Living Smaller Lives [The Zero Dot Podcast #30]

What happens when you stop assuming you already know who you are?

All that and more in today's episode of the Zero Dot Podcast.

A podcast for the quietly overwhelmed and the cautiously hopeful.

When our chips are down and resources are low, that's where all are most powerful.

Fighters of humanity.

Human

Hey, hey, everybody.

Welcome, welcome, welcome.

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, boys and girls, everyone of all ages, I'm your host
Sam Kirk.

We're here at episode 30.

Somehow we've made it.

John is still out recharging, expected to be back around June, and Daniel, my good buddy,
remains in the cave assembling this thing from scraps and caffeine and whatever he can

make it happen.

So today, it's just me, but I'm not alone, I promise, because I've got you all, and I
appreciate you all tuning in today for

episode 30 of the Zero Dot podcast.

For today's episode, I want to talk about growth mindset.

We're talking about Carol Dweck.

We're talking about Malcolm Gladwell.

We're talking about talent, fear, purpose, all that good stuff.

And maybe the biggest question, how many of us are living smaller lives because we became
afraid to try things before we learned who we could become?

But first, here's some good news.

So I'm gonna do the good thing myself tell us what's good happening around the world
remind us of the good things and today's good is one of my favorite kinds of good news.

It's not flashy.

It's not especially viral.

It's not scientists discovered immortality in a mushroom or Find found the cure to cancer
although that stuff is really impressive and they actually have done things like that This

is just human beings looking at the problem and slowly starting to fix it and that problem
happens to be air pollution

For context, air pollution remains one of the largest environmental health risks in the
world.

It contributes to cardiovascular disease, respiratory illness, asthma, and millions of
deaths annually.

Globally, it's associated with roughly 1 in 10 deaths as a whole, as it's reported by Our
World in Data.

That's staggering, because air pollution's kind of weird.

You can't always see it.

You don't wake up one morning and go, yes, today I feel 8 % more particulate matter in the
air than before.

unless you have a Google Home situation like my wife and I have, that tells us, hey, air
pollution quality isn't that great today.

Maybe watch how often you are outside.

Most people don't have that in their homes.

But over the years and decades, that 8%, that matters.

Now here's the hopeful part.

A new report looked at cities around the world and found 19 cities across nine different
countries reduced harmful pollutants by 20 to 45%.

over roughly 10 to 15 years in the making.

20 to 45%.

That's not tiny folks.

That tells me the future does not have to look like the present.

We are still on the path towards making things even more sustainable for everyone around
the world.

Some examples of this are Beijing dramatically reduced fine particulate pollution, is PM
2.5 by more than 45%, as it's reported by The Guardian.

London expanded low emission zones and cleaner transportation, as it's been said by
Breathe Cities.

Paris expanded cycling infrastructure and redesigned their streets, once again from
Breathe Cities.

And Warsaw.

Warsaw reduced pollution through cleaner heating policies and transportation changes once
again from breed cities and San Francisco was reported the only US city in the analysis to

cut both major pollutants by over 20 % reported by the Guardian.

This is amazing.

What I love about this is that these improvements didn't come from one miracle invention
or one venture by one human being.

No, rather this was done by policy.

This was done by

transit changes, bike lane infrastructure, electrification, emission standards, sustained,
know, putting in that effort day in, day out by a long period of time by global

governmental and non-governmental entities.

So this is huge.

This is massive.

I love this so much.

This is what makes me so proud to be on Team Human.

This is what human beings can do.

And if Daniel was on the call, he'd tell you that

We've only got one planet, folks, one planet Earth, and I would love to be on this planet
for as long as we can and make planet Earth keep rocking for future generations as much as

we possibly can.

So good on Team Human.

Congratulations.

I'm super happy about that.

But now it's time to dive in to our main topic.

We tell people you can be anything if you work hard enough.

While that sounds hopeful, I'm not convinced it's entirely true.

I think a better question might be, what happens when you stop assuming you already know
who you are?

Because maybe the thing you're best at is sitting on the other side of embarrassment,
failure, or even looking stupid.

To start our discussion, I want to remind ourselves of Carol Dweck.

You've heard me bring up Carol Dweck a few times here, but Carol Dweck is an American
psychologist.

She holds a Lewis and Virginia Eaton Professorship of Psychology at Stanford University.

Dweck is known for her work on motivation and mindset.

She was on the faculty of the University of Illinois Harvard and Columbia before joining
the Stanford University faculty in 2004.

She was named in Association for Psychological Science James McKean Catwell Fellow in
2013, an APS Mentor Awardee in 2019, and an APS William James Fellow in 2020, and has been

a member of the National Academy of Sciences since 2012.

She's kind of the name that you hear of when people talk about coaching and mindsets.

And what she's most famous for, if you ever paid attention to any of her work, is this
idea of growth versus fixed mindset.

What is this exactly?

Well, I mean, put in its simplest terms, to have a fixed mindset is to believe that you
are put on this planet, you have certain genetic code that predetermines what you're going

to be good at for the rest of your life, and once you get to a certain age where your
brain is no longer as neuroplastic as others, you're kind of set in stone.

You're either good at something or you're not good at something.

The growth mindset implies, hey, it doesn't matter where you start, from zero to 100 or
even further and beyond,

Wherever you start from, you can improve.

Skills can develop.

And generally speaking, you are not a complete human yet until you start refining and
practicing those skills.

This is one of the biggest topics that I talk about in my own leadership world.

I talk about Carol Dweck a lot.

I talk about the growth versus fixed mindset.

And we talk about it from the lens of coaching.

To be a successful coach, you have to believe people can change and grow.

If you think that you either have it or you don't,

you're not gonna be as successful of a coach.

But here's the thing, it's not all or nothing.

And oftentimes what gets misconstrued is people believing that everyone can be equally
good at everything, which is categorically insane.

To say that, to imply that, to argue that is to simply throw nature in its face and say,
sorry, you don't matter.

If you just have enough grit and determination, you can achieve anything.

And if you are,

first time listener to the Zero Dot podcast, this might be new to you, but my legacy
listeners all know we don't believe in that.

We don't believe in grit.

We don't believe in waking up at 2 30 in the morning and having a ridiculous morning
routine to seize the day.

You can do that if you enjoy those kinds of things, but that's not what the science says.

And that's not what Dweck says.

Okay.

She was saying when it came to growth mindset, if you have effort plus strategy, plus good
feedback from a good mentor and time,

All of that can change people pretty demonstrably.

But it's not arguing that you can start from zero and become a master at something with
enough time.

It just says that you can improve.

And so I bring this up because what did you quit in your life because you thought you
weren't naturally talented at something?

What have you quit?

Was it music, art?

Did you have a relationship that you just thought you're just not good at relationships so
you bowed out of the relationship?

Was it a leadership role that you were in?

You bowed out of that?

Was it sports?

Was it speaking?

Was it just being vulnerable?

Anything at all.

What have you quit prematurely because you thought I'm just not naturally talented?

Because sometimes what looks like lack of talent might actually be fear.

And fear has a really good tendency of masquerading as logic.

Because what a lot of adults say at a certain point in their life, they say, well, this
just isn't for me.

I can't do this.

This isn't in my wheelhouse.

They use all kind of fun little language.

And what they're actually saying as adults, and this happens the older you get, I'm scared
to be bad at it.

Fear is coming in and it's saying, don't look foolish, don't fail publicly, don't waste
time, stay known as being competent, stay known just in general.

But fear often sounds reasonable.

And that's why it is so convincing.

The older we get, the less willing we become to be beginners.

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I want to tell you all a story.

A story of me.

Okay?

Now, I'm a professional speaker.

I'm a professional talker, professional communicator, not just because I have a podcast,
but because I'm a public speaker in my actual professional life.

And it might surprise you the first time I had exposure to public speaking.

You see, my first exposure to public speaking was me being thrown into a situation that I
was very ill-prepared for.

And I would have never known what would have happened at the end of it if you told me of
it.

Imagine it's fourth grade in elementary school.

Fourth grade, and I'm your typical daydreamer student.

I didn't care too much about school.

Home life wasn't the best, and I'll leave it at that.

So I typically viewed school as just an opportunity for eight hours out of my day to
socialize, be with friends, and

just have my fun playtime.

I didn't pay too much attention to class, although I was a pretty good reader.

I liked reading quite a lot.

And I oftentimes forgot about assignments.

One assignment my fourth grade teacher gave all of us in the class was to write a writing
assignment of some kind that would pertain to one of two book contests that were happening

at the time.

One book contest was a continuation of a book that had

come out before called Girls Know Best, where it was people's submissions into a book and
stories and personal anecdotes that got published into a book called Girls Know Best.

Another one would have been the boys equivalent, kind of a sister or brother version of
this kind of same publication.

I know, I know, gender issues aside, this was problematic.

This was in the 90s, okay?

And the idea was

Again, they were gonna make uh a book kind of like Girls Know Best, but for boys.

It would later be called Boys Know It All.

And all the boys were meant to write up some kind of story, some kind of something.

I forget what the requirements were, if I'm being perfectly honest.

I think it could have been about anything.

It just had to be a certain word count.

Okay.

Well, me being the boy that I am, I forgot about the assignment.

Totally forgot about the assignment.

until the day the assignment was due and suddenly, crap, I didn't write anything down.

I had nothing to give in.

And as you can imagine, my teacher scolded me, but she said, look, if you give me
something tomorrow, I'll take off a grade letter and you can submit something.

So you can imagine, I was very upset, but I went home from school, popped onto my very old
and dated laptop, even at that time in the nineties, it was like a black and white laptop,

had to hook it up to a very bad printer.

uh And I typed up something.

I don't know what I typed up.

Actually, I kind of know it was related to drug use This was during the age of dare
remember dare kids remember we were scaring every way from drugs I'm like, all right Let

me just talk about dare because that's what the school has been talking to me about for
the past couple years dare stay away from drugs So just wrote up an essay about not using

drugs.

I was a straight edge.

What could I say?

I Submitted it the next day and I swiftly forgot about

So months go by, I think an entire season goes by.

We submitted this back in like the early parts of the school year, which is around August,
September.

It's like February, it's past the new year, it's cold, it's chilly.

And my teacher calls me in and says, Sam, do you have a moment?

And I thought I was in trouble.

You know, again, I was a daydreamer.

I didn't care so much about school.

I wasn't paying too much attention in class.

I was just barely skating by, I think.

Although I did pretty well in reading.

And she called me over.

teacher told me that that story that I half-assed, that little anecdote about drugs,
turned it in the day late.

I got scolded for that story.

The publishers loved it and they wanted to continue on with that story and give me an
opportunity to refine it, polish it, make it better so that way they could submit it and

be published on a paperback.

I was going to be a published author.

I was blown away by this because I didn't want this.

I didn't want to do what they asked me to do.

I just did it because it was a school assignment, but here it's going to become a
published entry in a book called Boys Know It All.

What follows is several months of me having phone calls with the publisher and them
sending me letters of what they needed from me and them telling me how much money they're

going to send me as a result of me being published.

It was a small amount of money.

um And me writing a ton of stuff, like making the thing

Gosh, it probably wasn't that long by my standards, but as a fourth grader, was probably
20 to 30,000 words.

It was a lot.

And then on top of that, they wanted me, they suggested me interviewing a subject matter
expert.

So I interviewed a psychologist slash psychiatrist in the field about drug use and how it
can impact things.

And I submitted that in addition to my written writing.

It was a hellish experience.

because it was not fun to try to meet some arbitrary word count.

It was not fun to try to meet some page count.

They asked you to submit the document via a word document back then.

We did not have word.

We were using, like I said, a very crappy black and white cheap IBM computer.

And the only other computer we had was an Apple IIGS, which if you remember what an Apple
IIGS is, my God, you are, you're a real one, my friend.

So I...

We mailed in the manuscripts, we mailed in the floppy disk of the not word document file
to see if they could get anything from it.

We saw one of the earlier copies that they were going to publish and there was my story or
rather not much of it.

A lot of my pros got cut out, but they kept the interview part and they kept some of the
framing and they made it sound more exciting than it actually was.

But there was my face right there, Sam Kirk, going to be a published author.

But that's not the fun, exciting part of the story.

You see,

I liked writing.

liked reading.

I didn't think I was good at those things, but I liked those things.

And was kind of interesting to know that, you know, even in my worst moments when I was
kind of phoning it in, as they say, there was some kind of desire to have it published.

Now I'm not dumb.

I know why they published my story.

I was probably one of the only few kids talking in a

in a way about drugs that made parents happy.

Like, here's a kid talking about drug use and it's a good story and it's about staying
away from drugs.

That was a big propaganda item back then.

So I don't think that my writing was brought in because of my capabilities.

Again, if you ever look at the book, it's called Boys Know It All.

I show up there, my name is Sam Kirk on that publication.

barely any of my writings in the actual published story.

It's mostly the interview.

So take that for what it's worth.

But that's not the part of the story that I'm fixated on right now.

I'm just telling you that as background.

Because what ends up happening is we get a letter in the mail saying they're gonna do some
kind of big public presentation at my school for the two to three kids that won this

contest.

Now there was like dozens of kids that won the contest, but in my school, my elementary
school, three of us, or no, I'm sorry, not the school itself.

I believe it was, if I remember correctly, two kids from the school.

And then there was another kid who's from a neighboring school, but within the same
district, who was going to be doing this presentation at our school.

I got this letter and it said, you know, have something available to present for this
time, et cetera, and speak about this thing.

Now I'm saying I received the letter.

I'm going to be honest folks.

I don't remember receiving it.

My parents told me it came in the mail.

My parents told me that I just simply forgot about it.

but I didn't think about it.

I just was like, okay, whatever.

Then the day comes and we got a phone call that, hey, I'm late for my public speaking
presentation.

I was gonna do about the book.

This is a year later, by the way.

So I'm in fifth grade at this point.

And I show up late to the situation.

There was supposed to be like an early brunch with all the other speakers.

There was a teacher and I am panicking because I didn't prepare anything.

I had nothing to say.

I didn't know what to do.

And again, it became incredibly embarrassing for me because I guess I forgot.

didn't know what, I was a daydreamer once again.

I had nothing to bring.

I didn't know what to do, but I couldn't get out of the situation.

couldn't say I was sick.

I couldn't say that, sorry, I can't do this.

It was do or die.

And so I asked the two other speakers, I think it was, if they could go first and I could
go last, just to give me enough time to think about what I'm going to say.

before I say it.

Now they had visual aids, had like trifold posters, they had a poster of some kind.

The teachers were very nice and they gave us a copy of our manuscript to show like uh on a
projector screen.

So that was some kind of visual aid, but basically I had no visual aid.

And I'm thinking there, sitting in my chair, thinking about what I'm going to say.

What am I going to say to these kids, these folks?

And eventually I say, why don't I just tell the story of how it all happened.

Why don't I just tell the story about how literally I dropped the ball.

I didn't submit it on time.

My teacher got mad at me.

I went ahead and submitted it.

I get submitted.

Isn't that great?

And then speak about the fact that once I got submitted that we weren't done yet, they
wanted 20 to 30,000 words more from me plus an interview plus more things I wasn't done.

And isn't that just crazy that you win something and you still punished for it.

And I thought maybe I could tell that story.

And then at this point in time, I'm in fifth grade, I'm a pretty physical guy.

And I thought, you know what?

How can I open with like a bang?

Like how can I do something funny that gets everyone, everyone laughing?

And I thought, well, I could do like a little bit of a pratfall situation where I'm
falling onto the floor and crying like a baby.

Again, this is fifth grade stuff.

I'm thinking about this on the fly.

This is not the best way to do this, but that's all I got.

So eventually,

I'm rehearsing in my head, I'm going over the motions.

I don't even remember what the other speakers were talking about.

I wasn't paying a single attention to them.

I was just hyper fixating on how I could make this look and sound like I didn't just wing
it.

Suddenly they called to me and I walk up to the stage.

Now in the stage, there are hundreds of kids in this auditorium and parents and teachers
and they're all looking straight at me.

And

I'm so fortunate that I have kind of a do or die situation here because I couldn't get out
of it.

I couldn't fake like I was sick.

I thought about puking a few times.

All I could do is just try to make this work and the pain will go away, I thought, just
like everything else.

And so I started.

I told the story about how I basically was a delinquent and uh I was late for my
assignment.

And some people got some chuckles out of that.

Some people probably weren't happy about that.

Cause here's this, I'm going to curse right now.

Here's this motherfucker who didn't even take the assignment seriously and he got
submitted and other people tried and didn't get submitted.

And I talk about how months later I forgot about it.

I get called in, you get, you're going to get published.

I say it, I speak about that.

And then the anvil gets fallen on my head.

We're to need you to write even more 20 to 30,000 words plus an interview.

plus get your sources straight, make sure to have this documentation done by the summer,
which meant my entire summer was going to be ruined by having to do all of this work that

I did not want to do.

I wait a beat and then I pratfall to the ground, chest, bodying the floor, and I shake my
fists and I cry like a baby, like, wah, very dramatic-like.

And the entire room roars with laughter.

The entire room is just absolutely ecstatic about my performance, about what I said.

They thought it was engaging.

And then the rest was pretty easy.

I just spoke from the heart, talked about the rest of the pieces, talked about how much of
an honor it was to do this story, how great it was to interview these folks.

And I talked about how I'm here right now and I'm presenting to everyone.

And I forget how it ends, but it kind of didn't matter.

What did matter was that at the end of that presentation,

The students said I was hilarious in a way they'd never seen me before, because I was
usually a pretty quiet kid.

The teachers came up to me and said, wow, that was such an incredible, amazing
presentation.

How long did it take you to draft and practice and get that written out?

Because it's so funny and hilarious.

And I don't think I lied to them.

I think I told them the truth, which was this morning.

And they were even more impressed.

Parents came up to me, said the same thing.

And then I learned somewhere along the way that I have to do this presentation two more
times.

Cause you know, they couldn't put the entire school in one pre in one auditorium.

They had to like shift it in different schedules.

So I had to do it two more times like for like, and each time I got the timing of the
stories better.

Each time I got bigger and better laughs.

Each time my stomach hurt from having to do that one little pratfall that really hurt me
quite a bit.

And the whole thing ends.

And I remember

one of our teachers, Mr.

Weiss kind of coming to me and saying, was truly remarkable, Sam, have a real talent for
this.

And I remember the other speakers at the time, the kids, they were like, yeah, that was
kind of cool, whatever.

They weren't paying too much attention.

They thought it was whatever, whatever it was.

We never spoke again.

I got a check in the mail for, I think the first run of the publication.

And that was that.

But that was my first glimmer of understanding that, hey,

Because of a combination of my interests and my ability to work well in a very high
pressure situation with absolutely no fallback plan, that didn't go that bad.

I can speak in front of crowds.

Later on throughout my life, I would do plays for school, not because I was, you know, I
didn't have a proclivity for it, but I noticed that I was one of the few people that just

didn't have that much stage fright.

I'd already gone through a significant amount of stage fright in that early part of my
life, that one

harrowing story that could have gone awful.

And I'd gone through it.

And that's my story.

Because...

There was never a point where someone handed me a certificate and saying, congratulations,
your destiny is facilitating people and being a public speaker and captivating people's

audiences and speaking to people.

I never got that.

I never got that message.

Instead, I had an opportunity where I got to try something that really was well beyond
what I thought was my wheelhouse.

And I got to see people's reaction to what I had performed or done.

Yes, there was discomfort.

Yes, I was a nervous wreck.

I probably was running on nothing but adrenaline, but people were giving me the feedback
that they loved it.

And I quite liked being able to tell a story and make people laugh and using my comedic
timing in whatever way that I saw fit to kind of get people's reactions.

And it was that early story that told me that, hey, maybe this could be something.

Now,

The story would go on for many, many years later where I would do other things in my life
thinking, know, I'm not handsome enough.

I'm not tall enough.

I'm not educated enough.

I'm sure I can't really be a speaker of any kind.

You know, I can, I can use my speaking ability within functions of other companies and
other roles that I might do, but I can't make it a career.

And of course I am where I am now.

because I had many years of learning that that's actually not true.

But actually I could make that my career and it helps serve the community.

And also the reason I'm able to do it is because I found the entire process, as stressful
as it was, incredibly joyous.

I made mistakes, I talked too fast, still talk too fast, over explain things, but it
energizes me.

The fear never really goes away, but I know exactly what it is.

It's the funnel.

and kind of propeller to get things moving.

It's the discomfort to get me to a place where, well, I'm in a joyous kind of nirvana
whenever I get to do it.

And that's what really matters.

Because the things that we enjoy most under a certain amount of pressure and our community
gives us a signal, a positive feedback loop that, they like this, they respond to this,

give us more of that.

That's what leaves us clues.

takes us then to the work of Malcolm Gladwell and his work, The Outliers.

You've probably heard it before, right?

The 10,000 hours theory.

Spend 10,000 hours practicing, honing your craft in anything and you will become a master,
an expert in something.

Except not exactly.

uh The internet and culture has kind of codified it to mean that if you just grind forever
at anything, you will become a master at it of some capacity.

Here's the reality though.

It's quite a bit more nuanced than that.

Practice matters enormously.

And it's a part of what I love about my job is I get to practice, practice, practice and
refine and get better and better and better.

But people also have to have natural tendencies.

I call them preferences in my industry, things that you gravitate towards and interests
and likes.

We also need to keep in mind our physical traits, plus and minus on either side, general
temperament and what motivates us as a whole.

Because...

You can spend about 5,000 hours aligned with your strengths and that might flourish very
differently than someone spending 10,000 hours fighting uphill.

I mean, it's the same thing, right?

You can spend 10,000 hours bumping up one of your stats, strength, dexterity, perception,
all that stuff and get it one point up.

Or you can spend half that amount of time, 5,000 hours working on something you're already
pretty good at, let's say uh dexterity for 12 and bump it up two or three points up.

Right?

And this is where we need to keep in mind what Malcolm Gladwell and others have said.

Growth mindset doesn't ignore your hardware.

It asks, how do I use the hardware that I currently have?

And then we turn to the great Joseph Campbell.

Joseph Campbell is quoted in saying, follow your bliss.

My father, who's a listener of this podcast, will say he bestowed that to his children.

Make sure to always follow your bliss.

If you follow your bliss, you'll never be unhappy.

You'll be, you'll never need riches.

You'll be the happiest man alive or woman alive.

And you'll be following a path that you can say you're proud of.

All good things.

And I agree with 99.9 % of it.

But I would like to challenge that just a bit.

I like the idea.

It is great.

Here's the problem though.

I think again, like all things, modern culture has weaponized it.

Social media has weaponized it because we are not very good at nuance in social media age.

So we've simplified it because when we say follow your bliss, what people hear is quit
job, move to the woods, become a pottery person.

Step four, we don't know, but step five is profit.

Right?

That's what people hear.

That's not true though, because in reality, people need healthcare.

You need rent, you need food, you need safety, those bare essentials.

It's hard to discover purpose when survival is eating up all of your energy.

And that's a lesson I had to learn early on in my professional career.

I really thought I could just be, you know, follow your bliss guy.

And maybe I could have, but I didn't have the finances or the safety net in front of me to
allow me to do that.

Not really.

I had find a way to get those basic needs met for sure.

And so I made it a career of just focusing entirely on my career.

So I would have healthcare, I would have rent, I would have food and safety.

And then I found another truth, which is what Campbell was saying about following your
bliss.

the things that energize you deserve attention.

So when I was in this space of trying to make sure my health was taken care of, rent,
food, safety, all that other good stuff, well, all that took up so much of my energy, I

had no other energy left to spend on the things that I loved.

I kind of drifted through life for a little bit.

So the tragedy here isn't failing to follow your passion.

The tragedy is really never spending enough time with your passion to know what it could
become.

So I would encourage everyone listening on whether you're 50, 60, 40, 30, 20 years old.

Heck, maybe you're 15, I don't know.

And whatever way you have to to survive this world, geopolitically and otherwise, you have
to make sure that you afford yourself the space and time to have energy to spend on your

interests.

One of my greatest failings as a human being, all throughout my 20s, I spent a nothing but
career, money, being sure I had safety, all that other good stuff.

And then I said, if I get all this lined up, I will then have time to do what I love.

Well, here's the problem.

That's just not true because

then that career that you've hyper fixated on becomes your entire life.

And you don't even know how to focus on your other things you care about, your hobbies,
your wants, your interests.

You have to find space so you can focus on the basic essential needs while at the same
time affording time and effort to focus on the things that you love in whatever way you

can.

So here's where I come in.

Here's what I argue.

Nothing against Malcolm Gladwell, Joseph Campbell, Carol Dweck.

They're all much smarter than me.

taking all these learnings together.

I say this, I think one of the greatest acts of courage any human being can do is allowing
yourself to try things badly as early as you possibly can.

Try everything.

Try doing as many things as you can.

Why?

Well, you don't know what you're good at until you try it.

You might in your head believe you're good at X, Y, Z, but you might not be as good as you
might think.

Meanwhile, you try ABC and turns out you're pretty good at it.

You like it.

People respond well to it.

And you can see something flourishing there where you keep developing those skills and get
better and better and better and better.

Try dancing, try writing, try coaching.

Try organizing leadership, gaming, painting, teaching, comedy, woodworking, whatever ails
you, whatever you see available.

Try as many things as you possibly can.

Because what trying does is it teaches us not to say, can I do this?

But it also asks us, who am I?

If I'm the kind of person that enjoys this particular kind of activity, what might I be
walking away from?

You are not obligated to remain the person fear convinced you to become.

Every version of you started as a stranger.

Hey, you, listening right now to the Zero Dot podcast.

Do you have a burning question you would love for us to talk about here on this very
podcast in this webosphere of podcastery?

Come check us out at the Zero Dot podcast where at the bottom of that page, you can submit
your questions.

Any questions you have about life?

empathy, employment, leadership, mental health, relationships, and onwards.

We'd love to discuss here and give you our candid, very free, unsolicited, but in some
ways very solicited advice here from myself, Sam Kirk, John Merrick, as well as Daniel

Prattley.

And if you want, can also email us at questions at thezero.podcast.com.

Once again, if you put your name in, we'll highlight your name.

Otherwise you leave your name blank.

We will make it anonymous.

So go ahead and submit your questions and we'll

love to talk to you there.

Otherwise, let's see what else this guy has to say.

Because folks, can I just be honest with you for a moment?

I never wanted to be a public speaker.

I wanted to be a writer at one point.

I wanted to be...

I wanted to work for Marvel Comics.

Yeah, in the 90s when they weren't so hot as they are today with all their movies and now
they're owned by Disney.

They were a fledgling comic studio that just made some of my favorite stories ever and I
wanted to be a comic book artist.

And truth be told, I still find time to draw.

I draw for myself.

I draw for my own enjoyment.

And right or wrong, there was an individual in one of my earlier classes that

looked at my drawings, my very poor drawings and my poor use of anatomy and lighting and
all of that stuff, and said to me, you're never gonna be good at drawing if you aren't

good right now.

Now, as an adult, I can tell you that's all hogwash, that's all BS.

I can say though, there was a glimmer, a slight little positive truth in what they were
saying, which was there were a lot of other kids in the school that had a natural

proclivity towards it.

I had the interest towards it, but I didn't have anything else.

I had difficulty in understanding what I was seeing and translating it to the page.

Still do, by

So I was trying to find something that I would be good at that I enjoyed.

So I went down the writing pathway, went down that rabbit hole for a little bit until I
found out that I had a skill that not many people have, which is getting in front of

people and talking to

Now I'm gonna give you one extra secret tip here, because I'm telling you to try
everything, literally try everything.

And you might be really surprised by the results.

But I'm also asking you to do one more thing.

If there's one particular skill that I think everyone can work on, it doesn't matter what
you do for a living, it doesn't matter where you see yourself.

If there's just one thing you can try doing and refine it every single day for the rest of
your life, you will be incredibly surprised by what

benefits that yield to you in the other things you actually care about.

And that's, you guessed it, reading and writing.

bit before on the Zero Dot podcast about giving yourself time away from technology to read
a book for the sake of reading a book, allow the slowness in which the words reach your

eyes, create a painting in your mind of what you're seeing and hearing and feeling.

I want to take it a step further though.

regardless of where you are, who you are as a person.

If you can spend any amount of time, even if it's just five minutes a day, reading and
writing every single day, the benefits are demonstrable.

Because when we think about it, reading is how we receive someone else's information and
how it paints a picture in our minds.

And writing, it doesn't matter if it's fiction or nonfiction, writing is just an act of
clarifying your own thoughts.

Again, if you want to journal and just journal to yourself, that's fine.

If you want to write short stories, go for it.

If you want to write nonfiction, that's fine.

But writing in a place that the only purpose is just for the sake of writing, you're not
trying to impress anyone, just write every single day.

And I will say to you that you might be really surprised by the results.

I am as successful as I am in where I am right now because of my writing.

For those of you that don't know, I also do voice acting.

I do voice performances.

I've done some audio books.

I also do public speaking, I'm a leadership consultant, I'm on the executive side of
things as well as the frontline leadership side of things.

And I can tell you that all of those things have benefited from my daily practice of
writing every single day.

Even if it's just one sentence.

Writing is the way in which we clarify our own thoughts.

Writing is the way in which we get to put all the other skills and wants and desires into
context.

There's going to be times when people ask you a question, you won't be prepared how to
answer it.

But if you've been writing every single day, you'll have at least something to say,
something interesting to say at the very least.

And there's always a difference between people who don't spend time writing versus those
that do, just the way they talk, the way they behave, the way they consider and think

about things.

So yes, try everything.

Try every skill.

Try everything.

Go to an improv class.

Try a pottery class.

Try as many things as you can.

Get feedback from your community, what they like and dislike.

Get feedback from yourself, what you like about the process.

Because it is my belief as a leadership consultant and coach, that everyone has one secret
super special skill.

They just don't know it yet.

And they don't know how they can use that and market it towards something that would
benefit them and their community.

Because that's why I'm here.

even though I had that experience, that exposure as a fifth grader, I forgot about it,
lost track of it.

I had to hire a very expensive psychologist to do a kind of a scan of my brain and do an
evaluation of me to bring it back out that, you have this natural proclivity.

I'm like, yeah, I did.

it's pretty easy for me.

It's not too difficult.

And I like learning and getting better at it every single day.

And it helps a lot of people.

And then he pointed out to me, cause he was also a career counselor.

There's an entire division of business.

There's an entire market for people that want someone like you.

And that is what allowed me to do what I love.

Because prior to that, I thought I had to do whatever anyone else wanted me to do.

And I had to fit my skills and whatever cog they needed me to fit in.

Without that experience, I wouldn't be where I am today.

And I want to pass that on to as many people as I can.

Try everything.

If you can't think of trying everything else, just at least give yourself the practice of
writing and reading every single day, even in small micro doses.

And then,

whatever special skill you find you have that you really latch onto, you like, that you
admire, that you enjoy.

Obviously spend more time with that.

10,000 hours should be very easy to accomplish.

If you love the thing that you've latched onto, then find the market that would really
benefit from your skills because there is one.

And if there really isn't one, if you've done all your research and there's nothing, that
just means that you have the lovely opportunity of inventing that opportunity.

And you will be a

a progenitor in that space, a forerunner in that space for other people.

I want everyone to walk away with that.

Because I'm not special.

I mean, I'm special, right?

We're all special, but I'm not really that special.

I just have the knowledge of knowing who I am, knowing what I'm good at, knowing what I'm
not so good at, spending my effort and time and energy towards things I love, spending

equal amounts of time to the things that I like.

don't necessarily love it, but I like it, but it creates great value for other people and
give myself a well-balanced life in the process.

What I would hate for anyone to walk away from listening to our Zero Dot podcast is
believing that you just have to grit, grind, pound your fist against the sand, pound your

head against the wall over and over and over again to get what you want.

And that's the key word there, what you want.

Is it really what you want?

Is it really what you want?

Or is it what people are telling you you want or what you believe you should want?

Because I want you to spend as much time and effort and strife on the things that matter
to you.

Because hey, even though I'm a public speaker and I'm pretty good at it, guess what is
still hard.

There are skills I've had to learn in this space to be a better public speaker.

You'd be really surprised.

Little itty bitty things like not talking to the slides behind me.

That's where you

Kind of look back behind you and remind yourself what you're about to talk about.

Look at the slides.

That's a hard habit to kick, but I've been working on that.

Making sure you do deliberate pauses at specific moments to get people to lean in.

What is something you haven't tried yet?

Anything.

And if you're listening to this episode, I challenge you to go try that thing in whatever
way is possible.

What is something you haven't tried yet?

So to wrap things up, I don't think growth mindset asks, can I become anything?

I think it asks instead, what might become possible if I stop assuming I'm finished?

Maybe your purpose isn't hidden.

Maybe it's been waiting beneath fear this entire.

So try things, embarrass yourself, be bad, learn, pivot, become, because nobody arrives
fully formed, not even yours truly.

And the world may need the version of you that only exists if you're brave enough to
begin.

It's another episode of the Zero Dot Podcast, episode 30 in the books.

Who knows what episode 31 is gonna bring?

I'm your host, Sam Kirk, Daniel Pratley and John Merrick.

Thank you for tuning in.

The only way to find out what's happening next week is if you tune in to our podcast then
at thezerodotpodcast.com or all other places where podcasts are aired.

That's right, we are everywhere.

Until next time, stay on Team Human, make it the best you can be and we'll see you next
time.