S3 E7: The Inmates Running the Asylum

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pushkin

Hey, dream listeners.

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Previously on the dream, what is neuro-linguistic?

Linguistic program.

Well, neuro-linguistic program means neuro, the mind-body connection.

I don't really agree with the advice.

I feel like it's teaching people to deny their intuition.

Okay.

What happens is we come to you with this information and you say, oh, it's something wrong with their mindset.

And so I just think, for lack of a better word, it's all bullshit.

Do I have to be doing this all the time?

No.

So what is the NLP part?

Jesus.

Can we just?

I just want you to give me the.

Let me give you a process.

In retrospect, what I'm about to tell you was super dumb of me.

But before we started nosing around in this world, I seriously thought that coaches had to have some sort of expertise in whatever they were coaching people in.

I'm too old to have assumed this, but like I thought relationship coaches should be happily coupled up, and finance coaches should be set for life.

Soccer coaches should know how to play soccer.

But as with soccer coaches who don't know how to play soccer, or music critics who can't play an instrument, instrument or therapists who are some of the most cuckoo bananas friends I have, yeah, no, you don't really need to know anything.

All you need to have is gumption and maybe a lack of imposter syndrome.

Anyone can do this, which I warned Dan was going to be a problem for me in finding a coach.

I want them to be fun and funny.

I don't want a whiff

of their life being fucked up, though.

so that which is something that i don't mind in a therapist right

weirdly right

okay well that's an interesting thing i mean and to me that's interesting because that you know like their lives are fucked up there's no one whose life isn't slightly fucked up

i don't want to know it okay i don't want to even be i want to not be able to tell because i want to be like i want people to not be able to tell that my life's fucked up right okay um so i want people to look at me after this and just be like how does she do it?

How does she have it all?

Meanwhile, nothing fundamentally has changed about my life.

Right.

It's just my attitude.

Dan's right, though.

Everyone is fucked up.

And hardly any coach or coach adjacent person we talk to passed this test.

Take Dr.

John James Sant'Angelo, PhD.

That PhD, even according to him, isn't even really that legit.

I just wanted the PhD after my name looks good on the book.

Wait, where'd you get that PhD?

It's an online university, and

they're specialists inside NLP,

CBT, and also hypnosis.

So it's very, it's very

important.

Which online university?

Oh, it's called Manna University back east somewhere.

Manning?

Manna.

Mana.

Okay, go ahead.

And that may be wrong.

Who knows?

I looked it up, and there are two MANA universities.

One is a Christian college, and one was an online university that now takes you to a 404 error page.

What about Jennifer?

She was stalled out for years making no money at Arbonne when Ray Higdon came along and selected her to become a coach.

And Ray Higdon himself, what are his credentials?

Well, according to his own biography, he failed at 12 MLMs.

Then he joined a coin collecting MLM called Numis.

and worked his way up the ranks so high and things went so well that he launched an offshoot of the coin collecting company that did travel MLM stuff, like a travel agency, but in a pyramid shape.

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Sounds to me like Ray's mostly an expert at sounding like an expert at nothing.

So at a certain point, I had to acknowledge I was living a fantasy.

Coaches don't need to have any first-hand experience with the kind of success or happiness or self-actualization they're selling.

And who's checking anyway?

There's no licensing board or anything, which begs the question, who are coaches really?

Who becomes a coach?

Who puts themselves out there as someone who knows how to do life?

And why?

Why would you do that?

Today, we're going to start with an answer based on actual research from an actual expert.

My name is Patrick Sheehan, and I just completed my PhD in sociology, and I'm starting a new job at Stanford as a post-doctoral researcher.

In what?

Sociology.

What kind of, what do you mean?

This is not like everybody.

Sociology is an expansive discipline.

I'm really interested in sort of economic sociology and sort of like the charismatic in the economy, sort of these elements that are not rational about what we buy and sell and what we believe in.

So I started graduate school to do a PhD in sociology around 2017.

And this was a time when the news was lit up with automation is going to change everyone's jobs, future of work, everyone's going to need to retrain.

I was particularly hooked on this story about truck drivers are going to get put out of jobs and they're going to need to become nurses.

Why?

Because there's going to be automated trucks.

Automated trucks.

I mean, this was

2016, it was going to be automated trucks next year.

You know how these things go.

And so when I started looking for topics to study, I wanted to see what was going to happen to people like retraining when they lose their jobs.

So I went looking for places that do retraining for unemployed people or dislocated workers.

And this is in Austin, Texas.

And all I could find were these places that are mostly called job clubs or job search clubs

that unemployed people go to once a week.

And there's a speaker that gives them some kind of advice on the job search or coping with unemployment and all the things that come with that.

And it's very much kind of group therapy stuff where everyone's looking at each other and encouraging each other.

And most of the places I was, this is kind of like North Austin, were all like older, unemployed professionals, very kind of white collar, a lot like IBM and Dell have these big places.

Were they, was it like conference rooms in an industrial park?

That's what i'm thinking it was more like churches oh

two out of the three big ones i went to were churches ranges of secular versus how serious there were prayers at the beginning and some were at just uh

community centers you know and they were kind of non-profit groups okay and so but you go to these things and i expect they're that that people are going there and getting retrained and they're going to get and they're going to learn how to code and become a coder or something and all they really got were these kind of motivational talks and so the people that come to these things every week are career coaches and every week there's someone giving a talk about how to improve yourself improve your resume change your mindset read you know

there you go uh at first i'm just shocked by that because it's just self-help you know for these poor people who just lost their jobs and they're worried about their mortgages and and they're just like motivational like i'm already suspicious about self-help as an answer to unemployment you know structural problems and then you're told to like improve your mindset.

But then this extra thing where it's like,

everyone's an expert expert and there are no experts and we're helping each other.

So I sort of pursued that kind of question and trying to, the main thing I was trying to figure out is like, how do people think these people are experts?

And how does one become an expert in career coaching when you're unemployed?

Right.

Well, I think that's, I think it's probably a prerequisite, honestly.

Like, I don't have time to become a career coach because I have a job.

Yeah, but you would think, right.

The first thing I was trying to figure out is like, what are they telling them is the problem here?

Like, what are they diagnosing as the problem that everyone is, because everyone is there is not only losing money or, you know, doesn't have a paycheck, but also is like, it's a lot of men that had technical jobs for a long time and their identity was really tied to their work.

And so there's having a kind of identity collapse at the same time.

And so I found there was three different kinds of stories that these coaches would tell.

One was that you're unemployed because the problem here is a technical problem.

You don't understand how to find a job today.

And all of this played on their age often, but it was like getting a job.

In this era, you mean?

In this era.

Yeah.

It's like, how do you get a job today?

When I was young, I used to be a yellow pad and a pencil.

Now you need to know how to master LinkedIn.

Networking is more important than ever.

Resume and interviewing, blah, blah, blah.

So one of the diagnoses is like, I'm going to teach you, and this is where they present their expertise.

I'm going to teach you how to get a job by teaching you how to master this kind of technical system of getting a job.

I'm going to teach you how to network.

You get to do these really kind of...

weird like role plays of networking.

I'm going to show you how to up your LinkedIn, change your photo.

We're going to test different kinds of titles and blah, blah, blah.

So one diagnosis is like this technical problem.

Second one is this sort of mindset calling problem.

Essentially, what they're saying there is that the reason you're unemployed is that you have the wrong sort of orientation towards work.

Couple, like two sub-things in that.

One is like kind of the mindset problem, which is you can't get a job because you have these limiting beliefs that are holding you back from seeing the opportunities that are in front of you.

And you're well aware of that kind of thing, but I can give you examples.

Limiting beliefs, I just immediately think of Mexium.

Yes,

yeah, yeah, and NLP and all of that.

Really weird, a lot of NLP and a bunch of practices that they would lead us in in the group of like power poses and power poses.

Power poses are a big one.

What to do one?

Stand up and do it.

My favorite is hands, you know,

fists at the hip.

You can also cross your arms.

I do that just naturally.

Because you're a powerful person.

But you know about those.

It's like,

okay, this

researcher from Harvard said that if you do these things, it raises your confidence and you perform.

Did you put your hands up?

One is like a triumphant V yes.

I would never do that.

You're supposed to do this thing in the bathroom before your interview.

Okay.

Like stand in the mirror and cross your arms and be kind of badass in order to prove your competence.

This is like one of the solutions they're suggesting to this diagnosis of a mindset problem.

Other ones that we had was like visualization, you know, the one I'm remembering now is like visualize yourself getting this job, close your eyes, see it in a picture frame in front of you, you getting that job.

Go out and grab that picture frame with your two hands, raise it above your head, plunge your body into that vision so that you can feel all of the good stuff about succeeding.

Then we scrunched it down into a ring and put it on our fingers to carry with us or whatever.

But

these are the kind of solutions that they offer for a problem of limiting beliefs, you know, not believing in yourself.

Unemployed people listen to one of those talks and then they'll tell me like, yeah, I think

my problem is that I'm an INFJ and my boss was an ENTG or whatever.

A lot of personality tests.

But people will say, like, the reason I can't get a job is because I'm a sensing intuitive.

But they'll tell me that that's the problem.

They lost their job.

That's why they lost their job and why they can't get a new one.

And then I talk to them a while for a while and then I learn that they actually lost their job in a reorganization.

You know, the jobs were sent to India or they shut down the division.

Yeah.

And then I say, what's what?

And they're like, well, you know, yeah, but.

It's magical thinking.

Yeah.

But personality test is something that you can focus on.

Mindset is something that you can do yourself.

But then the weird thing that happens is after a few weeks, I start to notice that

the people, let me say it through one person.

There's a woman I met named,

I think I call her Diane.

I change all the names for my research.

Yeah.

Sits at the back of the thing with me, used to work at Dell, got laid off twice, two or three times, maybe early 50s.

And I just chat with people.

I'm doing ethnographic research, right?

I'm taking notes and observing everything.

And I get to know her.

She's, you know, looking for a job, trying to figure it out.

and totally normal like everyone else I talk to.

And then I go back the next week and she looks a little bit more dressed dressed up and she's wearing a blazer.

And instead of sitting down next to me, she walks to the front of the room and she's this week's guest speaker.

And she introduces herself as a life coach, an expert motivational guru.

One week after you were sitting in the back.

Yeah, I mean, I had got to know her over three weeks, maybe, and she'd never mentioned this, you know, not too deep, but...

And then all of a sudden she's at the front of the room.

It's like she put on a blazer and she, they have a parking spot for like this week's guest speaker.

She parks there and all of a sudden she's an expert, you know, in the room.

Even though I know she's looking for a job, but she's helping other people.

And she gives a talk that's called like how to improve yourself to get to your dream job or something like that.

And at that moment, I was like, what is going on here?

You know, it's like, I already could see the group therapy stuff going on, but here it's like very clearly.

And not only does she go to the front of the room, everyone's taking notes.

You know, people take notes.

And she now has status.

The pitch that you're going to come to know and that you're going to take up if you you want to coach is kind of like this hero's journey kind of conversion narrative, which maybe I'll say, which is just what all these coaches say at the front of the room, which I'm sure you're familiar with, which is, I worked at Dell for 15 years.

And they can relate to everyone in the room and they're doing eye contact and tapping people and saying, I see you, Jim, in the back.

We used to work on both.

I worked at Dell for 15 years.

And then out of the blue, I was laid off.

I didn't see it coming.

I was maybe in a stupor of, you know, corporate drone work.

And I was immediately crushed and I was in the dark and I was depressed and everything was falling apart.

My wife was going to leave me.

And then I had this realization that

I shouldn't give control of my income to one person.

I should strike out on my own.

Or I realized that I never really wanted to be a software engineer.

I wanted to be a fashion designer.

I wanted to be an artist.

And they read like the artist's way or something like that.

There's a moment where they have this sort of moment of conversion and epiphany that they've been doing it all wrong.

And then they change their attitude.

They realize that this layoff is not a loss, but it's actually an opportunity.

That's like a key, crucial thing.

It's like you change your mindset about like, this is not the end of your career.

This is the beginning of something new.

Right.

And then through that, they trek through the dark.

They learn things about themselves.

They realize what their true passion is.

Once they have the courage and right mindset to throw themselves at their true passion, they have made it all click.

And then the thing is, their true passion always happens to be coaching other people to find their

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True passion.

That's like the really weird thing.

These professionals who tie their identity so closely to their work, it's a very American thing.

When you lose that, it is really, really hard.

And I want to look at that and say, hey, it was just a paycheck, dude.

Like, you'll get another job.

It'll be fine.

People take it really, really hard.

And being able to turn around and pick up a new professional identity, stop introducing yourself as, oh, I'm out of work, and start saying, I'm an entrepreneur.

I'm CEO of Career Navigation 2005 or whatever.

You know, that is huge.

And they change it on their LinkedIn and they say, I'm actually, I'm not looking for work with, you know, the searching for work

panel.

I'm CEO of Transitions Incorporated.

That is a reparation of their identity that is really important to them, even more than the money, because I interview a ton of these people.

Most of them don't hardly make any.

I was going to ask,

what does that look like?

My impression of the coaching world, like money-wise, money-wise is that it's very highly concentrated so there's very few people that make a lot of money and it sort of compounds and these are like the tony robbins at the peak of it and there's a lot of people faking it until they never make it okay okay until they can get their own job because oftentimes they're pursuing this coaching thing while also looking for a job okay

so so diane well i'll just go back to her is

I followed her for about three months and while she was doing this, trying to get this coaching stuff going and trying to find a job and she wasn't able to land another job.

And I had a a last interview with her at a diner where i was asking her how it was going and then she's you know she says coaching's going great and doesn't really have any clients but you know she's convincing herself that the coaching is going great and then at the end of the conversation she's she mentioned that she's been watching youtube videos of how people live out of their cars and kind of make it work what yeah so this is like this quiet, slowly going into the night of like precarity, economic precarity from like a Dell employee, which is a good deal in Austin, Texas, down to like, maybe I need to live out of my van because my mortgage payments are really, I'm running out of savings here.

But but spinning that as a positive.

No one can see you nodding on the radio.

Yeah, I mean, it's, it's this weird kind of in interviewing people, there's this weird kind of like self-gaslighting thing going on, it feels like, where all you can see, the only problems that you can see are within you.

The larger thing that coaches are doing is they're trying to tell you that your problems are not about power struggles.

They're not about politics, they're about personality, essentially.

Right.

These are like things you can do that sort of validate that diagnosis.

And they're endless things you can turn up, turn up to explain why your personality is the problem in your career.

And so they'll take you through

endless things like this until you feel like you've found the golden nugget that explains why you can't get a job.

Does it feel good?

Did you notice?

Does it feel good for people to

be told that their personality needs to change?

That's an interesting one because I found that people were bizarrely open to these kind of critiques.

Okay.

They're in a kind of vulnerable spot and particularly in these kind of group therapeutic vibe.

Maybe it's the people that select into these places that are more open to that.

Even tough guy IBM dudes, or you know, they think of themselves as engineers, would break down into some of these personality things and really say, yeah, you know, I didn't realize I'm so intuitive.

And these coaches also like step into and leverage this larger sort of declining trust in institutions and sort of expert authority, expert systems more generally.

We see it in health.

We see it in science stuff of all kinds.

We can go into it if you want.

But there's this general sense.

And there's a bunch of sociological reasons behind it, that the experts are out of touch.

They are not taking care of us anymore.

We are in charge of our own careers, our own health, our own marriage is all individuated.

And coaches come in and they say, they go and critique those official experts that are far away in those organizations with acronyms.

They'll say things like that.

And say that I'm like you.

And let me give you this sociology thing that I like.

Max Weber, famous sociologist, had this typology of experts and their authority.

And two of the things he positioned were, he used the examples of the divine religious authorities.

The priests and the prophets.

The priests are the institutional credentialed experts in salvation goods.

And the the reason people believe in the priests is because they wear the robe and they have that big church behind them.

But the priests, particularly in uncertain times, are in danger of losing their grasp over the laity

by looking too out of touch.

Okay.

And at this time, these prophets can come up from the laity.

They know the people very well.

They know what they're thinking, what they're feeling, how uncertain they are and what they need at that time.

And they stand on a little soapbox, not at the front of the pew, and they say, this is what you need.

you know the end is nigh i'll take you the beginning of life of brian that's right that's right but there's this all there's always this tension between like types of experts and how they gain credibility and legitimacy and one way is credentials and one way is i know you so well i am you

and i have experience exactly in what you're doing okay and which part of the way you get credibility as a prophet is you critique the priest and you say they don't they don't they haven't listened to you they haven't been there for you things are crazy the things they've been teaching don't work and so so the same thing, I think, happens with career coaches, but all these other coaches.

I mean, health coaches will say, big pharma doesn't care about you.

They just want to pump you full of blah, blah, blah.

Finance coaches will say, the financial system's rigged against you.

It's a rat race.

Career coaches will say, the old 40-year career is a sham.

And I have a different way.

And I've been there and I've failed with you.

I used to be in the red.

I used to not know who I was.

I failed and then I learned something and then I escaped.

And that has something to it.

There's a way that critiquing the official experts brings more credibility to this person.

Turns out that been there, done that quality was absolutely what I needed from a coach.

I didn't need perfection.

I didn't need someone so unrelatable and so put together that I'd kind of hate her.

I did, after a long search, actually find a coach.

And my coach, Jessie, she's a regular person with a difficult life, just like you and me.

The thing that makes her special is that she uses those difficulties that she's still going through as an inspiration for helping others.

Like, she doesn't pretend it's in her past.

That's less cheesy to me.

Coming up, we're going to get to know my coach, Jesse, who I think is more qualified for the difficult task of coaching me.

And we're back live during a flex alert.

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Ladies and gentlemen, my coach, Jessie, like I say, I like her because she's a real person, and she doesn't hide any of it.

I'll tell you a little bit about...

I want to hear all about you.

About me.

Yeah.

So

I will be 50 years old this year.

I have three children that I gave birth to and one adopted child, my oldest child.

And that's not the first child that I adopt and grows out and leaves, but this one stayed.

And I love her to pieces.

I have two girls, two boys.

Anyway,

I'm a very high functioning, depressed woman.

Me too.

Very high functioning.

And the fact that, and very codependent, you know, it's like my kids need me, my husband needs me, people need me.

And the minute that I don't feel that way,

I have my

sad days.

So I'm an immigrant.

I was born and raised in Mexico City, but my parents are from all over, you know, Central America.

Her parents came to the U.S.

illegally when Jesse was just eight years old and left her behind in Mexico with an aunt for years.

And eventually she applied to college in Los Angeles near her parents, but then she lost her visa.

You know, a lot of things happen.

You know, I had to lie a lot to come to the United States, fake, you know, paperwork to get here.

because my parents came to the United States illegally and they immigrated me with that amnesty, you know, paperwork back then.

I mean,

too much to go into, but they lied.

They lied about my age.

I had fake documents just to come to the United States.

But in Mexico, a lot of things could be just paid for, not really legal, you know, someone's just a side eye to get me out here.

Anyway,

I stayed here illegally and the rest is history, right?

Yeah.

When I describe Jesse to people, I always start with how hot she is, like a total jerk.

I didn't realize it when we met up to start this coaching thing, but I'd actually seen her in my neighborhood before, like at the grocery store and stuff.

And you guys, you guys, she looks like a fly girl.

And if you aren't old enough to know what that is, get with it, nerds.

When she was still at college, she started doing really cheap fitness classes in the park near school, just walking up to ladies who looked like they could use a little help.

That went great, and she began incorporating some of her spiritual beliefs, which I I don't totally understand, but she does like full moon fasting and stuff.

And she puts meal plans together for people and life plans.

And she says that a big part of why she loves her job and why she's good at it is because she gets to live vicariously through the clients she works with.

She gets to encourage them to do things she can't.

I've never been able to travel.

You're about to tear up after a few minutes.

I am going to tear up because

some people are just so blessed.

I have never been able to take a vacation outside of this country with my children.

My children cannot travel

unless I go with a different family.

Can't show my kids my...

I can't go to El Salvador.

I can't go to Mexico.

I can't show my kids my history,

where I come from, where I used to play.

And that's why I sacrifice everything so I can live in a neighborhood where my children grew up and and go to school because it's so important for them.

And if I can just give them back for right now and know that, and that's the only thing that hurts me, like believe me, I didn't give a shit about what my parents did to me because

I'm overcoming that.

And every day in a different way, it's going to affect me.

Or every year, whatever it is, it's going to affect me.

But what's affected me more is the fact that they didn't help me.

They're American citizens, for God's sake.

They travel everywhere.

They didn't help me.

And that is one thing that

I can't forget.

I will forgive them.

Poor things.

Like, who knows where they were going to.

Maybe they didn't have money or whatnot, but I can't forget that.

And

I feel trapped in the United States.

That's not my country, but this is all I know.

I pay higher taxes than everyone.

My APR and everything is huge if I can even get finance.

But I live in a pretty badass apartment, you know?

I have two Teslas.

I mean, you know, I'm extremely blessed.

I'm extremely blessed.

Jesse and I have been meeting twice a week now for months.

We work out together, or actually, she just watches me work out and yells at me for an hour at seven o'clock in the morning twice a week, which I I do not like at all, but I'm doing it because I'm trying to follow through for both this fucking podcast, but also because I was so miserable when I met her and she promised this would help.

She begs me not to eat fast food, which echoes in my head when I'm in my car and I'm hungry.

Sometimes it actually stops me from going to Taco Bell.

Jesse encouraged me to have surgery on a big uterine fibroid I've been ignoring on the advice of my doctor.

My doctor literally said, just ignore it.

And dear listener, I had the surgery in April and I've only bled once since then mildly turns out i may have been a menopause for way longer than i thought and the fibroid might have been doing all the bleeding anyway that's a huge deal i'm on hormone replacement therapy now and i wouldn't have figured it out if jesse hadn't sort of bullied me into getting it taken care of even though her reasons were a little wacky this fibroid which we're going to

magically remove remove like we're gonna remove it and and and we're gonna figure and we're gonna figure because what so right now you're just staying alive you're just staying you know you're just like I'm doing the best that I can with what I have let's just take that that element that shouldn't be in you let's just remove it because it's sucking the life out of you let's remove that okay and once we remove that let's give your body all that it's lost emotionally physically

We want to keep you

at your highest level of consciousness and at your most optimized health with this inside you.

I want to show you a picture of it.

Let me see if I can find

a crazy looking

fat.

Oh my God.

Here's the thing.

I just like her.

I wouldn't have liked her if she were quote unquote perfect.

And we've gotten really close.

I consider her a friend.

an $85 an hour friend, but still, I mean, is that, that's not more expensive than my actual friends because like I buy dinner, you know?

Uh, anyway, she doesn't make me do the fasting thing or ayahuasca, but she does make me slow down and think about my choices, move my body, respect my body, and my mind.

And I'm super privileged to have her in my life.

I totally recognize that.

From Jesse, I welcome all the ooe-gooey mindset talk, and it's actually doing something.

So, take that science

coming up on the dream.

So I'm Jesse Lee Ward.

Some people know me as Boss Lee or the people's mentor, you know, but at any rate, so I do a lot of things, sure, but I am the number one network marketer in the world.

I also have an education company.

The Dream is written, hosted, and executive produced by me, Jane Marie.

Our producer is Mike Richter, with help from Nancy Golumbiski and Joy Sanford.

Our editor is Peter Clowney.

The Dream is a co-production of Little Everywhere and Pushkin Industries.

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Hey, dream listeners, it's finally here.

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We're also going to have an amazing discussion board.

The interface has it cataloged under AMA, Ask Me Anything.

But I don't love rules.

So what I did is started a bunch of threads like ask Dan and I questions, general chit chat, just to make friends and stuff.

And every time I've been in charge of a discussion board, I've made a tab called Women Be Shopping, and it's there.

And we're just going to talk about what we bought.

It'll be fun.

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See you there.