While tooling around inside my YouTube account (because I was procrastinating working on my book), I discovered that I hadn't looked at the comments in over six months. 

As I scrolled through them, I saw lots of appreciative comments, both on my podcast interviews and on my solo talking head videos.

"Oh, this interview helped me so much."

"There are no words to express what my heart is feeling."

"So grateful for this information."

And my personal favorite, the one that touched me the deepest, on a conversation I had with Stephen Porges, creator of Polyvagal Theory:

"Within the first 10 min, your convo elucidates my perpetual struggle in the last 4 years in tech: burning out due to running on the toxic fuel of anxiety and thinking i'm not smart anymore or that i'm lazy. This gives me hope :)"

Hungry for Hearing About Impact

I quickly realized how hungry I've been for this kind of feedback. And how valuable it is for me to hear.

Because I've been publishing my podcast for over a decade now, pretty much every week, and honestly it can be lonely work. 

Aside from the hour that I spend with my guest, which is almost always amazing and uplifting and fun and exciting, the rest of the work is done in solitude. And I've gone weeks, sometimes months, without hearing anything about the effect this work — all unpaid, as a labor of love — is having out in the world.

So to receive these comments fills me with a renewed energy. I can feel it now, coursing through me in the form of new ideas, new people to reach out to, new segments and formats. I'm excited, and ready to manifest that excitement as work. 

We all want to know that our work matters. 

How many people these days work from home, or work behind closed doors, or work on siloed projects, and aren't getting this kind of appreciative feedback on a regular basis?

And what's the impact of that vacuum on their drive, their spirit, and their heart?

So who can you reach out to, to thank, to appreciate, to let them know that their work matters to you?

Feelings and Needs

Of all the comments, the ones that touched me the most were like that last one; telling me how a particular video made them feel, and what kind of need it met.

Which brought my mind back to one of my favorite teachers, Marshall Rosenberg, the developer of Nonviolent Communication (NVC). 

Rosenberg says that most human communication — words and actions — consists of various strategies for saying please. Anger, yelling, cursing, sarcasm, criticism, threatening, hitting — those are all ways of saying "please meet my needs," what Rosenberg calls "tragic expressions of unmet needs."

And I definitely get my share of those "tragic expressions" in response to my work; people who are enraged that I or my guest talked about implicit bias and showed our cards as "social justice warriors," or that I put too much faith in science or too much faith in anecdotal evidence, and let me know that I'm an idiot or a liar or worse.

The other thing humans say to each other is "thank you." And when we express gratitude, we're sharing how someone met our needs, and how that made us feel. 

That's why those comments so touched my heart. They impressed upon me the importance of the work that I do in sharing my guests and their insights with the world.

Your Turn

Who in your life helped you meet a need and made your life better (or as Rosenberg charmingly puts it, "more wonderful"? 

Who can you reach out to, even if it's just a sentence or two on social media (as the commenters did for me), or a short text or voicemail or email to a colleague or vendor? A quick word of appreciation to a friend, a family member, someone in your community.

I encourage you to reach out. Because the more you do, the more people in your world will get energized, like I did, about the impact they're having on other people. And that will make the world more wonderful for all of us.

If you'd like to become a conversational grandmaster who looks forward to every interaction — even the challenging ones — you can start with my (and Peter Bregman's) book, You Can Change Other People. (Great book, embarrassing title.) If you'd like to accelerate your progress toward becoming a truly "Trigger-Free Leader," let's talk. Click here to schedule a discovery call.