#033 - Growth and Exploration

Charles Knight 0:05

You want to talk about some Maslow stuff? or potentially? That kind of goes back to the we started off talking about that stuff? Geez, when did we first record that episode? Last year?

Robert Greiner 0:17

I'm gonna pull it up just because yeah, it's crazy how long this has been going?

Charles Knight 0:21

Yeah,

Robert Greiner 0:22

yeah. On the website. We have five pages

now. So

Charles Knight 0:26

Wow,

Robert Greiner 0:26

: 2020

Charles Knight 0:37

August 19. Okay,

Robert Greiner 0:39

yeah.

Charles Knight 0:40

We'll have to celebrate at some point.

Robert Greiner 0:42

What do you want to do the year celebrate the year?

Charles Knight 0:45

Yeah, maybe the year?

Robert Greiner 0:46

Yeah. Maybe in person.

Charles Knight 0:48

I was gonna say, do you have line of vaccines right now? Yeah.

Robert Greiner 0:53

Yeah, we are volunteering at the mega center.

Charles Knight 0:56

Oh, that's

right. Yeah. He told me that.

Robert Greiner 0:57

Yeah. Wednesday, Thursday, Friday of next week. Yeah. And so hopefully by the time this episode is released, we'll have been vaccinated.

Charles Knight 1:06

It's gonna feel good, dude. real good.

Speaking of Maslow, there's actually a new book that came out. Let me see if I can find it. See, let's see. So new book? Yes, here we go. So it is called Transcend by Scott Barry Kaufman. It's transcend the new science of self actualization. Have you ever heard of it?

Robert Greiner 1:29

No.

Charles Knight 1:30

Yeah. So let me see what it was this guy. He's a humanistic psychologist. Okay, in the same vein as Maslow and some other people, but I think all within that humanistic psychology realm. And the thing that was interesting is that he says that Maslow never put his Hierarchy of Needs into a pyramid.

Robert Greiner 1:52

Oh, really? Oh, because it does say reimagined, which is bold.

Charles Knight 1:57

Yeah,

Robert Greiner 1:57

yeah. Okay.

What was the hierarchy, I guess doesn't necessarily have to be a pyramid. You could have an organizational hierarchy or whatever. That does imply some structure, though. Right?

Charles Knight 2:06

Yeah, it doesn't plus structure. I don't know. I didn't read the book. So I'll claim or make that disclaimer. I listened to a podcast interview of him. I think it was the Sam Harris podcast making sense. And what this guy puts forward as another model of the hierarchy of needs is one of a sailboat. And I'm seeing if I can find the-here we go, I'll send you a send you the link, so you can look at it and then we can talk about it. Get your reactions on it.

Robert Greiner 2:38

I found

I found it on Google. Okay, yeah, it's got like a sort of half circle with three things, and then a triangle with three things. Okay. So it's safety, connection, self esteem at the bottom. And maybe those are what keeps you afloat keeps you from sinking and drowning. And then the sail is at the top of the triangle, which also has three elements is exploration, love and purpose. And I guess, are those what push you towards self actualization? Like, is that literal in the metaphor there?

Charles Knight 3:08

Yeah, I think so. I think the challenge with the hierarchy is that I think it's really, really easy to try to pick yourself at a particular level, I even think we, we probably talked about that. So the pandemic pushes us down, lower on the hierarchy, there's this, this notion of, you cannot have to go back up and come back down, depending upon certain events that happen, like a crisis. And I think the sailboat metaphor, this thing was like, hey, it's not like you're climbing up a ladder, or this, this pyramid, instead, you open up your sail. So it's like, you need to have these lower these base needs met, right? safety, connection, self esteem. And when you do that, you can unfurl your sale, right? Like you can open it up. And that allows you to pursue the self actualization, self transcendence stuff that Maslow talked about. Yeah, and what he talked about, and I don't know the picture that you see, but there is one sailboat in the middle of my picture and has safety connection, self esteem as the whole. And then the sail is exploration, love and purpose. But there's two other sailboats.

Robert Greiner 4:23

Yeah, I just share my screen. Is that what you're saying? Oh, okay. So the ones in the background are meaningful as well.

Charles Knight 4:28

Yeah, there are other people. And so the reason why the, the sailboat is cool for me is that we're, we all have our individual journeys, we each have a sailboat, but we're all and we may be going in different directions, like in our lives, but we're all sailing on this vast, open, unknown ocean. And so I really like that piece because so often when we talk about Maslow's hierarchy of needs, it's really singularly are individualistic focused on the individual. But the sailboat here, it's okay, we're all on this ocean together. And at any point in time, a massive wave, like a pandemic, can come crashing down on everybody all at once. And our sails have to come down. Or like immediately our sales just come down. And we have to focus on our base base kind of security, make sure we we plug any holes, or we don't sink and stuff like that. And I don't know, I thought it was a cool metaphor. And it Yeah, I guess it did. I was a huge fan of why I still am a huge fan of Maslow and the hierarchy of needs. This feels more like it maps to reality a little better. I don't know, what's your take on this with the very little that you've read and seen heard about at this point?

Robert Greiner 5:50

Yeah, let me just start by saying I have a pet peeve Charles. And I think you know this, but my one of the biggest pet peeves I have professionally speaking is when you take a framework and you just change it or rename a couple of things, and then present it as something new and unique. This is he might be onto something here though. Like At first I was thinking, wait, you reimagine Maslow's Hierarchy? That could make sense because there's not really a time element, for instance. So how do you build trust rapidly? Where do you start? Like how there's a few things that maybe you could augment or talk about, hey, here's how this pyramid fits into a specific situation. I have a little bit of an open mind. When it said, reimagined, I was thinking okay, but this guy, Scott Barry Kaufman, and I found the article. So I have the image right in front of me that you talked about an article that he wrote, where he's saying some of the same things that it looked like he was talking about on the podcast, and I'm so interested that I just bought the book too just one click bought it on Amazon.

Charles Knight 6:52

That's cool.

Robert Greiner 6:53

Yeah, yeah. So this idea of, and I'm very metaphor, thinking. So metaphors make sense to me like that. Those are what helped me make sense of the world, which is why I'm always trying to relate things back to sports or whatever, just because it's easier if that's what actually how I come to understand stuff. And thinking about the interaction between boats in an ocean, which can represent your life, like over time, or the interconnection between you and other people in a social fabric. Like all of that makes sense. And then what he says here is, if you have holes in your boat, you can't go anywhere, all of your focus is directed toward increasing the stability of the boat. That's so true. And if you thought if you think about having wind flowing in the right direction, so there's this thing called tacking too when you're sailing, right, where you're actually pointed in a different direction, based on how the wind is going. But you're not going in that direction, you're going in the direction you want to go. And so there's like lots of ways I think you could take and, and move in this metaphor and think about your well being and the well being of the people that you lead. By extension. I'm really intrigued, like, I hope the book is good. It had

good reviews on Amazon,

Charles Knight 8:03

The guy the guy seemed like he knew his stuff. It's not like he's, I think he does, you know, the the sales is pretty obvious. I don't remember Maslow's hierarchy. But exploration is not something that is in Maslow's hierarchy. And so I believe that the exploration love and purpose is the reimagined part of self actualization, because you don't see self actualization on this. On the sailboat, you know, it's probably this metaphor.

Robert Greiner 8:34

Yeah, that's a that is a short term from what looks like the article is saying, a short term experience flow that you come in and out of, when your sail is moving forward. And you are able to have purpose, love exploration, and you're not thinking about self esteem, connection, safety, and you'd like your life is moving in a direction, it would be the equivalent of self actualization, or the approximation of self actualization, which is actually more practical, if that makes sense to me. Yeah, sometimes you like what does it mean to be self actualized but Maslow's hierarchy, yeah, cuz you have psychological and safety needs at the bottom. So it's like a five step pyramid, those your basic needs, psychological safety, and then you have belongingness, and esteem, which are your psychological needs. And you have self fulfillment at the top, which is self actualization. Yeah. And you can say things like what we said in episode one so long ago, which is in a professional environment, most of the time, when things especially over the past 10 years, we've been focusing on psychological needs, right? belongingness esteem, we haven't had to address safety and psychological unless there's some kind of event that comes up. That's an exception. But now the basic needs addressing those first is the rule but going straight into a work conversation with that, how did you fare in Snowmageddon? Or what's the vaccine situation like or how are you feeling because you're you or your family? Or the people you're talking to may be dealing with, like COVID, or one of these, you know, massive waves that you talked about before. So, yeah, this is a really interesting way to look at it. I'm really intrigued.

Charles Knight: 10:11

You know, what I like about the sail is that I'm not a sailor, maybe you are tacking, which I know I don't really know anything about.

Robert Greiner: 10:21

No, I don't know much about it.

Charles Knight: 10:22

So

you can fully open your sail, or you can partially open your sail. You can unfurl the sail, maybe that's the phrase. And so that's a really cool part of this metaphor, too, because especially now, like it's things are still really bad. But things are getting better terms of the pandemic, more people are getting vaccinated. Cases are going down.

Robert Greiner: 10:45

Let

me interrupt you right there. I was on a meeting seven people five were vaccinated two weren't Yeah, like, and so now more people have gotten a shot than have gotten sick. You've seen the curve just completely fall off a cliff. So I think it'd be hard to say that we are not closer to the end of the beginning. Right now. We had a feeling around the end of last year. And we're only about halfway through this thing. Like I think there's a lot of light at the end of this particular time. Right?

Charles Knight: 11:11

Yeah. And so I think now's even though we talked about this first, the wave came crashing down on all of us in 2020. Right now, I think as leaders, we can start thinking about how do we ourselves, and how do we encourage others to begin to unfurl their sails? Because it's not like you can just fully open it? at will. It's not like a light switch your sail up or down? It takes effort, you got to pull on the riggings and all that sort of stuff to raise it, you know, to full mass. Yeah.

Robert Greiner: 11:44

And it's incremental. Yeah, it's a spec. Yes.

Charles Knight: 11:46

And there's probably danger if you try to raise it, you know, too fast, especially with fast wins on stuff like that. Or,

Robert Greiner: 11:53

of course,

there is man, you and I have faced points in our career alone, not to mention personal life where you move too fast. And what ultimately happens is you run into a brick wall, or I guess, a coral reef or whatever would make sense from the analogy.

Charles Knight: 12:08

So it's this, this unfurling of the sail it there's this maybe not exponential, but it's certainly not linear. It's like the more you open yourself, aka unfurl the sail, the further your boat is going to go. So there's this, if you focus on exploration, love and purpose, it's like there's, you can cross more ground. That's not the right phrase, because you're on the you're on the sea. But you can go further. And that's a really cool part about this metaphor, right? It's like you can you get a little taste, and open up your sail a little bit, you have one of these peak experiences the flow state, and you can prioritize and organize your life. And this kind of goes back to some of our positive psychology discussions around how do you get more into the flow by being challenged, focusing on your strengths and stuff like that. And, and you can eventually explore more navigate this and but to me, the sea, the sea is really life. Like, it's, to me, it's just pretty clear, like the vast unknown of the sea is essentially, our lives. And you can go through your life, if you are unlucky, and born into really crappy circumstances, you can live your whole life, focusing on plugging holes in your boat, right, making sure that you don't sink. And but maybe as leaders, we need to encourage people that it's okay to now I want to say take risks, or be vulnerable, you're going to open up your sail, just a little bit of test the winds, see how the boat moves and holds up under that pressure and strain? And I don't know, what are your thoughts on that? I'm not saying people should go out and party. I'm not saying take those risks. But it's more about, hey, it's, it's I don't know what I'm trying to say, man. Well,

Robert Greiner: 13:55

You've hit

you've struck, like you've been mining, as you've been thinking about this. And as we've been talking about it, and you've just struck some like metal. And you're like, Man, what is that? Because you I think you've hit exactly on the head, or meandering around, maybe. A real, like issue material issue of what it means to be human today moving forward. And that's we've been in survival mode and had this low grade, chronological tension for a year. And we've all shared it. And it's going to be really hard to do stupid little things, go to a restaurant and have a meal without being stressed out. Like I can't before, and my wife and I like eating out. That's exploration, we would go to the Food and Wine Festival at the Dallas Arboretum. And we try stuff that we've never tried before. And we'd go and purposely walk up to people and talk to them about what they're trying. It's so easy to start a conversation there. And that was like a really cool, love slash exploration thing that we did. We look forward to it every year we you get commemorative wine glasses, like it's a whole thing. So that's like a micro thing. We haven't been to a restaurant a year, like, we're not going to be able to go do something as simple as go out and eat without being stressed out the first time we do it, not to mention, like kids going back to school, going back on site at wherever you work, being in that first meeting, how you're going to get stuff done, and be productive in the very first meeting where everyone is in the room together. When we're all back at work again, like these, that's part of the effort required and the intricate knots, you have to tie and untie and move around to sail your boat forward, collectively with the people around you. And that's going to be a really challenging thing to do. And we are not going to instinctively be in a position to open that sail up and move forward at the pace at an appropriately fast pace. We're going to be reserved, I think collectively for Yeah,

Charles Knight: 15:56

yeah. When I think the boat is safety, connection, self esteem, right, that's the boat. The first the bottom part of the sail is exploration. And I guess from a leadership standpoint, maybe what we should be doing with our teams is we should embrace this idea of like, we need to go explore us, it's time to dig ourselves out of a hole. In that that might mean, hey, if use your personal judgment, and maybe it does mean you're ready and safe to go to a restaurant. But it could also be, hey, we've we it's time to go explore a new way for our team to operate in a remote environment with our clients. It's time where there's enough security where we can, maybe that's what it means their risk taking. I was like, let's go explore. Let's go try to do something new and interesting and different and fun. And, and let's experiment with certain things. And encourage that on our teams. Because I think everybody's just been hunkered down. Let me just do my job, keep my head down, stay busy, take care of myself and my family. And those are all good things. But that just keeps you down in the boat, you're going to stagnate and not grow as a result.

Robert Greiner: 17:14

So what Scott Barry Kaufman says on his website is security is primarily concerned with defense and protection. exploration is motivated by curiosity, discovery, openness, expansion, and understanding. openness. I think in this case, he means like creativity. And so that's it, that is a different kind of thing where you may feel in a situation whether you're at work or personal life, defense protection, in a situation that before would have been more of a discovery. And so I think the awareness of Hey, this could be going on. When you feel that tension you feel in your chest, I think it would be worth asking the question like, Hey, is this an opportunity to apply some curiosity, some creativity to a situation? Is this a situation that warrants protection that we've been in this mode for 12 months? Or do we need to rewire on wind some of that and go into a more exploratory mode? So I do think you're right exploration is probably the key to unfurling sales is that? I don't know if that's right. But I understood it when you said so. Well, we'll go with underling.

Charles Knight: 18:19

I mean, I think,

yeah, there's, you know, I think I mentioned there's some, we as leaders, we have to be vulnerable and kind of put ourselves out there, and maybe lead by example, in terms of that exploration first, to show people that it can be done. And yeah, I don't know. I mean, I'm trying to think practically about what that would look like. And I'm not sure it's coming to me at the moment, what would exploration look like on a day to day basis with the team that we're leading? you have any thoughts?

Robert Greiner: 18:50

I do think there's a purpose thing which we tapped into. So let me Maybe I'll back into that, where we spent a lot of time talking about how to make sure that people on our teams are engaged in productive, meaningful activity, right. Not everyone has the same level of busy. We had all this churn going on midway through the year, last year as we tried to reformat what people were doing. And one of the big things that we discussed and tried to keep a bead on was, are people actually working on activities, projects, teams that are doing productive work as a way to approximate promise. And when you're stuck at home alone, that's a helpful thing. And then when you get back into love, part of the professional equivalent of that is forgiveness. We talked about this last week, assuming positive intent of the people around you, and when you make mistakes and when other when others make mistakes. It's okay, this is a tough time. Maybe there's more benefit of the doubt you could afford others when maybe you wouldn't, when times were good. And so then if you back back into exploration, you can start asking questions I've been asked a few times this week, or at least more than normal. Hey, when are we getting together? What if I went off the books and scheduled us where some people could show up if they wanted to? How would we make that work? And so I think you start to see, not only people experiment with social the social side, exploring the social side of connecting, but also we're talking about what is the team going to look like when we all are back in the office? What do we do if the clients were out or the company we work for reduces cuts their office space in half? What's that going to look like? So, see, I don't know, I think, to me, I

Charles Knight: 20:26

wonder if that's still the boat. Okay, what if we get together thing, because that's a connection, I think that's a connection need, that's has been unmet, because of the virtual nature of things. Like I'm in the background of this graphic for people that can't see it. There's the sail, but the air of the sky, in the backdrop is labeled growth. And yeah, I was reading some stuff here about self actualization, because it's not listed here. And what this author says is that Maslow got some criticism about self actualization, because it's really this ambiguous hodgepodge of characteristics. And it's hard to Yeah, and he actually says that Maslow in his later writings, used a different term, it's a phrase, really, and the phrase is fully human. And so self actualization is the process of growth that leads towards actualization. It's not something that you ever attain. It's the whole, it's an ongoing evolutionary process of growing towards your, in our company towards our highest potential. And so maybe we should focus on on the growth opportunities for those on our team.

Robert Greiner: 21:43

And, and maybe the connections to so the bringing in

Charles Knight: 21:46

Yeah, yeah. And that's kind of that's an excellent point. Yeah. It's like the more you unfurl earlier sail, starting with exploration, allows you to navigate and traverse this sea. And there's other sailboats out there on the seat, too. And so as you began to offer your sail and move, you can move and navigate and interact with other sailboats, too. So I like that, yeah, maybe there's growth opportunities that, that we can point out and encourage our team to explore together.

Robert Greiner: 22:20

I was thinking of an example. So this podcast is a great example of what was rooted in security for you, me and Igor, who's not here, by the way, I think we mentioned that he's otherwise engaged, he didn't get tired of us. So if you think about it, and I'm, I'm pretty sure we talked about this, I would be curious for you to confirm or reject what I'm about to say, but this was a connection thing. You, me and Igor did that's why it's called one grab coffee, it's because we grab coffee five, six times a day, it seems we had coffee all the time together. And we'd have such great conversations around our careers, our organization, what we're doing at work, give each other advice support each other. That was a huge career boon. And you unplug that for three months, and you're like, Oh, my gosh, that's left a hole. And we started it as connection. And we pretty quickly have moved into our transitioning to exploration, right, where we're thinking about these things out loud, like, in real time, and trying to decide how we can be better leaders or help our teams more. And this is not something that I was aware of an hour ago. And so we're definitely in this more of a growth exploration type mode. And that was an experiment, we had no clue. If this was a good idea.

Charles Knight: 23:38

We don't know that. That's something that's the beauty of it. And also, I would say there's a we're pretty aligned in terms of purpose to of this. Yeah, may have started off as connection for sure. But we also think all agree independently, we probably arrived at this independently too, but this is something that brought us together is that we're doing this and sharing this publicly because we want to, you know, help the next generation of leaders to grow them so that they can go on and do great things. And yeah, yeah, you're right. The podcast is a nice little test here for this metaphor.

Robert Greiner: 24:15

I like this. I'm really glad you shared it.

Charles Knight: 24:17

Yeah, me too.

Robert Greiner: 24:18

Pretty

cool.

Charles Knight: 24:19

But I'm trying to see here.

Robert Greiner: 24:21

It's more approachable to me. Like, I feel like I get it more like every time I think about Maslow's, or I want to work it into something, I have to bring up the pyramid and I have to consume it again and re build up the mental model around it. You know what I mean? This is much more approachable. And so even if it was a knockoff it like I don't think it is, but it's presented in a way that I don't know like, I just get it. I'm normally skeptical about this type stuff.

Charles Knight: 24:48

Let me read some quotes here that I found in an article from the book, I believe, that can help to illustrate the differences or why the boat so you don't climb a sailboat like he'd climb a mountain or pyramid. Instead you open your sail, the more you open yourself to the world, the further your boat will go. The sailboat isn't a pinnacle, but a whole vehicle that helps us to explore the world and people around us growing and transcending as we do. That's, I think that's the part that I like the best is that it's got the sea and the other boats. So we're not, we don't navigate life as individuals. It's we're all interconnected. Let's see what else here.

Robert Greiner: 25:28

And just a quick fact note to this was released in April of 2020. So yeah, how timely

Charles Knight: 25:34

Yeah, okay. So he combined physiological and psychological needs, because they're so deeply intertwined, which makes total sense, like our physiology and our psychology are intertwined. That absolutely makes sense. The sail representatives of growth is a spirit of exploration, love and purpose built on the fundamental need for exploration, to reach higher levels of integration, and to contribute something meaningful to the world. Yeah. And then the whole, we haven't really talked about the transcendence piece. But I think the idea is that motivated by exploration and love, the purpose piece is something that simultaneously benefits yourself, and the worlds, which is why it's outside of the boat. The transcendence is the little seagull.

Robert Greiner: 26:21

Oh, that's why he talks about integration, like into society. Okay,

Charles Knight: 26:25

so the sea seagulls I knew you're above, you've got a higher vantage point, then your individual boat and other boats in the sea, we've got this bird's literally bird's eye view, kind of looking down on things, this this transcendence piece.

Robert Greiner: 26:40

You can see that more, maybe in a

less lofty example, in your career, when you were the first one or two years out of school. There's so much stuff you didn't know. Now you can have if you have someone on your team who just came out of college, you have a bit of a bird's eye view where you can help mentor in a way that you certainly couldn't win when you're in that same position. And that that came from Cerebro. And so this, there are some tests, I guess you could apply to this metaphor, a model that seemed to work. Yeah, I can't I'm trying to find something wrong with that. I

can't so

Charles Knight: 27:12

do you know Carl Rogers Hitman. I think he

Robert Greiner: 27:14

Yes, that name sounds really familiar.

Charles Knight: 27:16

He and Maslow we're, I think they're known as the founders of this humanistic approach to psychology.

Robert Greiner: 27:24

Oh, Carl Rogers was the Yeah, he was the he pioneered that. Like some of the when you're like, one on one talking, like the act of listening.

Charles Knight: 27:33

He's one of the founding fathers of psychotherapy,

Robert Greiner: 27:35

Is that him?

Charles Knight: 27:35

So like talk talk therapy.

Robert Greiner: 27:38

Okay. Yeah,

yeah. Okay. Yeah.

Charles Knight: 27:41

Hiss was the other name that I was thinking of earlier, when I was talking about humanistic psychology I Maslow are typically talked about when you think of humanistic psychology. Yeah, man. I don't know. I don't know. What

Robert Greiner: 27:53

This transcend book is. transcend is rooted in positive psychology, which we have a whole series on. So this aligns with or at least should align with the Perma V.

Charles Knight: 28:05

Yeah. Yeah, that was, I don't know if you remember, there was one time when I was talking to you and Igor and the positive psychology as was born out of the humanistic psychology stuff of Maslow. I remember making a comment to a while ago, it was because of this podcast interview. Positive Psychology, I think was really meant to extend the work of Maslow and now Scott, Barry Kaufman, with a scientific lens, are they positive psychology is all about finding the intent, testing it measuring the impact, but all the rigor of you know, scientific research they're trying to bring to this humanistic psychology roots. And so that I think that's why this is very approachable. Positive Psychology and its interventions or interventions are very rigorously studied and designed. So it's, it's Yeah, they are absolutely complimentary.

Robert Greiner: 29:04

And what a gift, right? What a gift to society, because the idea of the fundamental building blocks and foundation of positive psychology just resonates with me so much more, that this is a, an approach to flourishing. And to achieve well being not a, we're going to come in with a scalpel and try to cut out the negative things right, which both sides have utility and value, especially on the sort of tail ends of the bell curve. So it's not like you can throw one away. But for the those of us who are in the day to day kind of ho hum, situation, that the positive psychology gives it a huge boost. You know, I guess maybe it's better said for the periods of life where you're not on one of those tails and you're more towards the center of the bell curve, you have a more positive and growth oriented

way to look at the world which is

Charles Knight: 29:59

I just like Can't imagine When was the first time that you heard about Maslow's Hierarchy? So I'm pretty sure I heard about it.

Robert Greiner: 30:07

I thought

I was in school. But I don't know that maybe it must have been 5,6,7 years ago, though, where I really felt like I was told about it in a way where I could maybe conceptualize it,

if that makes sense.

Charles Knight: 30:19

I don't think I really thought about it until I entered the professional world. And we talked about Maslow's hierarchy is one of the foundational kind of frameworks that we use internally at our company, to help us design our organization, but also to think about our solutions for our clients. Yeah, stuff like that. I, I guess I'm just I'm a little in, I guess, I'll feel very lucky that I was born in a time period where humanistic psychology is a thing? What would the world be like before? If we were born into the world before Maslow, did all of this work around the hierarchy of needs? a company like ours wouldn't exist? I would guess, because it's, it's like this whole Maslow's hierarchy of needs. There's a fundamental assumption that humans strive for growth. It's a like a human imperative. Yeah, go for it.

Robert Greiner: 31:14

Yeah, you ready?

hy of needs, was developed in: 1962

Yeah, you're so right dude.

Charles Knight: 33:34

This is a man Yeah, this reads very, this I pulled up. I'm looking through it. It reads very stoic, detach, like you're detached from me. That's right. Yeah, it's which there's a whole unpacking that we can do there. I know. We've talked about maybe stoicism being a topic there. And yeah, it has a very stoics like the feeling like the tone of life that this describes, like you said a grin and bear it is very different from the tongue one feels when you think about flourishing, because you you're leveraging your strengths and your you've got purpose driving you and you have these rich relationships that Yeah, the tone is just so different.

Robert Greiner: 34:18

Yeah.

And he went through World War One. I'm pretty sure I have the dates right in my head. And I think that's it. But I think there there is a there's a truth to both of those areas, too. You know what I mean? Yeah, man, we've uncovered some things. I don't know how helpful they are, but to others, but I've got about this, I bought the book. I'm gonna check it out. I'm off next week. So maybe this will be my

leisure activity

Charles Knight: 34:40

I bought a book called the intellectual life by a French philosopher. I don't know. I'm going to be reading that one. I've been doing a lot of own reflection on what does it mean to be a thought leader and how can I help others create thought leadership and I stumbled upon that one And it's like a practical manual. It's pretty interesting. So, on the other side of our break, we'll have to share what we learned, maybe in another pocket.

Robert Greiner: 35:09

Hey, thanks for sharing this today. This was really interesting. I'm excited to get more.

Absolutely,

Can I shared it with you before we go. So this is by James Stockdale, James Bond Stockdale, United Navy, Vice Admiral. And in Vietnam, he was a prisoner of war for over seven years. So you could say that he has met life's worst experiences. And he, there's this quote called the Stockdale paradox where he says, You must never confuse the faith that you will prevail in the end, which you can never afford to lose with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be, and that's, I think, sums up what the if by Rudyard Kipling, the Stockdale paradox, those are in the security, those are in the boat side. And I think those are useful for when you're plugging holes in the boat. Continue this metaphor. That's the security piece. That's something we all share as humans, as we all are in those terrible situations that confront safety, connection, self esteem. And I think having this confronting these the facts of your current reality and doing what's possible, across whatever time frame is possible to get into that exploration, love, purpose, growth, towards transcendence. Well, that's a very important transition to make. can't rush it, but it's important that happens. I think,

Charles Knight: 36:37

that's great, man. Yeah.

Robert Greiner: 36:38

All right, man.

Charles Knight: 36:39

Yeah, take care.

Robert Greiner: 36:41

Bye. Bye. Thanks. Have a good one. Enjoy your week off. That's it for today. Thanks for joining and don't forget to follow us on Twitter @wannagrabcoffee or drop us a line at [email protected]