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The Conscious Entrepreneur | Leadership, Self-Awareness & Mindset
EP 114: How Great Leaders Reframe Fear: Nataly Kogan on Building a Possibility Mindset
00:43:12
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- [00:00]
A
As a leader, you set the tone. And in times of fear or uncertainty, the story you tell becomes the culture that your team lives in. In this episode today we are talking with Natalie Kogan. She teaches how to talk back to your brain shift from seeing obstacles to seeing opportunities. And how to help your team build the mindset that helps everyone thrive each even when the world feels shaky. This is how you build agency, how you create resilience and clarity no matter what's happening around you. Let's get into it. You're listening to the Conscious Entrepreneur and I'm Sarah Lockwood. This is the only podcast completely dedicated to the well being of entrepreneurs. It's where we do the inner work to become the leaders our businesses truly need. A thriving business starts with a thriving you. Let's get into it. Natalie, thank you so much for joining us today on the Conscious Entrepreneur Podcast. It is really a thrill to have you be here.
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B
I'm so happy to be here. Thanks for having me, Sarah.
- [01:03]
A
Of course.
- [01:04]
B
And for our listeners, would you maybe.
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A
Share a little bit about your journey to transformation, reinvention and happiness?
- [01:13]
B
Yes, I'm happy to. And I'm going to try not to make it into a TED Talk. My daughter always jokes that you, you know, someone asked me a simple question and there comes mama's TED Talk. I mean, I do talk for a living. So my journey into transformation and happiness, everything you just said really began when I was quite young. So When I was 13, my parents and I came to the US as refugees. I grew up in the former Soviet Union and after a couple months we spent in refugee camps in Europe, we got permission to come to the U.S. and you know, I was 13, I was completely overwhelmed. I didn't speak much English. Everyone was making fun of me. It was a difficult experience. But little did I realize it was the beginning in my masterclass of becoming really great at change and transformation and figuring out how to evolve. And for the next couple decades, that's what I did. I started my career after College at McKinsey in New York and left right before the dot com bust. I did not have great timing because I fell in love with startups and I joined a couple of startup startups, both of which exploded in a very as many did during the bust. But I still just fell in love with building things. Ended up at a very young age on the other side of it as a venture capitalist in New York investing in early stage companies. My favorite investment ever was a tiny, tiny company called Constant Contact, which most people probably know by now if you're in the business, became a billion dollar email marketing company still around doing wonderful things. But I, after five years of that, I went back to my love of creating things and I started several different companies, including a company called Happier, which we built what became the largest ever gratitude sharing app in the world that helped more than a million people practice and embody the habit of gratitude. It's something. One of my most meaningful accomplishments in my life was doing that. And I've reinvented even more since then. I've written three bestselling books including Unhappiness and Breaking Through, Burnout and Flourishing. I became an artist at the age of 40. If you're watching this on video, you see my art behind me or it's all over my keynotes now I speak all over the world and I work with leaders to help them become more of who they're meant to be by reinventing themselves and transforming themselves and their teams. And that's a little bit of my story. And I just want to say one last thing on that, Sarah. When I tell it or I hear someone reading my intro when I go on stage, it kind of sounds like, oh, that's so cool. Like none of this could I have predicted, none of this was planned and it all just came from like always envisioning new possibilities, including when I was a 13 year old who couldn't speak English, I had to envision the possibility of my new life here. And just probably the core of my ethos is action of just being willing to take action before you feel confident, before you have clarity, before you even know how it's going to turn out. And that's probably the core ethos of all my work now with leaders, with teams is just encouraging people to be. And if people listening to this from startups, this will be very familiar. But just having a bias for action because as we all learn, confidence and clarity don't emerge before we act, they actually emerge after we do it.
- [04:43]
A
That's right. And of course our listeners are people who are very comfortable with taking risks and envisioning something that doesn't exist today and going out and making it happen. And one of the things I love so much about the things you speak of really are about, you know, leaning into change and even, even not waiting for change to happen or not waiting for something to come, but instead to try to see around the corner and envision a future that doesn't exist yet. So I would love if we could, you know, talk a little bit about what, what it was that made you sort of lean into this idea and bring this idea to some new teams. As a founder, you certainly were doing this at some of the companies that you. That you started.
- [05:31]
B
Yeah, yeah. No, it's such a great point, Sarah. You know, we are living in the age of change. I mean, I, I would probably argue that we always have been. To be human is to change and evolve, right? That is what it means. But I think we're living through a time of accelerated change with AI here. Just everything is changing really, really quickly, and it can very easily start to feel incredibly overwhelming and like we don't have control. And I have heard this from many, many people at every kind of industry and every size company that just feels like things are out of control, right? And that's where for me, that. That concept of agency and instead of kind of feeling like you don't have choices to instead, instead of, as you said, waiting for things to come or just trying to, you know, survive it, instead looking at change as a catalyst, as an opportunity for you to grow, to do more the things you care about, to uncover more dimensions of yourself and bring them out, to create a more positive impact that I know your listeners about. And ultimately it does come down. That's what I was talking about, the ethos for, for action and agency. And to recognize that no matter what is going on, whatever the circumstances are, however much change your industry is experiencing, or even your organization, you always have the ability to make choices. You always have the ability to find new opportunities. You always have the ability to exercise your agency. And that, to me, is actually incredibly empowering. Because, you know, I'm a neuroscience geek, right? All my work is based in neuroscience. We thrive as human beings when we feel we have a sense of control. Without that, we can't thrive. Because ultimately our brain has one main job, to keep us safe from danger. So when there's a lot of change happening, a lot of uncertainty, the brain starts to worry a lot, right? How do I keep you safe? When we step into that place of agency, of making active choices, of exploring new possibilities, literally what we're saying to our brain, like, hey, I got control. I'm not just a passive participant. I can make progress. And that helps our brain feel safe. And when our brain feels safe, we are more likely to thrive. We're at our best. So to me, it's actually not just a kind of survival technique. But to me, this is what it ultimately means. To be at our best as human beings is to exercise our agency, to make these active choices to do more of what we want, more of what we're excited about.
- [08:05]
A
Yeah. On this show, we've talked a lot recently about the idea of choosing your thoughts. And the thoughts that we choose to have really influence our feelings, and our feelings then drive action. So one of the things that I'm curious about and I just saw you demonstrate is the idea of talking to your brain. This is an idea that you've shared and maybe you could expound on here is just sort of having that awareness of what's going on, the conversation that you're. You're having with yourself. But then also you talk about just sort of rebutting some of the things that your brain is telling you. So tell us more about that idea.
- [08:46]
B
Yes. I love that you bring it up. It's something I wrote about in my book, the awesome Human Project that I've seen take a life of its own. Like, I've seen people who I've never met say I was talking back to my brain. So just like a super, like, quick frame on this. Our brain has a. It's not neutral, so it has certain biases. Right? So our brain has what's called a negativity bias, for example, which means it's much more sensitive to anything that's negative. Why? Because that could signify possible danger. And the only thing your brain wants is to protect you from danger. So the reason I mentioned that is our brain tends to focus on the negative more than the positive. Our brain also tends to. Whenever there's uncertainty, it starts to worry. And so it could create a lot of thoughts that are not very productive. But here's the beautiful thing, and my favorite kind of short way to articulate this is a. Is a. I think it's a Zen proverb, but I've never actually found the source of it, but many people have shared it. Your brain is a terrible master, but a great servant. I'm gonna say it again. Your brain is a terrible master, but a great servant. So if you just for a moment, if you just consider, like, if you're listening to this, just all the kinds of thoughts you have throughout the day, oh, this is gonna go bad. Or this is this. Or your brain, you know, you're listening to this right now. 50% of the time you're listening to this podcast, your brain is thinking about something else. 50% of the time, our brain is thinking about something other than where we are. So left to its own devices, the brain is not a great master. It does not serve us to have a great, fulfilling life. But it is a great servant, meaning you can take charge and direct your brain. We've all heard of neuroplasticity. Our brain can change, but it needs us to give a direction, which is where this idea of talking back to your brain comes from. And it's quite simple, not always easy to execute, because the brain gives us thoughts, and we're like, oh, this must be truth. Talking back to your brain means you realize that the thoughts your brain gives you, they are not facts. They are essentially stories. And they are influenced by the negativity bias your brain has. They're influenced by your mood. They're influenced by early childhood beliefs. A lot of things go into that. So when you recognize the thoughts your brain is giving you are not facts, they're stories. You get to talk back to your brain. And what I mean by that very specifically, like, let's take an example. If your brain is going, oh, my God, there's so much uncertainty. All these companies are firing people. What does it mean for my industry? There's like, that's a negative spiral, right? You can stop and you say, okay, hang on, brain. Hold on. That's a story that you are telling me. What are the facts I know to be true? What are the things I choose to pay attention to? And here's the direction I want you to focus in. And doing that literally helps to shift your direction of your thoughts, your beliefs, your choices that you make. But you have to, like, put on your pants and be like, hey, I am in charge.
- [11:48]
A
I love that it dovetails so beautifully into the. A podcast episode that actually hasn't come out yet. But we were just talking about this exact. This exact powerful way of choosing your thoughts that lead to the future that you want to create. And you talk a lot about future self. I think a lot about future self. What we do today that creates the future that we want to have. And it all starts with our thoughts that influence our feelings and our feelings that then help us to take, you know, massive action.
- [12:23]
B
Well, and that's the. That's the thing, Right? So you just said the word beliefs, right? Our beliefs determine the actions that we take. Right. Quite literally. My favorite story about this that I tell a lot on stage is listeners. You might know about this, but in Coney Island, New York, there is an annual hot dog eating competition, and which is. They have 10 minutes to see how many hot dogs they can eat. You have the hot dog and the bun. So the whole thing. And for decades, like, decades, excuse me, the record was 25 and a half hot dogs. That's the highest number. That's a lot of hot dogs, if you think about it in 10 minutes, but that's the highest number. And then in 2001, this very, very short, small Japanese man named Takeru Kobayashi shows up. And you know how many hot dogs he ate?
- [13:10]
A
More than 25?
- [13:12]
B
No, 50. He doubles the record. He eats 50 now. How did he do this? Well, he talked about that he practiced expanding his stomach by eating a lot of cabbage. He came up with this new technique. He would take the hot dog out of the bun and break up the bun and dunk it in water so it's like, faster to eat. But those are actions he took.
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A
Why?
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B
Because he chose a different belief. Instead of believing that 25 was his limit, he chose to ask a different question. He said, how could I eat more than 25? I believe I can do it. How can I do it? And that guided his actions, experimenting with techniques, et cetera. And I love that story because it acknowledges that the beliefs we have literally determine the actions that we take. And if we want to change the actions, if we want to change our future, our circumstances, whatever things, we have to choose different beliefs first. And that's where we have to acknowledge what are the beliefs we have right now? What are the stories about ourselves or our work or our lives that we believe? Right. And then make an active choice to shift them to be more constructive and fueling to help us create the future that we want.
- [14:24]
A
I love that. And you know, Natalie, you touched on this a little bit already. We're in a moment of time where business leaders, I think, are faced with a lot of fear and uncertainty. And industries, entire industries, are threatened by technology, innovation, by the pace of change, by legislative things that are out of our control. And so I think as business leaders who influence the culture of teams and manage people, our ability to thrive in this moment of uncertainty and risk and fear. And there's plenty of fear mongering that only is focusing on the negative sides of all of these stories. I like to talk about this with you because how do we show up, manage ourselves, and almost have that lens on this entire negative spiral that we could be in. But then how do we also show up for our teams and teach them what you're talking about, model it, and also bring it into our corporate culture, particularly as it's related to this theme of like, oh, my industry is at crazy risk, or oh my gosh, all of our jobs are being threatened. How do you show up at work in the leader role? And kind of put some of your ideas into action.
- [15:58]
B
Yeah. And I think it's a really timely question. And you know, I would start by saying that as a leader, one of the key, one of the, one of the most essential roles that you have is to help your team craft a positive, constructive narrative. And this isn't something we talk about a lot, but that is actually one of your key roles as a leader. Right. Because as you just said, Sarah, if your team members are spending all their time worrying about what's going to happen to their jobs and what's going to happen to our industry and things are going bad, they're not going to come up with innovative ideas. They're not going to come up with creative ideas. It is not possible from that mindset to go into, oh, I'm going to do this new thing. And so as a leader, I want you to recognize that one of the things, best gifts you can give to your team is to help shape their inner narrative to be more positive and constructive. How do you do that? Not by cheerleading slogans, not by putting a value statements, you know, all over the walls, but by having a clear first. Two things. One, to make sure you have a positive and constructive narrative. Right. By working on what we just talked about with your own beliefs, but to have an open conversation with your team about, hey, this is what's going on. This is the, this is the inner automatic narrative your brain probably is having. We tend to over focus on the negative, et cetera. Let's make a constructive choice together as a team to tell a different story. Right. Because that story that we tell as a team impacts the choices that we make. And again, that story, I'm not, you know, I hate like fake positivity. I'm not asking leaders to come in like, everything is going to be amazing. This isn't about denial of reality, but what story is more constructive? Oh my God, what is going to happen to our jobs? Everything is shrinking. That story or there's a lot of challenges in our industry, but challenge brings about possibilities. What new possibilities might this be opening up for us? Which story invites action, creativity and innovation? It's obvious the second one. And so your job as a leader is to help create better narratives. Is to help. And the way, one way you can do that is to ask better questions. Right. I wrote a LinkedIn post about this, I think yesterday. I can't remember where my favorite question to ask when I work with leaders or teams is, if you had 10 times the courage, what would you choose to do? And here's why this question is really powerful. It literally shifts that mental map in the brain because when left on autopilot, right, the brain is going to have a mental map of what are the obstacles. This hasn't worked before. What isn't working? Focus. And then when you ask that question, you literally change the mental map that you and your team have of, oh, now you're asking me to think about courageous action that's going to invite different ideas, that's going to invite different choices. So it's an example of how, as a leader, you can help shift the narrative by asking different questions. The other one, I think is so important is to actively help yourself and your team shift out of the mindset of obstacles and into what I call the possibility mindset. Right? So again, our brain has a negativity bias. It is always going to focus on obstacles first, always left to its own devices. But instead of, oh, things are changing, it's creating so many difficulties, so many obstacles. What are possibilities that all this change might be creating? What are new things that we might want to explore? What are new things that you individually, you, this awesome human on my team, what are new ways that you want to grow and expand? Those questions are incredibly activating because they're asking for a brain to think about different things. So instead of thinking about everything is going wrong, my industry is shrinking, whatever it is the brain is now, oh, what new possibilities? How do I want to grow, how do I want to expand? And that question creates a different mental map and it invites different actions. And so to me, at the very core of how leaders can show up better right now and help their teams not just survive, but thrive, is to recognize that they need to create a positive inner narrative and to help craft the narrative of the team, again, not with slogans or motivating speeches, but by having these open conversations and by helping their teams focused on, focus on what is possible and then from there to encourage and guide and help their team members to take action. Because it's all ultimately about action, right? To take action, to expand, to grow, to experiment, to explore. And I think what we're going to see, and we're already seeing leaders who are doing that, their teams and companies are thriving even when things are challenging and leaders who are not doing that while the companies are being left behind.
- [20:56]
A
Do you have a story that sticks out in your mind that illustrates a team sort of reinventing or reimagining what might have been viewed as a. As a risk and has now then become this flourishing opportunity?
- [21:15]
B
Yeah. Well, a couple come to mind all at the same time. So one, I'll start with one that we've all seen because it's in a movie, Apollo 13, right? We all remember that moment when there's an accident on the space shuttle and there a lot of CO2 is seeping into the cabin and the astronauts up there don't have a lot of time left. And the engineers, the NASA engineers, it's a famous scene in the movie, come into the room and they throw on the table a bunch of things that are available at the space shuttle and they're like, we have to make a CO2 filter using a bunch of this random stuff. It's a great example because it's a life or death situation, not one that a lot of teams face. And it's seemingly an insurmountable challenge and obstacle, right? They do not have the tools available and they figure it out, right? They figure out how to do it and they save lives. But it all comes from where they have to focus on what is possible versus this is not possible. That to me is such a great culmination and we've all seen it. And so that's a great example of that. So they are coming in there and they're asking, how is it possible for us to do this versus oh my God, this is an impossible challenge. And that allows them to come up with a solution, another one. And I'm blanking on the name of this company, but it's an AI story that I think will resonate. It's a big financial services. I think it was a financial advisor company and they wanted to introduce more AI but they were feeling a lot of resistance naturally from their employees. They're like, the AI is going to come, it's going to take my job. I mean, normal concerns. And so what they said was, okay, we're just going to do this as an experiment. So everyone like is part of it. So it's not just top down, like, let's all experiment with how we could use AI to help us do our jobs better, to make them easier to get rid of the grunt work that we all hate because we all have that to deliver better service. And what they found is they actually have not gotten rid of jobs, but they have stopped doing a lot of the work that they didn't even like doing. And the quality of their service and advice has gone up tremendously. But it came from a place of instead of, oh my God, AI is going to take my job, let's do it together as an experiment. To see how we could help our do our jobs better. So, again, those are examples where that initial shift, shift in mindset of these are the obstacles versus what is what possible is what creates these possibilities.
- [23:58]
A
I'm imagining a team meeting where you play the Apollo 13 movie for a little bit, a little popcorn, a little info, and then kind of stand in front of your team with this, with this new framing of, hey, this is what's happening. This is how an analogy between what you just saw in this movie and what's happening in our industry. Let's get out our pencils and let's, you know, have a blank sheet of paper and start thinking about some of these things differently. I'm imagining that based on what you just described, and it sounds like a really fun team meeting, if you ask me.
- [24:29]
B
It is. And again, it's all about shifting the natural direction of the negativity spiral. The brain is prone to. Again, not, you know, I'm not like, trying to blame the brain. It's doing it to keep us alive. It has that negativity bias for that reason. But we have to understand that we have it and we have to make the active choice to shift out of it. Right? And that's why, you know, again, as a leader, recognize what your team is like, what your team's brains are doing naturally, and that it is your. You have an opportunity to help them shift that. So, yeah, like showing a little bit of that part from the movie and saying, like, hey, guys, we have some challenges, right, in our industry or our company, our team. Let's. Let's imagine what is possible, right? Because nothing is impossible. Let's imagine that it's possible. And again, it all begins with a choice to talk back to your brain, to recognize what our brain is doing, that we have this negativity bias, that all the negative stories in the media. The reason that we have so much negative stories in the media is not because our world is so negative, because the media knows that is what we're likely to click on and read, right? So that's a dangerous cycle to get into. But as a leader, you have this amazing opportunity to fundamentally shift that.
- [25:50]
A
Well, and Natalie, one of the things that is so important about this is that it's not one time. This is something that has to become a habit in a way of thinking and even like a way of being. And I, like, I'd love to talk about your. Some of the products that you've made, like your journal, your books and your journaling, because the idea of actually training Our brain to do something different than what it's natively created to do is it's not easy, right? And so how we kind of create this positivity bias or this opportunity, what did you call it? The possibility, possibility mindset. So talk about your journal and talk about your kind of some of the frameworks that you offer that people could actually, you know, go out and buy this book and start, you know, training themselves to.
- [26:49]
B
To digest, edit your thoughts. This is all this is, you know, so one of the core exercises that I practice and I teach and is in the journal and all my work is what I call editing your thoughts, right? This is where you, you are the editor of your thoughts. You start to talk back to your brain and you know, as you're, as you were talking, like the, the core thing there is, you're right, it's not a one time practice. There's no hacks here. This is an ongoing practice of you making choices about your thoughts, your beliefs. And this is something you have to do on an ongoing basis, right? Because that survival instinct in the brain is really strong. So that negativity bias is not going away anytime soon. And again, thankfully we have it because that's what helps us survive. And so these practices we have to do on an ongoing basis. So one of the tools that I use all the time, and it is not, it is not hard, but you have to do it and your brain will be stubborn, so you have to practice it is what I call edit your thoughts. So recognize the first part is all about awareness, right? So recognize what is a thought that you're having that is causing you to struggle, that is causing you to stress, right? And just becoming aware of that, putting it into your conscious brain is very important because a lot of these thoughts and beliefs are running on autopilot, like background software. We don't even recognize we have them, but we're making choices based on them. So recognize that thought. The second is to ask yourself this again, seemingly simple but very important question. Is this thought helpful? And again, when you bring it to your brain and I, you know, in my journal, this is very powerful to write this out because when we write things out, they're kind of more objective to our brain. So is this thought helpful? Like, is it helpful for me to keep thinking about how my industry is shrinking or how AIs are? Like, is it helpful for me to think about that? Does it encourage me to do something? Does it motivate me? No, but. Okay, so the first question, is this thought helpful? The second Question is, is this thought or belief 100% true? And this is where you have to be really honest with yourself. When I say 100% true, that means you have facts to support it and no facts that counter it. And one of my favorite exercises, and I've done this with leaders and teams and groups of people. Take the. Take the thought you're having, take a piece of paper, divide it in two, and this exercise is in the journal. On one side, facts that support this belief. On the other side, facts that counter it. Right. And write them out. And what you will find every single time is there might be facts that support this belief. There's also facts that counter it. For every job that is doing layoffs, there are companies that are working really hard to hire people and can't. Right. For every person who is, you know, their skills are becoming outdated, there are people who are coming out with new skills. So ask yourself this question. Are there facts that counter this belief? And the reason that that is so helpful is it literally kind of wakes up your brain and your brain goes, oh, wait, hold on. Yeah, this isn't entirely true. And that loosens that belief. So now you've said this belief is not helpful. This belief is not entirely true. And the third step is something we've talked about is what is a more constructive belief that helps me to move forward? Notice I didn't say what is a very positive belief. Right? No. What is a more constructive belief that helps me to move forward? Right. It might be just using our example. It might be. Yeah. There's a lot of things changing in my industry, and there are new skills that I want to learn. Great. That is a great belief. Because from that belief, you can say, okay, what are the skills I want to learn? What are the new possibilities? It guides a lot of action. So that exercise of editing your thoughts. Right. First of all, just recognizing what is the thought or story or belief you're having or you have that is causing you to struggle or worry or stress, asking yourself, is it helpful? Do you want to have it? And then doing this kind of inner lawyer, I call it exercise of is it 100% true? Are there any facts that counter it to loosen it? And then choosing a more constructive belief, this is something that I encourage everyone to do on a daily basis. And again, as you said, it's not. I do it once because the old belief has been there for a while. It's going to keep coming back. It's kind of like a weed, you know, so you need to keep reinforcing it with the new belief. But this exercise is very helpful because it helps you to see that the beliefs you have are not facts.
- [31:27]
A
And I like it, too, because what you talked about is that we're not talking about being Pollyanna. We're not believing. We're not trying to encourage ourselves to believe something that isn't true, because the fact is your brain doesn't believe it. So it has to be something that you're choosing to believe that you believe is true. Right. So it doesn't have to go all the way to a level 10 positivity. Pollyanna, I'm gonna believe this thing that I don't really believe. You have to find something that is true that you can get behind and that you can really believe.
- [32:00]
B
Yes. And I'm going to give you an example. This was just. I just gave a keynote last week to 400 leaders in education. And I did the exercise because the challenging your limiting beliefs is part of my reinventability framework. So when we came to that step, I actually, like, went into the audience and I said, okay, share your limiting belief with me. Right. Or a difficult negative belief. So this woman raises her hand and she says, you know, for 20 years, I was an executive director at this foundation for educators, and I love my job. I was great at it. She said, last year, I took a new role, and I'm leading a school district. And she's like, I just constantly feel like I'm not good enough. I'm not doing a good enough job. And I said, okay. So that's her thought right now. And it's very stressful, right? She constantly feels like she's not good enough. I said, okay, is this belief helpful to you? She's like, no, it's terrible. It, like, gets me down every day. I said, and then we went through this exercise. But the core thing there. To your point, Sarah, I'll fast forward. I said to her, well, you did your other job for 20 years, and you felt really great at it. You've done this one for less than a year. Could it be that it's not that you're not good enough. Could it be that you're just doing something new that you're not fully experienced in yet? And her face changed completely. She was like, oh, my God, that's it. So that's her new thought. So it's not her thought. Did not become, I'm amazing at this job. I am perfect. None of that, Pollyanna. But the new thought is, I'm new at this. That's why it's challenging. I'm learning new things every day. I've done hard things before. It completely changed how she shows up as a leader. So that's a great example. It's not about pretending, faking the positive. It's about finding a way to shape that thought that is fueling and constructive for you to move forward.
- [33:51]
A
Yeah. And I. I think that, you know, actually building this muscle of being able to. You can't change what you're unaware of. Right. And so you have to first go through this exercise of think of writing down what are you thinking about, what are your. What are you believing? What are your limiting thoughts?
- [34:11]
B
And then.
- [34:12]
A
And then finding a way to reframe them and choose something that is more productive and also true. But you have to do this over and over and over again. And if you could build a team of people who all had the same way of thinking and you created a culture in your team or in your company where this is the default way of thinking, instead of our deep grooves of our brain that take us down those negative pathways. You know, I guess what I'm kind of getting at is that would be the most powerful team, maybe, that you could create.
- [34:48]
B
It is. And just not to interrupt you, Sarah, but I think there's an important nuance. There is if you could just become the team that acknowledges that this is a skill you have to practice and that reminds each other to do that, you become unstoppable. So it's not even that everyone has to become aces at this. It's a skill. But becoming a team. And again, as a leader, you have a huge impact on this. And I've worked with a lot of leaders who now make this a regular part of what they talk together with their team about. If you could just become a team that acknowledges we have to edit our thoughts. We have to constantly bring awareness. What is our team narrative? What is our inner narrative? What are the thoughts I'm having? And to help each other be like, oh, hey, I think you're kind of stuck in the negativity bias right now. Let's help reframe this. If you could become a leader who encourages your team to do this, your team becomes unstoppable 100%.
- [35:42]
A
I love that. What a great inspirational thing to believe as a leader that you could actually influence your team to support each other in that way and create all of this openness and possibility for people to imagine something new, take action in a way that they wouldn't have without this inspiration.
- [36:05]
B
And the thing that I have seen Sarah, so much, because I do quite a bit of work with teams, is that in and of itself is so empowering for people, just being, recognizing, and that this is a skill they can learn, that their beliefs are not facts, that this is something they are encouraged to practice. That in itself is incredibly empowering because it gives them a sense of control. And then what happens is they start to see new possibilities, they start to take new actions, and it's exciting. We as humans, we are meant to grow. We're not meant to stay stagnant. Nobody wants to stay stagnant. It's that we have a lot of fear and we have beliefs that tell us it's not possible. So to your point, as a leader, you have the opportunity to change that. And again, like, I keep harping on this because we don't change it by coming in and giving motivational speeches. We change it by acknowledging that this is the reality, that this is what we're all experiencing, and then teaching and sharing and sharing how we are practicing this practice. But it literally changes how people on the team show up. Because I've seen. I mean, there are teams, Sarah, that I've worked with continually for a while, where in a team session, somebody on a team who is not a leader will be like, hey, guys, I think we got. Just got stuck in the negativity bias. Let's reframe. Boom. How powerful is that?
- [37:33]
A
Yeah, I mean, this is really some important work, and I think it's crucial right now. I think your message is incredibly timely. It's also empowering to. It's control for a leader. Right. So in this environment where you do feel potentially just as stuck as your employees might feel, I really like this idea saying, wait, this is something that I can do for myself. This is something that I can bring to the team that's way more constructive and way more exciting and way more vast and expansive than what I have been bringing to the table. And that's. That's control and that's empowerment. It is.
- [38:18]
B
And it's also, you know, I remember reading a lot of literature when I was a younger leader of, like, your job as a leader. And it's common things. Communication, vision, et cetera. And then I remember one of them was talking about, well, you're just the ultimate problem solver. And that is true. However, I think it is very easy in a challenging environment just to kind of get into that tunnel of just solving problems. Just bring me your problems. Solving problems. And what I am hopefully encouraging a lot of leaders to do is to Recognize that is not the entirety of your job. Actually one of your main roles is to be someone who helps people tell a better story, a more constructive, more hopeful, more expansive story of possibility. And I think that is really important to remember, especially when leaders are going through a lot of challenges in their industry or their company. And I'm not saying this, I didn't do it. I remember running happier. It's tough to run a VC backed tech startup. It's constantly a race to product, market, fit and make sure you have enough Runway. And I would get into this mindset I remember of just tunnel vision of problem, problem, problem, solve problem. And I'm hoping that this conversation, my other work, encourages leaders to expand beyond that, to recognize that when you can expand your own mindset and encourage yourself to think, to shift these stories and bring that practice to your team, not only can you solve problems better, but you're going to come up with more innovative solutions faster.
- [39:56]
A
100%. You're just activating all of those great resources of everyone on your team and all of their ideas and all of their talents and all of the their future selves.
- [40:08]
B
There's a great quote and again, I wish I was better at remembering sources that we did not invent ships by observing things that sink. We invented ships by observing things that float. And this is ultimately what we're talking about. Right? If you're always trying to fix the thing that's sinking, you might not be. You're, you're not focusing on possibilities. Right. And we have to do both. I'm not saying don't fix the, the problems, but I'm saying also we have to lift our head up as leaders and envision what is possible. Because that is how we empower ourselves and our teams to come up with the innovations that we need to come up with in order to thrive in this age of change in AI. We don't come up with innovative solutions by constantly focusing on what isn't working.
- [40:54]
A
That's so true for people who might be looking for more, more of your thinking and your thought leadership. Could you talk just briefly, maybe touch on your different books and journals and tell people where they can find more of your great ideas?
- [41:10]
B
Sure, sure. Thanks for giving me a chance to do that. So the best place to go is nataliecogan.com and it's n a t a l y kogan.com my website. There's a lot of great resources there, including free downloads. My I've written three different books. Happier now was a story of my coming here as A refugee chasing happiness through achievements, not getting there. And then what I learned about happiness being a skill and the five skills of happiness. The awesome Human Project is a book about breaking through burnout and the skills we need to thrive and work in life. And a lot of leadership that we've talked about is in there. And then I wrote a created a journal based on the awesome Human Project because there was so much demand, because so much of my work is these action practices. It's called the awesome Human Journal. Highly recommend. A lot of the practices Tara and I have talked about are in it. And I I write an email that you subscribe to on my website where I share insights like this. And my work today is focused a lot on what I call reinventability, which is this mindset and capacity that we all have to grow and expand into our true potential. And it encapsulates so much of what we just talked about, of actively choosing, not just trying to survive change, but actively choosing to evolve, to change, to grow and expand. And recognizing that when things are changing, it gives us an opportunity can be a catalyst for that. So those are some of the things that I've created and focused on. And I do quite a bit of speaking these days and working with teams on helping them become more reinventable.
- [42:45]
A
I love it. Well, thank you so much for the great conversation today and I hope people will go check out more of Natalie.
- [42:53]
B
Thank you, Sarah. I loved our chat. Thank you for asking great questions.
- [42:56]
A
Thanks for listening to the Conscious Entrepreneur. Every episode here is meant to sharpen how you lead and how you live. If something landed for you, please share it. Founder to founder. I'll meet you here next week.