Hunting Discomfort: Embracing Challenges for Authentic Growth with Sterling Hawkins

Alex Cullimore: Hello, Cristina.

Cristina Amigoni: Hi. How are you?

Alex Cullimore: Doing well. We just had a great conversation with somebody we've been trying to get on the pod for a couple of months now, but I'm really glad this worked out and at the time that it worked out. We got to talk to Sterling Hawkins, the author of Hunting Discomfort and the founder of the NoMatterWhat Movement. He's just, I don't know, that's full of gems, really fun to talk to. Just great time.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes wonderful time. We met Sterling six months ago. That has been literally six months in the making, because as soon as we met him, we said, “You got to come on the podcast.” Then between cancellations and travels and more cancellations and more travel, it's June, and we actually all showed up and couldn't believe that we all showed up. Wait, this is actually happening? Hold on. Maybe one of us needs to cancel last minute. Let's rethink the strategy.

Yeah, it was a wonderful conversation. It did give me the chance to actually go through his book. I'm almost done. I think I have 20 minutes left on the audio book, so I'm almost there. It wasn't because of the podcast recording. I actually have been wanting to go through his book. Audio is my preference and it is highly, highly recommended. It is by far on the top of the list of books I recommend. Lots of insights. It's all about hunting discomfort and how we – we can live in discomfort all around us, but we don't really hunt the areas that we need to. We still prefer to avoid those. You’ll see in the recording of the podcast that I actually am challenging myself to figure out what I'm avoiding, because I'm not quite sure what they are. They're there. I don't know where they are.

Alex Cullimore: I'm looking forward to this. I'm going to have to burn through this book over the weekend, so we can talk about this, because we're traveling out of town next week.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. Yeah.

Alex Cullimore: Burn through this over this weekend.

Cristina Amigoni: There's so much to talk about. Highly, highly recommend listening. I really like listening to books. Listening is my preference. This book, Sterling does a great job at narrating the book.

Alex Cullimore: Awesome. Highly recommended. I hope you guys enjoy this conversation as much as we did. This is Sterling Hawkins. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. Enjoy.

[INTRODUCTION]

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: And this is Alex Cullimore.

HOSTS: Let's dive in.

Authenticity means freedom.

Authenticity means going with your gut.

Authenticity is bringing a 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.

[EPISODE]

 Alex Cullimore: Welcome back to this episode of Uncover the Human. We are joined today with our guest, Sterling Hawkins. Welcome to the podcast, Sterling.

 Sterling Hawkins: Thank you. Great to be here with you. I've been looking forward to this conversation for a long time.

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah, it’s exciting. Six months in the making.

Sterling Hawkins: Six months in the making. It better be good now, right? No pressure.

Alex Cullimore: Let's fill people in on who you are and what you do. What's your story, Sterling? What got you here?

Sterling Hawkins: It's been a journey. It's one of those stories that’s a roller coaster of a career, not to mention, life. Where I sit here today having this conversation is nowhere where I thought I was going to be. At least, when I graduated college and started a tech company with my dad and sold it to this group in Silicon Valley, where it became part of this Apple Pay before Apple Pay. This is early 2000s. The technology is relatively new. Apple hasn't even released a phone yet, not to mention Apple Pay. People look at what we had put together, became part of this conglomerate, where we raised hundreds of millions of dollars, multi-billion-dollar valuation. I was living a scene out of – you know that movie, Wolf of Wall Street?

It felt like I was living a scene out of that movie. Models in the office, parties at the four seasons. It's not just in the movies. That stuff actually happens, at least to some degree. I'm sure, it's just a matter of time until we're going to take this thing public. We're all going to cash in. I'm going to crown myself the next Steve Jobs. Now, that would have made for a fantastic podcast, but it didn't end up that way.

Around when the housing market collapsed, our investment dried up and we didn't have enough organic growth to support the 700 people and offices all over the world that we had grown into. Long, painful story short, the company ends up going bankrupt. Thus, begins some of the hardest years of my entire life, because it wasn't just like, I no longer have a job, but eventually, I ran out of cash. I go from this big, beautiful penthouse in downtown San Francisco looking out over the Bay Bridge. I'll never forget it. To my parents' house.

Just to make sure I was firmly grounded in rock bottom, even my girlfriend broke up with me. It's like a depressing country song. I hit every single beat of that thing. It was in that dark time at my parents' house that I had a change in heart, a change in mindset. I had realized that both in the organization, in our culture and also inside of myself, we had been avoiding, denying and just surviving things that at least part of us knew we had to deal with, it was just easier not to. Making that switch, would I now call hunting discomfort going after those things that have been a little bit intimidating, scary, fearful, has been entirely the pathway of building myself back, at least to some degree.

Cristina Amigoni: That's incredible. I did have a little bit of anxiety, not when you mentioned the bankruptcy. I mean, I already knew the story. It's the empathy and the compassion on that, I had already processed. When you mentioned the 700 employees, that's when I was like, “Oh, God.”

Sterling Hawkins: It was awful. I mean, I remember specifically – there were a lot of tough moments, but one moment specifically is we had an all hands meeting in this big conference room in our office. There was the promise of new funding. Getting everybody like, “Hey, we're not going to make payroll this week, but we've got this new funding on the table. We're going to make it next.” Getting people pumped up for it. Deep inside of myself, and I knew there were other executives there that felt the same. It was like, “This isn't going to happen.” It was really trying to support a lot of those people when they no longer had jobs and making sure that, “Hey, I'm going to do everything I can to make sure they've got a next step in their careers and in their lives that occupied a good chunk of my time in the beginning.” In the end, I realized, I too actually needed help. I just didn't want to admit it early on.

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. It's the piece that I've been listening. I told you earlier, I've been listening to your book very fast, like a couple of hours a day, almost in the last few days. I recognize your voice now. It talks in my sleep. It's amazing how going through it, I feel like I'm a person, or at least before the book, I thought I was a person that hunts discomfort fairly often. As I was been going through the book, I've been realizing like, “Yeah, no. I definitely avoid it.”

Sterling Hawkins: Yeah. Well, there's these discomfort defaults is how I refer to them. Like, ineffective ways of being and acting around discomfort that are just automatic. We're on autopilot with them, and we don't even realize where we're avoiding, denying, and surviving. Those are the discomfort defaults. It starts for many of us from a very young age, maybe in teenage years, or college, or early in our career. It happens very naturally, because, well, uncomfortable things don't feel very good. Especially as a younger person, why would you want to feel that?

I think we don't realize when we make some of those decisions, consciously or unconsciously, that we're actually shutting off part of ourselves. We're shutting off some potential that lives inside of us, that we only have access to by going after that discomfort. I think an important distinction, Cristina, is I'm not advocating anybody live an uncomfortable life. Sometimes people hear the title of my book and they're like, “Sterling, look at my career, my bank account, my relationships, my team. I don't need to hunt discomfort. I'm surrounded by it.” I get that, especially in the world today. We've got inflation, looming depression, we've got global instability, we've got really a universal instability with more technology and tools and uncertainties than ever before. To some degree, discomfort is just thrust upon all of us.

When we stop just surviving that discomfort, living with the discomfort, placating the discomfort that's in our lives, we can start to get to the root of it and free ourselves at the source. Really, what hunting discomfort is about is living a life that's truly free. Not circumstantially free, but actually free.

Alex Cullimore: I like that. The title really lends itself to that, too, the idea of hunting discomfort is not just finding it and uncovering it. It's tracking it down, making sure you can really get rooted out, rather than just going to acknowledge that in fact, I do have mounds of discomfort everywhere I like.

Sterling Hawkins: Yeah. I think that's normal. Discomfort is something that evolved evolutionarily to tell us something, right? If you think back to the caveman days, what caveman, cavewoman, cave person, all the cave people days, discomfort drove their behavior out of survival, right? If I've got the discomfort of being hungry, well, I'd better go out and hunt, or forage, or I'm not going to live very long. Or if I've got the discomfort of being scared, well, I need to find a cave, or find something to dwell in that has some level of protection. The discomfort is driving our behavior.

Now, today, fortunately and unfortunately, we don't live in a world like that. Fortunately, many of us don't have to deal with life threatening situations on a regular basis. But we can live in a very comfortable environment, where I can maybe work on Zoom and I'm going to be entertained on Netflix and I'm going to order Uber Eats and I don't have to get off the couch the entire day. That discomfort that I might feel in a particular relationship, or particular conversation, or in any aspect of life, it's not life and death if I choose not to go after that.

Oftentimes, people continually start negotiating with themselves, which is a slippery slope of, “Oh, well. I'm just going to avoid that conversation here. I'm not going to ask for money there. I'm going to compromise my self-worth in this other place.” We start living with mounds and mounds of discomfort everywhere. It's just natural, myself included and I wrote the book. I think when we start to realize, here's some of the places that I've been trying to skip out on discomfort, it reorients us to those places where the greatest opportunities actually lie. It does take first, a commitment to do it and then let's call it the courage to go through and get to the source of it.

Alex Cullimore: When you think about your story and you're talking about, hey, the company goes down, you're living through parents, you have this mindset shift. What do you think, if you can pinpoint some things, what do you think helped drive that awareness and bring you to the idea that, “Hey, this is where I really need to focus”?

Sterling Hawkins: Funny enough, is something that my mom said. I don't know how all of your parents are, but my mom says some crazy things. She said things like, it's cheaper to milk a cow than buy one. Don't take any wooden nickels. These crazy sayings that apparently meant something at some point, but I still have no idea of that. The one that came back to me in that rough time when I'm living in her house was the way out is through. The way out is through. This came to me at the rock bottom of rock bottoms. I thought, you know what? To me, that means you've got to go through the fear, pain, grief, discomfort of any sort. What I'm looking for is on the other side of that. Literally, having nothing to lose. Six figures in debt, and I told you, my girlfriend broke up with me. I literally have nothing. I'm like, “Okay, mom. Let's put this thing to the test. If the way out is through, let's see.”

Somewhat, ironically, looking back on it today, the thing that scared me most, public speaking. Something that I do countless times every single year. It's a big part of my career. I decide that I'm going to apply to speak to this conference in Singapore. Because if I'm going to go through this discomfort of public speaking, I'm going to do it in a big way. I'm going to jump into the deep end of discomfort. Somehow, I end up getting on the phone with the conference director, talk him into being the keynote speaker of his event, which I don't know. Maybe it was, I didn't have anything to lose and a lot to gain. Because I didn't have a website. I wasn't speaking. I really didn't have any assets, or materials to share with him that gave him any confidence of my speaking chops.

But I must have shared a compelling enough story of what I wanted to share on that stage that he said yes. It didn't really land with me, Alex, until he sent me the legal agreement. I'm thinking, “This is insane.” Not only do I feel like a huge failure, because I've got this failure on my track record. I don't know what I'm going to say really, and I'm terrified to do it. I did what I think all of us should do when confronted with discomfort like that is I signed it as fast as I possibly could and I sent it back to him. I committed in a way where there was no going back, something that was going to force me through that discomfort .

I had a whole lot of help, notably from my sister and other people in preparing for that conference. I'll never forget the weeks and days leading up to it, because I'm like, I’m not sleeping. I'm having panic attacks. I'm not really eating that much. I cannot believe that I'm actually getting on a plane to go to Singapore.

When I get there, it's a good thing I practiced, because I think I blacked out. I don't really remember giving that talk at all. I was so terrified. I get off the stage, I think I bombed. I'm covering my eyes. Just want to get out of there as fast as I can. The conference director, of course, is making a beeline for me and he catches up with me and he's like, “Sterling, that's the best talk I've seen in my 17 years, or something, of doing this job.”

Now, to be clear, I'm a 100% sure he wasn't in the same talk that I gave. There's no way. I think he just wanted to say something nice to me. He's like, “Here's this poor American that's flown all the way to Singapore. I should say something nice to him.” He did go on to put me in touch with all of his conference director friends and all of a sudden, it was the beginnings of the career that I have today. I was like, “My mom was right.” The way out is through for all of us. We just have to go through no matter what.

Cristina Amigoni: That's a great story. Since then, every day, every week you do a lot of conference speaking and speaking events. How has that changed your way? Which way through do you need to go through now? Has that become more comfortable to the point that like, “Oh, now discomfort is somewhere else”?

Sterling Hawkins: It certainly has. I think, somewhat cliche is that our comfort zone grows, right? We get more comfortable with the things that were formerly uncomfortable, if we are committed to not only doing them, but doing some of the deeper, maybe soul-searching work of why those things were uncomfortable to begin with. It starts to expand where we're comfortable, what we can do. For me, that's certainly been in the world of public speaking, keynote speaking.

As human beings, there's always that next level we can go. Cristina, I feel like, sometimes I always just want to arrive somewhere. You know that feeling? I just want to be done. Like, “Oh, I've hunted all the discomfort. I've completed it. I'm now a transcendent human being.”

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. How bored are you going to be five minutes into that?

Sterling Hawkins: Quite possibly. Aside from maybe a couple people throughout history and maybe a few monks in the modern day, there's always more to hunt. That's what's really inspired a lot of some of the adventure, things that I'm doing. Sky diving, shark diving, trekking the Sahara, right? I'm looking for ways to push the edge of my comfort zone for a very specific reason.

I found this research out of University of Michigan, and they were looking at discomfort. We've all felt physical discomfort before, right? You stub your toe. Or emotional discomfort. Maybe you're having a difficult conversation with somebody. It turns out, physical, mental, emotional, the brain and body process discomfort almost identically. So much so, you can take acetaminophen, a Tylenol, and it will help you with emotional pain.

Now, all the disclaimers for your listeners and you about that, right? I'm not a doctor. It's not a biohack. I don't suggest you do that. What I do suggest is we can take that next step, which is if where you meet discomfort anywhere is the same. We can grow our capacity to deal with it everywhere. It's a muscle you can build. That make sense?

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. Yeah. I agree. We talk about hard conversations all the time, as in hunting them, not avoiding them, and going through them. They don't get easier. It's still a hard conversation, that still, the emotion, the trepidation, the wanting, the temptation to avoid it is still there. The wishing that it'll just go away by itself, it's still there. You just realize, like you said earlier, it's not the end of the world. You have the conversation and you're like, “Oh, wait. I survived that. The tiger didn't actually kill me. I can do it again.”

Sterling Hawkins: Yeah. Yeah. You build that, well, I call it the discomfort muscle, or you might call it confidence. You grow a known capacity to handle those things. If anything, I feel like, some of those tough conversations, the longer you delay them, the harder they get.

Cristina Amigoni: Oh, God. Yes 100% 

Sterling Hawkins: Right? They become bigger and bigger and bigger, and then you’re like, “Well, I'm going to put it off until tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow.” Then you're writing a page out of Shakespeare, right? You never really have that conversation, at least as powerfully as you want. When you notice that discomfort, which can be disguised sometimes. It might look like, probably the most often thing I hear is, “I'm really busy. I'm too busy to have that conversation,” right? It's a catch all excuse of how to put off the things you know you need to deal with. When you start catching, when you're doing that early and earlier, those conversations get easier and easier and you get better at them. It's a no-lose proposition, at least how I think about it.

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. We always talk about how anytime anybody says that, “I don't have time for that,” that's the biggest signal. Like, yeah, okay, that's where you need to lean in.

Cristina Amigoni: Yup. There is the clock.

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. Not as somebody who's not doing that. I have five things on my list right now that I'm too busy to do that I need to get to.

Sterling Hawkins: Yeah. Funny enough, I did that with the book. I've been speaking for years and people are like, “Oh, Sterling, it’s fantastic. You got to write a book.” Yeah, yeah. I'm too busy now. I'm doing this consulting and this coaching and this speaking and I'm doing all these things. I'm too busy for it. Then the pandemic happens. My entire calendar is cleared and I realized, “Oh, I've been avoiding that.” I've been scared to do it. As soon as I caught myself, that's when I started talking to publishers and started making commitments to do it. Even when we are conscious of these things, we can still behave in ways where our unconscious is very tricky sometimes. I'm victim of it myself, more often than not.

Cristina Amigoni: Now, that autopilot definitely kicks in on the, “I don't have time. I'm too busy.” Whatever the excuses. It's funny, because my husband, who you know, Jeff, he uses the time thing a lot. I'm like, I’m the wrong audience for your time excuses. You know how this is going to go. We're going to sit down and I'm going to ask you exactly how long it takes to do all these things that are preventing you from doing where you're trying to avoid. Then I'm going to ask you what you're going to do with the other 10 hours of the day that you have unclaimed.

Sterling Hawkins: There you go. How does that land with him, by the way? Is he like, “Oh, here we go again”!

Cristina Amigoni: I think so. I think he's getting better. I've also learned to be patient, and the fact that he has to process it. Just because I know it's an excuse. He still has to process it. Like you just said, he has to go through it. He has to go through the, “I don't have time. I'm panicking about time, or whatever the excuse is.” Then I have to feel that to then understand that it's not about the time.

Sterling Hawkins: Totally. I noticed myself doing it in some of the smallest places. I don't know how it is for you, but I can catch myself avoiding discomfort from the moment I get up in the morning. Boom, I hit the snooze button and I don't get up, right? I avoid it all together. Then I get up and I'm a little bit tired maybe. I don't want to feel that discomfort. Boom, I can grab a coffee, or a Red Bull, or something. Then I look at the building, I'm headed into for a meeting and I glance at the stairs and then I take the elevator, or the escalator. The day is just a series of choices, little choices oftentimes, where we either lean back into the comfort and certainty of taking the easy way out, or leaning into the thing that might be a little bit harder.

What they found in a study in Yale is that when you're uncomfortable in big ways and small ways, you're primed to learn up to four times faster. That discomfort is not something to avoid. When your heart is racing and your blood pumping and the adrenaline is coursing through your veins. Whatever that discomfort feels like for you is quite literally a biohack to being better, faster and smarter. You've just got to embrace it, instead of running from it. 

Cristina Amigoni: God, we got to use that. We have a leadership development training that we deliver. We started actually with mapping every participant on the comfort to growth zone chart.

Sterling Hawkins: Oh, cool.

Cristina Amigoni: And getting people to at least have some awareness, or at least go through the exercise of having to have the awareness. Maybe they don't have it fully yet, but they're going to have to put their name. It's a big poster. Write your name on a sticker. Put your sticker out there for everybody to see. But it's amazing how, you can see the awareness is definitely the first step. You're constantly seeing the mapping of yourself. I'm like, “Oh, I'm in comfort. Oh, no. I'm in fear. Oh, no. I'm in growth.”

One of our challenges as facilitators is as soon as we get somebody who says, “I'm in comfort zone,” I'm like, okay, my mission for the next three days is to kick you out of that comfort zone. Got it. Thank you for that.

Sterling Hawkins: Yeah. Yeah, totally. I mean, that's where growth is. It is worth noting, like you can go too far. There's a sweet spot of discomfort. If you pass it, where you get into a state of almost disability. You maybe can't talk, or your nervous system is just on fire, like you can't move, that tends not to be productive. Especially if you're not surrounded by people that can really support you going through those things.

The trick is finding enough discomfort, but not too much. Now, the good news is that almost nobody finds too much discomfort. It's very, very rare, especially in the workplace. Yeah, I thought I just offer that as a balancing idea.

Cristina Amigoni: Oh, yeah. That's a great point. That's the balance. The internal dialogue for us is like, okay, our mission is to get you out. You're going to have to convince you to come out of it. I did say kick you out, but we don't actually kick them out of their comfort zone. We just create the space to see, to entice the movement. Hopefully, we get there. Sometimes we don't.

Sterling Hawkins: Yeah. I think sometimes what helps and you probably do something along these lines as well, is to find a connection to what's ultimately important to people. I find for myself and the people in companies that I work with is when they're connected to something that's ultimately important to them, ultimately in the sense of death bed important. I'm going to look back in my life and I'm going to be proud of this love, joy, gratitude, or peace that's important to me. That can really be supportive in conducing to going through some of those difficult things.

Cristina Amigoni: Definitely.

Sterling Hawkins: The other thing around the discomfort is it tends to become chronic. In a lot of business cultures, it's chronic. It ends up working like a governor does on a car. I'm sure you're familiar with cars that have a governor, no matter how hard you hit the gas, you can't go any faster. Well, similarly, if you're chronically avoiding denying, or surviving discomfort, consciously or unconsciously, it works the same way, no matter how hard you work. You just can't get any new results.

How many people do you know and maybe some of the listeners that are like, “Gosh, I'm working 15 hours a day. I'm managing kids. I'm managing a relationship. I'm trying to get all these things done at work. I've been doing it for 20 years. Why can't I get ahead?” Now some access might be to, okay, well, there's some discomfort that might be in the way. It's really, really powerful.

Some Norwegian research found that avoiding discomfort chronically left people not unwilling, but unable to work in accordance with what they already knew. That means, you know what to do, but discomfort stops you. It's crazy.

Cristina Amigoni: That is crazy.

Alex Cullimore: When you know you've got discomfort, you know there is a systemic discomfort in organizations of how do you, how do you go about diagnosing, or helping start getting people oriented towards facing that?

Sterling Hawkins: Yeah. Well, I think it's probably similar to some of the process you go through. The first step is identifying it. Like, what are we avoiding? What are we denying and what are we surviving? It works on two levels. One, at a personal level, maybe there's some things I'm avoiding. It also works at a cultural level. A culture is just a shared set of values, ethics, and beliefs that everybody, more often than not, unconsciously just adheres to. What's possible, what's impossible, here's the things we should do, here's the things we shouldn't do. Here's the things you can share with this person. Don't share anything like that, you'll get in trouble. There are these unspoken, oftentimes unspoken and unwritten guidelines of how people are operating. As we can orient leadership, or anybody in that company to what those unspoken things are, that's at least the first step and being free of them is identifying them.

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. Awareness is definitely a key first step. You mentioned your tagline earlier in the conversation, and then it's on your wall and it's on your t-shirt, even though people can't see it.

Sterling Hawkins: Right. I'm representing everybody. I do have a coffee cup, too. I should have brought that one out for the occasion.

Cristina Amigoni: Tell us about NoMatterWhat.

Sterling Hawkins: It really came from those early days in speaking, where the way out is through. We just have to go through no matter what. NoMatterWhat was just a personal mantra I used way early on to get myself out of bed in the morning, to call my creditors, to go to the gym, to make the phone calls that I didn't really want to make, or I was scared to make. It was first my sister who came with me to Singapore. She's been a big part of my business and my life always, but especially from that low point is she's like, “You know what, Sterling? I'm seeing you being transformed by discomfort. Not only your results. I saw how scared you were doing that thing in Singapore. You're a different person than I've known you.”

Like too many young people, especially young women at the time she dealt with an eating disorder and body dysmorphia, and she said, “I'm going to take something from this, Sterling. I'm going to be healthy, no matter what.” It was only when she said it that it resonated with me like, “Okay. She's going to do it no matter what.” Over the course of a few years, she became a world championship bodybuilder, professional bodybuilder. She's free of any eating disorders and body dysmorphia that she had. I was like, wow. It's not just me this works for, it's somebody else.

Then there was somebody from my professional career. He came over as a Cambodian refugee. Didn't really speak the language so well. Was flat broke. He came to me and he said, “Sterling, I will be a successful entrepreneur, no matter what.” At the time, I didn't appreciate what journey he was about to embark on. Today, he's the founder of a Cambodia beef jerky company, which I didn't even know was a thing. He is selling more than he can keep up with. He just bought a super car and a house. He's rocking it with that company.

I started to see person after person engage with what started to develop as a system, and no matter what system we started calling it. It turns out, it was working for all these people. Then it started working for companies, and very naturally, we just started calling it NoMatterWhat. Are you going to do it no matter what? Here's the five steps you've got to go through to do it. Of course, now it's much more on a formal basis 

I've realized that what started as something that was somewhat selfish, right? I didn't care about anything other than digging myself out of that hole, has become something that is not even about me at all. I'm grateful to support the people and companies that I work with to achieve their goals, their dreams, their aspirations, no matter what they are, and somehow, many of them have achieved those things as well. That's a long version of where NoMatterWhat came from and what it's about.

Cristina Amigoni: It's a great story. It's such a powerful tagline. It's empowering and I don't know if shame is the right word, but it definitely – I no longer use it sporadically. When I think about it, it’s like, I better mean it if I use it. Also, elements of your book, it's the tattoo. If I'm going to say something and I'm going to declare it to the universe and to the public, can I actually – do I have the courage to say it and mean it no matter what? Am I going to go through it? If I'm not, maybe I shouldn't say it.

Sterling Hawkins: Yeah, it's a very powerful gut check, at least when you're paying attention to the words that you're using. I find it, it's so easy to just say things. What's the cost of words? Nothing. Cultures and people can get into a process of saying things, even committing to things and not really meaning. Or not falling through on it. I've noticed just by the simple act of adding that phrase ‘no matter what’, whatever it is that people are committing to, it causes pause. Where just like you're saying, Cristina, they step back, evaluate, “Well, is this something I really want to commit to anyways? Can I do it? Is it possible for me?”

When you go through that process of really getting connected to what it is that you want and where you're going, no matter what, you have a much higher degree of likelihood of making it there, or at least making significant progress, or maybe blowing it all out of the water and going way past it.

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. Definitely, agree.

Alex Cullimore: It’s funny you mentioned that, it's came from a spot of you. You wanted to personally get out of a hole and then it ends up being something it helps others. I think that's a more common theme than people maybe realize that really, we do have to help ourselves to get to that point of helping others. It doesn't generally take a leap once we really understand what helped us to bring that to other people. I think, it can be a stopper for a lot of people. I have a lot of other people have need to help in my life. Yes. And you have to help yourself. Because if you're not there, you don't have that energy. If you don't have the capacity, there's no way you're going to bring that anyway and you've got to figure out what works for you. Once you do, you have better chance of helping other people anyway.

Sterling Hawkins: Totally. Totally. Yeah. There's a possibility of developing these mutually supportive relationships to achieve goals, whether it's a co-worker, or a boss, or significant other, or a friend, you can use each other as a source of accountability. Not to make somebody bad and wrong and make them feel bad, or get them fired. But out of a place of love, saying, “Hey, I'm committed to what you want, as much as you are.” Even more important, when you forget what you're committed to. I can be a source of a reminder for that and you can be that for me.

The research shows that when you do that on an individual basis, that means I'm accountable to, for example, you Alex, for a specific deliverable, at a specific date, a specific time. I'm not 70%, 80%, or 90% more likely to achieve that goal. I'm 95% more likely to achieve that goal. By the way, as a team, it's even better. As you develop a team that holds each other accountable, four times is likely to achieve their goals.

Now, it doesn't necessarily feel good. It can be outright uncomfortable, especially if you've got goals that are a little bit bigger than you know how you're actually going to achieve, but it is critical to growth. Self-accountability, even for high performers is not enough. If you want to grow to that next level, it takes external accountability and the support of others to be able to do it.

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. One of my favorite comparisons from willpower is like, willpower is like an emergency break. It's great to have. But if you use it all the time, you're going to burn out.

Sterling Hawkins: Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Other people are incredibly powerful in our own process. Something as simple as, let's say, I've got a commitment to write another book, which I do, by the way. One of the reasons that I'm talking about it this early in the process is because I'm getting it out of me, and I'm sharing it with other people. I'm not really early on the process. I don't have dates, or anything yet. But sharing it with others calls me into that future and I've got some level of accountability just from talking about it, that I've found helps me get the kinds of results that I want, produce the things that I want.

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah, I would definitely agree with that. All the big moves, I would say, in my life and my career have been from just saying that I'm going to do it. I have no idea how, when, what the details are, but I'm going to do it. Whether it was living in Italy and saying, “I'm going to live in New York.” Where, how, what? No idea. I'm going to live in New York. Within six months, a year that happened, and it happened for every single piece, including our company. I got to the point where I said like, “I'm going to start a company. I'm not going to stop, no matter what. It's going to happen.”

Sterling Hawkins: Beautiful. There's a reason why that works, by the way. I'm not a brain scientist by any means, but I find this stuff just fascinating, and feel free to tell me shut up whenever you like. There's this thing in our brains called the reticular activating system, RAS, or RAS for short. It functions like the bouncer between our conscious and our unconscious mind. It's why, for example, you can hear your name called out in a crowded conference space, because you know your name's important. The RAS is tuned for that.

Or, I moved to Colorado, agosh, two and a half years ago now, which I can't believe. I found out the car that I had in Southern California was severely inadequate for the winters of Denver and the Rocky Mountain, so I got an SUV. Of course, as soon as I buy it, I see that exact same car everywhere. You've seen that before?

That's the RAS in action. Now, before you commit, specifically commit in ways where there's no going back, that RAS is auto-tuned for survival. It's going to tell you things like, why you can't, why you shouldn't, why it's embarrassing, why it's dangerous. Nothing to do with the actual real risks, but it's going to inflate all the problems, because it's much safer to stay exactly where you are.

Now, like you did, Cristina, when you commit in ways where there's no going back, saying, “I'm going to start this company, no matter what. I'm going to move to New York, no matter what.” You get rid of the safety nets. You get rid of the plan Bs. All of a sudden, it retunes that RAS to look for new openings for action that are quite literally impossible to see prior. Those commitments are what frame the world for us, is either something to be afraid of, or seeing new opportunities to step into.

Cristina Amigoni: That's really powerful. Wow. All right. I have a question for the two of you, and you can turn it around and I am going to steal your tagline for that. What is one thing that you will plan, can, want to do next and no matter what?

Sterling Hawkins: Well, I mentioned a couple of times already is my next book. Another thing, just so we can vary it a little bit is, have you heard of this thing called Devil's Tower in Wyoming?

Cristina Amigoni: No.

Sterling Hawkins: I think it's a 1,000-foot rock structure that just grows out of the earth. It looks very alien. I'm not a rock climber, but supposedly, novices can climb it. I am going to attempt to climb Devil's Tower this summer, no matter what.

Cristina Amigoni: All right. You got it.

Sterling Hawkins: What do you got, Alex?

Alex Cullimore: Nice. Interesting. Well, first comes to mind is when we've been saying it for a year now. Really, actually, finishing our book and doing – writing the book would be the first thing that comes to mind. It's been something that I’m avoiding for some time and need to get, get, just do. The other one that I've had on my list for a while was running a triathlon. I ran a half marathon just a couple weeks back, which was awesome. This is the first time I'd ever done anything like that, or any endurance sport. I've always liked things, like swimming and I want to try a triathlon at some point.

I hurt my knee a little bit on the half marathon, so it's going to be a little bit delayed, but that's, I think the other thing that would come to mind that I'd love to take that on as the next large personal challenge that I just – I've done nothing even close to that before. It's time to see what can be done.

Sterling Hawkins: Beautiful. It's awesome. Cristina, we got to circle back to you.

Alex Cullimore: Yeah.

Cristina Amigoni: I was hoping to avoid it. Can they forget that I didn't answer? I would say yes, the book. That's becoming a no matter what. A year is generous. Alex, I've been talking about it for five, so it's time.

Alex Cullimore: Well, we've been talking about it for a long time. We've been publicly talking about it for about a year.

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. Write and publish a book within the next nine months. I will be very specific on that, no matter what. Because if I just say, write and publish a book, that could be 30 years from now. I'll still be talking about doing it.

Sterling Hawkins: Nice.

Cristina Amigoni: Within nine months from now. I would say, the second one, which it is on the way, but it's still one of those like, kind of, sort of, is I want to live in Europe with my kids in the next near term, no matter what.

Sterling Hawkins: Awesome. Awesome. I am excited. I mean, sometimes I notice having conversations like this is a little bit scary and intimidating. Once you get it out and you start talking about it, it tends to be exciting. You really build some momentum around it and create some next steps and. It's worth noting, that there are two different kinds of things that you can commit to, no matter what. The first is what we've been talking about. Very specific finite things. I want to climb this, run that, publish this other thing, reach these revenue goals, growth goals, performance goals, whatever they are, right? Very specific things that either happen, or don't.

As much as you say, no matter what, I'll be the first one to tell you that sometimes you can't achieve those things. Sometimes the world just works in a way where it makes achieving some of those things at some point an impossibility. That's where the second no matter what commitment comes in. It's committing to the things, the ultimate concerns that humans have. At least, that's what German-American theologian Paul Tillich would call them. Our ultimate concerns of things like, love, joy, gratitude and peace. The things that somewhat ironically, no matter what happens in the world can never be taken away from us.

Now, when we bring those ultimate concerns, love, joy, gratitude and peace into the moments where we're potentially failing and are finite, no matter what, we bring it into the moments of uncertainty and the moments of fear and discomfort. That's what starts to transform everything standing in our way. That's what really can quite literally turn the uncomfortable and uncertain in to break through results. You make both those kinds of commitments, you can be unstoppable.

Cristina Amigoni: That's really powerful.

Alex Cullimore: That’s really good delineation.

Cristina Amigoni: That is very good. Now, I got to think of the other, the second kind of commitment. Maybe for the next podcast episode, I'll have an answer to that one.

Sterling Hawkins: There we go. Yeah, we'll have to do a V2. Hopefully, it won't take us six months to do it.

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. We are going to do a V2, no matter what. When, we'll figure it out.

Alex Cullimore: It was about a discrete one, but we'll put it on a list.

Sterling Hawkins: Perfect. Perfect.

Cristina Amigoni: A couple of last questions for you. One is, what's your definition of authenticity?

Sterling Hawkins: Anything that comes from the heart. I think oftentimes, we can get so tied up in our head about the circumstances, or even our discomfort that we can lose sight of who we really are. As we're connected to ourselves and specifically, our heart and soul in a deeper way, I think anything that comes from that place is authenticity. I'm not saying it's right. I'm saying, it's authentic.

Alex Cullimore: That's a good definition.

Cristina Amigoni: I love that answer. Yeah, great answer. We are judging the answers. So, you passed.

Sterling Hawkins: I would love to hear a podcast from you, where you share everybody's definition of that. That would be cool.

Cristina Amigoni: We actually have that ready. We’ve just haven’t pressed the button to publish it. Now, it's going to happen no matter what.

Sterling Hawkins: Perfect. Let know. I'll be the first listener.

Cristina Amigoni: I’m committing to publishing that. Yeah. I'll be committing to publishing those clips in the next – in the month of July. It's time.

Alex Cullimore: It's ironic, because we've been saying that. Now, because we spliced a bunch of them together and now we recorded more podcasts. Now, we technically have more. We need to go splice into that. The longer we delay it, the more this gets out of hand.

Cristina Amigoni: It's amazing, because, well, like the word, every answer is completely different.

Sterling Hawkins: Oh, cool. I can't wait to hear this one.

Alex Cullimore: There's some good ones in there, we thought.

Cristina Amigoni: Oh, well, well, that one, too and this one, too and this piece, too. Yeah, it's pretty amazing. When people talk about, let's define authenticity, I’m like, can you define as one sentence, authenticity? Because we've been trying for now two years. Every answer is different. 

Sterling Hawkins: Yeah. They're big, like a great research paper as well. I mean, it's got to be a chapter in the book.

Cristina Amigoni: Now it is. It is now.

Sterling Hawkins: There you go. There you go. Awesome.

Cristina Amigoni: Then, where can people find you?

Sterling Hawkins: Well, Sterling –

Sterling Hawkins: Sterlinghawkins.com is probably the easiest. Sterling Hawkins is pretty searchable on all the social media channels.

Alex Cullimore: Awesome.

Sterling Hawkins: You can learn more about me, my work. Maybe most importantly, is you can hear a little bit about and see a little bit about the NoMatterWhat community. See the incredible things that people from all over the world, all walks of life, all kinds of businesses have committed to and achieve results around. If you're feeling brave, you can even create your own NoMatterWhat.

Cristina Amigoni: All right. I'm going to have to do that. You mentioned that there's a quiz, a hunting discomfort quiz.

Sterling Hawkins: There is. You can find it on the website pretty easily, and I'll give you the link if there's show notes, or anything.

Cristina Amigoni: Yup. We'll put them in the show notes.

Sterling Hawkins: What we found is that most people weren't quite sure of the discomfort they were avoiding. Especially they weren't sure of the discomfort that would really would make a difference for them if they addressed it, because it was things from 20, 30, 40, 50 years ago, they had totally forgotten about and they lived their life, not realizing that they had cut that part of themselves out. What we did is we created a short quiz. I think it's 15 questions. Doesn't cost anything. We're not selling anything. 15 questions to orient you to which of the five major discomforts that humans deal with. We all deal with all five, but which one of them rises to the top as the discomfort that's most between you and the results that you want. Doesn't just leave you hanging there, it also gives you a suggested pathway of what you can do to address it.

Alex Cullimore: That's awesome.

Cristina Amigoni: I'll definitely have to take that one. Because that's the one thing that I noticed when I was listening to your book. There's exercises and activities to do, which clearly I was walking so and driving so I was not stopping to do them. I did fail on the homework piece of that. I was trying I was trying to answer the questions in my head. I couldn't pinpoint it. I can't figure out what is it that I'm not hunting. Which discomfort am I avoiding? I do want to investigate. Now I'm curious.

Sterling Hawkins: Well, after you take the quiz, if you want to talk about it, you know where to find me.

Cristina Amigoni: Will do.

Alex Cullimore: Perfect. Well, thank you so much for this conversation, Sterling. It's just awesome to hear about your story. Thanks for sharing just vulnerably, all of the things that have led to this. Obviously, best of luck with everything coming up. I'm really excited to see the second book. I have to start the first one, personally. That one's next on my list.

Cristina Amigoni: By Monday, Alex. When we have on the plate on Monday, we're talking about the book.

Sterling Hawkins: Monday, no matter what. Well, thank you both for having me on. It's a real honor to be on here and having this conversation with you. I can't wait to read your first book and listen to the podcast collective of all the definitions of authenticity. Thank you.

Cristina Amigoni: Nice. Thank you.

Alex Cullimore: Thank you. 

[END OF INTERVIEW]

Cristina Amigoni: Thank you for listening to Uncover the Human, a Siamo Podcast.

 Alex Cullimore: Special thanks to our podcast operations wizard, Jake Laura, 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@wearesiamo.com, or on our website, wearesiamo.com, LinkedIn, Instagram or Facebook. WeAreSiamo is spelled W-E-A-R-E-S-I-A-M-O.

Cristina Amigoni: Until next time, listen to yourself, listen to others and always uncover the human. 

[END]