Young and Profiting with Hala Taha - YAPClassic: Marshall Goldsmith, What I’ve Learned From 40 Years of Coaching the World’s Most Successful Business Executives

Episode Date: June 7, 2024

During COVID, Marshall Goldsmith spent several hours every weekend listening to successful people speak about their lives. From these sessions, he learned that even the highest achievers need help finding fulfillment. So, he wrote The Earned Life to address this need, drawing inspiration from Buddhism and his experience as an executive coach. In this episode, Marshall shares practical advice and exercises to help overachievers find personal fulfillment and live without regret. Dr. Marshall Goldsmith is the leading expert on leadership and coaching for behavioral change. He is also the author of several bestsellers, including Triggers and The Earned Life. In this episode, Hala and Marshall will discuss: - Marshall’s childhood and early years  - Marshall’s interpretation of Buddhism - How he uses his Buddhist philosophies in coaching  - The benefits and drawbacks of delayed gratification  - Impermanence and the ‘every breath’ paradigm  - Letting go of past successes - The definition of an earned life  - How regret and fulfillment are polar opposites  - Avoiding the big regrets - Why people don't live their own lives  - The three demands of living an earned life - And other topics…  Dr. Marshall Goldsmith is recognized as the leading expert on leadership and coaching for behavioral change. He has been named one of the top ten business thinkers in the world and the top-rated executive coach at the Thinkers50 ceremony in London since 2011. Marshall is the author of several Wall Street Journal and New York Times #1 bestsellers, including Triggers and What Got You Here Won’t Get You There, which is also the winner of the Harold Longman Award as Best Business Book of the Year. His newest book, The Earned Life: Lose Regret, Choose Fulfillment, was released in May 2022.  Connect with Marshall: Marshall’s Website: https://marshallgoldsmith.com/ Marshall’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marshallgoldsmith/ Marshall’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/coachgoldsmith/ Marshall’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/coachgoldsmith Marshall’s Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Marshall.Goldsmith.Library Marshall’s YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtvlM6xRUC_ErV_q1FgUgiA Resources Mentioned:  Marshall’s Book, The Earned Life: Lose Regret, Choose Fulfillment: https://www.amazon.com/Earned-Life-Regret-Choose-Fulfillment/dp/0593237277   YAP Episode 42, Become a Better Leader with Dr. Marshall Goldsmith: https://youngandprofiting.com/42-become-a-better-leader-with-dr-marshall-goldsmith/  Marshall’s New Yorker Profile, “The Better Boss”: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2002/04/22/the-better-boss  LinkedIn Secrets Masterclass, Have Job Security For Life: Use code ‘podcast’ for 30% off at yapmedia.io/course.    Sponsored By: Shopify - Sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period at youngandprofiting.co/shopify Indeed - Get a $75 job credit at indeed.com/profiting Industrious - Visit industriousoffice.com and use code PROFITING to get a free week of coworking when you take a tour!   LinkedIn Marketing Solutions - Get a $100 credit on your next campaign at linkedin.com/YAP Kajabi - Get a free 30-day trial to start your business at Kajabi.com/PROFITING Rakuten - Start all your shopping at rakuten.com or get the Rakuten app to start saving today!   More About Young and Profiting Download Transcripts - youngandprofiting.com Get Sponsorship Deals - youngandprofiting.com/sponsorships Leave a Review - ratethispodcast.com/yap Watch Videos - youtube.com/c/YoungandProfiting   Follow Hala Taha LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/htaha/ Instagram - instagram.com/yapwithhala/ TikTok - tiktok.com/@yapwithhala Twitter - twitter.com/yapwithhala   Learn more about YAP Media's Services - yapmedia.io/

Today's episode is sponsored in part by Industrius, Rakuten, Kajabi, LinkedIn, and Indeed. Industrius provides flexible, professional, and beautiful workplaces. Use code profiting to redeem a free week of co-working at IndustriusOffice.com. Get cash back on every purchase with Rakuten, the smarter way to shop and save. Start all of your shopping trips at Rakuten.com or get the Rakuten app to start saving today. Kajabi gives you control of your content, brand, and income. Get a free 30-day trial to start your course at kajabi.com slash profiting. Reach top-level decision makers by advertising on LinkedIn. Go to linkedin.com slash yap for a hundred dollar credit on your next campaign. Attract, interview, and hire all in one place with Indeed. Get

a $75 sponsored job credit at Indeed.com slash profiting. As always, you can find all of our incredible deals in the show notes. What's up, Young and Profiters? Today we're chatting with world-renowned business coach Dr. Marshall Goldsmith. Now, if you're a regular YAP listener, you know who Marshall is because he came on the show several times. He was on episode number 42 and then again on episode number 171, which is what we're going to be playing today for Yap Classic. Marshall is quite literally my oldest friend.

He's 75 years old. He is my former LinkedIn client. We ran his LinkedIn for many years. He's a huge influencer on LinkedIn. And the funniest thing about Marshall and our friendship is that he is trying to get me and my business partner Kate married. He is obsessed with setting us up. He's always calling us, texting us, hey, I've got so and so,

here's this picture, let me know if he's cute, I'm trying to get you guys married. He has no idea why we're not married and he's really trying hard to play matchmaker. But back to business, Marshall has over four decades of experience and he is the number one leadership coach and highest paid executive coach in the world. He's also a multiple-time New York Times bestseller. He wrote The Earned Life, which was his latest New York Times bestseller, which we actually helped him hit that list. And in this episode we discussed Marshall's key to living what he calls the earned life. Where your achievements are based on a higher aspiration, you're unbound by regret,

and you've detached yourself from the isolated achievements of careerism. If you're an overachiever who values accomplishment, or if you find yourself troubled by regret and are seeking a higher purpose, then this episode is for you. We'll learn about the every breath paradigm, we'll discover why regret and fulfillment are polar opposites, and lastly, we'll get into Marshall's actionable advice on how to let go of the past and truly live in the present. Now here's my episode with the living leadership legend

and matchmaker, Marshall Goldsmith. You were born in Valley Station, Kentucky. You grew up in a low income and low educated area, and your mom was actually a huge influence on your educational upbringing. Can you tell us about your early years, Marshall? Well, again, brought up in Valley Station, we had an outhouse the first four years I was in school, so I wasn't brought up in yuppie land. And my mother went to college two years,

which is very unusual for our neighborhood, and was a first grade school teacher, but then got married and my father had this idiot idea women shouldn't work. So we got to be poor. But the good news is, all of my mother's first grade school teacher energy was devoted to one student.

That would be me. I knew how to add, subtract, multiply, and divide before I went to school. So I go to the first grade and the teacher goes, one plus one is two. I go, yeah. I look around, no one knows it but me. So I go, I told my mother I must be the smartest person that ever lived. LESLIE KENDRICK That's so funny. And I know that another pivotal point in your life was when you went hitchhiking, I think you were about 19 years old or in your early 20s. You spent three months on the road and there you found Buddhism.

Tell us about that and why you chose Buddhism as your philosophy of life. Well, that was 1969, lovingly referred to as the summer of love. I did spend three entire months living on the road. I told my parents I was going to college for the weekend and was gone three months. It was just an amazing experience in those era of that time.

I learned a lot about life because when you travel, you have time to reflect. I'd wake up, I wouldn't know where I was. Your life is really random. You don't know who's going to pick you up. I could write a whole book about my adventures as a hitchhiker. And so, yeah, I had all kinds of wonderful adventures, but I think it gave me a good appreciation of life and Buddhism and also in the impermanence of life, how everything is constantly changing. And one funny story about that, I was just doing

a program two or three weeks ago, and a woman in the class was from Rifle, Colorado. So I said, I've been to Rifle, Colorado before. I spent the night there. She said, where'd you stay? I said, the laundromat. She thought I was kidding. I described the laundromat. She said, oh my God, he did stay in the laundromat. I spent the night there.

And then a couple of nice people brought me a sandwich too. They were so nice. But I was again, staying in the laundromat of Rifle, Colorado. They were so nice. But I was again staying in a laundry mat of Rifle, Colorado. That's so funny. And I guess I'm just curious of how Buddhism is something that you discovered on that trip, or how did you first get inspired to learn more about it? I like to read. So I read a book called Siddhartha, which got me started thinking about Buddhism. Now, there are many schools of Buddhism. So I'm a philosophical, not a religious Buddhist.

So let me just share my school, just a short version of it. And by the way, Buddhists had only do what I teach if it works for you. So there's so many different schools of Buddhism that are almost the opposite of each other. It doesn't mean they're wrong, they just have different interpretations. My interpretation is pretty simple. Buddha was brought up very rich. His father was a king, and he was protected from life. And he was able to sneak out of his little bubble three times. And the first time, you know what he learned? People get old. Second time he learned, you get sick. The third time he learned, you die. He said, old, sick, and die. That's not so good. And he really believed this, I'll be happy after I get more things, not going to work. So then

he went out in the woods, starved himself, and he tried to really find peace by having less. You know what he found out? It didn't work either. And then one night, he finally realized something. I can never be happy with more. I can never be happy with less. There's only one thing I can ever find peace with, what I have. There's only one place I can ever find peace here. There's only one time I can ever find peace now. Be happy now. So my school of Buddhism, what is Nirvana? Nirvana is talking to some old bald guy on a podcast. This is it.

This is heaven. This is hell. Here we are. That's so interesting. I can't wait to kind of dig deeper on some of those philosophies with you in a bit. But before we do that, as I've been getting to know you better, I always noticed that you say a lot of the same sayings over and over. You sign off all your emails and even your text messages to me with, life is good, right?

And doing some more digging, I found that you have two other favorite sayings, be happy and let it go. So what are these sayings, life is good, be happy now and let it go mean to you? And how does Buddhism philosophies underlie all these sayings? Well, to me, the great Western disease is I'll be happy when. When I get the money status BMW, the condominium, I will be happy when. One of the most powerful parts of the book is I talk about the fallacy of confusing achievement and happiness, achievement and well-being, achievement and peace. Everyone I work with is a ridiculously high achiever. I mean, ridiculously high achiever.

And one of the guys in my group was Safi Bakal. And Safi said, you know, I've learned something. He's a scientist. Now, Safi has a PhD from physics, in physics from Stanford. He's worth tens of millions of dollars. He started companies. He wrote a book called Loon Shots. He's consulted the presidents, you know, blah, blah, blah.

Safi said, I finally realized something. I used to think that happiness was dependent upon achievement. They said, no, happiness and achievement are independent variables. You can achieve all kinds of stuff and be happy. You can achieve nothing and be happy. You can achieve all kinds of stuff and be miserable, and you achieve nothing and be miserable. He said, happiness and achievement are independent variables. Well, the great Western disease is, I'll be happy when. You might have seen the great art form of the West before. I don't know if you've seen it. It sounds like this. There's a person. The person is sad. They spend money. They buy a product and they become happy. This is called a commercial. So I don't know

if you've ever seen one of those, but we are bombarded with this message thousands of times over and over. And the message is happiness is out there somewhere else. Well, you know, be happy now. That's now. A life as good as be grateful for everything you have and you know let it go. Quit carrying around all that garbage that we all tend to carry around. You know, learn to forgive yourself, forgive other people, and let go of the past and be willing to start over, forgive other people, and let go of the past and be willing to start over. And how do you use those sort of philosophies

like life is good, be happy now, let it go in your coaching with your coaching clients? Well, actually, my coaching has changed in a way. The last time you interviewed me, my whole focus was helping successful leaders achieve positive long-term change in their behavior. I still do that and help people become more effective leaders. My whole focus was helping successful leaders achieve positive long-term change in their behavior. I still do that and help people become more effective leaders.

Only now I also try to help them have better lives. Why? Half the people I coach are billionaires. I mean, one guy I'm coaching is worth $4 billion. What am I supposed to do, get you up to $4.1 billion? What does it matter anyway? Yeah. Most of the people I coach, they've achieved so much, they don't need me to help them achieve

more. And one of the things I help them do is make peace with life and help them make a difference in their lives. And I think that's the key to success. I think that's the key to success. I think that's the key to success. I think that's the key to success. I think that's the key to success. I think that's the key to success. I think that's the key to success. I think that's the've achieved so much, they don't need me to help

them achieve more. And one of the things I help them do is make peace with life, be happy and just try to have a good life. And so I've kind of changed. I didn't use to do that, but now I do. Because a lot of people I coach are family people, they're running family businesses, they've got a lot of money, they've got a lot of status and success. So I say, look, I'm not going to make you successful. You're already ridiculously successful. I'm not going to make you rich. You're already ridiculously rich.

I just want you to have a little better life. I love that. So speaking of a better life, you wrote this book called The Earned Life, Lose Regret, Choose Fulfillment, and you've written and edited over 30 books. And you wrote this book during COVID. And based on my research, I know that you believe that any good book solves a universal challenge.

So I'd love to understand what inspired you to put out one more book and what universal challenge are you trying to solve with the earned life? Well, this one is basically choosing fulfillment and losing regret. That's the challenge I'm thinking about. And this is a much more, it's a much more book about life

than just changing leadership behavior. Yeah. And I personally loved this book. I read like a book a week, Marshall, and I was just like, there's so much meat and potatoes in this book. Some books are very fluffy, yours was not. This was really meaningful and had a lot of unique insight that I haven't heard before.

So I highly recommend everybody go check out The Iron Life. I loved it. But you wrote it during COVID, right? And I'm wondering, did something trigger you personally to write this book? Yes. During COVID, a lot of this book is what I learned during COVID. Now, during COVID, I had no idea what the world would end up being like. And my friend Mark Thompson and I, we spent, oh, I think,

four or 500 hours every weekend. We spent six hours with these phenomenally successful people, and every weekend they would talk about their lives. What went well, what could have done better, their challenges. I mean, week after week, hour after hour, we did this and I learned so much about life. I can mention the names of the people. There's incredible people.

Palgasol, the famous basketball star was in our group. And Curtis Martin, the NFL Hall of Fame. And then we had Telly Leung, Broadway star. And we had head of the Olympic Committee, head of the Rockefeller Foundation, president of the World Bank, on and on. Just a phenomenal, very diverse group of people from all around the world. We have people from India, from Indonesia, from Paris, all different places.

And they all talked about their lives and they just loved it. And you know why? Well, one, there's an old saying, it's lonely at the top. It used to be lonely at the top. It is lonelier at the top today. It's lonely. They have no one to talk to. You know about social media. They can get killed in an instant in social media. They have no one to talk to. You know about social media. They can get killed in an instant in social media. They have to be very careful. And they just like the idea of their accountable talking about their lives, yet nobody's being judged. Nobody's putting you down. Nobody's evaluating you. One person said, you know, it's nice one hour a week. I just get to act like a human. This is basically what I learned from

all of that. 99% of humans, you know what they're trying to be? They're trying to be them. They're trying to be like those people I was with. I mean, these people, if you look at their bios, they look like gods, but you know what you learn? They got kids with drug problems, parents with Alzheimer's, they get sick, they're just humans like everybody else.

So let's talk about this topic of regrets and choosing to live the earned life. How would you define an earned life? Well, an earned life occurs when you really have alignment between three things. One is your aspiration, your higher sense of purpose. The second is you're achieving something meaningful. And the third is your day-to-day actions.

When the actions are aligned with those things, that's how I define the earned life. And it's interesting because most humans in the history of the world were lost in the action phase. They just show up, they go from day to day, they're not bad people, but they just do whatever's in front of them and they kind of just live. Some people are really lost in aspiration, higher purpose, they don't achieve much, but they kind of live in their heads. The people that I work with, pretty much, if they're not careful, are lost in achievement.

They achieve so much that they're almost achievement junkies. And sometimes if we're not careful, we get so lost in achievement, we forget to ask the question, why am I working 90 hours a week? Or number two, we forget to ask the question, why am I working 90 hours a week? Or number two, we forget to enjoy the process of life itself, the day-to-day actions of life. So with these people, really getting them to focus on,

don't become an achievaholic. The other thing I think is very important in this is, never make your identity or your values of human being based on achievement, or the results of achievement for two reasons. One, you don't control the results. The results are impacted by many things you don't control. And number two, even if you achieve the results, how long does that bring any kind of peace

or happiness? A week? Not much. Then what do you have to do? More, more, more. One of my favorite parts of the book is the story about the marshmallow research. I love that story. In the marshmallow research, you take this kids and you give them a marshmallow.

So say the kid, well, kid, if you eat the marshmallow, you get one. If you wait, two. Then the kid that waits, eats two. Now, allegedly, they have this research show the the kid that eats one marshmallow becomes a drug addict, the ones that eat two go to Harvard and get PhDs or something. It seems a little overblown,

but the point of the research is very clear. Delayed gratification is good. Delayed gratification, almost every self-help book. Delayed gratification is good. Here's how you can work out more. Here's how you can go on a better diet. Delayed gratification is good. Here's the problem with the research.

They didn't take the kid that ate two marshmallows and said, you know, kid, wait a bit. Three. Oh, don't eat those. Wait a little bit more. Four. Five. Ten. A thousand. Where do you end up? An old man sitting in a room waiting to die surrounded with uneaten marshmallows.

It's so true. Sometimes you surrounded with uneaten marshmallows. It's so true. Sometimes you have to eat the marshmallows. I feel like this is why the book resonated with me so much because I feel like I'm like one of those overachievers who can't stop achieving. And sometimes it's okay to slow down and think about like, what is my ultimate goal here? And just be happy with what you have, right?

And not always be thinking about what's next, what's next. Okay, breathing, ready for some free coaching for you? It's a coaching moment, are you ready? Yes. Raise your right hand. Okay. I used to be one of those compulsive overachievers. I used to be one of those compulsive overachievers.

I do not have an incurable genetic defect. I do not have an incurable genetic defect. I do not have an incurable genetic defect I can change if I want to I can change if I want to now see what you've said before you said I am This as long as you say I am guess what you're programming yourself. That's where you're going to be Nothing wrong with that if you don't want to change if you don't want to change don't talk that way Here's the problem if you say I am anything then you try to do something else. Even if you succeed, you'll feel like a phony. Why? If this is me and I'm doing this, this must not be me. And the real me is a compulsive overachiever. Anything other than that is not the real me. That would

be a phony. So be careful. Don't program yourself if you want to change. That's really good advice. Let's hold that thought and take a quick break with our sponsors. YapBam, we launched Yap Media four and a half years ago, and that was right when COVID was happening. I love having the freedom of working wherever I want, but to be honest, I've been getting burnt out from the whole working from home thing. I am sick of it. And although I'm on call to call, I talk to people every day, there's something about face-to-face interaction. I want to feel everyone's vibes. I want to feel the energy of the room. And I knew that something had to change.

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Why do you believe that regret is one of the most empty and desolate feelings that a human can have? Well, the point about regret is going back to letting go. It can be something we carry around for years or even decades. And a big part of the book is just learning to let go of that. And one thing I love is the idea of every time I take a breath, it's a new me.

Ah, new me, new me, new me. Everything that was done before is done by an infinite set of people. Those names, those people are called the previous me's. And learning to say they did what they did and learning to forgive the previous versions of you for being humans. And then the future versions of you, well, they're going to be who they are. So a couple of exercises I love. One is writing a letter to the past versions of yourself, just thanking them for thanking him or her for something good they did. And then as you write

a letter to the future version herself saying, here's the investment I'm making in you and here's what I expect back. So the concept is a really useful concept. You know, think of yourself, breathe. Think of all those previous versions of you. Yeah. They worked hard. They gave the you that's talking to me a lot of stuff.

Nice people. Did they make some mistakes? How about those previous years? A few mistakes. Let it go, let it go. If any group of women did that many nice things, what would you say to those nice women? Thank you. Yeah. Just say thank you.

Yeah, forgive yourself. Yeah, I think I'd like to really dig deep on this because I think this is really, really important what you're saying. So Buddha once said, with every breath is a new me. And he meant that literally. And a core pillar of Buddhism is something called impermanence.

And that's the notion that the emotions, thoughts and material possessions we hold do not last. They're fleeting, right? So can you help us understand the concept of impermanence and this every breath paradigm? I really want you to go deep on this, Marshall. Well, this is very hard for Western people to understand because it's so different. Hmm.

The Western paradox is I will get there and it's gonna be okay. That there is this place I'm gonna go and therefore everything is gonna be different after I do X and that will be permanent. Now, there's a book that after I do X, and that will be permanent. Now, there's a book that exemplifies this. You've probably read several of these. They had the same ending. It's called, And They Lived Happily Ever After. Now, that type of book is a fairy tale.

That's not life. Life is not a place you get to and then stop. Life is a place that keeps changing all the time. The you I'm talking to now is not going to be the you that was there before we started talking. We're always changing and we're all impermanent. Life itself doesn't last. So as you go through life,

looking at it as a series of infinite change and always starting over. Every time I take a breath, it's a new me. Well, what that means is, let's take a concept like happiness. That doesn't come from the past or the future, it comes from now. Taking a breath and saying, I'm a new me. Really looking at our life and creating meaning, creating happiness, and always starting over. Bob Dylan had a good quote,

he who is not busy being born is busy dying. Well, that's kind of the essence of the book, is we're constantly being reborn. We're constantly being reborn, we're different people, and the idea is looking at that as an opportunity to start over. We get lots of restarts here. Ah, restart, restart. We get a lot of chances to start over, and it's to me a very healthy way to look at life. Yeah. It's a very unique approach of looking at life because

oftentimes even when it comes to our relationships or our own self-development, we think like, oh, my significant other did this and so I'm gonna hold this resentment against them for a long time when in reality, what your significant other did 10 years ago has nothing to do with who they are today. And same thing with yourself, if you bombed a test 10 years ago, doesn't do with who they are today. And same thing with yourself.

If you bombed a test 10 years ago, doesn't mean that you're going to do it again. And so you get to start over with other people and even with yourself. I love it. There's a story in the book about that, which I love. And it's a story of a friend of mine. And basically his wife starts in on it. They had a really great weekend. Then his wife starts in on, well, you could have been a better father. And the guy said, basically, you're right. That was 10 years ago. And you're right. I did a lot wrong 10 years ago. I'm not the same person. I was 10 years ago. And you're

criticizing that 10 year ago person. He's not here right now. And it was very good because she instantly said, you're right. You're not the same person. I said, what am I gaining by bashing somebody who's not here? Yeah, I feel like it's a super mature way to think of things when it comes to your relationships and when it comes to yourself. So I think this is one of the most important and kind of impactful things that I read in your book was this concept of the every breath paradigm. So a lot of us can't seem to let go of past rejections, past failures, but then some people also have the problem of not being able to let go of their past successes and they obsess

over that. Can you talk to us about that? Oh, I certainly can. I've done nine programs at my house with retiring CEOs. This is a huge issue. It is so hard to let go of that past success and realize that's no longer you. One of my good coaching clients was Mike Duke. Mike was the CEO of Walmart.

He had a great story. He said, when I was the CEO of Walmart, I told this joke. And obviously Walmart, very sensitive, was a clean joke, did not offend anyone. People loved the joke, always laughing. I love my little joke. Then he said, I retired. And I was in this group of people and I told the joke. And he said, no one laughed. Then he said, well, I. And I was in this group of people and I told a joke. And he said, no one laughed.

Then he said, well, I thought they must be grumpy. Another group tells a joke. No one laughed. He said, finally my wife came to me and said, Mike, you idiot. You actually thought that joke was funny? Oh my gosh. When he was the CEO of Walmart, that joke was real funny. Ho, ho, ho.

How about when he's not the CEO? Not funny anymore. It is hard to let go. One of the people that endorsed my book is Palgasol. Pal's 41 years old and he's just retiring as a basketball star. It's hard. The former CEO, it's tough. The Olympic champ, Michael Phelps, a sad story after winning that final medal,

thought about killing himself. Why? If your measure of value is, I have to achieve more than last year, you're never going to get there. And you do get older and you may not do what you did last year. And it's hard. Telly, the Broadway star, he's 40 now. He's not going to play Aladdin anymore. That rolls over. It's a constant reinvention of life, but not comparing yourself to what you used to be. And not living, not being the ex-athlete who's sitting there getting drunk talking about Super Bowl. That was 40 years ago.

That's not you. That was some other person did that 40 years ago. Move on. Yeah. Live your own life now. By the way, in the book, we have a great case study, Curtis Martin. I don't know if you've met Curtis yet. I love Curtis. Not yet. Curtis, National Football League Hall of Fame, just a wonderful person,

brought up in a terrible environment, saw a lot of murder and death when he was growing up as a kid, and so happy. And he's one of these people, he's helping others, he's happy, he's very successful, he's making money. And one of the reasons is he didn't get stuck in the past, as opposed to a lot of, unfortunately, NFL stars, bankrupt, divorced, sad. Why? They're living in that other era. They're living in the past. A lot of them, Curtis taught me this, you know how they lose their money? A lot of them, they give it away. They literally give their money away because they're trying to buy love. Doesn't work. There's a good song about that. Money, you got a lot of friends hanging around your door when it's gone and spending ends,

they don't come around no more. Well, you know, that doesn't work. Yeah. So it's very difficult to do this, you know? It's easy to kind of talk about it at a high level, but when it comes to putting it into practice, how can we make this more like muscle memory and make this more like in any situation, we can just realize, okay, like it's time to be fresh.

I'm a new person. I'm not my past. How can we make this muscle memory? Well, there's two suggestions I'm gonna give you. One involving some questions and one involving one question. The first thing I do is called the daily question process. So every day I write down a series of questions

that represent what's most important in my life. And many of them begin with the phrase, did you do your best to? For example, did I do my best to be happy every day? Did I do my best to find meaning every day? Did I do my best to build positive relationships? Did you do your best to every day? And then there's a little scale,

you know, and you get a yes, no, or a number. And then at the end of the week, you get a little report card. Well, I've been doing this for about 25 years and I have to have someone call me every day for almost 25 years, almost every day someone calls me on the phone to make sure I do this. Why? My name is Marshall Goldsmith. I got ranked number one leadership thinker and coach in the whole world. Have someone call me on the phone every day to make sure I do this stuff.

Why? I'm too cowardly to do this stuff by myself. I'm too indisciplined to do this stuff by myself. I need help. It's okay. One thing I'm proud of in this book, I mean, you saw the people who endorsed the book, just amazing people. And four of the people who endorsed the book were ranked the best leader in America for at least one year. So it's a pretty impressive group. And one thing I'm so proud of is they all stand up and admit they need help.

Yeah. Thirty years ago, none of these people would have said they had a coach. None of them would have said they needed help. They would have been ashamed to have had a coach. They would have been ashamed to need help. One thing I'm very proud of is, these are big people.

Let's see, president of the World Bank, CEO of the year in the United States, CEO of Pfizer, winner of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, Harvard Business Review, best CEO in the world, head of St. Jude's Children's, on and on and on. These are big people, wonderful people. And I'm so proud that they have the courage to stand up and say, look, hey, I might be a big deal. Guess what? I'm a human. I need help. I'm not above everything. I need help. We all do.

Yeah. And you mentioned there was a second exercise. Yeah. The second exercise is that when you write that letter to the future. And an interesting thing about that exercise is, and I'm going to give you a not so happy story. One of the guys at my group said, retiring as CEO, and he

said, I worked 80 hours a week for the last 40 years with one goal, so my children would never have to do this. Then he said, that's the worst thing I could have ever done for myself, for my wife, or for my children. His kids are trust fund babies, spoiled, ungrateful, doesn't have a close relationship with them. What he did is he gave his children a gift. When you give somebody a gift, there's no strings attached. Guess what? They can do what they want.

Well, basically they're bums. They're rich bums. They're just trust fund bums. What he should have made as an investment, what he should have said is, look, I'm willing to work very hard to help you. Here's what I expect back. I expect you to try to have a meaningful life.

I expect to use this as an opportunity to do something special. I expect you to learn. I expect you to be grateful, not expect you to be a bum who just sits there and smokes pot and watches TV all day. Let's talk about that a little bit more. Why is it so much more powerful to earn something rather than be handed it? Well when we earn something, we feel a sense of worthwhile. I got this because I did something and I feel I deserve it. When somebody's giving us something, what does that mean about you?

Nothing. It means someone else earned something. Doesn't mean you earned anything. You just stood there and your hand happened to be out and you got a break. Someone else earned something. Doesn't mean you earned anything. You just stood there and your hand happened to be out and you got a break. Someone else did something of value that was given to you as opposed to you did something of value that was given to yourself. And again, the reality is it's pretty hard to be proud of the fact that someone gave you a handout.

So this reminds me of something that you said in your book was actually the definition of an earned life. You said, we are living an earned life when the choices, risks, and effort that we make in each moment align with an overarching purpose in our lives, regardless of the eventual outcome. And this really stuck out to me because like we were saying before,

I'm a goal-oriented person. And so for me, that seems counterintuitive that you don't need to worry about the outcome and you need to let go of the outcome or the earned rewards. So I'm just curious in your opinion, why is it that we don't need to worry about the outcome with all of this? Well, let me give you an example. The parable of the golfer and the beer can.

Okay. The golfer and the beer can. Now here's a golfer and is it a chance to win the club championship? There's a big chance and he never had a chance before. Last hole and he's getting into it. People in front of him force him and drinking beer, noisy, very distracting, but he would think he's sort of hits the shot. Looks perfect.

All of a sudden something happens. It bounces into a terrible position. He's walking toward the ball. What happens? He sees a beer can. The idiots in front of him have left a beer can on the fairway. Now his ball is in the bad straights. He's angry. Those idiots. What does the golfer need to do?

Stop, breathe. Forget about the drive, forget about the people, forget about the beer can, forget about winning the championship. You come up with a strategy, you walk to that ball, and you hit the shot in front of you. See, in life, all you can ever do is hit the shot in front of you. You hit the shot in front of you, and when you're thinking about the results, you're living in the past, you're dreaming of the future, you're not focusing on hitting the shot.

Well, the key is hit the shot. And the thing about achievement is the greatest college basketball coach in history was John Wooden. I was at UCLA when he was there and he said, look, do your best, that's it, be proud. You do your best and lose, fine. You do your best and win, fine.

It doesn't matter. That's all you can do. Harry Kramer, CEO of Baxter, was in my 100 coach group. Somebody said, how do you sleep at night? You've had to fire people, lay people off. You had to do very hard things to people. He said, I only asked two questions. One, did I do what I thought was right and did I do my best?

But the answer is, I did what I thought was right and I did my best. He said, I can sleep. That's all any of us can ever do. You just do what you think is right. You do your best and make peace. Well, to me that's it. You don't get lost in the past and you don't get lost in the future. And you never place your values as a human being based on results. The most famous poem in history is called the Bahavid Gita.

And this is the essence of the Bahavid Gita. You have a person with two choices in the poem, the Bhagavad Gita. One choice is very bad, the other choice is worse. And he's going on and on about how bad his choices are. And the message is pretty simple from Krishna. The message is, do what you think is right, do your best and make peace. And sometimes in life, we do have two choices,

bad and worse. Okay, pick the one that's least bad and make the best of it. Yeah, I love that. I think that's super powerful. So I'd love to talk about regret and fulfillment in terms of the fact that it's a spectrum, right? So I also thought this was pretty enlightening in your book. You say that regret and fulfillment are like opposite sides

of the spectrum, polar opposites, right? And everybody kind of slams on one part of the spectrum, no opposites, right? And everybody kind of lands on one part of the spectrum, no matter how successful they are. So you could be super successful and still have a lot of regret because you may have focused on your career and not your family or something like that. So I'd love for you to kind of walk us through

how regret and fulfillment are total opposites and maybe some examples of people that you've met where they surprised you in terms of the regret that they felt. Yeah, very surprised because the people I deal with, they're all on paper, amazingly successful. Yet, some of them like the one I mentioned. If you look at it, CEO, huge company, multi-multi-multi-millionaire, highly educated, smart.

Well, you'd think, well, fulfillment, the guy's off the charts. Not really, not really. In his own mind, not really too happy with life. Basically, he said, I blew it. I blew it here. And the problem with that regret and fulfillment thing is other people don't fill out the scorecard. You do. And you may fool somebody else, but at the end of the day, you gotta live with yourself.

And you've got to look at that and say, well, what do I feel? Am I proud of this? Am I ashamed of this? Do I have regret? Am I sitting there saying, I wish I would have? And the book begins with a story of a guy, you know, an interesting story, a guy filled with regret because he wanted to go out with some woman and he basically chickened out. He got afraid and then he's carried it around. This sense of existential regret, if I would have, things could have turned out better for me. Maybe, maybe not.

He still carried it around. It's very hard to forgive ourselves and forgive others and just let go and say, all right, that was then, this is now, that was then, this is now. And I mean, I coach people that haven't forgiven mom and dad for being who they were. Yeah. I mean, 30, 40 years are carrying around this anger.

And the problem with all that is you're not hurting the other person as much as you're hurting yourself. And I feel like the other kind of lesson in all this and just an insight that I had from your book or what you're trying to solve is there's no one size fits all when it comes to regret, right? There's small regrets that don't really matter. And then there's these big existential regrets you call them, like not having children or not taking a big job. And this is the purpose of your book,

is to make sure that you know what you want in life so that you don't make these big regrets that are super hard to let go, is that right? And it's interesting, because we seldom regret the risk we take and fail. We often regret the risk we failed to take. So it's a question of, I talk about risk and opportunity. When do I take the risk? When do I not take the risk? And I point out examples of when risk taking is very important and when it's not. And I give some example of my own life of a stupid risk.

And I was like 27 and we're going out and riding boogie board. I don't know, not that much of an athlete anyway. And then I get macho and I started riding a few waves. Oh, you can do it. Then I go out there like an idiot and try to ride a nine foot wave and flips over and breaks my neck in two places. I'm lucky I'm even here.

And I talk about that from like this, is that part of my aspiration in life to be a surfer? No. Am I any good at it? No. Am I ever going to achieve anything? No. Why am I doing that? Well, I got lost in this macho, ridiculous show-off thing. That's an example of just not really thinking.

On the other hand, when you take a chance on something, maybe you don't succeed, but you tried. Well, then you can look back on life and say, hey, I gave it a shot. I look, I'm my home now is here in Nashville. I mean, you know, God bless a lot of these kids are all waiting on tables, but they're giving it a shot. They're going to try to be the music star. And reality is most of them aren't. Yeah, Yeah, still I respect them. They're trying. They're giving it a shot and at the end of the day they'll probably be okay. Just do something else. We'll be right back after a quick break from our sponsors. Yeah, BAM, I bet a lot of you out there are thinking about and dreaming about starting a course.

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Don't forget it young and profitors. I want to close this out or with some Don't forget it, young and profitors. I want to close this out with some three demands that you talk about when it comes to living an earned life. I thought this was a great way to kind of just summarize some of the key points in your book and I'll tee you up for each demand and maybe ask some followup questions. Sure. So the first demand was live your own life,

not someone else's version of it. Can you tell us your two cents on that one? Yeah, and I mentioned, I can't mention his name, it was my friend Mark Tursick, who was a managing partner of Goldman Sachs, they did the IPO, he makes a ton of money, and he's thinking about being the CEO of the Niger Conservancy, and we're walking around,

and he says, well, I don't know, what will they think of me? I'm sitting here going, what do you care? It's not their life, it's your life. Well, part of this, that first thing is live your own life. I mean, it's pretty hard to live a fulfilling life if you're not living your own life. And you got to say, what does real life mean to me, not somebody else, and get over that I have to impress so-and-so because so-and-so doesn't care anyway, really. And just not trying to waste your life on that and being willing to take or not take a risk to live your own life.

Which sounds pretty simple, but an amazing number of people don't. And they end up dying thinking, you know, I wish I would have. I wish I'd have gone for this, gone for that, gone for something. Well, it's not somebody else's life. This is your life. Yeah, it's a part of it. And it's not as simple as it sounds because we're so focused on it and not in a negative way as human beings. We've been brought if you have to impress people, you have to gain approval.

That's just part of our history. It's hard not to do that all the time. Yeah. I think a lot of people have this problem where they let other things and people stop them from going for their dreams. And so in your book, you actually list off a couple of reasons why people don't live their own life. Two of them that really stuck out to me was inertia and obligations.

Can you tell us your perspective on inertia and obligations? Well, inertia is the greatest predictor of anything we're going to do. The biggest predictor of what are you going to do five minutes from now is what are you doing now? And so we all tend to be where we've been, go where we've gone. In my other book, I talk about this too. It's hard for successful people to change. Why?

Any human or animal will replicate behavior that's followed by positive reinforcement. Now, the more successful we become, the more positive reinforcement we get, and we fall into a trap. I do this, I am successful, therefore this makes me successful. I'll just keep doing this over and over and over again, as opposed to saying, maybe I can do something different, or maybe this doesn't always work all the time. So that's kind of inertia. And then obligation is what we talked about though, the feeling that somehow I'm supposed

to do this. In Mark's case, he's a managing partner of Goldman Sachs. It's not like they're all going to sit there and go through, oh my good, he left us, I'm going to die. No, they'll do fine without you. Well, Jim Kim, greatest story. Jim Kim was president of Dartmouth College. And Jim Kim's a great guy. He was a partner in health, literally saved tens of millions of lives. He's president of Dartmouth College. He's a great guy, but not necessarily the best job for him. Food in the student cafeteria and raising money all the time.

So he gets offered a job as president of World Bank. Oh, I don't know. I've only been at Dartmouth College two and a half years. Should I take the job? I said, take the job. So then I, obligation, he ended up taking the job. I called him three months after he had the job and said, Jim, I'm at Dartmouth College. Guess what? It's still here. And now they're all complaining about the new president. Life goes on. It's so funny. We all make these decisions as if people care that much about us.

And at the end of the day, people only care about themselves. You know, nobody cares. Primarily. Right. And I also, if you ask him, most of them would probably say, just do whatever you feel like. It's so true. Okay, so let's, oh, another one that's really interesting

in terms of why we don't live our own life, vicarious living. And I think this is super interesting given everybody's addiction to social media. How does vicarious living really prevent us from living our own life? Well, I mean, vicarious living is huge. I don't have to tell you, you know more about this than I do, but the average kid that's flunking out of school is spending, I forget, 55 hours a week on some sort of media, TV, movies, social media.

It's an addiction. And we have to be very careful because when you're living vicariously, you're living through someone. It's not your life. You're not one of the Kardashians. You're not the movie star. That's not you. And you're reading this drama of them. Well, what happens is vicariously, we start living through them or the football team or whatever. And my son brought up a great example. I use video games as pretending to be in a battle. It's really not. It's a pretense. Oh, my son said, no, no, you missed the point.

People spend thousands of hours, millions of hours watching other people play video games. PewDiePie, how many hours? Billions of people watching this guy play video games, making sarcastic comments. Hour after hour, they're watching this nonsense. He's some Swedish guy. I'm not blaming him, by the way. He's making millions of dollars. He's doing okay. He's living, not everybody else isn't. He's living his life. But why are you watching this Swedish guy making sarcastic comments, playing video games for hours?

Well, you're living someone else's life. You're not living your own life. And you can never find happiness living somebody else's life. The other thing is they don't care about you. Yeah. They don't care about you. They're living their life. And you're never going to find satisfaction living someone else's life. Yeah. By the way, physiologically, my friend Martin Lindstrom has studied the brain.

When the football player scores a touchdown, the fan experiences almost the same reaction as a football player in the brain. It's like they scored the touchdown. They're jumping up and down, they're screaming. They didn't score the touchdown. They watched someone else score the touchdown. This is so interesting. I feel like part of the reason why I've been very successful,

especially in the last like five years, is because I literally don't watch TV. I don't even know how to turn on my TV in my apartment. I don't ever watch, I don't do that. And even on social media, I'm focused on my content and my clients and what, and my friends make fun of me. They call it Hala TV. They're like, oh, she's on Hala TV again,

because all she cares about is her stuff because I'm not worried about what everybody else is doing because like you said, I feel like that's wasting your own life when you're trying to live, when you're paying attention to somebody else's life, just live your own life. Yeah, live your own life because like you live your own life, at least it's your life.

Yeah. It's your life. And you know, I had a funny experience that with a New Yorker magazine. This changed my life. Many years ago, the New Yorker magazine, I think it was 2012, wrote the story of my life. It was called The Better Boss.

Wonderful story written by a woman named Larissa McFarquhar. In this story, New Yorker profile is a big deal. They spent hours on this thing. They spent an average of $60,000 per profile just doing the research. A lot. This is a big deal. They spend hours on this thing, right? They spend an average of $60,000 per profile just doing the research, a lot. This is a serious thing. She followed me around for two months. Now half of the New Yorker stories are just rip.

They just rip into people, and almost all of them have at least three paragraphs of Andy's a jerk. But I talked to my wife and I thought about it, and I thought, Peter Drucker told me who's the customer? I thought, well, first I thought it's the people that send me money. But then I said, no, the customer is my unborn great-grandchildren. This brilliant woman is going to write a story about me,

and if I don't act like me, they won't know me. They're just going to know some fictitious character. They won't know me. So I told my wife, I'm going to act like me. I said, we're probably going to lose about 150,000 bucks or 200,000 bucks. I'm sure it won't annoy people, but I'm just going to act like me. Now I said, we're probably gonna lose about 150,000 bucks or 200,000 bucks. I'm sure it would annoy people, but I'm just gonna act like myself.

It was turned out as the best thing I could have possibly done. Number one, she's got an IQ of a zillion anyway. She went to Harvard. One of the odds I'm gonna fool her for two months, zero. If I did try to fool her, she'd probably just justifiably crucify me for acting like an ass.

So I said, just be yourself. Well, be yourself. You may lose, but at least it's you that loses. I love this conversation. Let's move on to demand number two. It's commit yourself to earning every day. Make it a habit. Why do we need to do this? Well, that goes back to also my daily questions. It needs to be something you restart every day, because if we don't, we just get lost. And it is so easy to get lost on little things. One of the guys in our group was Pau Gasol,

the basketball star, and one of his areas was he wanted to be better at being present around his wife. Present, not just sitting there, but actually being in the room in his mind. He tells a story, he comes home and he says, how did you do? He's in our little garage. I said, I'm not so good. My wife is very upset with me. She said I wasn't really present too much and checked out.

He said, but I was tired. How tired were you? Oh, so tired. I was working out all day, very tired training for the Olympics. I said, it's interesting. I paid a thousand bucks for a seat. My son Brian paid a thousand bucks and we went to watch you play the Boston Celtics in that World Championship there. You guys won that game. It's probably the biggest game of your life and you're running up and down the Boston Celtics in the World Championship there. And you guys won that game. It's probably the biggest game of your life.

And you're running up and down the court like a banshee. Now, coach here, Phil Jackson, called time out with two minutes to go. Did you say, you know, Phil, I'm tired. I'm tired, Phil. No, he said, no, I never in my career told a coach I was tired, never. So I said, you think your wife is impressed?

Well, it's often harder at home because when we're working, like you, when you work, you're on. You're very on, you're professional, you know, when we're not on, and we're not in that professional mode, it's actually easier to lose it and realize, you know, those people at home are important. And every day you need to re-earn. Jim Kim, another guy, my friend at World Bank, I said, every day I re-earn my legacy. That's the way life is. The person that did that stuff yesterday was that person from yesterday. They're

not here today. And the thing we don't think about is the fact that we need to really focus on earning all kinds of things, happiness, meaning, purpose. And if we don't, inertia kicks in. You watch the game, you go to the TV, you know, like you said, you're like a zombie and your life's over. Yeah. And it's because the things that make us fulfilled like happiness, like you were saying, those things are fleeting, right? They come and they go super quickly. And so to your point, we need to learn how to earn them over and over again, because they can be gone just as fast as we get them.

Which again is the great Western disease, I will be happy when. Once this happens, everything is gonna be okay. It's all gonna be okay once I get money, status, BMW, car, date, something. Well, no, once you get that, it's nice. Yeah. It doesn't last very long.

Totally agree. Okay, once you get that, it's nice. Yeah. It doesn't last very long. Totally agree. Okay, so demand number three, attach your earning moments to something greater than mere personal ambition. Right, and I think that's why you need to answer that question of your attribution in life, your aspiration in life. Why am I doing this?

Why? Because the people I know work their butts off. They're all phenomenally hardworking achievement or they don't need me to teach them about delayed gratification. They live delayed gratification. They're highly educated. They're successful. They work their butts off. Well, you've got to have an answer to this question, why am I doing this? And if there's not some higher purpose as to why, then why are you sitting there killing yourself to achieve all this stuff unless there's some higher reason to do it? And it doesn't have to be religious reason, just some reason. There needs to be

something. It could be I want to have great kids that have good lives, or I want to, I don't know, I want to help as many people as I can, or I want to help the people I'm with have a little better life. It needs to be something though that's not just a goal line. Because the problem with the finish line is, after you cross the finish line, you are finished. By definition. And part of the book is a good phrase my wife came up with, after the victory lap. What happens? Yeah, all the people cheering. Yay, yay. What happens after the victory lap? If that's it, you're finished. This is super inspirational.

So there's one more question I wanna ask before we start to really wrap this up and it's sort of related. We'll figure out how it's related. And it's the fact that you wear the same outfit all the time. You wear a green polo shirt and khakis. I meet with you once a week.

I see you every week. And it's true. You wear the same thing every time, no matter like if you're on a podcast interview with me to 50,000 people or if, you know, it's me, us and four people. You're wearing the same thing. Talk to us about this freedom in limiting your choices and how that relates to an earned life.

Well, there's a chapter in the book called The Agency of No Choice, which talks about the value of not having to make choices. Back to the New Yorker story, ironically, this connects. In the New Yorker story, the woman said, I always wear a green t-shirt and khaki pants. I actually didn't, but she said I did. After that, people expected it and I thought, what the heck? This is my life, I don't have to think anymore.

So literally every day I wear the same clothes, green t-shirt, khaki pants, it makes life easier. One more decision I don't have to make. Decisions are tiring. The more we can eliminate decisions, the better. I mean, Barack Obama, he basically said he has a gray suit and a blue suit and a white shirt and a blue shirt, and his wife picks out the ties and that's it.

He just stumbles around. Why? He doesn't want to think about that. Well, it's nice. I don't have to think about what I wear. The more we can look at choices that are not that critical to us, makes our life simpler, makes it easy to pack. The nice thing is people expect me to wear a green shirt and khaki pants, so I can go work in City Corp with everybody else who has a coat and tie and they're all dressed up.

I don't have to wear a coat and tie. Why? People don't expect me to. Yeah, you've just made it iconic. You're just an icon style icon. Awesome. This was such a great conversation. So I always wrap up the interview with two of the same questions to all of my guests

and then we do something fun at the end of the year with them. So the first question is, what is one actionable thing my young and profitors can do today to become more profiting tomorrow? Well, I'm gonna define profiting in a different way. I'm gonna define profiting as profiting as achieving a meaningful and successful life for you, which is not necessarily money.

And that is breathe, and imagine you're 95 years old and your skin ready to die. Before you take the last breath, you're given a beautiful gift, the ability to go back in time and talk to the person who's listening to me now. What advice would that old person facing death have for you that's listening to me right now? Well, whatever that advice is, do that. That is the definition of a profitable life. This might tie into the next question, but we'll see. What is your secret to profiting in life? Secret of profiting in life is kind of what we talked about, breathe and start over and

say profiting in life is not accumulating something. Profiting in life is living now. Living now a life that's meaningful for you, not coasting on what I did last week or what my net worth is. It's living now, making the biggest difference you can make now. And you know, let's finish by, why do I do this? Well, basically, as I've grown older, in some ways my level of aspiration has gone down and down and down. My level of impact's gone up and up and up. Why? Quit worrying about what I'm not going to change. What's my goal on this podcast is very, very simple. I hope someone listening has a little better life.

If one person listening to this podcast has a little better life, just want this good. Thank you so much, Dr. Marshall, for coming on this show. This conversation was amazing. Thank you so much. You're wonderful. I'm so grateful.