How to Break the Patterns That Keep You Stuck

Shaun
00:00:01.040 – 00:00:51.210
This isn’t just a podcast about leadership. It’s about the patterns that run us, the scripts we inherit, and the beliefs we reinforce without even realizing it. We’ve watched this work, rekindle marriages, renew parents connections with their kids, and reimagine the future of businesses. So if you’ve ever found yourself asking, am I becoming the person I’m supposed to be? You’re in the right place. This is in the arena conversations about what it really means to live and lead. Well, welcome to the Arena. My name is Shaun Dyke, the managing partner for a leadership development and executive coaching firm called Door2, based in Long Beach, California. We’re coming to you today from our brand new content studio built here at the Door two offices. Incredibly excited to be joined by my colleague, podcast producer and head of marketing, Chris Stemp. How are you today, man?

Chris
00:00:51.210 – 00:00:54.010
Doing great. Can’t believe we’re finally here, but excited to do it.

Shaun
00:00:54.280 – 00:00:56.360
Walk me through what’s the focus of the episode today.

Chris
00:00:56.680 – 00:01:30.000
Yeah, so look, we purposefully named this podcast the arena, and it also is very common throughout our business. So right outside the space here, we have our workshop area where we invite people in, and that is called the Arena. When you walk into the front door on there, it says the Arena. It’s a very intentional construct that we use. And so what I’d like to do is talk about why, Why’d we choose that and how does it value those listening to understand what that means. Before we do, though, want to give a little context of who we are and more importantly, like, what brought us here, what are we doing here?

Shaun
00:01:30.080 – 00:02:32.769
Yeah, love it. So the firm itself has been around a bit. This thing was founded about five decades ago by a gentleman named Dr. Brad Spencer. I guarantee he’s going to show up on here one of these days. He’s an incredible human and, you know, started in this space of recognizing there was an opportunity to a little bit of a mashup. Mashup. Some understanding of business, some understanding of behavioral psychology in the pursuit of helping people be the best versions of themselves. So for nearly five decades now, that’s been the intent. How do we help work with individuals to move them to a brighter place that they would like to be. This content studio and this podcast came as a result of recognizing that when we limited it just to the boardroom, we were reducing the level of impact that we wanted to have. And so the goal was, can we find a way to. To have sort of a broader outreach to larger populations so that it’s the, you know, it’s the 22 year old still navigating college, or it’s the 35 year old hanging out in the shop, wherever they are, that they’re getting that opportunity that maybe they’re not going to get from a standpoint of a professional executive coach.

Chris
00:02:32.930 – 00:03:05.930
And I want to highlight that for a couple reasons. One, it’s one of the many reasons that I’m here, you know, relatively newly on board here, is because I remember when you said, I want to do this. And sure, if it’s a business driver, great, but not at all my driver. I want this to impact the world. And what I hope to bring about through this show is Door two has these incredible models that are almost answers to many of life’s most difficult human problems, which is what we all are.

Shaun
00:03:05.930 – 00:03:06.330
Well said.

Chris
00:03:06.490 – 00:03:44.730
The first time I experienced a workshop that you were facilitating, I went home that night and had a conversation with my wife that I’d probably been putting off. Not a bad one, actually. One that I was unsure of or scared to remember. This has forever changed the arc of our incredible marriage. And I’ve been doing leadership development, behavioral change for 15 years. If I can sit in one day of a program and go do something differently, that’s when I was like, that is abnormal. You know, that that doesn’t happen. And I’ve been doing leadership development, behavioral change for 15 years. If I can sit in one day of a program and go do something differently, that’s when I was like, that is abnormal. You know, that that doesn’t happen. So to bring the brilliance that exists here to life for others, I think is only gonna be a benefit.

Shaun
00:03:45.130 – 00:03:46.890
Well said, man. Well said. Completely agree.

Chris
00:03:47.210 – 00:03:55.130
So now let’s dig into this idea of the arena. Why is it so foundational in what we do and what we name the podcast?

Shaun
00:03:55.210 – 00:05:22.940
Yeah. So as you know, if you get the opportunity to chat with some of the folks in our firm and bump into them and you ask some sort of fundamental question of like, why do we do this? Why do you guys do what you do? Or what is this all about? There’s this theme that tends to show up. You know, you’ll hear our colleague Tom say, we get to heal a hurting world. You’ll hear Brad say that people are navigating through some sense of pain. For me, it’s really been embodied in a quote that I love. It’s been on my LinkedIn page for, I don’t know, at least a decade as well. And the quote is from Thoreau. We all know it. It’s the quote that is most people lead lives of quiet desperation. Quiet desperation. It is that space where we recognize there’s a pretty pronounced delta often between where we are and what we want to be. And that can manifest in a lot of different Spaces that might be as a spouse, that might be as a leader, that might be as a brother, it might be as a son or a daughter. But there’s a unrest, a longing to be in a space where, gosh, maybe I have this opportunity to do something more, bigger and better, but I’m not. And I feel that weighing on me. That’s a big piece of what our focus is. And what we do is we try to help. You name that. Yeah.

Chris
00:05:22.940 – 00:05:28.140
And I want to pause on this for a minute. So let’s go back to the quote. Most people lead lives of quiet desperation. And I want to pause on this for a minute. So let’s go back to the quote. Most people lead lives of quiet desperation.

Shaun
00:05:28.140 – 00:05:28.720
Yeah, yeah.

Chris
00:05:29.910 – 00:05:48.990
Many listening go, that resonates, some go, really sounds kind of depressing. But what I liked that you said initially when you brought this to me was desperation. Let’s break it down to the root of despair. What is despair? Typically, it is a feeling. We are first alerted to it through an emotional state. Right.

Shaun
00:05:48.990 – 00:05:49.390
Yep.

Chris
00:05:49.390 – 00:05:56.590
Oftentimes we don’t go further than that. We say let’s just have a cocktail.

Shaun
00:05:56.590 – 00:05:58.950
Tuck it away. Which, I mean, I’ve done.

Chris
00:05:58.950 – 00:06:17.610
We’ve done. Yeah, yeah. Which is. Which is a blast. But when you bring this, the knowledge that you have and when you work with executives and things, well, what is this pain? Often it is more simplified. We are in a current state. We always have a desired future state.

Shaun
00:06:17.610 – 00:06:18.130
Yep.

Chris
00:06:18.610 – 00:06:22.130
The gap between those is discomfort.

Shaun
00:06:22.130 – 00:06:22.650
Yep.

Chris
00:06:22.650 – 00:06:36.200
Call it discomfort, call it pain, call it despair. That is where most people are. Often. I think that alone helps bring some recognition or self awareness to am I here?

Shaun
00:06:36.280 – 00:06:36.640
Yeah.

Chris
00:06:36.640 – 00:06:37.160
You know what I mean?

Shaun
00:06:37.560 – 00:07:44.600
So I think to expand on it, when you talked about, like, it is an emotional state, the experience, I have a desired future state, I’m occupying a current state. There is a delta between those two and the tension that I feel that we’re going to label it despair, pain, dissatisfaction, discomfort, whatever those things are, it’s most prominently initially experienced as a feeling state. And the question is, can you then move that from a feeling to a thought? Can you turn it rational? And can we then decide what do we want to do with it? Do I like occupying this state in this space? Is it something I want to change? Am I willing to change it? Which gets back to the whole space around self awareness and tying into recognizing that I’m actually feeling that despair or that state, Can I do something differently with it? And in this moment, we’re focusing on the singular space of an individual. The opportunity then becomes, can I do that? For populations in mass, which is a burden and a gift and a responsibility and a duty and an opportunity that many in the space that we navigate on a daily basis, they get to bear.

Chris
00:07:44.760 – 00:08:08.020
And that’s actually what I think we’re going to talk about in the next episode, which is when we have to take it from self to others. So, little teaser. I think, everybody. That’s a big one. So that I think, clearly put some guardrails around this idea of despair. Let’s move to the quiet piece because genuinely, and correct me if I’m wrong, I think that is where the work is.

Shaun
00:08:08.500 – 00:08:46.170
Agree. So let’s take a pause and a step back and think about first. You get to answer that question for yourself, which is uncomfortable and we don’t like to do. Am I in a state of despair? Dissatisfaction, Discomfort? The first bump I’ve got to be willing to feel is I’m not where I want to be. I’m not doing the things I want to do. I’m not having the impact I want. I’m not at that space. And that’s okay. That doesn’t mean we have failed. That doesn’t mean we have floundered or fundamentally just screwed it all up. It just means we feel attention between where we are and where we want to be.

Chris
00:08:46.170 – 00:08:47.210
Genuine question here.

Shaun
00:08:47.210 – 00:08:47.690
Yeah.

Chris
00:08:47.930 – 00:08:57.370
Do a lot of people not know it or just don’t want to admit it? I think it can be hard to not know if you are in some type of despair.

Shaun
00:08:57.370 – 00:09:29.990
We’ve had this conversation where I think it’s a misattribution. So I might feel angry, frustrated, irritated, and. So what do I assign it to? I assign it to my employer. I assign it to a spouse. I assign it to something else. So I. I think we recognize that we’ve got a consternation, a disrupt something in us that just doesn’t feel right. I think often, though, we don’t know how to attribute it appropriately to the thing that is actually hitting it for us.

Chris
00:09:29.990 – 00:09:30.470
Got it. Shaun 00:09:30.550 – 00:10:46.950 So do people know that they’re maybe not feeling where they are or want to be? Yeah, to a degree. I also think that we could chase this one forever. I think people are really good at pacifying their selves and sedating themselves and distracting themselves. Right. I feel that feeling creep in. Oh, Netflix. Boom. I’m gonna watch something for a while. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Social feed. Let me get my dopamine hits and let. I don’t wanna confront that piece. So do I think People feel the despair or the uncertainty, the discomfort. Absolutely they do. They often misattribute it. And then they oftentimes. I’m gonna tuck that away. Cause I don’t like hanging in that discomfort. It’s hard. Right. Cognitive dissonance. When you’re in that space where you feel the dissonance between something, you just sort of. I don’t wanna chase that. So, yeah, I do think there are. So then you get to your point on how does quiet. Factor into this? Like, because despair or dissatisfaction in itself sounds noisy. It sounds like I’m going to be grappling through it and frustrated and irritated. Quiet is. It’s that internal struggle that we navigate through often on our own. It is a. An unwillingness or a fear to acknowledge it. I’ll use an example if I can. I have five children, three older boys.

Chris
00:10:46.950 – 00:10:48.830
Surprised you can still count. I have three and it feels like a lot. I get their names confused all the time.

Shaun
00:10:51.950 – 00:12:13.440
Oh, oh, you cycle through all of them, right? But I do think once you go past, like, three kids, you’re a professional parent. So I think I’m actually. I have this accreditation around it. Right. So one of my sons, Jackson, he’s 19 now. When he was younger, 7ish, we were watching this great movie called We Bought a Zoo. Phenomenal movie. And in it, he. He, you know, loses his wife to a medical condition and they’re navigating the world around them, and they’re having this conversation where the kids are asking Tim to retell the story of, like, how he met their mom. And he says, you know, he’s walking past this diner window and he notices this is incredibly beautiful woman sitting inside. He, you know, loses his wife to a medical condition and they’re navigating the world around them, and they’re having this conversation where the kids are asking Tim to retell the story of, like, how he met their mom. And he says, you know, he’s walking past this diner window and he notices this is incredibly beautiful woman sitting inside. And he says to himself, like, I gotta go talk to her. Like, I have to. I’ve gotta go have the conversation. And in those moments, life will ask of you 20 seconds of insane courage. Are you willing in those moments to set the discomfort aside, to set the vulnerability aside, to walk at that acute state of panic that can just paralyze you and push through it? And the answer for most is no. We sit quietly. We don’t do it. We don’t step into this.

Chris
00:12:13.440 – 00:12:27.200
I like this. This brings us back. We know there is this delta. There’s a goal state. I want to go talk to the woman in the window. Right. The quiet is, I don’t do it. But I still feel the pain of it.

Shaun
00:12:27.200 – 00:14:07.540
Oh, it’s not only do you not do it and do you feel it? You often ruminate on it. So you feel it in the moment and then think, had he not in the film, let’s say he had. Well, there wouldn’t have been much of a film. So then, as he walks on for the next many hours, there’s the should have dialogue. There’s the I wish I would have dialogue. There’s the man, how would life be different if I had of dialogue that you have with yourself? So I think the quiet of these unwillingness or fear unwillingness oftentimes is not a proper way to describe it, because I think there’s a desire to, and I want to. But you get paralytic in the fear state. Sure. People are just genuinely concerned around it. Like, well, what would happen if. And that’s scary. Pushing beyond that discomfort into a growth space is phenomenal. But people, they jump immediately into a panic spot. And that’s just scary. What if? What if? Right. There’s a. There’s a complicated book, for many reasons, that’s called why Am I Afraid to Tell you who I Am? And there’s a fun story at the beginning of that where the author says he was on a plane and he told the person next to him, yeah, like, I’m writing this book. It’s called why Am I Afraid to Tell youl who I Am? And he said. The guy said, do you want me to tell you? And he said, no, it’s the title of my book. And there’s a fun story at the beginning of that where the author says he was on a plane and he told the person next to him, yeah, like, I’m writing this book. It’s called why Am I Afraid to Tell youl who I Am? And he said. The guy said, do you want me to tell you? And he said, no, it’s the title of my book. And he said, no, I know, but you want me to tell you. And he said, sure. And he said, because if you’re not okay with it, it’s all I’ve got. There’s no more of me. So if I am vulnerable enough to pull out of that quiet and walk at that dissatisfaction that I feel, that can be really scary. Greatness could be on the other side of it. But a large portion of the population is afraid to take Kierkegaard’s leap of faith.

Chris
00:14:07.540 – 00:14:09.940
Because if I don’t, at least I’m in a known state.

Shaun
00:14:09.940 – 00:14:10.660
I’m in a known state.

Chris
00:14:10.660 – 00:14:47.800
There’s this incredible kind of idea of we will suffer in our current state as long as we know what it is, because we know we can tolerate the known. That just brings forward this idea of maybe I’ll stay stuck in my unwritten scripts, my, you know, behaviors that are not conscious to me. Which is, again, a lot of the drive of what we’re here to discuss, what we’re here to open up. Which actually brings us to the idea of the arena. Right. So how do we back into that from. From most people lead lives of quiet desperation to our workshop space. Sign on the door. The podcast is called the arena.

Shaun
00:14:47.800 – 00:16:59.480
Yeah. So an arena consists primarily of two spaces. Space number one are the stands. That’s where the spectators set. It’s where people come to observe the people on the arena field. Space number two is the arena field. Now, the arena in its core premise came from where we were inspired by it. It’s from the Roosevelt quote, man in the arena. And it talks about those that are willing to enter the arena floor. Now, the arena floor in our context might be the boardroom, it might be a stage, it might be a soccer field. It is the space where we’re willing to go do the work. Where we’re willing to bring all of those learned and acquired skills to the table in a way that’s trying to create meaningful outcomes for self and others. And it means that we’re willing to confront it and we’re to work through it. There’s that aggressive sounding quote of sweat more in practice. Bleed, lesson, battle. That I’m willing to go into that spot and bump into those demons, to knock on those spaces and to feel that it is way safer to sit in the stands. And the stands are where the critics sit. They throw commentary, they tell the ref they did the wrong thing. They judge from the seats. You should have done this. Why didn’t you do that? You’re not in that spot where you’re doing it. So for the us, the arena is those that are willing to step into the center of the arena, they’re stepping onto the arena floor and they’re willing to really work through that. Where we come in is we try to be right there with you. We’re not sitting in the stands telling you how you should do it. We try to hang with you in that spot and acknowledge. I get it. It’s scary, it’s uncertain. There is a felt level of pain. It is normal that you’re navigating this space. Don’t think that you should just have it all locked down. Fallacy of perfection is real. People think they should just have this space and they don’t. But if you’re willing to walk into the arena, you’re willing to take the risk and stumble repeatedly. The likelihood of greatness being on the other side of that is so high. What you can guarantee is, is if you never step out of the stands, nothing changes. You’re probably going to be safe, but nothing will change.

Chris
00:16:59.720 – 00:17:22.300
So to kind of Bring this home. If I’m listening. I’ve given you a shot. I’ve dedicated 25 minutes of my life so far. And I hopefully got some value out of it. What do you hope I take away from this conversation? Right. The quote, the arena, the beginning of where we’re going in our podcast journey. What do you hope somebody takes away?

Shaun
00:17:24.780 – 00:18:33.540
I think my macro hope would be that for someone to recognize that they are not limited to the current state that they’re experiencing and if they want something greater for themselves. And I don’t mean amassing wealth, satisfaction, feeling like, I think it’s the great Mary Shelley quote of I think it’s Mary Shelley. What will you do with this one wild and wonderful life you’re given if you know that you’re sitting in quiet despair and you want to be doing it differently, as a leader in industry, as a leader in your home, as a leader on the Little league field. If you’re in that space where you want to do it differently, what I want is you to come back. Because we’re going to spend time talking through the unconscious, unknown patterns, the inherited scripts that are having you live your life by default, not by design. We want to identify those things. We want to tame those. We want to eject the ones that don’t matter or not helping us in our life anymore and figure out how we push beyond that space so that we are not like those masses of people living in quiet desperation.

Chris
00:18:34.500 – 00:19:38.870
So well said. I think about it from the perspective of this is why it’s the arena. There are going to be hopefully many times you listen or join us or whatever it is, and you go, that’s ridiculous. That’s not me. And then you question, wait, is it? And that pain, that discomfort, right, that despair is the goal. You all say we talk to the talking starts. It’s trying to get people out of quiet into self awareness, which is what we say. All growth starts, which is the first step in being able to change it. One of the things I come back to is one of our workshops that I taught a couple months ago. I had a gentleman sitting front left and he came in at the beginning of the workshop very nicely. Hey, great to meet you. Really gregarious guy. Didn’t say a word for the rest of the two and a half days. Walks out. I’m like, did he like it? Did he? I have no idea. I get an email from him that night and it’s very simple. It says, I just want to say thank you. I no longer need to come into work every day and ask myself, what’s wrong with me, man?

Shaun
00:19:39.350 – 00:20:05.360
Yes. And if, man, if we can get the opportunity again, this is why we started this. We get to work with executives, we get to work with people, and then we want to work with the rest of the world. And if you can find that spot where in the listening, you find that spot that says, you know what, that’s me. I see that. And is there a way to advance it, improve it, to make it better? I think that’s a pretty phenomenal space for us to be in.

Chris
00:20:05.680 – 00:20:07.520
I love it. I think we can wrap there.

Shaun
00:20:07.600 – 00:20:09.840
Yeah, I think hopefully we see you in the arena.

Chris
00:20:10.560 – 00:20:53.480
Thanks for joining us in the arena. If you want to keep growing, the best thing you can do is join our weekly newsletter. It’s where we break down the biggest ideas from the podcast and share the tools and frameworks we use every day to help leaders live and lead differently. You can sign up for that@doortwo.com signup that is D O O R T W O.com signup and if you enjoyed the conversation, make sure to follow or subscribe wherever you listen. If you prefer to watch, head over to YouTube and check out our full video episodes filmed right here in our on site studio. And remember, all growth starts with self awareness. We’ll see you next time in the arena.