Connecting with Belonging
This week co-hosts Alex Cullimore and Cristina Amigoni dive into Belonging, how it ties to authenticity as a basic human need that greatly shapes how we show up, how we feel about ourselves, and what we can accomplish as individuals and groups in the workplace and communities. Episode Notes can be found here at uncoverthehuman.wearesiamo.com
Credits: Raechel Sherwood for Original Score Composition.
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Alex Cullimore:
Welcome to Uncover the Human, where every conversation revolves around enhancing all the connections in our lives,
Cristina Amigoni:
whether that's with our families, co workers, or even ourselves.
Alex Cullimore:
When we can be our authentic selves magic happens.
Cristina Amigoni:
This is Cristina Amigoni.
Alex Cullimore:
This is Alex Cullimore.
Both:
Let's dive in.
Guests:
Authenticity means freedom. Authenticity means going with your gut. Authenticity is bringing 100% of yourself, not just the parts you think people want to see. But all of you. Being authentic means that you have integrity to yourself. It's the way our intuition is whispering something deep rooted and true. Authenticity is when you truly know yourself, you remember and connect to who you were before others told you who you should be. It's transparency relatability, no frills, no makeup, just being.
Alex Cullimore:
Hello, and welcome to back to Uncover the Human. I am Alex Cullimore.
Cristina Amigoni:
And I am Cristina Amigoni.
Alex Cullimore:
And you are here listening to another episode of Uncover the Human our podcast on authenticity, exploring what authenticity means in the workplace, at home, in our families, and everywhere in our lives. So this week, we really wanted to dive into the topic of belonging, which is something that I feel intricately ties with authenticity, but is something that also comes up in just about any facet of life. I know, Cristina, you thought about having this as a topic, any thoughts on why you wanted to throw it in?
Cristina Amigoni:
Well, we did mention it in the last podcast that we wanted to talk about belonging. And I think it came up in a couple of examples. Part of the authenticity piece was that we just we have to know who we are. And we have to belong, and find a way to belong to ourselves and outside of ourselves. And so it just seemed like a natural transition to belonging.
Alex Cullimore:
Belonging is a great I think through line in life in general, this is one that comes up time. And again, especially when you're a social creature, like humans, you have so much dependency on people around you, you have so much just pressure to be really aware of your surroundings, especially when it comes to the people you're with what they might be thinking of you what you think. And then where you stand in a group. That's where so much of our anxiety can come from. And so I think belonging is such a great tie in for authenticity and just the experience of being a human in general.
Cristina Amigoni:
Yes, definitely. It's a very interesting concept, because I think there's a tendency in some societies and in some cultures to kind of want to do it alone, and think "I can do it alone, I don't need anybody's help". And we can't really, we never have been able to, we're creatures, and we're beings that have always depended on others to survive. If we look back on our ancestors all the way back to pre-civilization, survival was completely dependent on being alone or being part of the tribe, the minute we were not part of the tribe. That was it. We were done saber toothed tigers, tsunamis, wheather, starvation, you name it. And so that need for others, to be able to survive as beings, just at the basic level before food and shelter is still with us. It's wired in our brains, it's wired in our genes, to the point where, when we are excluded, for whatever reason, even if it's just from a conversation or from a coffee, or something simple, it causes us deep pain, and our brain reacts as: "this is a threat and I need to do something about this."
Alex Cullimore:
I think that's such a great point. And that's one of the interesting pieces of this, because people will talk about, needing to be part of the caveman tribe. And it's easy to
then dismiss like: :
"Well, yes, that was important in caveman days, but we're talking in the modern era". And that might be true, we don't have to worry about saber toothed tigers when we're walking through our neighborhoods, and if we happen to walk alone, really, it's only other humans that are threats at this point. We don't have to worry about these things, but like you said, it really is ingrained in us. And so it behooves us to really understand what does that mean in the context of our day to day lives, and what are times when we might accidentally either trigger that in ourselves or other people, because it's such a crucial thing, and so core to our survival, that we aren't going to let go of it, we're always going to have that strong reaction. So we might as well know about it, be aware of it, make sure we're aware of it both in ourselves, and when we're talking to others.
Cristina Amigoni:
A couple of things come to mind when I think of belonging. One is the conversation that I had on LinkedIn with a really good connection on how we have this tendency to think that we can do it alone as I mentioned earlier, and we think that we actually can do things alone, but even when we, let's say something simple as cook dinner for the first time on our own. We're never really truly alone. So when I broke down the definition of: "oh, but I can't do it alone. Look, I've done all these things by myself. Well, you did them maybe without another person standing next to you and helping you, but you didn't do them alone because somebody built the kitchen that you are cooking in. That wasn't you, somebody made the food that you bought at the grocery store that you can now cook to make the meal that you did on your own. Somebody taught you how to make the meal. So there really is no doing anything alone.
Alex Cullimore:
And this is a great tie into, I once heard of a kindergarten teacher that used this as an exercise and you're talking about some great influences that led you to the point where you can cook alone in your kitchen. But there's also things, and you mentioned it when you're talking about people building the house for you, there's so much even if you're just gonna heat up a can of soup on your stove. There's so much that went into that. I mean, if you think about the can of soup alone, you've got some kind of machine that could make aluminum cans, that's a huge endeavor, every little piece of that had to be assembled somewhere that's in some US Patent Office from 80 years ago. And then you've got the actual label of that. So now you're talking about the people that put together the actual design of the label, you're talking about the people that created the ink. I have no idea what the process is to create ink that goes on soup labels, but that is a whole process somewhere. If there's a factory that's making ink, or I don't know what you do, if you mine ink. I don't think that comes out of the ground. But that's a tie in every single person along that chain essentially affects your ability to make that can of soup. And I heard some kindergarten teacher that used that as an exercise and said, you are looking at a box of crayons, can you name all the people that were required to get that box of crayons to you? So you've got packagers, distributors, you've got every single piece along the way and I'm sure it's a thought exercise from the kindergarteners, but it's one that stuck with me. Because it is that, you are dependent on other people no matter what you do.
Cristina Amigoni:
I love the fact that it's an example of talking about this at that early age. Because at some point we lose that. Kids, obviously babies clearly know that they can't survive alone and don't expect themselves to. Most kids also know that so at which point in our growth, do we get this something that externally it's like, okay, from now on, you're on your own, go figure it out, you don't need anybody else.
Alex Cullimore:
That's a great point. And it does really start to lose. And this is actually one I'd love to get your opinion on from a cultural point of view for between nationalities, but also one that came up recently for me, when we started going back into quarantine, when I started to see all the news of the coronavirus coming throug., You started to hear about it in China long before you started to hear about it in the US. I was listening to podcasts that we're talking about the economy and why this is potentially dangerous for the economy. And this is before we knew it was going to be a big issue. This is before we really understood anything about the disease. And before we thought it was going to come over here. I started to realize more that lesson that I had forgotten from long ago that we are really interdependent. We all hear about you know, lots of our products and manufactured goods being made in China, but when China suddenly has to undergo social distancing, and shut down all of these factories, suddenly that impact comes home and you start to see the globalized world. And I think that has carried through in quarantine, we see restaurants that are asking for help and please buy gift cards now, if you can't come to us for the first couple of months when they weren't open, like you have a bunch of people who are dependent on labor that requires you to be in person, or in close quarters. And there's suddenly this understanding, or at least I started to see strings that I had never really thought about that tie between everything where all these people are dependent on each other. And you are a part of that ecosystem as much as you would like to feel that individual spirit that I don't know what you'd call it.
Cristina Amigoni:
Yeah, I mean, all of that. It's It's really amazing, kind of focusing on the individual piece more than the why belonging, what belonging is, but we'll get there. It's a journey. It's a lot of that, you know, I think about the the collective in the understanding that it's not about being alone, it's really about being part of the group. And so how can I contribute to be part of the group? And how can I feel that I am part of the group, what happens when I feel that I'm not part of the group.
Alex Cullimore:
And that's something I experienced on a small scale. I grew up in Colorado, and then I spent time in New York for a few years, and there's definitely some culture shock and some little differences there. I spent some time in Dallas, and you start to feel like you're, you're switching to a whole different group and you're trying to understand, do I fit in here? What do I need to do to fit in here as a whole different topic, the idea of fitting in versus belonging, but I think that's something that you can definitely relate to because you came over from Italy, you have a whole different ocean between you and your origination point.
Cristina Amigoni:
Indeed. And it's an interesting one because our very good, well hopefully one day friend Brene' Brown, who we both admire and inspires us and she talks about the difference between fitting in and belonging. And how belonging is deeper and fitting in is more about, as the word says, it's fitting into a box, fitting into somebody else's construct of how you should be and what you should act like and what you should say, so that you can be accepted into the group.
Belonging is really more about:
"this is who I am, this is my authenticity. And the group accepts me and values me for me".
Alex Cullimore:
Yeah, that's exactly it. When I think about fitting in, it always comes back to some idea of having a mask, essentially, in front of you, you're doing something to transform your appearance or your individual person, but to feel like you are fitting into a box. And I think a box is a great description of that. Because sometimes it absolutely feels like putting a round peg in a square hole, you're trying to do something that is very unnatural, doesn't really fit. But you're conforming to fit into that rather than belonging, which in my mind is much more, you are yourself, nothing is making you feel like you would have to change to be accepted and fit in and belong.
Cristina Amigoni:
Yes, or even better. You don't have to be like anybody else. You don't have to be your own peg. All pegs are welcomed. And yes, they're valued. And they're seen. And they're celebrated, because they're all different. And that's truly belonging. And the first thing that gets us there is this concept that Brene' Brown talks about so much, which is belonging to ourselves first. So
understanding :
" Who am I? Who am I without the box? Who am I without the mask? Who do I want to be? And is that okay with me. Shrinking ourselves so that somebody else is more comfortable, that's not belonging. And that's never going to end up well, for anybody involved.
Alex Cullimore:
You're missing out, if you're the person who's doing the shrinking or asking somebody to do the shrinking, you're missing out on whatever that person can bring to the table for one, you're missing out on whatever they actually have to offer and their unique vision. But you're also just basically damaging the relationship over a long time. It's incredibly, at the very least tiring to be part of feeling like you are being formed or asked to conform.
Cristina Amigoni:
Very tiring, exhausting, that's one of the things that I can relate to, because I spent a lot of my time trying to fit in. And a lot of my time, not fitting in and being the outsider, growing up in Italy with an American mother and an Italian Father. We grew up in a small town and everybody in this small town, except for us and a few others, was literally born there generations behind, the parents were from the same small town, the whole family was very close by. And so we were different. We had not only somebody that was from outside the region, or the city or the town, we have somebody that was from outside the continent as part of the family. And that in my mom, my mother is she should have she influenced that we listen to English songs, we spoke English at home, we ate American food, or, you know, whatever, we can get close to that. And my skin, which you probably see from my pictures and maybe one day if we ever do video, is way darker than most Italians, despite what the rest of the world thinks. And so I never fit in. I was always the American. I was always called the American when I was in Italy. And then I moved to the US and here I always the Italian. And so basically until I was in my late 20s. Well it looks like the only place where I actually belong is the Atlantic Ocean.
Alex Cullimore:
This was the the old accent in movies in like the 40s and 50s. All the actors had an accent that really doesn't exist in the world. And it was called the Mid-Atlantic accent, because it's got the American overtones, but they were taking on various, almost British feeling pieces, so that it would give this aura of sophistication but the actual accent didn't originate anywhere but for movies. So that just reminded me of that, that the only place I really belong is a place that doesn't really exist. You really just have this blank ocean where no one else is.
Cristina Amigoni:
Pretty much and it was it was different. It was hard. It was very hard to live through that. And then I slowly learned to embrace it as not something that made me an outsider. Well, it's still an outsider, but now I actually love being the outsider.
Alex Cullimore:
Yeah, there's huge advantages. I spent my life in two different camps growing up and throughout college and then after college when I was growing up, I started doing theater in school and all the plays and musicals but during the school day, I was much more academically focused and so I basically split my time between, in the daytime hours, I would spend all my time with all the, for lack of a better term, AP kids and the people who were just really there to go basically measure their class rank and make sure they were on top of it and get the best GPA they could. And then after school, I'd go do rehearsals and spend all my time with people that weren't, it's not to say they weren't academically motivated, they just that wasn't their sole purpose. Theywere not the same group of people generally, because most of the people that I'd go to school with all day, were going home to make sure that you compete over how many hours of homework they had done, whereas the people I was going to rehearsal with already were eating up half of their evening to go do
rehearsals. So it was this:
"in theater, y you're kind of the school kid and in school, you're the theater kid, and there's no in between". And that kind of carried into college, I ended up studying math. And then I ended up going into consulting, where I had no business experience. And while I was doing consulting, I started doing stand up comedy in New York. And being an IT consultant is not a common day job for comics. And being a comic is not a common night activity for consultants. And you just kind of feel like you're constantly living as the only person in the middle of a Venn diagram that has never before intersected.
Cristina Amigoni:
Yeah, well, it definitely makes for wonderful stories.
Alex Cullimore:
Yeah, there's always something weird going on. And always something you tend to notice that other people might not see if you spend all of your time. And I've talked about this at length with Raechel, my partner, and we talked about this, because we both have done a lot of business and jobs that would be, I don't know like marketing, and I guess it feels more like corporate businesses, but on the side, we've had all kinds of creative projects, and you start to see, when you're in the creative projects, all the pieces of it that feel like a business. And when you're in business, you start to feel all the pieces that seem like creative opportunities. And it's really fun to have that intersection, once you start to feel a little bit more of a sense of belonging,
Cristina Amigoni:
Very good examples, ans of some of the advantages. First, finding the comfort in knowing: "I am the outsider. And you know what, here's all the reasons why I want to stay that way". So, how did you find belonging, eventually?
Alex Cullimore:
That's an interesting question, I'm not totally sure there was definitely a lot of times where you just don't feel that way, you feel like you don't really belong wherever you are. You feel like you're sitting at a conference room table, thinking about times when you're out at open mics, and there's times and you're at open mics and thinking about what you're going to have to do at work the next day. It starts to take almost pieces of the experience away from you, because you're not fully present. And so I've tried to get a lot better. And I've gotten a lot better now at starting to, not necessarily box each of these into their own corner, but you start to compartmentalize them, you start to just be able to live fully in one while you're doing it and start to get a little better at the context switch when you have to go back into another one, and let each of the sides stay. And I think for me, that was huge, because I had not lived that way, I was raised, mostly to think that there was one thing that you do with your life, you have one career, and whatever it happens to be, that's what you work on just about all the time. And I think that's also a message that we see a lot in the corporate world, you see a lot of "get really good at one thing, make this your specialty and this is the one thing you should be focused on and basically eat, live and breathe to this one thing. And it's a kind of difficult message when you feel like there might be something else you're interested in or there's some part of you that doesn't fully feel like you're invested in that, because that can start to create imposter syndrome, you start to feel like I'm not really all in for leads based marketing. I don't know, that was a that was a totally generic term. I'm not nearly good enough marketer to say that that's even a thing. Jargon I think I just threw together. There's people who really love marketing automation, and they can talk endlessly about it and that's great, but if you don't feel fully invested in that you can start to feel on the outside and for me, it started to help a lot to, I don't want to say compartmentalize because it's not so cut and dry, you're still yourself when you're in both of these arenas, I got better at letting go of feeling the gap. It's always there. You're always still all the people that you are all day long are still with you. You just don't concentrate on the fact that you don't draw the boxes for yourself that there's a discrepancy there. You're just happened to be a person that goes through both. Absolutely use some Oscar music.
Cristina Amigoni:
Well, I figured like he may start singing if I started playing the Oscars, which is totally fine. Again, like belonging is doing whatever it is at the moment that feels like the right thing to do.
Alex Cullimore:
What do you feel started to move that for you? What do you feel started to help you feel like there was belonging power in being the outsider as you called it.
Cristina Amigoni:
I think if I recall back to when I was suffering through the Mid Atlantic identity crisis, when I actually realized it was a huge advantage, I think it was when I started working in Switzerland. During the summers, when I was in college in the US, I went back to Switzerland, I worked in and international camp that had anywhere between 400 and 600 kids from 80 to 100 different countries every summer, and plus counselors, probably about the same. And I realized that I actually was in a much less split identity than most of the kids there. I only had two languages and two nationalities and half the kids there had four or five languages, and enough passports to compete with James Bond and then lived in a country that had nothing to do with their passports. And so I realized "hey these kids are happy and they use it as an advantage because they can communicate with anyone, and they can relate to anyone, and they make friends in an instant and coming to camp is not traumatizing for them listening to, walking in a room where they don't understand a single word of what's being said doesn't even faze them as a barrier to connecting as humans. And then I realized the same thing was happening to me, all of a sudden all these boxes were going away. And I was like, Oh, wait, I don't have to call myself an Italian and I don't have to be an American, I don't have to be a woman of this age doing specifically this, because that's what all the women at my age, in my small town where I grew up are doing, I can actually do what feels comfortable and all these people are accepting me and connecting with me, and I'm connecting with them at a level that I had never experienced before.
Alex Cullimore:
I think that's a fantastic example and I really love the idea, and I think that really cuts to the core of it in my head that those divisions that we draw up, the boxes and the titles that we give ourselves, and are given, frankly, by whoever it happens to be around of woman, Italian, French speaker, whatever it happens to come up whatever the box is, there's, I mean, as humans, we're very good at categorizing things, it's one of the things that our brain really excels at, to try and like see patterns very quickly, but it's also damaging when we have it in this kind of context, where we start to see those boxes and assume there is something you have to be or do when you're inside that box or something you have to not do. I mean, it might be something that you want to do that doesn't fit in that box traditionally, or quote on quote, traditionally, whatever somebody's idea of that traditional box is, when you want to do something else, there can be great resistance to that, not only externally, but when you start to internalize that, then you start to feel those divisions in yourself.
Cristina Amigoni:
And it's, it's very dangerous, because then you lose yourself. And you lose your courage and you lose, and so much, and you mentioned this earlier, so much is lost about what you can give, your gifts, your talents, your creativity, your passion, your contribution really to the room, the world and the people around you gets lost because we spend so much energy trying to fit it, we spend so much energy trying to be accepted into this role, mask, armor, box that somebody else created because it was their comfort zone that then we're like "wait, but now I'm not actually in a work situation. For example, I'm not focusing on producing, I'm not focusing on providing value I am focusing on not being excluded".
Alex Cullimore:
And that's an interesting point. Because that's something we carry with us. That's something we always carry along. If we let it be there. We're always trying to be there to fit in. And it's why it's, I think it's so hard to teach this accurately. Because if you think about coming out of high school, getting through maybe college or just going straight to the workforce, whatever you happen to do after that, and you feel like you're now in life, you're trying to figure out who you are, what you want to be, what you are, and we spend so much time defining those often by career first, we'll call people, you know, a lawyer or a developer or whatever, we'll put that box out there first and then if you start to feel one of those identities or move towards one of those identities, then you start to get the pressure to be like, okay, and this is this is true. I can talk about it in the software development world for sure, there's all this pressure that you should be able to do all of these things. There's a bunch of people who studied computer science and so they are very good at certain algorithm challenges that may not come up a whole lot on the job, but they can go on to online forums and tell you "hey, this is this is what it really means to be a developer, you should be able to do this or you should be able to write assembly code, which is basically like writing actual binary, and telling a computer what to do." And that's not true or necessary and it sets up these particular standards, when something like development especially, can be so wide, that there's absolutely no need to feel like anybody is or isn't a developer based on what they do. Because there's no way you can do all the things that development can entail. And to put such a wide box, and then pretend like it's so narrow, creates this impossible standard that is easy to buy into when you're trying to create and define your identity starting out.
Cristina Amigoni:
And it's interesting because it leaks beyond that. Those are great examples of work related boxes, and how they're labels and they are misconceiving, and they cause problems. In the end, well, the beginning, they cause problems throughout. There is no winning, or there is no not problem with that mentality, but it also leaks into social life, and it leaks into personal life. From a work perspective, the whole box and label and who you are is your job was a pretty big barrier for me to understand when I moved to the US and started working in the US, because that was, especially in New York, and probably everywhere else, too, but especially in New York, it was the first question before they even hear your name, they ask you what you do. And based on the answer, then they decide whether they should talk to you or not, and figure out what your name is. I could ever understand that. And why does it matter what I do.
Alex Cullimore:
And that is such a weird way we define ourselves. And then we spend, or at least we have spent and there's more topics online now and I see more articles shared on LinkedIn, where there's people talking about the blur between work and life, which of course, there's a blur, and we are the same person at work as we are at home, we carry the same emotions back and forth. It's just interesting that we start with the professional ones much we define so much based on the profession, at least, especially in this country. I don't know how true it is everywhere else. But that's very true. In all the places I've lived in America.
Cristina Amigoni:
Yeah, I mean, I definitely found a huge difference, a cultural difference with that. Unless we meet people in a professional sense, and their profession matters to the meeting, and the conversation that we're about to have, nobody even asks that question. Because that's not who you are. What I do, especially me, if you look at my resume, it's crazy, you can't define who I am by what I do, because well, what I do changes every time I get bored, which is, I think we talked about in the last podcast, or maybe not, but which is why I do something twice and the third time I'm bored. So when does that transition happen for me?
Alex Cullimore:
That's a great point. So out of a point of context, if the first question in Italy is not what do you do? What tends to be the first question if you're introducing yourself to somebody new what do you talk about?
Cristina Amigoni:
It's a very good question. I think where you're from is the first question. I'm not saying that there isn't a label and there isn't prejudgment and preconceived notions around that, because there are, as soon as you say where you're from, and you say, oh, from Milan. "Oh, well you're from the north, and you're the rich Milanese and you have really bad weather, but really good fashion. So all of that still happens, but it's also a little less boxing because where you're from, it doesn't change, where you live changes. But there's something rooted in where you're from that it's kind of always there in how you grew up. I mean, my mom who's American, you know, when she people say like, oh, you're American, she actually corrects them and says, "No I am a New Yorker " and she's lived in Italy now for almost 50 years, if not actually probably over 50 years. So more more than she has lived ever in New York, but she's still a New Yorker.
Alex Cullimore:
That's really interesting, because New Yorker is globally known. I mean, when I was listening to, again, Brene' Brown's podcast with Alicia Keys, and she was talking about when she and Jay Z were making Empire State of Mind. And they didn't know if this weas going to be super popular, and it ended up, because it was really about New York. I mean, it's Empire State of Mind. It's they mentioned random streets and neighborhoods throughout New York. It's very New York centric, but the feeling of the song and this ownership pride and just feeling of possibility ended up being incredibly universal. And obviously that's a very, very popular song now. And New Yorker is such an interesting label because of that, because that is kind of a globally known label. And it's something that people wear with extreme pride when they can feel like they can call themselves a New Yorker, it's like a label a box that you want to be in, but I can create that same dichotomy of, well, now I'm trying to bend myself to seem like what a New Yorker must seem like.
Cristina Amigoni:
It's interesting. I hadn't thought about it that way, but it's true. And there is definitely still a comfort zone in in figuring that out. I know for myself, and especially like you, because you also lived in New York. I also remember when I found out that you had lived in New York, and actually ended up leaving a few blocks where I used to live, it was almost like, Oh, yeah, I can be friends with this person.
Alex Cullimore:
I was just thinking about that, when you're talking about introducing people in Italy, and you ask where they're from. There's this weird, I had never thought of it this way before, but there's a weird double race going on when you meet somebody because you're trying to engage with somebody new and so you want to be able to find common ground, you want to explore pieces of them, so you ask some questions that may be a little more generic, "what do you do? Where are you from?" If you're on a date, maybe it's "how many siblings do you have" whatever these pieces are, we try and create these frameworks that we can then talk to people on, but we're also internally, because this is how the brain works. We are running with all the mental shortcuts and heuristics that let us make bigger generalizations, based on the information we get back. I may have feelings about like "Oh, you don't have any siblings? Well, only children tend to be like this" or "oh, you have a ton of siblings, that must have been really interesting. Do you feel like you got enough attention?" Or whatever it is, there's there's different boxes that we're both discovering, trying to fit people into, and then trying to learn enough about them, that we then defeat some of those boxes. Does that make sense?
Cristina Amigoni:
Yes, it does. It's true. There are boxes everywhere and while we may, individually on a personal level, continuously smash the box, we are very quick and wanting to put others in the boxes, because then, "of, you lived in New York, great, I know that you get really good food and different languages and different ethnicities, and you're whatever it is that I associate with my experience of living in New York and what it means to me living in New York, and so now I can relate to you on that level.
Alex Cullimore:
Right. And that's a huge one, too. And I
Cristina Amigoni:
That's funny, because it reminds me of the especially was thinking about food, I think that one's super interesting, just marker of personality, and just a fun thing to explore anyway. But I was thinking about all the interesting food of New York. And I also think about that, especially when I talk to people who are from Europe, especially France, and Italy, just, there's such great food that has come out of there. And I feel almost bad doing it. Because it is definitely a box for thro ing people and if I met some ody who was from France, and was like, "Okay, so what's you favorite bourguignon?, tha 's not great, but it's somethi g that I think about because I just love food and I love tal ing about that, it's a great c mmon ground and then after th t, it is incumbent on you to t en try and dive deeper and unde stand that person outside f the box you're already onstructing around them, or by their own words. fact that when I moved from Italy to the US, and it was here in college, and then also think a little bit after college, trying to recall, but the short story of that is I don't drink coffee. I never have I just don't like it. I don't like the taste love the smell. I don't like the taste, tried it doesn't do anything for me, so stop trying. And what Italy is very known for is everybody drinks coffee and it's very known for the good coffee. I also, for a long time, didn't drink wine. And so when I introduced myself and people ask me where you're from, or whatever it is, and I said from Italy and then I would not drink coffee and wine. They were like, wait, but no, but you don't fit the box. I don't get you. How can I relate to you? That's not normal.
Alex Cullimore:
But are you even Italian?
Cristina Amigoni:
Exactly, theyou're not Italian? And I'm like, well, let's go down that path and see where it goes.
Alex Cullimore:
That often tells you a ton about the person you're talking to. When they're like well then are you really Italian? Okay, either you want to just joke about this, or we really aren't going to be able to get along well because you're not gonna be able to see past this first impression that has already been established.
Cristina Amigoni:
And yet, it's so fascinating. If I think back of my time in Switzerland, when you meet all these kids and people who have so many cultures and nationalities and languages within them, they can't fit into any box, because it's so diluted that any box would be way too small. And so nobody puts them in any, most people will then put them in any box, they have their own box, they truly belong to themselves first. And that's when you you realize, wait, that's the secret. The secret is to not worry about the box.
Alex Cullimore:
I think that's what I talked myself into an answering what belonging was to me, how I overcame some of the feeling of being in different groups. That's how it really feels, is realizing that the boxes that have been told to you are ones that you essentially internalize and it's up to you to stop feeling the box.
Cristina Amigoni:
And it's magical. Honestly, when I, I know that at whatever point I stopped feeling the box, that's when I could work in a consulting firm and not be a consultant and still socialize with consultants, which was very close to prohibited.
Alex Cullimore:
Yeah, definitely a weirdly insular circle.
Cristina Amigoni:
Yes, exactly. I was hanging out with consultants, they were my friends, I was working in consulting projects way more than other non-consultants, so and if I look at my career, not just my friendships, but in my career especially, I've gotten so comfortable with being the outsider and not fitting into the box that I look for that, I am way more comfortable in a room with highly tech people and I'm the only non-tech person than if everybody is like me, well, if everybody's like me, and contributes the way I do, then why am I here?
Alex Cullimore:
Yeah. And that can also contribute, I feel like personally, that can also contribute to feelings of competition, you can start to feel like, well, I'm around a bunch of people that are like me, I gotta find a way to either stand out, or I don't want to be washed out in the crowd, or I hope people notice that I still exist beyond the box that I feel like I'm in that these other people are also in around me, there's comfort, and there's that lack of comfort. You can have a lot in common and you can feel like there's some amount of distance or in my case, I definitely feel like I almost want to create that distance, because it feels weird to be in some level of conformity.
Cristina Amigoni:
Yeah, I never thought about it that way. That's an excellent point. And I can definitely relate to that feeling, feeling of non existing of being erased and disappearing. Well, to get into deep vulnerable coaching mode, that is my biggest Gremlin. And it's true. When I think about if I'm in a room of people that have my skills and similar experience, and can do what I do better than me or not are the same, I really feel like I I disappear.
Alex Cullimore:
Yeah. And just to clarify, do you want to explain a little bit about Gremlins? I love that analogy.
Cristina Amigoni:
Oh, yes. So Gremlins are basically the little voice that we have in our head that are trying to protect us from harm and danger. The Gremlin keeps reminding us that we're not good enough, not intelligent enough, not tall enough, not outspoken enough, not different enough, not the same enough. It's kind of that devil that takes little pieces of our self esteem and our self confidence and tries to shut us down so that we can play safe, and we can not risk and just stay in our little Gremlin cave with wine and couch, and nice music playing in the background and "don't go out in the world because the world is gonna exclude you and not like what you see, and you know, whatever it is that happens on in the world."
Alex Cullimore:
You automatically start just by protecting yourself, by almost ignoring everything, stepping away from everything and total immersion. Yes, I like that idea. Because in my head, and I imagine given how social humans are, this is a pretty common one, but I think belonging is a huge Gremlin for me. I have both Gremlins of you really got to fit in and be part of this, and I want to be with the in crowd. And then the second, it feels like there's too much in crowd. Like I said before, I got to start standing out here, this feels like a total wash, what am I doing here, there's got to be something different. Either of those Gremlins will come out, which is a fun little dichotomy to live in.
Cristina Amigoni:
It definitely resonates. At the end, the danger of the Gremlin is that it operates at a very low level of survival of fight or flight. And so when the Gremlin takes over, from a coaching perspective, it's when we either close ourselves in our cave and sit there, shut the world out, lose all confidence in ourselves and can't really move or do much, we don't have any initiatives creativity, we just we're just in darkness, or we're in the fight mode, which is "I need to fight my way through being accepted into this". And as much as that sometimes helps to get things done, iin the long term, it's very dangerous, there's no establishing relationships, there's no coming to real good solutions when you're constantly having to fight.
Alex Cullimore:
Yeah, and you're going to just exhaust yourself and you're not going to spend a lot of time figuring out who you are outside of the boxes that you're drawing or your Gremlins are drawing. You're not going to start to erase those lines for yourself, because you're so busy defending yourself to either get into a box, or to say that you are in a box already. And there's something there, because it's something we learned so early on, as you said earlier, babies automatically know they obviously have to have people to survive. They're born essentially entirely helpless, there's nothing they can really do can't even open their eyes or hold up their own head, they are absolutely dependent on their parents on whatever body of people is raising them. That's something that we have to be I think cognizant of when we're raising and talking to kids is being aware of the times where they feel that pressure of belonging, and we it's been kind of explored in peer pressure in high school and lots of movies about middle school, maybe. But that's something that really carries with us before and after those times. And we may be most susceptible to trying to find our identity in some of those years, andfinding the most struggle there, but if we could teach kids early enough to start to see what are boxes and when to define that box or not. And to be, more essentially, mindfully aware of when you're creating that for yourself, you have a better chance of staying ahead of it for a little longer, and maybe enjoying a little bit more of that freedom that you were talking about, where you start to feel the lack of lines, and you feel like I have belonging because I have belonging in myself,
Cristina Amigoni:
As you were talking about that I keep thinking about is how that translates, as we get older, if you have kids that are starting to feel they can't ask for help, because they're supposed to do it alone. So they go from the transition from "I'm totally helpless. I can't survive here without you to "oh, now I'm supposed to do this by myself, and nobody's here to help." That's so seen in the workplace. If you think about these imaginary rules that sometimes are imposed, where you can ask the same question three times, what about the fourth time, you have to know by yourself, figure it out? Right? Is that written somewhere? I have to get this one concept, right with one, two or three communications. And if I don't get it, that's it. The bell goes off? What happens If I ask it a fourth time?
Alex Cullimore:
Well, the weird thing is, schools almost encouraged that kind of separation and change too, because there's almost a reward for being the kid that got it first. You're the kid that can get that quickly. You we start to rank them, we literally have school ranks, this kid got an A, this kid got more of an A, this is less of an A and we start to put judgments onto the achievement and the ladder that we put in front of them. And then we start to put them in a box that distinctly has different statuses. And that can be especially damaging, which is such a weird way. When you think of school as a place where all these kids are together to come learn something and become more fully fledged humans. We're really breeding a lot of competition in the way we put that out there. And in the way in things like tests, it comes back to what you're saying about not asking for help. I don't care. I've said this three times, you should know this by now. And that may or may not be true for any given person.
Cristina Amigoni:
And we've seen the damage, we experienced the damage, but we definitely see it everywhere that resilience equals not asking for help. To me resilience has nothing to do with not asking for help. Resilience is getting up every time you're knocked down. Resilience is asking for help, so you don't stay down. it's trying again and knowing that "well, it didn't work this time, maybe I can do it in a different way. Maybe if I ask for help, maybe if I involve somebody else will have a different idea." That's resilience. Resilience is not you've asked three times, if you can't figure out on your own, then you're out. Out of what? The problem is that we actually get out of what actually happens, which is why the exclusion is so deeply traumatizing. It's because we do exclude people. There is this tendency to exclude people for not having some knowledge they were supposed to have through osmosis at some point, or for not getting it the first once or twice or three times. And then you're abandoning people. If we go back to "Hey, we're humans and humans alone can't survive" it we go down the same spiral of like, now you've taken away like you're you're seriously like cut off somebody's legs and then you're expecting them to win a marathon.
Alex Cullimore:
And trauma is exactly the right term for that both in the losing your legs metaphor and and you said the word traumatic exclusion is traumatic. We log that as a traumatic experience because it is so tied to it. Survival in the core of our brain is so tied to safety, that it is incredibly traumatizing to start to feel that lack of belonging, which is why in so many work cultures, you can see separation starts the second you start to exclude people and you might for a little while create a click, and that click will hold on to each other. And even though they're making everyone else feel excluded, they feel included. And that click might exist for some time. But the second you start to allow for clicks to take on a shape of their own and have some form of hierarchy of being in the in crowd versus an out crowd, you can start to really corrupt the culture all around, even within the group, there's going to be people who don't feel like they fit that mold, it's going to start to fracture, you see it happen in all kinds of even religions, over time, we'll start to fracture on different lines, any group that starts to grow large enough, there's going to start to be sub sets, sub fractures, sub pieces that will not really fit in with the hole, at which point you risk really corrupting the entire culture. And in a workplace, you can see that happen within different departments within groups of people. We've been at companies where there's a crew that does happy hour, there's a crew that doesn't do happier as a crew that is all about in person office hours versus a crew that wants to do remote stuff. And if there's some understanding that that doesn't take away from the person that can be okay, but the second it starts to be a competition, you really put up those barriers, and you risk the entire culture.
Cristina Amigoni:
I mean, as you talk about that, it's it's it's painful. Besides being an outsider in it, I guess, Mid Atlantic, whatever that is.
Alex Cullimore:
I think that should be our new podcast.
Cristina Amigoni:
Exactly. I'm an empath, who is raised, like, I feel other people's pain. And so it's not an exaggeration, I actually feel other people's pain in my body at the thought of pain and this sight of pain, I pick it up. And it's incredible, because, one of the most painful experiences I have, besides being excluded myself and being siloed, and put it on island, is the thought of somebody else feeling that because I know how painful it is on me. And so when in past jobs I've had people who have come to me and have actually told me, "I've never felt so isolated in this company ever before", it just broke my heart. If it weren't a professional call, I would crawl in a ball and start crying from that pain.
Alex Cullimore:
I remember feeling exactly that way, I generally feel it most strongly. Anytime I sense that there might be shame. I feel that reaction where I can't tell somebody something because it might cause any amount of shame. And it really you feel it as if you're feeling it yourself. And that's probably I haven't done the research on this. But I really wouldn't be surprised if that is something that triggers some of our mirror neurons, the ones that fire to feel out what somebody else is feeling based by essentially imitating it, you have the exact same reaction? Physically, you have that same feeling?
Cristina Amigoni:
I would say yes, at least for me, I definitely have that. And so I guess that the solution is knowing what matters to me. One of the advantages of feeling that pain and understanding it and seeing it come up over and over and over it that it brought me to realize that if I look at my values, and I hold on to those, because they're mine, it's how I can belong to myself, and how I choose who to interact with, which jobs to take, what cultures to be around, and what communities to create, what friends to make. Any time I look
back to my values, which are:
inclusion, in the top of the list, because I know the pain of exclusion, connecting, deep connections with people is another one, honesty, transparency and trust. Because without any of those, then you're back into this "I don't know what this is and how can I belong in a place where I don't feel that there's truth and I can't trust people?"
Alex Cullimore:
Absolutely. And I think that those are great values for creating belonging, I think that's something people should absolutely focus on. Anytime there's a need to create and enhance any amount of belonging. But I think even beyond that, the idea of matching values is a huge component for belonging, whatever those values are, if those happen to be honesty and openness that will immediately plug into belonging. But sharing any kind of value is a great foundation. I feel like in my life and from what I've seen, that's a wonderful foundation for individual feelings of belonging, in work in life in communities.
Cristina Amigoni:
If I think back at an interview with a very successful business man who's very young and he has started lots of extremely successful ventures. One of the things that he said as his advice to others was when you decide to hire people, or to work with them, or to form a team, or to partner with them from a business perspective, then the only thing that matters is whether you have shared values. Because if you have shared values, that it doesn't really matter what it is that you end up doing, the outcome and what we produce is pretty irrelevant, because it's going to have to change in time anyway, as the world changes and the needs changes in the market change, but values is the one thing that's going to get you going during the tough times, and during the good times. And that's not something you can actually change.
Alex Cullimore:
That's an absolutely fantastic way of putting it, I love that, that makes total sense. Because you don't have control over anything else. And it's so off the mark, when we put people into the boxes of what they do, we hire people based on a skill set, or we look at people based on what they're doing right now. Or we give them a project. And this is their set of tasks for that project that has nothing to do with anybody might be able to do any of those tasks. But you can actually connect and drive the overall mission. When you have value alignment. That's when you connect to the deeper and the bigger picture, that's when you have the everybody will chip in. Because it's no longer about treating people like XYZ resume lines. It's about treating everybody as a team as a group. And that's where I think the idea of mission statements sometimes gets washed out a little bit. And people don't always feel like they can connect to mission statements. But I think that's more of a fault of the mission statement itself. And the idea of a mission statement, because if you can get as Simon Sinek says "The Just Cause", that's the idea. If you have a Just Cause, that's something everybody can line up behind. And it has nothing to do with skill set. It has everything to do with belonging to a cause, with feeling like this is important enough that I want to work towards this cause.
Cristina Amigoni:
And it's when you have that basic human understanding of what's behind the mask, what's behind the hat, what's behind the box, it what's the core of it all, that's where I see values really come in, because if they don't change that they're just there. But once you understand those, and you know that there's alignment in those in their lives, and you can see it, disagreement is totally fine. It's just disagreement. It doesn't become a reason for a huge break. Sometimes it ends up being that way. But it's literally just that because fundamentally you can prefer pizza with cheese. And I can prefer pizza without cheese, which is a very simple disagreement. Well, depending on which cheese we're talking about catastrophic disagreement. But if I go back to " oh wait, I am friends with Alex, because he believes in inclusion, because he lives that every day in what he does, because he's always honest and transparent. And I never really feel like he's telling me maybe 20% or 50% of the story. So sure, we can disagree on cheese on pizza.
Alex Cullimore:
There is some core alignment and that's when it starts to feel like the core versus the details, like details of the cheese are far less important when you can align yourselves at the core. It applies very easily in personal relationships. And I think of this nowadays, I can't get my mind off of the political landscape. And that's definitely a place where if you can find some values, there can be the common ground, that doesn't have to be the shouting match. That tends to be most discourse nowadays, at least online, of course. But this also plays into workplace when you bring your values out, there's so much to be gained there. I remember you and I were on a project that was going far south, very far south in the last two weeks, and you have been working on something else and you came in and you're surveying what was going on. And you found the core issue here, and you used all of your values to get us out of that. You were just honest, transparent, you went to the client and you talked about what was going to be needed to do to make this successful. And even though it was a huge push for three weeks, you took somebody that was basically about to turn over and leave the entire project on the table, and change the entire relationship just by bringing your values to it and finding that that was a shared value across the table, because they appreciated enough that you were straightforward with them that this was going to be something that was worth them defending, and you defending for them.
Cristina Amigoni:
I remember that project, it's actually one of my fondest memories for some odd reason of that life. But I think it was because, besides the 20 hour- days, 10 days straight, first of all, I'm not alone, because you stepped up and a couple of other colleagues stepped up, the client stepped up. So I might have been there working at 2am. But I knew I wasn't alone, everybody else was to. But also because it was really " let's set aside everything else. Let's set aside the noise and focus on "we trust each other as humans, because there is honesty and transparency and deep connection. So we'll get through this. That's it."
Alex Cullimore:
And you didn't go in there to go blame everybody and make sure that everybody knew whose fault it was and what boxes essentially to avoid in the future you went in there with "here's a problem. We're the team that's supposed to fix this, let's come together as a team. And it was that trust that allowed that to work and allow that to happen."
Cristina Amigoni:
Lots of belonging needs, for sure. There's lots of beautiful things that happen with belonging and lots of pain that happens when belonging is missing.
Alex Cullimore:
And as with so many of these things, it's something that you can learn, you can get better with both internally and externally. And it's something that even though as we've said we're not going to get perfectly, we probably accidentally create exclusions here and there in life, it's not something you have to just let go, you can apologize, you can reach out you can recreate that belonging, you can make sure there is that safety. And that's something that's always nice to remember is that it's not about getting these things perfectly, it's about being aware of them so that you can try your best to not step over the line. But when you inevitably do because we're all human and will inevitably do that. It's not the end of the road, it's easier to not end that road when you really know what's going on underneath.
Cristina Amigoni:
Beautifully said I actually recently experienced, one of those situations where the train left the station before I even realized there was a train or a station or train tracks. And all of a sudden the outcome of that a good friend coming back and say "hey you guys just made this decision without me and why did you exclude me?" And I realized I forgot one of my values. Oh, that does happen. And so I reached out and with no No excuses. I'm not gonna sit here and tell you what might or might not happen. I am sorry. I am deeply sorry that I made you feel like you were excluded from this. That's it.
Alex Cullimore:
Absolutely. And that is like a masterclass in the again, I'm going to bring up Brene' Brown, the podcast with Harriet Lerner on apologizing you, you did exactly the gold standard of apologizing, which is here's my part in this, I am sorry for that. And there's there's no ifs, ands or buts. There's no explanations. There's just I'm sorry, that happened. I totally understand that. That sucks. And I'm sorry.
Cristina Amigoni:
So on that note, Alex, how does belonging tie to authenticity in your life? In your opinion?
Alex Cullimore:
I'm actually really glad we had this conversation because the answer is very apparent. It's what I should have gotten to when I spent five minutes rambling on this earlier. It's that you don't feel the internal boxes, the authentic moment you have is you showing up without feeling like you have this predefined thing that you are trying to fit into the world or be so that you fit in. It is authentic, in that it is whatever shape of peg that you are, you just belong. And that belonging that's where the difference between belonging and fitting in is so important too, because belonging has to rely on authenticity, it has to be a deep sense of belonging for that to really come across. I think that's where authenticity ties over to belonging for me. And for you, how does belonging really tie in and really measure up to authenticity?
Cristina Amigoni:
That's a good answer. I don't know that I can beat that.
Alex Cullimore:
Well, it is a competition. So
Cristina Amigoni:
Always just make it a PowerPoint competition, then will know who wins.
Alex Cullimore:
I will lose that misery. If you put some PowerPoints up the podcast notes just to show the difference.
Cristina Amigoni:
You can fight back with some code of some language that I don't understand. I think it's everything you said, I mean, the, I think they're completely interdependent, belonging and authenticity, I think that true belonging cannot actually happen without finding our own authenticity and accepting the authenticity of everybody else around us. I think that when that's missing, when we're more concerned about the mask, the box, the armor, the what to say, what not to say what language, whatever, whatever it is, then we don't belong. And we're not authentic, so that there's really it can be one without the other.
Alex Cullimore:
I like that answer. And it really ties back to what you said when you defined authenticity on an earlier podcast. And there's something I really loved in what you said in that definition. And you said that authenticity is a social contract, because there's both sides of it, there's you feeling authentic, and there's making space for others feel authentic. And I think that's absolutely true, and possibly more so, when it comes to belonging, we have it incumbent on ourselves to belong to ourselves first, and to create that belonging in the situations we find ourselves in.
Cristina Amigoni:
Very much so. So on that note, well, thank you for joining us.
Alex Cullimore:
Thank you so much for joining us. It was a great conversation. It's a great topic, I think belongings fascinating.
Cristina Amigoni:
Yeah, I think we could have a whole season just on belonging, which we may end up coming back to it. Because all I could think about was movies and TV shows and superheroes references. So that's gonna have to be a podcast for sure.
Alex Cullimore:
I usually make a second podcast that just has movies as they tie into our various discussions and let's Brene' Brown on one of these.
Cristina Amigoni:
Yes Brene', please listen to this and join us.
Alex Cullimore:
Thank you guys so much for listening. This has been a blast to do. I hope you got something out of it as well. Join us in the coming weeks. We have a lot of really fun topics coming up. Thank you so much for listening. Feel free to review and subscribe anywhere you listen to podcasts, we are Uncover the human. And also we have an email list now. Do you want to talk about that Cristina
Cristina Amigoni:
Yes, so we do welcome questions, topics, feedback, anything you want to share with us. You can reach us at podcast@wearesiamo.com , which is SIAMO. And we'll put that in the podcast notes so that you can quickly get there. And please You know, as Alex said, subscribe, review, share with anybody that you think may enjoy this and talk to you soon.
Alex Cullimore:
Thank you guys so much.
Cristina Amigoni:
Thank you for listening to Uncover the Human a Siamo podcast.
Alex Cullimore:
Special thanks to our podcast operations wizard Jake Lara and our score creator Rachel Sherwood.
Cristina Amigoni:
If you have enjoyed this episode, please share, review and subscribe. You can find our episodes wherever you listen to podcasts.
Alex Cullimore:
We would love to hear from you with feedback, topic ideas or questions. You can reach us at podcast@wearersiamo.com or on our website. WEARESIAMO on LinkedIn, Instagram or Facebook.
Cristina Amigoni:
Until next time, listen to yourself. Listen to others and always Uncover The Human.
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