Fearless Authenticity: Walking Across the Coals | Episode 19
In this episode of “Culture is an Inside Job,” Wendy, Karen, and Scott explore the essence of authenticity, the power of surrender, and the lies we often tell ourselves. Have you felt the weight of not being true to yourself, especially in the workplace? Listen along as we examine the importance of authenticity and the damaging effects of leaders who fail to practice what they preach. Through personal stories and practical tools, we uncover the lies we tell ourselves and the fear that holds us back from embracing our imperfections.
We also explore how our beliefs shape organizational culture and the transformative power of letting go. Join us for an inspiring conversation about personal growth, overcoming fear, and creating a culture of authenticity in both personal and professional realms.
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Full Transcript
Wendy:
What I learned very quickly is to learn how to ask and accept help. That is one thing that I had to surrender to from an ego standpoint. You know, if I want to provide the life for my kids that I want to, and if I want to be there for them in the way that I want to, I had to surrender that. Okay, welcome back everybody. So good to see you, Karen and Scott and Taylor behind the scenes.
Karen:
Oh, welcome Hi. Yes, we’ve already had a morning, so maybe I was talking by myself.
Wendy:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So in our last episode we had the opportunity to start diving a little bit deeper into your book, Scott. I don’t think I held it up last time, but here it is. I didn’t see it on video. Culture is an inside job. Look what I have in my mitts. All right. Yeah, I think the last time we were together, Scott was like, oh, do I need to have that book with me? I was like, well, it might be helpful.
Scott:
It would help.
Wendy:
It would help. So I think we ended last time and you know, we too that it had come off of you saying every organization has a culture, because every organization has people, which I’ve heard you say before, of course and then you say that you came to believe this, that what we think is what we believe. What we believe is what we give to the world, and what we give to the world is what the world sees in us. And so, in other words, what you think your organization is is what your people will believe to be true about your company or, deeper than that, what they believe about you as the leader. So I love that quote and I’m just wondering if you can share a little bit more about your heart, about what that really means to you when you think about culture, because that’s, you know, that is a belief system, right, it’s a really deep belief system. So can you share a little bit more about what’s on your heart around that when you think about why that was important to put in this book?
Scott:
Yeah, great question. You know I think I borrow a lot of quotes, but I think I wrote that I don’t know, it might be like 15 or 16 years ago Because when I was like really lonely and like broken, I realized that I told myself lies about who I was, that I was little, I wasn’t big, I wasn’t smart, um, and I wasn’t brave. It was the lies that I told myself. So what I came to believe is the fact that the lies that tell yourself turn into belief systems, and then you give that to the world and that’s what the world sees in you, and so their realization of all that was the fact that they were just self-created lies that turned into really heavy, arrogant, prideful, false humility, false pride, heavy masks, that kind of propped up who I, who I thought everybody else wanted to be.
Scott:
And today I’m smart enough to know that. I mean, I really believe what we think about ourselves and what we think about our organizations. That’s what we believe and that’s what we give to the world. So if we, if our vision, says something like oh I’m just trying to think of one, you know, we want to be the kindest company in America, just as an example, and we don’t believe that, then we’re not going to give that to other people and they’re not going to see that in us. And then if I work for somebody that says that and they’re not kind, those are just lies Then the whole organization is just like this place is just full of bunk. And then the whole organization is just like this place is just full of bunk. And so if you just kind of said, hey look, I just want to, I just want to be better tomorrow. I’m not very good today and I just want to be better tomorrow, it’s all in my opinion. It’s all about the honesty about yourself, about your organization. Does that help?
Wendy:
It does and and really it’s walking your talk too right, like it’s one thing to say it, it’s another thing, uh, to actually live it out and do it. And if you say one thing but don’t do it right, it’s gonna. Whatever you are actually believing in your heart is what’s going to permeate throughout you and throughout the organization.
Scott:
Yeah, yeah and I’m not sure if I talked about this before I got a really cool LinkedIn message from a bunch of pharmacists at Premier Hospital. They have a book club and they’re reading my book and they said, hey, you’re in this book club and all that stuff. And I threw out there hey, if you guys ever want me to stop by, I’ll stop by. So I stopped by premier um um, their big building downtown Dayton. Last Thursday or Friday, I met with this team of pharmacists. It was really cool and it felt really good too. But as I was talking to him about exactly what you, what you brought up, I said I want you to think I’m a big fan of T-charts.
Scott:
So, on one side, what you’re, the lies you’re telling yourself about who you are these are just blatant and they’re honest. You have to get incredibly honest and, by the way, you don’t have to share it with anybody. These are just the things I think about myself. Could be body image, could be all kinds of things. I’m not smart, I’m not tall enough, I’m not pretty enough, I’m not handsome enough, I’m not thin enough, Like all of the lies that you tell yourself about what you think. And then the other side is what you want to think about yourself. Does that make sense?
Scott:
And there’s this huge gap and you can make this come alive. And I know like even like I love, like Karen often will like call you right on the carpet when you say something right. It’s like whoa, Karen, I’ll give you a big speeding ticket.
Karen:
Yeah, so I didn’t mean yeah, I will say well, I didn’t mean that.
Scott:
And then Karen will say but just said it, which means I’m thinking it Does it, does that make sense? We say through it to bring that stuff to life.
Wendy:
Yeah, and and, and I love that you just brought that up because, karen, isn’t that what we are? Our last episode, at the end, when we said let’s go inside and we were inviting people to do things I think that’s one thing that you ask everybody to do, Ccott know is to you challenge them to create that t chart.
Karen:
So, thanks, reminder, Karen, what comes up for you around this uh, fear, a lot of fear in in, in what? And I say this a lot through in my with, with my clients. I use this little analogy that I refer to people don’t? We don’t want to show the color of our underpants because we’re afraid that they’re going to judge us and and we’re not even sure that we like the color of our underpants is what you’re saying, Scott, right? So that’s the piece that if we got comfortable with that, then why wouldn’t we be willing to show, you know, right outside of the cuff of our pants, at least just something that would demonstrate these warts that we have, that we’re good with that? We don’t know how to accept ourselves enough around because of fear.
Wendy:
Yeah, what’s the impact when we do Karen like, when we allow ourselves to show some of those?
Karen:
warts or tip underpants uh, well, I think that that’s that place where we get to authenticity, right where there’s effortlessness. Right, scott, you know this. This is why this works for you. This is why life feels and tastes so good for you, because there’s an effortlessness around being authentic and that you saw how hard it was to try to show up for everyone else the way you thought they wanted you to show up. But it wasn’t until you got real with what you wanted and how you wanted yourself to show up that you could lean into that and and grow into that and become that. That that authenticity is now.
Scott:
There’s fearlessness there so I think it’s going. I think it’s going back to like I might have brought this up before, but it’s like looking at in your life where was your most happiest.
Karen:
I say that about when you were a kid right.
Scott:
Yeah, when I was like eight years old in a tree house, I was all by myself and I wasn’t worried about what people were thinking and it was just like we’re allowed to go back and meet that eight year old little boy sitting in the tree house.
Scott:
We’re allowed to go back and shake his or her hand, give him, him or her a hug and say what happened between where I am and where I was. And. But you know the other thing too, karen you bring this up is pain’s like a great motivator too. So if you feel the pain, you’ve felt it before. And what I worry about sometimes is some people are waiting for massive pain to make changes and you don’t have to wait for it.
Karen:
I say where fear there is no truth, and where truth there is no truth, and where truth there is no fear. And we have to dance there. Right, we dance around fear. Right, we dance through fear to get to truth.
Scott:
What if you can’t dance?
Karen:
You step in a whole lot of yeah, it’s firewalking right Like look at how we stand on the side of those hot coals. And that’s where we stand most of our life on the side of those hot coals Fearful.
Scott:
Yeah.
Karen:
The hardest part is standing there.
Scott:
Walking across the coals is simple If you talk to a fire walker I’m not one, but you get the point right yeah, there’s a, there’s a, there’s a um, a song that I would send to my grandchildren called going on a bear hunt, and you just play these different like things and you go to a mountain, you can’t, can’t go under it, right, and then you’d say can’t go over it, can’t go around it, and I think it’s exactly what you’re bringing up gotta go through it around you gotta go through it, and as hard as that is for a lot of people, in my opinion that’s where the beauty of life comes alive.
Scott:
That’s where, like, wonderful things happen.
Karen:
And you said, where there’s truth, there’s no fear and when there is truth where there’s fear, there’s no yeah, oh yeah that’s a mic drop boom yeah, they can’t coexist in the same space yeah, so so when we can sniff out the fear and look at square in the face, and that’s the T-chart, that’s the square in the face, moment right. And then what you get from that, your revelations, your, whatever the emergence of that. Now the data, as I like to say, it’s just data, but what are you going to do with it? And that’s the moment I think you can step into truth.
Wendy:
Scott, I feel like this is also a great segue into something else that is at the beginning of your book and you talk about surrendering. So what does it mean to you to surrender?
Scott:
That’s a big deal. I’ve got to meet somebody today and I hope they surrender. But I can’t make them surrender, I can’t force them to. But what I can do is I can share my own experience, strength and hope and the beauty of surrender.
Scott:
And you know, surrender to me is, you know, we carry this backpack in our life and it’s full of resentments, it’s full of ego and pride and this image we’re trying to prop up, and it’s full of hurts and hang-ups and bang-ups. It’s full of pain and we carry it with us all day long. And surrender is a beautiful thing because we get to take off that backpack and we just get to put it down and we get to rest on that. Now the hard work begins when we get to put that backpack back on and walk down a path and pull the boulders out and leave them along a path. And pull the boulders out, leave them along a path and unpack resentment and unpack pain and unpack all the things that are going on in our life, and because you’re going to have to put rocks back in your backpack and when you can unpack and then you have a room in your backpack, and then when you realize what freedom looks like, without having to carry that thing around all the time then you’re really intentional about.
Scott:
I just put a rock back there and I better figure out how to let go of this rock, because things get really, really heavy. And I think, Karen, that’s what you were talking about. I never thought about that and I don’t say this in a egotistical way, but I do bring my authentic self to everything. I don’t know any other way, because it’s given me so much peace and so much serenity.
Karen:
I see a big difference here. I was thinking of this the way we exist, the way we let’s see, the way we believe we are living our lives in a very linear way, like through time. Right, I know this is kind of kind of very ethereal, but let’s just go here for a second. You were talking about carrying that backpack full of boulders. That’s like the living in the past, like holding on to every one of those stories, the rumination of those stories, the suffering of the continuing suffering of them having to come with you into the present moment.
Karen:
But what was different was the fact that the minute that you are aware on this path, that I’m going to let these boulders out and I’m going to let them go, whatever that might be, that reconciliation that reframe, whatever that might be, that reconciliation that reframe, that’s present moment awareness. We can’t do that in the past, we can’t do that in the future, we can only do it in the now. And that you’re aware of what rock or pebble you’re putting in your backpack at this moment and having an intentionality around that. Again, that’s not happening in the past, it’s not happening in the past, it’s not happening in the future, it’s happening in the now. And so I think, if we can just fight like what, what you’re in authenticity, it in authenticity is because we’re living in either the past or the future. We can only be here now. So I see you in this beautiful presence, and that’s why it works.
Scott:
I know, someone really ticked me off like a week ago and I had this awesome conversation with them, but they weren’t around. But I, I just turned them into an ant. I squished him like a bug verbally it was a verbal assault and then what I heard was the fact that, um, like they’re sick and I’m not and I don’t have to behave like that. And then what I heard was kind of like do do me a favor, I want you to pray for him. Why don’t you just pray for him? And I was like oh, yeah, but that’s not.
Scott:
that’s not fun, Got to go through this. I want to squish him like a bug. Yeah, but it was really man. It was just the games that we play with ourselves. Oh, fudge, it’s exhausting.
Wendy:
Oh fudge, it’s exhausting, made really, really hard. That didn’t need to be that hard, you know, and part of it, like with my, as I like to call it, operating system, it’s either exactly what you said, Karen, right, I’m holding on to things in the past or I’m so focused on what I want to happen in the future and I’m not letting go of the outcome, as we say when we get. Letting go of the outcome is surrendering and letting go of the past.
Karen:
Right. That’s the rumination of the story that we keep telling ourselves and and then partly for me.
Wendy:
You know, when I think I have a difficult time, it’s because I think I need to be doing. If I’m not doing, then it’s not going to happen. And I am amazed. I have seen in my life how, when I’ve allowed myself to let go and surrender, how things just start to open up. And I have someone very close to me in my life right now who’s going very through a very tough time and and they’re trying so hard, they’d sent me a text saying I’m trying so hard to trust, let go. And I said isn’t that like crazy how we say that I’m trying so hard, right, to let go? And it’s like, and that’s who we are so many times as humans. So yeah, just inviting, I think, inviting our listeners to ask themselves like what, what do you need to let go of?
Karen:
and what would the benefit? You know when I first like fell apart.
Scott:
This is so bad I’m embarrassed to even bring this up bring it up, bring it up, bring it up so gosh probably what it’s a safe place. It’s a safe sure oh right, right all the listeners have to close their ears, though, yeah don’t listen to this, but I was terrified financially and I believe financial fear is one of the worst fears on the face of the earth. And, yeah, it’s awful.
Wendy:
And.
Scott:
I mean, I had all of this, these expenses and all of this income and, by the way, they didn’t match and I honestly didn’t know what to do because my ego was that big. What to do because my ego was that big and I asked for help and I had someone actually helped me get on the phone and call the guy that handles like our home insurance, car insurance and all that stuff and negotiate like bigger deductibles and bring that cost down, because I didn’t have it. I didn’t, I didn’t know how to do that, I didn’t know how to ask for that. And then I had like call Time Warner, which is cable and stuff like that, and then it was. It felt so embarrassing.
Scott:
I was so embarrassed, but I was embarrassed for myself, but it wasn’t like public. Does that make sense?
Karen:
Yeah you’re keeping it all in you Like, even when we know it nobody else does right, it still does, and I needed somebody to help me make that first call.
Scott:
And then, after the first call, it was like I’m calling everybody and it took. I mean it took a while, but it was just like one step at a time and it was one decision at a time.
Wendy:
What do you think you surrendered there, Scott? What did you surrender?
Scott:
Oh, it was all. It was all ego, 100% ego. It had nothing to do with um, what was the image? Thought I could jump off this cliff, or a judge could make me jump off this cliff, a cop could, a divorce attorney, a bankruptcy court, whatever. But here’s the thing. I was, my ego was so big, it was like I don’t want that to happen. So even my intent there wasn’t super virtuous and noble, right, but it was a fence. It was a fence on the edge of the cliff and that person held my hand and showed me how to do something very simple and it’s. I’ll just, I’ll just, never forget it. I’ll never, I’ll never forget that. What that, what that looked like.
Karen:
That was you standing. That was you standing on the edge of the hot coals.
Scott:
Yeah.
Karen:
Because think about how long it took you to make that first call, and the call itself is the coals. That wasn’t as hard as you know. You got past that and then you could walk on hot coals all day long. Then you, just you had just taken that first step, standing there, looking at it, anticipating, thinking about I’ll never be able to do this, what all that means if I do do this, what all the things that we tell ourselves through that egoic perspective was limiting your ability to take.
Scott:
Yeah, I never thought it’d be that bad, um, but I was so terrified. Honestly, I was just scared, and I’ve talked to some other people that I’ve been to done some bad stuff. I’ve done bad stuff, but I love Paul in the Bible, right, so like I’ve done some bad stuff. But I never drove around town killing Christians just because they were Christians, right. I never drove around town killing Christians just because they were Christians, right, I never did that. And and on the heels of that, I didn’t write any books of the Bible.
Scott:
And that’s what Paul did. He did some bad, bad, bad stuff and in his redemption and his restoration I mean, we’re reading his books for 2000 years Um, and no matter what it is, it’s never that bad. It just isn’t. It’s never that bad. There is hope in the middle of everything. And, wendy, I’m sorry for bringing this up, but I even think of like you know, mark, and I think of like, in the midst of all of what happened happened, if he did not make that choice, he’d be able to see his kids, you know, grandkids, all of that, and in a split second, that decision, which is probably a hard decision on top of that, but it’s never that bad, even the consequences that were on the other side of that. It’s never, ever ever that bad.
Wendy:
Yeah, I think I mean we could go down, you know, a rabbit hole with all of that, but at a high level. You know it’s a huge part of why I do what I do being able to help people see the value that they have and what they bring to the world and the truth, the capital T truth, of who they are.
Karen:
And that we’re all doing the best we can. Yes, and that is a capital T truth, right Even in our own little ago. Going back to presence, in this moment we are perfect. We could not be anything different, and I know that’s pretty radical to contemplate.
Wendy:
But that’s presence right and it’s present is like many of us. Most of us aren’t, but if we are present, then then in that moment.
Scott:
Yeah, like you said yeah, and I think when d2 when I think about you is you not only had to pick up your pieces, but you had to pick up the pieces for your kids and everybody around you, and we could probably talk about that later.
Wendy:
But I think, from a surrender standpoint, scott, for that piece, that is where. A surrender standpoint, scott, you know, for that piece that is where, because I, you know, I think what I learned very quickly in going through all of what I went through with all of that is to learn how to ask and accept help, and so that is one thing that I had to surrender to from an ego standpoint, was I can’t do it off, you know, if I want to provide the life for my kids that I want to and if I want to be there for them in the way that I want to, I had to surrender that, um, but I think, scott, this also leans into by. You know what we’re talking about. You use the triangle model in the book, right?
Karen:
And I feel like this.
Wendy:
what we’re talking about is also really related to that, Do you agree there? Are balloons again. I don’t understand why my for those of you that can’t see my zoom throws balloons up for some reason, but anyway, um, is that something that you want to maybe tee up, like what that is, and then even maybe next time we could dive a little bit deeper, or what do you think?
Scott:
Yeah, I had somebody what, by the way, I quit chewing Nicorette gum after 25 years, so it’s been a week yeah.
Karen:
Congratulations.
Wendy:
It’s been a week. I was going to say how’s that going? Congratulations, yes.
Scott:
Well, you have to ask my family how that’s going.
Scott:
I was going to ask Lori, yeah, I’ll get a little snippy, testy. I’ll get a little testy, for sure, but I think it’s going okay. So what I found, though, if I drink a lot of water it helps. So I’m normally not a big water person, so I’m doing that. But the triangle, I think, is the beginning of surrender. So if you think of a triangle, maybe I’m just going to help people imagine, like in their brain and their eyes, what it is. The top of the triangle is. There’s two triangles, in my opinion there’s the self triangle and then there’s um, because my faith’s really important to me it’s the second triangle, is his triangle, the first one, and you can’t have the second one unless you go through the first one, because if you have the second one, then you’re going to be like self-righteous and really ugly like really ugly.
Scott:
But the first part of it is the words and the experiences that you heard when you were growing up, and most often it’s the lies that you told yourself, or if we were verbally told that we weren’t good enough or smart enough by others. And then you draw down to that, that triangle on the right side, and that’s the identity that you created out of those words and experiences that you heard from others. And then out of that identity then drives your behaviors, and then out of that identity then drives your behaviors. So when I was, you know, I grew up with a lazy eye, I was dyslexic. I’m an identical twin. I wasn’t very smart. It was really hard for me in school. I had to memorize everything just to be able to pass a test. So I thought I was never really that smart. But you have to go back to those words and experiences to then be able to identify.
Scott:
How did I create this identity? And then my identity are the behaviors. So if you think about it, what I think about myself is the top right. What I believe is the identity I created, and then the other side, the behaviors. That’s what I give to the world, and the second one is the most powerful side of it. But if you don’t go through the first one, I wouldn’t recommend going through the second one. You have to Now. Karen, you talk about this. You talk about dancing, like you’re going to dance on fire. Through that first one, you’re going it is.
Karen:
It is brutal, it is ugly, it can be like fighting um, but the end of it can bring, I think, real beauty into your life that reminds me of the uh, when we we talked in the first season about our saboteurs, right, and the recognition of them and bringing that to the forefront of our cognizance and being able to be like ick, and then you’re okay. Now, what do I need to do about that, right? How do? What’s the story that I’ve been telling myself? What’s the story? What’s the new story that I’d like to tell myself? What do I need to let go of against surrender?
Wendy:
so, yeah, the way we think, the way we feel and the way we act, right I think this might be a really good way, a really good place to to wrap up. If we were to again challenge our listeners and ask them to go inside. Um, I feel like it’s what are you willing or what do you need to let go of in order to surrender, and anything?
Karen:
else and to step into your most authentic self.
Wendy:
Yeah.
Scott:
Yeah, I’d go back to that place when you were a little boy or a little girl and get real specific around the five senses, so what you saw, what you heard, what you felt, ultimately, what you smelled. You know what you heard, what you felt, um, ultimately what you smelled not literally, but you know it was an authentic place. Why was it that way? I’d get real specific around what, like, what part of you came up Like well, why did I remember that event and that place and all of those things, what was important, what was special, and I would just stay there for a while. What does that look like?
Wendy:
Yeah, because, like you said, Scott, right, like that’s thinking back to and again, this could be complicated for some people, but so make sure you’re taking care of yourself in this. When you’re thinking back to your childhood, um, but it can bring us back to that, reminding ourselves of when we did feel the most joy at some point in our childhood and basically, you know, like, even like what karen was saying, um, all our childhood has built so much for us, right, that’s where our joy started and that’s also where our inner critics and saboteurs and all of those showed up. So, so, with that, um, again, think about what we’re you know, when you check in with your five senses, scott says, back when you were young, and, and then also thinking, if, if anything comes up for you about what you’re willing to let go of in order to surrender, to show up as your most authentic self, what is that? And with that, we will see you next time.
