85. Becoming Fearless

Intro: Duration: (04:44)

Opening music jingle & sound effects

Jeff Hunt:

Welcome to Human Capital, I'm Jeff Hunt. Have you ever hesitated to take the next step in your career or personal life and didn't quite know why? Or are you reluctant to take healthy risks in your current job? For many people, fear is at the center of these hesitations. Fear is something that can hold you back even when you're not aware of it.

On the other end of the spectrum, however, we've all probably known people who seem to charge ahead without fear, but instead have strained relationships and they lack support for important things like collaboration and teamwork. Today on Human Capital, we will explore how overcoming fear and self doubt can improve relationships, performance, and personal growth.

To help me understand this topic better, I've invited Dr. Benjamin Ritter to join me at the mic. Ben is a two time guest here on Human Capital, and he's a distinguished leadership and career coach. He's an organizational development expert, and he's the founder of Live for Yourself Consulting. He holds a doctorate in organizational leadership, an MBA, and a master's degree in public health.

And I just read Ben's latest book, Which is titled, Becoming Fearless, 65 Strategies to Journey from Self Doubt to Self Mastery. And in this book, he provides a roadmap for conquering fears. Building personal and professional lives with intention and leading with confidence. So without further ado, welcome Ben.

Dr. Benjamin Ritter:

Thank you so much for having me again. This is awesome. It feels like I was on the show yesterday, but ooh, does time fly pretty quick.

Jeff Hunt:

Very fast. And for those listeners that want a little bit of a different perspective on Ben, you can go back and look through the human capital archives and you'll find the other episode there. But today, we get to talk about this book, and one of my reflections Ben was that you could sit down with a book and just read through, but another strategy might be like a daily reader. You have it chunked down into these bite size tips and strategies, which really are helpful.

Dr. Benjamin Ritter:

Yeah. And I always tell people that I have this like fortune cookie style of learning.

I like to like crack open the fortune cookie, read the quote. And if the quote resonates with me, go do something about it. And when I was learning about the fields of personal and professional development, I would walk around with a little, like, journal, and I would jot down the epiphanies I would have from, like, hours of reading and work.

So I'd, like, read all this stuff. I'd go out and do things and try things out. And then the next day I'd be driving in the car or walking on the street and get like a little bit of an epiphany, like neurons would fire the right way. And I was like, Oh, that's, that's the important piece here. And so that's kind of stuck with me throughout my life being the like lifelong learner that I am.

And when I wrote my first book, which was more about like relationships and such, I kind of made a little pocketbook. I'm like, this is what people need. And throughout my life, I've kind of kept with this idea that like we just need to know the thing that we don't know and the thing that we have to do, and then we have to go do it.

And I was a little torn between making Becoming Fearless a workbook. I didn't want it to be a workbook because I know when people see the word work or they think they're going to have to do something, they put up a bunch of roadblocks. They hold themselves back. It's like, I'm not good enough. I don't have time.

Like, that seems really hard. Like, there, I have other things I want to prioritize right now. It's, we come up with excuses whenever we think we actually have to do something. So I wanted to make the book that would be like, if people want to do something, they can. This is the one thing I want you to do. If you just need to read about the thing you need to do, or think about the question about that might be holding you back, you can do that too.

So, and I've had some people that read the book that are like, Ben, that was a really inspirational, motivational read. Like, I feel empowered right now. And other people that say, I sat down, I read one thing and then I thought about it for like five hours and I was like, great, that's awesome to like, however you want to go through the book that creates learning is important to me, because what I truly want to motivate people to do is just two things.

One, if you'll empower that you can make a change in your life, you can become fearless. Two, you have to feel that you're accountable to actually go be fearless. And that's, now the book has a different little bit of an origin story, but that's kind of the concept of why it was written.

Topic 1. Who or what inspired you the most along the way? (04:45)

Jeff Hunt:

That makes sense. Before I ask you some specific questions about the book, I want to have you reflect on your career a little bit. Who inspired you most in your career journey?

Dr. Benjamin Ritter:

I just had to give a talk at the CDC and they gave me a really interesting ask, they go, they went, Ben, tell your story, but make a point. I was like, what? I can't just go give a keynote. You have to tell my story. And so I sat down and like wrote down my whole story. I reflected on it and realized that when I was unhappy and resentful in my career in health care, because I've done a couple of career pivots, and when I say resentful, I was like actively going into work, trying not to work.

I was avoiding relationships. Not saying I want to do this thing, but for some reason, my company still thought that I was a high performer, still thought that I had potential. So they selected me for a leadership development program. It was 16 months of leadership training. And in that program, I had a mentor.

That mentor was the director of the entire leadership development program across all of our hospital sites. And lo and behold, the conversations with that person, with a coach, with someone that led with curiosity and without judgment, like it built, like we were able to build enough trust where I was able to start actually processing the thoughts, the feelings and beliefs, which I talk about in the book to allow me to distance myself from my resentment and my fear.

And allow me to figure out that like, Oh, what do I care about? And what do I want to do about it? And that one individual changed my trajectory. And honestly, like, look what I'm doing today helped me figure out the type of work that I wanted to do for other people too, because it was actually painful.

When I looked back on those experiences. I burned bridges. I didn't take advantage of that time in my career. I, you know, that bled into other relationships. And I don't want anyone to experience that again.

Topic 2. The origin of fear. Evaluating healthy risk (06:41)

Jeff Hunt:

That's a great lesson for everyone, how you can take those most challenging things in your life and turn them for good.

And you did that. So thanks for sharing that. As we get into the book, the first question I really want to unpack is the common causes of fear, because you have all these fantastic strategies in there that people can implement that are very practical. But before we get to that point, it feels important.

To unpack the causes of fear, especially at work. Now, I know there are some aspects of fear that are healthy , from a primal standpoint. But many of these things get overblown and show up and manifest themselves in ways that don't actually allow us to advance. So give me your thoughts on this.

Dr. Benjamin Ritter:

We have fears because we've learned over time to be afraid of those things. Some are innate, like lion, watch out. And I don't really know how much of them are innate, like darkness. Why are we instinctually afraid of darkness? Or do we become afraid of darkness over time? I'm not sure. But there are certain things that we are afraid of in our life because of how we've lived our life so far.

Because of our relationships, because of where we grew up, because of the options that you've had. And then also in our work environment the negative experiences that you've had, like if you had a toxic boss, or if you've had role models where you've seen people burn out, or if you yourself lost control of your schedule and felt like you were completely overworked, or maybe you also underutilized and felt like people kind of dismissed you, those become part of your story.

And so all of a sudden now, You wake up, you go into work, and you are the addition of all the things that you've had in the past. And that can be anything. And what's really neat about fear is, just like it developed over time based on experiences, you've actually chosen to believe those experiences and have made them your reality.

Like in the book, I talk about, feel your feelings, like understand what you're actually feeling. Don't distance yourself from them. Think about your thoughts so that you can understand them and not like actually really then choose the thought that you want. But then that helps you understand like, well, what do you, what do you actually believe?

And then do you want to believe that? Like do you challenge those beliefs? And in our work environment, a lot of what I see from people that are trying to succeed more, they tend to have beliefs such as people are judging me, I am at risk of losing my job all the time, which then makes you maybe hold back ideas.

Overwork yourself maybe do things that you don't truly want to do. They don't relate to what you care about. Stay within your role. Don't not, not try to like expand and act as if you're promoted or try to try new things and be more proactive. You're more reactive. And then these ideas that like, that you're supposed to be given things in the work environment because you're afraid if you do anything that's not given to you, you're overstepping some sort of boundary and such.

So does that, that, I'm not sure if I answered your question, but I'll, I'm going to pause for a sec.

Jeff Hunt:

No, I appreciate that. I think one of the things that I'm reflecting on also came up in the introduction, which is this hesitation that people can have in their jobs and how that hesitation can come from different places.

It can come from a lack of trust among their team or the culture of the actual work environment that they're in. But that their willingness to step forth and take risks can be reframed and redefined even in these more challenging environments. So if somebody's feeling like they really do need to stay in their job, there's an opportunity for them to rethink with a different paradigm, how they maybe could take risks in a healthy way and advocate not only for themselves, but make their work environment better.

Dr. Benjamin Ritter:

Yeah, I had a client who was very attached to the belief that they needed to overwork, respond immediately, take on a bunch of new projects. And in our initial conversations, when I would talk about challenging that belief and maybe canceling a meeting and maybe saying no to a work assignment and defining priorities, I would always be told, you don't know what it's like.

You don't know how it is. And something that's like really important when it comes to becoming fearless. It doesn't matter what your environment is like, it matters what you want to create in that environment. And no matter what you think is possible, if you have a goal towards something, there is always something you can do to make progress towards that goal.

So, for example, feeling like you're overworked, so you list down all the things that you're doing that are extra, and you pick one, and you say, I'm just going to see what happens when I don't do that for a day. That's it. Simple little action. But that's a step towards becoming fearless. If you can't get to that point, because you're so afraid of taking action, then I actually, like, we have to figure out what can get you to the point of wanting to experiment.

What can make you feel safe enough to do it? Or you can try that one thing. Is it saving a little extra money every week? Is it doing a meeting with someone that you trust? Whatever it is, we have to get to the point of challenging your beliefs, because if not, that fear is just going to stay. And even worse, every time you believe that the fear exists and act in a way That confirms that, that fear gets stronger and gets more solidified within your life.

Jeff Hunt:

And conversely, isn't it true that every time we take a little risk that the outcome is successful with, then it builds confidence, it is a little bit of a dopamine rush. It helps us create pathways to doing this more, and then we become not only maybe more productive, more successful, have better relationships, but we're actually more fulfilled in our lives. Would you say that's a truism?

Dr. Benjamin Ritter:

It's the whole purpose of the book is to give people 65 strategies, mainly actions that they can take that helps them build. The fearlessness helps them create that level of confidence within themselves. Confidence tends to be two main things. It's like your actual skills or your competence and then like your belief in yourself.

And it's kind of like a cycle. It's, if you can show, if you can prove to yourself that you have the skill, you tend to believe in yourself more, but you have to believe in yourself to feel like you can go figure out what the skill is and go take action. Yeah. And so when you do one thing, you no matter how small it is.

And that's why when we, I don't know, like, we're going into goal setting now, but when someone has a goal, you generally, one of the worst mistakes that people tend to make that holds them back is they think they have to accomplish the goal. They plan for accomplishing the goal instead of planning for the action towards the goal.

So you see this a lot also in job searching, which is the goal is getting a job. No, that's not the goal. It's like, if you focus on that goal, You're focusing on the 0. 5 percent of success that tends to happen in the search. The goal is applying to positions, redoing your resume and LinkedIn profile, knowing how to tell your brand story, connecting and building relationships.

And if you can focus on those goals, you're going to build more confidence in yourself in the search because You're focused on, on more of the things that you can control that also have a higher success rate.

Topic 3. Small steps, big achievements (14:54)

Jeff Hunt:

Yeah. It's interesting because in our software, we have goal setting and managing goals, and we will profess that the milestone or the step on the pathway to achieving the goal is actually much more important than the goal, because if you do accomplish all those milestones, the goal ends up being a by product of that.

So it's not the end all be all, it's just what the result is of accomplishing all these milestones. I also, I was also thinking about, we've been talking about this specific topic on the podcast for several episodes. And I just recently interviewed Jeff Haden, who is a, prominent thought leader on LinkedIn.

He told me he did 100, 000 push-ups in a year, and he didn't tell anybody about this except his wife, and he didn't focus on the 100, 000. He focused on the breakdown of that spreadsheet that he had to fill out every day. He said for the first two weeks it was miserable, but after that, he got a little bit better, a little bit better.

And then pretty soon he got to his 100, 000 push ups. So that's the analogy of exactly what you're saying, isn't it?

Dr. Benjamin Ritter:

Yeah, what's that saying? It's we underestimate what we can complete in 10 years and overestimate we can complete in a year. It's like we, like generally our focus is we miss the cumulative effect, right?

That's why people don't save. It's like, they don't take advantage of the compound effect. And how often do we, how many different examples do we need to highlight how incredible, how much change you can influence in your life? How much you can. impact with a longer term vision and giving yourself the grace to accept that.

And then also as part of the book talks about is enjoying your day. And if we're very focused on the outcome, it's very difficult to enjoy our day because we're not at the outcome yet.

Jeff Hunt:

That's right. And by the way, when you get to the outcome, it's not as great as you think before you get there, right?

Dr. Benjamin Ritter:

I work with a lot of, you know, and I work with, I like, I have a big community of entrepreneurs in my space too. And they're always working on a project, always working on a project. I gotta do this project. And I've completed enough projects in my life to know that nothing changes because I completed the project. Like my business is still my business. I created a product. I'm going to create this product. And all of a sudden now I'm going to be like the biggest thing in the world.

No, you're going to have a product and then you're going to have to sell the product. And just like in your professional world, you work really hard. I have to be promoted. You get promoted. And you're just as bored as you were in your last position. And so it's like, it's not the position, it's the fact that that's how you approach work.

It's the, what you understand about novelty and challenge and what stimulates you and what energizes you. And, oh, okay. So we're both on soap boxes. I'm stepping down for a second. And we're just, it's, it's real. And so, and becoming fearless, bringing, taking the back to it is really just understanding that anything in your life is possible.

And you have to figure out like, well, what do you want that to be? And how does it best serve you? And a lot of our fears hold us back from taking action. These small steps towards making things possible for ourselves.

Topic 4. Reshaping culture & Executive presence (18:21)

Jeff Hunt:

I was thinking as I was reading your book that there's many aspects of it that are applicable to business culture as well. So if we as a leadership team or an executive team embody some of these behaviors that you have in your book, then we can slowly change the culture. And what's the contrast to that? The contrast is reactivity instead of proactivity. And I want to go back to something that you just said a minute ago.

If I'm in my job and I feel like I have to respond to every email or text within 15 seconds, that doesn't leave a lot of room or margin for creativity or innovation in my job or building relationships. And yet it could be that that expectation is established in the C-suite. So it underscores to me the importance of actually being very explicit and defining some of these behaviors and not only defining the behavior, but why we are calling that behavior important and then communicating it. And so I'm just curious about your reflections on that.

Dr. Benjamin Ritter:

It was leading a, like a emerging leaders workshop. And I asked everyone in the room, how quickly do you think you need to respond to a Slack message? And I gave them different times instead of just open-ended 24 hours, four hours, one hour, 48 hours, 15 minutes.

And everyone had a different expectation. And imagine if everyone on your team has a different expectation and what does that do to the ability to collaborate on your team, as well as what are the levels of stress now for each of those different people in the room. And it's so critical to understand what people's expectations are, but and also what they feel like they have to do and what they, what the team wants for themselves.

And then take a look at, well, what am I role modeling? And I think that one of the examples that we've, I've seen a lot lately, I don't know if you have, but in the remote environment, now time, the workday has disappeared. There is not a start and not an end. And I can remember when I used to, it's like, I feel like in my days when I had to go into an office and lock, actually, when I left the office, I locked my computer in a drawer for security reasons.

I did not take my work home with me. I did not have a messaging app on my phone. And there was a very, very, very clear end of the day. And I could not respond to anything until the next day. There were some times where we had some corporate report outs where they asked me if they could contact me at night, if they had any questions.

And so as an executive, now, if you are sending an email at midnight, because you've been in meetings all day, because you haven't built into your day time to answer emails or to respond to people, or you have certain times, time requirements of responding to emails for yourself, you're What does that tell your team and what expectation does that create?

And then if you have someone on your team, that's responding at 6 AM or 5 AM, and then you see now global teams too, that responded all hours of the day, how is that impacting people's stress levels? And what does it create for in terms of an expectation of how they're supposed to work?

So have you sat down with your global team? Or have you yourself as a leader set time boxes around when you should reply or do you use the schedule send piece? And I saw this post the other day too, with someone saying, well, just put something in your signature that says. I'm sending this when I need to don't worry about it, but we're human and we have to understand what that creates like if I see a being or I hear a sound and I am required to have email on my phone at I'm looking at it before I'm going to sleep.

And so what fear is that creating? And I don't think those little signature notes work. I think there has to be a much further discussion around expectations of communication and then a yeah. Very clear guidelines set from everyone on the team and when that communication can be sent or how they're checking it.

Jeff Hunt:

Yeah. That little statement at the end of the email or the Slack message or whatever it is, is not that the modeling is the sending or the not sending of the message. So, right. They're going to follow that. That example is what they're going to follow. One of the things you talk about in your book is executive presence, and not only in your book, but you have a lot of thought leadership around this whole concept of executive presence.

And for somebody that's looking to be promoted, what are some things that they can do to enhance their own executive presence and or demonstrate their readiness for a promotion?

Dr. Benjamin Ritter:

The best advice I've ever received on this topic. And most, like, every tip in the book comes from an experience that I personally had. And, because if I learned something, I then integrated it into my life and had the experience. And, uh, I'll go back to the actual experience itself. I wanted a promotion, and I was working in my career, and I was doing a good job, and I was ready for the promotion, and so then I asked for it.

And the promotion did not happen the next day. There was a whole path forward to make that promotion a reality. And it was a year plan ahead of me. And this concept was reinforced multiple times with, working with other clients in this space. Promotions take time. You have to build champions. You have to follow whatever sort of corporate structure and policies you have to do.

And so if you want a promotion, you need to let your manager know a year in advance. You need to be checking on it every, every one on one talking about your career development. You need to get very specific competencies and expectations lined out for you. And you have to have evidence that you've done those things.

And so it's this constant process of being your greatest champion, and then ensuring that you're getting expectations from the leaders around you. of what you need to do to highlight that you're ready. And generally what that involves is not doing your job, because doing your job is an expectation. You already have your job there, so you're supposed to do it.

Doing it well just means that you keep your job. It generally means doing the next job. So what are the, what projects would you accomplish if you got promoted into the next role? And this might, people might be like, I don't want to do free work. Well, no, if you're proving that you can do the work.

And so you do that project now, you might extend the deadline and the timeline for that project so that you can work it into your normal everyday work itself. But you're acting like that next role. And from a presence perspective, from also a work perspective. And presence generally means, because as you move up in the organization, generally what it means is you are sharing more of your ideas and meetings.

You are not speaking first, but you're guiding. You're connecting the dots. It means you're thinking longer term and broader. So you're communicating updates that are happening within your department to other departments that are relevant. And generally you're following up on things that you hear or helping people that might be outside of your specific scope.

In a way that helps you build relationships and shows that you have that broader level of thinking.

Jeff Hunt:

Now talk a little bit about introversion and extroversion because you may be a person who falls on either end of the spectrum, but the hope and the goal for advancement is being, is self-advocating in meetings so you may be a lot less comfortable speaking up. So speak to the introverts that are out there.

Dr. Benjamin Ritter:

Well, I think for both, extroverts may speak too much and introverts may speak too little. I honestly don't care if you're an introvert or an extrovert. It just means that you have some problems or some troubles and some personal preferences that you need to adapt to.

I do a lot of leader assessments, and I'm sure we both can talk about this. Everyone has different personalities and different preferences. But being effective at your job generally means you have to be, you have to balance. And you need to make some compromises and need to become uncomfortable to be able to, to show up in a way that your organization needs.

So if you're an introvert and generally like to be quiet, that's wonderful because actually being quiet is a huge sign of executive presence, but then asking the right questions and giving people the opportunity to share even more. So as an introvert, you have to get, really listen when you are quiet and figure out what is the question to ask in this situation that's going to help create.

How do you make progress towards the goals that we are trying to achieve or to learn more about the situation overall? I mean, it also means, and you see this a lot, it's probably the number one piece of feedback I have to give to leaders that are moving into the senior manager and director role, but want to move higher.

Who do you need to know in your organization? You know, I'm not talking about speaking at the town hall, the all hands. I'm talking about setting up a one-on-one 1530-minute chat. With the senior stakeholder that's cross functional, that's going to be able to champion you and help give you more advice or even mentorship.

Because if you don't know those people, when your senior leadership team goes into a room to calibrate promotions, there's only one person that knows who you are and that's your manager. And that needs to change. You need everyone in that room to know who you are.

Topic 5. Giving upward feedback (27:48)

Jeff Hunt:

And it seems like in order to really grasp a lot of these concepts, feedback is a critical component.

And so, don't we need to really make sure that we are soliciting the right amount of feedback and not only soliciting it, but we're listening to it, and we might not agree with all of it, but we are able to ascertain what we will take away, what we will change, and then conversely, give feedback, not necessarily in an unsolicited manner, but give upward feedback.

I know that as an executive. I'm always much more respectful of people that work for me that come to me proactively to give me feedback, whether it's about my own leadership style our company or our go-to-market strategies, anything that is on their mind.

Dr. Benjamin Ritter:

I was working with a client the other day and People were all coming to her to give her negative feedback about her leader.

Oh, your leader derails meetings. Your leader is terrible to have around. And she was wondering, well, how do I give this feedback? And well, you don't want to play telephone ever with feedback. You don't want to bring in other people's perspectives because she was thinking like, well, I'll just tell him that other people are telling me that he's derailing meetings.

Like that's a really easy way to get someone to be defensive towards you because that's not your perspective. You're not sharing someone else's and now they feel attacked. And they feel like they have to defend themselves to you. But what you can do is find an opportunity for you to give feedback to that person.

Or you can even ask for feedback to create the safe, a safe space for feedback. And when I ended up, what ended up happening is, you know, we coached through the situation. And a really easy way to give feedback is to lean into mentorship and to lean into questions towards the other person asking, how do you think that meeting went?

What do you think, what progress do you think we made towards our goal? What do you think is getting in the way? Well, what approach do you think might be more effective with these stakeholders? And all of a sudden now you're getting information from them, including them in a conversation. And then you can say, Yeah, actually, I think in our last meeting, it seemed to be that maybe you got like a little heated and we got off topic because like they are, these are tough and high stress conversations.

What can we do as a team to like, do you want me to step in in those moments? Do you want me to like call, call it out? Do you want me to send you a side message? And all of a sudden now I'm giving feedback, but I'm doing it in a way where it's collaborative and that we're working together. And then when you do that, all of a sudden now you have the chance to say, well, what can I do to, to, to be more effective here?

You're not asking what did I do wrong? You're saying, what can I do better? And that tends to create a really positive relationship with someone where they start trusting you more. You might proactively get feedback to help you succeed in your role. And they also see your level of pro like proactiveness and interest in growing in the company.

Jeff Hunt:

I love that. Actually. One of the things that came to mind for me is an exercise that we've used with our clients before, and you may be familiar with this, Ben. It's basically a dynamic 360. So you take the senior executive and leadership team, and you could do this with any team.

And every person in the room sitting around the table has identified that the one person we're going to talk about that person, the first thing that everyone around the room is going to say is what is the greatest contribution this person brings to the team and the organization, and which allows us to achieve our vision better or faster.

And then secondly, what's the one thing that might get in the way of that happening, in other words, what's the greatest growth opportunity. And if we have a high trust levels and we're able to really put this into a matrix, then you have some incredible real time feedback that the team can use to build trust, to continue to enhance communication, to understand and accept those growth areas.

And then to also be able to recognize the high performance that can be there. So I'm curious your thoughts on that or any other exercises you've seen that have worked well with leadership teams.

Dr. Benjamin Ritter:

Oh, if you can seed somebody in that room. And generally there's often one person that's a little bit more open, kind of has that like whatever attitude.

But once someone starts, it starts, it creates momentum. You've probably seen this in your work. And so maybe pre vetting, like kind of having those conversations with your champions of that activity. that workshop to say, what are you going to share? Who do you know that has something to share about you?

And how do we get two people ready? Because then all of a sudden now, we'll get the entire group going. Oftentimes people are afraid to be the first person because they don't know what the limits are of the activity. And, and so if we, if we can set the limits in a safe way to align with our goals, generally people will start chiming in.

I mean, something as simple as like, you see people giving away free stuff on a street corner, like doing samples. Well, you're more likely to go get a sample if someone's already there because you don't know, like you kind of want to, but you don't really want to be the first person to do it.

Same thing happens with, I mean, we're simple. The same thing happens within these types of activities.

Topic 6. Lighting round questions (33:07)

Jeff Hunt:

Definitely. All right, you ready for the lightning round? Let's do it. What are you most grateful for?

Dr. Benjamin Ritter:

Uh, my pets today. Tell me about your pets. I have a rule. What do you got? Yeah, I, I, I have a rule to when my pets come up to me to play, I'm playing.

I mean, some exceptions with interviews and coaching sessions and stuff, but I have a four-year-old like street rat dog, scruffy little. Schnauzer, Chihuahua, kind of shepherding dog mix, rescue pup. I have a 13-year-old cat and a 21-year-old turtle. So I can't play with the turtle as much, but I'm playing with the cat and the dog.

Jeff Hunt:

I love it. I'm a pet lover too. So that we're like-minded. What's the most difficult leadership lesson you've learned over your career?

Dr. Benjamin Ritter:

People gossip and sometimes one person's opinion will change everyone's. And there's nothing you can do to prevent gossip, but what you can do is try to create a feedback-forward type of community and relationships where people are open to sharing that with you, and then be okay for being frustrated about that fact that people gossip.

People are not going to be as open with you as you want, no matter how much of a trusted environment that you build for them. And so just be prepared to deal with those situations. And it's not that anyone's bad or wrong. It's just human nature at times.

Jeff Hunt:

And if you can model not gossiping and call out triangulation, isn't that a good strategy too?

Dr. Benjamin Ritter:

Yeah. The same example that I gave you earlier with the individuals that were playing telephone with feedback, I was like, okay, so next time that happens, cause what happens is right now you're, you're feeding that. So say, I actually think you should give that feedback to him. And just don't, don't agree.

Maybe you can empathize. And this, this client was like, wow, that's a great idea. I never thought about that. I guess. So don't feed the gossiper.

Jeff Hunt:

Who is one person you would interview if you could, living or not?

Dr. Benjamin Ritter:

Oh, who would I interview? Richard Bandler, the author of Reframing, one of the founders of NLP. His book, Frogs into Princes and Reframing, changed my life. And it's been a little hokey for some people, like this idea that you can talk to your little beliefs that you have or the habits that you have that are within you and you can reprogram them has been one of the most powerful concepts in my life.

Jeff Hunt:

And actually I've interviewed a couple of guests on the show that are Highly experienced at the internal family systems modality, the IFS modality, which is right along that same pathway of instead of trying to whack a mole these parts of you, let's get investigative and curious about them.

And then we can actually learn a lot more about ourselves.

Dr. Benjamin Ritter:

Yeah. Those beliefs within you were created for a reason that generally there's to keep you safe. Like the things that you're afraid of generally are there because they, your body feels that they're, they should be afraid of them. And you have to, it's a lot easier to acknowledge them and, uh, to have a conversation with them and to say, I thank you for what you've done for me so far, but I think I need to do something else now.

Jeff Hunt:

What's the best piece of advice you've ever received?

Dr. Benjamin Ritter:

You are greater than your purpose. Talk about it in the book of, uh, never having too much work. And I also talk about the purpose piece specifically in the book. Everything that we are interested in or care about is something that we have given meaning to. So, if that thing ever drains you or hurts you, you can always remember that it's created by you.

So, maybe go do something else for a little bit.

Jeff Hunt:

Good advice. I really enjoyed your book, Ben. I enjoyed our conversation today. If you had to leave our listeners with one or two kind of key topics or takeaways, what would those be?

Dr. Benjamin Ritter:

So, fear is just information. Everything in our life is just information. We choose to define it by what we want to perceive it as.

And I was like a big cover. I was having this conversation with a friend the other day and I'm like, truth, there is no truth. Like, truth is what we decided to be. The same thing with fear. If you decide that something isn't afraid, doesn't mean that your body's not going to react to it as if it's afraid, but you can, it can, you can choose then and create some autonomy around how you respond to it.

Jeff Hunt:

Ben, thank you for all this wisdom. Everybody Ben's book comes out on September 17th. And once again, you can find it on any platforms and , the title is Becoming Fearless, 65 Strategies to Journey from Self Doubt to Self-Mastery. We will put a link to the book on our show notes. Dr. Benjamin Ritter, thank you so much for coming on the show today.

Dr. Benjamin Ritter:

Thank you so much for having me. Always a ton of fun. And that lightning round got me jazzed up, so I'm ready to go.

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Outro(38:53)

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Jeff Hunt:

Thanks for listening to the show this week. We release new episodes every other Tuesday. Let me know what you thought of this episode by emailing humancapitalgoalspan.com. Human capital is produced by GoalSpan. Subscribe, wherever you get your podcasts. And please share this podcast with your colleagues, team, or friends. Thanks for being human kind.