Latest / Pathological Positivity / You Can’t Succeed Alone – Episode #672
Transcript
- This is Live On Purpose Radio episode 672. You can't succeed alone with Will Sampson. Now is the only time to create and live the life you love. I'm doctor Paul Jenkins, the positivity psychologist. My job is to connect you to powerful positive psychology principles that immediately upgrade your relationships, business, and mental health. Are you ready? Let's jump in. Hello, everybody. Welcome back to Live On Purpose Radio. This is doctor Paul the shrink who expands your life with another episode of Live On Purpose Radio. And joining me today is doctor Will Sampson. He has a PhD in sociology, and he is on a moonshot mission to disrupt the self help industry. In fact, self help is probably a misnomer, and I think we'll get into that. Will, welcome to the show. I am so delighted to be here, Doctor. Paul. This is great. I've seen some of your work and I'm very, very excited to join with you and share, my thoughts with your community. Well, let's jump right into this. I know you've done some academic work in in the area of community and how people come together. And as you're applying this to the self help industry I mentioned earlier, that may be a misnomer. Tell me where your brain goes with that. Yeah. So the term self help is a fascinating term. It actually, was the the title of a book in in 1859 by a guy, and I'm not making this up. His name was Samuel Smiles. I wish I was making that up, but Samuel Smiles coined the term self help. And if you think about what was happening in that time of industrialization, everybody was just sort of trying to figure out this new way of living. And along came Smiles who said, what we need is really self help. We all just need to sort of own our own story. And, he didn't say this, but another way it's often expressed is we just need to pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps. Yeah. And it's it's interesting because that idea of self help, the idea of bootstraps thinking, that's become almost codified into our cultural stories, and we think it's settled science. We think, well, of course, that's how, you know, people succeed when they when they take take their life on their own, when they when they take complete control of their life. And it's one of those fascinating both ends. It's one of those fascinating paradoxes, and I know you you talk about this somewhere. We we, we don't wanna be dependent on others. But the idea of self help is, it's just a false notion. In fact, my favorite quote, you remember the comedian George Carlin? He said, if you needed self help, then why would you read a book by somebody else? Basically, in other words, if you could if you could come up with the idea yourself, you didn't need somebody else. Right? And so part of what I try to do is is parse out the really important difference between self help and personal growth. Self help is this narrative that we've been handed in our in our... In this culture through our stories, through the way we craft hero stories in our in our world Mhmm. Versus personal growth and internal motivation, you know, actually finding the motivation within ourselves. But it's often true that we need the help of others to clear some things out of the way, to actually get to a place where we can begin to accept that, yes, we can own our narrative. Yes, we can grow. Yes, we are capable of being these great things. One one thing that's an important part of my story is I had a group of people at a very particular time in my life about three years ago who got around me and said, let us love you until you can love yourself. Like, you're you're in a dark, hard place. Let us love you until you can love yourself. Let us believe in you until you can believe in yourself. And I call that idea emotional capitalism. So they they were sort of investing in this very wonky product, which was Will Sampson. And it turns out that that investment really gave me the ability to both believe in myself and now to begin investing in others. So sometimes people ask me, what are you? And I I I don't... I used to just... I I used to say, well, I'm an emotional capitalist. And then I I realized that, like, we need to do a little more groundwork before I can just start calling myself that. But it's this idea of investing love and belief in others because often our traumas, our our self talk, our stories are just getting in the way of our own growth and really owning our own story. So that's what... That's... When I say I'm... I wanna disrupt the self help industry, I wanna disrupt it so that everyone has the freedom to grow themselves. That growth is something that we naturally do as humans when the context supports it. And and I believe that context as I'm listening to you, Will, I'm... I I believe that that context is not something that we generate, just out of nothing. It it exists in the world around us and the connections that we have with other people. You know, this this cultural tradition of I need to do this myself. I remember a fellow came into my office years ago so embarrassed that he had to get help. Right? From a psychologist, no less. And and he was sort of ashamed or embarrassed by that. And I said, well, what did you expect that you could do this by yourself? He said, well, I think I should be able to. I said, well, what what else do you do by yourself? Like like getting dressed this morning, did you do that yourself? He said, of course, I did. Oh, really? With clothing that you made from fabrics that you created from fibers that you harvested? How many hundreds of people help you to get dressed in the morning? When you look at it that way, it is this greater community. Yeah. And that's what that brings to mind for me, Will, as you start to, tune us in to this idea. It's not that you have to do it yourself, in fact, I don't think you can. Right. Right. And when I say you can't succeed alone, that's precisely what I mean. This idea that we... In fact, I love the... I love looking into this phrase, pull yourself up by your own bootstraps. So there's a historical context to that phrase as well. There was a guy... I... Again, not making this up. His name was Nimrod Murphy, and he invented... He had invented this perpetual... He called it a he called it a perpetual motion machine in the... This was in the nineteenth century. And a newspaper was writing an editorial about Murphy's perpetual motion machine, and they said, maybe... They were trying to point out how absurd it was, and they said, well, maybe if he pulled hard enough, he could actually pull himself up by his own bootstraps. As if somehow could could... Someone could do that, that they they could pull themselves over a fence or off the ground... Lift themselves off of the ground by pulling hard enough. But but just like self help, the... This idea of bootstrap thinking has become so embedded in our in our cultural stories Mhmm. Mhmm. That we don't take the time to think that something that started as a joke is now really undergirding a lot of the stories we tell ourselves. And just like you're you're the individual working... That you worked with, yeah, there's not a single day. I I I don't wake up in the morning and sing and think, I wish I could generate enough electricity to turn on my lights by myself. I don't... When I turn the coffee pot on Right. Any of these things. Like, literally, within fifteen, twenty minutes of waking up in the morning, I have already become deeply enmeshed in a web of interdependence, which was Stephen Covey's great contribution to this to this over... Overall conversation. We are inter... Interdependent, and the sooner we realize that, I think the sooner we have... We can find hope for our own growth. And that's sort of the irony of it is that for me to grow as an individual, I need to recognize that I live in these interdependent webs. Yes. You know, I heard a beautiful example of this just yesterday from my wife who's reading the book Creativity Inc. By Ed Catmull. He's the president of PIX Pixar animation and Disney animation. Sure. Yeah. Creativity. I mean, who does it better than Pixar and Disney? Exactly. And he he made a statement in that book about a young couple who had met while working at Pixar. They got married. They had a baby. They're raising a family. And his mind went back backwards into the the founding years of Pixar and all of the people who made courageous decisions and and moved things in different directions. And somehow now he's responsible for the life of this child. Right. Yeah. At least he said that he contributed, but even he is in the place he's in because of other people who had created different kinds of flow. It's... We are so interconnected that I don't think we possibly could do anything ourselves. No. No. No. Even the even the sort of mythical person raised by the wolves out in the forest still lives with the ecological decisions we all make about rainwater and sun and things like... I mean, we are simply... To exist as a human on this planet is to exist in interdependency. There's just no... That's... That is simply a statement of the human condition. To pretend it's not is really problematic. And the reason why I care so deeply about it, doctor Paul, is because for me, I was caught up in those negative stories. I was a person kind of in the grips of those negative stories, and I had to have other people say, hey. We love you. We believe in you. You got this. And that gave me the freedom to really begin to to work my way forward and to work on all these other things. So now when I'm coaching, when I'm when I'm helping young entrepreneurs start companies, when I'm doing all the work that I do now, I can thank. It's it's almost like a return on investment. It's a thank you, kinda like the head of Pixar that you're talking about. The... It's the it's the return on investment that those people made in me that I get to give to others. Yes. And that keeps the flow going. Yeah. Which is a a beautiful thing. Yeah. Yeah. It is. I'm feeling to ask you a question, Will, about all of this, and it kind of ties into this therefore what idea. Why is this such an important idea, and how do we apply that as we move forward? Your your book, for example, if I'm remembering the title correctly, it's, No One Succeeds Alone or something along those lines. Did I get that right? Yeah. It's You Can't Succeed Alone. You can't succeed alone. Right. Tell us about the practical application, what we're talking about here and what kind of a mind shift do we need in order to truly succeed? Yeah. You bet. And I'll tie this in with with your story because I was listening to your most recent podcast, Doctor. Paul, and one of the things I was struck by was the similarity in your pandemic experience, similar similarity to mine, which is the pandemic was this time of amazing growth for me, almost, I mean, almost galactic growth for me. To have known me three years ago and to know me now would would... You may not even know other than kind of a bald guy with a gray beard. Like, you wouldn't necessarily know me otherwise. And the reason why was because I... It was it was that balance of having a network of people around me who were able to help me particularly through a difficult time in my life. My story is one of long... I'm a I'm a person in long term recovery, and I entered into recovery as the pandemic was starting. So where a lot of people got deeper and deeper into their addiction, I actually found an incredible amount of grace and hope and recovery during that time, both because I had the... That network that I could rely on and because I took advantage of them. So it's that... So so what do we do? How do we move forward? How do we do... What do we do with this knowledge of self help versus personal growth of of, you know, the way our stories control us? We... Yeah. It seems to me that we create new opportunities for investing in other people, and then we encourage them to invest in themselves and to grow. It's that it's that both and. You you deal with clients, and and I'm sure it's true that they come to you with a particular set of issues that they wanna work through, and and you are a great resource for them. But you can't do that work for them, they have to do it themselves. And where I think we get out of whack is when we think it's one or the other. When we... You know, codependency says this person's gonna fix my problem. No. They're not. But false independence says, I got this. I don't need anyone. And as we've illustrated already, that's just not true. That's not true even in our most basic daily experience. Right. So I think the application... And at least for me, when I talk about disrupting self help industry, part of the way that works out for me is beginning to create the networks and the structures so that people can find the hope they need. They can find that love. They can find that belief. They can find other people who are willing to invest in them. That's what I wanna spend the next however much time I have left on this planet, hopefully thirty, forty, fifty years left on this planet, working on that issue is creating those networks so that people can find the love and belief they need. That love and that belief will help to fuel that forward motion. It gives us hope, really. Yep. Because how great a news is that, that you can't succeed alone? Right? I mean, it might be a little counterintuitive on first glance, but, it also means you don't have to. You shouldn't even try that. I remember one of my coaches recently, Will, had shared with me as I was struggling over, how am I going to do this thing? Okay. And he's listening to me. He's very, very kind and compassionate, but he's he's patiently waiting for me to finish being frustrated and overwhelmed. And then he comes in with fall. What if you were to stop thinking, how can I do this? And you start thinking, how can I have this done? Yeah. Yeah. And my mind went also back to a book by, Ben Hardy and Dan Sullivan called Who, Not How. Yeah. Love that book. It... That question changes the game. You think who who do I know who either knows something about this or probably knows someone who knows something about this and connect with those people. Think who, not how. I think that's one of the very practical applications of what you're teaching here. Exactly. Exactly. And I I I get to spend some of my day, thankfully, working with large Fortune 500 companies and large organizations. And, you know, you wouldn't... The chief technology officer would never, I mean, certainly may have some financial responsibilities, but would never sit around thinking about the financial implications for the organization. They might ask financial questions, but they recognize that there's a CFO, chief financial officer. The CFO would never sit around and think, well, how am I gonna hire people? They have a CHRO or some version of a HR person at the executive level, usually. Right? So we recognize in com... In complex organizations and companies, we need multiple people. Well, what what I think each one of us humans need is our own... I call it a life team. We need our own life team because there's no way... I'm I'm a big believer in human potential, and I think I could learn anything theoretically. But why? Like, why would I ever... I... There's things that that I'm blessed by. There's things that I know are... You know, fulfill my sense of purpose in the world. And when I do those, I feel the pleasure of the universe. I I know deep in my soul that's what I'm supposed to be doing. When I coach, when I speak, when I work with with people through complex problems, yeah, that's... Oh, that fills my soul. So why would I ever think I should be able to be able to do all the other things that require just my little tiny, you know, four person business to run. I don't I don't need to know how to do all... Do administrative work or do these other things because I have people who do that for me. In the same way, I think we we we've bought into the cultural story that the successful person is the person who does it all by themselves. Mhmm. And it's it's not true. And it's... To me, it's it's getting in the way of growth. There's a... I'll tell you a great story that illustrates this. So Yeah. In the nineteen seventies, there was a a young guy in East London who owned a record store. And he was he was a really bright guy, very driven, but he had some learning disabilities. He wasn't didn't... Wasn't really... Wasn't great with finance, so he didn't pay attention to things like like his taxes, for example. And he got underwater, and he was bankrupt. He was about to go... He was gonna have to declare bankruptcy until his mom came in and mortgaged her home and gave him the money to keep that tiny Virgin Records store afloat. That's Richard Branson. Like, literally, Richard Branson, when we think about guys who... People who made it on their own, we think of the Richard Branson's and the Bill Gates. Even Branson has this or part of his origin story as he had somebody who said, wow. You're down and out. I believe in you. I'm gonna I'm gonna invest in you so that you can move forward. Now would Richard Branson have succeeded without Eve Branson? We don't know because every... I can... Literally give me five minutes with a with a with a self made success story, and within five minutes, I can find the Eve Branson's in their narrative because we... Because that's the way the world works. And especially if you back it up a few more years because she probably had another role in keeping him alive as a little kid. Yeah. Yeah. Actually, I was listening... This was a couple months ago. I was listening to a podcast and it was an entrepreneur, and and the interviewer said, well, you know, why did you... What what drove you to to be so successful? And he said, well, you know, I had to make it on my own. My mom was never around. She was working two jobs. And immediately, my mind said, oh, wow. Your mom worked two jobs so that you could eat and have clothes for school. And and, you know, the the reality is that, yes, go far enough back. We are we are the product of cultures and people. When I, I don't teach in the college... At the college level anymore, but when I used to, one of the questions I used to ask is, tell me about your people. What people did you come from? I'm a sociologist by training. And when people... When the students would start to realize, oh, I came from a family, I came from a culture. I came from a hometown or a county or wherever. I... You know, I've I've... I'm a complex web of the stories of the people I came from, and I'm a complex web of the resources, both good and bad, that I got from the people I came from. When we realize that, then we then we can own the incredible power we have to shape both our future and the future of the world. I love that. Just as you're talking, Will, I'm thinking about the complex narratives and stories and history and legacy that allows me to have this conversation with you today. And those are just some of the ones I'm aware of because there are others that I'm completely blind to. But even down to the point where one of my great grandmothers, as a two year old girl, came across the plains, the windswept frozen tundra of Wyoming with a handcart in her family, some of the early settlers of Utah, and she had the fortitude to not die. And that's relevant to our conversation here today. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Yep. And the beauty of that story is we can take that, we can be inspired by it, which we need. You know, we need to have our hearts moved. Mhmm. But we can also learn from it. So it's our heart and our head. It moves our heart. It inspire, it breathes into our spirit. But we can also look and say, oh, what... What's a practical application of that kind of determination in my life? What's in front of me in my life today? Because none none of us, I don't think, and no no one listening to your podcast is crossing the plains of Wyoming with a handcart, but they may be trying to figure out how to get, from... How to turn their side hustle into a real... Into their permanent hustle. They may be trying to figure out how to restore broken relationships in their family around them. They may be... So so, no, it's not a it's not a cart taking them through the plains of Wyoming, but it but it feels like it. And that and that lower part of our brain really doesn't know or care about the difference. It knows that there's some great struggle ahead of us and it's asking us how can we meet that struggle. And one of the ways we do that is by finding other people to walk along the path with us. So interesting that you would point out that particular aspect because that story helped to sustain me through my bankruptcy. Wow. When I went through bankruptcy. And I was thinking about this little family, they had seven children, this particular family, as they're dragging this handcart across the plains. And they all arrived alive, in Utah, some of the earliest early settlers of Utah. And as I was going through this difficult time of my own, and I look around and my kids are all sleeping in beds tonight. Right? And and I'm like, what was it that I thought was hard? Right? These these stories are so inspiring. And I think we learn from this also that extreme does not equal extraordinary. We can have those I love that. Those intense extreme experiences, but other people have already experienced it, and probably someone in our network, in our legacy, in our history, has experienced something like that. I love that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's that understanding that can propel us forward. We have created a culture where, you know, the kind of if it bleeds, it leads journalism ethic that that has dominated our culture. We have created a, I think, a misshapen hero story. We've we've we've created an entire industry, particularly the self help industry, but whole industries out of out of misshapen stories. So so so what are our options? Well, our options are to stand outside the gate with a placard and shout, bad story, bad story, or let's tell better stories. The better story always wins. Right? Let's tell better stories if we can. This is the amazing thing. I just I think about... I mean, the few coaching clients that I get to work with... Most most of my work is with larger companies right now. But the future coaching clients I get to work with, some of the stories of triumph and the and the... And overcoming pain, overcoming trauma, moving forward and creating something new and beautiful that they didn't even imagine when they started on the coaching process. I'm sure you experienced this as well. It's just this is... That... That's what... We need to tell those stories and not, at least for me, maybe I'm maybe I'm preaching to the choir, I need to spend less time trying to tone down the other store... The negative stories because that's not my job. My my responsibility really ends at the tips of my fingertips. But I can tell better stories and I can help people tell better stories as well. And so that's that's what I try to do. I think it was was Nietzsche that that said, better to light a candle than to curse the darkness. Yep. And that's exactly what you're doing. Will Sampson, you're bringing it. Before I let you go today, I want I want people to be aware of your work and how they can connect to you. I know you've got the book, You Can't Succeed Alone. Tell us about that or where people can connect to you best. You bet. So the best way to connect with me is willsampson.com. No p in Sampson. So it's just willsampson.com. And I mostly exist in the social media world on LinkedIn. I, I I spent some time... I spent a... Put a little bit of content on Instagram and Twitter, but but the, probably the most consistent place to get me is on LinkedIn. Yes, wonderful. So go connect, folks. Willsampson,withoutap,.com is the website, and also through LinkedIn primarily if you're on the social media. That's where you can interact with our phenomenal guest today. Will, thank you so much for bringing these insights to our family here at Live on Purpose Radio. Thank you. This was a great privilege and great conversation. Thank you, doctor Paul. You guys have heard it. Think of ways you can apply it because now it's time to go live on purpose. Did you get what you came for? Give yourself the gift of taking real action on what you realized today. Please share this episode with someone you know would value it, and leave us a rating too. It's time now to live on purpose.