Reactivity to Presence: How Mental Fitness Unlocks Authentic Leadership with Aaron Wilson

“Aaron Wilson: I definitely know in consulting, in my tutorials and working in consulting that it is chew you up and spit you out. If I think about Hollywood, it's a system built to chew up and spit out products and young actors. I put that parallel with consulting at times.”

[INTRODUCTION]

Alex Cullimore: Hello, Cristina.

Cristina Amigoni: Hello.

Alex Cullimore: We just had a great conversation and we actually recorded it on a Wednesday. Same as I wrote these dates.

Cristina Amigoni: I know.

Alex Cullimore: We had a conversation with Aaron Wilson.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. Yeah, very good conversation about his journey through consulting and then as a coach and how now he has his own coaching practice and he's helping people be more authentic and less burnt out and finding ways to stop letting the autopilots take them off track and to a life that they don't want to live.

Alex Cullimore: Yeah, he's got such a great message around just finding that pause and creating those conscious choices, instead of running on those autopilots and hitting the same results that drive us into burnout if we don't change our course. It's like that quote we always love to use, “If you don't change where you're going, you may end up where you're heading.”

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. Yes. Yes. That one is a quote that we use all the time and also, it reminds me of even the other quote that says, “Nothing changes if nothing changes.” We have the power. We have the agency, as Aaron says, to make conscious choices for things to be different, for our life to be different, for us to feel differently, for our results to be different, all of the above.

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. Enjoy Aaron and his message of change.

Cristina Amigoni: Enjoy.

[INTERVIEW]

Alex Cullimore: Welcome back to this episode of Uncover the Human. Today, Cristina and I are joined by our guest, who has actually appeared on the podcast before but never as a guest, Aaron Wilson. Welcome to the podcast, Aaron.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. Welcome. It's a long time coming. We've been talking about this for a long time.

Aaron Wilson: Yeah. We have.

Cristina Amigoni: Now you're here.

Aaron Wilson: Now I'm here.

Alex Cullimore: Now is a particularly good time to talk to you, Aaron. We've had the pleasure of working with Aaron for a long time, but we've also watched you've been building out your coaching practice for the last few months and did a lot more traction there. It's an exciting time to get to talk to you about this and get to showcase what you've been up to, because there's a lot of cool things going on. First of all, we wanted to talk a little bit about something that you've talked about a lot with us and helped us work with and helped a lot of people with is the idea of autopilot and where that appears in our life. I'm curious what that means to you, Aaron, and where that came from.

Aaron Wilson: Yeah. Where that came from. Yeah. I was shaped by a challenging past. In that challenging past, I operated on reaction, shall we say. Operated on what other people, other entities have encouraged, or mandated, or strongly suggested that people behave in certain ways as they grow up in America. With that came this reactive nature to please, to perform, to be somebody that I didn't realize I wasn't being true to myself. I operated that way for decades, not really realizing that there is a gap between who I am and how I show up. I didn't realize that that gap existed.

In that gap, I realized that there is an opportunity to improve my own growth and well-being, my own relationships and my ability to be effective at being a servant leader to those that I support in life. I think by me being able to find that I was on autopilot and realizing that, I was able to take action to address it and to close the gap that I felt was demanding that I be wider and that I be more disconnected from who I am by way of trying to perform, trying to please, trying to be somebody for other people than I wasn't for myself. That's the gap that I really want to help address for clients as part of yourcoachthroughchange.com. It's really not just helping people get by and working with the autopilot. We're always going to have that. It's just that in our inherent nature as human beings that have conscious awareness. But to use that conscious awareness and to be equipped to have the tools to lead yourself with clarity from a different place, from not autopilot, from not reacting and to intention, is possible. People have conscious choice to do that.

Cristina Amigoni: That's really important. You and I have been on part of that same journey through that, which has helped a lot to understand what that is and how to stop it and how to choose how we show up, as opposed to just letting the autopilot run all over and then just couch it as, well, this is just who I am. Everybody else needs to adapt. These are the results I'm always going to get, because this is who I am.

Aaron Wilson: Yeah. Yeah. To your point, who I am, they're just the habits and assumptions that I do every day, so why would that need to change? Even though those habits and assumptions could in theory be self-sabotaging.

Alex Cullimore: I think in practice, mostly yes.

Cristina Amigoni: It's a little bit like the definition of insanity. It's doing the same thing and expecting different results. It's like, if we keep doing the same thing, because this is who I am, but then we expect different results and we're frustrated when the results are not changing, well, where does the change need to happen? What are we missing here?

Aaron Wilson: Yeah, exactly. In some of the things that I experienced, I think all of us on this call experienced the, how is it that we can truly shift behavior of people if they're not even realizing that that self-reinforcing, sabotaging behavior is something that's not serving you and your own awareness. You don't even realize that it's happening. I think if you're unable to talk to people about what's happening inside them, their mindsets in particular and what that looks like for them, then you're not meeting people where they are. That gap is just going to continue to widen and they'll still operate on autopilot is how I see it.

Alex Cullimore: I'm curious from both of you. We've all done some coaching. We've all gone through the same program, actually, at some point. I'm curious, how you guys think about helping other people raise their awareness of these things and start to understand that they do have some of that choice? How have those conversations gone for you, and what do you find is either effective to help people with that, or blockers that date in the way?

Aaron Wilson: Yeah. Go ahead, Cristina.

Cristina Amigoni: No, no. I was going to say, I'll let Aaron answer that one.

Aaron Wilson: I'm going to throw you guys both a hard one. Yeah. I mean, I think it goes back to us realizing that autopilot is not who we are. It's just the reactions that we do as an impulse, as a learned behavior, learned habit, as a mode of protection through survival. Because there was a lot of unpredictability as a young human, and we had to learn to adapt and be able to keep ourselves safe in those moments. I think as part of that adaptation, we can build sabotaging habits that don't serve us because the context changes, the needs change, the relationships that we have in life change. I think if people can recognize that that is a past behavior and know that there are tactics, tools that they can employ to enable them to choose differently, I think people would want to be able to learn more about that. I think they would want to be able to realize, “Do I have to be trapped by my mind? Am I always constantly behaving and reacting to every stimulus that comes to me in my world?” No.

To know that you have that option is the first opening conversation that I would have with somebody to know that authenticity that you're looking to connect with isn't, at least in my experience, your past experience contributes to that authenticity, but it doesn't make you who you are.

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah, I find that going through the journey myself, it's how I do anything, actually. If I'm trying to teach, or share my knowledge, I have to understand them myself first. Then I can share the knowledge. I can't just read something or know it theoretically and then just share it. I think especially when it comes to behavior change, experiencing it myself, then helps me understand, oh, here's the benefit, here's my journey. Then sharing that journey. Sharing like, “Hey, I've gone through this journey and this is what I've learned.” I find that a lot of times, that opens up the possibility for somebody to think like, “Oh, wait. I noticed a difference,” and she's sharing her journey. Maybe I can be on that same journey, or maybe there's a journey for me, too. It's more of that not imposing on people like, “Hey, you need to change and here's a "solution.” “Just do what I say.”

Alex Cullimore: Stop being like you.

Cristina Amigoni: Stop being like you. But it's more about creating a different reality and showing what it is. A lot of it, therapy is a great example. When you see how therapy can help others, you're like, “I'm curious how it could help me. I want to try it out, too.” Having that, and I know, Aaron, for you as you're building your practice, you're sharing a lot of your journey. You're sharing a lot of what you're going through in your marketing and social media with the world, so that it's not really about, “I'm perfect and you all need to change. Good luck. Here's a solution.” It's more like, “Hey, here's my journey.”

Alex Cullimore: Not successful marketing.

Cristina Amigoni: Apparently. Here's my journey. Here's what I go through every single day. Here's what I have gone through. Here's the different outcomes that I am now reaching by understanding that yes, there's an autopilot, which most people probably know that as a theory, as a concept. Like yes, we all have autopilot. But it's that gap between the understanding, the knowledge and the implementation of how do I actually stop it, not through words, but through mental fitness, through actions, through something that I do differently. Every single day, they will get me there. one day I'll wake up and realize, “Oh, wait, that's not triggering anymore. I'm responding differently in the situation and look at that situation.” You just believe that you're going to get there and then you get there.

Aaron Wilson: Yeah. to build on that, I would say, we are all – our inherent nature to be able to implement that, to be able to be in the pause. Yes, you're in the pause, but what next? Your inherent nature as a human being is ease and flow. That's where you are, and your reactions, your stress reactions, your self-sabotaging are just your own. In order to access and to be able to pause, be able to, whether it be being present with your five senses, moving to a place, doing any activity that puts you back to your center will put you in a place of ease and flow and groundedness to where you actually have the space to choose differently, versus react to something that is not serving you.

I think that's so critical to helping meet people where they are, to help people realize that you have the internal capacity to change. You just have to be able to access parts of yourself that are open. When I say open, your whole being is engaged in the process of being. You're engaged in the part of being, not doing, I guess, is what I'm trying to say is that that's the difference in moving to being versus moving to doing and reacting. I think there's that difference is where I think people could really benefit from accessing as part of just moderating their reactions to life and overcoming life's challenges.

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. You can see both the general nature of us having our set patterns that we might not challenge, and then we end up doing things that we aren't necessarily super conscious about, and are just doing them on repeat. There's also the societal pressure of you should be doing something, and even rest is a pause before you can get more productivity done. There's this push to do, do, do. That, I think, ends up multiplying the effect of our desire to do, rather than be and then feel like we have to do rather than be.

Aaron Wilson: Absolutely. What I would also say to that too is I talk about this on my website, and also on my post is this idea about performative resilience. This concept that I've developed this need because of society, because of my own internal expectations that somehow I need to just keep going. I need to project confidence. I need to project competence.

I need to show that I'm being in control, and I have the answer, and I'm not – At the same time, internally, you're running on empty. You don't realize that's happening, until you're having breakdowns. You can't get up in the morning, because you feel dread in your body. That's something that is burnout can continue to build on those experiences, and it will completely disconnect you from your true self. You won't have clarity. You won't have self-direction. Your judgment will be affected. Ultimately, you can't lead yourself.

Cristina Amigoni: Well, and that it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, because the more you perform the way you think you should perform, the more you strengthen the autopilot, the more you don't get the results that you want, which then burns you out, which then leads you to perform even more. It's just this cycle that never ends. It's that pause. It's like, it's a pausing like, “Hey, I don't like those outcomes.” Where do they originate from? They originate from the autopilot, this inner critic, this default ways of looking at the world and of responding and reacting, that, yes, there's a component that served us in the past that may serve us in some situations, but then it's a dark side. When you get to the dark side is where you lose the control, and now somebody else is driving. Then you get to destination and you're like, “This is not where I wanted to go. I'm here again. Why am I here again?” I’m like, well, then stop turning on the autopilot. Get behind the wheel.

Aaron Wilson: Yeah, and it's hard. I mean, I think one of the things that really helped me to interrupt and then pause, so interrupt that autopilot, and then – pause is to have language to it. Understand that this isn't who I am. For example, we all judge. I feel like every minute of the day, they’re a cell of circumstances. That is the impetus for what then puts you into that self-reinforcing spiral that you talked about, that if I'm judging others, they're going to feel judged and their reactions to my judgment will then be acting to my judge, what I'm doing. Then both of us will react to the situation. Then it'll become amplified and become problematic for team cohesion, relationship connection, whatever it may be.

For you to know that, for example, the judge is not who you are. It's just a reaction is something that is really powerful and helpful to know that I can distance and create some distance between that and myself. I can pause and I can say, “This reaction is just a reaction. It's not who I am. I can then pivot and make a different choice and own it.”

Alex Cullimore: I remember early in my therapy journey, my therapist introduced me the idea of changing the – we often identify with emotions. We say, I am angry. I am sad. It is our identity. That is who we are. But there are two levels beyond that. There's I am sad. Then there's I am feeling sad, where you start to notice notes. That's a feeling that I'm having. Then there's the third one, which is I noticed that I am feeling sad. Then you put yourself in more the observer position in that more mindfulness area of I'm noticing this thing that's coming up for me, instead of I am it. I am controlled by it. Everything about my world is angry. Right now it is. Now I'm noticing that I feel angry. Now you’ve put yourself in that exact space you were talking about, Aaron, where you have a chance to interrupt that and say, “Oh, that's not who I am. That's not my identity. That's not everything that is happening right now. That is just a reaction that happens to be coming up. I might have other choices than just autopilot running with that the way that I would normally do.”

Aaron Wilson: Yeah. Yeah. What that gives you is a decision based on grounded judgment and not fear, where you're not being taken your emotions, or this performative need to feel certain, or this need to have the answer. I can tell you, that was the single biggest challenge that I had in my career was this performative nature, this feeling that I wasn't being authentic with what I was saying, thinking, doing, and none of it was in alignment. I felt this cognitive dissonance that my beliefs were completely in conflict. It became so challenging for me to operate daily, to be engaged and feel like I'm delivering value that I got so burned out and so panicky that it just didn't feel right anymore.

Then I had to make a decision. Because at that point, it degrades you and erodes your sense of self. Just being a human being, it feels like – I always think of myself, I sold my soul to corporate. I think everybody can identify with that. That's the feeling that we're talking about right now, this autopilot of nature that we all feel we have to do, because that's just the expectation. That's the norm.

Cristina Amigoni: It does. It's exhausting. I've been talking about it recently with a friend who's also a coach. I've described that as it's like swimming upstream and hitting every single rock as you're doing that. You're already exhausted, because you're swimming upstream and you're just getting destroyed with everything that gets in the way in that river. The opposite, first of all, swim down the stream, stop swimming upstream. But it doesn't mean that you just relax and let go and then hit every rock on the way down, because you're like, “Well, I'm giving up.” You still have agency, which is that stopping that autopilot, understanding the language, understanding how you're actually showing up why it's not working, when it's not working. That is yes, go downstream, take the pause, relax, have awareness of what's around you, relax when you can, and also use your arms and legs and move to not hit every rock going down. That's the choice. It's the awareness of I'm not just going to close my eyes, lay down and let go, but I don't have to do it so hard the other way.

Aaron Wilson: Yeah. What I would add to that, too, is when you have that choice, that is why a coach is so critical to help you. The coach is there to help you find your own answers. We're not there to direct you. I think in that moment, you have that space and clarity to be able to make that conscious choice when you didn't have it before, because you were taken over by the reactions that are shaping your autopilot that come from all of the need to feel safe from all of your past experiences, the things that you had to do to adapt that no longer are working in this current context. I think that unfortunately, at least in my experience in corporate is that that's how people are operating all the time, or constantly just reacting to what other potentially looking up the threats, essentially, and then reacting on such.

Cristina Amigoni: While swimming upstream.

Aaron Wilson: While swimming upstream. Thank you. Yeah.

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. I like that you brought up the judge and how we judge all the time, because that's what we've learned in positive intelligence is that we judge all the time. We're humans, we judge. Taking the shame out of that. So, the goal is not to stop judging, because that's not possible. It's like, the goal is not to stop thinking when you're meditating, not possible. Your mind is not going to stop. The goal is to realize that what you're doing and choose differently.

As I go around about my day, I catch the judge so many times, where something happens, I'm like, “Oh, I'm judging. Okay.” Even that pause allows me to have a space to then think about, “Oh, okay. How am I judging this? Which one of my accomplices to the judge is showing up? It's increasing the judge. What's my reaction default after I judge? Is it to please? Because my pleaser is now shouting and taking over the driving. Is it the high performer? I need to perform more? Is it the hyper-vigilance? I need to be vigilant that this may be a dangerous situation for in whatever form that comes up?” Even just going through those motions helps just stop. It's the hand on the stove. It's like, I put the hand on the stove like, “Oh, my hand is on the stove. It's getting burnt. Let me remove it before I lose my hand.” I don't have to keep it on the stove. I can remove it.

Alex Cullimore: I'm tired of having this burnt hand all the time.

Cristina Amigoni: Exactly.

Aaron Wilson: Yeah. It's this unconscious suffering you're causing yourself by keeping your hand on that stove.

Cristina Amigoni: It's a signal.

Aaron Wilson: When it's just a signal –

Cristina Amigoni: I'm judging.

Aaron Wilson: - what you decide is, I'm judging. That's just a signal. When I judge, I could feel my chest tighten. What this has helped me do is just pay attention on my body before my mind, because that's what's going to signal first anyway. I never used to have that. I never used to be able to separate myself from the emotion, like you were saying, Alex. It was so difficult to put guardrails around my behavior, I guess, if that makes sense. Creating boundaries and being able to know what's going to keep me safe and others safe. Just all of the things that happen when you react and you regret it. That happened to me so much, even in work.

I know that this isn't a positive intelligence plug fully, but it is such a massive transformative tool framework to put an operating system behind how you go about your day and know that you can make those changes. We're talking very abstract right now, but just go to positiveintelligence.com. We'll figure it out. But it's great. It's just a transformative way of looking at how to build your mental fitness, not your mental health, but really to be able to ultimately snack back from those periods of life's challenges that normally we'd keep your hand on the stove and you'd be spiraling. Where now with the training that it gives you, it gives you an opportunity to choose ease and flow to access that part of yourself. That's always there.

Alex Cullimore: That's one thing that I've noticed in coaching. One thing I've always appreciated about the coaching or therapy is that when you start to realize that, you start to say, “Yeah, I want to change this. I don't want to be this way. I'm tired of having this reaction.” The next portion is frustration at the number of times it will come up as you start to notice it, and then you're frustrated at like, “Nope, I'm doing this again. I'm doing this again.” one thing I really appreciated about coaching and therapy was that getting back into those, you have somebody else there who would confirm for you that like, that happens. That's okay. What would you like to do differently next time? It's very different than most of our upbringing in school and work, where it's like, you made a mistake. Now, let's all remember that you made a mistake and –

Cristina Amigoni: Let’s put it on the board.

Alex Cullimore: - make sure we can't trust you next time, or whatever it is. Yeah, keep it in the spotlight. Having that knowledge today, that's just part of the transformation that it is more difficult immediately when you start to notice it. Then it gets a little easier over time, and then it becomes habitual. Then you don't even notice it. That's okay. Then there are people with you in that journey, validating that you don't have to have done it perfectly, just because you notice, “Oh, I do this. Doesn't mean that the next time it comes up in forever more, you'll do it differently.” Just for certain leanings that we might move there. It's okay that that happens. That's natural. That we don't have to feel like, “Yes, I burnt my hand off the stove again. Yes, I didn't want to do that. But I'm more aware of it. It was slower this time. I was faster to take my hand off this time. Next time, I might not even touch the stove. There will be moments in the future where it happens again, and that's okay.” We just know it's there and we'll continue to move around it. That was a huge portion for me of letting go of the perfectionism of needing to understand what's right. Then either you do it all the time, or you fail.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. Yeah. It's zero-sum game. You either become perfect immediately, because you have the knowledge, or that's it. You're doomed. Might as well not try.

Aaron Wilson: I love that idea. Yeah. That's the self-sabotaging thought process that we, I think, default to. I think, at least for me, it's the same thing where I'm hypervigilant for threats. At the same time, I'm hypervigilant in those threats to – maybe not even just the threats. I'm hypervigilant and I can read the room a little bit better than others, because of that strength of staying out of this judgment aspect of what others are doing and more around how I can turn this into a positive versus negative. I think there's that duality between those two that everybody deals with. I think that's a challenge for everybody.

Alex Cullimore: Hypervigilance is a great example, because that's one that's like, hey, it's an adaptation that did help me. If you're hypervigilant, it's probably because you existed at some point, or for maybe a long time in a place where there were a lot more threats. You had to be hypervigilant to try and stay ahead of the curve as much as possible. Though it's something that did serve you for a long time. If you let it continue into places where there aren't as many threats, then you might perceive things that aren't actually as threatening as threats and you have that reactions that you aren't happy with, or that don't help you, and that's where we slowly start to make that change.

To your point, Aaron, there's still a lot of superpower in that. It can still be incredibly helpful. There are moments where it's useful. As long as you're consciously using like, “Oh, I'm aware of this. Hey, something's coming up.” As long as it's not doing exactly what we've been talking about where it takes it right on the autopilot and, “Oh, I now, I assume this is a threat. Now I'm reacting in ways that I don't want to react.”

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah, that's a huge difference. Because there are moments, especially when you have the language, there are moments where you realize like, “Oh, I'm hypervigilant in this moment.” Even making the choice of thinking, “Oh, I need to be. This is a good moment for the superpower.” Let's just monitor how that superpower has been used, so that I don't fly off and change universe when I'm just trying to fly to the next town.

Aaron Wilson: Yeah, absolutely. Also, too, and something to impress upon people, too, is that the mental fitness is lifelong, just like physical fitness, your muscles will atrophy. With that, when it comes to mental fitness, your reactions to life, if you have an atrophy muscle, you will react to everything in life and not come from a place of intention. I think if you quit, yeah, you just have to be in the gym. You have to work out. Otherwise, the strength to manage life challenges will be harder. Yeah.

For me, I think the need to provide this as a tool for people to know that this is something that you can work on daily. It's not a personality trait. It's a skill that can be trained. It's something that I believe can help people close the gap from who they are, versus how they show up. I think fundamentally, that's what will help people make change, will help them reduce the noise, have clarity, move forward, be able to come from a place of ease and flow that is calm, clear from a calm, clear place. I think that is needed more than ever now across industries.

Cristina Amigoni: You brought up a good point earlier saying, we're talking theory in a lot of things, but we also have the practical experience of our own changes. Since we're talking about mindset and behavior changes, what are some examples that you've seen and how you show up differently now?

Aaron Wilson: My husband, he's a hyper-rational, hyper-achiever type of person. He likes to find – he likes to rationalize away, instead of not connect to the options at times. What I would say is, in terms of my mindset and behavior change has been around not reacting to what now he is experiencing and what I believe is burnout. As a partner, as a person that is there for him when he needs to decompress and share what’s on his heart, much of what he has exhibited is somebody that's having challenges at work. One of the things that I've learned through this theory of mental fitness framework is your closest partner is your greatest trainer, the person that causes you the deepest reactions, because they are the closest to you, you are the most vulnerable with them. It's going to cause the partner to react maybe more intensely, because of that closeness and that connection.

What I've learned through mental fitness is to come from a place of empathy first. Certainly, as we've been talking about recognizing that in those moments when he's reacting the way he is, that I don't judge it, that I come from a place of empathy and that involves me grounding myself through being in a place where I can connect with my five senses in the moment and not be responding to what he's saying. That's a very hard thing to do. It takes training, like we were mentioning. However, it is something that it enables me to hold space for him in the moments where he's erratic and not being rational in his thinking process. I can come from a place of understanding and help him explore what options he has available to him, what actions he can take that serve him in that moment when he is looking to me as an inspiration, as a place of calm, as a presence that is able to hear him in those moments where he isn't feeling heard and where he's feeling unsafe. I'm able to give that to him.

Before, I was dismissive. I was taking it as a front on his inability to show up as a human being. I was bringing in my own preconceived notions about what is the best way to go and approach certain situations in his work. I wasn't coming from a place of openness and understanding. I was coming from a place of judgment and rationalization. I wasn't there for him in those moments. I think to answer your question, long story short is that that it really is about showing up differently and coming from a place of grounded presence and peace and knowing what that feels like in those moments. Because when you're on autopilot, you don't realize that you're doing and reacting as you always do. Instead, it's taught me differently. He also notices that.

Over time, since 12 weeks of me doing this, he now comes to me from a place of ease and comes with questions, and how do I do this, versus is reacting and responding to what he is experiencing. That has changed our relationship and has really helped to open up what's possible in our conversation, versus reacting to every stimulus.

Alex Cullimore: Great example. I love that you pointed out also that things like, your partner as your greatest trainer. The people who are closest with is the paradoxes we find in working with these. We assume these are our closest people, the easiest people to talk to sometimes. But sometimes that's the most challenging. Sometimes that's the closest thing that we have to our greatest immediate training possibility, closest opportunity I should say yes. Our ability to do that. There are a little paradoxes if you start to understand these things, and it can be a little bit more painful at first. You start to work with people who you're close to, and that can be almost harder than trying it out in less high-stakes situations. But they all are our best opportunities to really practice what we learn in getting into that pause space and interrupting that autopilot. That’s a great example of changing the relationship of your relationship.

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah.

Aaron Wilson: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Cristina Amigoni: Well, we've seen it even in this room by having the same language and the same understanding. We can almost anticipate that if I say things this way, their autopilot make akin, their critic, their default make akin. How do I change how I say things? Or how do I provide more context, so that I'm not triggering what I know it's right there ready to default, the thought and judge?

Aaron Wilson: Yeah. That training aspect is the – because it's not just going to be a one and done when you open up the conversation. Those feelings are going to come back. It's training, at your point, Alex, too, is it's the groundedness. What I do is I will go and I will – before I know I have to have a hard conversation with anybody, I know that I need to spend 10 minutes minimum just going through grounding exercises, before I even, because I know myself. I know I react. I know my emotions. It's regulated more quickly than others, I think, but that's a judgment on myself. I have to release all of that and just, it's hard. It is an anecdote, but not easy. It's something that you really have to force yourself to do in order to anticipate, to your point, Cristina.

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. It's a little bit like, using your non-dominant hand for things that you use your dominant hand on. You actually have to consciously stop and switch the toothpaste, switch the fork, use the other hand, and it's going to be uncomfortable, but you have to do it over and over and over and over and over again. You can't just do it once and be like, “Success. I actually brushed my teeth. I didn't brush my nose with my left hand today.” It's, need to do it again, need to do it again. Yeah, and it's going to take me 10 minutes instead of two. But it's, how do I put myself in the situation?

Aaron Wilson: Totally. Totally. Yeah. One other thing too, as you're saying, is I'm like, the biggest challenge with doing that is to pay attention to switching the toothpaste and being present without reaction on things. What I've discovered is it's really challenging to do that when I fill my brain with other things during the day. For example, when I am on my phone and I go to my phone and those quiet 10 second moments where in reality, I could have, if I was focusing on sensations and I was really focusing on changing the toothpaste and switching the fork to the spoon and being able to be intentional with those different things and making changes, it's harder for me to get there when I'm so distracted with information that I'm overwhelmed with at any given point during the day. That prevents me from actually taking action and pause. Because then I'm in that pause, I'm going to my phone, or I'm doing other things with my kids. I don't have a kid, but there's just another distraction that I can easily go to, because it's your thing, or it's the dopamine thing.

That I have to call out, because I still struggle with that now, and will always struggle with that. I think as humans, I think we're going to go to the easiest thing, and so you have to be aware of, an example as a phone, as a distraction. What are your distractions that are preventing you from choosing differently in that pause?

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah, notifications. I don't know what I did, but I got a new phone and somehow it's synced to my watch, but it's not. I don't get any notifications anymore. They're there. They happen. But I leave my phone wherever in places. I try not to look at it, unless I absolutely need to. That's when I realized I missed three calls, I have 15 text messages, people had questions. Then I think about it and I'd be like, well, nobody died, everybody's safe. It's fine. Nothing bad happened. Because an hour later, and I see all these things now. But not having that distraction of the constant notifications, which I turned off. I never turned the sound on on my phone ever, unless it is an emergency. It's always on silent.

I turned off sound notification on most of the stuff years ago, and I never turned them back on, because the sound, it's just this constant reminder of, oh, here's another thing, here's another thing, here's another thing, here's another thing. It's like, most of the day I turn on the not disturb. When I meditate in the morning, I forget to turn it off and then I get things when I get things. I know that my kids and my family are the only emergency contacts that can get through. I tell everybody. It’s like, if you actually need me, because it's an emergency, you need to call. Do not send a text message, because that's still not something I will check consistently.

Aaron Wilson: I think some of the undercurrent of this is, and I read this and I don't remember. I forget. But yeah, just being bored. Boredom. I've read this recently, it's just like, we all just can't – We have a difficult time being bored and bored doesn't necessarily mean, like you were saying, Alex, right? It's like, I feel bored and I am bored. There's those differences there that what do you do with your time? Is the boredom generating awareness, or is it generating more reaction and more feeling the need to do something?

One of the things I've caught myself doing on autopilot is just dithering. I'll just grab a piece of paper and turn around in my house and look around, because I was waiting on the next thing, because I saw something on my floor. I picked it up and I was like, “I don't want that on my floor.” But then I'm thinking, “Well, I need to put this in the trash can, but I also need to do three other things while I'm doing it. Let me throw this on here and go to the next thing.” It's just that not wanting to have pause. That is the training aspect that we keep going back to, to empower you to move to more intention with your time.

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. Yeah, I think that's a good point. I saw some comedian recently who was talking about how mindfulness wasn't a word in the 80s. He's like, “Because we didn't have phones.” Anytime you were just waiting for a bus, or sitting on a bus, you had nothing else to do, it was all mindful. It was all mindful moments. There just was more pause. I think that the push notifications are basically the antithesis of that. There's always something that you can't track. There's always something that you can feel you have to do, or feel like you have to respond to, and then tell, you have a forcing mechanism, like you Cristina, where your watch stopped syncing with it for a while. Now there was no notifications by technological accident. Or when you set that more on purpose, get a brick function, or whatever. It takes to help eliminate those. Not until we do that that we started to experience that initial discomfort and eventually more space for some conscious choice.

Aaron Wilson: Mm-hmm.

Cristina Amigoni: Tell us about Your Coach Through Change. Who are your clients?

Alex Cullimore: Also, Your Coach Through Change is Aaron's coaching practice, since we haven't mentioned that yet. It’s for everybody who knows.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes.

Aaron Wilson: Yeah, Your Coach Through Change. Yeah. I mean, my client is a consultant. There's a broad cross section of consultants out there as management consultants, business consultants, leadership, all the things. Any consultants really, and when I say consultants, they're all high performers. A lot of us like to say we're all high performers. We probably are. I would say, consulting is built on that from its model on high performance.

Cristina Amigoni: You don't make it into consulting if you're not high performing.

Aaron Wilson: You do not know.

Alex Cullimore: No. It's a high anxiety field.

Aaron Wilson: Yeah. I definitely know and consulting in my 12 years in working and consulting that it is chew you up and spit you out. If I think about Hollywood, it's a system built to chew up and spit out products and young actors. I put that parallel with consulting at times. What's important with that in both of those is that, not all of them, but some flame out, because they were not supported.

Cristina Amigoni: Most, which is why most leave consulting, because it's not sustainable.

Aaron Wilson: It's not sustainable. The system is supporting performance, because, and that's changing the billable hour. Now with all of the AI and all the things happening, it's going to be even more pressure, because it's going to be outcome based, not process-based. That in and of itself, it's going to create a whole host of self-sabotaging thoughts and behaviors, from consultants that have their identity, fundamentally affected, because the billable hour was what was their bread and butter, was what owed value, what is what clients expected, because we're paying this much money, you give us this result. Now it's gray and it's very nebular for people. That brings up all kinds of insecurities, absolutely with a consultant.

It goes back to closing the gap from who you are to how you perform. With consulting, you're always performing. It can create this sense of emptiness inside that takes you away from your presence, that takes you away from all of the things that can really influence your decision. Unfortunately, what I ended up having to deal with, I ended up reacting and pleasing and performing and just making sure that the rooms were constantly satisfied. It took me away from the core work of what I did, which was to promote behavioral change as part of my work in change management. Over time, I just struggled with feeling like, what I did mattered. I burned out. I said that earlier.

What led me to Your Coach Through Change was helping people close that gap and helping people move from presence. With that presence being able to become aware of your mental habits, those things that are causing you to run on autopilot that ultimately make you feel empty and not feeling like you have purpose, or passion in your life. Then from there and being able to understand and be aware of those mental patterns, we help you create capacity. Recognizing those patterns is really only the beginning. Learning, as we've talked about, to shift them in the moment takes practice. It's regular exercise, takes coaching and support, as well as that coaching can help you bring you to choice. We have presence, we have capacity, then we have choice.

I'll say, conscious choice, conscious choice. There's between choice and reacting and not having to say your choice. Then there's conscious choice where you're aware of the choice you're making and the implications of that and all of those things. You're really pulling more of yourself into making those decisions, because you have the capacity. That's part of what I do. I coach people on those live challenges, help them have new reactions to replace those old reactions. Then as a result, you begin to notice, others begin to notice. With that, you get momentum, because you understand what your patterns are. You can uncover why those patterns are happening and you can interrupt them in the moment. I think that, all of that presence capacity, conscious choice and momentum is the framework at a very high level I'm explaining. This very high level to help people get to a place where they're rooted in understanding their self-sabotaging thoughts and behaviors and actions. Then I help move them into the origin world.

Where did those trigger, those self-sabotaging behaviors come from? They came from your childhood, so let's go down to where the energy of where that came. Let's unpack all of what's behind that, those limiting beliefs that you have about yourself, those assumptions, all of those self-sabotaging behaviors that keep you from your most authentic self. I think that's really my focus with Your Coach Through Change. I think, ultimately, consultants who have been built to perform are so far away from that they need to coach, they'll help them get.

Cristina Amigoni: Definitely. Very much needed. Yeah, because it's there. It's that sentence that we hear all the time like, you're getting your own way. But then it's like, okay.

Aaron Wilson: What does that mean? What do I do about it? What if I don't want to get in my own way all the time?

Aaron Wilson: Oh, no. Think about it. Yeah.

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah, that's absolutely needed. All right. Yeah. A couple of last questions for you. One is, what is your definition of authenticity, which you've actually talked about authenticity throughout. How would you define it?

Aaron Wilson: Showing up as you truly are, not how others think you need to be. I think it's just that it's being real when it's uncomfortable, it's alignment between how you think, feel, and do. It's all of those things, I think. As an example, one of the things that I have done from in the past is now, I'm saying I don't know when I don't know, versus I do know and I have the answer to it, how that performative that I spoke about. It's being able to raise disagreement with someone when it happens in the moment, versus just it's easier to go along. It's those types of things, I think, are so important to help feel like you are empowered in life as a human being and that what you say matters and you matter. I think that's so important.

What I've learned, particularly out of consulting after the last year that I was in, because I've not been consulting for last year. I've had a lot of time to really reflect. That's been me. That's authenticity for me.

Cristina Amigoni: Great definition. Where can people find you?

Aaron Wilson: Multiple places. On yourcoachthroughchange.com. I'm on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn.

Cristina Amigoni: We'll have all those in the show notes.

Aaron Wilson: Thank you. This was great. Appreciate the conversation.

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. Thank you.

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. Thanks, Aaron.

[END OF INTERVIEW]

Alex Cullimore: Thanks so much for listening to Uncover the Human. We Are Siamo, that is the company that sponsors and created this podcast. If you would like to reach out to us further, reach out with any questions or to be on the podcast, please reach out to podcast@wearesiamo.com. Or you can find us on Instagram. Our handle is @wearesiamo, S-I-A-M-O. Or you can go to wearesiamo.com and check us out there. Or, I suppose, Cristina, you and I have LinkedIn as well. People could find us anywhere else.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes, we do have LinkedIn. Yes. Yeah. We’d like to thank Abbay Robinson for producing our podcast and making sure that they actually reach all of you. And Rachel Sherwood for the wonderful score.

Alex Cullimore: Thank you guys so much for listening. Tune in next time.

Cristina Amigoni: Thank you.

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