Latest / The Person behind the Position / When Achievement Isn't Enough with Mike Enos
Transcript
- 0:12Speaker 1: Welcome to the person behind the podcast podcast that looks
- 0:17Speaker 1: beyond what people do to discover who they are.
- 0:22Speaker 2: I'm your host.
- 0:43Speaker 1: Welcome to the person behind the position. I'm your host,
- 0:49Speaker 1: Michael Chisholm. For 25 years, my guest followed the script. Degrees,
- 0:57Speaker 1: part number 39. Boardrooms, the titles.
- 1:03Speaker 2: And it worked. Right up until one question started following
- 1:07Speaker 2: him around. Is this it?
- 1:12Speaker 1: So he made the leap. Walked away from the career
- 1:15Speaker 1: he had spent whole adult life building. Clarity didn't show
- 1:21Speaker 1: up like he expected. What showed up instead was a
- 1:25Speaker 1: lot of couch time and reruns of Law & Order.
- 1:29Speaker 1: He started moving instead of thinking.
- 1:30Speaker 2: The Iron Man, Kilimanjaro, 100-mile ultramarathon. Some of it worked
- 1:38Speaker 2: and some didn't. He learned the same lesson.
- 1:43Speaker 1: Every time the action creates the clarity and not the
- 1:48Speaker 1: other way around.
- 1:50Speaker 2: So please welcome Mike Enos. All right.
- 1:55Speaker 3: Thank you so much, Michael. It's a pleasure to be
- 1:56Speaker 3: here today.
- 1:58Speaker 2: Thank you.
- 1:59Speaker 1: So, so when you earned the PhD, when you become
- 2:04Speaker 1: a partner, advise senior executives and boards, later chief people
- 2:09Speaker 1: officer and COO, what was happening Inside Mike, when a
- 2:17Speaker 1: life that looks successful started feeling incomplete.
- 2:24Speaker 3: That's a really good question. I think you got to
- 2:26Speaker 3: go back a little ways to see, um, and understand
- 2:30Speaker 3: how I'm kind of wired. And I think this is very, um,
- 2:35Speaker 3: this is, this is the way a lot of men
- 2:37Speaker 3: are wired, right? We are taught at a very young
- 2:40Speaker 3: age to, um, to achieve. and to go to school
- 2:43Speaker 3: and start making money, take care of your family. Right.
- 2:46Speaker 3: So those are, those are the things. And so I,
- 2:49Speaker 3: I went in with that script. I'm going to, I'm
- 2:51Speaker 3: going to achieve, achieve, achieve. And that's where, you know,
- 2:53Speaker 3: I went in and got my PhD at a very
- 2:55Speaker 3: young age and went into consultant and went from analyst to,
- 3:00Speaker 3: to the partner level, you know, it took 10 years
- 3:02Speaker 3: to do that. Uh, sacrificed all the weekends and a
- 3:08Speaker 3: lot of vacations and kind of, and, uh, you know, uh,
- 3:15Speaker 3: delayed gratification, if you will kind of delayed my, my,
- 3:18Speaker 3: my life just because I needed to achieve. And that's
- 3:22Speaker 3: kind of, that's kind of how I was wired. Um,
- 3:26Speaker 3: and I thought that if I achieved a certain amount
- 3:30Speaker 3: of things that happiness would eventually come. And so each
- 3:34Speaker 3: time I had one of those achievements, I, you know,
- 3:37Speaker 3: happy for like maybe a minute, two minutes, and then
- 3:39Speaker 3: it's like reset and you're like, okay, what's next. And
- 3:42Speaker 3: you keep going and you keep thinking that next thing
- 3:45Speaker 3: is going to make you happy, but it never does.
- 3:47Speaker 3: And so it took me four or five of those
- 3:49Speaker 3: rounds to realize, okay, this is not going to work.
- 3:55Speaker 3: This is not the way to go through life. And
- 3:57Speaker 3: eventually I had kind of an epiphany like this is it.
- 4:00Speaker 3: This is the question that came up. That question, is
- 4:02Speaker 3: this it, kept popping into my mind because I wasn't happy.
- 4:06Speaker 3: There had to be more to life than just achievements
- 4:10Speaker 3: and trying to make money. and those things. And that's
- 4:13Speaker 3: when I, I took a leap and just left my
- 4:18Speaker 3: executive role and nothing lined up, nothing lined up because I,
- 4:23Speaker 3: I knew there needed, there needed to be more in
- 4:25Speaker 3: life than just what I was doing. And I had
- 4:27Speaker 3: hoped that I could eventually find it, but I had
- 4:30Speaker 3: no plan. I just left.
- 4:34Speaker 2: Okay. So when you were, leaving something that you no
- 4:44Speaker 2: longer wanted or.
- 4:46Speaker 1: Expecting to finally discover who you were without it, what
- 4:54Speaker 1: did you believe was going to happen once you left?
- 5:01Speaker 3: So when I first left, what I really expected was
- 5:06Speaker 3: that there was going to be an outpour of people
- 5:10Speaker 3: knocking at my door to have me work in their,
- 5:13Speaker 3: in their organization or the corporation. And I mean, there
- 5:18Speaker 3: was some of that, but it was within the industry
- 5:20Speaker 3: that I was in and I was trying to get
- 5:21Speaker 3: out of that industry. So I didn't want to go
- 5:24Speaker 3: back into that, but there was no one else besides
- 5:27Speaker 3: people in my old industry knocking at my door. So
- 5:30Speaker 3: that's when, you know, that's when I was, I spent
- 5:34Speaker 3: the first couple of months sitting on my couch eating
- 5:37Speaker 3: popcorn and watching law and order free runs because I
- 5:41Speaker 3: thought that if someone, you know, eventually someone's going to
- 5:45Speaker 3: reach out. But I also thought that if I thought
- 5:47Speaker 3: hard enough at that time, that my purpose would come.
- 5:51Speaker 3: I knew my purpose wasn't what I used to do
- 5:53Speaker 3: in the old industry, but I knew I would find something,
- 5:58Speaker 3: but I thought thinking on the couch was going to
- 6:01Speaker 3: get me there. And that got me obviously nowhere because,
- 6:04Speaker 3: you know, um, in order to get clarity and in
- 6:10Speaker 3: order to find purpose, you actually have to take action.
- 6:13Speaker 3: And that's, that is one of the big discoveries that, um,
- 6:15Speaker 3: I mean, it sounds like so much common sense, right. But,
- 6:18Speaker 3: but that's what I discovered those first three months.
- 6:23Speaker 2: Okay.
- 6:24Speaker 1: So, so, um, what was that season really like when
- 6:31Speaker 1: there was no title, no schedule or, next achievement telling
- 6:37Speaker 1: you what to do?
- 6:43Speaker 3: Yeah, I think at first it was kind of like
- 6:47Speaker 3: almost a cleansing period because for so long every day
- 6:54Speaker 3: was emails and Zoom meetings and chaos and fire drills
- 7:01Speaker 3: and all that kind of stuff. So you're Yeah. When
- 7:05Speaker 3: you're in that world, your nervous system is just, is
- 7:09Speaker 3: this going bonkers? You're always on, you can't turn it off.
- 7:13Speaker 3: And so there was a period when that was all gone.
- 7:17Speaker 3: I just kind of, it was a reset and, um,
- 7:21Speaker 3: kind of gave me time to, to think, which I did. Right.
- 7:27Speaker 3: And I was okay with that. I really wasn't, I
- 7:29Speaker 3: don't think I was attached. My identity wasn't attached to
- 7:32Speaker 3: my title. my identity was always attached to achievement improving.
- 7:39Speaker 3: And so I didn't, I didn't need the, I didn't
- 7:44Speaker 3: need the title. I wasn't, my ego wasn't impacted by
- 7:49Speaker 3: not having the executive title. What I struggled with is still,
- 7:55Speaker 3: still the achievement stuff. And I, and I'm sitting on
- 7:58Speaker 3: the couch. There was no achievement. So I started, you know,
- 8:03Speaker 3: when I, to break out of that, I started taking
- 8:06Speaker 3: actions and I started doing things to go after achievement again.
- 8:10Speaker 3: And that's a story in itself too, because striving just
- 8:14Speaker 3: for achievement, that doesn't bring you happiness either, which I
- 8:17Speaker 3: later discovered. But that's when I started doing, I went
- 8:21Speaker 3: to Stanford and got a degree at Stanford, a program
- 8:25Speaker 3: called the LEAD program, which was exceptional. And then started
- 8:29Speaker 3: training for an Ironman, Jumped out of the plane, skydived,
- 8:34Speaker 3: faced my fears, started training for an Ironman, and that
- 8:38Speaker 3: just kind of got things kind of going for me.
- 8:43Speaker 1: So I want to double back to you talking about
- 8:48Speaker 1: striving for achievement.
- 8:50Speaker 2: Explain that a little more to me. Well, yeah.
- 9:02Speaker 3: So I think it boils down to this. I came
- 9:05Speaker 3: from kind of a middle-class, lower middle-class upbringing, blue collar,
- 9:11Speaker 3: and also was an athlete. And so I think the
- 9:19Speaker 3: combination of those two things, you know, as a lower,
- 9:22Speaker 3: lower income person, you want to prove yourself right and
- 9:25Speaker 3: make it. So there's, there's that piece of it. That's
- 9:28Speaker 3: like in my, in my system, I wanted to achieve
- 9:31Speaker 3: and show the world that I can do it.
- 9:32Speaker 2: Right.
- 9:33Speaker 3: And then there's that competitive element because I'm an athlete
- 9:36Speaker 3: that I, you're going to, you're going to win. Right.
- 9:38Speaker 3: So between those two things, that's why I think achievement
- 9:41Speaker 3: was so important to me. Like it was just kind
- 9:44Speaker 3: of in my system, but, but, and I always thought too,
- 9:49Speaker 3: that if I achieved enough, I would be happy, but,
- 9:51Speaker 3: There's three components of happiness, all right? And achievement's one
- 9:56Speaker 3: of them, but it's not it's not all of that
- 9:58Speaker 3: enjoyment is another one and purpose is another one you
- 10:03Speaker 3: gotta have three of those variables working you know satisfaction
- 10:07Speaker 3: which is achievement uh purpose and enjoyment and so i
- 10:11Speaker 3: over indexed on the achievement component for a You know,
- 10:20Speaker 3: and so, you know, I started writing this book and
- 10:22Speaker 3: through the whole process after I left my job was
- 10:25Speaker 3: that happiness is found in those three things and working them,
- 10:30Speaker 3: all three of them at the same time. You can't
- 10:32Speaker 3: just have one or two. You can have all three.
- 10:37Speaker 2: So how did you know you were exploring who Mike was.
- 10:45Speaker 1: And not simply replacing corporate achievement with a different kind
- 10:48Speaker 1: of achievement?
- 10:50Speaker 3: That's a good question because I didn't know at first, Michael.
- 10:54Speaker 3: And in fact, when I started my book, I still
- 10:56Speaker 3: didn't know either. And the funny thing is, is that,
- 11:01Speaker 3: so I ended up finishing the Ironman. So I set
- 11:05Speaker 3: out to do that and I finished it. And then
- 11:07Speaker 3: three days later, I was on a plane to Africa
- 11:10Speaker 3: to hike Kilimanjaro. I did that with my son. So,
- 11:14Speaker 3: you know, I had two massive victories in a period of,
- 11:19Speaker 3: you know, two weeks. And then, and then I was like, okay,
- 11:22Speaker 3: what's next? Cause you just got to keep going, right?
- 11:24Speaker 3: You gotta, you gotta one up it. And so I
- 11:28Speaker 3: signed up for an ultra marathon, a hundred mile ultra
- 11:30Speaker 3: marathon in California. And so I started on that journey
- 11:34Speaker 3: because that's, that's what I do, right? Just keep kind
- 11:37Speaker 3: of going. But here was the beauty of it. And
- 11:39Speaker 3: this is why, this is why it took me so
- 11:42Speaker 3: long to write the book because the book, the story,
- 11:45Speaker 3: I was still in the middle of the story when
- 11:48Speaker 3: I was, when I was writing the book. I signed
- 11:51Speaker 3: up for the 100 mile ultramarathon and trained my butt off.
- 11:56Speaker 3: And I'm a very disciplined guy. Six months, boom, every
- 12:00Speaker 3: day was a workout schedule. I hit my targets, boom, boom, boom, boom.
- 12:05Speaker 3: And I show up in California to do that race.
- 12:08Speaker 3: There's 300 athletes there. And it's up and down canyons
- 12:14Speaker 3: in California. I trained here in New England In Massachusetts here,
- 12:19Speaker 3: it's relatively flat, and it was the winter, so I'm
- 12:22Speaker 3: going to travel almost the winter training. I show up there.
- 12:27Speaker 3: It's canyons up and down, and you've got to hit
- 12:30Speaker 3: certain cutoff periods during the race. Anyways, I didn't make
- 12:34Speaker 3: the 100 miles. It's called the sweepers sweep you off
- 12:39Speaker 3: the course because you didn't hit certain times by certain distances.
- 12:46Speaker 3: I didn't hit it. And then, um, but, but that
- 12:49Speaker 3: taught me a valuable lesson, Michael, because that night I
- 12:53Speaker 3: was sitting on, I was, I was actually lying in
- 12:56Speaker 3: bed reflecting on, okay, I just, I just failed. This
- 12:59Speaker 3: is a failure. I trained for six months and it
- 13:02Speaker 3: wasn't bothering me, Michael. And that's, that's when I realized that, okay,
- 13:06Speaker 3: I don't, I don't need the achievement anymore. I need
- 13:09Speaker 3: to tie my identity to achievement. I can still fail.
- 13:13Speaker 3: And it's the journey. It's the journey, which is so important.
- 13:17Speaker 3: And that was such a valuable lesson. And I knew
- 13:23Speaker 3: it intellectually, but I never really experienced it, and that hit.
- 13:32Speaker 3: And my son sent me a text that night, and
- 13:34Speaker 3: it was just so on point. He said, Dad, the
- 13:40Speaker 3: outcome doesn't matter. It's all about the journey. You should
- 13:45Speaker 3: be really proud of yourself. And that kind of summed
- 13:48Speaker 3: up the lesson and the experience.
- 13:51Speaker 2: Of all that.
- 13:51Speaker 3: It was a beautiful thing. Okay.
- 13:55Speaker 2: So your book is called, you know, Explore Again, Break
- 13:58Speaker 2: Free from the Script. Yeah. Right. So looking back, whose
- 14:04Speaker 2: script were you actually following?
- 14:09Speaker 3: Yeah, it's two parts, right? We learn our scripts when
- 14:15Speaker 3: we're in a young age, right? So where we grew up,
- 14:18Speaker 3: where we go to school, our friends and that stuff.
- 14:21Speaker 3: So the original script that I was taught in the
- 14:26Speaker 3: kind of blue collar world is that, you know, happiness.
- 14:30Speaker 3: So you peak early, work sucks, and then you retire
- 14:34Speaker 3: and then you can be happy. That was kind of
- 14:36Speaker 3: the script that I thought. And then I went to
- 14:39Speaker 3: college and I was like, you know what? That script
- 14:41Speaker 3: is not the right script. So I upgraded the script, right?
- 14:45Speaker 3: To the white collar script, which is, earn your degree,
- 14:49Speaker 3: work hard, make a lot of money, still delay gratification, but,
- 14:53Speaker 3: and then you can be happy once you make a
- 14:54Speaker 3: lot of money and have your status. So that was
- 14:56Speaker 3: the script that I followed, which I learned, you know,
- 14:59Speaker 3: in college, but then I also, you go to the
- 15:01Speaker 3: white collar world and that's everyone's kind of, or most
- 15:05Speaker 3: people are following that script. It's just, that's just what
- 15:08Speaker 3: it is. And so I went, I'm all in, right?
- 15:12Speaker 3: I'm all in kind of guy. And so I just
- 15:15Speaker 3: ate that up. I'm like, okay, this is the game.
- 15:17Speaker 3: This is the script. We're going to do it. And,
- 15:20Speaker 3: you know, it just took a while for me to
- 15:24Speaker 3: figure out. Following the script is not the way to go.
- 15:29Speaker 3: You've got to break free from the script and follow
- 15:31Speaker 3: your own path and create your own script.
- 15:36Speaker 1: So do you think that there's still a script that
- 15:41Speaker 1: you catch yourself following today?
- 15:44Speaker 3: That's a good question. I want to say no.
- 15:52Speaker 2: Right.
- 15:52Speaker 3: But, um, where I, I, I can, I fall sometimes
- 15:57Speaker 3: back into autopilot, like just kind of doing the routine,
- 16:01Speaker 3: you know, which is kind of the script, but I
- 16:05Speaker 3: know that to feel alive, cause my goal is just,
- 16:08Speaker 3: this is to feel alive and learn and just, make
- 16:12Speaker 3: the most of this miracle that we have being on
- 16:16Speaker 3: this earth. When I can catch myself, I'm not really following,
- 16:23Speaker 3: I'm not following a script anymore. I'm creating my own script.
- 16:28Speaker 2: Okay. So how do you feel when you've.
- 16:35Speaker 1: Accepted the fact that you're following your own script now,
- 16:39Speaker 1: not this I guess this pseudo script of the world,
- 16:43Speaker 1: you know, where happiness is only found after you've achieved,
- 16:48Speaker 1: you know, so many things.
- 16:51Speaker 3: Yeah. I, you know, I would love to say it's
- 16:53Speaker 3: like so easy and it's fantastic and it's great, but
- 16:55Speaker 3: that's not the truth because you're out on your own,
- 17:00Speaker 3: you're doing your own thing and no one's really doing it.
- 17:04Speaker 3: So there is a piece of like, not loneliness, but
- 17:08Speaker 3: you just, you're, you're, not doing what everyone else is doing.
- 17:13Speaker 3: And so you're different. And so that's difficult. And then
- 17:19Speaker 3: the other piece of it too, there's uncertainty. With a script,
- 17:21Speaker 3: there's certainty, right? You just follow the path everyone's doing, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.
- 17:25Speaker 3: It's easy, right? What I'm experiencing now is that there's
- 17:33Speaker 3: just uncertainty with everything. Everything I'm doing, there's uncertainty. And
- 17:38Speaker 3: so it's a matter of getting uncomfortable uh getting comfortable
- 17:42Speaker 3: with that uncertainty which i've learned and i think it's
- 17:45Speaker 3: a very valuable skill is being able to sit in
- 17:48Speaker 3: discomfort and not knowing that's uh uh i think such
- 17:53Speaker 3: a valuable skill and i'm happy to say that i'm
- 17:55Speaker 3: getting much much better at it because like in everything
- 18:01Speaker 3: you know my coaching business that i have now it's
- 18:03Speaker 3: uncertain like i don't know how how much how great
- 18:07Speaker 3: it's going to be right in or some of these
- 18:09Speaker 3: athletic have that i take part and i don't know
- 18:11Speaker 3: what's going to happen it's just but uncertainty also you
- 18:16Speaker 3: know scary and uncomfortable it's actually makes me feel alive
- 18:22Speaker 3: right um because we're not in autopilot anymore we're just
- 18:25Speaker 3: like okay uh anything can happen here let's let's find
- 18:29Speaker 3: out um so that that part is amazing.
- 18:36Speaker 1: So i like how you um said that even in
- 18:42Speaker 1: the uncertainty, you know, life can still be amazing.
- 18:51Speaker 2: What do you do when the uncertainty is not so amazing?
- 19:02Speaker 3: Well, that's been kind of, I've dealt with it in
- 19:10Speaker 3: the past, you know, three years.
- 19:12Speaker 2: Since I left.
- 19:18Speaker 3: Believing that something better is going to happen. So having
- 19:22Speaker 3: a strong belief system in yourself, right? And having hope
- 19:29Speaker 3: can bail you out. And then uncertainty is, there's always,
- 19:35Speaker 3: it's not forever, right? So you know that eventually this
- 19:38Speaker 3: uncertainty is going to end, right? And so you're aware.
- 19:44Speaker 1: Of that, that.
- 19:46Speaker 3: This is not going to be forever, this feeling of
- 19:50Speaker 3: uncertainty and discomfort. So there's hope, and you know it's
- 19:54Speaker 3: not going to be forever, and those two things help.
- 20:02Speaker 1: Okay, so you earned a PhD. You've been a partner
- 20:06Speaker 1: and advisor previously. chief people officer, COO, coach, an author,
- 20:11Speaker 1: an endurance athlete, and an explorer. So just for a moment,
- 20:16Speaker 1: I'm going to take all of those away. No title,
- 20:19Speaker 1: no next mountain, no accomplishment to point to.
- 20:24Speaker 2: Who are you behind the position?
- 20:27Speaker 3: Whatever I want to be. Yeah. So if you take
- 20:32Speaker 3: all that stuff, which is actually freeing, right? Because like,
- 20:35Speaker 3: take it all off.
- 20:36Speaker 2: Boom.
- 20:38Speaker 3: I'm just someone here on this earth for a short
- 20:40Speaker 3: period of time that is trying to make sense of
- 20:44Speaker 3: this all that wants to have connections with people and
- 20:49Speaker 3: experience joy and adventure and love. And yeah, that's it, man.
- 20:59Speaker 3: Those are the things I like that to me, that's,
- 21:03Speaker 3: that's a beautiful life. Like you take away all that stuff.
- 21:07Speaker 3: I don't know. Like all this stuff is what makes us,
- 21:11Speaker 3: drives us crazy. You know, when I was younger, like
- 21:16Speaker 3: the idea of being an executive, right? Like the push
- 21:19Speaker 3: for that, I get it. It was important. I wanted
- 21:20Speaker 3: to make money and all that stuff, but the amount
- 21:24Speaker 3: of sacrifice and it wasn't a happy life. And so
- 21:31Speaker 3: I think a lot, we get stuck in that. We
- 21:34Speaker 3: just think that it's going to be better when we
- 21:36Speaker 3: have these achievements and have these titles. You strip that
- 21:38Speaker 3: all away, you're free. You are completely free. And that's
- 21:44Speaker 3: how I wanna operate. It's not about titles and achievements anymore.
- 21:50Speaker 3: It's just living life free with love, connections, adventure, those things.
- 22:02Speaker 1: Okay, so Mike, thank you for allowing us to meet
- 22:07Speaker 1: the person behind the position. Where can our listeners find
- 22:15Speaker 1: you on social media?
- 22:18Speaker 3: Yep, so LinkedIn, Mike Enos, and then you can buy
- 22:26Speaker 3: my book if you go to exploreagain.com, it's my website,
- 22:30Speaker 3: and you'll be able to purchase my book there. It's
- 22:32Speaker 3: coming out in, so we're in September right now, It'll
- 22:36Speaker 3: be out in early November time period to be able
- 22:40Speaker 3: to purchase the book.
- 22:43Speaker 2: Okay. Thank you so much for once again being with
- 22:47Speaker 2: us today.
- 22:49Speaker 1: And to everyone listening, maybe the question isn't only, is
- 22:54Speaker 1: this it?
- 22:56Speaker 2: Maybe we also have to ask, whose script am I following?
- 23:02Speaker 2: And who am I without it? I'm Michael Chisholm, and
- 23:07Speaker 2: this is the person behind the position.
- 23:12Speaker 3: Thank you, Michael.
- 23:14Speaker 2: Thank you. If you've enjoyed this episode, share it with
- 23:40Speaker 2: your friends.