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Welcome to the Wired to Lead podcast with Julia LeFevre!
Wired to Lead ep24 - Robert
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Julia: [00:00:00] Hi everyone. I'm Julia LeFevre, and around here we talk about leading with clarity, rewiring our mindset, and growing from the inside out. So let me ask you something. What if the billions we spend on training every [00:00:15] year are actually being wasted because no one learns how to make it stick? Today's guest, Robert Feeney, created ringer ring, a habit formation, technology backed by clinical trials and used by schools, enterprises, and government. [00:00:30] His work is personal. After losing his two brothers to suicide, Robert set out to discover what truly drives lasting change and what he found is transforming how we think about learning, wellness and performance. [00:00:45] So I'm really excited to introduce you to Robert. Robert, welcome to Wired To Lead.
Robert: Thank you. Yeah, thanks for the introduction.
Julia: Absolutely. So, I just found out something [00:01:00] about you today and I am wondering, um, how do you keep your, your Hollywood past a secret, uh, so that people don't even know? Tell us a [00:01:15] little bit about, this secret about you.
Robert: It, it's, it's because I'm not in Hollywood that it just doesn't, I, I mean, it's doesn't carry into every conversation now, uh, living in Wichita, Kansas, uh, which is a culture pretty afar from Hollywood. [00:01:30] Uh, you know, there isn't a lot of chance to talk about it or a reason to. yeah, when, when it comes up and like you, as you found out this morning, it, it. It kind of makes you go, oh my gosh. So yes.
Julia: so you're being very, um, vague about it, but [00:01:45] Robert was an original Newsie
and, I am a music theater fan girl. I love it. And yeah, we were just talking about how Wichita just had Newsies here. [00:02:00] Um, MTW has an amazing theater program and presence here in Wichita, and so I imagine it was really fun to have it come close, close to Kansas.
So for those of you in the [00:02:15] world who think Kansas is completely removed, just know we're not.
Robert: We are not,
Julia: We are not.
Robert: we are definitely plugged in
Julia: so, okay, we've talked about Newsies growing up kind of in [00:02:30] Hollywood and now you're a Kansas boy. So how on, fill in some of the gaps. How did you, how did you get here?
Robert: Several ways to tell a very fun story, uh, there. So I was in California. I grew up in San [00:02:45] Diego. I spent most of my adult life in LA and Hollywood. And then moved up to Silicon Valley, uh, developed a technology company called Knowledge as a Service, and we have this technology called Ring Orang that's used.
To engage [00:03:00] people in habit formation. Mostly it's to engage people that are trying to break out of whatever it is that has 'em stuck. So this has people helping them out of addictions, helping them out of cycles of poverty, helping [00:03:15] somebody to get educated and get up into the workforce sometimes for the first time.
Uh, and so we work in schools throughout the country, but also in large scale enterprises and in nonprofits. Right. And I formed it in Silicon Valley virtually at first. [00:03:30] We had a partner of mine who was in New York City, uh, and he had roots in Wichita, Kansas. When COVID hit, he had just gotten married and they were gonna have a baby Doing that in New York City during COVID was a bad idea.
[00:03:45] So he came back home to Wichita, Kansas as a support system here in a family business. And he said, Hey dude, you gotta check out Wichita. There is. It was in kind of an entrepreneurial energy about this region and the next [00:04:00] generation here of entrepreneurs has a tech bent to it, and maybe we could really be contributors.
That was enough for me to come check it out, and I was skeptical at first, but then I, I was one over within the first couple of days of being here.
I grew up in San Diego, it's [00:04:15] gorgeous, and I totally wanted to get out of there. You know, that's, that's,
Julia: And that's where I went for our honeymoon.
Robert: I, right.
Julia: you know.
Robert: I learned that once I left it, I was like, everybody's trying to figure out how to get here and I'm busy trying to figure out how to get out of here. That's just how it is growing up, right?
But [00:04:30] then when I came to Wichita as an outsider looking in, I love the community feel. Of Wichita. I loved the, it, it so embraced me. I immediately, they were bringing me into entrepreneurial mixers. Uh, I was going out to dinner with, you know, people who were [00:04:45] like state politicians, uh, deans of schools and such.
Like this. I was trotted around the innovation campus the second day that I was here out in Wichita on Ws U'S campus, which is brilliant. And if you anyone hasn't seen it, you really ought to go out there. This place was [00:05:00] booming and I thought, I wanna be a part of it and I want to contribute to it.
Julia: wow. Well, I'm so glad you're here. It's been really fun just to get to know you a little bit and watch the work that you're doing.
So. [00:05:15] You've been pretty open about what even motivated you to, uh, move into this space of habit formation and trying to help people achieve lasting change. And [00:05:30] so, you know, how do you go from doing dancing on stage to on tech, that that really has a, a meaningful purpose.
Robert: Yeah, you mentioned it in the introduction. So it, an [00:05:45] inciting incident in my life was having lost my older brother and my younger brother to suicide. There is, there's no way to come out of a situation like that without it absolutely informing your future. And so my older brother, Tommy, [00:06:00] took his life at the age of 21.
My younger brother, Michael, five years later, took his life at the age of 21. And so neither one of 'em really got into adulthood. They just didn't. See that they had a shot, they both suffered from a really severe bipolar [00:06:15] condition that somehow missed me. And that brought up other things too, which is like, why me?
Why did, why did I survive this? You know, because I've got a baby brother even now who lives in San Diego, who's, I call him ba, he's a baby brother. He's 40 years old. But, uh, he lives with my mother, [00:06:30] and he, he, he suffers from same condition that my brothers whom I lost, suffered from. And that had me wondering, how does a, a person take on a behavior in their life that makes it work regardless of [00:06:45] their circumstances or their mental wiring?
And it became a quest.
Julia: Yeah.
Robert: going to Hollywood and dancing and singing and doing the things that I did really was in, I didn't know this at the time, but I, in retrospect, I could [00:07:00] see it. It really was a, uh, a desire to create something inspirational for people. What I was able to access at that point in my life was that when I would do a show and an audience would react, [00:07:15] or when people would go to see a movie or a television show that I mean, and you'd see their reactions, I thought that's the most accessible way to impact them with inspiration or with aspirations or something.
Even if it's just as simple as [00:07:30] making 'em smile or laugh and you know, when you, when you've had so much drama hit you that hard when you're young, you're just looking for a way to affect things positively for yourself as well as for other people. And that's what brought me to Hollywood. But then ultimately what brought me all around to [00:07:45] what I do today was a long, weird circuitous journey of trying to find that answer of what causes a person to take on a behavior that makes their life work and what has 'em drop [00:08:00] behaviors that make their life not work.
Julia: because so often it's the things that we have taken up as coping mechanisms for something that just hurts inside. And it's those [00:08:15] coping mechanisms that they help in the short term,
but long term they become destructive,
like addiction
or, you know, just a lot of different things.
Robert: Oh yeah. What I get very, uh, I was [00:08:30] gonna say excited about, but that's something it's, I get kind of obsessed about it. What is that moment that has a person make a decision, either to take on a vice or succumb to a vice, you might say, a coping [00:08:45] mechanism or make a decision not to? That moment is really interesting to me.
Cognitively, neurologically, what's going on there? I call, I give it a nickname. I call it the heat of the moment. [00:09:00]
Julia: Hmm.
Robert: a phrase that we kind of know 'cause there's heat around it. Usually in that moment there is heat to like, what, what am I gonna do right now? And more often than not, the body and the brain are gonna win out is they're gonna say, I want this, [00:09:15] I need to survive on this.
And that's often something that we would call an addiction. But it is coping any way you look at it. We're just trying to survive that moment and the what possibility exists [00:09:30] that we usually don't see, but if we can just glance and see a possibility of something else, it feels accessible to us. The shot you can take of getting outside of that routine of just doing the coping becomes real.
And [00:09:45] that is now what my whole life's work is. How do you get somebody to do that?
Julia: So that's the question. How do you, and how does your technology help people to veer into a more [00:10:00] desired trajectory?
Robert: We're all familiar with that phenomenon of the heat of the moment there. So there's a lot of science under it. But without getting wonky on the science, this is, this is the phenomenon we all know. One of the, my favorite stories [00:10:15] to depict it is, you know, when you're at the high school dance you see that person across the room that you've really want to go talk to, and maybe you've been thinking about it for a long time.
Maybe this is somebody you've crushed on for a couple of years even, [00:10:30] but the moment is now and you really want to go. Your friends are around you. They know what you're thinking, they're razzing you. They're saying, come on, you gotta go over, ask that person to dance. And you even get a look from that person.
And [00:10:45] you're like, oh man, oh man. And the heat on that moment is intense because what's going on in our brain at that moment is all of the ways this is gonna fail. All of how this is gonna [00:11:00] go terribly wrong. I'm gonna go and humiliate myself. I'm gonna get rejected. Uh, people are gonna laugh at me, but if I don't do it, my friends are never gonna forgive me.
Oh my, I, I gotta, I don't, I can't do it. I, I have to do it. And then I take a step. And [00:11:15] once I've taken that step, it's almost impossible to stop at that point. Now I'm in it and I gotta go over there. Maybe I gotta walk past the person. No, no. I gotta say, and then you say something. If that moment I hadn't taken that step [00:11:30] that I might have missed out on my spouse.
How many stories have you heard about that? It's a high school sweetheart. They become lifelong. Spouses, you know, and they have children and grandchildren. I could have missed out on that [00:11:45] if I had succumbeded to safety. I'm not gonna go over there.
Now that happens all day every day to all of us in greater or lesser degrees, right?
We all have those moments, all day long things that we wanna [00:12:00] say to someone and we don't say it. Uh, things that I'm thinking I wanna do, I'm not gonna do it. It's not bad or good necessarily, but by distinguishing the heat of that moment and seeing a possibility that would cause you to take that [00:12:15] step, that is what causes behavior change.
Because then if you take that step and then you say something and it turns into a dance, you get to have with that person. Now, that kind of worked. Now there's a beginning of what we [00:12:30] call a habit formation cycle because it worked once. There's a shot that I'm gonna do it again next time something like that comes up because I've seen myself as someone who is capable of stepping [00:12:45] past the heat.
Julia: Exactly. You, so what you're. Talking about is your ability to build capacity to step into something that's [00:13:00] uncomfortable.
Robert: Yes.
Julia: So that's what at Wired to lead or at, uh, brave Restoration, we talk a lot about, uh, the heat is never going to go away
in life. It doesn't, in fact, I think it [00:13:15] rises as
life goes on. It gets harder.
Robert: Yeah.
Julia: It doesn't get easier. But what, it's not a hopeless situation because we can grow our capacity to handle the heat
to be [00:13:30] able to do it. And the thing I love about your process is that it's using the science. So I'm gonna bring out my brain model. For those of you who are just listening, just picture a cross section of a brain and. What [00:13:45] Robert is talking about is the ability to be able to help your automatic nervous system in here. That is, it's your helicopter mom part of your brain. It's saying, be careful. Be careful. Stay [00:14:00] safe. Stay safe. And yet, the more we grow our capacities in this part of the brain, the more we can make a logical decision to step in and say, it's [00:14:15] okay.
I know it's scary, or I know I might get rejected, but I might not.
And even if I do, I will be okay. And so,
and it's the experience of doing it that is [00:14:30] rewiring this subconscious part of your brain.
Robert: Uh, the, I will be okay message that's in the background of people that we call confident or courageous or bold or whatnot, that I will be okay. Is something that, that I [00:14:45] live with most of the time. Like I, I, and I get teased by my wife. Uh, one of the other fun stories about Wichita for me is that I met and my, my partner says, you're gonna meet a nice Kansas girl.
And so I ended up meeting a nice Kansas girl, is what happened. [00:15:00] And we got
Julia: We're nice, aren't we?
Robert: Yes, you really, really, and, and my wife is, you know, in my world, she's the best of them and she has a different way of going about life than I do. Um, and she. [00:15:15] Teases me and admires it at the same time.
I've got this something like, I'm gonna be okay. Message going on for me, and I'm going like this. But since you brought out a brain model, that's probably not the appropriate one. It's more like here it's more, it's, it's more
Julia: in here. It's in [00:15:30] the limbic
system where,
Robert: right? Yeah. So like the midbrain is the one that's gonna be fight or flight and all that stuff.
And then I'm gonna make decisions with the cortex and in, in the midbrain. It's like, it gets upset about [00:15:45] everything. It's, it's ready, it's, it's convinced that I'm gonna die all the time and I have created enough capacity. The word you used, uh, in myself to be able to quiet that [00:16:00] sufficiently that it says, not by saying, you know, suppressing it, I don't think that's even possible, but by saying, I, I am gonna be okay.
Not even as a mantra, but more like it's been built into me from experience. And so I go [00:16:15] about life a a little bit, like I'm an invincible for better or worse. And my wife on the other hand is, is concerned about things like normal humans are. You know, she's concerned, she's concerned about that [00:16:30] things should be done certain ways and she's right.
Uh, and then she'll look at me and go, I don't know Robert, to be you. It's like you, you know, you just, you kind of bounce around you, you like a cocker spaniel and you just enjoy being around people and then you just fall asleep when you [00:16:45] wanna fall asleep and you get back up. That doesn't mean I don't have difficulties in my life, but I, I do have something like a message.
And I'd be curious from you to, to share, like, what have you found that a person who tends to be [00:17:00] more like, I'm gonna be okay versus someone who's gonna be like, I am not gonna be okay. Where that comes from?
Julia: Yeah. It's such a good question, and it comes from your past experiences. Your brain is, we call it [00:17:15] experience dependent.
So the phrase, you know, words or actions speak louder than words. Uh, could not be more true about our brains be, and this midbrain, the limbic system in here, [00:17:30] which is subconscious by the way.
You're not thinking about, oh, I'm not gonna worry about things. You just don't. And your wife isn't thinking, oh, I need to worry. She just does, based on [00:17:45] one of two things. Either she hasn't had experiences where she, didn't worry, uh, ahead of time. Uh, she just hasn't had that. So sometimes if, [00:18:00] you know, I called this our helicopter mom.
If any of us had real helicopter moms, I didn't. So I can't speak to that, but,
But I've watched,
Robert: yeah.
Julia: I've seen it, and helicopter moms [00:18:15] and. I'm being overly generalizing here, but they protect their kids so much that their kids don't have the chance to build resilience, those muscles, those core [00:18:30] capacities to be okay because they don't get the experience of failing and being okay.
Robert: Yeah,
Julia: And you said it earlier, I can't remember if you said it before we were taping or while we were, but you [00:18:45] said, you know, all of these, all of my Hollywood experience, I had rejection after rejection after rejection.
Robert: yeah.
Julia: And you learned this isn't personal, this is just a numbers game. [00:19:00] And so you had the experience of quote unquote failing
and still being okay.
Robert: Yeah. Very good. I'm glad you brought that up because that's probably one of, also, one of the most common and accessible experiences we have is failing, [00:19:15] uh, at or, or the feeling of failure that comes from rejection or what we make it mean. What do, what do we make rejection mean? Uh, it's something like, we make it, we make it mean like, I am rejected.
And that's, [00:19:30] that's tough. Uh, if we, if we believe I as an identity is rejected, then oh, that, that weighs on me and my, how I feel versus what I had to offer was not accepted. [00:19:45] And that's different. Uh, and what, what we learn in show business, when you go audition to audition, to audition, to audition, it's kinda like going for a job interview over and over and over.
Uh, probably a similar situation if you're going to job interviews, but [00:20:00] maybe what's a little different is you expect. That most of those auditions are not gonna work out. And you go in there and you're giving it your all, you are offering something and then it doesn't get accepted At first. The natural reaction [00:20:15] is, they've rejected me.
Julia: Mm-hmm.
Robert: tough. But once I can take it outside of myself and get that, they haven't rejected me. They don't even know me. You know, they just, they saw me for all of about two minutes
Here. What I offered, they didn't accept. And there are [00:20:30] a variety of reasons why they don't accept that have nothing to do with the quality of what I offered.
Julia: No, it's a completely subjective decision.
Robert: So you're right that doing that enough, that experience with enough frequency somehow builds in here that, okay, I'm gonna survive [00:20:45] this. I'm gonna survive not being accepted again. Not being accepted again. And eventually something does get accepted and you think, all right, that'll, that gives me enough juice to go to another 10 or 20 auditions.
There you go.
Julia: You know, I didn't have a [00:21:00] helicopter mom, but I did have some experiences early on. I'm a firstborn daughter and really fell into a lot of those stereotypes of type A, do all the right
things. [00:21:15] And I somehow, in my growing up, and I've talked about this with my mom, so it's, we're good. Uh, but I took on the expectation that I need to be perfect.
And [00:21:30] so while my mom wasn't protecting me, I became an overachieving, everything because I started to, uh, internalize the story, the idea in my [00:21:45] midbrain that you get. Accolades or affirmation when you are the best.
And so my kid brain flipped that and said, that must mean you'll be [00:22:00] rejected if you're not the best.
And so in the beginning of my career, I mean all the way through high school, college, first 20 years of my career, I was pretty successful. [00:22:15] And that anxiety, in a sense wired me to be the best. The problem is, is that I was working out of a place of [00:22:30] deficit that, that I was extending myself beyond what was healthy for me. And it eventually led to extreme anxiety where I couldn't function. My body finally said. [00:22:45] We can't keep up with you and we're done. They, my body went on strike. And so that was something that I had to rewire in me. Um, so I just wanted to give another option that it, it's not necessarily [00:23:00] others, put on us by others.
Sometimes it's
the way our childlike brain interprets the world and then experiences a little bit of success, and that can drive us to a negative [00:23:15] coping behavior.
Robert: Yes. Right. And then, and then one of the things I've discovered about.
Julia: Okay.
Robert: My brain and I, and I realized that this is not unique to my brain. All brains operate on patterns. They [00:23:30] create patterns. They detect patterns. Uh, and, and the brain seems to be predisposed to getting into a groove. Like get into a pattern
Julia: Mm-hmm.
Robert: do it over and over again.
There's some level of [00:23:45] comfort. Um, the, the studies that I've done show that it's, it's actually what the brain seeks. The midbrain in particular, is seeking that. Because if you, a pattern means it's something that's repeating itself, right? And if you survive the [00:24:00] first time, that means, and then the second time, now your brain is registering that, oh, it'll survive a third and fourth time.
So it likes that pattern and sufficiently that it will avoid other patterns because other patterns aren't proven yet
[00:24:15] Right? So they're scary. They're, I'm not gonna be okay, or I might not be. Okay. Is the message. And frequency of repeating seems to then be something that calms it the heck down.
So that, that was the thing that I got hold of [00:24:30] when I was in Hollywood, uh, in, in the audition process, as I mentioned. But then also something
Julia: Hmm.
Robert: Advertising.
Advertising runs Hollywood. And I saw when I was there how effective [00:24:45] advertising is at causing people to change behaviors. And when I got right down to the molecules of it, it became obvious.
It's like, well, of course, because the brain, which is looking for patterns, sees a pattern [00:25:00] in an advertising campaign,
The word I use for it is familiar. You become familiar with a brand or a message. And because of that familiarity. The brain pattern now says this is safe. Now, that may not [00:25:15] be true.
Maybe it's eating something that's not good for you. Maybe that's what's been advertised, but the brain says, I'm familiar with it. So there's a certain level of comfort that you have in being able to try it, and that's what the advertiser [00:25:30] is working on. It's working by the drip on getting your brain to be familiar with the brand, such that when you're walking down a grocery store aisle, the likelihood you're gonna pick that brand instead of another is very high, because why?
I'm familiar with it [00:25:45] and I feel like I'm gonna be okay if I try this. And then if I try it and I like it, I'm gonna do it again. Now I'm in a habit formation cycle. So that was the the thing that really impressed me about how a person could then take on a new behavior. [00:26:00] Well, you gotta drip the messaging out, and that became the genesis of my product, ringer Ring, which is how do you get somebody.
Enough touches enough engagements on a given message or a given subject for coaching [00:26:15] a behavior that you're asking someone to try out that they haven't really tried yet. And it could be a behavior like, when the heat comes up like this, instead of going to your coping mechanism, try this. Like literally there's one we worked on with a, a clinic [00:26:30] that does opioid addiction therapy and people who had committed themselves to opioid addiction recovery.
One of the things that you gotta deal with is that your brain is constantly looking for that thing that it gets itself hooked on. As we've [00:26:45] learned in the sciences around recovery, it's not really about the substance. The substance isn't the thing. The body does get familiar with the substance and then actually produces, you know, it actually produces a, a craving for it.
But what gets it hooked in the first place is the need for the midbrain to feel [00:27:00] safe with something. It's gonna survive. There is a, I don't know if you've ever seen the body of work that Kevin McCauley has done, Dr. Kevin McCauley. This is something you would find fascinating. Kevin McCauley did a a, a YouTube series, I wanna say like 15 [00:27:15] years ago, and he did a kind of a re-up version, like a sequel to it, I think
Julia: Mm-hmm.
Robert: three or five years ago.
It's called Pleasures Unwoven, and he uses the Grand Canyon as a metaphor for how the brain works, all the crags and turns of the brain. [00:27:30] He distinguishes addiction as a physiological issue as opposed to behavioral. Now it shows itself as behavioral.
Julia: Sure.
Robert: It shows itself as I seem to become a different [00:27:45] person when I drink than when I'm not drinking.
You know, there are those people, you know who, it's not just that they take drinking and they loosen up a little bit, but they take a drink and it's like boom, they become this other human being.
Julia: Yeah.
Robert: So that is. A [00:28:00] physiological issue where the cortex, as you were pointing out, which makes those decisions and controls, uh, has weaknesses in it,
Julia: Mm-hmm.
Robert: such that the midbrain will jump forward and grab hold of [00:28:15] situations that those of us who don't have those weaknesses, we would never have the midbrain.
It's not a life or death situation we're dealing with here, but all of a sudden, this conversation for a person who has that weakness is a life or death situation. And they're just in there. They're like, I gotta win [00:28:30] this point. And they just get really intense and you're, everybody else is kind of like, whoa, why did that happen?
And it's, it's not because the person's psychotic, it's not because that person is, is there's something seriously wrong with them. [00:28:45] They've got something that so many people of us have. We have weaknesses in the cortex that can make it accessible for the midbrain to do things that otherwise the control center would suppress or, you know.
So I, I, I [00:29:00] find, uh, with the work I do with Ring orang, when we go into let's, well, I was already bringing up an example, let's say the opioid
Julia: Mm-hmm.
Robert: In the heat of that moment, instead of me grabbing the [00:29:15] substance, an opioid or any other substance, I'm hooked on, try sugar. Put into your kitchen foods that have sugar better.
If it's fruit, it's natural sugar. So you're not just pounding a bunch of, you know,
Julia: [00:29:30] Snickers bars.
Robert: Snickers bar. Right? Uh, but try eating a piece of fruit when you have that craving and give it a minute. Eat the fruit. You're still gonna be craving this other thing, but eat the fruit out of like a Cortex decision that says, just eat the fruit because [00:29:45] I said I would.
When I'm feeling this way and when feeling this way is very physiological, you're like, I, you know, I got this burning sensation in my face. I've got, I've got this, this thing in my back that happens when I've just gotta go have that substance, eat the piece of [00:30:00] fruit. Give it a minute. Now, what I'm saying here, this is not some sort of a clinical prescription.
Of course, this was an example of, Hey, try this. Something outside of your decision making over here, a decision that will be ultimately healthy for you. [00:30:15] And if that works, if after a couple of minutes the heat calms down a little, now we've just gotten one hit to the midbrain on what's possible outside that, and then do it again.
And then do it again after a few [00:30:30] times you're training the midbrain, I'm gonna be okay when that heat comes on. That is a powerful way. To, to start coaching somebody forward out of a cycle that they're in, that they can't break. It's [00:30:45] just, you gotta give 'em something really simple and accessible. You can't give 'em a concept.
None of us, none of us take actions on concepts or great ideas. Know we talk about, oh, great ideas, run the world. No great ideas. Never done anything ever to anyone. Great ideas are [00:31:00] simply there as an opportunity to take an action inside of that idea that might then make a difference. And that's what, that's the, the work we do with Ring Orang, especially in underserved communities where a lot of times there's trauma that's cyclical poverty, that's cyclical.
Uh, the [00:31:15] tools and the remedies that we want in our life are not as available. Uh, to be able to coach somebody with a coach in your pocket, where a game, in our case, it's a game, it'll pop up and say, Hey, try this. And if you do try [00:31:30] it, there's some incentives to it. Answer a question. There's leaderboard points.
There's just simple ways that in 60 seconds. You give someone an a view of something else that they can try, you can tell how passionate I am about this. I get [00:31:45] really into it.
Julia: I can. So I'm interested, how have you seen this help people overcome things that have kept them stuck?
Robert: We all seem to see ourselves a certain way
Julia: Hmm
Robert: and where I've, I [00:32:00] get most, I get most gratified is when I see somebody see themselves a different way.
Cause that's the beginning of change. And change is, you know, I mean if, if I could pray for [00:32:15] one thing to be bestowed upon every human being magically it would be that everybody knows that they author their life and that they are the author of change at any given moment.
We all can do [00:32:30] that. I get very worked up, but like right now, I can feel very emotional about it. And when I think about my brothers didn't have that sense of authorship,
Julia: yeah,
Robert: they didn't know. And I have written on a whiteboard at home, you know, you can see that [00:32:45] kind of stuff I do here at my office or I write all over the windows.
That's how my, my, uh, very busy brain works. But I wrote down one day and it just came so clearly. No one takes their life when they know, they author it.
We take our [00:33:00] life, we make decisions that are ultimate like that because we don't know that we author the next moment. We think circumstances do we think I am a certain way and it's not gonna [00:33:15] change.
The life is a certain way. People are as they are, and that's not gonna change. So hope, what we call hope disappears,
And then we think. This is very painful for me and I feel stuck and I don't wanna do it anymore.
Julia: what's the point?[00:33:30]
Robert: What's the point? It's not gonna change. We don't know in that moment, and all of us have had some version of that moment, whether or not it was suicidality.
Uh, and suicidality is loads more common than people talk about. Like [00:33:45] the most adept of us deal with suicidality in moments. But even if it's not to that acuteness, we deal with some version of, I don't feel like I author the change that I want, so I'm [00:34:00] stuck. And man, if, if I could just say, you know, wave the magic wand, poof.
We all knew it. would change in such a profound way that we wouldn't recognize ourselves and we wouldn't recognize life itself. [00:34:15] And I'm, I'm out for that. I mean, I'm up to that. I'm really up to that.
Julia: absolutely. You know what I hear you talking about is, is empowering people, helping them [00:34:30] to get their voice back, get their choice back, get their agency back, because so many times I think life, uh, shapes us. You know, in the beginning we, we define trauma [00:34:45] by three. There's three characteristics that something happens.
It's not so much about what happens, but it's about how you felt in a situation. And if you feel like you had no voice [00:35:00] or no choice. Or no power. That's what determines a trauma. And, and what you are talking about and what I even help people to rewire is [00:35:15] that may have been true in the initial moment. You may not have had a voice, you may not have had a choice, and you may not have had power. But now you are not that same [00:35:30] five-year-old, 10-year-old, 20-year-old.
You are growing and you have the capacity to grow capacity, and we're going to give you your voice back, your choice back, and your power.[00:35:45]
And I see your tool, uh, your ringer ring, your, you know, this, this technology is helping people do that by taking that first. Step and experiencing, oh, I [00:36:00] did have choice.
Robert: yeah. Now I'm curious, Julia, you with the show being called Wired to Lead.
I have a, I have an assumption here now, and, and please correct it if you don't find this to be true. I have an assumption that when [00:36:15] people hear the word lead or you put it into the person as a leader, that we tend to think that person is put together.
You know, they've, they've, they've got life figured out to some [00:36:30] fair extent and to the point where they're leading other people. And there, there's a certain amount of power that person has. And a lot of times I think we think a leader is a position or something. I don't have to think it's a position. I think it's a, I think it's behavior.
What have [00:36:45] you found, uh, around where, where leaders and I, and I'm a leader and I consider myself, I dunno, put together, I guess that's, that's a way of saying it. I, and yet I deal with. All [00:37:00] sorts of self-doubt, all sorts of, like the helicopter mom talking to me in my ear all day long, day when I'm supposed to be composed, when I'm supposed to be on a podcast.
You know? And I'm supposed to like, [00:37:15] seem like I'm totally put together and still, I got a helicopter mom in my head that's talking about whether or not what I said is gonna be looked at as foolish or somebody else is gonna, are they gonna, does anyone even care about that? Or how do you [00:37:30] look right now?
You know, and why are you wearing glasses on your shirt? You know, you know better. Things like that. Right,
Julia: we're old and we can't see.
Robert: right. What are people gonna think? They're gonna think you're not 25 anymore. Uh, so what have you found [00:37:45] then, the assumptions or the prejudices about leading or leadership that, uh, that get people caught?
Uh, or, you know, maybe the solution is hidden from them on how to deal with that helicopter mom voice.
Julia: Yeah, [00:38:00] such a good question, and you've just turned the tables on me, but this is one of my, one of the reasons I wanted to start this podcast is to start to challenge those typical assumptions that [00:38:15] leadership is having it all together. Uh, leadership is having had all of the right experiences that wired you to lead. It's why I tell my story that, yeah, the thing, my [00:38:30] experiences led me to some successful leadership positions and roles, but it also almost destroyed
me and, and some of the people that I was leading. And [00:38:45] so what I have learned about the brain is that I'm gonna pull out my model here again, I call this midbrain the brain tank.
Robert: The
Julia: And I wish it was shaped as a heart[00:39:00]
because that is where our emotional experiential memories lie.
So. You've heard the statement, people don't remember what you tell them. They remember how you made them
feel. [00:39:15] Right? That is being stored in the brain tank of our
brain, our greatest need. So let me back up.
Our brains operate from the bottom up. And you, you implied this too, [00:39:30] that our automatic nervous system is wondering, am I safe? Is
this life or death? So that's what the brainstem is doing. But then when the stimulus, when the information gets up here to our brain tank, that limbic system, the [00:39:45] midbrain, the question now that our brain is asking is, am I relationally safe? In other words, do I belong?
Do I matter all of these identity questions
[00:40:00] because. Not only does our brain need to keep us safe physically, it's trying to, its next job is to keep us safe relationally. We are, as humans [00:40:15] wired for connection. We are social creatures. And I often will ask people, you know, what are our, our core needs?
And people will very quickly say, food, [00:40:30] water,
Shelter.
Robert: Yeah.
Julia: safety.
Robert: Right.
Julia: And there's another core need. And that is belonging.
Robert: Belonging. Yeah, very good. I, in working with students, particularly in [00:40:45] students that, uh, are in CTE programs, career and technical education, uh, when we were younger, they were often just called vocation. Sometimes that term is still used, but, but CTE, by the way, has gone through a renaissance. It's like people are really realizing that it's not [00:41:00] just about going through a four or eight year degree in higher education.
You can go right into a job, but you just got, one of the things that gets lost in that is how do I behave in a job? And that's, that's a lot of what we do with Ring Orang, with a program we have called Future Ready that's used [00:41:15] throughout the, the country. Well, it, I, this came to my mind because in working with those kids who oftentimes these students are coming from pretty significant trauma, oftentimes poverty, sometimes they're very much in a bubble like [00:41:30] small rural towns that just don't feel highly connected.
To the rest of the world, right? Except through media, I've learned that there are three phenomena that happen in each one of these people, and then after that discovered that actually that doesn't change when [00:41:45] you're an adult. It's just maybe a little more pronounced in a young person who's reaching adulthood and trying to get there.
And they are. We've mentioned two of the three. One of them is that I'm gonna go from backwards to forward. [00:42:00] So the one that we haven't mentioned is, is autonomy from the past. Find that, and for usually for a young person, that's autonomy from your parents. The past looks like your parents. 'cause that's all you knew growing up is your parents.
So [00:42:15] autonomy from the past. You wanna make sure that you feel like you have some agency in the world and you're not dragging behind you all of the things you wish you didn't have to deal with anymore.
Then the second thing is belonging, which we just. Touched on belonging in the [00:42:30] present. I want to know and feel solid that I know where I belong.
I know who I belong with. I know my tribe. I know my place I belong in. Right? And the third one is power to create the future.
That's the [00:42:45] authorship thing I was talking about earlier on is like to know that I can actually author what's ahead of me. And so those three things, which is a past, present, future framework.
I want autonomy from the past. I want to belong in the present. And I wanna know I have the power to create the future [00:43:00] that consumes a young mind because why They're anxious about all three of those all the time.
Julia: Yep.
Robert: And they're, they're sure that they're never gonna get autonomy from the, from their parents.
And they're sure that they don't belong right now in the present. [00:43:15] And they're dang sure they're not gonna be able to cause a future that they want no matter what they say. So here I am at the age of 55 and I still have those concerns every
Julia: Yeah.
Robert: They're just perhaps a little less pronounced. I've got more of my [00:43:30] cortex worked out, you know, and you know, but it's still there talking at me all the time.
Julia: And do you know why?
Robert: I You mean like physiologically, why?
Julia: Or are you curious why?
Robert: Oh, very curious. Why. Yes, please.
Julia: yeah. So [00:43:45] there are four capacity, there are four quadrants of our capacity, and this is tied to psychology. And I mean, you just introduced this beautifully. So, uh, our autonomy [00:44:00] from the past is linked to our capacity for definition of who we are as separate from our parents,
as separate from authority figures. [00:44:15] Our need for belonging is tied to our capacity to connect. Both with ourselves emotionally and relationally
and, and with others. [00:44:30] And these, so all of these capacities are what are in this brain tank. Uh, the third capacity is your capacity for integration. So you talked about having [00:44:45] the capacity, like being able to be your own author. Well, that means, uh, integration means whole. And we live in a world that's really broken
and really beautiful. [00:45:00] Your experiences most likely include really broken experiences. And beautiful
experiences and your ability, your capacity to hold both the [00:45:15] positive and the negative without getting overwhelmed will lead to your ability to stay regulated, to stay in your
thinking brain so that you can author your future.
Robert: Yeah. There you go.[00:45:30]
Julia: I mean, it's, those are the, so those
are The when we talk about building capacity, we're not just saying try harder. There are, my work is centered on I helping people [00:45:45] identify which of those capacities is weak
and how can we introduce new experiences to counteract, to help you step into the heat of the [00:46:00] moment
to start experiencing new things, which will build the capacity.
Robert: You know, uh, most, one of the most common experiences that I have around that regarding the heat of the moment in leadership. So I, I lead a team here at Knowledge [00:46:15] as a service, and, uh, it's, it's in the interacting with my team. It is like, for instance, in the conversation where have a vision and I, and because I've cast that vision with my team and my team is integrating the vision into our operations, I have certain [00:46:30] expectations.
Julia: Mm-hmm.
Robert: Some of those expectations are well articulated and everybody knows them. Some of those I made up this morning and have told no one,
Julia: No one.
Robert: but they're [00:46:45] there and I'm expecting it, and then somebody across the table on my team tells me something that does not meet my expectations. As a leader, I have an opportunity.
To respond to them in a way that's going to be effective for [00:47:00] them, for myself, for the company, for the vision, or to be thoroughly ineffective. And it doesn't seem to matter how long we've been leading the likelihood, maybe it, maybe it impacts the [00:47:15] likelihood that we're going to do, you know, an effective versus an ineffective job of responding.
But I, I tell you, I, I have to be very conscious of how I respond and I don't have the answer most of the time on what's going to be effective. There's just, there's some [00:47:30] combination, it seems of pattern of what I've seen work. And then maybe, maybe something like a creative intuition, something like God whispering in my ear and saying, try it this way,
Julia: Try this.
Robert: which I, which every day I try to [00:47:45] listen for all the time.
I say, God, just tell me how to speak so that I can be a conduit for you, because if you just leave this to me. And my autonomic nervous system, I'm going to react in ways that will be ineffective.
Julia: yeah. And not only ineffective, but [00:48:00] probably destructive to what everyone's trying to achieve. And so this is, this is where I would just suggest that there are ways to identify which of those four capacities is, is maybe a [00:48:15] little bit weaker, and then being able to build the capacity in that
so that, so what we're doing is we're helping this midbrain to, to step into the heat, [00:48:30] but to be strong enough that it doesn't burn me and I'm not having to fight or flight.
I can come up here to my smart brain and make. Get curious. I can [00:48:45] start considering, I can think critically, but it all comes back to being, being able to build that core capacity. Uh, and most of us, most of the science has [00:49:00] bypassed that we have thought that information equals transformation, but it doesn't because information only lodges up here in the cortex and [00:49:15] experiences in here in the midbrain are going to be what helped to rewire those automatic responses simply by building capacity. So it's like, I don't, I'll just [00:49:30] give a quick example. My kids, they laugh at me. They say, I have mom hands.
Robert: Mom hits,
Julia: Because I, it's not as sweet as you'd think. I hardly ever use Hot Pads anymore because I've just, I've, I grew up, I [00:49:45] was a farm girl. I had calluses, right? And so I don't heat, it doesn't burn me, but other people, it burns.
So I, I have built this capacity to [00:50:00] hold things, and that's what I, I want leaders to understand is that you can do the same and you can help your teams do the same.
Robert: Yeah. That's very good. That's a good analogy, right? That you can, you can, you can handle this. You can take
Julia: can handle it [00:50:15]
Robert: That's very
Julia: it's okay.
Robert: You mentioned curiosity or curious, uh, being able to be curious and you said it with a tone of voice, like it was, uh, there was something magical about it.
What [00:50:30] is it about curiosity and how does someone access curiosity?
Julia: Yeah. You know, if you're on LinkedIn very much, you'll, you'll see so many things get curious. Uh, we've all watched Ted Lasso
be curious
[00:50:45] and so we've all been told, be curious, and yet how many of us are in the heat of the moment? It is impossible to be curious when your capacity is low. And so the thing that [00:51:00] feels magical to me is that I used to be a reactive person and I, I could, curiosity was just beyond me.
If there was any sort of relational threat or something [00:51:15] that I felt threatened by, so I would go into a meeting, I didn't feel safe, and I'm sorry, my brain is not. My helicopter mom brain is not even going to come [00:51:30] close to letting my smart brain work.
Robert: Hmm.
Julia: But what has changed that for me is that I have worked to grow my capacities for connection, for definition, for [00:51:45] integration in so many ways that now I can step into really difficult situations and my body isn't responding
because I've built that capacity through many, many, many [00:52:00] repetitions of experiences. So now if somebody blurts something out in anger,
Robert: mm-hmm.
Julia: that would have triggered me, but now my body stays [00:52:15] calm and my helicopter mom brain has learned. This is okay. I don't need to protect Julia. She's good. And it lets my, my cortex get curious. It, it lets [00:52:30] me lean in,
which has been life changing for me.
Robert: It lets me, isn't that interesting? Like, it lets me like, it, it, the opposite of that being, it doesn't let me, uh, [00:52:45] and it does feel that way, doesn't it? Like a lot of times that my brain's just not letting me. You said something that was really interesting to me earlier in this where you, you said you got to a point in your life where, your body, I'm forgetting your words, but it was something like your body just said, I'm [00:53:00] done.
You
Julia: I'm done.
Robert: and, uh, and that, that's your brain talking, right? I mean, but it probably impacted every part of your system, but it's your brain saying, I'm shutting down. And we don't really have a say in that. When your brain gets to that [00:53:15] point.
Julia: We don't, and I finally had to listen and my body had been telling me for years, but I just kept pushing. I wasn't listening. And because what's happening is that when our helicopter mom gets [00:53:30] activated, it sends the energy down into our body to go to fight or flight.
So your muscles literally get tight,
Robert: CS up.
Julia: adrenaline starts flowing.
Well, it, it's almost like I [00:53:45] got stuck there and I was in constant fight or flight mode,
which meant guess how much thinking was happening.
Like zero.
Robert: It would not let you
Julia: function. It wouldn't, [00:54:00] but now, but then I, I, I figured out I can have a voice, I can have a choice, and I can get my power back. Um, it's just not by reading books and [00:54:15] it's not by knowing what to do, knowing what to do is not the same as being able to do it.
Robert: It is like trying to act on a concept. You know, the concept won't get you there. I love that you were pointing there to the cortex and saying that, you know, it's the, that the [00:54:30] information is not what's gonna make a difference. You can reference it, your brain's gonna reference information and that's, but that's not where the power is.
What you do with your clients is so very powerful to me. Because you're, I was [00:54:45] asking you how do you access curiosity? Just how do you get at it? I think we all have the information. There's been enough popular science out there to say that I know I'm supposed to be curious. I know I'm supposed to be courageous.
I know I'm supposed to be confident. I know I'm supposed to communicate. I know [00:55:00] I, I know, I know. I'm supposed to actively listen. Whatever that means, you know, we know all of what informationally, what we're supposed to do. And we don't do it.
Julia: Mm-hmm.
Robert: So that's, that's, it's really powerful to be able to transfer to another [00:55:15] human being.
Uh, you can't access this and then actually have, really get that experientially for themselves.
Julia: yeah. Well, man, we could probably go another hour, but
Robert: I know we could, we definitely.
Julia: [00:55:30] so we might have to, we might have to plan a part two for this, but, yeah. We need to wrap up 'cause I have to get to another appointment in a bit. Uh, but Robert, I just, yeah. Thank [00:55:45] you so much for being here and just sharing your perspective and just a little bit of your story. And if, if someone is out there listening and they wanna get ahold of you, what's the best way? Or if they're [00:56:00] interested in working with you on a project, um, how can they get ahold of you?
Robert: certainly by, uh, Facebook or LinkedIn, Robert Feeney or Robert j Feeney, you'll find me there. And, uh, and then the [00:56:15] website for my product is ring orang.com. R-A-N-G-O-R-A-N-G. And apparently, as you found out also 30 years ago, you can see me on IMDB.
Julia: You can.
Robert: You actually can.[00:56:30]
Julia: You can, well, we'll have all of those links in the show notes as well, but I just, uh, wish you and your company so well. I love the work that you're doing and the
heart behind it, so Thank you
Robert: much, Julia. It's a [00:56:45] pleasure.
Julia: All right. We'll see you later everyone.