Alchemy For Life

Joseph Mallozzi – Executive Producer Stargate franchise, Dark Matter

A fan As a longtime fan of Stargate SG1 and Stargate Universe I’d come to really appreciate so many elements of the storytelling that were done—the continuity, the characters, the character interaction, the dialogue, the growth, the well-done sets, the subtle and non-jarring humor, and more.  As someone who writes, I enjoyed on a whole different level. So you can imagine that I had both the pleasure and honor of sitting down with Joseph Mallozzi, the Executive Producer and writer for Stargate SG1, Stargate Atlantis, Stargate Universe, and Dark Matter in which he is the Show Runner (he literally runs the show). Our chat We covered everything from character development, to his thoughts on music, the untimely cancellation of Dark Matter on season three (a show I’d only recently discovered and thoroughly enjoyed), his journey as a writer, what it means to have a writing partner, the challenges of writing a movie script versus writing for an episodic series, the difference between science fiction and fantasy and why he is very much not a fan of the latter, He was a very kind and energetic guest, and I just keep getting lucky with having people like him on my show. It was not only informative and fascinating, but some moments were actually touching (e.g. discussing cancellation of Dark Matter and it’s affect on both him and the cast and crew. He clearly is not only passionate about is creative work, but cares about the cast and crew). I truly appreciated his openness, willingness to share and vulnerability when needed. There are one million topics I would have loved to cover with him things like AI in both the real world and how it affects writing and it’s use by certain authors as well as its implementation in sci-fi, his loves outside of writing, and who this Sharky person is.   Hopefully he will return for another episode and even better, I can take him up on his offer to have dinner. I hope you enjoy this episode as much as I did.    My Patreon will have some video excerpts from the discussion. Note that this transcript may have errors due to sounds and interpretation variations. I have edited it to add some of the headings as well as links to things mentioned, but editing for accuracy and grammar is not fruitful in a normal conversation. Hopefully you gave this a listen! Oct 3, 2025 Joseph Mallozzi chat with Mark Bradford – Transcript 00:09:59  Mark Bradford: I’m here with Joseph Mallozzi. Hi, Joe!Joseph Mallozzi: Hey Mark, how are you doing?Mark Bradford: I am just lovely. I’m so happy to have you. I’m absolutely thrilled to have a chat. So, as I ask everyone that I have on the show, tell us who you are and what you do.Joseph Mallozzi: Sure. I am Joseph Mallozzi. I’m a writer, uh, producer, and showrunner with, uh, a little over 400 hours of produced television to my credit. Uh, notable productions includes the Stargate franchise SG1 Atlantis Universe, as well as my own show, Dark Matter.Mark Bradford: Awesome.Joseph Mallozzi: That’s the 2015 shipbased show, not the more recent Apple series. That is also a sci-fi show with the exact same name and title font.Mark Bradford: Very awesome.  Mark Bradford: Uh, as someone who enjoyed SG1 and just finished Dark Matter, uh, I I applaud your work very very much so.Joseph Mallozzi: Thank you.Mark Bradford: And and a lot of people probably may have heard the term showrunner.Joseph Mallozzi: Sure.Mark Bradford: And again, you’ve probably been asked this a lot, but uh the difference between a showrunner and producerJoseph Mallozzi: Yeah. Well, producer could actually mean a lot of things. producer can range from a vanity credit like maybe you suggested someone pursue the rights to a book and then they ended up you know securing the rights or they name you a producer or you know you bring money to the table you know you that could make you a producer or you could be a hands-on producer someone who’s involved in production either you know dealing with budget or the creative process uh in my case I was an executive producer and a showrunner. Now, showrunner entails pretty much what you know what it implies, the fact that you run the show. So, as a showrunner, I am the de facto cap.   Being a showrunner  Joseph Mallozzi: I say capoi cap. My my my job is to kind of oversee production, everything from uh casting uh and construction, the building of sets to costumes and final edits.Mark Bradford: Wow. Wow. That’s impressive. Uh, I think the best way to put it is the the person who runs the show because, oddly enough, the term showrunner doesn’t sound like it’s on the level of a producer, but it’s sort of above what a producer is.Joseph Mallozzi: Well, showrunners are usually executive producers of a show and you know we go through the various distinctions of producer. Everything from associate producer to co-producer to producer to supervising producer, co-executive producers and ultimately executive producers. Again, they can all mean very different things. Uh, but for the most part, a showrunner is usually also an executive producer. The show’s executive producer.Mark Bradford: And so you were also were you the executive producer of um start uh SG1Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah. So, my writing partner and I, Paul Mullie, joined during the show’s fourth season as co-producers and ultimately worked our way up.   Writing partners  Joseph Mallozzi: Um, again co-producers, just kind of an entry level credit and then we became producers and we began to oversee our own produce our own episodes, meaning we would write the scripts and then we would uh oversee prep. So prep week usually takes place before the beginning of production and prep week is comprised of all the department heads getting together going through the script uh and then attending the various meetings. You go to the costume meetings and you tell the costume uh people what you need for every scene in in the script. You go to the props meeting and you decide what props you want to see and you go to the art department meeting and you discuss this various sets that need to be built. Uh and so you know you you become essentially a supervising producer and then a step up from that is co-executive producer and then finally when you get executive producer that’s when you know you’ve hit the big time. That’s the uh the ultimate uh credit amongst producer credits.Mark Bradford: That’s right. So, and as the executive producer, you’re still writing.   Creative Producers  Mark Bradford: You’re besides all that other stuff.Joseph Mallozzi: Yes.Mark Bradford: So, you were above high above and in the trenches at the same time.Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah. Yes. Again, executive producer can mean a lot of things, but most of the executive producers on Stargate were uh writers as well, writer producers. So Brad Wright, uh, Robert Cooper, Brad Wright was a co-creator of SG1, Atlantis and Universe, uh, Rob Cooper was a co-creator of Atlantis in Universe, and Paul and I were exec producers. Ultimately, Carl Binder, Martin Garrow, all worked their way up to the exec producer uh, role, but at the end of the day, they were creative producers. We all wrote, we all we all spun stories, we all gave notes on each other’s scripts, each other’s episodes. Um, so very hands-on.Mark Bradford: So you mentioned uh Paul as the as your writing partner. What what did that really mean to you to have a writing partner? Because I think for different people it means different things.Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah. And for us it did mean different things.   00:15:11  Joseph Mallozzi: We no longer write together, but uh when we did in the very beginning, I mean, we take a lot of the pressure off. Uh, so when we initially started as a writing team on on SG1, we would actually sit in the same room and write together, I mean bounce dialogue off each other and and run the scripts back scenes back and forth. And then as ...

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Why selfish productivity may be the best productivity

Oct 500:10:43Tap to summarize

Have you ever noticed that when there’s something you really, really love and really speaks to you that when you look at the backstory for it, the person that created it said that they “selfishly” just made it for them? Here’s why selfishness, like the comfort zone, gets a bad rap it doesn’t really deserve Transcript. Selfishness, like the comfort zone, takes a lot of crap. Well, hey there. Welcome back. The Surprising Power of Creative Selfishness Have you ever enjoyed the work of someone else and thought, “Man, this this really speaks to me. I I love it’s like perfect for me. It’s it’s really well done.” Or you think, “I I couldn’t like this more.” And that can range from anything like a a creative work or movie or or a book or even the way somebody took care of your plans. Have you ever noticed that more often than not when you follow up on this stuff, you hear someone say the phrase, “Well, I kind of selfishly did it for me the way that I would like to have it done.” A Side Quest: Building a To-Do List App for Myself So, let me go off on a side quest and continue. So, I had been thinking about the to-do list, and I have a lot of holy grail quests myself, and one of them is the to-do list. It’s one of those things that not sure if you can ever attain the perfect to-do list. It’s something everyone needs. It’s something everyone uses in one way or another, whether it’s on a piece of paper or planner or digitally or in their brain. I missed the days of having a Franklin planner in which you would have this little book and you’d have your to-do lists among other things and then at the end of the night the ones that you didn’t check off you would flip the page and you’d transfer those to the next day and then you would actually sleep through the night. Having recently created my behavioral mapping software that I can use in really cool ways that’s currently patent pending, I had the confidence to sort of do something else. So, I thought, I’m going to make a to-do list. So, I did. I made a little app for to-do list that looks great on my phone and and my desktop. I thought selfishly, what do I want to do since I’m the only person that’s going to use this? I want to do color coding. I want it that when I check something off, it automatically doesn’t go to the next day. I want everything to go to the next day that I don’t check off to be super easy and super frictionless to use. No real login and blah blah blah. So, anyway, I did all that. I ended up showing it to a couple people and a few of them were really interested in using it. So I built it in such a way that multiple people can use it. Every time I described it, I said I selfishly made this for me. Selfish, selfish, selfish. I kept saying that because it was with me and only me in mind. Now is it extremely usable for other people? Yes. But it was made for me selfishly. And once again, it felt like one of those projects or things that someone does that people say, “Wow, that’s really great.” and it’s because it was done selfishly. Do you think that’s counterintuitive? Applying ‘Good’ Selfishness to Your Profession So, getting back off of our side quest, if you’re in corporate America, you may not have a lot of opportunity to do something selfishly. If you’re a probate attorney, you’re not going to be doing it with a lot of flare. If you’re laying down asphalt, there’s probably a specific way you need to do that. And plumbers going to plum. However, if you’re a probate attorney doing probate for your grandmother, you might spend a bit more time on something or you might throw out a rule and say, “I know that’s best practice, but not in this case.” If you’re a plumber, you may allow x amount of time because of a price to do something in someone’s bathroom. But if it’s your bathroom and your wife is going to be using this, you may spend an inordinate amount of time to make sure it’s absolutely right. You will selfishly do it. And not because you’re afraid your wife’s going to yell at you, because you could say, “I’ll just patch this up. It’s just it’s just family. It’s just my wife.” But because you enjoy the validation that you get for being good at your job and the validation you get for showing your loved ones that you are so good at this sort of thing and you take pride in it. Why Selfishness and the Comfort Zone Get a Bad Rap Selfishness like the comfort zone takes a lot of crap. There’s a lot of bad PR about both of those things that’s kind of undeserved. I understand what people say about comfort zones and obviously if someone is just simply selfish, yes, that’s probably a bad thing. But there are elements to both and you can check out the episode on comfort zones if you want to learn more. Feel free to pause now or listen to it after this. There are some really good things to learn on not avoiding something that has some really positive aspects. And this kind of selfishness is is one of them. I would ask you if there’s something in your life that you do that you avoid being selfish in the way that you do it. In other words, you don’t do it to absolute perfection or the way that if you’re doing it for yourself, you would do it and you get paid for that. Ask yourself what the reason is that you don’t do that. And like my examples, you may say, well, look, it’s just not it’s not profitable in any way for me to spend 3 hours on doing something that I can typically get away with doing in 1 hour. And if it’s something you love, you would sort of do that anyway. And you’ll counter and say, “Well, yeah, Mark, I can’t go to the grocery store and say, I did something selfishly and I didn’t get paid for it. Can I have some bananas?” And they’ll say, “Well, of course, no. Please leave.” But there is sort of you’re sort of trapped between the book end of I really do enjoy doing this and gee, I really like eating. Right? And obviously there’s some variance in there. Obvious you get to a point with certain things where it’s all just a lot of gravy. And do you want more gravy or less gravy or or how much time and effort and time, energy, and perhaps resources you want to put into something to get it done the way that you like doing that. The Artisan Approach: How Artists Embrace Selfish Creation We see people who do something for a while and they really start to adopt this attitude. The attitude of well I’ve kind of learned the way that I really like to do things and people really like the way I like to do things. Now a perfect example of people who are pretty much untouchable in this and can adopt that attitude from day one are people who are artists and when I mean artists I mean what people think of as an artist. Somebody who’s who paints, right? Someone who works in that medium. They they just they do what they do and that’s their style. Period. End of discussion. No, I’m not going to paint differently because you’re my sponsor. We don’t ever question that. We know that’s just the way this person paints. When it comes to books, movies, other creative endeavors, jobs, and so forth, well, we sort of become a bit more skeptical on that. We’re a bit more critical on that. But it is where words like artisan come from, right? We know it’s somebody who took their time. They did it the old timey way, and it’s going to be done well. and we’ll probably have to pay a lot more for it. Like the places you go for your craft beer and your $35 hamburger, your 3ml metal container of ketchup. Using “Good” Selfishness as a Creative Guide It’s an interesting guide, isn’t it? If you allow this selfishness to guide your productivity and your creativity, it may take you in a very interesting direction. It may start to be selfiltering. You may say, “Well, the things I really want to do the way that I want to do them are not particularly profitable. So, I have to find a different way to do it or I have to get people to pay a lot more for this.” You may end up actually forking in the road. It’s really none of my business. And having your standard way of doing things and then you have your selfish way of doing things and you may throw on a label like premium or elite or or you only do that for a handful of clients or or whatever, right? But you may actually have two different ways to do something. That’s not a bad thing. That’s an explorative fun thing that you can do with your skills and should. It can be the same way for you moving up the ranks in what you do. You’ll get better and better at somethi...

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The invisible Barrier

Sep 3000:11:17Tap to summarize

The invisible barrier you must cross to switch modes and why it fools you into thinking it would take too much effort to complete a task. Transcript Revisiting Multitasking and the Energy of Switching Tasks Do you multitask? Wait, we we already covered this. In a previous episode, we talked about how energy is really the glue that holds together various multitasking tasks that when you switch between one and the other, there’s a certain amount of energy you have to expend. And the studies recently done add a lot of credence to it and that you’re really not getting more done. You’re in fact getting less done and not as well. So, anyone who’s multitaskked probably found this and and multitasking is one of those holy grails that I look for in my talk and podcast about something called do it to a fault, which is one of my fun acronyms and I love me some acronyms. I explain how people can connect two things together and get a couple things done at the same time. Now, that’s not multitasking per se because it’s really using two different brain systems. Having a conversation on the phone while you’re emptying the dishwasher is not necessarily multitasking because they’re two different modes of operation. Doing your taxes while you’re driving, well, yeah, that’s not a good idea. If you haven’t listened to that one, go listen to it. It’s it’s a good episode. Having said that, I want to talk about something related but different. The Invisible Energy Barrier of Changing Modes So, have you ever had something that you need to do and you realize you haven’t been doing it or you forgot about it and then when you remember it, you have a little bit of a a dread or a sigh. But if you examine how much energy it takes to do the thing, it doesn’t really take all that much energy. So, it’s almost confusing as to, well, why don’t I just do that? What you’re feeling is the invisible barrier of energy that’s preventing you from switching into that mode. And that’s kind of what we talk about in in multitasking is that there’s this energy you have to expend to switch and kind of clear your mind and say, “Okay, now I’m a chef. Okay, now I’m a mom. Okay, now I’m a corporate individual like a CFO and I have to speak a certain way and so on and so forth.” And we talked about that a bit in an episode about switching modes. So check that out as well. But getting back to this invisible energy barrier and and that’s what it is. You think about a task and you think, “Oh, well that’s not that.” And then you just kind of feel it. You feel that you don’t want to do that cuz it’s different. You’re in a different mode. And it’s not that it’s a bad thing. It’s not that you don’t even necessarily not want to do it, but our brains like to trick us and we think, “Oh, I’m only not doing that because my wife this is going to happen or this happens with my kids or I’m just so drained from this.” And and you’re not. You’re not drained from the thing because this might even be something that in a way might be rewarding, but you have to switch modes. And you can feel that energy of switching modes and it might be disorienting for you. Why Switching Between Work and Personal Modes is Draining If you’re at work in a corporate environment and you’re in a conference room and your boss says, “Hey Janelle, be funny. Be as funny as you can possibly be right now.” And it’s a it’s a very somber, serious, financially oriented environment. As much as it sounds fun and empowering to just sort of be funny and be silly, it feels disorienting because you normally aren’t in this situation. And it feels like you’d have to push yourself into being funny. And guess what happens once you push yourself into being funny or being in this different emotional mode. You would then have to push yourself back out. Something that might be a little closer to home is if somebody you’re working with is going through something. They’re going through a divorce or something horrible happens to them or or or somebody they care about and they kind of pull you into their world and you’re like, “Oh, that’s right. Tomorrow Denise is going to tell me about her her ex-husband or what she’s going through and it’s just so draining and I just want to focus on my spreadsheet stuff.” Now, just to clarify, you might very much look forward to going and grabbing some wine with Denise after work next Thursday to talk about all this nonsense. You’re you’re going to get into it. It’s going to get really juicy, but not in the middle of work because besides it being inappropriate, it’s also something that causes you to switch modes. Hit the wall of energy going in and hit the wall of energy going out. The Exhausting Effect of Juggling Multiple Life Roles Is this starting to clarify why some things are difficult for you to get accomplished to check off your to-do list? It could explain a lot if you are bouncing around between a lot of different things. And when I say a lot of different things, I mean maybe switching between being a single parent or an entrepreneur and somebody who wants to be creative and somebody who wants to get stuff done around the house and somebody who wants to be romantic for their partner and so forth. All of those are different modes. Each one of them has a barrier of energy that you have to cross over. You’ve probably also noticed that the more willing you are to do a thing, so in other words, it’s something you really want to do. And in terms of my latest book, it’s a it’s a unicorn that’s pulling you to this pleasure. The more you want to do it, the easier it is to do it if you know it’s going to be a while before you go back. So, in other words, if there was something fun you wanted to do and you were going to kind of sneak it in like across your lunch hour, it would be hard because you’re going in and going out again. But if you said, “I’m taking a half day,” you’d say, “Oh, yes, take me. Finally, I can go and do that thing I want to do that I’ve really been looking forward to.” And the thing might be gardening. The thing might be cleaning up a closet, but it just might be weighing on you. And like again, it requires you to put your head down and to get into it. And those should all be key phrases for you. Putting your head down, getting into it, letting yourself go, being in a certain frame of mind. All those things mean the same thing. They mean that you are driving and adjusting your intellectual, emotional, and physical energy to perform this task to the best of your ability. The High Cost of “Phoning It In” While Mode Switching That brings up another subject to the best of your ability because you can push back and say, “Mark, I can switch things like this. I’m not like some crazily committed person to something as opposed to a committed person who’s crazy.” You say, “Look, it’s it’s you’re making a big deal out of it.” Yeah, I’m making a big deal out of it. If you like to do things shoddily, if you like to do things kind of phoned it in and say, “Well, that’s good enough.” Well, sure. Then you could switch all day long sucking up your energy where you’re still kind of half in one world while you’re half in this other world and you just kind of get it done. You could be inattentive. You can be that way for your parenting. You can be that way for your taxes. You could be that way for your relationships. You can be that way for your career. Yes, you can be fairly inattentive, but do you want to be? I don’t think so. Especially if you’re listening to this. I think you’re really someone who likes to hear new ideas, likes to better themselves, likes to think about what’s the best way to do something, and likes to think about behind the scenes, especially when it comes to getting things done and the fun of experimental psychology, which is really kind of cool. A Strategy for Overcoming the Energy Barrier So, what did we learn then? Well, as always, I try to raise your awareness and then I try to give you some homework or something that maybe you could do that that would help. And the awareness is that there is this invisible barrier between us switching modes. And the bigger the difference in the modes, the larger the amount of energy. We learned that if you want to go off halfcocked and or just not be so committed or just phone it in, then yes, you can kind of cross that barrier back and forth, but y...

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Learning styles and learning right in front of someone

Sep 1400:09:37Tap to summarize

What’s your learning style? Do you know what your learning style is? Did you know you have one? For a long time I have known about the diferent ways humans learn. People not only have aptitudes (someone is good with mechanical stuff, or math, etc.) but also differ in the way they learn. Same resulting information, different ways of it to enter your head. I truly wish we would explore this in the schools because it would make all the difference in the world for kids and people trying to learn. What I have come to recognize any time I am teaching (conversations, consulting, teaching, coaching, workshops) is that I can detect the style just by watching the person as they learn. Here are the styles I’ve come across and what I notice. The styles Audio – people who learn this way learn mostly by hearing the information. They are watching you, sure, but they focus mostly on what you are saying. These people may make facial gestures as they listen. They might seem to be staring at you. They really prefer audiobooks instead of regular print books. They might seem to be ignoring what you are putting on your white board. They are waiting for you to tell them something. Visual – You hear this a lot – “Im a visual learner.” Obviously this means they are watching very carefully and pay most of their attention to what they see. So, your diagrams and text on the board is devoured. They will talk with their hands typically. I’m Sicilian so I do this anyway. Some teachers seem to think that everyone is one of these kind of learners. Conceptual – The conceptual learner is really inwardly focused on what he/she is processing. I know when I am talking to one of this tribe because they tilt their heads and usually look up at the upper right. I know because I’m a member of this tribe. It’s sometimes disorienting for others as it looks like I might not be listening, or that i m doubting what they are saying. In a way they are right—I am testing the concept they are relaying with what I know, and creating it in my head to see. Conceptual Lerners tend to “take things to heart” immediately. They learn faster and harder, but will be quick to lose interest if they are not engaged. This list is from experience, anectotal evidence, and a bit of research. Your results may vary, but knowing this can be very useful and not only help you communicate better but prevent misunderstandings between different learners. Like the love langauges, people aren’t just one of these and can be a mix. This podcast, unlike most, comes with an article typically. The article is written in an authoritative manner to make the reading and absorbing of the concepts easy. The recording is me speaking in a more conversational tone. Maybe when I get more patrons I’ll start creating videos as well. They I’ll have all of y’all covered. Q: Which kind of learner are you? Q: Have you ever run into difficulty learning because it was presented one way and that way was not a style you favored?

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What’s Apathy? Who cares.

Sep 300:11:09Tap to summarize

Transcript What is Apathy? The Answer Might Surprise You Well, hey there. Welcome back. What’s this episode about? Who cares? So, many years ago, I was with a few of my friends and one of my friends said, “What’s apathy?” And my other friend said, “Who cares?” And it took a little while to realize that he was actually answering the question. Visualizing Motivation: The Psychology of “BeCAUSE!“ As you may or may not know, I’ve written patent-pending software now that actually can help me to do behavioral mapping. It’s an offshoot of my latest book called Because. And I’m finding there are many, many offshoots of the whole concept of Because, which is based on Freud’s pleasure principle: seek pleasure, avoid pain. The software has allowed me to visualize all of these interesting concepts that might be kind of hard to visualize. And in doing so, it’s allowed me to see things that even I didn’t see while writing the book. Why You Never Finish Your To-Do List Let’s talk about your to-do list to make this a little clearer. You can create a to-do list and then you can assign priorities. You can create a to-do list and then you can convince yourself that the one you really want to do is the one you should do. I talk about this in one of the chapters. You’ve probably made many to-do lists. Some of them grand, some of them small. But like most people, you don’t have a sort of a grand overarching to-do list. Like your life list, if you will. You can get complicated. And on that life list, you can have, “I’m going to climb a mountain.” “Here’s my bucket list.” “Here’s me finding love.” Here is, “Oh, that’s right. I have to get groceries. I have to cut the grass.” Like, all these things are to-dos, and some of them are of a grander scale or not. If you think about your own list, there might be something that you keep putting on there, but you never do it. And so if we apply monsters and unicorns and we mapped it out, we could probably see that maybe there’s something painful about it, that there’s just too much pain that this thing generates and you feel like there’s no return on investment. Or there’s just not enough pleasure generated, or there’s not enough pain being generated if you don’t do it. The Unfinished Novel: A Case Study in Laziness vs. Apathy Let’s take an example. Let’s say you have an awesome life doing what you do. You have your full-time job. You’re invested. You have a career and all that stuff. And one day you’re thinking, “You know what, I wouldn’t mind writing a novel, a fiction.” So, you put that on your little to-do list and you think about it sometimes. And once in a great while, you write a few words here and there. And finally, after seeing it on your list and looking back on the fact that you’ve been writing this novel for almost a year now and have almost nothing to show for it—you know, you never really made an outline, you don’t really have much in the way of the characters or any research or anything like that. You look at it and you might realize, if you had access to the kinds of things we talk about here on the podcast all the time, “Oh, I’m afraid of failure. That’s so strong I’m never going to finish this novel.” Or, “I’m afraid I can’t write realistic dialogue.” Or, “I’m afraid it’s going to take too much time away from me,” and so forth. And we’re defining monsters and monsters and monsters. But let’s say instead of that, when you do your self-examination, you’re like, “Well, I guess I could work on it. I don’t know. I just don’t care.” Now, that’s apathy. If you just don’t care, it means there aren’t any monsters and unicorns at all. There’s nothing that says, “Ooh, this will be pleasurable.” “Ooh, my friends will think better of me when I do this.” Or, “Ooh, this I’ll feel good because I’ll have accomplished something.” Or, “Oh, I’m afraid of embarrassment if I don’t finish it,” and blah, blah, blah. You won’t have any of that because you just simply don’t care. Introducing Selective Indifference: The Apathy You Should Have You can be a fairly dynamic individual interested in a multitude of things, whether it’s improving skills or hobbies or creativity or what have you. And you can have things that you simply don’t care about. You can’t like everything. You can’t care about everything. I don’t want to jump out of a plane. It’s not because I don’t care. It’s because I have a monster that says, “That’s going to hurt when you hit the ground.” And any unicorn that might be there that says how cool it would be to do that is really tiny compared to the giant monster that says, “The sudden stop is really bad. Don’t do that.” So, I’m not doing that. I’m also not, for the most part, going to go to an opera. And there’s really no monster-unicorn waiting for me there that says, you know, “Don’t go, it’s going to sound terrible,” or, “You should go because it’ll improve your culture.” I just… I don’t care. And I know this is going to shock you, but I kind of feel that way about sports. I don’t keep up on sports and things. So, I don’t care how certain teams do or anything like that. And I know that’s shocking and I’m sorry and I apologize, but I’m kind of the same way with that, too. It frees up a lot of time, I’ll tell you that. So, I’m apathetic towards going to the opera. I’m apathetic towards sports for the most part. But if I place something on my list and I look back and I eventually realize I’m apathetic towards that, I have to think about that. And you should too. You should also be thinking about the things in your life that you have apathy towards. Are You Lazy or Just Selectively Indifferent? And by defining these things and defining what apathy is, as opposed to what it could be—which is laziness, or at least something you could define as laziness and say, “You know what, I don’t want to do that right now. I’d rather eat some chips. I’d rather go do that fun thing. I’d rather do that thing that makes me feel more productive.” Maybe it’s not even fun at all. “I’m going to put in an extra hour of work,” or, “I’m going to go help my friend move instead of doing that thing because of your value system.” Your monsters and unicorns tell you that’s the thing you want to do. So that’s about prioritization and, again, seeking pleasure and avoiding pain, but not being indifferent or being selectively indifferent. When I say I’m not particularly interested in sports, I’m selectively indifferent to it. It’s just not something that turns me on. For the most part, I can be dragged to it. It’s fine. Not something I seek out. Like a million other things in life that we don’t seek out. We just don’t seek it out. A Simple Test for Self-Discovery I’m trying to drive home the point of how important it is to sort of look inwardly and say, “Am I being lazy or am I being apathetic?” So before we go any further on anything, that sounds like really good homework to have. Are there things in your life that you’re thinking, “I thought I was going to do this by now. I thought I was going to do this,” or, “Why am I struggling so much to get this off the ground, change careers, what have you?” There’s probably a bunch of things in your life that you’d either like to do or can’t do, and it might be disappointing you. And here’s the thing. If it’s something that you’re not doing and you should be doing and you really want to do it, but you have some monsters and unicorns in the way, well then that’s something we can get through. And if you read Because, you’re a lot smarter on how to get through that. But if it turns out to be selective indifference, chosen apathy, well, that’s a win. Because now you can stop beating yourself up. You can stop giving yourself a hard time because you’re not doing that thing. “Well, I just don’t… I’m not… I don’t care.” Does that make se...

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The Availability Gap: Why Your Energy Matters More Than Your Time

Aug 2400:10:52Tap to summarize

Are You Truly Available? The Critical Difference Between Time and Energy I’m going to ask you a simple question: Are you available right now? Of course, you’re listening to this, so your immediate answer is “yes.” But are you? For years, I’ve talked about the constant negotiation between our time, energy, and resources. Today, I want to zero in on a nuance that seems small at first but has massive implications for our work, our relationships, and our own well-being. It’s the difference between being merely present and being truly available. More Than a Calendar Invite: Availability at Work Think about a typical corporate scenario. You ask Mike and Sarah from HR if they are available for a 3:30 meeting, and they agree. They show up. They are physically in the conference room or logged into the video call. They have made their time available. But is their energy available? You know what I’m talking about. You see the vacant nods, the lack of retention. On a video call, you see the tell-tale white glow on their face from another screen or the reflection of scrolling text in their glasses. They are physically present, but their energy—their focus, their mental capacity—is somewhere else entirely. Maybe Sarah has a problem at home, and her mind is there. In that case, no matter what her calendar says, she’s not really available for your meeting. The time is there, but the energy isn’t. This becomes even more obvious when you’re a speaker or a teacher. You can have a room full of people who showed up for your 10 a.m. workshop. Their time is committed. But you see them fidgeting, looking at their phones, their minds clearly elsewhere. Their energy is being siphoned off, and as a result, they aren’t available to receive what you’re trying to give them. Divided Attention: The Availability Gap in Our Personal Lives This concept doesn’t just live at the office. It follows us home. You and your spouse might set aside two hours to sit in the same room and “spend time together.” You are technically available, right? But if you’re staring at your phone or have your laptop open, and every question they ask is met with a distracted, “Huh? What?” then you aren’t available for them. You’re available for your screen. Your energy is flowing toward your device, not your partner. This is why an activity like playing a video game together can feel so connecting. You are both intensely available for the game, which means your energy is focused on the same goal. You are, in fact, available for each other. The Most Important Question: Are You Available for Yourself? This brings us to the most crucial relationship of all: the one you have with yourself. How often are you truly available for you? This isn’t some esoteric concept. It’s profoundly practical. You might think, “I have free will. I’m always available for myself because I choose what to do.” But that’s not how life really works. How often have you committed to a task at work, but your brain is already on vacation? Or you come home from the office, but you haven’t mentally clocked out? That drive home used to be a forced decompression period. For many who work from home, that buffer is gone. It takes a microsecond to walk from the “office” to the kitchen, but your mind is still at work. You are home, but you are not yet available for your family or for yourself. Life is full of things we don’t plan for—a spill, an emergency call, an accident. That lack of availability is often the root cause of problems. A driver fiddling with their phone isn’t available to pay attention to the road, and the result can be a crash. At home, not listening to your spouse may not cause a physical accident, but it creates a relational one over time. How to Create True Availability So, how do we fix this? It starts with awareness and is followed by self-control. Being available for yourself means taking a breath and asking: What do I want to do right now? What do I need to do? What would make me happy? In my new book, BeCAUSE!, I talk about the “monsters” (things we do to avoid pain) and “unicorns” (things we do to seek pleasure) that constantly pull our energy in different directions. When we live in a purely reactive state—bouncing between avoiding the boss’s anger and chasing the thrill of completing a project—we leave no space for ourselves. We become robots, always on, with no room to look up and ask, “Wait, what’s going on in my life? What do I really want?” To become truly available, you must first create that space. You have to be willing to put your head up and check in with yourself. You must become available for you first. Only then can you genuinely offer your energy and availability to everything and everyone else in your life. Thank you for being available for this message—not just with your time, but with your energy. The people who get the most out of this are the ones who truly engage. If you make yourself available for ideas like this, I’m sure you also make yourself available for yourself. And I hope you continue to do so. Transcript Well, hey there. Welcome back. Hey, are you available for this podcast? Well, of course you are. You’re listening to it, right? Or are you? Let’s talk about this whole concept. I’ve talked about time, energy, and resources so much. You can pretty much recite that. What I’m about to talk about is one of those things that when we look at it in its native situation, it may seem that I’m just being overly nuanced, but when we transfer it to a different situation, it becomes blatantly obvious. And I love that. If you work in corporate America and you have to pull someone from another team or department or what have you and you’re like, “Hey, are you available at 3:30 for just a half hour meeting?” and they say, “Sure.” And so then they show up in the conference room or even, god forbid, on some sort of video call, they’re available, right? Well, their time is available, but is there energy? And this is the nuanced part because you may say, “Well, yeah, I I met with Mike and Sarah from HR and they were available from 3:30 to 4 and we talked about whatever it is we talked about.” But if you find that there wasn’t a lot of retention or there was just a lot of nodding, or if it’s a video call, as you may be very well unfortunately aware of, if their face lights up with, suddenly lights up with white or changes or you can see things in their glasses, then you know they might not really be available. And you know what I’m talking about. Their energy is going somewhere else or it’s focused somewhere else. Or they may actually be in a meeting with you, but because Sarah has an issue going on at home, her mind may be elsewhere. And if her mind is elsewhere, her energy is elsewhere. Let’s make it even less nuanced. If you’re teaching a class of 10 individuals, say a seminar or you’re giving a a talk or or what have you, say it’s a 1-hour, a 1-hour situation, whether it’s a workshop or a class or something, everyone who shows up at 10:00 a.m. for the 10 to 11 class is available, right? They they’re spending their time with you. Do you see how I paused there when the nor next word was going to show up? If people are fidgeting or looking at something else or they have their phones out, well, they may actually not be all that available for you. And it can be very frustrating as a speaker or a teacher that your students aren’t actually available for you. They’re physically there. They’re spending their time with you, but their energy is somewhere else or their energy is being siphoned off by something else, or they can’t seem to focus their energy on you. Obviously, if this same issue is affecting the actual teacher, then it can be very clear to the students that this person, they’re just not all that interesting to listen to. They’re just, “I I don’t get what she’s saying.” You would say, “I I I I’m trying, but you know, she’s not all that available because she’s focused on something else.” This concept doesn’t just apply to your work life. And as you know with time, energy and resources and most of, most if not all of the concepts we talk about, it applies to you as the whole. And part of the whole is your non-work life. So if you’re available for your spouse, you know, you’re sitting in the same room for 2 hours, that’s being available, right? But if you’re staring at your phone or the time that you want to sp...

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A fast “no” is always better than a time-wasting “yes.”

Aug 10, 202500:11:53Tap to summarize

The CEO Mindset: Why a Fast Decision Beats a Slow Promise In the world of productivity and time management, we’re often told to optimize our calendars and to-do lists. But what if the single most effective habit of top performers isn’t about complex systems, but about one simple principle? A fast “no” is always better than a time-wasting “yes.” This core idea reveals the true CEO mindset—a way of thinking focused on decisive action that has nothing to do with your job title and everything to do with reducing stress and reclaiming your time. The Surprising Trait of High-Achievers You might think that world-renowned authors, tech luminaries, and presidential candidates are the hardest people to schedule. The reality is often the exact opposite. The common thread among these high-achievers is their ability to make a decision—and make it fast. When presented with an opportunity, they don’t leave it lingering in their inbox. They respond with a definitive “yes” or a respectful “no,” often within days. This isn’t because they have more free time; it’s because they have mastered their time by eliminating indecision. People who are hard to pin down are often drowning in a sea of non-committal “maybes,” a cycle that creates more work and anxiety for everyone involved. How Procrastination Creates Hidden Stress Every task you put off—every email you promise to “get back to”—occupies valuable mental real estate. This constant loop of unfinished business is a major source of hidden stress. It’s like having too many apps open on your phone; eventually, everything slows down. Conversely, taking immediate action, whether it’s tackling a task or simply scheduling a firm time to do it, frees up that mental space. The goal isn’t necessarily to do everything at once, but to decide its fate immediately. By converting a vague “I’ll do that later” into a concrete calendar event, you give your future self a clear command and your present self the gift of peace. Your Action Plan: From Indecision to Control Adopting this leadership mindset is straightforward. The next time a request or task comes your way, you have two powerful choices: Act or Schedule Immediately: If you intend to do it, either do it right then or pull out your calendar and assign it a non-negotiable time slot. This is the essence of effective scheduling. Give a Fast, Honest “No”: If you don’t have the time, energy, or desire to do something, say so. A quick and polite “no” is a sign of respect for your own time and the other person’s. It closes the loop and prevents the stress of a lingering, unfulfilled promise. By becoming a decisive person, you’ll find that the stress leading up to a decision was always the worst part. You’ll accomplish more, feel better about the commitments you make, and finally gain control over your most valuable resource: your time. Transcript: A fast no is much better than a time-wasting yes. Well, hey there. Welcome back. It was a good decision for you to come back. See what I’m doing there? Now that we’ve passed 300 episodes, I want to give you a little behind-the-scenes look, which I think applies to everyday life. I want to apologize in advance that I’m about to use a word I hate using, and that is mindset, but it actually applies here. I want to talk about the CEO mindset, the leader mindset, the decision-maker mindset, and it has nothing to do with your position. It has to do with your, well, mindset. So what does this have to do with my experience? I have interviews on this show periodically. I put a lot of effort into selecting and approaching people that I think are very interesting, dynamic, and can present something to my audience that’s unique and from a perspective that you won’t see anywhere else. I’ve been fortunate to have discussions with world-class musicians, presidential candidates, brilliant minds, famous authors, and technical luminaries. In addition to that, I have people that you may have never heard of, but I think they have a story to tell. While all that’s going on, I am typically turning down people who are applying to be on the show because I need to act as a filter for you. What World-Class Leaders and Top Performers Have in Common Do you know the one thing that the luminaries and world-renowned people have in common? I know that sounds so clickbaity. “The one thing these people have in common… you’d never guess.” It’s their ability to make a freaking decision. That’s it. That’s the one thing I think they all have in common. They have an ability to make a decision and they have integrity backing that up. The statistics are the opposite of what you would think. The people with the CEO mindset are the people that just get it done. We get it done because they can make a decision, stick with a decision, and be honest about the decision. And sometimes that decision is no. When the decision is yes, they act upon it and they have control over their schedule. I will tell you it’s almost always days. Yes, days between contact, acceptance, and recording. That sounds insane, right? You would think the high-level CEOs are the people that are the hardest to nail down. The Hidden Stress of Procrastination vs. The Freedom of Action I have found that the people that are hard to nail down are the people who simply aren’t being honest with you, or they’re so bad at controlling their schedule that they just react to whatever is making the most noise. That’s a terrible way to live. Putting things off creates more work for you. I did an episode about how doing things quickly when they come to you actually frees up a certain memory space, which feels like less stress. You can get to the point where you have these little mini-panic attacks and go, “Oh my god, I forgot… oh wait, no, I didn’t. I did it immediately.” I’m so used to thinking, “I’ll take care of that later,” that when I handle it right away, I later think I’ve forgotten it. Think back to school when you were given a month for a project. Most people wait until the last few days because they become motivated by pressure. Well, imagine if you do it immediately. On the 28th day, when everyone else is panicking, you might panic too, thinking you forgot, but then you realize, “No, I did it on the first day.” I understand you don’t always have the time slot in your day to do something. You might be running around like a chicken with your head cut off. But there’s a solve for that, too. You can schedule it. You see the difference? We have control over our future selves. We can schedule it. That’s the whole point of a calendar. Real-World Examples of Decisive Scheduling in Action Don’t believe me? Fine. I’ll name names. John McAfee: Wrote operating systems for NASA, was worth over $100 million, ran for president twice, and invented the first antivirus. When I connected with him, it was days until we scheduled his appearance, and days after that, he made the appearance. Scott Adams: Creator of the Dilbert cartoons, author of a stack of bestsellers, and a master of persuasion. Again, it was days until we scheduled his appearance and days after that he was on the show. Manuel Rendon: Holder of nine patents and CEO of the only company capable of producing truly dissolvable plastics. Again, days after contact, days until the appearance. <a href="https://www.alchemyfor.life/balancecoaching...

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Mindfulness from Bhutan – my chat with a monk named Jamyang.

Jul 27, 202500:51:47Tap to summarize

I find it quite illuminating to speak with people from all over the world. The power of our technology and interconnected world is that it allows me to have conversations I could never have. I had the pleasure of chatting with Jamyang in this week’s podcast. Jamyang Loden Jamyang Loden is a monk from Bhutan, the “country of gross national happiness,” (you’ll hear more about this later) currently residing at Ludakaru monastery in Bumang, central Bhutan. He has been living a monastic life since he was seven years old and is studying Buddhist philosophies. Even monks have YouTube channels Jamyang created a youtube channel (see link) to showcase Bhutan to the outside world from their own perspective. Daily Life of a Monk Jamyang Loden details his daily routine as a monk, starting at 4:30 a.m. If you’ve ever wondered what that actually looks like, you’ll find out in detail. English Proficiency English is a second language in Bhutan, and younger generations born after 2000 are particularly fluent. That makes it rather easy for me to have a chat like this and I am always appreciative that English is still the lingua franca. Bhutan’s Geographical Location and Unique Qualities Bhutan’s location is situated between China to the north and India to the south. There are some unique facts about Bhutan, including its history of never being conquered and its status as a carbon-negative country. The country’s constitution mandates maintaining at least 60% forest coverage, contributing to its green landscape and small population of just over 700,000. Bhutan’s Approach to Infrastructure and Nature Bhutan is nearly 100% powered by hydropower. To me, Bhutanese architecture is harmonizing with nature, with buildings appearing integrated into the landscape and resembling sculptures. The drawings of the new international airport in Gelephu, which incorporates natural elements like trees indoors and features a modular design. Gelephu Mindfulness City Gelephu Mindfulness City is a unique, large-scale project initiated by the king, designed to promote mindful living amidst nature. Uunlike cities with skyscrapers, Gelephu will integrate natural elements, allowing wildlife like elephants to roam within the city, providing tourists with a tranquil and immersive experience. It is an amazing project that you might hear more about on this channel… Meditation Practices I asked Jamyang for advice on meditation for those who find it difficult to stop thinking—not that this is ever an issue for me. :). Hear what he said. It might surprise you. Check out his channel, FB and instagram, and tell him Alchemy for Life sent you! Jamyang’s contact info: https://www.youtube.com/@jamyangloden4935 facebook.com/share/14r3F1ipSD https://www.instagram.com/monk_key_diary Transcript: Mark Bradford: Well hey there, welcome back. I’m here with Jamyang Loden. So, as I ask everyone, uh, tell everyone who you are and what you do. Jamyang Loden: Okay, first of all, thank you Mark for giving me this opportunity to share about my country to your audiences uh especially Americans if I’m not mistaken. Jamyang Loden: So um once again thank you very much. My name is Jamyong Loden and I am from Bhutan the country of cross national happiness. So uh currently I am a monk at Ludakaru monastery in Bumang that is uh central part of Bhutan. So uh yeah I’m learning Buddhist philosophies and it has been uh 7 years since I took monastic life and yeah that is a brief introduction of me Mark Bradford: Well, that’s very good. I’m so, as I said before, I’m so happy to be able to speak with you. I love that the technology allows us to communicate in this way and and see each other. And speaking of that, uh you have definitely embraced technology because you have your own YouTube channel. Jamyang Loden: Yes. Yes. A very small growing YouTube channel I should say. Um the shall I continue? Mark Bradford: Oh, sure. I was just going to ask you uh if you would mind telling people about your channel. What is the uh purpose or mission of your channel? Jamyang Loden: Okay. Thank you very much for this question. One second. Um uh the main reason or purpose that I created this YouTube channel is because uh I wanted to show my country to you know outside Bhutan because there are so many vloggers or YouTubers who are talking about our country within Bhutan and there are so many YouTubers outside Bhutan you know great YouTubers who comes to our country and show Bhutan to outside world. Then I thought you know why not I show my country to outside. It is it would be better that if I represent my country on my way own way and show to other you know other people that would be very uh you know meaningful. That is one reason and the another reason is uh as a monk you know uh we have so many less people coming out and speaking and sharing about their life and uh if I share about my spiritual journey then it would uh make others other people to learn what is spirituality that would give you know some insights of of uh what what is the life of a monk you you know as a monk. Jamyang Loden: So that is one reason that is another reason why I created this YouTube channel and uh there are other factors uh which I am not able to remember now but then uh these are the two reasons you know main reasons why I created this YouTube and yeah and I think uh I would say I’m blessed to have you know uh that I got attention from outsiders as as I you know there’s one uh there’s a saying you when you want something everything conspires in helping achieve that. That is uh what I felt you know uh exactly as I wanted. Uh I got opportunity to talk about my country in one of the biggest YouTube channels you know uh about construction. They gave me platform and that has really helped me to pull the subscribers from you know western countries subscribe to my channel and now I think uh it is working well. Mark Bradford: Oh, Jamyang Loden: Yeah. Mark Bradford: absolutely. And so I will let you know too that when this is published, I will make sure that there is a link, a very clear link to people being able to see your YouTube channel and being able Jamyang Loden: Okay. Mark Bradford: to find you and and so forth because I know people out there really want to learn. You know, Jamyang Loden: Mhm. Mark Bradford: YouTube is a wonderful way to to learn. It’s overwhelming. There’s so much that’s there. And Jamyang Loden: Yeah. Yeah. Mark Bradford: uh and people who listen to this podcast also want to learn. They want to know new things, maybe things that would be difficult to find otherwise. And the greatest thing about it is being able to hear directly from the person who’s experiencing it. You know, we can read about it all we want, but to be able to have the luxury of speaking to you directly is really, really cool. And you were mentioning uh being in the monastery and being a monk. I’m sure everyone would be very fascinated to hear sort of your description of that because I think everyone has a concept in their mind of what it is and I’m sure it varies depending on where you are in the world and so forth. Mark Bradford: Would you mind sharing a little bit about what it is to be a monk and what your day-to-day activity looks like? Jamyang Loden: Okay. Um, I’ll just uh begin with uh uh how I begin my day. So, uh my early bell rings at uh 4:30 a.m. standard time that is uh plus 6 GMT. So um my you know when there’s a ring uh in early hours 4:30 a.m. then all the monks will have to get up and get ready by 4:45. They’ll be they’ll have to sit in their room. So and you know they’ll have to uh read some som...

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The unnerving power of no

Jul 20, 202500:08:29Tap to summarize

We deal with decisions every day. Many of the episodes deal with the decision process on both a grand and low level. Three Voices deals with how we communicate these decisions, work through them, talk to both ourselves and others about them. Going with your gut—the universal advice–is telling you to listen to your first voice. Understanding the “Why” Behind Your Choices Sometimes we say yes, and sometimes we say no. BeCAUSE! explores the why behind those decisions, why some feel really good, and why others might feel really bad. Sometimes the wrong decision feels good and sometimes the right one feels bad. Why the Right Decision Can Feel Bad But how can the right one feel bad? It’s for the same reason that having your third piece of cake can feel good. If you’ve read BeCAUSE! then you know that we are seeking pleasure and avoiding pain on a complex granular level. We want the cake because the first two felt pretty good, ya know what I mean? But that doesn’t make it the right decision. Diets sometimes feel bad. Avoiding a food we love feels bad, avoiding a food we consider a reward feels worse, and avoiding a food we deem to be the only reward we get in our very stressful, controlled life feels horrible. But it’s the right thing to do. We get this mostly when it comes to ‘guilty pleasures’ or things that we consider to be things we do purely for pleasure—playing games, watching TV and movies, binge watching our favorite series, escaping deep into a book, desserts, hobbies, etc. But we are far less cognizant of this when it comes to seemingly neutral decisions—or even decisions that aren’t even needed. High-Stakes Decisions: When “No” is the Right Move in Business Take for example the dilemma of the solopreneur. Every dollar counts and each new client and gig is a win, right? Keep building, keep growing, keep increasing your reach and client base. More and more work. More and more clients. But what happens when a new gig isn’t a fit? What happens when a new client isn’t a fit? Should you do it anyway? Take creatives like people who produce music, or art. If a company wants them to create a jingle for alcohol, but their music is about the opposite (or the band leader is sober now going on five years) what then? Take the manager that has to interview a number of people, but is told that one individual is good for the company but there are two others that clearly have better skills, a personality more in line with the mission, and a better track record. What then? What if your small company is presented with an opportunity to rescue a company from a crumbling infrastructure and you could be the hero? On paper it looks like a great opportunity if they just purchase all the equipment you propose and allow you the control needed to make it work for them (with ongoing involvement). But what if your first voice, your gut, your intuition tells you this won’t be the way it plays out, that in fact it will be a struggle to have them on board with what will really work. Then what? The Power and Difficulty of a Single Word One word. One difficult one. One word that can cause you to have stress and regret and soul-searching. Business vs. Relationships: An Instinctive Difference What is interesting is that I have to spell it out and make a case by case example of this in business, but if we were to apply this to relationships you would instantly get it. You’d know that someone isn’t a match, or that you’ve had red-flags experience and would make the very personal decision to end a relationship, or not even pursue one that fit the parameters. And you might even be offended that I am trying to tell you the kind of people you should pursue a relationship with. In business we operate—seemingly—on simple rules of profit, margin, growth strategies, and all those other exciting terms we see ad nauseam on LinkedIn. But we don’t talk much about the clients you don’t pursue. But we should. Navigating the Internal Conflict of Saying No Saying no can be difficult. It can activate all sorts of Monsters and Unicorns that manipulate you into seeking the pleasure of making someone happy, being the hero, gaining more profit, gaining more status, having a perfect record. It will activate the monsters that push you away from the pain of seeing your bottom line continue to shrink, or the self-esteem drain of thinking a better person could do it, or the fear of missing out on an opportunity, or the pain of having your reputation be affected by a lack of skill. So one must take the time and energy to activate the Monsters and Unicorns that seek the pleasure of being honest with yourself, or knowing that you choose the right thing over the obvious thing, or avoiding the pain of the hidden time bomb of being blamed for the failure of a system that is about to fall apart. A Personal Story: The Long-Term Reward of My First “No” I remember my first no, years ago, when I had a meeting with a potential client. I met with them, saw their environment, spoke to the president. After a short while they let me know that they weren’t going to pursue me. I thanked them for their time and months later saw an article that applied to them. I thought it would be helpful for her to take a peek and I happily sent it to her. Weeks later she was so impressed by this that she mentioned that, and wanted to have me come in for a second, deeper look. This time I was dealing with a marketing person, and the deeper look revealed items that were completely unknown, a pricing structure that was non-existent, and an elevator ride in which I was told to make sure that I “showed up on time.” In two decades (at the time) of client interaction I had never missed a meeting, an appointment nor had I ever taken a sick day. All those pieces came together into a resounding, but polite no, which was met with a “Oh so you think you probably can’t handle this.” Two weeks after this I experienced something unique. Passing an exit sign on the freeway (which mentioned this business) gave me a terrible sinking feeling of my new client. Except that they weren’t. It was a three second roller coaster of opposing feelings—the dread and shock to the realization and relief. My no had paid off. Applying Past Lessons to a Present Decision I find myself in a similar situation right now and am reminded of my first no. Back then I wasn’t aware of the Monsters and Unicorns and their purposes and placement. But I see them now and I appreciate what they are doing and ultimately I will decide. And I’ve decided the right answer is no. Do you have a difficult “no” you’re trying to figure out? Let me know and I can help you identify the Monsters & Unicorns involved.

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When the Devil Sounds Like a Unicorn

Jul 5, 202500:09:26Tap to summarize

The Enduring Metaphor of Angels and Devils The metaphorical representation of a devil and an angel on a person’s shoulders dates back to the 16th century1. Throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, this concept was prominently featured in plays and allegorical art. By the early 1900s, it had found its way into cartoons as a visual shorthand to depict the internal struggle between virtues and vices. The angel serves to keep one on the “straight and narrow,” while the devil tempts one toward vices and earthly pleasures. A New Metaphor: The Monster and the Unicorn Did you hear what the devil is trying to get you to do? He was pulling you towards pleasures. Which does he sound like? The unicorn. Confusing, no? Well, no, not at all when you realize that the angel and devil metaphors are not the same as the “monster” and “unicorn.” This distinction can be a source of confusion for some who mistakenly believe them to be interchangeable. In literature, the roles are clearly defined: the angel encourages you to do what is right and good, which is often the more challenging path. Conversely, the devil tempts you to take the easy, lazy, vindictive, or even mean-spirited route. The angel represents good, while the devil embodies bad. However, neither the monster nor the unicorn is inherently good or bad; they are neutral. They function as psychological building blocks, each with a singular purpose driven by a cause. The unicorn pulls you toward pleasure and actively seeks it with you. Its goal is for you to experience pleasure, and it tugs at you when it finds it. The monster, on the other hand, wants to protect you from any and all pain. As we know, “no pain, no gain.” Some necessary life experiences involve pain, and not all pleasurable things should be pursued. The Overlap Between Angels, Devils, Monsters, and Unicorns In some instances, the devil’s work aligns with the unicorn’s, as he encourages the pursuit of earthly pleasures and vices. The angel’s role can mirror the monster’s by trying to keep you on a path that minimizes future sadness and regret, preventing actions you might later look back on with remorse. However, the devil can also perform the monster’s function by convincing you to avoid something simply because it is difficult. The angel, at times, does the work of the unicorn by pushing you toward a higher, happier, and kinder purpose, which naturally feels good. Under the Hood: The Building Blocks of Morality In literature and even in your own imagination, if you have perceived morality as a struggle between a devil and an angel, you will find that both are composed of multiple monsters and unicorns. Your morality is constructed by these monsters and unicorns working in concert with a purpose. The way you pair and combine them creates powerful forces within your psyche. If you build your angel with a host of strong monsters and unicorns, your devil will be comparatively weak, and the reverse is also true. While we often view the angel and devil as distinct entities with their own personalities, the monster and the unicorn are single-purpose building blocks. Each monster and each unicorn has a singular, specific purpose. The same monster that prevents you from doing something harmful in one relationship could also be the one that holds you back from doing something beneficial in another. Not only are they interchangeable, but their highly specific purposes can cause problems if misapplied. Therefore, we can conceive of the angel and the devil as a higher form of thinking, positioned above the monster and the unicorn, as they are composed of them. From Freud’s Pleasure Principle to Personal Morality At a foundational level is Freud’s pleasure principle, a simple binary. This binary, when combined with causes, gives rise to the monsters and unicorns. Combinations of these monsters and unicorns then form your morality, which you can express as the devil and the angel on your shoulders. This entire construct ultimately shapes your personality and who you are. Those who are religious or spiritual may feel that their monsters and unicorns come pre-packaged within their belief system. Others may feel they have acquired their monsters and unicorns along life’s journey and are simply the result of managing them. Whether you believe you are guided by an angel and tempted by a devil, or if you feel closer to the pure binary that Freud described, monsters and unicorns are still part of the equation. Pre-packaged angels and devils from religious texts still contain monsters and unicorns that provide the “why” behind the drive to do good and avoid evil. If you feel you have a devil on your shoulder that whispers “chocolate” too often, he is merely repeating the words of the unicorn inside him. The more you break down the origin and the “why” of the devil and the angel, the more you will truly understand the source of your motivations. My subjective belief is that it is far better to communicate directly with your monsters and unicorns than to blindly accept that everything the angel says is good and everything the devil says is bad. Marlowe, Christopher. Doctor Faustus. Written c. 1592. In the play, Faustus is visited by a Good Angel and Evil Angel who offer opposing moral advice—representing internal conflict akin to the modern angel/devil trope ↩︎

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