took that route and it's that unknown. And I guess had all of these people had the opportunity for someone to just hear them, to listen to them or cheque in on them just at that one moment, then potentially that conversation could have had a different outcome rather than just everyone's okay, everyonE's fine.

First, thank you for sharing that. That's not light, so thank you for sharing that piece. What comes to mind when I hear that, having been there, the cheque ins are nice, but cheque ins I don't think help so much. So if a person doesn't know where they are, if they're already in a place mentally, then it comes down to shame and fear. Like, if I've never been trained on talking about these things, how do I come to you and you're going like, are you okay? And you're like, yeah, I'm fine. That's what we are. We are a fine society. And I always forget what the acronym of fine is, but it's not a good one.

So if I always told people, it's like, look, Robin Williams, Anthony Bardain, they seem like they had such great, like, they're not with us anymore for whatever reason. So we can go down that path. But people could cheque in, I don't think it's a cheque in, I think it's actually understanding and diving in. Like, I did not know where I was. If you checked in, I was great at hiding it. I didn't know how to share. No one actually taught me those skills. No one held space.

So I think it goes from how do we do that better in order to stop anyone getting to that sad ending?

You talked about the multiple masks, multiple hats that men wear. Was it? You said nine. Was it hats, different masks? Having tried it in my past, being a man, I tried it for a while. It didn't work out for me. But there's a lot of pressure being a man, to live up to societal expectations, family responsibilities, as you say, that perfectionism, to be the person that everybody looks up to for strength, not showing weakness or deep emotion, and to keep that invincible, stoic front going, which is why we see suicidal amongst men being the biggest killer of a certain age range. I think it's, what, 20 to 50 or something? It's one of the biggest killers of men, certainly in the UK. I guess it plays the same in the US as well. And it is a tough gig being a man.

I know we say that women have tough gigs having to put up with men sometimes, but men Have a tough gig just existing as a man for the pressure they have without sometimes the support structure, or as you say, the conversations you have with your female friends allow you to go deeper and to have those more empathic, more emotional type conversations that you could never have with male friends. And men tend to socialise with other men, and it often stays at that superficial level without the opportunity to go deep, doesn't it?

Yeah. Look, I think being a human is difficult, regardless of any factors, and each one's got their own. Like, we can all joke going like, oh, I couldn't be a woman. Oh, I couldn't be a man. Right? Couldn't be a dog, it's like, oh, a dog's probably the greatest life. I don't know. But, yeah, I mean, as a male, a 40, almost 41 year old male who grew up in a generation where your parents in the early 60s were taught certain things, I think we're changing and the next generations will become better and you're seeing that. But the current generation, where I'm at, I'm still living from those past and it's tough, but that's why I'm like, all right, we got to start listening better.

We've got to start asking questions and responding. Otherwise, not only is it suicide, but it's also why men die of heart attacks. I didn't cry. I could tell you I cried four times, probably in 20 years, and those four times were over sporting related events, whether I was playing or watching. So that just goes to show you where my head was and then crying over them, especially when I was playing you're like, I can't believe I'm crying, and I'm showing all this emotion in my field. Like, this is terrible. No, you've got to allow that. And so I've now learned, like, crying is such a great release.

It is a beautiful thing. We're not taught those things. Those aren't allowed culturally across all different facets.

That's so true and so insightful. One of the things that I've learned over the last seven years, since I gender transitioned, is to not hold my emotions in. Maybe it's the oestrogen that I have Flowing through my body now. Maybe it's those hormones, the chemicals, the female brain kicking in with those hormones, but I find crying extremely cathartic. It's extremely powerful release of all those emotions. I'm happy to burst into tears in front of the television. If I'm having a deep conversation with someone professionally, we'll all end up having a cry and a hug. I find it's just such a release now that I don't have to hold that in.

It's almost like I've got permission to be female, to be emotional, and therefore I'm going to bathe in it and use it to my advantage or to my self care. And I think you're right there, allowing yourself to share and show those emotions without any bound, without anybody judging you. And as a woman, I don't get judged for crying. It's almost like, oh, she's crying again. It's expected. Or my wife will say, oh, there's hormones. Here we go. I go.

It's great. I'm loving it. It's fantastic. So, yeah, I think that's a really insightful thing, what you said.

There is.

You can cry four times in memory, and those were over winning or losing a sporting competition or your team losing or something, or winning. So, yeah, we got to give permission, not just to men, to people, to let this out. It's a natural human release, isn't it? Maybe we're training people to hold it in rather than express it.

You've got to stay strong, or I can't show weakness, or there's a problem with that. If you're always staying strong, then where is the joy and the beauty of actually, quote unquote, being human and weak and allowing that? I empathise for parents who are like, I've got to show strength. Even though my life is in a tail spin at the moment, as whatever's going on at work and I got my kids, there's a lot more that you're taking on as I watch my brother and my sister in law with my niece. But sometimes there's strength and there's beauty in going, like, it's okay to not be okay. And if you teach kids that, if we teach each other that, wow, once again, how amazing that would be. Because then we'rE all not trying to be stoic, we're all not trying to be strong. We're allowing ourselves to be human, to be vulnerable.

If you think about maybe back to high school, college, don't the big, brave, strong men have the best life? And then the kids that are maybe emotionally weaker and expressing themselves have kind of like the not so great life. They don't get the girls, they don't get the hero story. We're setting ourselves up for men having to be brave and strong to get the girl, to get the hero, to be the success that's still propagated in movies and Disney and other cultures, isn't it?

Yeah. I mean, if we go back to Disney and the movies we all grew up, I mean, they perpetuated a lot of that, hopefully. I think things now, if you look at, you've got more female character led movies. So we're changing that. The thought of the prince rescuing the princess is what we grew up on. Right. So that narrative is changing, which is amazing. And I think as we continue to evolve, and that's why I'm here, to try and let people know.

People just want to be heard. They just want to be understood. They want vulnerability. We just don't know how it to do it because we weren't taught. So how do we start teaching this? How do we start changing that perspective? It will stop a lot.

It will. It's almost like we got to help educate parents, maybe even pre parents, when you're planning a family, as to how to bring your children up, to nurture them in a more, less stereotyped, less gendered way, to use more empathy, to use more compassion. And it's not about winner takes all. It's not about having to be the best. I think if we can educate our next generation of parents with these tools and skills, otherwise all they're going to do is, like yourself, propagate the behaviour and the parenting model that you were given by your parents.

I would go with not just educating them as parents, because I don't know if I'll have kids. So it's more of a matter of just educating us as humans and that's going to make us better regardless. As if I'm a breeder, or if I'm not right, if I'm adopting, if I'm not right, if I have kids, whatever the case may be, it's going to make us as better, it's going to make you a better partner, it's going to make you a better coworker, it's going to make you a better human being, able to have honest conversations with your boss and going, look, my father passed away two months ago, and I had to tell, as you know, I'm at a startup and I'm like, I got three co founders. I'm like, I don't want to let them down because there's so much to be doing. But I was not in a mental place to do much of anything. And they're incredibly supportive, and that goes to bereavement. We, as a society, usually have three to five days for bereavement. So we're allowing, as a society, going like, hold on, you just lost someone.

There's grief. We have a problem with grief. I learned that one as well. So if we have a problem with. We have a lot of discomfort because we don't talk about these things. So if we can start forgetting parents and just doing it for ourselves and having these conversations and understanding, this is natural, and there's ways to go about this and that. We can remove that shame of A, not knowing, or B, feeling this way, we can become a better human race.

Yeah, I'm going to give you a high five to that one. That's definitely a good mantra and a good way to evolve our society. I look back seven, eight years ago, when I gender transitioned. I was at that point where everything was dark, everything was dismal, everything was kind of a stress point. There's lots of holding secrets in trying to prop everything up, and then this feeling of being the pain giver and trying to be the pain fixer at the same time. All that pressure of playing all those roles. And I think I learned, I came up with an affirmation, which is just two words, I am. And that, for me, solved a lot of my baggage and my demons, because I was trying to wrestle with, as you say, not being good enough, trying to fix things, trying to work out, rationalise my ideNtity, rationalise all the things in my head.

And then I realised I didn't need to rationalise them. They didn't need fixing, they didn't need understanding, they just needed accepting that I am who I am. And I think once I found that affirmation, everything clicked into place. I didn't need the answer. There was no answer. There was no problem in reality. There was just an acceptance of self. And once I was able to accept self, it allowed.

Enabled other people to accept me based on that affirmation, if you like. So I think, as you say, we hold it in, we build this pressure cooker and it's finding that release so that it doesn't explode through stress, through depression, through hopelessness, whatever it may be, and just stepping back, going, I need out for a minute. I need out. Let me just take some time. Let me be me for a bit. Let me talk to you. Listen to me. Rather than feeling this need to say, hold it in and be the one that is invincible.

Can I ask you a question on that?

Go for it.

I'm finding at 41, almost, that I am able to go, like, I don't care about anyone else, right? Like, I have reached that point of, like, I am who I am. I'm accepting that. So you reach that point at whatever age. But before that, right, the question is, could you have accepted I am who I am earlier? And how do we get people to accept who they are earlier? It's a hard thing, right? Because you had all this pressure, you had all this fear, you had all these things going on. So how do we get that I am moment accepted earlier?

Yeah. Could I have found it earlier? I don't know. I don't know, actually, because a lot of it's caught up with shame, fear of failure, rejection, all these kind of things, these human instincts, fear of failure, fear of rejection. Shame is a powerful emotion. Brene Brown talks about it a lot, about shame and guilt. There's useless emotions that we can't do anything with, but you're caught up in it. The fear of the unknown, the fear of taking that step forward, that irrevocable step that once you've said it, you can't unsay it. And then the fear of being judged for doing it.

And I don't think I could have, looking back on my life, found an earlier time zone. I needed to revolve into it. I needed to take those small steps, nudge up to the edge of the cliff, look down it a few times, look down it a few times, and then realise it was only a centimetre drop. It wasn't thousand feet, it was a centimetre an inch, half an inch. I think I had to discover that myself. And I had people in my sort of social network who were going through similar kind of demons in their head around being trans at the time. So it helped to have other people to bounce this stuff off, to realise that I wasn't crazy on my own, so I didn't do it alone. I didn't actually have active help, but I knew there were other people.

It wasn't just me, which gave me the belief that it was solvable. If you seen. I've seen people come out the other side intact, so I knew it was possible. And I think it was just a case of after I gender transitioned, after I sold my previous IT company business. Sat on the end of my bed in tears, not being able to sleep each night, going round around circles, trying to fix this problem. Laying awake. Laying awake, really kind of tearful, angry, depressed, retreating into myself. And I said, the art became to me one day that I am.

And I woke up and the sun came out, the curtains opened, and I suddenly found my purpose in life. And I often talk about the Japanese saying, Ikigai. It's where those four elements intersect. What you love, what you're good at, what you get paid for, and what the world needs. And I realised that I hadn't actually locked into place what I love. I was good at stuff, I was getting paid for stuff, and the world needed it, but I didn't have my heart and passion in it. I think a combination between I am and realising what fulfilled me allowed me to bring that together. And I think once you've made a huge.

The conversations you share today, once you've made those big fundamental life announcements or sharing what you shared, it becomes very easy, or a lot easier to share other things in your life because you're no longer held back by fear. You're almost empowered to talk about things and to share things. I don't want to put words in your mouth, but do you feel stronger and more empowered to share things now than you've ever done?

Oh, my God, completely. If there's fear in me, I go, okay, let's go talk about this. Because as soon as I keep letting that fear stay inside, whether it's through a rubber duck or whatever, it's like, all right, how do I share this? Whether it's therapist or someone else going like, all right, am I crazy? Is this a normal emotion? That's where you're looking, the validation? So it's like, all right, before, I was keeping everything in my head. And so when you're keeping everything in your head, yeah, you're going to go down a ruminating rabbit hole. That's probably not good for you, but when you start talking about it, I'm like, I love your concept. I am Popeye, right? Why was Popeye so famous? Because he is who he is, and that's his thing. And so once we start understanding that, the problem is once again, as, like, we say these buzwords, like, oh, everyone, you should be Popeye. Like, what's great about Popeye? He is who he is, and that's great, but we don't accept that.

We don't really accept that. We want you to have that, but, like, do we really accept that? Those in your network that do. Back to your story. And you had a community. Like, you weren't alone. I felt alone. I felt if I shared any of these things, that it would not actually go. So it was the fear of if I share what I couldn't control, and that becomes a perfectionist mindset.

You're, like, perfect, right? You want to control things, but I love that I'm going to have to look into the Japanese. One phrase I love from the Japanese. What is it? I always screw it up. Kinsuji, where it's putting broken pieces together, but with gold, so it allows the beauty of you. You're not broken, right. You can be put back together, but allowing those broken pieces instead of just glueing it so it's back to the original piece, it's like, no, show that with the gold and your cracks are beautiful. You are beautiful. Who you are and all elements of you.

Once we accept that, back to you. I am. When we accept who we are, that becomes a beautiful thing.

That's truly beautiful, because I want you to see all of me. I want you to see the broken bits, the healed bits, the scars, because that's part of my essence, is how the adversity I've overcome, the challenges I've picked myself up from. That's so beautiful, those golden threads, those golden joins. Because I often use the analogy of taking a piece of paper, screwing it up, and then trying to flatten it out. It will never be the same perfect bit of paper, but I've never thought of it in the way you framed it as, see those scars, see those healing, and see what I've been through. Don't see that crumpled bit of paper as broken. See it as whole with life and lived experience. I love that I'm going to look up that and.

And bring that into my mindset as well. Thank you. That's really powerful.

Yeah. When I heard that one, I cried, of course, because I'm like, wow, that is a powerful way to look at you, going like, I am all these things and you can be all those things. The question is, are you willing to allow others to see those? And goes back to the start of this conversation, like, if we can actually start listening to people and giving them the space so that they feel like they can be who they are, then we'll all be walking around covered in gold, and that's kind of cool.

It also plays into the kind of, when people say, I don't see gender, I don't see ethnicity, I don't see race, I don't see this, I don't see that. I just treat everybody the same and I want to go, no, I want you to see me for who I am. And that's exactly what you're saying. I want you to see those cracks. I want you to see where I've healed and all of those things that I've come through, because that makes me me. That's the power I have. We talked about superpowers at the beginning. My superpower is I'm etched in gold, where I've healed myself and pulled myself up.

I think that's a great analogy. I'll put that in the show notes so we can share that. Fabulous. So going back to the period of, excuse the euphemism, call it your dark time, where you are not sure whether tomorrow would come or not or whether you'd make different choices. We often talk about the difference between being alone and lonely. And you can be lonely in a room full of people, and you can be alone and yet fulfilled and happy. You are probably experiencing being lonely in life, regardless of who you were surrounded by.

100%, like I said, no one knew. When I tell the story, there's no way you're a glass half full person. There's no way. It's a shock. And it's like, no, you get really good at putting up a front to allow society to see what you want society to see and not letting people truly in. Because if you did, there's the fear of what they would see, what you would feel. So you kept that all inside. So, yeah, it goes back to the early part of this conversation.

Like, you feel so lonely because you don't know how to share those things. You are afraid you're not told and taught that you can share those things. Or if you're told, like, oh, I want you to share these things with me, then there's a judgement or there's a fix. It's easier to not share these things. So I'm going to continue to not share things about myself because I am fearful of the response that's going to be given and the response that's going to be given is you shouldn't feel those things. Or how could you? It's a standard. If you think about, we were talking offline about food, it's like if they comment about their weight, they're like, oh, but you're not fat. Or whatever the case may be.

It's like you're not helping the situation because that's how they feel. You literally just told this person, don't feel the way you feel. You didn't validate how they're feeling. You are just trying to go like, well, compared to other people. Like, oh, you're so skinny, or whatever. It's like, we have that as a societal, and I'm just using weight and food because that came to mind when we're talking about it. But, yeah, we are so quick to, in that instance, not even me, too. It's just like, well, you're not.

And it's like, I'm going to boost you up because you're tearing yourself down. But they're not tearing themselves down. That is how they feel. So how do we actually allow them to feel that? And what is it that they need to hear or feel? I'm in great shape. So when I tell people I'm out of shape, they're like, but you look great. I'm like, okay, looks is one thing, how I feel, what I'm used to. I worked out last night. I'm like, oh, this is kicking my butt.

I'm so out of shape right now. And then other people are like, well, compared to me, you look great. Those are the things that play with once we stop realising how a person's feeling, what they're thinking, and we validate that instead of trying to go like, oh, you're not. Or like, me, too. Yeah, that lonely feeling was there because you're like, no one's going to validate anything I'm saying right now. Who do I talk to?

Yeah, I hear you. You talk about having a workout last night. I am not anyone's athlete. You look at me, I'm 58 years old. I'm significantly, probably twice the weight I should be for my height, certainly my age. And I have a gym session each week. I have a personal trainer. We do an hour together.

And I don't pretend that I'm fit, but I do come out of those sessions. She kicks my butt, basically. She works me and works me and works me. So I come out of that hour and I can't walk I can't breathe, I've got to sit down, I got to recover. She goes, are you okay? I said, yeah, I'm happy. Knackered. I've delivered, I've done what I wanted to do today and I don't ever expect to be fit, but I take pleasure in doing the best I can, going back to the perfectionist thing or putting my whole self into something to achieve. I don't want to walk away thinking, I left a bit.

I want to go walk away thinking, yes, you had everything today. And that was all I could give. I think that's the sign of a good workout, that personal drive to do all you can, regardless of compare with somebody. I don't need to compare myself with somebody else. I don't care if I'm doing eight pounds and somebody else is doing 16 pounds. It doesn't matter to me. I'm doing what I can do to limit my ability. So, yeah, the comparison is such a negative kind of emotion and trait.

We should judge ourselves by ourselves. And when I set this new business up, I mean, you talked about impostor syndrome or that feeling of not being good enough. I started a new career, a new gender in a new sector, and I had immense imposter syndrome. And what I realised was I was evaluating myself against the standards of others, not looking for my incremental improvement. And as soon as I stopped comparing myself with yesterday and started comparing myself with a month ago and two months ago and a year ago, I realised that there was a differential, but I was comparing myself at a micro level and not seeing much improvement. So I think that's the important thing. When people say, wow, you're doing great, you're moving on, you've come a long way. You don't go and argue with them, you go, thank you, really, thank you, and accept what they're saying as validation and not just fake platitudes and sayings.

Most people mean it. And that's what I had to do. I had to learn to say thank you and really absorb that to enable me to sort of, kind of manage my impostor syndrome. I think that's what I ended up doing.

You gave me a thought that I'm going to have to ponder on, because if I say it, it's not fleshed out. I know in my head it doesn't make sense, but it's like when you're talking about comparison, it is truly a negative thing. And so I compared. I compared myself all the time. Self deprecation was my thing and taking a compliment was not something you could do, because if you have a perfectionist mindset, how could you take a complimeNt? Right? I'm not perfect. There's more I could do. I fed off of. Tell me what was wrong so I can fix it.

Because if I knew what was wrong, that means I could go and try and become perfect, as opposed to accepting like, you were good enough or you did the best you could. It's like, no, tell me I could have done better. So how do I fix that? Especially in a corporate world, especially in the sales? Like, I want a hunter who's going to go out there and close all these business deals and so forth. It's like, when you're looking for that, you create a culture that's probably not healthy, but it's going to do great for your business. But your mental health of your employees is probably not great. So there's a balance there. But, yeah, comparison is such a negative trait, and we do it all the time, in everything we do. And social media doesn't help in that regard.

Yeah, the instaculture, the philtres, the Snapchat, the pressure on younger people today, being always on, always compared. Chasing the likes, chasing the validation.

Aren't you glad both of us didn't grow up with social media in that regard? Like, imagine where mental health would have been then.

Yeah. No phones, capturing photographs of everything we did. We got up to stuff and it disappeared. It never existed. And I'm glad I can't remember some of it because I did some crazy stuff. I'm sure you did as well. And it's gone. And we can laugh about it around the campfire, but we got no evidence.

We can't post it all over social media. But yes, it's a tough gig. And the mental health of younger people is really impactful. We see bullying because in my day. In your day, we went home, we could escape it. We shut the front door. And unless we had people being vicious and phoning us up and saying things, we largely had safe zones where we weren't being. But now your phone vibrates and it's a bully.

It's a negativity. Or even if we didn't talk to someone for a couple of days, that was the worst it got. Or we maybe pinched them occasionally or poked them or somethIng. That was our bullying of our day. But now it's intense. And it's not just the circle around you. It's the infinite amount of connections, the thousands and thousands and thousands of people who can pile on to a stranger and reinforce negativity so destructive these days.

And to that point, the fact that it is an infinite amount of people that are influencing you, which makes it even more crucial that we are creating habits and mental structures within side all of us. So that, all right, a troll is a troll. It's not going to bother me because I accept people are going to be like that. And negative feedback is just as good as positive feedback. And those are someone's opinions, and that's perception. And I am who I am and I'm going to be there, and I like that. But we're not training the people appropriately. To philtre, that, and that's a hard thing.

Yeah.

And feedback. If I don't value your opinion as a person, then I don't have to accept your feedback. I can leave that present unopened, I can return it to sender. I don't need to absorb your feedback into my life, or I can frame it in such a way that, okay, that's one person's opinion. Okay, if everybody gives me similar feedback, then maybe I should learn and adapt and listen. But if it's a one off, out of context with everything else, then it's just. I call it graffiti. Like you're driving down through a ghetto and you see all these hate words sprayed on the wall and it's just someone being angry at the world.

You don't know who I am. Your words aren't directed at me, you're just being angry at someone. A stereotype like me. That's fine. I can drive by Anglesco and I can ignore it. It's just graffiti. I don't take it personally, but it does take a very strong mindset to be able to philtre out that noise and contextualise it as just junk, because many people will bring that in, into their psyche and they'll want to argue, they want to fight, they want to debate it, they want to bring it in. And those emotions aren't productive either.

Being able to let things go and not get absorbed by the negativity again, it's a trait I've learned over the last few years, to be able to, and I wouldn't say it's about putting a suit of armour on and protecting myself all the time. It's around just being able to philtre out the noise and move forward. And I think a lot of people don't necessarily have that ability, but it's helped my mental health no end to be able to compartmentalise noise and just close it down.

You bring up an interesting point. We also struggle. We're defensive as a society. So if I give feedback, I'm going to go, like, hold on, now you're attacking me. So it's all a matter of I'm defensive. And so that's where the argument starts, as opposed to, like, hold on. What is this person trying to show me? What are they trying to tell me? Can we sit here and actually have a conversation? It's like, no, I'm going to get defensive and that is the ego getting attacked. Right.

If I think about things in that regard. So if we can just realise it's a US together as opposed to me against you, we'll also be better in that regard.

Yeah. And I often say when people are coming at me wanting an argument and I just say, I don't owe you an argument. I don't owe you a debate. If you want to have this conversation, I'm not the person that's going to sit here and want to engage in it. You can tell me about my identity, you can tell me about what your belief is and you can tell me about biology, you can tell me all these things. I go, I don't owe you a discussion. I am. I'm me.

I can't explain it. I'm not going to debate it with you. Sorry, but this conversation is not going to give you productive for either of us. You just want to tell me you're right and attack me. I don't need to get involved in that conversation. So I think being able to step out of it sometimes and not owe someone a debate, not get engaged in something where it's nonproductive and it's not bottling it, it's not avoiding the conversation. It's just saying this is not productive for either of us. You just want to be right.

Whatever I say, we're not going to change each other's opinions. So I don't need to have a conversation where you want to be right without listening to me. So I can do that in the pub, in the bar, somewhere with somebody else, I might enjoy it.

Right.

Greg, we've been chatting now for an hour and a half bit in the green room and an hour on here. Amazing. And thank you for sharing your story. When you said to me that you wanted to take part and you had something you wanted to share, that was deep, I had no real idea as to what you were going to say or how you're going to say it, and I let it unfold and, yeah, thank you for trusting me. Thank you for coming here and saying what you said. But also thank you for being, I suppose, a friend. We've known each other superficially through Slack and through a product that you're a part of. I'm quite a fangirl of cast magic and I'll be using it for the show notes for this episode.

So tell us more about cast magic, tell us more about how to get hold of you and how to find out about the mean.

Once again, thank you so much for making this a reality and having this conversation, giving me. I don't drink coffee, but a coffee chat over something that's very serious to me and why I want others. And that's what I love about what I do. So cast magic, it's platform that allows you to take any audio and video and repurpose it. So you can take this podcast, you can take your speaking engagements. What I love about what I do goes back to my thesis, life is about time, relationships. And so I get to connect with people like you through our slack community, through a product that is helping your business. And then I get to serve you and go like, how do I help you? How's this doing that? So I'm on LinkedIn.

That is where most of my content lives. Every Monday I post three podcasts I think people should listen to. I am trying to constantly tell people on how to help their podcasting journey, how to help with their brand identity and a partnership person. So partnerships as well. It's kind of where I live. And this is the transition of 2024 into the ethos of how do I continue to tell a story to help people from a mental health standpoint? While it's now the trendy thing, it's something that is great. I can jump on because I know where I was a year ago and if I can just help one person feel less lonely and help one manager understand how to have a better conversation, that's all I need.

That's so powerful. Help one person have a better outcome as a result of a conversation with you. I think that's an easy thing so often not achieved by many. But yeah, it's a good starting point. We're not trying to change the world. If I can just change one person, we can all do that. We can all influence the one, if you like, change ourselves, influence those around us. So very powerful.

Thank you. Amazing. Thank you to you, the listener, for getting this far. I mean, we've had been online now for about an hour and hour and five minutes. Thank you for getting to the end. I really appreciate you and I hope you found this conversation as insightful and powerful as I have, please do subscribe. If you're not already subscribed to keep updated on future episodes of the Inclusion Bites podcast. That's B-I-T-E-S.

Please share the love, tell your friends, tell your colleagues. I've got other exciting guests lined up over the next few weeks and months, and it won't be long till we're at episode 100. Yay. Fireworks. So I'm looking forward to that episode, that milestone. Of course, if you want to be a guest like our guest today, Greg and others I've had in the past, if you'd like to come on the show and you just want to tell a story, you want to have a conversation with me, please do drop me a line to jo.lockwood@seechangehappen.co.uk. If you got any other suggestions.

Also please let me know. Finally, my name is Joanne Lockwood. It has been an absolute pleasure to host this podcast for you today. Catch you next time. Bye.