Why Accidents Happen & Where to Find Courage When You Need It

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Today on Something You Should Know, where does wisdom come from? And more importantly, when do you acquire it? Then, why do accidents happen? Some explanations may seem hard to believe. We saw a spike in the number of ladder falls following the introduction of the show Home Improvement and it was a really noticeable increase.
That show inspired people to be involved in more do-it-yourself home projects and a lot of those involved ladders. Also why you simply cannot rush wisdom.
And would you like to be more courageous? You may need to be a bit more reckless. Reckless is the courage to take calculated risks and to err on

the side of action. Because frankly, better to learn from your mistakes than waste time predicting

the consequences of every decision, right? Like think fast and fearless. And if you're on the

fence, do it. All this today on Something You Should Know.
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And practical advice you can use in your life.

Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers.

It is often said that we live in a fast-paced world, but there is one thing that you cannot speed up, and that is wisdom. Hi, and welcome to this episode of Something You Should Know.
In middle age, something happens to your brain. According to imaging science, the mature brain is not inferior to a younger brain, it is just wired differently.

As a result, it's capable of triggering a new form of intelligence

that we're just not capable of when we're younger.

In fact, when a mature brain is challenged,

it begins to produce a type of intelligence that for thousands of years we have called wisdom.

In other words, the brain is wired in middle age to start to produce wisdom and continues to do so in old age. And no matter how smart you are, that wisdom will not come to you when you're younger.
It just cannot. Put simply, as people age, they become wiser.
Of course, it doesn't apply to everyone. Oscar Wilde once said, With age comes wisdom, but sometimes age comes alone.
And that is something you should know. Doesn't it seem like our world is safer than it used to be? Cars are built safer.
Playground equipment is safer. Bikers and skiers wear helmets when they didn't used to.
Your stepladder has multiple warnings all over it. Safety seems to be a big concern.
Still, accidents happen. And there is this perception, at least, that some people are more accident-prone than others.
So what does the research say about our safety-conscious world? Are we safer than ever before? When accidents happen, why do they happen? The answers might surprise you. Joining me is Steve Kasner.
He is a research psychologist who studies the accident-prone mind. He is a NASA scientist who also flies jets and helicopters and rides motorcycles and skateboards.
And he is still around. He's author of a book called Careful, A User's Guide to Our Injury-Prone Minds.
Hi, Steve. Welcome to Something You Should Know.
Thanks. Glad to be here.
So are we safer than ever before? Because it seems like we're safer than ever before. It's getting a little bit harder to be safe over the past few years, say 15, 20 years.
The rate of unintentional injuries has just crept upward and upward. And this is after decades of improvement.
In the old days, driving a car, walking down the street were much scarier things. And we've made so many improvements.
But lately, maybe in the past 20 years or so, 15, 20 years, the numbers started reversing and it got worse. Why? What happened? Things that we deal with in everyday life are becoming more complicated and more complex in ways that we're not really noticing upon first glance.
Things like what? One of my favorite examples is the phone. Now we all have smartphones and we're walking around and driving around looking at these phones.
That invention sort of introduced a very big difference that we, you know, didn't necessarily see coming. So you think back in the old days, the phone was attached to the wall and you could do other things while you talked on your phone that was attached to the wall.
You could keep an eye on your spaghetti sauce. And, you know, if you were distracted and something bad happened, it wasn't going to be that terrible.
And then a few years later, we had the longer cord on our phone. Then we could grab our phone and go in the other room.
You'd run it under the

door and you could sit in there and have some privacy. And that was fine too.
And then we had cordless phones, which allowed us to roam around our house with no cord running under the door. And that was fine.
But when the smartphone came along, it just eliminated everything about that, all the restrictions about that.

We can now drive a car.

We can walk.

We can do anything.

And we're in this new environment.

And people don't really understand that, wow, I can get in a whole lot more trouble with this particular invention than I could with all those previous inventions.

And no one really, I mean, people know it on some level but they don't stop to to to totally realize it and are the statistics backing that up that that there's a lot of phone related or or maybe somebody gets hit by a car you don't say what's because they were watching their phone uh yeah i mean if you you go to the statistics, there is a noticeable growth in driver distraction, crashes and fatalities. And even over the past few years, since my book came out, we've seen just a striking rise in the number of pedestrians and cyclists getting hit by cars.
and sometimes it's the drivers that are distracted. Sometimes it's the pedestrian or the cyclist

and sometimes it's the drivers that are distracted.

Sometimes it's the pedestrian and the cyclist. And sometimes it's both, which is a really awful scenario.
So what's the solution here? I mean, it seems like you're not going to take people's phones away and they're not going to, that's one of the reasons they have them is they can do all this multitasking. So, I guess it's survival of the fittest.
Well, yeah, that's a pretty cold way to look at it. Thank you.
Yeah. You know, just the very idea of multitasking is something, you know, we have to reconsider that maybe there's multitasking 40, 50 years ago where we would talk on the phone and, and keep an eye on our spaghetti sauce, you know, that that seems okay.
But in the car and on the street, you know, it's a very different, different picture that, you know, people aren't just aren't generally aware of how limited our ability to do that. I mean, there really is no multitasking.
We, what we're really doing when we're doing two things at once is switching back and forth. And, and there's a subtle thing, people don't really realize how engrossed in their phone they can be.
You know, the classic example is you're waiting at a stoplight, and everybody's seen this,

that the light turns green, but the person in front of you doesn't go anywhere because

they're looking down at their phone.

Besides the phone, though, when I think about accidents, accidents that I've had or accidents

that I see other people have, it does seem that a lot of the time, one of the ingredients in that accident is somebody wasn't paying attention. Yeah, I mean, that certainly is some of that.
So much is technology-based. So like the rearview cameras we have in cars now, there's another one.
I'm always talking and writing about these. People think, hey, this is so great.
I have a camera that shows me what's behind my car. I can just look into that camera before I go and, and, and then go.
But we're actually not seeing them have the, the effect that we all hope for that, you know, we would eliminate these sort of backup crashes that, that we had, because what, you know, people aren't realizing is that they're really there to supplement our looking around to see what might be behind us. They're not the only thing we can use.
We still have to turn around and look because they don't show everything. Yeah, I remember when I got my first car that had a backup camera and it's, and I think other people have this

same experience that I didn't trust it.

I just, I knew it was showing me what was behind the car, but somehow I still had to

look back over my shoulder because that's what I've been doing since I started driving.

But now I really don't look back over my shoulder.

I've gotten to rely on that camera and, and perhaps that's not such a great idea.

Thank you. driving.
But now I really don't look back over my shoulder. I've gotten to rely on that camera.
And perhaps that's not such a great idea. You know, where the accidents happen in many, many cases is someone comes running.
Often a child comes running from the periphery, sometimes to say goodbye to the driver. They run around the back, hoping to make it to the other side and say, you know, bye.
And, uh, you know, that's not on the screen. Well, why wouldn't it be on the screen? Well, it, it only shows a limited, uh, uh, unlimited angle.
So that child comes running out of nowhere. They're going to be one foot away.
You're going to see it on the screen, but you're going to have what a half a second to react to that so you need to be uh looking around and seeing the big picture you know it doesn't really help much to see what's happening right now you you need to know what's going to happen or might happen in a second or two or three seconds from now or even 10 seconds from now is it true that a lot of accidents and injuries that happen to people happen in the home yes it turns out that about 50 of all injury accidents do happen inside the house believe it or not you think that if you want to stay safe uh you could just never leave your house and that would uh that would solve the problem, it would probably make the problem worse. And where in the house are they happening? Literally every implement people use in the home can become almost a weapon of destruction.
You look at the number of injuries that happen using stoves and pots and pans, knivesives are another really big one. And then, of course, ladders.
Ladders are a terrific way to get hurt. Why is that? Why are ladders, I mean, obviously you're climbing up into the sky, yes, but there's also 400 warning stickers on every ladder that gives you a sense that there may be some danger here and to pay attention to what you're doing.
For one, it's sort of easy to imagine that it's not going to happen to you, that you have a really good sense of balance. You know, you're going to be okay.
Again, this is another example of the world just slightly changing and slightly becoming more complicated. But we saw a spike in the number of ladder falls following the introduction of the show Home Improvement.
So, you know, and it was a really noticeable increase. So, you know, what we imagine happened there was that that show inspired people to be involved in more do-it-yourself home projects.
And so they did. And a lot of those involved ladders.
So people pulled out their ladders and started using them much more than, you know, they did before. And there it was.
We're talking about accidents and safety. And my guest is Steve Kasner.
He is a NASA scientist and author of the book, Careful, A User's Guide to Our Injury-Prone Minds. This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance.
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That's shopify.com slash realm. so steve what about this idea that there are just some people who are injury prone that accidents are just more likely to happen to them yeah that was a long a long-held notion that there are you know people walk around with a little black cloud over their head the accident prone and someone finally wrote a book about this.
And, you know, people walk around with a little black cloud over their head, the accident prone. And someone finally wrote a book about this and, you know, dug into all the research.
You know, what they find is it's sort of a myth that really they're and I'm sure they're individual exceptions. But generally speaking, there are not people who are, you know, an accident waiting to happen happen it it's sort of spread across all of us because you know these things just aren't obvious like you know the effect of the phone they just don't pop out to to really anyone but are there's a general sense i think that men are more risk takers and therefore more likely to be hurt in accidents and they use more power tools perhaps or whatever, but do the statistics hold true for that? Yeah, it's two to one odds.
It's going to be a man, a male being wheeled into the emergency room. And so what do you do differently or what do you recommend people do differently? Like what are the big things to be really careful of that maybe people don't think about? One thing I like to do day to day is just pause for a second whenever I pick up anything that might do some harm or enter into any situation where I could be harmed.
And, you know, I have a great one about hand tools. Like I literally stopped cutting myself with kitchen implements once I started doing this.
What I always do is say I'm holding a knife and I just imagine that the knife goes a little farther than I intended it to, or a little wider than I intended it to. So you can almost imagine a cone of possible travel for the knife.
And then I think, what's in that cone? And is it anything important that I don't want to get stabbed or sliced or slashed? And, you know, it's just really amazing. I'll find myself, I'll catch myself like trying to open a package by pulling the knife towards me, you know, almost towards my chest.
And I'll think, do I really want a knife in my chest? I mean, it's probably not going to slip, but what if it did? So, wouldn't it be better to move the knife away from me so that if it did slip, it would just go into the air? And I do that with chopping vegetables or using screwdrivers, hammering a nail. You know, there's a classic one, you know, do you really want your other thumb to be right beside where you're aiming the head of the hammer? I mean, is there another way there? And there usually is another way.
Yeah. Almost always, you know, and it's often just as simple as, you know, rearranging yourself so that the tool just goes somewhere that, you know, it isn't going to hurt you.
And, you know, the classic example is when you're chopping vegetables to curl your fingers, you know, get your fingertips out of the path of travel, possible path of travel of the knife. Because sometimes it just doesn't dig in.
It slips to the side and that's where it gets us. Exactly.
Or the other thing is, you know, I tend to cut myself in the kitchen more likely right after the knives get sharpened. Because I'm used to them not being that sharp.
And then all of a sudden they're slicing through things like my finger like never before. That's interesting.
You know, a lot of people say just the opposite that, you know, the dull knife is more dangerous. But, you know, I think anytime something changes, you got to realize that your old routine, that that routine that runs on autopilot for you might not serve you so well in this situation.
So, yeah, a newly sharpened knife. Yeah, I'd be careful with that myself.
So we hear a lot about, especially for older people, slips and falls, you know, in the bathroom or wherever. And is that really, uh, the, the domain of older people, or it seems like anybody can slip and fall.
Yeah. I mean, we certainly do, uh, see that it's sort of this U shaped curve.
Uh, people who are really good slippers and fallers are children. They have no experience and no sense of what's dangerous.

And that's why we have to follow them around and helicopter over them to prevent things that are worse than those boo-boos and scrapes. But then, you know, comes later in life.
And here is the other big example of something in the world that changed and caught us by surprise that we're not willing to sit down and think about. So I go back to 1930.
I just did this the other day. What percentage of the population was age 75 and older in 1930? And it was 2%.
2% of all living human beings were 75 or older. So, you know, that's kind of rare, one in 50.
I mean, you could walk around, go about your day and never actually see one, one meaning a person over 75. But now you fast forward today, it's almost seven and a half percent.
So we've almost quadrupled the number of persons over 75. But all of a sudden, we have this widespread need to be aware of what it's like to be 75 or older.
And aging is something that's getting us. And you got to understand, none of us have had any practice being 75 before our 75th birthday.
And if there aren't that many of them around, we don't get to learn from others. So this is something we really got to prepare ourselves for because it's different.
It really surprised me what you said at the beginning that things are becoming less safe, that there are more accidents, because that's not what I sense from the world. It seems like we're very safety conscious.
You know, people wear helmets today for things they never used to. The playground equipment is safer.
There are more restrictions, safety restrictions on all kinds of things. Cars are built better.
So if things are getting worse, where are they getting worse? what would surprise me to know where safety is not

working? Could I just back up and say something? You said something really important there about

the world getting safer and safer. And it really did.
But it seemed to hit a turning point sometime

around 1995 or 2000. I call it the hockey stick graph.
So it's really fun. You go back to 1900 and you see, you know, the world is a very dangerous place.
And but the numbers year after year just keep going down and down and down and down like the, you know, the long handle of the hockey stick. And then we get to 1995 or 2000 and then it starts going back up again.
So we're seeing a subtle rise in everything across the board. And, you know, which just reinforces my point that we got to put a little more thought into this, that it's a little harder to get through the day in one piece.
It's not a lot harder. You know, we don't need to study.
We just need to stop and think just a little bit more than we used to. Are we, though, making some progress in some areas that, for example, it seems like because cars are so much safer than they used to be with airbags and the way they're built, that we're not seeing the injuries and the deaths in car crashes like we used to.
No. Again, that's my point.
The hockey stick graph, it did go way down and then it started going up again. Look at the past couple of years.
We've seen just unprecedented increases in the number of car crash fatalities, pedestrian fatalities, cyclist fatalities. It went up again.
And it almost leaves you incredulous. We've put every safety feature, safety strap, we bubble wrapped everything in sight.
How does it go up again? Well, we've introduced things like phones that can be used while you're driving and other subtle things. Maybe people are more stressed out.
They're maybe more likely to drive aggressively than they used to be. There's just a lot of subtle things, which brings me back to my point.
We just got to think a little bit more about this. Am I more stressed out? Am I distracted? What's going on with me? Spend 15 seconds, 30 seconds thinking about this, and you might make a difference in your life.
Well, I still find it surprising that we're seeing more and more accidents. But as you say, things like the phone and other distractions probably play a big part in that.
And that paying attention, paying attention could go a long way into preventing accidents. My guest has been Steve Kasner.
He's a research psychologist, NASA scientist, and author of the book, Careful, A User's Guide to Our Injury-Prone Minds. And if you look in the show notes, you'll see a link to his book at Amazon.
Steve, thanks for coming on today. Hey, thanks, Mike.
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I'm sure there have been times in your life when you have done something really courageous, something that took real bravery to pull off. There are likely other times when you couldn't quite muster up that courage, and maybe now there's a twinge of regret about it.
If only I had tried. I remember a previous guest here said, and I always remembered this, that people are much more likely to regret things they never tried than the things they did try and failed.

Still, some force holds us back from doing something that we think we really want to do.

And here to talk about what stops us, what that force is, and how to push past it, is Jenny Wood.

She's a former Google executive, speaker, writer, and airplane pilot.

Her writing has been featured in the Harvard Business Review, Entrepreneur, Inc., and Forbes. She's author of a book called Wild Courage.
Go after what you want and get it. Hey, Jenny, welcome.
Good to have you on Something You Should Know. Thanks so much for having me.
It is a total pleasure to be here. So explain what wild courage is and how it's different than regular courage and why we're talking about it.
Yeah, of course. Well, think of something you want right now, right? It could be a goal, a relationship, a promotion, and think about what's standing between you and achieving that thing.
I'd coached tens of thousands of Googlers, executives, non-executives inside and outside the company, scientists, artists, and the same theme kept coming up, Mike, their relationship to fear, fear of the unknown, fear of failure, and fear of judgment by others. And so wild courage is the process of feeling that fear and going after that thing that you want anyway.
And it's the set of tools to help you go after what you want and get it. And the reason I say wild courage, not just regular courage, is because wild courage encompasses these nine traits that raise eyebrows.
They're sizzly, but they create the bars of an invisible cage that keep you small. And when we can learn to use these traits in a positive way, we can really just make incredible things happen for ourselves, for our lives, for our relationships, and for our careers.
So when I hear the term wild courage, when I think of someone who has wild courage, it's a certain kind of person, that it's a kind of person who's really out there, who's very extroverted, who really doesn't care what other people think. He's just out there making things happen.
And, you know, that's not who I am. And so it seems like wild courage is more of a personality trait than it is something you could learn to do.
Well, I deeply believe that wild courage can be learned. And I also believe that wild courage can come in small steps and little courage deposits that you make every day.
So here's an example that might feel just on one end of the spectrum of wild courage, and then I'll kind of bring it back to how you can still apply this to your day-to-day. So it's 2011.
I'm riding the New York City subway home from work, and about 20 feet away from me stands this really good-looking guy, gorgeous blue eyes, thick, wavy brown hair, and I'm so taken by him, and I want to talk to him, but something holds me back. Those same three fears I just mentioned, fear of failure, What if he's married, fear of uncertainty? What if he's a convicted felon, fear of judgment by others? What if a hundred people watch me as I make a fool of myself on this packed train? So I sit there as the train passes stop after stop after stop.
And frankly, Mike, as life passes me by, but I was still so excited about the prospect of this guy. And I was looking to get married at that time.
So I was clearly keeping my eyes open. And I said, okay, if he gets off at my stop, then I'm going to try to strike up a conversation with him.
And if not, then that's the universe telling me it wasn't meant to be. Well, he gets off at the next stop, which is not my stop.
And all of a sudden, this wave of wild courage washes over me and practically pushes me out of my subway seat. And I pry the doors open.
I am not exaggerating. I pry the doors open and I run off the train after him.
I catch up with him. I tap him on the shoulder.
I say, excuse me, I'm sorry to bother you. You're wearing gloves.
So I can't tell if you're wearing a wedding ring. But in the event that you're not married, you were on my subway, and I thought you were cute.
Any chance I can give you my business card? And he calls the next day. A week later, we go out.
Three years later, we're getting married, and we've now been married happily 11 years with two little hooligans, ages seven and nine. Well, it seems like you're making my point by telling that story because I can imagine a lot of women, particularly, but people in general, listening to that story and thinking, I could never, ever do that.
Walk up to a guy, a strange guy, and offer to give him my business card. I would never do it.
That's not who I am. Right.
So yeah, when I teach Wild Courage, I definitely, I use that as an example, right? That seems like a very extraordinary example, but there are so many ordinary moments as well where it can come into play. Just yesterday, someone voice memoed me and said, hey, Jenny, I've got such a, they'd read the book and she said, I've got such an exciting example of wild courage that I never would have done before.
I applied for a role within my company. I had to fill out this online form and there was a box.
I had to enter the number of years I have of XYZ type of specific marketing experience. And I said seven years.
And then I got an auto rejection. She filled out the rest of the form.
She got an auto rejection because she got it immediately and learned that it was because she didn't have the right level of experience. So instead of just, I think a lot of people who are not living with wild courage would be like, okay, I guess that it's not the right level for me, or I don't have the experience, or it just wasn't meant to be, right? The universe just didn't have this one in the cards for me.
But instead, she found the recruiter and she wrote them back and said, well, I have seven years of book experience and I have seven years of marketing experience. And even though I don't have seven years of those combined, I think in the same category, I think that I actually do have the experience.
And the recruiter was super psyched to talk to them, right away set this person up for interviews. This person interviewed just yesterday, and that's why she had told me about this exciting moment of wild courage and said it went really well and we don't know the outcome yet.
But the reality is this was not a subway chaser moment. This was a very common situation where someone gets rejected for something or they're scared scared to ask for something, or they think it's out of place or out of line or out of the norm.
But then because of this mindset of wild courage, they went for it anyway. And that is what is so beautiful.
And that is why wild courage can be learned. And it's not just about hunting strangers down and asking them if they're married on the subway.
Is it part of the process? Because I don't know how much people know this, but I think people know this, and we've talked about it here before, of how people looking back on their life don't regret the things they did that didn't work out. They regret the things they didn't do.
They wish they had, because you never know. Is it important to embrace that? Or that's nice to know, but that's not part of this.
Oh, it's absolutely part of this. Oh, I'm so glad you're bringing this up.
Because that's the, you know, of the nine traits, that's the reckless trait. Reckless is the courage to take calculated risks and to err on the side of action.
Because frankly, better to learn from your mistakes than waste time predicting the consequences of every decision, right? Like think fast and fearless. And if you're on the fence, do it, right? I regret, and I so agree with you that we regret the moves we don't make more than the moves we do make that maybe resulted in a mistake or maybe a failure because, A, failure is just data.
B, if you want to double your successes, quadruple your failures. C, if you want to have a successful career, look at the discography of any successful leader, right? Don't just look at their greatest hits.
They had a bunch of gaffes. They had a bunch of failures.
They had a bunch of missteps. Look at their LinkedIn profile.
Look at all the redirections, right? The career changes, the moves, the lateral moves, the industries, the international moves, right? Like all of those represent risks that they took, represent failures that happened. It represents that they must have learned from those failures, which just become data.
And for sure, I've regretted the moves. I didn't make far more than the moves I did.
When John and I got married, we said, okay, at some point, when our kids are young in elementary school, we're going to take them and we're going to live abroad for a year and work abroad, be expats for one or two years. Guess what? Life has passed us by.
It's our own subway train moving stop after stop after stop without us getting off the train and together as a family moving to another country because it's easy to stay, because it's hard to rent your house, because the kids are in school and ingrained in their activities and their lives. But for sure, I regret that we didn't make that happen, even though we vowed to do so.
And I'm pretty confident that if we had moved to Paris or Singapore or Buenos Aires, we would have, sure, had some hard months getting adjusted, but we never would have regretted it. So I agree that even I fail to be reckless, right? And to have the courage to take calculated risks and that I, too, regret the moves I didn't make more than the moves I do make, even if they weren't perfect decisions.
So if somebody listening says, okay, well, this all sounds great, but if you're not inclined to be like you, where do you start? Where do you put your toe in the water? Yeah. Well, you start by dialing up your confidence a little bit, right? And this is stuff you can do every day with your boss.
75% of employees report a lack of confidence at work. This is a study out of the University of Leeds.
And this is so, I believe it because no matter how they calculated this or how they did the study, I certainly saw this at Google. I saw so many talented, smart, driven, capable, experienced employees stay stuck.
And we're talking Google. We're talking the cream of the crop and one of the best companies to work for.
And yet people would get in their own way. And so I think the first step is to dial up your confidence, which I call shameless.
And that's the courage to stand behind your efforts and abilities. It's being your own champion.
Because if you, you know, if you find your swagger and you kind of act like you're doing great work, because you probably are, then let people know. So what's a real easy tool? I call this the Monday minifesto.
Every Monday, send your boss a note that takes no more than 15 minutes to write. No more than 15 minutes.
Two things you're proud of last week or that you did last week and two things that you're excited to work on this week. I had leaders who reported to me who did this and I had leaders who reported to me who didn't.
And it was unbelievable how much I valued the ones who did it, understood what they were working on, used it as things I could take to my boss to show that my team was actually getting stuff done. When they would link to things, I'd be like, okay, cool.
Now I can save a 15-minute meeting with you because I see the doc that you're working on right here. I can just add some comments.
And so that doesn't require subway chasing. It doesn't require some massive ask to your CEO, you know, if they can mentor you.
It's just you and your boss and you shamelessly talking about what you did last week. It's using the language, I'm proud.
And that is so powerful. Can I put you on the spot, Mike, and ask you one thing you're proud of last week professionally? Well, I'm certainly proud of the success of this podcast, given that we're, you know, on Apple Podcasts on their charts, we're in the top 200 of all podcasts.
And I think there are, I believe, over 5 million podcasts to choose from. So to be in the top 200, yeah, I'm pretty proud.
I'm pretty proud of that. Oh, okay.
That was the most perfect example of healthy shamelessness because you started with I'm proud. I'm proud that there are, you said 5 million? At least.
There are at least 5 million podcasts and we are in the top 200. Not only was it like, I just got excited hearing that.
So I am not your manager, but if I am your manager, I'm getting excited about the work that you're doing. And you've also done something really smart, which is you've used a tool I call double your numbers.
You didn't just say, we're a top podcast. You said of the 5 million plus, we are top 200.
That is an amazing shameless tactic. And again, shameless in the right way, shameless about the audacity or the pride in your work in the best possible way.
Because now I'm, I mean, man, Mike, I'm excited to be on your show. I knew you were a big show, but I didn't know you were that big.
And what a privilege that I now feel to be having this conversation with you. There are some people at work who never talk about their wins with their manager, and there are some people who do.
And the way you did it actually excited me. And it expanded the pie of this conversation together because it got me so excited to be here.
And that's the impact you can have on your boss when you share something you're proud of, especially when you include numbers. So you said there are nine traits of wild courage.
So let's talk about some of the other ones. Well, obsessed is a great one.
And you know, this is one that just like the others, it raises eyebrows. It creates the bars of an invisible cage that keep you small.
People don't want to say, oh, I'm obsessed with this project. But obsessed is the courage to set your own standard.
It is your ability to push, persist, and perform. It's frankly is almost like the baseline of all of the others because none of these other nine traits will serve you well if you don't learn to deliver, not for some company, but to achieve your own ambitions.
Here's a great example of this. I do a lot of keynotes for Fortune 500 companies.
I do a lot of consulting. I do a lot of fireside chats and workshops.

And I was working with a keynote coach on refining some particular parts of my keynote. And he's like, Jenny, he read the book to prep for this work together.
And he said, I read the book, except I skipped the obsessed chapter. And I was like, Mike, why'd you skip obsessed? He's like, oh, it just sounded so exhausting.
And I was like, okay, fair enough. but he then as we were working together

shocked me

because obsessed. He's like, oh, it just sounded so exhausting.
And I was like, okay, fair enough. But he then, as we were working together, shocked me because he kept sending me clips of keynotes.
Steve Jobs, Stanford commencement speech, minute seven, he texted me, Jenny, I want you to watch these two minutes. This is something that I think you can do.
He took a story and he said, I'm so excited to share this with you. I've tried it three different ways.
And I think this is going to get a bigger laugh. He would send me

other things to look at that other people had done, other Ted talks that he thought this was

a part I could emulate. And we got on a call and I was like, Mike, I know you skipped the obsessed

chapter, but this is what obsessed looks like. You are so excited to make this keynote as good

as it can be. You are so excited to help me shine.
You are so passionate about this project that you can't help but pour all of your energy and enthusiasm and ideas and examples into it and constantly text me things for me to review. That is obsessed.
It's the passion. It's the drive.
It's the fire under you that so many of us have. But sometimes we want to play it cool or we think like, oh, like I don't want people to know how hard I'm working or I don't want it to look to my coworkers and my teammates like I am, you know, this intense on the project.
But it's a great thing. It shows you care about what you're doing.
So what is that? What is that reluctance that I don't want to look too eager or too passionate or too whatever it is? What is that? It's us being stuck in high school or middle school, right? And I was. And it's almost like this evolutionary psychology of being on the savanna where you never wanted to stand out.
You never wanted to stick your neck out or show that you were different or too eager or too opportunistic. Because on the Savannah, if you're standing out, that could mean you were a lion's lunch, right? Because you wanted to keep your head down, stay protected by the pack.
Same thing with middle school. You wanted to play it cool.
This was me in middle school. I would would study really hard for the test mic, but then, Oh, Jenny, you got to play it cool.
You got to study hard, but pretend like you didn't, you get the A and you're like, Oh my gosh, how did that happen? But no, in real life, the world is far too busy and competitive and, and you know, um, packed with people on social media or in your organization with 8 billion people, that standing out, what I call playing it hot, which is part of being obsessed, is the only way you can really make a dent. So in an organization, let's say you're the intern.
Sure, you can play it cool. You can stay quiet.
You can never share a creative idea thinking, well, I'm just the intern. Who am I to say? Or I'm only five years into this company.
Who am I to go say something that pushes back gently on an idea or that creates a new project or that proposes a new system or a new program or a new product, whatever it is? Who am I to do that if I'm not in the C-suite? Well, when you play it hot, when you're a little bit obsessed, you go for those things. And you kind of shed that evolutionary psychology vibe of, I don't want to stand out.
And you decide that it's actually a strategic commitment to not fit in. And you say something in the team meeting, you come off of mute, even if you're the intern, right? You may as well make a splash and have people remember you.
If you want to just have that company on your resume for the two-month summer stint, then sure, go ahead. Play it safe.
Stay quiet. Live in fear.
Don't live with wild courage. But if you want to get that job among the 20 other people who are competing with you for that same full-time offer in the fall, then being obsessed, you know, working hard, telling people you're working hard, being opportunistic, asking for new opportunities, asking to sit in that meeting with marketing or sales, even though you're not invited, absorbing those things and being bold.
That's how you actually win big time in life and you achieve great success as opposed to just humming along. So in the last few minutes here, tell me how I start my journey of wild courage.
What's the first little steps to start? Well, you take the first action, right? So I've got this very quick goal setting framework, which is rock, chalk, talk, and walk. What is the big rock that you want to achieve? Maybe it is losing 10 pounds by the end of the year.
Well, that is your very specific goal that has numbers in it. We talked about that before with your example, which I loved so much about the podcast.
So that's your rock, lose 10 pounds by the end of the year, not lose weight. That's not specific enough.
Chalk, you then write it down. So I chalked it down in your case.
You would write down the goal of losing 10 pounds and put it somewhere where you can see it every day. You talk about it out loud.
You might then go to other people, friends, family, partners, and say, hey, I have a goal to lose 10 pounds. Would you keep me honest on it? Would you be my gym buddy? Would you be my accountability partner and allow me to like, you know, check in with me how I'm doing on my weight loss app or my calorie tracking, whatever it is.
And then you walk the walk. What is one small thing you can do today to achieve that goal? Maybe it's replacing the big dishes in your kitchen with smaller dishes, right? That is to me how you start your journey of wild courage is you set a big goal and then that's how you close the gap between you and that thing that you want to achieve.
Rock, chalk, talk, and walk. Well, it's great to hear you talk the way you talk, because you not only give people encouragement, but almost permission to try something.
As you said, if you're on the fence, try it because you're far more likely

to regret never trying something

than trying something

and maybe it doesn't work out.

Jenny Wood has been my guest.

The name of her book

is Wild Courage.

Go after what you want

and get it.

And there's a link to her book

at Amazon

in the show notes.

Jenny, this was great.

Thank you so much for coming on.

Well, thank you so much. What a joy to be here.
Thanks for the conversation. There's no one way to tell if someone is lying or telling the truth, but there are some clues you can look for, according to former FBI agent Jack Schaefer.
First of all, the yes or no question. A yes or no question deserves a yes or no answer.
To test people for the truth, ask them a yes or no question. If they fail to answer yes or no, that could be a red flag.
After someone provides some convoluted answer, then ask the same question again. If they once again fail to answer with yes or no, the probability of deception increases.
The word well. If you ask someone a direct yes or no question and the response you get begins with the word well, there's a high probability of deception.
Well indicates that he or she is about to give an answer that he or she knows the questioner is not expecting. Why should I believe you? When truthful people are asked why others should believe them, they typically answer, because I'm telling the truth, or some variation of that.
Liars have a difficult time saying, because I'm telling the truth, because they're not telling the truth. Instead, liars offer other responses like, well, I'm an honest person.
Well, you don't have to believe me if you don't want to. Or, I have no reason to lie.
While these are not 100% foolproof, collectively, they can indicate how truthful someone is being. And that is something you should know.
If you're a regular listener, you've heard me say a million times that we would love it if you would share this podcast with someone you know. And if you've done that, great.
Feel free to do it again. But if you haven't, even though you've heard me ask, maybe this would be a good time to do it.
It only takes a moment to share the link on the podcast player you're listening on and help us grow our audience. I'm Mike Carruthers.
Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. Have you ever heard about the 19th century French actress with so many lovers that they formed a lover's union? Or what about the Aboriginal Australian bandit who faked going into labor just to escape the police, which she did escape from them.
It was a great plan. How about the French queen who murdered her rival with poison gloves? I'm Anne Foster, host of the feminist women's history comedy podcast, Vulgar History.
Every week I share the saga of a woman from history whose story you probably didn't already know, and you will never forget after you hear it. Sometimes we re-examine well-known people like Cleopatra or Pocahontas sharing the truth behind their legends.
Sometimes we look at the scandalous women you'll never find in a history textbook. Listen to Vulgar History wherever you get podcasts.
And if you're curious, the people I was talking about before, the Australian woman was named Marianne Bug and the French actress was named Rochelle, no last name, just Rochelle. And the queen who poisoned her rival is Catherine de' Medici.
I have episodes about all of them. Hello, I am Kristen Russo.
And I am Jenny Owen Youngs. We are the hosts of Buffering the Vampire Slayer once more with spoilers, a rewatch podcast covering all 144 episodes of, you guessed it, Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
We are here to humbly invite you to join us for our fifth Buffy prom, which, if you can believe it, we are hosting at the actual Sunnydale High School. That's right.
On April 4th and 5th, we will be descending upon the campus of Torrance High School, which was the filming location for Buffy's Sunnydale High, to dance the night away, to 90s music in the iconic courtyard, to sip on punch right next to the Sunnydale High fountain, and to nerd out together in our prom best inside of the set of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. All information and tickets can be found at bufferingcast.com slash prom.