The Changed Podcast Episode 47 Transcript - Josh Braun

5:33PM Sep 9, 2021

Speakers:

Aden Nepom

Josh Braun

Keywords:

people

change

listening

motivated

day

skill

point

phones

life

feel

josh

experiences

conversation

moment

dad

talking

called

practice

podcast

sales

Today, my guest is best known for teaching people how to sell without selling their soul. But there's more to him than that. He's a philosophical guy.... I'm excited to bring you Josh Braun. I'm Aden Nepom. This is the changed podcast.

Aden, thanks for having me on.

I'm excited that you're on my podcast. Thank you for being here.

You should be I'm kind of a big deal. I'm really, you know, it's I'm surprised that you were able to actually get me on your podcast of all the things I have to do today, which is, there's so many shows on Netflix. So I, I'm delighted to be on here. Thank you for inviting,

you know what, to your fans, you are kind of a big deal. And you do have fans? Thank you.

My mom is listening.

Yeah! those who know you, know you as a guy who helps people get better sales results without having to be gross about it. In fact, you really encourage people to just be human beings with each other, which I always have admired and respected. Do you fancy yourself a little bit interested in human behavior? Is that something that's interesting to you?

It is! It is. I study human behavior all the time for my professional life, which is to help people sell, but in ways that don't feel salesy or manipulative and gross. And I also study human behavior to help me in my personal relationships as well with my friends and with my wife.

So. So you know, the one thing that I find really interesting is that there's this sort of universally true thing about change, which is that we all go through it. And then there's the really individual response to that truth, which is some people really resist it. Some people try and get ahead of the curve by being like, I'm the I make all the changes, and then change can't chase me down, because I've already moved the furniture and change my life and then a different career. I'm curious what your relationship is, with this idea of change. What does that word mean to you when I say it?

Yeah, I think where we get into trouble is where we think that we can actually change other people. Right. So sometimes people spend a tremendous amount of time trying to change other people's minds. And the realization that I came to, when I started studying stoicism, several years ago, which is that you don't control other people. You don't control your revenue number, you don't control how people respond to your message. You don't respond, you don't control your quota. You don't control if people are going to hang up on you, you don't control if something's going to change, you only control what is in your nature to be able to controlled: what you say, what you want to do, how you conduct yourself, how you behave and your thoughts. When we start to change people's minds, we often are met with resistance because people don't like it when other people take away their freedom to choose you telling a teenager to stop smoking naturally start to smoke more, it's actually something called the backfire effect. So you can't actually motivate change, you can align with it, the only thing you can do is start to ask questions to understand if someone is motivated, and to what level or degree they are motivated to then see if you can create an opening that would invite them to care and be motivated to want to learn more.

How do you respond to change that shows up on your doorstep? Like, you know, it's sometimes you choose change for yourself, like you choose to change something? Going from couch to 5k, for example, is a change people choose to make but where are you on that spectrum? Do you do you get excited about making changes in your own experience? Or do you like things to stay sort of level,

I'll give you a couple of examples. So I think the only time people change is when they are not able to make progress anymore. So everything's going fine in your life. And then all of a sudden, something changes. Something comes on your doorstep as you said, or you're no longer to make the progress you want to make. You're doing 5K's and you're training a certain way. But now you're going into half distance or marathon reign running and the training that you were doing and the diet that you had, isn't causing you to be able to make the same progress before so you got to start changing some stuff. Gotta change how you train, you got to change what you eat, sometimes the changes things that you haven't considered before that can make your life more awesome. And I'll give you a couple of examples. Because it does relate to what we're talking about but also relates to a sales superpower. Um, you know, several years ago, I was in the mall with my wife before the COVID obviously and I did I did not need anything literally. I was just in the mall with her just trying to kill some time I didn't need to change, I didn't need anything. I was fine. And to just kill some time, I walked into a Fit to Run store not needing anything. And if the store associates said to me, 'What brings you in today?' I would have said nothing. If she said, 'Can I help you change into some other clothes with new sneakers?' I would have said, No, I'm good. If she said, 'Can I help you?' I would have said, No, I'm good. But she didn't say any of those things said, she looked down at my sneakers, she said, 'Are you a runner?' I said, Yes. She said, 'What distance?' I said, I'm training for a marathon. And she said, 'Have you ever had a running gait test?' And I said, What's that, and moments later, I'm literally on a treadmill in the store. She freezes the frame and she says, 'Look at your ankles, they're over pronated. I'm like oh yeah they are. She goes then, 'Did you know that if you run in sneakers that are not made for pronated feet, you can get injured on long distance runs? And if you'd like we could take a look at your sneakers to see if they're made for pronated feet.' And four minutes later, I'm spending 180 f-cking dollars on insoles and new sneakers. So that's a change. Because she shined a light on a terrible no good, very bad thing that was about to happen to me. And that caused me to question the status quo, what she kind of illuminated the cost of inaction. And so for me, all of a sudden, I was I was not able to make progress anymore. And I bought, and that's happened to me a ton of times, and that's a sales superpower. Because everyone you talk to doesn't want to make change. They just want to make progress. And your job, when with regards to sales, at least, is to highlight or eliminate the cost of inaction, to see if someone wants to do something about it. I would never try to change someone's mind. by convincing them, you know, what I was trying to introduce my wife to transcendental meditation, I didn't try to convince her. I started to expose some ideas to her to see if she was motivated. And I would say something like, you know, on a scale of one to ten, ten being you can't wait to start this tomorrow, one being you'd never want to do it again.... Like where are you just out of curiosity? She goes 'a six.' And I say, Well, why don't you pick a lower number? 'Well, I might want to do this, I might want to do that.' So these kinds of questions get to it's called motivational interviewing. It helps you understand if someone is motivated, and to what degree to see if you might be able to create an opening based on their reasons for change, not not your reasons for change.

Yeah, I think that that's interesting that you bring that up. I mean, definitely, when I think about how just being human with each other works, there's this weird assumption that what's important to me is going to be important to you, because it's important to me. But that rarely pans out. That doesn't mean that we might not have the same things that we find important. But your reasons for finding it important, if you do are probably going to be a little different than my little more nuanced than simply we both think that's important. So we're on the same page. I think it's a I think it's really interesting to try and, you know, to get to know what people are curious about, or how they're making their decisions. That's more powerful than me trying to like give you this is why you should think it's important based on my understanding of the world.

Yeah, I mean, sales people do this all the time, right, they have benefits of the product. And they think that because the product has benefits, it matters to the prospect. But to your point, like my grandma, God rest her soul, she had an awful toaster, like it was it sucked. It only made one slice of toast. It took forever. And toast was always light. And so I would come in with these new toasters Grandma look at this new toaster, two slices of bread, fast, new toaster digital user interface. And she's like, get that out of here, sit down and have your soup, I don't want, I don't want that because my grandma only wanted one slice of toast. She didn't want it fast. She only wanted it light. And so just because the toaster had benefits didn't matter, because my grandma didn't see them as benefits. So to your point, the benefits only matter, the change only matters, it matters to the person you're talking to.

But this isn't unique to sales, either. Like this is definitely you know, your realm of expertise is in sales. But that's not it's not limited to that people are selling each other, whether they call it sales or not. All of the time. You look at, you know, I've been doing these reason and outreach world workshops, which is really the same skill set from a different point of view. People coming into these conversations, trying to change minds, and getting frustrated when they don't get the results they want. Because like you say, you can't necessarily simply just walk in, present a bunch of facts and then expect for everyone's minds to change. I think it's super interesting. Like I read this great study on the study was done years ago on the relationship between facts and changing minds. And it turns out that once somebody whose mind is made up, presenting them with a bunch of data, like proof that they should change their mind does not in fact, change their mind. Very rarely does that have any influence on that outcome? And the minute I found that out, I did what most people do, which is I posted on social media. I was like, hey, look at this really cool study on how facts don't change minds. The data doesn't really work. This is in like 2017. I shared this. The very first comment was from somebody who was like, I don't think that's true.

Trying to change your mind, or trying.

Yeah, they're like, 'I don't think it's true. I think data is really effective in changing minds.' I was like, Oh, that's a Yeah, I totally see what you might say that that's interesting. Here's two more studies, right? And they're like, 'Yeah, no, that doesn't feel right.' And I think that really speaks to how our feelings, our relationship with the world around us, our experiences are so influential. And data is, if you're trying to make your mind up data might be interested, but interesting, but if you've already made your mind up, that data doesn't necessarily sway anybody.

We're kind of getting back to how people are wired, right. So there's something called rule of consistency, or incongruence, like so if I talk to someone who smokes. That's, you know, 45 or 50 years old, the person knows that smoking is bad for you, but they smoke, that creates an incongruence. So what they'll say is, plenty of people smoke and live to 95. What they'll say is, I only smoke once or twice a week, what they'll say is I only smoke when I'm stressed out and I eat healthy all the time. So people want to stay in homeostasis. They want to stay congruent with what they believe it feels bad when someone like you comes in and says something that's incongruent with how someone feels what their belief system is, creates an incongruence. So that's why your kinda, you're getting that reaction. The way around that is to not try to argue your point. Because when you're explaining, you're losing,

yeah,

the secret skill is to actually make the other person feel heard. That is a skill that a lot of people take for granted, listening, because we do it all the time. And it's a tragedy. Because if unless we realize that understanding and listening is a skill that in fact can be learned and mastered, like painting or playing an instrument, you lose the opportunity to get better at it. So people like Chris Voss, who I had on my podcast, the author of Never Split the Difference is a master at making people feel heard. So much so that he's able to using just his voice over the phone, free hostages that are being held captive, saying, 'I'll kill her unless you give me $80,000.' And literally two hours later, the hostage is being freed and they're not getting any money and now, and the bad guys going to jail. And he's using just his voice that what he's selling essentially is jail time. And he's using just his voice to be able to, and if you really analyze what he's doing and listen to the tapes, which I have, if you take his masterclass, you can actually hear the hostage tapes, and him doing a break, you know, kind of a breakdown of it is he's just making people feel understood. And that's a skill that is not inherently in your DNA, as people because we want to talk, we listen for our opportunity to talk. And when the other side doesn't feel heard. To your point it gets it gets combative.

Yeah, I mean, you can see this time and time again, if you hang out on social media at all, you could just see what your platform of choice doesn't really matter. It's there's plenty of evidence, no matter where you hang out on social media, where people really get into that place of trying to talk at each other until the other person says, Oh, you know what? I take it all back. You're, right? And, and then the number of times that happens to reinforce the behavior is so few and far between. and yet people still really try and get at it that way. I'm 100%. In agreement, you have to give people the gift of being heard if you want to make progress. And the other thing I think is really, really powerful is know why you're having that conversation if you don't have a, because sometimes it's like, I don't actually need to be having this conversation at all, do What's in it for for me to continue on down the path. It's like if you're trying to spark change in the world around you, if that's what people's goals are, which I gotta say, I don't know that that's a lot of people's actual goal based on evidence that is, I don't know, made up in my head, but it's like, it doesn't seem behaviorally like that's what I witness. What it seems like, is people just want to feel right, which is really different than sparking change in other people, but but it would feel great to have somebody be like, I've been changed that would feel good to the person talking to the, to the point. But if you can give people the gift of feeling heard, and more likely to listen down the road anyway.

Yep. I think people know that inherently. But I don't think people know how to do it. And they don't think

it takes practice. Yeah, it takes practice a lot of great stuff takes practice.

How do you like what's the skill? What's the skill? Like, what's the skill, like, how do you do that? Like, we could talk about that if you want to get into that. But like, first off, what how do you do that? How do you listen? Because there's techniques, and then how do you practice it? Or it becomes your default behavior two separate things like okay, I know I have to improve this, so this is a thing that can be improved. That's step one: is I'm even thinking about it. Thing number two is what does it mean to be better listeners tactically, like one of the tactics that I can learn? And then three, how do I practice them? Get my reps in, so that when I'm in these situations, I default to listening rather than overcoming and convincing,

right? I mean, it's any skill. Really. I think it's fascinating that somehow we put listening into this category that's different from riding a bike, like you, when you learn to ride a bike. It's really clunky and awkward at first. And it takes practice and reps, like you said. And eventually you get to the point where you get on a bike, and they say, it's just like riding a bike, you never really forget, once you've practiced, though, I do think your listening skills can atrophy if you don't keep up with the practice. But the assumption that we

remember, like,

go ahead,

no, I cut you off. So we're talking about listening, and I'm not even listening see how I.... So one of the things of listening is letting people have two or three seconds, like Aden does this better than I do, if you've been listening to this podcast, you'd let people have like two or three seconds after they're done talking. And then you talk, because because you're waiting for your turn, and I just was guilty of this just now, right? Because you're waiting for your turn to talk. Sometimes what you have a tendency to do is cut other people off. So what I just did, so technique here is to just have a little self restraint and just count to two or three. Everything's gonna be okay. And then you can talk. See, Aden just did it. See, I'm still talking and she hasn't come to see I'm keep I'm talking again.

Oh my god, I'm cutting you off right now, what are you talking about? There's, in recording, we're going to experience a little delay. So ironically, we can leave each other space, but we'd have to leave each other 10 seconds of space in order to actually give each other two seconds of space.

Yeah, I mean, to your point of being able to practice. I mean, I remember a few years ago, I did a guest lecture at a college in South Carolina. And these professors like they knew their domain, but a lot of them didn't know how to explain it in ways that we're motivating to learn more. Because turns out that knowing your domain, and then knowing how to teach it in a way that inspires people to care are completely different things. But unless you realize that explanation is a skill in and of itself, if you if you don't realize that you can improve it, it's the same thing with listening. Like we do it so much. We think we do it, like I know how to be a better listener more, but we don't really know it's a skill, like painting or playing the guitar, there's things, there's tactical things, there's mindset things, and then there's practice routines, and we don't get better at it.

You know, I.... For years, I've been helping people develop these skills through experiential learning live and workshop. And one of the interesting things that I'm currently facing in this current environment of the digital world, I can give people experiences online, but what people want is their free time. And I want them to have their free time. So it's so it's this, it's this weird, interesting thing where I like to really be changed, there's experiences too, that help people see that there's a different way than the, the sort of the default way. And to inherently understand the value of it. And what I what I would love to do is put out a product that's like here, just do this, watch this video, practice on your own time. And then and then be on my merry way. But what I want is it to actually work for people and to do that it feels like there needs to be experience in the room. To start that process of practice, I don't think I could have watched a video on how to ride a bike, and then been able to ride a bike, I think I needed somebody to hold my hand through that early process. And then I could practice it on my own and watch a video refresher if I wanted to, which I've never had to because it's riding a bike. So you know, there's also this interesting piece where the people's hunger for how they learn things is changing. And yet, it does seem to me that some things benefit from that human element.

Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, everyone just has a hunger to be heard. And so few people have that opportunity to feel heard, especially now in this day of checking our phones every two seconds. I mean, I can't tell you the amount of times I'm out with people. phones are on the table face up, I think Simon Sinek talks about this, which which kind of secretly sends this message of like, you're competing, obviously, there's emergencies that happen in your family. But most of the time when these phones buys they're not emergencies. They're like Google Alerts, or you're getting a message from Instagram. You know, back in the day, back in my day, back in my day, you know, he didn't know the answer to question you just kind of went to the next thing. Nowadays, it's like, we take out our phone and we have to Google that instead of going to the next thing and that kind of takes you out of this moment. There was a photographer in New York that did this really interesting picture. And you may have seen this, it was obviously pre pandemic, he took a picture of a crowded restaurant. And then he airbrushed out all the phones. And what you see is just people, with their families and kids and like, nobody's really connecting anymore as they used to. Um, so that's also another these phones are in a very addictive program. So and they kind of pull us, they vie for our attention. Obviously, these platforms make money, the more of our attention they get. And it does make it a little bit harder to be in the moment, because we feel a little antsy, like we're missing out on our, our phone, you know, I haven't checked it in five minutes. And I'm guilty of this too. I mean, like, I'm on LinkedIn a lot. And you know, LinkedIn, to me is really what they're selling is likes and comments, because it makes your ego feel good to get those things. And so you turn these notifications off, so that you don't feel the need to be able to check that stuff anymore. But that's an that's a form of addiction. For sure.

Yeah. I mean, so we're talking about change, in like about a thousand different ways, all wrapped up into one tiny conversation, which is: the changing world around us, the idea that people can or can't change people's minds, motivation behind change. But here's what I really want to know, Josh, is, if you think back into your own life's experiences, going all the way back to childhood, if you want to, if I were to ask you to identify a moment in your life, after which things noticeably changed for you. Are you able to identify a singular moment like that? Or do you get like thousands that come up, and then you have to pick one and it feels hard?

Yeah, I mean, I could talk about a couple. I mean, my dad when he was 49 years old. I noticed when I came home for lunch one day, his car was in the driveway, which it never was. He was an attorney in Boca. He worked crazy hours. Car was in the driveway like 11 o'clock on like a Wednesday, which is normal for me to be home because I was just out of college not really doing anything. But he was calling like, and I was like, I came in the house. And I look around, he's like in the room, I open the door. He's like sleeping. Like in the bed. I'm like, that's so weird, must be must be tired. And I go workout with him in the next day in the gym. And he's like complaining about a back problem. This goes on for like months, until finally he decides to go to see a doctor to make a very long story short, he ends up having testicular cancer, which is very rare. For someone his age, he ends up having to go to MD Anderson. I don't see him for three months, he was a little overweight. By the time I got to see him three or four months later after I'd been treated. And I walked into his room. I didn't recognize him at all. Like he was probably about 120 pounds, no hair, and I just lost it, forever changed me. Because it, what it made me realize pretty quickly is how, you know, you think you have this time. And you think it's really unlimited, especially when you're young. But you really don't I mean, if you see your mom, I don't know, once a year and she's 70. Maybe you could see her five or six times left, seven times left. And so it really taught me to reevaluate the things that I value. And ever since then I've been reprioritizing my time over money. I make an OK living. But I could make more if I wanted to. But there's a cost for that, for me at least. And so I choose to change in a way that I don't take on work even though it might be very lucrative financially, if I feel like it's going to trade it for hours that I could spend doing other things that I want to do to enjoy my life.

Thank you for sharing that story.

Yep. That was a tough one.

How... How is he now?

I lost him. So he he he died at 51 years old. So he was there at MD Anderson for about two years. And it came back and wanted to live on the beach for like the last five or six months of his life, which is what he did.

Yeah, life is unpredictable. I sometimes, when I think about how, how both short and long this life is, because it's just it's both you don't know though which which end of the straw you you draw. There's all these things that people do to sort of mitigate their chances that it's short. But But to your point prioritizing the present moment seems low on the list for a lot of us unless we really make a conscious effort.

Especially if you're young, right you kind of think like Oh, I got all this, all this time but you know, everyone everyone's motivated by different things. But for me at least like the the days now really matter. Ever since that moment, they've always mattered.

If that hadn't happened, if that had not been part of the equation, what path Do you think you would have headed down,

I would probably be one of those people working like 60-70 hours a week, I'd probably be one of these kind of hustlers, because that's kind of the path I was on before. But I saw, you know, I saw what happened with my dad, he was always waiting for the day, you know, always waiting for the day where he was going to be able to do this, or retire or save for this or go on this thing. And that day really never came. Really. I mean, he enjoyed his life a little bit, but he was always, you know, waiting for the one day. And, you know, there's, there's, to me, there's like, a, there's a tax on that. And there's a lot of people I know, that will make a lot of money, but they're in this like, hamster wheel of life, which maybe they like, I'm not judging it at all. But for me, I didn't want to live in that life at all. Um, so I limited down my expenses. I mean, if that didn't happen, I definitely would have bought a bigger house. And when you buy a bigger house, you get bigger cars, you get bigger furniture, and you got more debt, and you got to pay it off, and you got to make more money. So we we never moved, we paid off the house. Our maintenance dues on this house are $85 a year, we live in this association, middle class neighborhood, paid off the house. And so you limit your expenses. And you know, you can make a okay living and still divorce your time from your freedom. Like to me it's about freedom, not really about money, freedom to do what I want to do. And so I've created now assets, I sell things that are not my time, I sell information products, that divorced my, my money from my time, so people can buy these things without me having to have my time selling them. Whereas before my dad, I was consulting, I was training I was doing, you know, b2b sales. I was it was a very time intensive process. This got me to shift like, how can I get freedom? Like, how can I create assets that generate income, maybe not as much but enough, or I can cover my expenses and have a little extra, where I can have my freedom to do other things that I want to do, whether that's to write or to be on a podcast or to swim or to bike or to run or do whatever. So that's what I've done. When my dad passed away, it's got to be 15 years ago, maybe a little bit more. But to your point, if he didn't, I would have still been probably working at a corporate job on the treadmill.

If your dad was alive now. Like if you you could have one magical day. Just a little bit of borrowed extra time with Dad, what's something you would want to do with your dad now?

Yeah, I would, I would, I would say go on a bike ride on the beach. Hang out, have a little iced tea, maybe like a little sandwich, hang out on the pavilion, have a little conversation about whatever the topic of the day would be. He was a real smart, funny guy. But it said like, and I think maybe like I shouldn't say the day he wouldn't want to spend the whole day with me. He would probably want to spend like two or three hours though, he'd want to watch TV.

In his in his defense in this scenario, there's a lot of great TV to catch.

He had he'd have so many choices Not to mention that the pornography nowadays! Back in his day didn't have the option so he would definitely not want to spend time with me.

That's hilarious. I did not anticipate that answer. It's a great answer. I'm also really curious what kind of sandwich like he painted a beautiful picture and he said maybe a little sandwich and I just got to know what kind of sandwich

it would be like this is what exactly what it would this is exactly what it would be. Okay. We go down to a place called Bagel Works. Now he wouldn't want to go in this place. I would go in and I would get a toasted sesame bagel, turkey off the frame, sliced thin. Right? Not mustard because it's going to get a little messy. Little swiss cheese. One or two pieces of lettuce and some baked Lay's. Iced tea for him, bottle water, pack it in a bag, put in the backpack. Bam. Under the at the pavilion. That's it.

I love that. I love that so much. Like I could picture like a Norman Rockwell painting. Do you like do... Are you one of those people that you occasionally get to hang out with your dad in your dreams.

So it's interesting that you say that so there's definitely moments where he's more present. So I actually made a video of him when he was battling cancer at MD Anderson and I set it to a song called Comfortably Numb part of it to Pink Floyd song. Because it just went it just for some reason went with the footage and the whole vibe of it. I was in the video editing back then. And so every once in a while I'll be doing something and I know it's just coincidence probably like logically but every once in a while I'll be doing something and that song will come on. On. And I do kind of feel like he's trying to say, hey, pay attention a little bit more to this moment. Or sometimes someone will say something to me. And I'll respond in a way that he would have responded. Like, I'll say something, you know, kind of witty, for instance, you know, one of my friends was, is about to do a mushroom trip. You know he's going on into the psychedelic psilocybin mushrooms, tellin' me all about it. And it's just kind of a guided experience. And at some point, he's like, 'yes, I'm guided. And then she's waking me up and just kind of going through this thing.' And at some point, I'm like, 'and at what point do you put your pants back on is that like afterwards or before or like is that during like, are you like it the whole time?' Like, and that's something like my dad would say something like, he'd be funnier. But it's something like that, he would say something like that. So sometimes those moments, they kind of come to me, because I don't think the person's ever really gone. Like you kind of have him in your head a little bit in terms of what they would say, or their mannerisms. He used to do this thing where he would get tired of eating at the dinner table. And he would like, go like this and kind of push off like this, right? Like, and that would be my mom's cue, like he wants to leave. And so sometimes I do that, you know, I'll just go like this. And my wife looks at me like Oh, boy, like Josh wants to go, like, he would do this thing in the mall, there was this thing at the mall, this this mannequin that would go like this. Like it would kind of circle around. And so he would go like this. Just like stuff stupid stuff like that, that I that I do. Like when I saw the mannequin, I did that. It's like little things like that. They're like the least you that you at least expect it. And then you see the mannequin going around, you're like, Oh, I'm going to do that. And you just you feel a closeness at that moment.

I really appreciate you sharing these thoughts. And these memories, I.... It's cool, because not only does the person's memory live in, in your mannerisms, and in some of the things that you say, or think or feel. But when you share those stories, I think they live that, you know, your dad now lives a little bit in between us just for this moment. I agree. And I always think that's very cool. It's It's a neat thing that, I don't know, it's neat. You know, life goes on, life changes. And at the same time, if we don't let ourselves be human people with human experiences, connections, relationships, and depth, then we're missing out on the full experience -- the full ride

100%. 100% agree.

As we as we bring this conversation kind of to its natural, natural conclusion. What are what are your final thoughts here just about the nature of change, or what it means to be a human being? Or any really anything that's bubbling up for you? I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Yeah, I mean, I think it comes back to how we started it, which is a couple of core beliefs to go by, I think, with regards to change, and one of them is don't try to change other people. Don't try to control other people. And understand that people are motivated by their reasons and on their timeline, not yours. And only worry about things you can control and change the things you can control. And also just take it easy on yourself. Like, you know, everything's gonna be okay, regardless of what you choose. I've kind of learned this as I've gotten older, I've had some really lows, career and personally, and you think the world's ending, but really, it's, it's okay. Like, it's gonna be okay. In the end. Like, none of it really ends up mattering anyway, honestly, the deal, you lost the, whatever thing you're going through, like, within three or four months, five months, it's going to be better than it was, it's going to be not as bad. It's kind of like this wave up and down. And it all is okay. In the end, everything is going to be okay, in the end. You know, everything's gonna be okay. No matter what happens, no matter what you choose, you know just kind of take the pressure off yourself.

Thank you. Good reminders, really good reminders. Well, Josh, once again, I really appreciate you spending time with me having this conversation. I've enjoyed hearing your perspectives. I really love a lot of the philosophy that you've come to at this point in your life and career and choices. So thanks for sharing those.

pleasure talking to you as well. We should do this again soon.

In all these conversations about change that we've had on the show, the focus seems to mostly be on the individual on ourselves. But Josh raises a really good point here that when it comes to change, the word itself crops up most often in relation to other people. How do we change someone's mind? How do we change workplace behavior or dynamics, how we change the world? And to Josh's point, if what you want is to feel frustrated, unsuccessful and unsatisfied, then by all means keep trying to change everyone else around you. Or, and I must say I agree with Josh on this, perhaps you can focus instead on your own curiosity. In his sales coaching, Josh often says 'ditch the pitch, instead of trying to sell someone else, let them sell to themselves.' Because ultimately what people want is to feel heard and understood. In fact, here is something that you can try in your next conversation if you want to give that gift of having the person who you're conversing with, feel heard. Next time someone is talking to you. Listen, all the way. In fact you can wait a couple of seconds after they finish to make sure they're completely done. And while you are listening, give yourself this job. Listen for the underlying values or what you think that person cares about underneath what the words are that they're sharing with you. So for example, if somebody is ranting about how a dishwasher is loaded, perhaps they really care about order or doing a job well, or things working the way they're supposed to. But listen for that. And then you can check at the end of their pause. What you think is true by saying, you know, 'based on what I'm hearing you say sounds like you care about' and then fill in the blank and when you do that take a moment to notice how it shifts the communication that you are having.

I want to hear from you! Have thoughts feelings sarcastic remarks are a story to share based on listening to this episode? Help me keep the conversation going. Join the Facebook group www.facebook.com/groups/changehub.

I want to thank Josh Braun for his stories, thoughts and insights and I want to thank you for listening to and supporting the Change Podcast. Special thanks go to my family for their love, support and patience to all of the amazing Changed Podcast Patreon page members who I couldn't do this without Art of Change Skills for Life. And Patreon member producer Dr. Rick Kirschner. If you got something out of this conversation, please help us spread the word. It really does make a difference! I'm Aden Nepom. And I wish you the kind of experiences in life you're excited to tell stories about