Hello and welcome to the Swim Brief. I am Chris Desannis, and as previewed last week, or I guess now two weeks when you're gonna be listening to this, I am joined by Sherry Fisher. Sherry, how are you?
SPEAKER_01I'm great today.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, me too. Um you've been on this podcast actually several times, but there may be people who are listening to it for or listening to you for the first time. We got, you know, we're always picking up new listeners. So um, you know, I introduced you as uh my coach, somebody that um that really helped me um with my ADHD. And but give people an idea uh beyond the coach of Chris DeSantis who you are before we get into this conversation.
SPEAKER_01Well, I have um worked with people who have learning attention and executive function challenges for more than 40 years, and uh that crosses from you know little kids who just can't figure out how to manage in school and their parents to adults who have just recently um gotten a diagnosis and it explains many things, but it doesn't actually provide them with strategies for how to make things better. So um anybody who ha who falls into that very big range, those are the people who I have worked with over decades now, and um I find them to be really exciting because once you can start to peel back the layers of what gets in the way, these are the most creative, fun, interesting people anywhere. And when they get into their their lane where things are working, the sky's the limit, and it's really to say it's rewarding work, people say to me, such rewarding work you do, and I'm like, it really is. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean, we had a moment, so you were actually down by me. You you're you work up uh and live up in Massachusetts, although I guess you know in in 2024 you can work with people all over the world. Um, but you were down in in my neck of the woods for the annual gathering of uh masters of applied positive psychology people, and we managed to just meet up in uh the the downtown train station there in Philadelphia and just hang out um for a couple hours. And um yeah, it was that was maybe I guess that would have been three, four months after um we had stopped the the coaching. And even at that point, I felt like the stuff that we worked on had just continued to kind of like percolate, and there's just so many things, Sherry, that that we did together that had you that we had seeded, and it's like everything's just growing out of it. Um, and I I can gather that must be a pretty exciting process for you.
SPEAKER_01It is. And just to sort of put it into a little bit of perspective, that this weekend I'm having um brunch with a a former client who I haven't seen for 25 years. I worked with her when she was in middle school, and now she is uh a lot older than middle school. And uh we're gonna we're gonna eat like grown-ups, not just in the cafeteria.
SPEAKER_00Well, that I mean that echoes something that I have thought a lot about in the work that I do now. Um I think you know uh coaching in most instances really is kind of like a lifetime commitment. Like I'm I'm going out to Seattle in a few months, and among um I'm gonna go visit a friend, and then I'm gonna visit three people that I consider friends, but but also people that I coached. And um a lot of times I think coaching just ends up being uh the start of some kind of lifelong relationship. I think that's probably actually one of the most rewarding parts about coaching.
SPEAKER_01Agreed. Uh the number of people who I still know is enormous. And that is that's great because the people who will come and uh find me who don't what otherwise wouldn't know anything about me, they learn about me from a friend. And that's sort of like the best that kind of a referral is wonderful. The best advertising ever.
SPEAKER_00So let's get into some of the stuff that we did together because and I'm gonna spring a compliment on you, some flattery on you before we start. I have often said in the context of this podcast, yes, I'm gonna my goal is to make you blush right off the bat. But I've often said uh on this podcast that yeah, I got this master's in applied positive psychology. That's an education you have as well. Um and I felt like when I left it that the A was a big lie. In my opinion, when it comes to the A part, you are the master, Sherry. Like you are the applier of positive psychology. I I don't know anybody else who is more, I don't know, kind of like hands-on, not just like talking in a theoretical sense about what positive psychology can do. You're you're using it every day to to make a difference for people.
SPEAKER_01Well, thank you.
SPEAKER_00Uh I that that's I know that wasn't a question.
SPEAKER_01That's not a question, no. Thank you. So someone told me at MAP this this year when um that weekend that that um we saw each other in the train station, some someone called me the Swiss Army Knife of Positive Psychology.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um, that I had all the tools.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, you do. You do have all the tools. So I want to start um just by talking conceptually, because I think this is a really important piece uh of any coaching. Like you when you go into having somebody work with you, you have an expectation of what it's gonna be. Like I deal with this all the time. I I coach people and they have an idea of what it is I'm going to do for them. And um what I end up doing for them is almost always not what they think. And so um I want to talk about that a little bit, uh, how that manifests in in your coaching situations. And I can just speak from my own perspective. I had this idea coming into coaching with you that I, you know, like many um people who struggle with their executive function, I was leading this like really chaotic life, and that you were somehow going to um teach me uh, I guess like mechanisms for bringing order to my life. And and that was not it at all. Um that there's nothing there's nothing, I would say there's nothing mechanical about uh what you did. Is that is that common with people that you coach that that that that's an expectation that they have?
SPEAKER_01Absolutely, because what people think the problem is is not what the problem really is. People think the problem is an output problem. But the problem is not an output problem because you don't have something to output unless you're managing your input a whole lot better. And in order to manage your input better, you need to be able to recognize what's uh, you know, it's it's like your air traffic control system. You need to be able to recognize what's coming into a landing and decide whether you want to let it in or not.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so give me an give me like go, give me I uh I hear you on inputs and outputs.
SPEAKER_01Give me a more specific example of that so I can give you a lot, but uh do you want that inputs to be about imaginary people who are not using it?
SPEAKER_00No, no, please make them about me. I'm I'm an egomaniac. I want this podcast to be all about me.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_01Um for example, say that uh what you think the problem is is that you um you keep on dropping the ball on things and you don't follow up, or or you find that everything is interesting to you and you can't make any choices about what you're really gonna do and and follow up or follow through on.
SPEAKER_00So that was something I was having a hard time with.
SPEAKER_01Okay, right. So that sounds like you have a whole lot of problems going on, and we could label those problems, or we could figure out um when do those problems happen? We can identify are they um related to a certain time of day? Are they related to um underlying feelings that you have about those things? Have they been going on for a very long time? Is it something that you experienced uh in a multiplicity of contexts? Was it the case when you were back in middle school? Was it the case when you had uh uh a first job? Does it happen in relationships in your family? Does it happen in your extended family? Does it happen with friends, other people you know? You have to start figuring out where these things exist. And I have what I call the SPCA. That's his structure. So do you have structure in your life that will help? Or are those structures sort of missing, or are you dependent on other people to create those structures, or when you've been successful, is it because that structure has existed? So that would be the first part of that. Um I'll give you like the overview and then you can ask me whatever you want to ask me. Um the next one would be P would be process. Do you have processes that work for you? Lots of times people say, Oh, I set my alarm or I I had a notification, I slept through it, or I don't listen to those things anyway. So that that's not a process. So you need to figure out what is a process that you are um willing to consider, and then you have to practice a whole lot and figure out what part of it works, and figuring out what works is often not at all what people think it is either. They think the output, the final end product is that it worked when what makes it work is actually the part that matters.
SPEAKER_00Right.
SPEAKER_01And then C is for your your context. Um, in in uh a variety of different contexts, you may have the same problem, in which case one fix might actually solve many problems. And sometimes that's not the case at all. Sometimes it's unique to different contexts, in which case you have lots of beliefs underlying all that, and we have to poke away at those a little bit and see what you really believe. Sometimes the biggest belief of all seems to have nothing whatever to do with why you're not doing what you're doing, and that's actually the biggest thing of all. And once you know what's most important to you, everything else will have a place to live. So that because your context could be you know very broad or it could be very narrow. And then the last one would be action. So you have to take action steps, and most of the people I work with will talk about things that they ought to do all day long and do not do them. Or they'll do them once, and my favorite thing they all say to me is I already tried that, it doesn't work. I'm like, okay. How many times did you try that? Oh, I only needed to try it once, and that was plenty.
SPEAKER_00I'm just laughing because too, in my in my work, I mean, uh, I think I was coaching somebody just last week who was uh complaining about something that that we had worked on on together that they were gonna try, and they're sort of like they tried it, and the f on their first attempt, you know, uh they they were able to execute it for like 75% of the duration of whatever the thing they were trying was. And they were like, Well, but I wasn't able to do the last 25%. And I was like, I'm thinking in my mind, like, the first time you tried it, you you made it 75% of the way, you're it's incredible. That's the most incredible thing I've ever heard. And the person was like, yeah, so it doesn't work, obviously. And I'm like, ah, I just want to rip my hair out in that situation. But um, I'm sure I'm also laughing because I am sure that um I can't think of any specific examples right now, but I know that when we were coaching, I looked you straight in the face and went, Well, that doesn't work for me in a number of uh I can think of examples. Okay, give them, give them to me.
SPEAKER_01One of the so one of the examples uh had to do with uh using Google Calendar. You know, oh yeah putting your life all in one place instead of the little things that you that you already knew about, and you have it took you a long time, and actually a lot of this happened after we were done, where you were like, you know what, I need it all to be in one place. It works for me to be in one place. Wow, look at how well I could manage my time if, but but you have to come to that over time, and you had it took a long time for that.
SPEAKER_00I'm sure I'm sure you noticed because I invited you to come on this podcast, and then within hours you got an invite and a link for where to go, and you were like, What is this? You know, like this um you're you're you're absolutely right about that. Uh I've become it's it really interesting, I think, if I could speak to one of the outcomes um for me, and I but I do think it's important we get back to like the the the process to get there, but the outcomes that I got out of working from you were with you, sorry, is that um I my perception of myself was as like a pretty chaotic, like all over the place, disorganized person. I've actually become hyper-organized to the point where I'm I'm I'm scaring my uh type A like hyper-organized wife a little bit with how on top of my life I am, because it became like a snowball running running downhill at a certain point for me when I started figuring out where I'm going to um put stuff, then it was like then I then I then I became like so much more efficient. Um and yeah, I have um I have so much of my life, you know, in that calendar, like six to nine months now, almost, um planned out where I'm going to be, uh, when, what kind of stuff I'm I'm trying to do. Um another thing that I started doing with you uh that I that I just thought of is um I sit down at the beginning of every week before I start any work on anything in my own business, and I write down what I'm going to try to accomplish on each day of that week. And it's um it has brought so much peace to my life. I'm gonna get emotional talking about it because I used to just sort of like sit down and think, there's so much to do, right? And and just start spinning around and and like impulsively doing tasks until I was exhausted and dejected and thought I probably hadn't accomplished anything. Um, and I thought, I don't have time to write this down, there's too much to do, you know, like I don't have time to organize myself. And uh the gains that I've that I've gotten from that are pretty incredible.
SPEAKER_01Well, you know, I'd say that um another thing is people often think that the the problem that you have when you um are struggling with executive functions is that you need time management or you need productivity skills. And while you could practice those things, if you really have the the you know, my trifecta, you know, the learning attention executive function things, if you have something in there, it's really not going to be enough to just take on more tools. Because without a change in your self-perception, which is what you had, which comes from really digging a little bit deeper into things you believe, not just about yourself, but also what you believe about life life in general, you really won't know what you want to accomplish in the world. And you don't have to have like the perfect answer either. I think that's something else. People think that they'll have like their first meeting with me, they're gonna get that, you know, someone's I'm gonna like take the curtain back and they're gonna say, Oh, that's what it is. But it's actually a lot of work. It's yeah, it is uh it's not the same as therapy because it's uh the the degree to which you have to take lots and lots and lots of action and do a lot of your own self-reflection that's not necessarily therapeutic. That's a big part of it. So you have to be willing to put in the work. People will say, I just want to try it once. Okay. Um, you know, like we talk uh when we're working with uh with clients, we want to help them manage expectations. You and I have talked about this before. Managing expectations is really important because if you tell people just what the outcomes are going to be, they don't understand that their motivation is going to flag occasionally. They don't understand that they're going to not be instantly successful. It's not like uh getting, I don't know, even if you you had uh I don't know, any kind of an exercise program, you you wouldn't instantly be stronger or instantly be faster. So this is a a kind of it's its own kind of exercise.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And also, right? Yeah. I I would say yeah, it was uh my experience uh being coached by you, like it was it was a it built to a crescendo. I remember being in the beginning being like, yeah, uh well, when are we gonna get to the the the thing? Like what we're we're it seems like we're just setting up, you know, like when when are you gonna do the magic thing, right? Like, and I was constantly expecting, and then it it was only like months after the fact that I understood what I was doing, like two to three months before. Um, and I think it's a very good point, uh and and and one that uh of course uh I incorporate in my coaching as well, is that like I'm not interested generally in doing one-off uh coaching of people because like coaching takes time and and there is like you you you do have to have some action taken and some time to think and reconsider. Um I wanna I wanna cite another thing that uh we did together that has has I've been thinking about a lot since we did it. Um right towards the beginning, you had me take this incredibly frustrating three-hour battery of tests. And uh I say incredibly frustrating because um it was uh I think it's called the Highlands Ability Battery. Am I giving that the correct name? Uh so it was, you know, like probably, I don't know, something like 12 to 16, five to eight minute little activities, uh essentially, uh, that were trying to drill down on sort of one very specific type of thinking and uh measure your proclivity for it. And so, yeah, some of the stuff I was like, oh, this is fun. You know, I could just like, no problem, great. Some of the stuff I thought, like, oh my gosh, like, is what is wrong with me? Like, I cannot. The one that stuck with me more than anything that um maybe we're gonna get into a little bit, um, because the the test assigns you um percentiles essentially afterwards of you know how you do in comparison to other people. This is what I was fifth percentile in. That is 95% of people um that have taken it, you know, they're they're better than me at uh this particular activity. And it was, it showed you a picture with some items on it, right? And then you got to look at it for like 20 seconds, and it took the picture away, and then it showed you a new picture, and it said, you know, we've moved some items, um, we've added some items, we've taken some items away. Can you like describe, you know, as much of that process can you describe? And I would just sit there and go, I don't remember at all what the old image looked like. Like, no recollection, so couldn't tell you what's been subtracted, um what's been added, what anything. And that's obviously why I got down into the fifth percentile. But but here's where I'm headed with this story is yes, it was incredibly frustrating, but um, and I'm I'm not gonna spoil the answer because I actually want you to you to get into it. This turned out to be a really like hopeful exercise for me. Can you can you can you just like for the audience just take a stab at how how you think it ended up being something that like actually built a lot of optimism for me finding out something like that?
SPEAKER_01Well, that's interesting. Um, your your recollections of of taking the um the battery. So it was like over three hours. It's a lot of little tiny things. It's timed, which is really important. So it's looking at what you can do under the press of time, and it compares you to other people who can do that thing faster or slower or more accurately, depending on what the subtest is. There are 19 of them, which is why it's tiring. And uh, but the idea is just the the way um you take it is how can we look at who you are at your at your most automatic self, and then um which of those things about your most automatic self, maybe you are underusing those things, and we could really like capture the things about you that are the the you know the strongest about you. And also, it doesn't really matter who you are compared to other people as much as. What your own results look like comparing you to yourself. So for example, you might be somebody who does everything very, very slowly and all of your scores look low compared to other people. But if we figure out like what your mean scores are and we look at combinations of those subtests, we come up with new things about you. So that's what we did is in the in the um the review of your results. So it does not matter that you had a single subtest where you had at the fifth percentile. So what do you want to do if you have trouble remembering things? Um are you gonna get better if you work super, super hard? Maybe a little bit better. But what if you don't need to always be remembering every little visual detail of things? What if there is a technology that will help you with that? Or what if it turns out in your um actual work that you do when you when you coach people? What if you don't even need that really?
SPEAKER_00Well, so that's that you got to it there right at the end. That's the crazy thing, Sherry. Taking that test made me realize, I mean, so I'm I'm a swim coach and I I don't actually coach that many people anymore in how they swim. Um it's actually one of the hardest things for me to explain to people now because I say I do private coaching and they go, from your house, but like so people are filming themselves live at the pool. I go, no, I'm mostly talking to people about the thoughts that they have around their swimming at this point. Um but I, you know, I had a long career as a as somebody who watched people swim and then um was meant, part of my job was I was meant to give them feedback based on my recollection of how I saw them swim. And I realized, Sherry, by the time that I'm talking to somebody, I don't remember what their swimming looked like. And yet I know that I'm good at helping people improve the way that they move. So taking the test actually made me realize that I had a process where I used other competencies that I had to get to that. And among them was um from the second that I watched somebody and thought ahead, like, oh, I'm gonna talk to this person about how they are swimming and what I think um, you know, give them valuable feedback, translate that image always into words. And the words were accurate to what I had what I had seen. So by the time I'm talking to them, no, I don't remember what it looked like at all, but I had still have valuable information to give them off of what I observed. And I think realizing that the reason why I built so much uh optimism in me is it reinforced that, you know, and I notice this in elite athletes all the time. If you watch them, they have tons of flaws. The best athletes in the entire world, they have tons of flaws, they're not perfect. They have many things which any elementary coach could point out and go, well, they're not actually doing this very well, they're not doing that very well, they're not doing this very well, and yet they perform amazingly. Um and I think it's because, again, as we all know, nobody's perfect, and you find a way to compensate with your own strengths for areas where maybe you're not as strong as everybody else. Um and I guess it leads me back to a previous point that you made that I really want to hammer home in relation to these two things, which is you talked about like a lot of people come to you with a problem focus. And I've often said that part of understanding positive psychology is we're not really problem solvers. We are opportunity finders.
SPEAKER_01Yes.
SPEAKER_00We are we are we're we're opportunity-minded, we're not here to like fix stuff. That is actually a foundational idea of positive psychology, right? It's not the psychology of what is wrong with people and how do we fix them. It is the psychology of what is right with people. And you know, what what can we do with those opportunities? And I see that in in this example and and and in the stuff you've been talking about so far.
SPEAKER_01Well, it's the dis the ability to be able to discover opportunities, though, which is uh magic, right? So when you are thinking about um like you could people take the the via signature strengths uh survey, for example, and and people who don't come from the world of positive psychology instantly go to the bottom of the list to see what's wrong with them. Yeah, uh forgiveness is my bottom strength, you know. That's why why I I just can't, you know, I I can't ever get back together with so-and-so because I can't forgive them for what they did to me. Okay, well, that might be one thing, but that's not really looking to see what so what do we have to work with here? So that really is far more important. So in in the case uh for you, if we if we look at the example of what you weren't doing, you weren't remembering all of the the uh visual details about someone swimming, but you had already created a story in your head that made it possible to have a dialogue with somebody about their swimming, that person is going to be able to drop into how they feel about themselves as a swimmer, and they're gonna remember what it felt like. So you were able to talk to them about their story, they're able to internalize what it feels like, you can dialogue with them, and it also means you can have communication with them, whereas looking at a video of them and them looking at a video and you pointing at things. So I'm thinking of you know stuff that you see you know when you're uh watching you know like sport videos or whatever, and that someone's pointing out what's going wrong, or you uh they have um software that will track what people are doing, exactly what movement wow.
SPEAKER_00The biomechanics, yes.
SPEAKER_01I've seen that that's kind of overwhelming and might not really help somebody tell themselves a new story. So ultimately, like in your work, you do help people tell new stories, even just little bits of things that change the way they are thinking when they get back in the water. That's super valuable. But the opportunity um finding is that's a gift. That's not just something that you know everybody can find for somebody else.
SPEAKER_00Well, I I I've described that, I think there's a paradox with uh problem solving, and I I observe this in a lot of the people that I end up coaching, right? I mean, we have all sorts of um biases, right? Biases like when especially um when a belief takes uh root in our mind or a collection of beliefs, right? They can they can form biases in all sorts of different ways. And I think that a lot of, especially like, I don't know, you say high achieving people, um, end up with a problem solving bias. And you know, they they they start off and they are good at problem solving, okay? But if you are good at problem solving and you perceive that it is it is a like your story you're telling yourself is like what's something that's really good about me is that I'm a great problem solver. Well, your your perception is going to give you more problems to solve and eventually um overwhelm your like you'll have too many problems, and so even though you become this highly capable person, you your perception is there's so many problems and I can't solve all of them.
SPEAKER_01Yes, and you um that's that's part of it. And then the other thing is when you develop the problem uh solving bias, you also look for um for ways of blaming things that are outside of your control when what you really need is to be able to decide what agency do you have so that you can solve the problems you need to solve. So, in in your case, for example, there were so many reasons, biases, whatever you want to call them. There were so many of those where you were blaming things that weren't actually the problem. But if you believe that something is the problem, that is. You know, hands down, that's your problem until you can say, Oh, you know what, that's not really the problem.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean, yeah, and it it becomes self-perpetuating, right? Whereas um if you can actually develop as a skill um a and you'll be weak at it, nobody I think most people are um natural sort of problem solvers and not natural opportunity uh observers. And uh so it takes a lot of work to develop a bias towards noticing opportunities. Um, but when you shift towards that, uh it instead of it turning into a situation where there's like, oh, there's so many problems and I can't solve them, it's more like, oh man, there's so many opportunities, and I guess I've got to decide which one of them I want to try and do and which one of them I have to say no to.
SPEAKER_01Um Yeah, see, my whiteboard over there, those are my opportunities.
SPEAKER_00Those are yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_01Little post-it notes stuck on there, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Well, so that that whiteboard is a perfect transition to another thing that I wanted to talk about and a key insight from what we were doing together. Um, from the very beginning, I think uh you influenced me to, and I find no better words to say this, but you influenced me to find containers for my thoughts. And um the amount of of thoughts that I have gotten uh out of out of my head and into the world in some shape or form, I want to say the volume uh from from before we worked together to now, it might be like ten times the amount of stuff that just I I produce in some shape or form. Um and I had no idea that that would help me in any way. And it's been incredibly helpful. So to talk to me a little bit about where that comes from in your in your work.
SPEAKER_01So here's what I have to say about containers for thoughts. When you are a person who is easily distracted, even by your own thoughts, and where you are um generating so many. So, for instance, your idea productivity in the Highlands ability battery was very high, I I believe. So you're constantly churning things. But you have the um, if you have that as part of how you are neurodevelopmentally, and those ideas are constantly being lost, you feel unproductive, and you also um start to feel sad also because something that is that that might be a really great idea that you had yesterday is now lost. You know, we often talk about shower thoughts, but you know, it's not like you have a way of recording those things, you know, when the water's running. And just as an aside for um for for gifts this uh holiday season, I gave people waterproof lined paper, and it comes with a waterproof pen and a little suction cup thing, you stick it right on the wall in the shower, and the things are called shower thoughts anyway. Great idea.
SPEAKER_00You literally gave people something to record shower thoughts. Incredible. Oh my god. Yeah, yes.
SPEAKER_01So um when you the the containers for your thoughts um rely on something else which is another strength of yours, which is abstract verbal reasoning. So since I know that that's a strength of yours, and the challenge is that you have more ideas than you have um time to do something with them, when you start putting those into buckets, so they start living someplace. It's like you know, uh putting all of the short-sleeved shirts together and putting all of the socks together and all of the shoes together. So you could look around your house because you happen to have a very organized spouse, and you could see all of the ways that structure is built in. So all those containers are structures for your very wonderful ideas. And once you're not losing those ideas anymore, then you don't have, you know, not like that there's anything wrong with Swiss cheese, but like it's not like you have a Swiss cheese full of holes. Instead, you have like a nice smooth cheddar, you know, and it everything seems to all belong together.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. It's kind of, I mean, it's similar to, you know, uh the the the step of writing down all the stuff that I um intend to accomplish over the the week. I mean, if I didn't have that stuff right written down, it would sort of swiss cheese through, and I wouldn't have my perception of what I have done would be completely different from what I actually accomplished. Um and when I read people sometimes like the list of stuff that I did in a given day, that they're like, that's incredible. Like, and you must have worked, and I and I go, yeah, and it didn't take me that long. Right? Um because it's it it's it's very easy when very easy. It's when you when you set up the right process, right? It is it is a lot easier to do things um than when you have, as you say, like when you talked about the process stuff, and I love the way you framed it because I I find myself asking people all the time, well, how's that working for you? You know, and that's like my my uh my process question, because people will be like, Well, I do it this way, and I think, how's that working for you? And I think not not writing down what I was going to do, how is that working for me? Not very good. Keeping um most of the stuff that the ideas that I was generating just like in my own mind and not like spoken out loud to somebody or written down somewhere or you know, any any kind of way put in any type of container. How was that working for me? You're right. It was making me incredibly sad because uh inevitably at some point I would remember for a fleeting moment about the thing that I had forgotten about for a long time, and I go, oh, missed opportunity. You know? But once I've found a place for it, I go, it's there when I need it. Right?
SPEAKER_01Well, what do you yes, and one of the other important things about that is that you you would sort of lost touch with what purpose uh you were bringing to your work. Like why were you doing any of the work that you were doing? And um especially when you're a self-employed person, you often think, gee, I should just go get a real job. But what if you're not a real job person? Like, you know, you are not a real job person.
SPEAKER_00Um That's what that's very clear. But anybody who's thinking about hiring me for a real job, just don't listen to that part of the podcast, you know, in case maybe down the line I want a real job again. But but yes, you're right. I'm not a real job person.
SPEAKER_01Well, when I say that though, I it's it's because your the degree to which you feel um that you and the work are kind of merged, your your purpose in that way is really important. And revealing that to yourself was a very important part of you being coached. The other thing is having a sense that when you do your work, that that that work matters to the people who you work with. So I can remember when you you had like a uh an aha moment about who you most wanted to be working with, and then that immediately you wanted to start um being you know future-oriented, much more planful to see that that could work. You figured out who do I need to talk to to make this happen? What could this look like? When um would I need to do the preliminary things? When would I have my first meetings? When might it start generating income? Uh is it even realistic that I could get this off the ground? Will my family starve before this happens?
SPEAKER_00Like that level of um I became hyper-detailed all of a sudden. Right. I I thought I wasn't a detail-oriented person, and then all of a sudden I was the most detail-oriented version of myself in planning that. You're absolutely right.
SPEAKER_01Right. But I remember that as one of your breakthrough times, and that when you when you talked about that project, you also talked about like your whole like back to when you were um a college swimmer and what it um the people who you worked with along the way who mattered to you as either as your mentors or your teammates, and how you wanted to be able to take the best of the things that you'd learned, opportunities, the best things you learned, and you wanted to bring that into the next things that you were going to do. So sometimes what happens is we forget that the journey that we're on, um, lots of times people will say, Oh, well, that's behind me. Well, no. The parts of it that were good you'll you can bring with you. So that was another thing that you learned how to do, I think.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and I I mean, so I I teased before we recorded this podcast, and you you referenced it, so I'm gonna bring it back here now. You know, that we we have uh I have this, I'm looking as we're recording this podcast at the 32 pages of notes that you produced, which um anybody who's being coached by me, uh don't don't get jealous. Everybody works to their own strengths. Sherry just happens to be the type of person that uh we weren't in class together because you were in the original map class and I was in the fourth one. But uh Sherry is the type of person, if you were in class with her, she's got the notes you want to study off of. Like she's she's she's playing to her strengths. Um she's an incredible note taker. But at the top, um, and this one of the first, I think it in one of the first couple times we worked together, you asked me this question. You said, you know, you're married, you got uh two wonderfully delicious children, um and I want you to picture the day that uh you drop your youngest uh Jacob off at college. And what what do you want in your life on that day? Like w where do you want to be? Who do you want to be when you got there? Um and so I have written down at the top of every page on here that I want to have a deep connected relationship with Kate, my wife, who's coming on the podcast eventually. That's another thing people can look forward to listening to, and our kids for the rest of our lives. And that's something that's another one of these things, Sherry, that you like you, you and I seeded that I don't think I've I think I've I've realized more of the potential of, but I still don't think I've still even realized the full potential of what that was. Because you talk earlier about um shifting the storytelling you have of yourself and um uh shifting your self-perception, your thoughts, which is which is what we do. Um and uh originally the move that I made uh to coaching, and I I've talked about this on the podcast, probably in this way, um, but I'll I'll talk about the the the way that I've changed that story over time. Um I mean I got fired from my coaching job in Denmark. Um I was like a rocket ship of uh coaching. I looking back, I can't believe that I got a job at Georgia Tech when I was 25, and I can't believe I got uh the head coaching job of that team in Denmark, and I was a national junior coach. Um and and then I got fired. And um part of it was too that I was very dissatisfied uh with the work even before I got fired, um because I could see that what I was doing professionally, it was affecting my relationship with my wife, and it was affecting um my relationship with my then you know one and a half-year-old uh daughter, Olivia. And but the story that I told myself at that time was that I had to make the shift because it was hurting those things. And the story that I tell myself now is that I want to do this because it's going to it's leading to the place where I want to be. And that is a big deal.
SPEAKER_01Say more about that, because I think that that is flipping that script is huge.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean now you now you You've done your thing and you've turned now you're you're you're I love it when people turn it around to interview me. Um so I first off, just on a conceptual level, I mean I say to people all the time, um, and I'll see this in the the the sport of swimming, somebody will be really overwrought when it comes to performance time. And I just spoke to a coach about this last week, and the coach's advice was them like you gotta just you gotta have fun. You gotta have fun, right? That the if you have fun, like you know, you won't you won't be so overwhelmed in this situation. Well, it I I got news for everybody. It's pretty much impossible to enjoy doing something when you think you have to do it. Just imagine all the stuff in your life that you have to do. And I I double dog dare you to go, yeah, you know what? I just meet that thing that I think that I have to do with joy every day, because it's just so amazing to have to do it. Okay? It's it's um it's it's not how it works. Um you, you know, it's it's motivationally to get yourself to do something that you have to do, um I think usually involves some form of self-intimidation, self um I don't know of a better term than maybe like self-bullying, like do you have to do this or else. And you get into like a very, very dark, like primal survival instinct place that um no none of us were designed to use chronically. It's just not. Not it's not a not a system we were supposed to engage for eight hours a day, um, you know, five days a week, uh, because it it was meant for acute situations to save your life. Um and and so I'm not sure if I'm really answering your question. I think I'm speaking very theoretically about it, and not at all about how I changed it, but maybe you can ask me another question and then I'll I'll figure out how I did that piece of it.
SPEAKER_01Um well, while you were talking about this, I was thinking that you know um motivation is a tricky thing because it's made up of some of several things that are not motivation as a general concept. We think that motivation means do it, I want to do it or I don't want to do it. And people will come to me and say, Oh, I just lack the motivation to do X, Y, and Z. No, that's not it. If you uh are not feeling motivation in a very general sense, it is probably because of several different things. One of those things may be that you feel that the skills that are required to do whatever that that thing is, um, that you lack them or that you're not good enough, or you're never going to be good enough. And that could be made up of so many other layers of things. I'm never going to be good enough, you know, I wasn't born into the world good enough, you know, fixed mindset, things like that. Um, but also maybe you just haven't learned something yet. And if you don't think about it that way, that sort of will stop you in your tracks right there. The other, the second part would be choices. Sometimes we don't really feel that we have the choice to do the things that would help us uh do better and feel better, and lacking choices and just falling back into what you were describing just a few minutes ago, which is you know just bullying yourself to do it, you know, if you don't do this, or or or setting up all kinds of like fear scenarios, you know, uh, or catastrophizing, if I don't do this, all these other bad things are gonna happen. And then the last of those things is that you're not feeling self-directed, you're feeling like everything is coming from something external to you, and you there's nothing in it that you can direct on your own behalf. So maybe it doesn't feel purposeful to you, maybe you don't feel like you matter where you are. So whatever value that you you on some level believe you want to bring, that you have to bring into the work is not it's not possible on whatever level could all be in your, you know, how you you perceive it, or it could be very real. Sometimes you just can't bring like I've been fired too. Um things I wanted to do. Like I I um I had a one-year position. Um, I had two of these at different times in my career. Uh, one of them um I had um a classroom of second, third, and fourth grade kids who had a variety of you name it kinds of uh learning challenges. And some of them had no reading skills, and some of them had fabulous reading skills, and some of them had no math skills, and some of them had amazing math skills, and some of them had no social skills, some of them had amazing social skills that was all over the map. And I was supposed to create a cohesive classroom out of this. So I went to the the head of the school and I said, here's the deal. It is you've told all the parents who have paid their tuition that you're going to give them these outcomes, and these outcomes are not possible. Because if it were possible, you're looking at me and I can teach all of these kids all the things, but we're not going to get to where you've told the parents things are going to go. And the woman said to me, Do you know who you're talking to? I said, Yes, you're the head of the school. Very literal answer, right?
SPEAKER_00By the way, anytime I just want to inter interject, anytime you have to say like some version of, Do you know who I am? I think you've lost. But anyway.
SPEAKER_01Right. Well, but so I I ended up staying in this place um till the end of the school year. Um, I was able to hire an assistant, and I was able to hire a person who came in like uh a few days, you know, for very, very part-time. And those parents followed me when I left. So it it was not, I wasn't wrong, right? So I didn't know that would that would happen. I made all kinds of miracles happen in that classroom, and I taught other people, you know, the other adults, how to do that. But at the end, when it was time for contracts and I was fired, I was so relieved because I thought I was gonna have to come back and and fight that fight all over again. Instead, I got like a whole bunch of people who wanted to come into my private practice and um because they saw the value. So this also happens when it to almost anybody who is like mismatched for the job that they have, maybe not because they're not good at doing the job, although it may look like that, you know, other people on the inside. You know, that you you you can have the feeling that you're you are um you're called to do important good work and yet feel that you can't get past something, some barrier. The barriers are sometimes your thoughts and sometimes are other people's thoughts. And being able to know the difference is super important because otherwise it's really easy to beat up on yourself.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Or to to miss the opportunities that are there.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Because I wasn't really called to be teaching uh, you know, elementary school. That kind of wasn't my gig. But um but I loved those kids and I didn't want them to suffer. So what did I learn about myself? I learned I did not want to have a job where anything I did was attached to other people's suffering. That I thought that was unethical. So I but then I made the big leap though that the this is why the woman said to me, Do you know who you're talking to? Because I thought she was being unethical and I called her out and she was my boss and she wasn't having it. But she she ended up being fired herself like the next year. Um, you know, at the end of the day, you you don't have to be so attached to all these things. Something else that's that's meant to work out better. Um it's not gonna happen all by itself. You're going to need to do things, which is what you learned. You'll need to do things, but you also need to feel things and you need to learn things. It's not enough. There's not no perfect test that's gonna say how you should be in the world. There's no perfect test that's gonna say you need to have this exact job. Yeah, especially if you're an entrepreneur.
SPEAKER_00So a couple a couple I have a better answer to your question now. I think one of the things that this helped me to realize and why what I do now works so well for me. Um you and I have talked a bit about how uh um sometimes when I think of myself um my mind a bit athletically, like I'm I I'm a I'm a sprinter. I I like to I like to um attack something and put absolutely all of my attention and focus into it and like make some make the maximal amount of difference in the minimal amount of time. Um a lot of coaching, just the way people have set it up, coaching on sports teams, it is a grind. It is a 55 to 60 hour a week grind. If you try to grind and do what I just said, you will be miserable. I mean, like you will be absolutely miserable. And the the wonderful part of what I get to do now, I was talking to um a new team I'm gonna be working with, the the head coach there, and uh he started using a baseball analogy. Like, I haven't watched baseball in 15 years, but I still sort of remember. And he's like, Listen, I've thrown eight really good innings, but I need a closer. And I'm like, I'm your man, I'm the closer, right? Like, bring me in for the ninth inning, I'm gonna come in throwing fireballs, and then I'm back out of the situation. Um and but but but to get back to the the shift from had to to want to, I mean, and I'll I'll probably bring this up when I bring uh Kate on the podcast. I mean, I was coming home from that job in Denmark, and I could tell that my wife, the the love of my life, that she was really upset. And she was upset for two reasons. I mean, she was both upset at how much I wasn't around, but she also could tell much better than I could how miserable I was doing what I was doing, and she didn't like seeing that, right? Um, and I think I told myself that she made me stop doing that as a job, but she didn't. There was never a conversation where she sat down and she said, either you stop coaching and going to these things, or or you know, or else. Never. Never. She just didn't, she just was upset. And um and I reacted to that. So, you know, getting to the part where I understood um and actually felt good about that reaction. Like it is a good reaction, it is good to care about how your partner feels, and um that's something I like about myself. That's the person I want to be. Um what it allowed me to do was all of a sudden, many things that I was not motivated to do, and I think a lot of people who with ADHD they'll just go, like, well, some stuff it's so easy for me to do, and some stuff it's like it's just so impossible. Well, I've been able to take a lot of tasks that I previously would, you know, um spin around the cul-de-sac on endlessly, and actually build a cognitive link to go, you know, actually, you want to do this because this is what leads to what you want. And then it's not that hard. Then when you can build that, and it's not as easy as I just made it sound it requires a lot of work, but it makes it infinitely easier to motivate yourself to do those things.
SPEAKER_01Right. So when you self-direct your motivation because it's attached to something else that's not being imposed upon you, it's it's coming from inside, you know, intrinsic motivation, not extrinsic motivation. There are lots of ways of looking at what um makes us be motivated, but uh the the shortest um way to burning out is to do it for somebody else. So in a relationship like this, you're not doing good things um for just for Kate's benefit, it's for the relational benefit, and that's that's the most powerful thing that you can do. It's great for your well-being, you know, your happiness, the well-being of your kids. Um, and it turns out that it's also great for the well-being of your business.
SPEAKER_00Yes. Yes, absolutely. Um well, I think that's that's a good stopping point for uh for this podcast. Uh it's been amazing having you on here, Sherry. Um, I I was really excited to do this. Uh, people who have been listening, you know, I hope that you learned a lot from listening to Sherry. And I I had somebody uh warn me before uh I started doing this. They said, Don't make Sherry sound too good. Um, you know, that don't make it sound like she's she's better than you. Um I say there's many situations in which you'd be better off with Sherry as your coach. Um and I don't I don't have I don't have any reservations about about saying that. Um and I hope that came through when when people were were listening to this. And uh I hope you enjoyed this process as well, Sherry.
SPEAKER_01It's always fun to see you, first of all. And I also think it's kind of fun to see how far, you know, just like I'm gonna, you know, have brunch with somebody 25 years later, I do think it's a lot of fun to continue to know people and to see what they do with the their real selves once that that person uh is revealed to them.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think if you could see me carefully folding my um my pajamas that I'm gonna re-wear, you know, and putting them at the end of my table instead of just like throwing them across the room, you'd just be like wow, do I know him? Do I know him? Um all sorts of little manifestations. Thank you so much, Sherry. Thank you to everybody for listening. Oh, sorry, one more thing. If people want to know more about you, they want to contact you. They go, wow, that person sounds like the the miracle that Chris says she is. Um how can I get some of that? Where do they go?
SPEAKER_01Uh I have a website, my it is learnandflourish.com. And on that website, if you want to contact me, you click on contact and it will take you right there to make your um initial appointment. There also are free download things if you uh are interested in finding out how to um manage procrastination, for example, um uh how to deal with the probably problem. Uh most people who procrastinate say they'll probably do something, and that is the first thing that's gotta go. Probably me means maybe I won't. You know, people will say, but it also means maybe I might. Like, no, uh-uh, no, probably it's gotta go. So um you can find out more about that. That's free download. Uh, I also have uh a books page uh if you're a parent and you'd like to be able to help your child in a more effective, coach uh friendly kind of way. I have a book called The Effort Myth.
SPEAKER_00Oh my gosh. Every parent should read the effort myth. Sorry, but I can't believe we got this far on the podcast. If you're a parent, buy the effort myth and read it. Like it, it's like it's the best parenting book I've ever read in my life. And I'm quoting parts of it. I was just quoting the part about uh your son and the guitar lessons uh in a conversation with with Kate earlier this week. Effort myth, gotta buy it.
SPEAKER_01Um anyway, there's that, and then there that uh comes with um 40 pages of you know, like worksheets and and additional activities and stuff. But if you wanted to just like uh if you don't need any of those other things and you need to talk to me, um you can do that too. The website's easy to navigate, uh learn and flourish.com. I'm trying to think if there's anything else.
SPEAKER_00Uh well, so it's I I I wanted to ask you, because you you mentioned that stuff about procrastination. Are we allowed to tease what you're working on in terms of procrastination?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so I think I'm working on actually two things. One is the perseverance project. So procrastination is a negative thing, right? But if you used your character strength of perseverance, you would be much more likely to be able to manage your procrastination. So we're going to use a positive psychology approach, and the procrastination project will be coming to you. It will be starting small, and then I don't know exactly all the places it will go eventually. Hopefully, it will turn into a program that you can just log into. We'll create a community of people who would be able to really benefit from that. And then the other thing is looking at flipping the script in uh in schools for the triad of uh students, parents, and teachers. Um, because lots of the language that we talked about, like you know, Chris coming up with new ways of thinking about um, you know, what's purposeful to him, what matters to him, um what he he wants long term, um, what he brings to the table, what he never wants to do. Never, right? That's pretty important. Um, those are conversations we can start having more productively and with less blaming and shaming. So I'm working with a colleague on um bringing that to the world as well.
SPEAKER_00Okay. Yeah, I'm I'm very excited uh to to uh see that when it's when it's ready. I mean, I'm not much of a procrastinator anymore, but um I I I feel like uh I I got a couple anecdotes from my life into the project, so you know selfishly I want to see I want to see that one as well. Um well again, thank you so much, Sherry. Thank you to everybody for listening. If you want to contact me, ChrisDcoach.com, Chris D underscore coach on Instagram, C D swim coach, or you can email swimbriefpodcast at gmail.com, any of those ways. Uh you can reach out and uh get in contact with me. Love to hear from people that are listening to the podcast. Love to hear your feedback on this one, um, especially swimming people, you know. We're we're we're we're bringing on somebody from outside of the swimming world. Um, Sherry, and I always love having you here. Uh again, thank you, everybody, and I'll see you soon.
SPEAKER_01Thank you.