Welcome to Vertebrae, a podcast to inspire listeners to discover their own vertebrae — the “essential” passions/priorities in their lives that give them a backbone.... more
Share Vertebrae
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
Vertebrae
By John Emery
FAQs about Vertebrae:
How many episodes does Vertebrae have?
The podcast currently has 49 episodes available.
Vertebrae episodes:
October 02, 2020Control & Response I don’t need to set this up at all… you know — sometimes when you’re doing some sort of sales, and you want to make a point, or propose some sort of solution to people’s felt needs, you first must articulate the problem we’re all facing… So if you’re a door-to-door vacuum salesman, you have to talk about how dirty floors ruin your day. Or how heavy other vacuums are. You have to remind people of the problem so that your solution FEELS more revelatory. If you paint a compelling picture of how bad a problem is, and then pitch your product, you’ll likely make some sales. Same thing with public speaking. If you have a point to make, you need to set it up with all the failed solutions we’ve tried thus far… You need to shine a spotlight on how ugly things are, so that you can propose a beautiful alternative and people will lean into it. It’s why old-school preachers used to talk about Hell so much. It’s psychology. Scare people into a vulnerable place, and then propose some sort of safety… and all you have to do is pray a prayer and put a $50 in the offering. Well — this is a long walk to get to this simple point: I don’t feel like I need to articulate ANY of the shit we’ve been going through this year thus far. You guys know. And in fact, if I go back through it all, like so many podcasts and political pundits do, it’ll likely only trigger MORE ANXIETY than I’ll be able to alleviate. Because we’re all already AT that vulnerable, out-of-control spot you want an audience in, let’s just start talking. This year, thus far, has hopefully taught you a few lessons about control. About how little control you have over certain parts in your life. About which areas of your life you truly, actually, continually can control — and that’s something interesting we might talk about here. About the tendencies you recognize in yourself that wants so deeply to be able to control how other people behave, or vote, or what they believe, or what they tweet, or what your boss thinks is reasonable, or expectations for kids during this school year. This desire to control is understandable. Don’t beat yourself up for it. We’ve been trying to exercise control over our surroundings since the dawn of time. Think of our ancient ancestors. Clearing brush to set up a campsite. Fighting back the cold nights with a big fire. Turning fields of weeds into neatly planted rows of vegetables. And every generation in the history of civilization… they’ve been marked by the human desire to control some new aspect of our lives that was previously uncontrollable. We learned how to control food supply. We learned how to control water distribution and aqueducts and sewage. We learned how to control elements and forge them into metal structures and weapons and tools. We learned how organize people groups into different political experiments and democracies. We’ve learned to control certain diseases and outbreaks. We’ve developed vaccines and controlled variables to make living life safer and more predictable—extending life expectancies, and improving quality of life tenfold every generation. Indoor plumbing, air conditioning, birth control… All good things. Our desire to control is something we’ve inherited from our ancestors. And it isn’t something we should hate about ourselves. But it is something we need to be aware of its limitations, or else we might be tricked into believing we can control EVERYTHING, which leads to the inevitable shock that “No, we cannot control everything” which leads to anxiety that says, “But i SHOULD be able to control everything,” which might be where some of us are today. This year has taught me that I can’t control my children. We had a honeymoon phase around age 3 to 5, but now that two of them are north of that, they’re just showing us that “No, you cannot control us, no matter how hard you try.” This year has taught me that I can’t control my income. I can’t predict any better than my 5 year old which new client will walk through our doors…some with enormous budgets, some with no money at all. This year has taught me that I can’t control what people think of me. I can try to “signal” who I am and what I care about and what people can expect from me, but how someone internalizes and crafts my reputation in their eyes is entirely up to them. This year, I’ve learned that I can’t control my own body’s physiology and what chemicals release from my brain at which times… There are days of unexpected gloom, and then days when I give myself over to it and experience joy and freedom like no other. I don’t understand that — and I certainly can’t control it. I’ve learned that I can’t make other people’s decisions for them. As deeply as I want to help people and want to influence them to make — now let me be clear, what IIIIIII think is the right life decision — they’re entirely free to choose whatever career path, or subscribe to whatever ideology, or raise their kids in whatever way… But in all of these lessons that 2020 has taught us thus far, which we’ll likely be unpacking for the next decade in therapy, there is a helpful way to turn the gem on the thinking here, and that’s what I want to share. I spend far too much time in my own life trying to CONTROL things that I’m only ever actually responsible for RESPONDING to. I want to CONTROL, but God just expects me to respond. How many things do I try to control, by hustling in front of, during and after, to get the outcome I want… Texting people on the side, getting consensus, try to do some insider trading to limit any variables from surprising us… versus simply letting what will happen, happen, and then responding accordingly. One of the things Elyse and I have learned by taking care of our daughters Type-1 Diabetes is exactly this… when they introduce you to the disease, the doctor’s all use the word “manage.” “Managing Type 1…” Meaning, we’ll never get ahead of it, more than a few hours at a time. It’s an hour by hour thing that we need to respond to… we’re managing something that is wildly unpredictable, and if we spend our lives trying to CONTROL it, we’ll die of exhaustion and despair. Instead, if we use the tools given to us, and we pay attention to what’s happening, then we can respond accordingly… and as a result, the next few hours can be good. It’s something that sailors understand that motorboats don’t. Baked into the very essence of sailing is the baseline understanding that you can’t control the wind. It’s silly to even suggest otherwise. And as a result, sailors are experts at RESPONDING to unpredictable shifts in weather. Because that’s all sailing is anyways — responding to the wind. The wind will blow wherever and however the wind will blow. And you have these little tools in these ropes and sails and rudders to respond — and catch that wind, lean into it, and maybe go somewhere with it. Motorboats are just like, “I turn this wheel and push this button and I go there.” Which, let’s be honest, was invented because we wanted to be able to CONTROL the sea. And thank God for motorboats. But there are situations that simply can’t be tamed… And we’re in the middle of one. And this might just be the middle. Who the hell knows? We can contribute to this presidential election, but we can’t control what’s going to happen. We can’t control what our neighbors are doing and how safe they’re staying during this pandemic, but we can respond by wearing a mask around them. We can’t control our income or job security, but we can respond by making conservative decisions with our money. We can’t control everything about our health, but we can respond by eating well and moving our bodies to ensure our immune system is as healthy as possible. I wonder how much of our daily anxieties would loosen up if we stopped putting expectations on ourselves to CONTROL things, and gave ourselves some grace to simply RESPOND to all these external variables and stimuli. If you want to come out of the closet, you can’t control how your family will react — but you can step into that with open hands and then simply respond to them accordingly. And I think RESPONSE is something we can get good at. That’s a skill we can hone in on and refine. We can improve the speed at which we can wisely respond. We can become better decision-makers, learning to research and weigh pros and cons and respond accordingly. So this is the challenge… Thinks about your day today. What’s one area of your life that you’ve been trying to CONTROL that might benefit from you instead letting it unfold a bit and then responding accordingly… This isn’t passivity — it’s humility and keen observation and prayerful decision-making. What’s something that’s been consuming your thoughts and has aggregated into actual anxiety lately? Something your heart knows you cannot control, but you brain can’t stop trying to control… Maybe it’s the safety of your kids at school. Maybe it’s the stock market. Maybe it’s how someone has been treating you. Maybe it’s a spouse or partner or child that you’ve been desperately trying to guide and micromanage, for fear of something going off the rails… And for what it’s worth: some of these things are actually self-fulfilling prophecies… We so desperately want to CONTROL something, so we inadvertently smother it and ruin any chance it had of being healthy. The most common cause of new seeds withering after they’ve germinated is OVER-watering. We’re so eager to help them start their new lives that we literally drown them… Sound familiar? So here’s the challenge for us today, myself included… Step back, just far enough, to catch yourself in the act with one of these things… Acknowledge that trying to control that person or thing is likely the source of some of this anxiety… no matter how much you want it to go your way, no matter how important this thing is to you… To shift your thinking enough to create space for that thing to unfold however it’s going to unfold, and then be very intentional about responding to it. Once it happens, then you’re ENTIRELY in control of your response. Get all your need to control and ball it up into your response. Because THAT you can control. And if you REALLY want to kick your anxiety in the nuts, spend some time you would be anxiety trying to control the situation instead planning the various ways you might respond whenever your response is needed. Because in a lot of ways, our anxiety is a result of living in an already/not-yet kind of tension where our brains are somewhere in the future catastrophizing the worst possible scenario… and if instead we spend time thinking through our various options for how we might respond afterwards, we might find that it actually alleviates our anxieties. Stop trying to control everything and instead control your response to the world around you. I think this is a step in the right direction for me… I think this helps me live more wisely, and more at peace with the chaos around me. And maybe it’ll help you too. I love you guys. Share this episode with a friend. Make it a good day....more July 14, 2020Stan Mitchell on Progressive Christianity Guys, I’m trying not to be hyperbolic with how I describe this conversation, and the man I had it with… Stan Mitchell has been someone I’ve looked up to as a pastor for the last few years, someone that I’ve texted back and forth with countless times—trying to navigate frustrating situations at church and new ideas we’re dreaming about, and this episode today is the first actual conversation we've had over the phone. We talked for nearly 2 hours, and it’s here, unedited, unfiltered, for you to listen in on. It’s unfortunately rare to come across progressive Christian leaders that have scripture memorized, and a deep love of the tradition—which he claims has always been progressive, from the moment the story began. We talk about hell, universalism, the future of megachurches, social media’s beauty and downfalls, and he hits me with a half-dozen moments of personal conviction that I’ll likely listen back to a hundred times. If you’re on Facebook, please find Stan Mitchell and follow his posts. I’m thrilled to have made a new friend in him, and I know we’ve got a lot of work to do together in the coming years. This week’s episode is brought to you by our sponsor—calling your old friends. This is something I’ve started doing again over the last 2-3 months. I’ll go for a walk in the evening, scroll through my contacts on my phone, see a name I haven’t seen in a long time, and then just calling them. 75% of the time they don’t answer, I leave a voicemail—typically thanking them for something I love about them, and then immediately call the next name that pops into my head. When there’s no agenda other than just saying “hi,” there’s nothing to prepare or overthink… It’s free and reminds you of all the people that have played significant roles in your life over the years. So that’s this week’s sponsor: Calling your old friends. Try it. I dare you. And without further adieu, here’s today’s conversation:...more May 29, 2020Finding Our "Joy Compass" with Andrew Morgan Andrew Morgan is an internationally recognized filmmaker focused on telling stories for a better tomorrow. His experience includes a broad range of work spanning narrative and documentary storytelling for multiple film and new media projects that have been filmed and released all over the world. His work is currently on HBO, Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime. The New York Times described his unique style as “gentle, humane investigations,” and Vogue Magazine wrote that it is “evidence that each of us can act as a catalyst for change within our own lives and work together towards a greater good.” He lives in LA with his wife Emily, and their four children.
...more May 10, 2020The Son of a Holocaust Survivor Finds Grace Larry Volk is an artist, educator, lecturer and author.
He and holds an MFA in Photography from the Rhode Island School of Design has taught photography and visual art in nationally and regionally, for over 25 years. Currently, he is a Professor of Photography in the School of Visual and Performing Arts at Endicott College. He has lectured nationally on, digital imaging, portfolio production and art practice and has served as portfolio reviewer nationally as well as a juror for regional art and photographic competitions.
As a visual artist, Larry works with a range of photographic media in a variety of contexts. His work has been exhibited nationally and is held in both private and museum collections. He is a member-artist of the Bromfield Gallery in Boston, Massachusetts. His most recent exhibitions include: a solo exhibition at the Bromfield Gallery (2019), a solo exhibition at the Atelier Gallery of the Griffin Museum (2017) , two-person exhibitions at Endicott College (2013) and New England Bio-Labs (2012).
...more April 28, 2020B.T. Harman on Coming Out and Using His Platform for Good B.T. Harman is a former executive turned creative strategist, writer, and speaker. He was previously Vice President of Client Experience for Booster, an innovative school fundraising company based out of Atlanta. Between 2005 - 2016, B.T. was a key player in helping Booster raise more than $150 million for American schools. Within Booster, B.T. led a team of creatives that developed high-end character and leadership content for more than 1.3 million students annually. B.T. is also the creator of the blog & podcast, Blue Babies Pink, "A Southern Coming Out Story in 44 Episodes." More than 1.3 mil episodes of the BBP podcast have been downloaded since it released in 2017. It was a top 40 podcast worldwide in March of that year. Today, B.T. is a freelance content-creator for millennials and the brands that serve them. His consulting work focuses on brand strategy, design, marketing, social media, leadership, and more. B.T. recently released his second narrative-style podcast. Catlick is a historical true crime podcast that follows a remarkable series of events that occurred in Atlanta in the early 1900s. B.T.’s other passions include storytelling, leadership, good design, antiques, Seth Godin, SEC football, European travel, Roman history, archaeology, and Chick-fil-A. He also serves on the boards of directors for Beloved Atlanta and the Alpha Tau Omega Fraternity. B.T. lives in Atlanta’s historic Cabbagetown neighborhood with his husband Brett and their grey tabby cat, Walnut. To learn more about B.T., visit btharman.com.
...more April 20, 2020Jesus' Next 500 Years with Jonathan Williams ...more April 15, 2020Jill McAfee on Being a Missionary, Coming Out, and Finding Her Voice. ...more April 07, 2020What are yours? Vertebrae. The essential elements in our lives that give us a backbone. They’re what help us stand tall—to be strong in the face of adversity. They define our posture, and how we approach the world. They’re tested under pressure. They relay information to and from our bodies. They’re center and central to everything. If you mess with them, things get off center, or worse things are severed and healthy function ceases. The essential elements in our lives that give us a backbone. And so it’s got me thinking lately… What are yours? What are your vertebrae? We’ve got 24 vertebrae from the base of our brains down to our tailbone… If you were to write down the immoveable essentials in your life, what would they be? Some folks like distilling their lives down to one purpose, or 3 values, but I feel like that’s too intimidating, and it limits creativity, honestly. We get stuck on needing to have just ONE thing, and it freaks us out. If you ask someone what their favorite movie (or food) is… you’ll probably be met with a deer in headlights. But if you ask, what are some of your favorite movies? What are some of your favorite foods? The “some of” relieves the pressure and allows people to verbally process. So what are some of your vertebrae? You’ve got 24—that’s quite a bit. Don’t worry about running out. What are some elements of your life that you couldn’t possibly life without? They can be people, or passions, or places, or priorities… Whatever gives you a backbone—whatever makes you who you are.- Self-improvement. Being kind to myself, but recognizing that I have a long way to go in every aspect of my life.
- Spirituality. Openness to the Mystery. Diving deep into ancient traditions and finding universal truths. Being brought up in the Christian tradition, and doing the difficult, necessary work of not being stuck in that, but also not bucking against it and missing all the beauty there.
- Physical health. Feeling healthy. Being active and able to move and sleep well and surprise myself with what I’m able to do physically.
- Financial stability. Making good money doing what I love, and creating something as stable as I’m able to. This corona thing is shaking the foundation, and definitely affecting us financially, but it’s also reassuring that we’ve been building is sustainable.
- Generosity. This flows out of financial stability, and stability in general I suppose. Knowing where our next meal is coming from helps us relinquish our grip on resources and support incredible organizations that are serving vulnerable people, climates and causes. I really value “sharing.” Life is better when it’s shared. I share everything I can with everyone that’s interested. I’m a natural born Evangelist, with or without the Jesus. If I have good news to share, I’m going to share it.
- Family; Elyse and the kids. My extended family. This could feel like a given, but it’s not. It needs to be explicit. It needs to be something constantly in front of me. And again, with this coronavirus, it is. We’re spending more time together as a family than ever, and it’s been incredible.
- Efficiency. Productivity. I have a very short attention span for projects that drag on unnecessarily. I’ve always been able to see the shortest path between where we are and where we want to go. That’s been a blessing and a curse over the years, but mostly good. It’s how I’m wired, and it helps me be helpful. The sheer volume of people I interact with over the course of a day is ridiculous, but so, so, so rewarding. Not productivity for the sake of trophies or accolades, but to maximize how helpful I’m able to be.
- Friendship. Being physically and emotionally and spiritually available to people that have shown up in my life. I want to be a thoughtful, generous friend. Someone that reaches out unexpectedly and supports you in surprising ways.
- Curiosity. This is something that I believe keeps people open to the world around them. It keeps them humble. It’s something that my grandmother, Marcia, instilled in me… an unquenchable curiosity for the world around her. And I think it’s really important. It pulls me into all sorts of worlds I wouldn’t otherwise find myself.
- Being playful. A few times a day I’ll switch gears into a silly, goofy, playful guy. I’ll get creative with little pranks or tickle fights or being flirty with the world. That’s something I value. I don’t ever want to take life too seriously that I can’t be silly or make someone laugh.
- Nature / Animals. I love creation. The wild. The animal kingdom. The diversity of life on earth. I will get sucked deep into EVERY type of “Planet Earth” documentaries, because the world is marvelous, and deserved to be marveled at.
...more March 13, 2020A word of encouragement re: Coronavirus As humans, we’ve evolved over thousands of years to primarily do one thing: survive. To pass on our genetics. To continue the human race, whatever that is. To hopefully find a respectable mate and reproduce another generation and another and another. And we’ve done a pretty good job so far… I mean, we’re here. We’ve somehow made it this far.
For thousands of years, (many believe nearly 200,000 years), humans have been able to perceive threats, adapt to those threats, and train our children to do likewise. Sometimes those lessons taking root in our psyche, sometimes those lessons resulting in evolutions of our bodies and brains.Somewhere in the last 10,000 years, we got this “survival” thing down enough to begin focusing on not only surviving, but thriving. We began farming and trying to produce predictable food sources, developing medicine and care to keep our bodies in good health, extending the lifespan, and checking off the lower levels of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, developing religions and ways of expanding our minds beyond simply surviving.
Physiological needs: air, water, food, shelter, clothing…
Safety needs: security, employment, physical health…And began focusing on the higher levels of love and belonging, esteem, freedom, and eventually self-actualization… to try to be the best versions of ourselves possible.
Now I’m not ignorant to the fact that there are billions of people on earth still struggling with those base physiological needs—we haven’t evolved past having the poor amongst us… But the people that I’m surrounded by, and perhaps the friends and family you’re surrounded by tend to have food in pantry, clothes in the closet... but I recognize it’s even dangerous to assume that.
My point here is that every once in a while, we’re confronted with a curveball, of coronavirus proportions. We get so “used to” stability and relative predictability that when something like this happens, we’re confronted with the naked truth that, “Yes, in fact we are these little, opinionated monkey people, on a rock covered in soil and ocean, spinning 1000 mph on our axis, while traveling 67,000 mph through empty space…”
For those that feel high and mighty and important, we need that truth to knock us down a peg. For those of us that already have some anxiety baked into our DNA, we don’t need to be reminded of those facts AT ALL.
But it’s true. And I can’t shake the feeling that we’re here to do something. Something beyond survive. Surviving can’t be the end goal of what’s going on here. There’s way too much soul and spirit and love and unexplainable connections between people for this whole thing to just be… this.
So what do we do when new threats show up? First, we deny it. Then we post memes about it. Then SNL does skits about it. Then someone we know tests positive for it. Then we panic. Then we flood Costco and buy all the toilet paper even though the virus doesn’t make us poop. Then we don’t sleep. Then we get out of bed and see that some random guy from Boston posted a video on Facebook and for some reason we’re still watching it.
This virus is a serious thing. Maybe you’re not in the highest risk demographic, or you’re in an area that hasn’t been hit by it yet, but this is just as much a test for our collective humanity as it is an imminent threat. This likely won’t wipe us out, thank God.
But how we respond to moments like this expose so much of our interior lives. It illuminates our priorities, and our motives, doesn’t it?
I’ve spoken to friends that are devastated by events being cancelled—not because they’re in the event industry, but because they love their March Madness… and yes, that’s a thing. SXSW, NHL, college graduations… These are real things with people’s careers and education and feelings of fulfillment all tangled together.
But it’s not more important than our collective good. If I have to cancel a vacation, or forego a favorite restaurant, or stay home for a few weeks to slow this thing down and minimize the risk for those most vulnerable, you better believe this will expose my true motives.
Coronavirus hits the elderly the hardest. Those that are 80 years and older have a 15% mortality rate. 50 years and under, it’s less than 0.5%
Maybe this thing isn’t posing you a great threat, but it’s dangerous for millions and millions of people, and they come before our preferences. Don’t they? Shouldn’t they?
This is what I mean by these things exposing what’s going on inside of us. If something of this proportion can’t slow us down in our tracks and allow us to put other’s well-being before ourselves, we have a much worse virus infecting us.
We’ve been inundated by the news and media, telling our subconsciouses that WE ARE NOT SAFE and inducing panic in our communities. And we’re seeing yet another failure from our country’s leadership, to act quickly and strategically… but this collective anxiety isn’t going to serve us much beyond convincing us to stay home.
If a little bit of anxiety convinces you to take this thing seriously, good. But beyond that, it’s not going to serve us well. It doesn’t help. It’s not going to help us recover from this thing, that’s for sure.
Humanity has endured hundreds of collective curveballs over the years, and we’re still here. We’re smarter, more resilient, and more connected across the globe than ever before. These things have the ability—the potential—to produce good in our communities, if we allow it to.
When my 7 year old daughter was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes 3 years ago—an auto-immune disease that she could never have avoided—we couldn’t see any silver lining. It was all heartache and fear, needles and medical devices and alarms going off in the middle of the night.
But if I could introduce you to this girl… and you could see how resilient and joyful and brave she is? To see how healthy her decision-making around food is? To see her meeting younger kids that are just diagnosed and reassuring their panicking families that everything is going to be ok?
You might even say—it’s worth it. I wouldn’t wish the disease on anyone, but with Lily so far? It’s worth it.
And when it hasn’t felt worth it, we’ve made it feel worth it.
My word for you today, in the midst of unpredictability and a collective anxiety we’re sharing, is this: Make it worth it.
Take this massive disruption to our lives, acknowledge the weight of it, and then find a lightness within it. “Yes, this thing sucks. No one wants it. But we’re still here. And we have all this time on our hands. What could we do with these weeks ahead of us of uninterrupted time?”
Friends, we get to spend these days so that we’re a better humanity on the other side.
You could take these weeks of quarantine and isolation to begin chasing a dream you’ve complained you never have time for.
You could take this time to begin brainstorming that business you’ve always wanted to start.
You could take this time to start eating healthy and tracking everything you eat and finding workouts on YouTube that you can do in your living room.
You can take this time to setup FaceTime dates with people you love and spend hours and hours in conversation with people you’ve drifted apart from.
We complain about the pace of life, and so maybe the universe slows down the pace of life for a minute… just to see how we respond.
If you’ve ever been running on a treadmill and you turn it off quickly, it’s disorienting. You’re used to the pace you were running and you almost run into the front of it.
That’s what’s happening here. We’ve been running 1000 mph, and for some reason, we’re being forced to slow down. This doesn’t have to be viewed as an altogether bad thing.
Maybe it’s time to finish that book you’re been reading (or writing). Maybe it’s time to rekindle your relationship with your kids. Maybe it’s time to get sober.
The goal of life isn’t to run as fast as we can and then just burst into dust at the end. Maybe this thing can open our eyes to the wonder around us. Yes, the fragility of life, but also the resilience of life. We’re still here.
You have a choice on how to view this thing, and it is a choice. You can spend your time assembling all the negative things and setting up a shrine to worship those losses and frustrations over the next few weeks, or you can take a moment to breathe, and reflect on how you’ve been spending your time.
Is how you’ve been living the last 6 months how you want to be living? Are you in a season of life that you love and you want to preserve that and stay right there, or is some of your anxiety around this virus rooted in the fact that you don’t feel like you’ve lived enough life for this to be the end?
Friends, I want to end this little video with a blessing to speak over you…
May this pandemic wake us up. May our eyes be opened to the fragility of life, to the brevity of life—but also to the opportunity that life gives us.
May you live your life in an eccentric way—in an “others-centered” way. May you put the well-being of others before the conveniences and preferences of yourself.
May you be inspired to use this time to actually slow down, and take inventory of your life. Is how you’ve been living how you want to be living? Or is there some beautiful, disruptive change that might come out of this scare?
May our spirits grow stronger, and closer together, even in this time of relative isolation. And may our hope for what our collective future might look like take root in a way that no virus can threaten.
Friends, I love you.
I care for you. Let’s care for one another.
Make it a good day.
...more March 05, 2020Change requires change. Everyone wants better, brighter, simpler, more joyful, more satisfying, to feel more complete, more whole… Living closer to their truest selves; so that their interior lives and exterior lives are synced-up. To be known and affirmed for who we actually are, not just the face we put on to the world. Most people that I bump into don’t feel as if they’ve “arrived” just yet. That point of nirvana isn’t quite within reach, but they’re still aspiring to see “here on earth as it is in heaven.” But we’re not there. Not always. And maybe not today. This might feel completely out of touch, like you’ve never felt further from having “arrived” at where you want to be, or maybe today’s a good day and you’re in that neighborhood. Regardless of where you find yourself, we have to acknowledge that we would like to see some things change. Some big things, on a large scale, and some small things, maybe interior-life things… Like having more peace of mind, or forgiving yourself for that night, or releasing that person from the prison of your mind… but here’s the problem with change. Change requires change. And as humans, we’re resistant to change. Because change means uncharted waters. And we’ve inherited this DNA from our ancestors that has evolved over thousands and thousands of years to avoid risk, and change is risky, and so here we are. We want to experience the benefits of change—the fruit, the reward, the achievement or accomplishment or “arrival”—without actually changing anything. Change requires change. We see this in our clients at the Emery Agency all the time. A medium sized organization is experiencing problems. They’ve been in business for decades and the landscape is changing so fast and their customers are changing and their employees don’t really feel passionate about the vision anymore… they might be excited about a new product or something, but a product isn’t the business. If the product fails, the entire hopes and dreams of the business can’t ride on it. So they’re having a bit of an identity crisis. Who are we, how should we behave, what should we care about, what should we invest time and energy into, how do we talk about what we do and why it matters… So someone recommends they talk to us, they schedule a call and all of a sudden we’re sitting in the same room. They’re talking about all these symptoms that our team has seen time and time again, and we help diagnose what the source of the symptoms are, which is typically identity. Who are we, what are we doing, why does it matter. We dive into the work and it’s good. We find all sorts of small changes, a handful of big changes, and all the solutions are in alignment with one another… then comes the moment when we actually need to unveil the changes. To begin to implement. And leaders throw on the brakes. “Wait, wait, wait… What will Steve think of this?” Ok, let’s bring Steve in and talk with him. “Wait, what about this segment of our customers?” It’s ok, this will work for them, and even if it doesn’t, it’s ok to have a small segment of customers fall off if it means gaining over here. “Wait, wait, wait…” And around we go—like my 7 year old daughter dilly-dallying at bedtime. Hesitating, halting, stalling… because—guess what—change requires change. And leaders can talk a big talk about vision and the next 5 years of innovation and how they’re going to beat out the competition, but when the rubber hits the road, their courage is nowhere to be found. They didn’t actually want change. They wanted a makeover with no interior work done. Like a Queer Eye episode if someone was like, “No, I don’t want to talk about my self-esteem, I just want new pants.” Or an Extreme Home Makeover that was like, “You can change the shingles and shutters, but please leave the inside the same.” Jesus had words for this in Matthew 23. He was talking to teachers of religious law, and seeing the incongruence between their interior lives and their external presentation, and He says, “Woe to you, scholars… hypocrites. For you are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but inside are full of dead men’s bones…” That’s some first-century smack talk. We all want the benefits of change without actually changing anything. We want the six-pack without sacrificing the nightly ice cream. We want the vacation house without changing the budget. We want the safety net without saving money. We want the success without risking our time and money. We want innovation without failure. We want leadership and authority without embarrassment. We want the healthy marriage without counseling. We want kids without the sleepless nights. If you want the fruit, you have to see the thing through. Change requires change. If there’s something in your life that you want to see change, it’s likely going to require changes in other areas of your life to make that change happen. And having been in the change-business for over a decade now, I want to share a few prerequisites for tangible, measurable change, that I’ve seen in people’s lives and businesses alike. The first is the humility to recognize that something needs to change. Our ego can derail healthy change before it even gets a chance to start moving. Our pride can disrupt the productive thoughts that might be leading you towards something meaningful… As soon as you start thinking, “But someone like me shouldn’t have to do that…” you’re already in trouble. You’re already tangled up and there’s no chance for change. In our branding work, we’re committed to never having to CONVINCE someone they need to rebrand, or change something about their business. That’s way too far a journey for us… It’s way too expensive, way too time consuming… Convincing someone that they need help is exhausting. If someone has already recognized they can’t do it on their own, and they’re demonstrating the humility of asking for help, then it’s worth having a conversation. So the first piece is humility. Recognizing the need for change. The next piece is honesty about what the actual problems are. This is sort of a piggy-back on the humility piece, but we have a tendency of waffling on the facts, blurring the symptoms a little bit so that we might evade being “found out” … And this is still rooted in ego. If a CEO gets roped into a meeting with us, she might agree that something needs to change, but she’s likely going to go to the most superficial things, like “Yeah, our website needs to be updated, and maybe we could do a better job telling our employees we appreciate them…” And so we dig deeper. We’re not as interested in the symptoms as we are discovering the source. And so we play the game with cards face up. Everything on the table. Let’s be brutally honest about what the actual problem is so that we can actually address it. Like when your doctor asks if you smoke, or your dentist asks if you’re flossing… Lying only harms one person, and it’s you. Honesty is essential if you’re considering some big life change. And listen, you might actually have a hard time seeing what the actual problem is, and that’s why you need trusted friends around you. You have blindspots. I have blindspots. There are areas of our lives that we just can’t see clearly, and it might be that our biggest area of change is hiding in there. Humility and honesty go hand in hand. One begets the other. So once we have an accurate picture of what needs to change, we have to get creative. There may be a thousand ways to tackle this problem, there may only be one or two. But at the end of the day, problem solving requires creativity. Intentionally straying from the worn paths of thought in our minds so as to maybe discover a new way of thinking. People wrongly anchor “creativity” in the world of art and design. I can’t tell you how many leaders have told me, “I’m not creative.” while they’re sitting on top of a $50m company with incredible products and people on staff… Not creative? You’re crazy. Again, creativity requires humility. It requires vulnerability to propose ideas that may not work. Writer’s rooms at late night shows have this baked into their DNA. Everyone knows that half the jokes won’t work, but it doesn’t mean to not say them. It means to say them, get them out of the way, and help riff on the ones that gain traction. In doing anything meaningful, there’s a high percentage of failures along the way. Anything worth doing is worth doing well, and if you’re doing it well, you’re going to fail along the way. Try, fail, learn. Try, fail, learn. That’s the wheel of innovation that keeps this whole thing rolling. Again, humility is essential. Bob Iger, CEO of The Walt Disney Company says, “Innovate or die.” And it’s never been truer than today. Humility, honesty, creativity… and lastly—courage. The courage to actually implement the change. This is sort of baked into the whole thing, and it’s where this little conversation started, was being brave enough to actually change. Change requires change. We need the courage to actually change. Yes, there’s risk. There’s risk in change. But there’s risk in staying the same. Isn’t there? You know what will happen if you don’t change your health habits. It’s not rocket science. You’ve seen your family members get sucked into the same problems. You know what will happen if you don’t change your spending habits. It’s not rocket science. The Average American has $100,000 in debt. You’re not an anomaly. Get honest with yourself. You know what will happen if you don’t makes those changes at work. If your teams feel unappreciated, if people feel uninspired… It’s not rocket science. What are you so afraid of? You might not want to be seen as someone that tried to change and failed, so instead you’ll be known as someone that was always stuck? Stuck in their ways, stubborn, cared more about self-preservation than innovation. That’s not a legacy I want. I want to always be tinkering with my work. Not only the work I’m doing, but HOW I do the work I’m doing. If something starts to feel rote or uninspiring, I’m going to change it. I’m going to tweak it; iterate it; test it; take notes; get feedback… and hopefully move forward. You might be in charge of something big like a business or organization or a small team at work, or maybe a family at home, or maybe you’re considered a leader in your group of friends… or maybe the only thing you’re in charge of is yourself. And sometimes you’re the most stubborn with yourself. If you’re experiencing some sort of frustration… Change is worth it. It’s disruptive for a season, but it’s worth it. It’s worth it, friends. Change requires change and the change is worth it. Hope this was helpful. If it was, do something with it. Make it a good day....more
FAQs about Vertebrae:
How many episodes does Vertebrae have?
The podcast currently has 49 episodes available.