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Eric Zimmer 00:01:09  Is it possible that overwhelm might sometimes signal a life filled with what truly matters? My guest today, ukemi awakened. Jeter recently shared a weekend so busy it would make most of our head spin. Traveling hundreds of miles, attending your daughter’s track meet. Leading civic events, showing up as a friend 500 miles in a car over the weekend. But rather than seeing chaos ukemi soar a life brimming with meaning and purpose. In this conversation, she reminds us that when our days feel full to bursting, it might just mean they are filled with things that we deeply value. So if you’ve ever wrestled with the paradox of loving a life that feels overwhelming, this is an episode you won’t want to miss. I’m Eric Zimmer and this is the one you feed. Hi, Ukeme, Welcome to the show.

Ukeme Awakessien Jeter 00:02:00  Thank you. It’s great to be here.

Eric Zimmer 00:02:01  For those of you who are listening, you cannot see this. But ukemi and I are sitting together in a studio in Columbus, Ohio. She is one of the things that she is  the mayor of Upper Arlington, which is a town that I lived in for about 12 years while raising my boys. So we have the fun of talking in person. We’re going to talk about that. We’re going to talk about her book called Immigrit: How Immigrant Leadership Drives Business Success. And we’ll get into all that in a moment. But we’ll start, like we always do, with the parable. And in the parable, there’s a grandparent who’s talking with their grandchild, and they say, in life there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops. Think about it for a second and look up at their grandparent and they say, well, which one wins? And the grandparent says, the one you feed. So I’d like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do.

Ukeme Awakessien Jeter 00:03:01  First of all, like, that is like an incredible parable because I think about it, as you know, I grew up with Christian parents. You know, there’s always the good angel and the bad angel, right? Kind of akin to this. But that that intentionality about the one that you feed, you know, is missing from the very good angel. Bad angel. Kind, kind. Look. So this, this thought that, hey, the one that you feed, the one that you pay attention to, the one that you pour into, is the one that wins. I love that. you know, I, I intentionally have to, given that I’m usually the only or one of few in many rooms that I’ve been in in my life. there’s always just that fear that I have to quail the fear of. Are you enough? Are you in the right room? Are you? Can people understand you? You know, being an immigrant with an accent. And it takes an intentional kind of rewiring to, remind myself that I need to be in that room, that I, To to feed into the idea that I am enough to feed into the idea that I do have something to to contribute.

Ukeme Awakessien Jeter 00:04:09  So, yeah, I love that pair.

Eric Zimmer 00:04:11  For people who are listening, cannot see you. When you say you’re sometimes the only one in the room. You mean as a black person? I’m the only one in the room as an immigrant.

Ukeme Awakessien Jeter 00:04:20  As an immigrant? Yeah.

Eric Zimmer 00:04:21  And you’re moving in some extraordinarily white rooms. Upper Arlington is a town is. I mean, I jokingly would call it the whitest place on the planet. I’m sure it’s not, but it’s not far off. I mean, there were things about sending my son to school there that I thought were really good, but one of the things I did not think was good was the absolute lack of diversity that was there. Like, I saw that as a as a big strike in the column for that as a public school system from my perspective.

Ukeme Awakessien Jeter 00:04:52  Yeah. And I think most people would would agree with you. That is that is a shortcoming for our city and the reason that we all choose to live in Upper Arlington, I think are similar, right in a ring suburb.

Ukeme Awakessien Jeter 00:05:06  The beautiful old 100 year old trees, right?

Eric Zimmer 00:05:10  Yes.

Ukeme Awakessien Jeter 00:05:10  The older homes, parks, rec the good schools. So pull any human and those would be factors that would a human would want to live in the community. So the question is, well, how did Upper Arlington become the place that only a certain subtext of humans that want that live there, i.e. mostly white? It’s about only 1.2% of Upper Arlington is black, with a population of about 38,000 people. That’s only if you do the math. That’s only about 600 of us that are black. there’s about 7% that are mixed race or Asian or population of color. So if you’re doing that right, 90% of Upper Arlington is 89 to 90% of Upper Arlington is white. but I it’s not something that I thought about when I moved there. It wasn’t something that I had. The factors that I just said earlier, you know, I wanted the great schools, the beautiful home, the fact that I was close to downtown and it was really my daughter’s experience as the only black kid in her kindergarten class, that heightened for me what that feels like in community, because I usually when I say I’m one of few or one of only in the room I’m talking about in corporate spaces, right? You know, I’ve never understood what that feeling is like in community till I experience it through my daughter.

Eric Zimmer 00:06:36  Yeah. And as a child. Right. You’re an adult and you have ways of processing. Okay? I’m the only person here that’s of color in this room. And I understand some of the reasons why that is. And I’ve done enough work on myself that I don’t take that on board And for kids it’s a different it’s a different story.

Ukeme Awakessien Jeter 00:06:55  A five year old child. Yes. They don’t have the words. They don’t have the process. Their kitchen table looks very different, like the home that they return to at the end of the day looks very different. And for my daughter, the words that she had was, mom, can you straighten my hair for school the next day? And in her mind, she thought changing something about the way that she looked was the thing to do to to create belonging. And children shouldn’t have to, shouldn’t have to at five. Think about that.

Eric Zimmer 00:07:29  Right?

Ukeme Awakessien Jeter 00:07:30  Right. So the question is what can community do even if your community that’s mostly white. Is it possible to build community where if you’re not white, you still feel like you belong? Yeah, that was a challenge.

Ukeme Awakessien Jeter 00:07:44  That was the challenge for.

Eric Zimmer 00:07:45  Me, right? And you talk in certain places about being at a crossroads? Yes. And you call that as sort of a you’re forced to make a decision. Right. Yeah. And so your daughter coming to you like that forces you to make a decision, which is either. Oh, I made the wrong choice. This is the wrong community for us. Time to get out of here, or I’m going to stay here and find a way to make it work. And you chose the latter. What was going through that decision like how were you going through that in your head.

Ukeme Awakessien Jeter 00:08:15  Yeah. from a practical standpoint I had just moved 200 miles from Cleveland, so to Columbus. So that was just pure exhaustion from.

Speaker 4 00:08:26  Moving, right. From a very practical standpoint to do this again. I cannot do all of this again. there.

Ukeme Awakessien Jeter 00:08:31  Was certainly that. And then the other aspect was we hear this be the change you want to see. Quote from Gandhi. And just philosophy is out there. You know, everyone’s like be the change you want to see. Well, what does that really mean in practice. And what does that mean if you’re going to show your children, be the change you want to see. and so I took that on, like, there’s some things you can’t just write in, there’s some change. You can’t just phone in or, you know, call people on. And that’s what I’ve been used to doing my whole life. Something’s not right. I write about it. I, you know, send an email to the person in charge to share my thoughts, share my insight, share my idea. what about jumping in the arena? That’s really being the change you want to see. And it was important for my kids to see that in in its application, that you can be the change you want to see.

Eric Zimmer 00:09:24  And where did that start? So now you are the mayor of Upper Arlington, which is again, I find no meeting you now. I’m like, well, of course she is.  But before that, right, you’re like, really? You know.  Like, okay.  You know, it’s it’s good. So there’s a there’s a big difference between this moment of your daughter at five and she’s 12 now. So seven years later now you are one of the preeminent leaders in the community. What did the early steps look like for you of saying, all right, I’m staying, and I’m going to embody and bring about some of the change that I think we could have here.

Ukeme Awakessien Jeter 00:10:04  The early days really started by paying attention to the environment my daughter was in. So paying attention to her classroom, paying attention to what the playground looked like, paying attention to programming that was available in the community for her to go to and the people that came to it. And the very first lightbulb for me. So this is all happening like October 2018. 

Ukeme Awakessien Jeter 00:10:32  My first Black History Month in Upper Arlington was February 2019. This is about six months after I’d moved to the community. Right. And so I am dropping my daughter off at school in And notice that there if Black History Month is happening in corporate where I was at. It’s not happening in her school. There’s no poster. there’s, you know, you send the Friday notes, the teacher sends the Friday notes at class on what they learned.

Eric Zimmer 00:11:04  Nothing.

Ukeme Awakessien Jeter 00:11:04  Nothing had come up. And it dawned on me this even really wasn’t about, my daughter being the only. It was also that other kids were not getting exposure to information or to activities or to learning’s, which kids are beautiful. They don’t understand this. You know, whatever you expose them to allows them to have curiosity, allows them to have conversation. but if you don’t expose them to things that allow them to talk about it, then they just grow up and we hear stories of people finding out in college for the first time of some stat that they didn’t know before that they probably should have known. And so that lack of exposure led me to ask a question of the community.  I went to the Upper Arlington discussion forum on Facebook.

Ukeme Awakessien Jeter 00:11:58  And I asked the question, what does our community do for Black History Month? And that post was met with so much curiosity, so much wonder. you know, the community members just even in their own just saying, wait, we don’t do anything. We I thought, you know, became one of those pointing fingers. Doesn’t the library do something? Shouldn’t the city be doing something? Is that the park? Like everyone is wondering who’s doing the thing, right? Right. And didn’t realize that no one. These things weren’t happening right?

Ukeme Awakessien Jeter 00:12:28  The library had some book collections at that point. The PTOs in particular schools. Since each school has its own PTO, some toes were doing stuff, but overall no one was holistically looking at the exposure our community members got, and so that’s kind of where it started. It started with diving in there. and before I knew it, I was serving on boards and commissions within the city.

Ukeme Awakessien Jeter 00:12:53  And in 2020, well, 2020, we all know what happened. 2020. not only Covid, but there’s this racial awakening, right? and so by 2021, there was a seat coming up on city council, and I’d only lived in the community three years at that point. And one of my neighbors that had kind of been on the journey since 2019, when I was asking questions on working with different community members and bringing the city its first Black History Month. said, hey, there’s a seat opening up on council. You should run. And it never crossed my mind. And I said.  I first laughed at the idea. Like three years. I have a name like Ukeme, Like. No. Right. No community recognition whatsoever like that. That’s.

Eric Zimmer 00:13:35  This is not.

Ukeme Awakessien Jeter 00:13:39  That. Be the change you want to see. And, the Hamilton soundtrack is one of my favorite soundtracks. There’s a there’s a song on there, the room where it happens.

Ukeme Awakessien Jeter 00:13:47  You know, we often think all this, all these policies, all the this impact that we have to feel from things that were done. It all started in the room and, you know, the song is like no one was in the room where it happened, the room where it happened, and I thought, I need to be in the room where it happens. And in order to be in the room where it happens, you got to do the hard thing of running for office and putting yourself out there and getting elected. And so that’s what I did. That’s how it started.

Eric Zimmer 00:14:16  You talk about asking a how question instead of a why question, right? So if we think about you and your five year old daughter, the why question is why? Why are there no black people in Upper Arlington are so few? Why? And and I think there’s also a chance that the why question pivots you towards judgment and anger.  And you talk about how how question pivots you towards curiosity.

Ukeme Awakessien Jeter 00:14:44  That’s the concept I talk about in my book, Immigrant, because I think when you’re really leading across difference or in a room with a lot of difference to avoid judgment, to your point, that why question almost puts you on the defense. If you’ve ever tried to ask a ten year old or a teenager why? they’ll just say because, right. That feels feels like I mean, adults do it too. They’re like, right. Because,

Ukeme Awakessien Jeter 00:15:09  It can create that judgment and instant kind of defensiveness.

Ukeme Awakessien Jeter 00:15:12  But when you ask, how did you come to believe? How did we it allows people to explain. And actually, you that asked the question to it puts you in a very curious position where you’re really listening to the history or their understanding of what happened or what transpired. and a lot of that happened, through understanding my daughter’s experience. It’s from there. Rather than ask, why did this inner ring suburb city only have 1.2% black. And then the how question.

Ukeme Awakessien Jeter 00:15:44  How did we come to be this city? Then you start to learn about the things like redlining. Then you start to understand the things about the socioeconomics. Then you start to, you know, the how reveals this history, what it’s taken for us to get there. And it also it also invites something about how the how question also invites people to be part of the solution.

Eric Zimmer 00:16:06  I was going to say it immediately. There is a pivot towards okay, how could it be different? Yes. Right. What would we need to do for it to be different? Right. I mean, it is a it, it puts you into sort of a solution. And this is an oversimplification, but a guest who’s been on the show a few times quotes Quincy Jones, who says, I don’t have problems. I have puzzles right now. I’m not saying that some of the things we’re dealing with on a grand scale are are puzzles, right? They’re more serious than that. But that pivot. from this is a problem to this is a puzzle.

Eric Zimmer 00:16:43  Yeah. Is that pivot to oh okay. Puzzles have solutions, right? Puzzles. You know, you can you can work on a puzzle when it’s a problem until the problem is gone. There’s it’s just oh sucks –  puzzle, ytou can enjoy solving to a certain degree. Right. It’s just a different framework, which I think is what you’re talking about when you’re talking about moving on those questions.

Ukeme Awakessien Jeter 00:17:05  Absolutely, absolutely. And, you know, in this instance, for me, what started as three women that believed in me and said, yeah, you can do this, you can run for office. And me having a mirror conversation with myself to face the inner critic and say, yes, you can do this, led to a team of almost 70 people that towards the end of the campaign that helped the campaign in some way and touch the campaign in some way.

Eric Zimmer 00:17:56  How are you finding or how do you get people to be civically involved? Right. I mean, I was not very civically involved when I was there.

Eric Zimmer 00:18:08  I was busy with a career. I was busy with two kids. I just wasn’t I wasn’t real civically involved. And I think a lot of people are. Well, I think if you just look at studies were far less civically involved as a, as a culture than we used to be.

Eric Zimmer 00:18:23  How were these the people that were already kind of showing up to these things? Or was there something that pulled people out? And if so, how did you. Did you have to pull people out or did they kind of come on their own?

Ukeme Awakessien Jeter 00:18:34  I and this is one of the big initiatives I’ve worked on on councils, civic engagement, and most of what I’ve implemented has come from how I ran the campaign. Here’s what I realised about people running my campaign and trying to get them involved. You’ve got to understand what they desire to get out of the experience, and you’ve got to make the experience a delightful one for them. I’ll give an example. If you want volunteers to help with Lit Drop, and I don’t know how many volunteer experiences you’ve had, but you show up and it’s unorganised and you haven’t, like specifically cut out. The sheet and said this is your section, And we don’t give them 500 things.

Ukeme Awakessien Jeter 00:19:17  We give them the 50 that you’re hitting today. It’s only going to take you two hours. We kind of outline for them exactly how it’s going to go. So I talk about that being.

Speaker 4 00:19:26  Delight.

Ukeme Awakessien Jeter 00:19:26  The volunteer experience. And then they go do it and they’ll be back.

Ukeme Awakessien Jeter 00:19:33  Because you made it so seamless and so easy for them to be involved. So I’m always critically thinking about in order to get people to engage. You got to meet them where they are. So sometimes we were doing these was block parties or meeting at coffee shops. We’re not creating or plugging into existing events. We’re not creating a whole new thing for them to just say, oh, another thing.

Eric Zimmer 00:19:54  Another thing to do. Yeah.

Ukeme Awakessien Jeter 00:19:56  You know, you’re kind of figuring out a way to integrate that experience into things that they’re already going to be at or that’s existing. And I’ve done this with our boards and commissions in the city because we need new ideas and we need people to serve on those boards and commissions.

Ukeme Awakessien Jeter 00:20:12  So it starts everywhere from our recruiting process. How do we talk about our boards and commissions? How do we talk about how it ties in? That’s perhaps the purpose piece. People that ended up working on my campaign understood the purpose of what we’re trying to do, and they had, like, grounding language about how we’re going to conduct ourselves. It was going to be fun. It was always going to be positive. We don’t bash on the other candidates on this campaign. So everyone is tied by purpose to start with. And then second thing, like I said, is like after you’ve you’ve shared what you would get from the experiences recruiting in a way where it’s easy and understandable. Don’t have a 20 page application to be a volunteer, it needs to be three questions. Yeah, right. Right. Figure what that is.  That is the same thing even in government, even in, like serving on a thing like a big board and commission. Then invite them in for the interview so that that’s a big piece is like, how do you really think about very much like a customer service.

Ukeme Awakessien Jeter 00:21:07  And I’ve probably been in corporate too long. But I think about I think about civic engagement as how do you delight that volunteer in your experience.

Eric Zimmer 00:21:15  What was your corporate career in before?

Ukeme Awakessien Jeter 00:21:17  So I have worn many hats. I started my corporate career as a mechanical engineer.  I was a project engineer and I traveled around the country. I liked to tease with my kids, but it is true. Literally, I was a toilet paper engineer so I worked on paper products, specifically toilet paper, and my task was to make it softer. I’ve never felt more validated of my toilet paper experience than Covid. When everyone was running around to pick up toilet paper, I knew that I could make it if I needed to. So I was like, I was not worried. I was like, I know how to make it and make it softer. That too, you know. So I started I started my career there. I did that for almost a decade. and I went to law school, and then I graduated law school.

Ukeme Awakessien Jeter 00:22:05  I was a non-traditional student. graduated law school, came out, did intellectual property. So I worked in private practice as an intellectual property attorney. the third grade understanding of that is I helped companies protect their innovation and their brands. Right. And then I went in-house. And that’s kind of how I came here to, central Ohio. Columbus. I was in the financial and insurance tech industry, and that’s how I came in, and I worked in-house in corporate as an attorney and did that for a few years and then ran for office, and now I’m at OSU. I’m an administrator and a professor. 

Eric Zimmer 00:22:43  So is being mayor not a full time position?

Ukeme Awakessien Jeter 00:22:46   Not in Upper Arlington. It’s not some cities. It’s a full time position. Not not in Upper Arlington. We what we how our form of government is, is we have the seven person elected council, and then we hire a city manager. And the city manager is the executor.

Eric Zimmer 00:23:00  Yeah. Okay, so you did make a new career change.

Ukeme Awakessien Jeter 00:23:04  I did make a recent career change. Yes, I went into academia, so. Okay. Yeah, it’s been fun. I do global education, so most of my programs are the international programs for the law school, Moritz Law School at OSU. 

Eric Zimmer 00:23:18  I have a bunch of questions about being an IP lawyer that have nothing to do with this show. So I’m going to just set those aside and move forward. But I was having a conversation with a young lawyer about IP law. me anyway. 

Eric Zimmer 00:23:35  You had a recent LinkedIn post where you shared something which was basically your weekend. Tell us about your tell us about your weekend. A recent weekend.

Ukeme Awakessien Jeter 00:23:48  Oh my goodness. It’s always it’s crazy I think.I think the one I posted on LinkedIn, it was I was down in Cincinnati.

Eric Zimmer 00:23:54  which is about two hours from ours.

Speaker 5 00:23:57  Yeah, two hours from Columbus. And then I had to get back up to Springfield.

Ukeme Awakessien Jeter 00:24:01  For my daughter’s track meet,  which that took an hour and. 15 minutes to go from Cincinnati to her track meet. Watched her track meet. Enjoyed her track meet. Cheered her on. She did fantastic place. Went back down to Cincinnati for.

To finish out the rest of the program I was there for, which is Leadership Ohio. And we’re traveling around the state to learn about different parts of the state. Went back down there, came back from there to Columbus. had a friend’s baby shower. I was teaching a webinar that day, so I had to be on for that. Just so by the time I got to Monday, I was. And then, then after that. So then I was in, Mansfield, Ohio. I left Columbus, went to Mansfield, and then Mansfield back. I put like 500 miles in my car.  That that weekend. like almost ten hours driving, right? Yeah.

Eric Zimmer 00:24:57  Like ten hours in the car.

Ukeme Awakessien Jeter 00:25:00  getting to all these things. it sounds insane. Because you look at your weekends. Like. Well, why are all those things scheduled in one weekend? You know what? You’d have some critics say that. but it’s just the season and the reality of the life that I’m in right now. And I kind of had to look at that weekend and take it for what it is. I was a mom, I was a civic leader, I was an educator. All the things that are important to me, I was a friend. All the things are important to me. were part of that weekend. Yeah. And so I couldn’t knock it for being this hectic, unwieldy. Why did everyone schedule everything in that weekend? I just had to figure out a way to stretch my bandwidth a bit. Yeah, so I could be there and enjoy all those things. yes, I was wiped. By the time I got to Monday. but I was grateful that I could do that, and I was able to.

Eric Zimmer 00:25:56  Yeah, I loved it. partially because we just launched a new course called Overwhelm is Optional. And the core idea is exactly what you’re saying, which is that for most people, their lives are as full as they want them to be. Yeah. Like there’s moments where you’re like, gosh, this is too much. But everything you’re doing is of value. It’s important to you. There’s a lot of advice of like, just slow down, do less. Oh, and that used to feel frustrating to me when I would hear it because I’d be like, well, but I don’t really want to or I can’t mean I can’t. I mean, I would give up something I value in order. I would have to act against something I value in order to do it. So if you can’t reduce the amount, all you can do is reduce how you relate to it. And that’s what I loved about your post, is because you did that work of relating to it instead of I have to do this, I have to do this, I have to do this.

Eric Zimmer 00:26:48  You related to it from this point of these things are all valuable to me, and I get to do them. And you know what? The cost of that is? A little frantic ness and tiredness. But I’m okay with that.

Ukeme Awakessien Jeter 00:26:59  Yeah, I oh, I love this course. When can I sign up? You know, to tell me more. No, it’s it’s great teaching because I think we’re living in an era of no say no. And like, you get to control your life and do all these things, but we don’t give the flip side of that. Yes, you get to control your life. And if you want to fill it with things meaningful, sometimes that does mean overwhelm.

Ukeme Awakessien Jeter 00:27:26  Yeah, yeah. You know, but you’ve got to look at it from the lens of I’m grateful that I get to experience all these things and it will land better. Yeah. Even if you’re just a little bit tired, it’ll land better for you.I think attitude is everything.

Eric Zimmer 00:27:38  Yeah, it was when  my boys were teenagers that I had the insight of. I was complaining about taking one of them to one practice and another to another practice on the other side of town. And I was in that I have to do all this and that. I just had the thought. I was like, no, I don’t.  I don’t have to. There’s no law on the books. It says, I got to take my kid to soccer practice like I’m choosing to. And why am I choosing to? Yeah. Oh, I’m choosing to because I think it’s good for him. He like. I mean, now now I’m back in the driver’s seat of my own life, and I’m and I’m and I’m realizing that the things I do are choices. Yeah. And that makes such a big difference.

Ukeme Awakessien Jeter 00:28:17  Yeah. I love that.

Eric Zimmer 00:28:19  Yeah. You tell a story about having a Joey. Yeah. In your life. Tell me, who’s Joey?

Ukeme Awakessien Jeter 00:28:25  Joey is my first boss.  My first corporate boss. Right out of engineering school. Just a fantastic gentleman. Actually. I start Immigrit with a story about Joey, because I remember when I was interviewing for jobs, and I still cannot remember to this day who it was. It probably was someone in our career office that had said, you’ll have a lot of opportunities. I mean, you’re female mechanical engineer. Like at that point, 2004, like, there’s not a lot of girls in STEM and everyone’s trying to get it, get their hands on one. So you’re going to have a lot of opportunities. How are you going to pick it? Well, one thing you should consider, and I would consider it like the big thing you should consider is how well you relate to who your manager is going to be, your direct boss. So if anything, yeah, you can get the fancy company titles. but I would go for the boss and I thought it was a really great advice, and it’s one that I give to my mentees now to very, very early on in your career.

Ukeme Awakessien Jeter 00:29:28  I think who you get as that direct manager, your sponsor, your mentor, your advocate is is that boss. And for me, that person was Joey and I picked. How did I become a toilet paper engineer? I thought I was going to go to mechanical engineering school and end up working on German cars. That was my dream. I loved German cars. I wanted to like, design and build them. I ended up as a toilet paper engineer because when I went into the interview and had an opportunity to interview with Joey and knew he was going to be my direct boss, we just had great rapport, great conversations, and I chose that opportunity and it worked out really well for me. as an immigrant, there’s also just different pressures in terms of, proving yourself to be able to stay and contribute to the economy of work in the United States. And much of that proving yourself comes in. The visa processes, the work visas that you have to get. And Joey didn’t know very much about the process, actually.

Ukeme Awakessien Jeter 00:30:33  But what he knew is that I was worth keeping, and he was willing to listen to what it was that we had to do. How how to position me. Because you get three years into the and you have to get your work visa. You have to. There’s a process where your company has to show of all the people that interviewed you, why why it was you. Most companies don’t want to go through that. They’re just going to be like, you’re not that great, okay, we’ll just go with it. If it causes us less work, you know, causes HR less work, they’ll go with this. But he was willing to go that journey. and so it solidified for me. Why tell my mentees now that that first boss in the career that you believe you want matters? Yeah, matters. They’ll give you the opportunities. They’ll advocate for you. Rooms that you’re not in and they’ll guide you like you know. Joey would  tell me that’s not that important at all. You didn’t do that. Right. And we’re young and moldable enough that it’s important to have that honesty right off the bat, because it becomes less and less so the more you go in your career. Yep.

Eric Zimmer 00:31:41  Hey, friend, before we dive back in, I want you to take a second and think about what you’ve been listening to. What’s one thing that really landed, and what’s one tiny action you could take today to live it out? Those little moments of reflection. That’s exactly why I started good wolf reminders. Short, free text messages that land in your phone once or twice a week. Nearly 5000 people already get them and say the quick bursts of insight help them shift out of autopilot and stay intentional in their lives. If that sounds like your kind of thing, head to oneyoufeed.net/sms and sign up. It’s free. No spam and easy to opt out of any time. Again, that’s oneyoufeed.net/sms. Tiny nudges, real change. All right, back to the show.

Eric Zimmer 00:32:32  It’s interesting. I got to see my Joey about two weeks ago, which is rare because he lives in Austin, Texas. Yeah, and it’s possible. I’ve never talked about him on this show. Amazingly so I’m excited to be able to. His name’s Charles Fry, and I, you know, at 2025, I was a homeless heroin addict. I got a job sort of in the tech business, customer support. But but this was the first like, big job that I had sort of landed was with him in this small organization. And it was him. Yeah, yeah. And then it turned into we became part of a startup and, and and I remember I thought I was going to be a network engineer because I could study for it. I had never been to college and I could study and you could get these certifications, and I got them all and and and we. We started this new startup company said, I want you to go over and do this thing called integration work. And I said, I have no idea how to do any of what you’re saying.  I trained to do this. I want to do this. And he said, no, you know, you would be an okay network engineer. You could be great at this. And I said, I still sort of argued. And I said, fine, okay, I’ll go do it for three months with the agreement that after three months I can come back and do this. And he was dead. Right. And it changed the whole direction of my career completely. I never would have had the career I had without him seeing something in me that I didn’t at all, and believing in me and putting me in roles that I. We were startups, startups. You do this, but you end up in roles you have no business being in now. But thankfully I, you know, landed on my feet. And it really, you know, was was what guided my career until six years. Today is actually the six year anniversary of me leaving my full time job to do this podcast. Hi everybody, Happy freedom day!

Ukeme Awakessien Jeter 00:34:25  That is incredible.

Eric Zimmer 00:34:26  Today is the six year anniversary. Yeah.

Ukeme Awakessien Jeter 00:34:29  Now, what was the decision? See, I’m going to turn this into my podcast. All right. Yeah. How did you arrive? That’s very brave. I mean, how did you arrive? There’s. There’s the safety net. Yeah. Of having a full time thing.

Eric Zimmer 00:34:40  Oh, yeah. It was tough. I, you know, about three years in. So I’ve been doing the podcast while having a full time job. This is the busy time I was talking about. Yeah. I’ve got a full time career that’s going well. I’ve got kids. I’ve got a podcast that’s going well. I got a mother who needs medical attention. Like, my life is full and I don’t. I don’t want to give up any of it.

Eric Zimmer 00:35:02  So. But about three years in, I started to dream a little bit, like, maybe I could do this full time. Like, this could be my career because I had started a solar energy company. I think as I went on in my career at first was like, can I make any money doing anything right? I’m a homeless heroin addict. I never went to college. Like just can I make any money doing anything. And over time there was always that. But it started to become a little bit more of like. Can I really enjoy what I’m doing. But. And then it was like, can what I do have what feels like a bigger meaning? Yeah. So I started a solar energy company, and that solar energy company went about five years and it flopped for a bunch of different reasons. And it was in the wreckage of that that I started doing this. Yeah. And I realized, like, oh, I love doing this. And so about three years I started dreaming, like, maybe I could do it full time. And I was out of startups at that point. I was in a corporate, big corporate job doing really big software projects and starting to finally make real, real money.

Eric Zimmer 00:35:58  Like, you know, you get to be, what am I if I was ten, ten years ago, you know, mid 40s? Yeah. Like when you’ve done it long enough that like throwing the real money at you. and ironically, there was a point where they said they like, they hit a point where they’re like, if he leaves, we are screwed. So they gave me a bonus to stay for a year, which turned out to be the thing that sprung me.Because I was like okay with that bonus and some savings I can go.

Ukeme Awakessien Jeter 00:36:29  I can do this.

Eric Zimmer 00:36:30  And so yes, it, it did feel it did feel risky. I mean, my, my, my boys weren’t at home, but I was on the hook for paying all their college. I mean, I still felt like I was nervous, but I felt like I had a plan, and, It’s worked. Now, I don’t make the kind of money I made then. I mean, I’m not making that kind of money that I did then. Still, I mean, I don’t regret the.

Eric Zimmer 00:36:55  And I don’t regret the decision. Right. Like, you know, I would go spend three weeks in the UK coming up because I can. Yeah. You know, because of this thing. So. But yeah, it’s funny that we got to talk about Joey. So thank you Charles. Which six year anniversary. That’s how I ended up with the stupid haircut.

Speaker 6 00:37:14  Because then you’re finally. You’re like, I’m not in corporate. I can I can do.

Eric Zimmer 00:37:17  My one year anniversary. I was like, I’m gonna go get a stupid haircut. I’m gonna go get a dumb haircut that I wouldn’t have gotten in a corporate job, and I’ll shave it off tomorrow.

Speaker 6 00:37:27  And it stayed. Well, this is your brand, you know? Now, you guys. Yeah, yeah, it’s become the. Yeah. Well, all right.

Eric Zimmer 00:37:33  Back on topic with you, though. So thank you for the little detour. I do want to talk about the book a little bit.  In the book. You talk about a core idea which is shifting the perception people have from the immigrant struggle to immigrant leadership. Talk to me about what immigrants bring. It’s special.

Ukeme Awakessien Jeter 00:37:56  This is a great question, because I think most times when people think about immigrants and immigration, they think about that journey on the boat and they have to learn the language and all these things, and they forget that these are people. We’re not a monolithic group by any means, but they’ve left what is familiar. To start anew. There’s some critical skills that it takes to start new.

Ukeme Awakessien Jeter 00:38:25  That perhaps people, some people even have a taste of that just moving out of their parents house or moving to a new city. You probably get some taste of you got to be adaptable.  It’s going to be unfamiliar. You’re going to be throwing a bunch of curveballs. How do you adapt to those things without going under? That’s one. There is a resourcefulness that it takes. I don’t care whether you’re the Prince of Persia and you have $1 million or you have pennies. But when you are in a new system, you got to learn the system. You got to figure out. Again, if you are a millionaire, you got to figure out what? What bank do I have to put this money in that gains interest? All of that stuff, all of those skills, takes resourcefulness.

Ukeme Awakessien Jeter 00:39:07  And it requires you to build new networks. And again, they’ve got to be resilient. And I talk about it as kind of like resilient. Plus because we think about resilience and we think about this concept of bouncing back. There’s no bounce back for them. It’s not like they can bounce back to where they came from. It’s all bouncing forward.

Eric Zimmer 00:39:25  Bouncing somewhere new.

Ukeme Awakessien Jeter 00:39:26  It’s bouncing somewhere new. It’s bouncing every every setback that they have. The bounce back means that they’re they’re springing just a little bit forward.

Ukeme Awakessien Jeter 00:39:35  Right. All these things and then grit because you’ve you’ve made that journey and you’re committed to seeing it through. Right. And so it’s like all of that is what I coin immigrant like that adaptability, that resilience, that resourcefulness, that grit. That’s immigrant. That’s the aspect of the immigrant experience that I think we fail to talk about or understand. And it really it translates to how they work, how they are as talent in the workplace That we miss.

Eric Zimmer 00:40:29  You talk about how I don’t have the numbers in front of me, but how very underrepresented they are in our leadership structures.

Ukeme Awakessien Jeter 00:40:38  Yeah, 3% of fortune 100 CEOs are immigrants. Meanwhile, 50% of fortune 500 companies were built by immigrants. Think about every household brand that you know of. Google. Levi’s, AT&T. All of them. all started founded by immigrants and immigrants and not leading this. I like to say in some of the research that I that uncovered from the book, we’ll see, immigrants in kind of what I call technical leadership or functionally technical leadership.

Ukeme Awakessien Jeter 00:41:13  So your chief technology officer is likely an immigrant from India. Right. But you don’t see them with broad levels of leadership. And we’ve got to ask ourselves why. Yeah. And I say this in the book, too, when we if I was to ask anyone, what are you what is the skill set that you think a CEO needs or leader at a high level, needs adaptability would come up. Markets are going to change. We need someone that you know can can perform under pressure. Can Bob and we even they would say that resilience is their secret. All these qualities that I talk about in immigrant, you’re going to say we want that in a leader. And here and the wonderful thing about these skills or the the interesting about these skills is not stuff. You can go to Harvard Business School and learn. You’ve got to live.

Speaker 7 00:42:02  Adaptability doesn’t just come to you. You got to live through situations that requires.

Eric Zimmer 00:42:07  More than it is knowledge.

Speaker 7 00:42:08  Yes.

Eric Zimmer 00:42:09  Right.

Ukeme Awakessien Jeter 00:42:09  Oh, I love that.I love that frame. That’s exactly it. Yeah. It’s not. It’s not a textbook learning. You’ve got to live through these things. Yeah. And here’s a population. Again, we’re not a monolithic group by any means, but here’s a population that I can pick up on without even knowing. The full story can tell you that they’ve lived these things. They’ve lived these qualities time and time again. So why are we missing that in our recruitment and our talent elevation and getting them to to leadership roles?

Eric Zimmer 00:42:40  You talk about giving a commencement speech back at your alma mater. Yeah. And one of the things you talked there was you were telling students to confidently go off script. Say more about that.

Ukeme Awakessien Jeter 00:42:56  there’s a lot of scripts that we’re kind of dealt in, in life, and I didn’t I didn’t necessarily write about this, but everyone knows it. You know, you you go to college, you get this degree and you work that path, right? You don’t rock the boat, right? You do as you’re told.

Ukeme Awakessien Jeter 00:43:13  The that’s generally the script that most people are told in life is success, especially on the on the corporate path and or to climb the corporate ladder. These are the things that you do. In fact, you kind of see it in even in professional development courses that you take within the company like get this skill, do this thing, do this thing, and then you go up another rung on the ladder. Yep. The problem with that advice is for most immigrants. And I’d I had to learn this myself. You don’t get the luxury of living life exactly on this script, whether it be the immigration process, whether it be the fact that you have to get a visa for something, whether it be how you prove yourself, sometimes you’ve you’ve got to bop and weave. It cannot be, that straight path that you dreamed about for yourself and using that wisdom in my life. Part of why there was the pivot from engineering to law was that I’d like, had worked out the possibility of my work visa.

Ukeme Awakessien Jeter 00:44:16  You only get it for so long, six years, and then you got to do another proving of yourself. And I was I was tired of that. And I said, you know what? I’m going to go back on a student visa and build another path and see how I’d. So I had to be flexible enough to let go of these dreams or this, this script. And it took confidence to say, figure it out before, I’ll figure it out again. And I was talking to a class that had just come through the pandemic, and so they were very anxious about what was going on for the future. And it’s like you’ll be less anxious if you weren’t too worried about script, if you could just figure, how can I confidently like, navigate whatever life is throwing at me? Going off script, that was the commencement speech I gave, Given the time that those students were in and graduating into. Yeah.

Eric Zimmer 00:45:08  And I think it’s never been more true that that path doesn’t exist in the same way that I used to.

Eric Zimmer 00:45:17  I had a conversation with my son a few weeks ago, and it was the first time in my life that I felt almost like I had nothing to offer him in the way of career advice, literally, because I was like, anytime up until like a few years ago, I’d have been like, well, you know, I mean, I wouldn’t I don’t know what you should do. I don’t, but I can offer some guidance and some ideas and some. And now, particularly with I, I’m like, I really don’t know. Yeah. I really don’t know what what jobs. I just don’t know. Maybe that’s part of getting old. Maybe you just eventually maybe everybody hits this point where they’re like, wait a second, I don’t understand this world. But but I feel like this is, you know.

Ukeme Awakessien Jeter 00:46:00 There are no traditional paths anymore. Yeah. And I think that’s what we’re picking up. And it’s more prevalent, now more than ever. But there’s something about this generation, too, that, that I’m enjoying is that they realize and I say this, I recently said this to a bunch of early career folks.

Ukeme Awakessien Jeter 00:46:18  We’ve been taught to, like, audition for our lives, where it’s like, oh, previous hopes for this thing apply for this job, and it’s time to start authoring your own life. You want something like figure out how you get the opportunity and do it. And this generation, something magical about this generation is that they figured how to make money outside of corporate. Because really, what kept us on the path or what kept us auditioning is who was going to be paying our paycheck.

Eric Zimmer 00:46:50  Yes, 100%. Yeah.

Ukeme Awakessien Jeter 00:46:53  And so there’s, there’s more freedom now to offer the path that you want off of the life that you want. And so. I say. I say to people, the life that you want is about how brave and how courageous you’re willing to be to get it. And that’s always been true. But it’s more prevalent now that people can actually do that, right?

Eric Zimmer 00:47:16  I want to talk about an idea of bringing your whole self together.

Ukeme Awakessien Jeter 00:47:22  Yeah.Authenticity is about the story. The short coded word.  I have a very complex relationship with with that word authenticity and bringing your whole self to work because, I mean, the way I think about it, sometimes you’ve got a code switch to bring yourself to work. You’ve got to there’s some level of survival that it takes. I think you’ve got to be culturally intelligent in reading the room to understand what parts of yourself you bring to work. Yeah. You know, it’s a cute phrase to say “bring our whole self to work.” But once you go into a room, you can tactfully decide. This is the part of self that I can I can bring fully. Some people call it code switching, some I call it being clever to say this is the part of me that this room needs right now. Right. It’s not always trauma dumping. It’s not always sharing your pain. I think bringing your whole self to work is really about how do you use a part of you, or a story within you to build a bridge or build a trust in that room? And sometimes that’s not your whole self. It’s just a part of yourself, right?

Eric Zimmer 00:48:33  It also assumes that there is this fixed self that you could drag around to all these scenarios. Right? And that’s not the way we are. No. Like I’m different with you than I would be different with my partner Ginny tonight than I would be with my son. And that’s not because I’m inauthentic. It’s because there’s no like, I’m not this monolithic thing. I’m a shifting, and that’s life. And so being wise and skillful about that, I think makes complete sense, and I am certainly one of those people that realized as I brought, quote unquote, more of myself to work. Yeah, I did better in the relationships that I was able to build with people. But but that was within certainly within some constraints. Yeah, right. It was certainly within some like, here’s a fruitful time to share a little bit more than I might. Hey, you know what? This meeting is probably not the time. Yes. Right.

Eric Zimmer 00:49:31  You know, and again, I don’t think that’s. I don’t think that’s inauthentic. Being someone you’re not, that’s inauthentic. Showing different sides of who you are is just skill.

Ukeme Awakessien Jeter 00:49:44  Bingo. You got it. That’s. Yes, that’s exactly it.  Yeah, that’s exactly it.

Eric Zimmer 00:49:49  I love you know, what you said was authenticity is not a vibe. It’s a skill. Like that. I think that really speaks to it. We talked earlier about turning towards situations with curiosity. And you describe your freshman year of college where you just moved here from Nigeria and someone asked you what did they ask you.

Ukeme Awakessien Jeter 00:50:17 It was it was  Martin Luther King weekend. And I was asked, what does Martin Luther King Junior mean to you? And I froze. And it wasn’t because I didn’t know who Martin Luther King Junior was. It was that I grew up in Nigeria. I’m a black African. We didn’t have the civil rights movement impact us, or our history or our learnings.

Ukeme Awakessien Jeter 00:50:46  We learned of him as some kind of historical figure that did something. and I can still see this all playing out, because the steps of the library in this reporter, because it’s I mean, the camera is in my face as a journalist and kind of motioned on. and I remember saying, blurting out that he doesn’t mean anything to me, but I know who he is. And I went back after that, and I was talking to my roommate about the situation in this expectation that just because I’m black, I should know black American history. I’ve since learned it over time. I’ve been here for 20 plus years.

Eric Zimmer 00:51:27  Because now you’re in America. It makes sense to learn it here in America, but not in Nigeria.

Ukeme Awakessien Jeter 00:51:32  Not not in Nigeria. and I remember her saying to me, well, you should learn because when I walk into a room, no one picks up intersectionality first. They like they don’t see that layer. What they see me as is a black woman. And I will never speak for all the experiences of black America because I’m not a black American, but I understand it now because I’ve taken the time to to learn it.

Ukeme Awakessien Jeter 00:52:06  and, I mean, I write about this in Immigrit and that’s, that’s really the work of cultural intelligence, as I understand who people expect me to be in rooms, and I can correct them. But it doesn’t mean that I don’t understand because I haven’t learned versus that dumb experience that I had. Like dumbfounded when like when the reporter came up to me. Can I take a beat? Pause. I’m remembering because I know I’ve written on two different things. There was that. And then there’s the did you grow up in a tree scenario? The one? That’s the one. Okay, I was thinking about that one, too, because I read the Martin Luther King one and I talk about.

Eric Zimmer 00:52:40  I can I can make this all work. So let me bring us into it. Eric Zimmer 00:52:46  So that is a great story. There’s another story from college that I can’t. It’s when someone said something so outrageous to you and and how you handled it then and how you would handle it now.

Ukeme Awakessien Jeter 00:52:57  Oh my goodness. Okay, this that’s the way you’re talking about. To go back to like my first year in America, there are a lot of stories. Maybe I’ll do a book just on its stories. But, this particular one asked whether I grew up in a in a tree in Nigeria, and I was so like, shocked and offended. I mean, I’m young. I’m shocked, offended about the question. I’m like, what the hell are you talking about? And I’m kind of like this sarcastic individual. So I retorted, yeah, right next to the American Embassy. Because, I mean, if I grew up in the tree, that means the diplomats that come here from America also live.

Ukeme Awakessien Jeter 00:53:39  In the same situation that I did. But what I didn’t understand at the time that I blurted that out is what the media shows about Africa and what it shows about how we live, and it doesn’t show the full story. There’s a quote by Chimamanda that says, the problem with stereotypes is not that they’re not true. The problem with stereotypes is that it’s not the complete story, right? So more than 20 years in here, I probably would have invited that. I would have shown a picture of how I grew up. I probably would have invited a very different conversation. Exposure showed them that, yes, those things are there, that there’s people that live in mud houses, there’s people that live in in treehouses in Nigeria. It’s not that it’s not true, it’s that it’s not the complete picture. And so approaching that with validating some of what they knew and adding to their knowledge. Right. And then opening up the opportunity for them to be curious about asking me more, it’s probably a better way to handle the situation.

Eric Zimmer 00:54:51  Yeah, I love that idea about stereotypes, you know, because when you bring up stereotypes, you’ll be like, well, stereotypes are, you know, they’re there for a reason. Yeah. Like, well, yes. And to your point, but it’s just it’s just focusing on one aspect.

Ukeme Awakessien Jeter 00:55:07  Yeah. We can’t make up a whole story.

Eric Zimmer 00:55:09  Of of people, and people are so much more. And all situations are so much more complex than that. But I just thought the way you wrote about this was, was really gracious. People don’t know what they don’t know. You know, to say one is old enough to know better assumes they’ve been exposed to better, right? Yes. how can how we respond can matter more than what was asked? And that’s that is a that is a position of strong agency.

Eric Zimmer 00:55:40  Right. That’s a position of strong agency to say whatever is whatever’s brought to me. Could be ignorant, could be done. But the way I respond to it is more important, and I don’t know that a lot of people feel that way.

Ukeme Awakessien Jeter 00:55:55  Yeah, there’s some kind of a wisdom that has that comes with time, I think. And as we become a more global world and what I, what I mean by that is before when people came to America in the 1800s, they had to be on a boat.

Ukeme Awakessien Jeter 00:56:10  They traveled a long time. There wasn’t a lot of exposure. Now people can get on a plane. Right now, people have the internet where they can.See although worlds. Right. But it still doesn’t erode. And why I use that phrase to to say you’re old enough to know better doesn’t mean it’s still just because we now know see,  different things we’re exposed to different news doesn’t mean that we’ve been exposed to it doesn’t mean we’ve had the opportunity to have a conversation about it.

Eric Zimmer 00:56:40  Yeah, exactly.

Ukeme Awakessien Jeter 00:56:41  You know, so what I say even. This happens to a lot when I see people spiral out on conversations online and that it’s of that position. Well, I mean, this is 2025. They should know. They should have seen. They should have. It’s like you don’t know what sections of the internet they’re on. You know, what they’ve seen or what they’ve been exposed to, and they’ve certainly never had a human conversation on it. They’ve probably just been in like chat rooms talking about this. So here’s your opportunity. When they have that point of contact with you to to have a different conversation.

Eric Zimmer 00:57:15  Yeah. And I think that that idea goes both directions. Meaning someone may have a lot of ignorance about our situation or may have a lot of ignorance about, you know, say, a particular group’s situation.  But oftentimes the people on the other side of that don’t understand that person’s situation. And it seems like that person’s situation is better. But unless you’ve grown up, just to take an example, right, you could have someone on the left who’s very multicultural and thinks that’s the way to be. And you have someone on the right who’s not right. A lot of people that I’ve talked to, particularly in particular, I see this in the coastal areas. They have no concept at all of what it would like. Would it be like to grow up in a tiny town in the middle of Ohio? They don’t understand what that world looks like at all. And so there’s this demanding that that those people understand the other world, which they should, but there’s no understanding back to what that world is like. And it’s a different world. You know, and I think I like what you said about never having had a human conversation about it, because it’s one thing to see it on TV.

Eric Zimmer 00:58:34  It’s another thing to encounter anyone, a human who’s living that way or has lived that way or has. Those are very different things.

Ukeme Awakessien Jeter 00:58:43  Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

Eric Zimmer 00:58:45  Yeah. But I just really loved that how we respond can matter more than what we asked. You know, because I do. As I said, I think it’s an agency thing, and I think it’s always been a big value of mine, which is like, I don’t want to just return what’s gift given to me. Like, I want to decide who I’m going to be. I’m not going to be who you who you expect me to be. Right. Yeah.

Eric Zimmer 00:59:11  And the simplest example, the time this first came to me was when my first wife and I split. And it was really painful. My son was two and a half. She left me for a guy who was in AA. It was a very. I was angry. It was really angry. Yeah, but I just had this moment where I was like, but I want to be towards her the way I want to be based on my values, not based on what she did. And and again, I don’t say that because I’m like this high minded person. I mean it because it gives me puts me back. You talked about being an author. It puts me back in the author’s seat. When you respond that way.

Ukeme Awakessien Jeter 00:59:48  Yeah.

Eric Zimmer 00:59:48  You’re in the author.

Ukeme Awakessien Jeter 00:59:49  Seat. Yes.

Eric Zimmer 00:59:50  Here’s who I am, regardless of who you are, Within reason. Right? I mean, you know, someone.

Speaker 8 00:59:56  All human at the end of the day.

Ukeme Awakessien Jeter 00:59:59  I mean, these are the things we can control, right? We can control our response.We can’t control what we’re asked. Right. And so if you look at it in that perspective, you can control, you know, our response. We can control what we do.

Agency I love that for agency. It’s yours to to to figure out. And I think if more people understood the power of their agency, we’ll be better off.

Eric Zimmer 01:00:21  I want to ask you a question. This kind of comes all the way back to being the first black mayor of Upper Arlington. Yeah. About being in a situation where you find your daughter at five one. Just straighten her hair. And it would be very easy to be angry about the systemic injustice of colored people in the United States. Which I think there’s a lot of reason to be angry. Right? And there’s. And there’s a lot of reason to believe that it is the way it is. It may not be right, but it is the way it is. And I’m controlled by those circumstances. And I find there’s this really challenging middle ground to find which is I am the way I am because of the circumstances that exist in the world. And I’m entirely my own, just my own creation. And I don’t, I don’t know that we’re either of those things. Yeah. How did you sort of because you sort of to me threaded the needle.How did you know to do that? What did you have to say to yourself to get there?

Ukeme Awakessien Jeter 01:01:18   So for me. It was about the children. there’s a there’s actually a Ugandan parable about this. Like, how are the children? Threading that needle for me was about how my daughter and my son would move in society. How would they? How would they move in rooms? How would they move in at the park? I didn’t want them to feel like they were less than in any regard because of their skin color. They’re five and two at this point. That innocence of seeing the world as it is. We all are humans. We all can play together. We all get to go to school. We all have the capacity to learn. This is the dynamics almost are the same things that happen on the gender front of things like how do women check out a STEM? Like at what point? And it’s because of this repeated saying, oh, women are not good at math. Oh. Like, yeah, you don’t want to stop putting. I didn’t want that to be put out for my kids.

Ukeme Awakessien Jeter 01:02:33  So was easy to thread that needle where it’s like, well, mommy is going to figure out how do other people relate to you? How do other people understand your world? And I remember when I was campaigning, I would say to people one simple task, and it’s always one, one task that I asked people to do today. Look at your mum. Think about who you went to dinner with, people you had in your intimate spaces. If you didn’t have a black person or person of colour that you invited over to your house for dinner, you need to expand your circle.

Ukeme Awakessien Jeter 01:03:03  Because our children learn more from those very intimate spaces. If you can’t have someone over. My daughter has never had the luxury of not having people of different colours and races in our house for dinner or her playdates, but there are some families in UA, that have never had a black person over to their house that have. Never had dinner and invited, you know, friends.

Eric Zimmer 01:03:28   So how do those people expand their circle? Because for a lot of those people, it’s not because they don’t want to.

Ukeme Awakessien Jeter 01:03:32  Yeah.

Eric Zimmer 01:03:32  It’s because it’s because there’s 30 of you in all of Upper Arlington.

Ukeme Awakessien Jeter 01:03:37  Right?

Eric Zimmer 01:03:37  I mean, you’re booked. Your dinner dates are booked.

Speaker 8 01:03:41  I know, I know exactly what you mean. Well, do you seriously?

Eric Zimmer 01:03:45  I meanI think that’s a real question. Yeah.

Eric Zimmer 01:03:48  Of that. I think a lot of. Yeah, well minded people who are in sort of the white enclaves to a certain extent. How do I expand that circle in a way that is authentic? Not me going to hunt out my token black person.

Ukeme Awakessien Jeter 01:04:02  I know right? Yeah.

Eric Zimmer 01:04:04  It’s a this is a genuine question.

Ukeme Awakessien Jeter 01:04:07  And that that for a lot of people is the challenge. I get that question a lot because yes, what ends up happening is the the burden and the task is on me. I have to be at all the things and, you know, be the face in all the rooms and, you know, make all the connections. I think it starts with playing in the spaces that you are. So at the workplace, you know, what do you have on teams? What do you have? Have there intentionally going to activities that you just really wouldn’t go to the Lincoln Theater here in Columbus, brings in some incredible artist and black artists. And look at those rooms. Find things you genuinely aren’t. Think about the art that you go. View. Think about black artists. Think about black musicians. Think about books that you generally wouldn’t have read. Read a different experience. Those things are the things that expand even for your children.

Ukeme Awakessien Jeter 01:05:04  Think about the books that are on their bookshelf. This was actually really where it started with with Harper in her classroom. It was like, look at all these books on the bookshelf. Start with there. Start adding different books to this bookshelf. Here’s a list of other black childrens author. How cool would it be for your child to read and see different animation, and see a different way that they do? Dinner or different celebration? Diwali or whatever that they celebrate and think, oh, why did they cook beans and put a penny for New Year’s Eve. Start that question. Start those questions. And it usually starts because they’ve been exposed to something different. And then from there, you you find the people that you do community with. Yeah. It takes some intentionality. If you are going to want to expand your circle, Fo me, I don’t have to do much right. That is what I’m surrounded by. But I get it on your on the other side. You have to do a little bit more work right than I ever have to do.

Eric Zimmer 01:06:03  As we wrap up. Take one thing from today and ask yourself, how will I practice this before the end of the day? For another gentle nudge, join good Wolf Reminders text list. It’s a short message or two each week, packed with guest wisdom and a soft push towards action. Nearly 5000 listeners are already loving it. Sign up free at oneyoufeed.net/sms. No noise, no spam. Just steady encouragement to feed your good wolf. 

You and I are going to continue this in the post-show conversation because I have more that I want to do here. Listeners, we’re out of time. Listeners, if you’d like access to that post-show conversation as well as all the others. AD free episodes, a special episode I do for you, and the good feeling of supporting a show that matters to you. Go to one you feed dot net. You kami. Thank you so much. This has really been fun.

Ukeme Awakessien Jeter 01:06:57  Thank you. That time flew by. It’s been a pleasure.

Eric Zimmer 01:07:00  Thank you so much for listening to the show.

Eric Zimmer 01:07:03  If you found this conversation helpful, inspiring, or thought provoking, I’d love for you to share it with a friend. Share it from one person to another is the lifeblood of what we do. We don’t have a big budget, and I’m certainly not a celebrity, but we have something even better. And that’s you just hit the share button on your podcast app, or send a quick text with the episode link to someone who might enjoy it. Your support means the world, and together we can spread wisdom one episode at a time. Thank you for being part of the one You Feed community.

Steven Shapiro 00:00:00  I think one of the challenges for parents and for people raising families is, in many cases, it’s the first time that they’ve been the architect of their own culture. Most of the time, we’re culture passengers.

Chris Forbes 00:00:18  Welcome to the one you feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in, garbage out or you are what you think ring true. And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don’t strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don’t have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it’s not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf.

Eric Zimmer 00:01:03  After this conversation, I couldn’t stop thinking about my son. He’s 27 now, and like every parent, I can think of things I did well and things I wish I’d done differently. Talking with Steven and Nancy Shapiro reminded me of one core truth. You don’t raise kids by having the right answers. You raise them by creating the right environment, what they call family culture. Not just ideas, but actions. Shared language, small, consistent practices that define who we are. And while this is aimed at families, I think what they’ve created is really about how we create culture in all the groups we’re part of, because culture is always there, operating behind the scenes, and we always have a chance to improve it. I’m Eric Zimmer and this is the one you feed. Hi, Steven. Hi, Nancy. Welcome to the show.

Steven Shapiro 00:01:56  Thanks. Great to be here.

Eric Zimmer 00:01:57  For those of you who are listening. You are not seeing this, but the three of us are sitting in a room together in Columbus, Ohio, and Steven and Nancy are people that I’ve become friends with over the last year or two years, probably. And I wanted to have them on to talk about something that they’ve created called Our Family Culture, which is really about how to create a culture really in any group of people.

Eric Zimmer 00:02:21  So we’re going to talk about that. But before we do, we’ll start like we always do with the parable. And in the parable, there’s a grandparent who’s talking with her grandchild, and they say, in life there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops. Think about it for a second. They look up at their grandparents. They say, well, which one wins? And the grandparent says, the one you feed. So I’d like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do.

Steven Shapiro 00:02:56  We love that parallel era, and both of us are educators and parents. And so we hear that parable through the lens of parents and families. And I think when you think about feeding as a parent, the minute a child is born, you make an immediate decision about feeding your child.

Steven Shapiro 00:03:11  Are we going to nurse the child or are we going to bottle feed the child? And as you go a few months later, we’re going to introduce solid food. And how are we going to do that? And what’s the best way to do that in the healthiest way? And as the kid gets older, we make decisions about things like how do we get them to eat healthy foods? How do we convince them to eat vegetables? Like that’s a constant parent battle? How do we get them to like fruits and vegetables and not become addicted to sweets and junk food? And so we think a lot about how we feed our child because we want their physical health to be good. And so I think in the light of this parable, we are also feeding our kids emotionally. We’re feeding our kids not just food in their body, but we’re feeding them ideas and values that nurture their souls and their well-being. And so when I hear that parable I think about as a parent, how do I make conscious decisions about what I feed my child emotionally, not just about what I feed my child physically?

Eric Zimmer 00:04:03  Makes sense.

Steven Shapiro 00:04:04  Yeah.

Nancy Shapiro 00:04:05  And as a middle school counselor, I was a middle school counselor for almost 30 years. And so also a parent and an educator. And so when I think about that, I would add to that, that that the emotional food that we provide for our, our kids is, is what makes them who they are. And if we’re not very intentional about how we are feeding them emotionally, what what are our kids walking out of the house each day feeling? Are they feeling safe or are they feeling, kind? Are they feeling protected or are they feeling, Or are they sensing stress and and anger and, perfectionism? What is it they’re walking away with? And so when we talk about feeding our kids emotionally, we want to make sure that that we are being super intentional about how we’re feeding them emotionally because we have this, as you know, I’m sure this this terrible crisis in mental health with with young people. And so there’s a lot of loneliness, depression, sadness. And so if we have this base of being well fed both physically and emotionally, then we’re putting kids out in the world who are ready to to tackle whatever comes at them.

Eric Zimmer 00:05:19  You used a word in there that I want to come back to, which is intentional, because we can talk about this in the culture of a family. But every group of people you put together ends up having a culture for sure, whether you intend it or not. It does. And intentionality in that culture is what’s critical for it to be the kind of culture that you want, whether that be your family, your children, that be a group of friends, a place that you work, a support group you’re part of. There’s always an element of, we can just let it kind of shape the way it does. Or we can direct it to a certain degree. And I think what you guys are really focusing on is directing that culture to a certain degree. Now, you guys are not saying, here are the five things you as a family must do. You’re offering up, what, 50? 50 fundamentals?

Steven Shapiro 00:06:16  Yeah, I think 44.

Eric Zimmer 00:06:17  The family would go through or a group would go through and choose. Here are the 10 or 12 that are really important to us that represent who we are. And then what you’re trying to do is then provide them with very small, very easy things they can do to build their family around that idea. Give us an example of an idea.

Steven Shapiro 00:06:37  Well, I think if you if you pull back, if you ask, we ask many, many parents as we were doing this work both in our careers and then as market research in this, in this work, what kind of kids are you trying to raise? What kind of family are you trying to have? And what we found, and it was actually quite surprising, is most people, when they thought about what kind of kids am I trying to raise would say. Kind. Honest. Let’s see. and they were kind of stuck there was those two. Everybody wants their kid to be kind. Everyone wants their kid to be honest. But usually people got stuck there. Now, that isn’t to say that people don’t care about a lot more things than that.

Steven Shapiro 00:07:15  Deeply and passionately. It’s just that they’re not at the front of people’s minds. Right? And so what we’re trying to help parents do is say, let’s really plumb the depths to say, what do you really care about? What really makes your heart sing? What could a parent say to you about your kid at a parent teacher conference that you’d be like, yes, that’s the kind of kid we’re trying to raise. If we can identify those things and bring them to the forefront. And so you ask for examples. I think one of the in addition to practicing kindness or showing integrity or doing the right thing, a lot of parents really want their kids to be resilient. It’s really important when our kids are all going to face obstacles and hardships, and a lot of parents really want to make sure their kids are able to weather the storm. And so we have a fundamental called bounce back. When something hits you hard, we bounce back and let’s practice building our resilience. And there’s a wide variety.

Steven Shapiro 00:08:03  I think some families are really committed to respect and hard work. Some families are really committed to creativity and self-expression. There’s not a right way to have a family. It’s just figuring out what kind of family you want to have.

Nancy Shapiro 00:08:17  But Eric, what you said, I think is, is very important about when you recognize the intentionality and the fact that all groups of people, when they come together, are a culture. So you either are a culture by default or a culture by design. And so what we’re trying to do is if I asked you about what your family culture was like growing up, I’m sure you would have some some memories that would start popping up and thoughts that would come up. We do too. We were raised by the same parents and we had.

Steven Shapiro 00:08:45  The same.

Nancy Shapiro 00:08:45  Home, in the same home.

Speaker 5 00:08:46  Even when you said, I don’t know if you said that, oh yeah, we’re a brother and sister, You live in the same home. How’d that happen?

Nancy Shapiro 00:08:54  That’s so.

Speaker 5 00:08:55  Weird.

Nancy Shapiro 00:08:56  But. But I think. Instead of just allowing color to happen by default, we recognize that families don’t identify as cultures necessarily. And so we’re sort of elevating that idea that when you’re a part of a family, you are a culture. And in fact, we want that culture to be the strongest part of who you are as you’re building the person that you’re going to become in the world.

Steven Shapiro 00:09:17  And we want that culture to be really deeply aligned with what you care most about. Like, why not? When you have a kid, you have dreams and hopes. How do you make those things come to life with intention and purpose?

Eric Zimmer 00:09:27  Yep. I want to jump back up for a second. I went a little deeper than I wanted to at first, because I want to go back to something you said about kids mental health crisis. So I have certainly read all of the data on this. And if you really pay close attention, there’s some factors in there that are being reported in ways that are not necessarily accurate, as in a certain number of years ago, we started reporting teen issues differently, and all of a sudden you saw this jump go up because the way things were reported.

Eric Zimmer 00:10:00  So there’s a lot of there can be a lot of noise in that data. And I’m not really here to to debate that one way or the other. What I would like to do is actually say, as educators, as people who work day by day with kids, what have you actually been seeing, regardless of what the cultural narrative is?

Nancy Shapiro 00:10:18  Yeah. I mean, I can speak to that in my work as a middle school counselor. And of course, you know, middle school is it’s a kooky time anyway, for for kids. And by the way, I work with incredible kids, like, there are some kids who are really grounded and really know who they are and what they’re about and are great leaders. But but more kids are really trying to figure it out, and they don’t know who to look to to figure it out. And so they’re they’re kind of unmoored. They don’t know what they believe. They don’t know what they think because you know. Think about the other. The other food coming to them in their lives, the other feeds that they get.

Nancy Shapiro 00:10:54  They’re all of their social media stuff and all and and just the normal peer relation and peer pressure and all that kind of stuff. So there’s there’s a lot of confusion for that young brain to try and figure out.

Steven Shapiro 00:11:06  Yeah. One of the things I observed a lot is anxiety. And the anxiety is usually rooted in, and this is really disturbing, but I’ll say it out loud, I think a lot of kids feel like their entire childhood is an audition for a college admissions officer. Their really, their whole life is going to be determined by which college they get into. And so they’re making decisions about what’s important about what they do in their life based on what will look good on a college application. And their fear is that if they don’t get into the right college, their life will somehow be diminished.

Nancy Shapiro 00:11:35  Or their parents fear their fear or their parents fear, which is which is what they’re feeding their kids. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Steven Shapiro 00:11:41  And so in some ways, rather than living to some set of values or some principles, they’re really just trying to achieve some external validation, as opposed to having some sense of who they are independent of that.

Eric Zimmer 00:11:52  Right? I was saying to you, Stephen, the other day, I was I don’t remember what I was listening to, but somebody was talking about purpose and about, you know, about people knowing what they want to do with their life. And they, they I don’t know how accurate this fact is, but but it was interesting. They said only two out of ten kids in their 20s really have any idea. And of those two out of ten, 80% of them are religious, meaning the vast majority of kids who have any real sense of where they’re going in their 20s are the ones that are religious. That makes sense, right? That makes sense, because if you are raised in a home where religion is important and and I think this is a critical and it works for you because it doesn’t for a whole lot of people. Right? And it works for you. That’s ideal. That’s wonderful. What I like about what you guys have done is that you’ve you’ve moved beyond any sort of fixed belief system, and you’ve made the field wide enough for parents to be able to say, here are the things that are really important to us as a family, and they can be whatever they are.

Eric Zimmer 00:13:00  You get to make your own unique sort of combination of them, and then the next thing I think is really important and is somebody who has a book coming out next year called How a Little Becomes a Lot, right? It’s about how little things accumulate and how trying to do too much at once often is unsustainable. And as parents, I mean, I’m a parent. My son is 26 now, but as a parent, I can think back on, you give me some big program I need to start doing to build family culture. It is not going to happen. Overwhelming. I’m not going to be able to do it. And so what you’re providing are these really small things an activity per day, per week, or a question or a short conversation that you can have as a family as a whole to talk about that idea? So if we’re talking about bouncing back, about being resilient, there’s little things to talk about and do each week in that regard.

Nancy Shapiro 00:13:52  Right. So an example of that might be. So what would happen is you would get something each day like you said. An example might be when you experience a disappointment. You know, people often try to help you feel better by saying don’t worry, it’s okay. You’ll get over it or a sadness or something. So the question might be, what are what is something that people could say to you that would feel better? Then it’s okay, don’t worry about it. Because and so and so we’re asking kids to start identifying and families to start identifying when you are feeling upset, sad, disappointed, like a failure, whatever it might be. What can we say to you that’s going to make you feel better?

Steven Shapiro 00:14:33  And this is aligned with the fundamental bounce back right. So if we want to help you bounce back, what would be the right thing for us to say that will give you. So I got cut from the team. It’s like, oh don’t worry about it. It’s like I am worried about it. That didn’t work.

Steven Shapiro 00:14:45  So what would be useful on a kid? Might say it might be useful for you to remind me about that video we watched where Michael Jordan got cut from his team, and about how that made him stronger. And it’s like, oh, if I if you say that to me, that’s going to inspire me a little bit more. And so we’re feeding parents all of that stuff to help them build that culture about resilience, in this case.

Nancy Shapiro 00:15:04  With the notion that that each one of the fundamentals is action oriented, there are values that are seeped in to these actions. So bounce back is the action. And so once you have practice, bounce back over and over, then all of a sudden instead it’s a shortcut. You don’t have to go through all the all the different things. It’s like, oh gosh, I you know, I didn’t get the grade I want out of my test. Oh, how are you going to bounce back?

Steven Shapiro 00:15:29  So simple. I would say in some ways, like you’re focusing on this the way that this shows up.

Steven Shapiro 00:15:34  And I would say that’s actually part three of the system. Part one we’ve talked about a little bit is alignment. Like just identifying what do you care about. I mean, I think and strangely, I know this is hard to hard to express, but if people are listening right now and I would just say to you, make a list of the ten most important things you want to raise your kid with, or that you want to build in your church group or your, you know, you know, focus whatever group you want to focus on. Most people have a lot. It’s work to figure that out.

Eric Zimmer 00:16:03  Oh, it’s a tremendous amount of work.

Steven Shapiro 00:16:05  So like if you start with that, so what we’re providing people with this list is choosing. Now you’ve got alignment. Now we know what we care about. Yeah. Second thing. Language right. We’ve got words. So if we say resilience is important, we’re giving you bounce back. Now this is code word and these become shorthand language.

Steven Shapiro 00:16:22  So now we have a way of talking about resilience in our family. And we use the phrase bounce back all the time. I think one of our fundamentals is called Leave it Better Than You Found it. And it’s a great one because once you get leave it better than you found it in your mind. You will not walk past a piece of trash without thinking.

Eric Zimmer 00:16:38  That is my fundamental. I don’t know what they’re called. Like razors, right? A razor, which is just the simplest thing you can have. And when I tried to boil down everything that I believe in, want to do all that into, like, one razor, one sentence that I could use it was that I want to leave every person, place, or thing better than I found it. It just gives me the simplest orientation. If I’m trying to make a decision between two things well, which which is going to do that better? And so you said language is number two. And then number three.

Eric Zimmer 00:17:08  Practice practice.

Steven Shapiro 00:17:09  Okay. So you got alignment.I know what I care about language I know what what I call that and then practice which is I get to bring that into conversations with my kids and actions with my kids. So it’s it’s both what we’re providing with people is once you have and this is one per week, so say this is bounce back week. Throughout the week we’re going to give you questions you can talk to your kid about. We’re going to give you scenarios you can present to your kid and see what what you do in this case videos. Eric I think this is my favorite part of our system. I do I mean, I think I watched all the seasons of YouTube. I mean, I watched literally thousands and thousands of videos to find these amazing, like two and three minute videos that align with each of these fundamentals. So like if you’re doing Bounce Back, there’s this great video you can watch of Michael Jordan being interviewed, talking about being cut from the basketball team, for example. Or there’s there are a whole bunch of them.

Steven Shapiro 00:17:56  And so you’re just in you’re in this conversation with your kids about bounce back just for one week, and then you move on to the next one. And if there’s 15 of them, you do them for 15 weeks.And then on 16.

Eric Zimmer 00:18:06  Year.

Speaker 5 00:18:06  Round, you’re back to bounce back. Yeah.

Steven Shapiro 00:18:08  But eventually, over time, this is how culture gets built, this slow way where language becomes shared and conversation. In some ways, we’re not only helping you build a better family and build better kids, we’re actually helping people have better conversations with their children.

Nancy Shapiro 00:18:21  And have better relationships with their partners. If they’re if they’re parenting with a partner.

Eric Zimmer 00:18:26  And just in general being more intentional about their own lives. Right? This is it is intended. Most parents are going to take it on for the children. But an example, me doing this podcast, just talking about this sort of stuff all the time, changed who I was on a consistent basis.

Nancy Shapiro 00:18:43  Yeah. We worked with a gentleman named David Friedman who wrote a book, Culture by Design.  And so he has done this culture building work in business. And when we read his book, in fact, at the end of it, Steve, we were sitting at Steven’s kitchen table. He said, sis, listen to this. And he reads out loud. And David says, many people often ask me if I use this same system when raising my family. And the answer always is, I wish I had. Yeah. And so it’s funny because because we’re working with David and, and sort of building off of his system with, with our background and history and expertise. And there are a lot of people who have asked him in, in the work that he’s done. Do you have anything like this for families? And I have a feeling what’s going to end up happening when families are using our family culture is people are going to say, hey, do you have anything like this for schools or for business or for? So it’s just so symbiotic that way

Eric Zimmer 00:19:40  Once you start thinking about culture, you suddenly recognize how ubiquitous it is and how important it is. And you realize you’re in a bunch of different cultures. Yeah, unless you just stay at home all the time, in which case you’re in a culture, you’re still in a culture because you’re watching TV or reading or whatever. But but yes, you’re you’re in one. And I think as soon as you start thinking about it, at least for me, I start to see it everywhere and I start to go, oh, okay, that’s a great culture. But this other one I’m in doesn’t feel so good.

Steven Shapiro 00:20:10  I think one of the challenges for parents and for people raising families is, in many cases, it’s the first time that they’ve been the architect of their own culture. Most of the time we’re culture passengers. Rarely are we culture drivers. Yes. Right. I think one of the advantages when I look at my own parenting journey, my wife and I were both educators. She was an elementary teacher. I was a high school teacher. The beauty for us was that we had five years of teaching experience before we had kids.

Steven Shapiro 00:20:34  So we had practiced creating a culture in our classroom. And then when it sucked after the first year, we were like, okay, we could do better the second year, and by the third and fourth year, we figured some things out. We figured out what we cared about. We figured out how to make that live for many people, like their family is the first time that they’ve actually been in charge of designing the culture. And that’s a tough place to start because it’s the most important culture you’ll ever build. And it’s your first try at it.

Nancy Shapiro 00:20:58  And many are simply unaware that that’s what they’re doing.

Eric Zimmer 00:21:32  When I heard about what you were doing, I certainly was like, I wish I had this when Jordan was little.

Nancy Shapiro 00:21:37  Like we say that too.

Speaker 5 00:21:38  Yeah. I mean, I feel like we have.

Eric Zimmer 00:21:40  I feel like I did lots of things. Good. Some things probably not so good. But there wasn’t this level of intentionality and this level of consistency. And that’s what I think is really important.  It is the little things repeated. Yes, because I created a program called Wise Habits, and I think there’s a lot of overlap. And I set it up as there’s like three core problems that we kind of have to solve. Right? First is just busyness. Everybody’s super busy, so whatever you do has to fit. Second is the problem of forgetting. You just forget to do it. You have the best intentions on Sunday evening, and by Thursday you’re like, what happened? And then the last is way too much information. Way too many things to do. Do this, do that. You know. And I don’t mean I don’t just mean like, tasks, I mean information. Like, if you’re like, oh, I want to be a parent, I’m going to I want to be a good parent. There’s a thousand things coming at me, a thousand different posts. I could read eight blogs before breakfast, right? But none of that. I won’t say none of it. Rarely does that translate into a path forward, because that path has to be consistent. To a certain degree, it has to go in a certain direction, and then it needs to kind of loop back on itself. Right. Because we don’t get it the first time. And, you know, the first 50 times I was in an AA meeting, they say the same thing every time.

Eric Zimmer 00:23:02  Both good and for good and bad. I mean, like, you know, there are times I thought I’m going to kill me. I mean, if I have to hear this again, that’s what’s going to cause me to drink, right? If I have to listen to them read these 12 steps again. And yet it was the consistent going back to these foundations that I believe was one of the big reasons for transformation. It’s because I was exposed to the same thing consistently, again and again and again, the same idea. And that’s partially what you guys are doing. There’s a there’s a Jewish system known as Musar that does this also. There’s a certain number of traits or character virtues that you pick and you go through them maybe 13.

Eric Zimmer 00:23:40  There’s 13 of them. And when you get to the end of 13, you start right back over. You do it four times a year and you keep going. And and over time you are deepening yourself further and further into these things. I want to ask a question about the language, though. I’m really intrigued by not values, but actions.

Steven Shapiro 00:24:00  Behaviors.

Eric Zimmer 00:24:00  Or behaviors.  Say more about why that is that way.

Nancy Shapiro 00:24:05  I think the reason it’s that way is because when you look at a list, you know, there’s lists of values. You can talk about trying to pick values. I mean, schools do this all the time. What do we value? Our businesses. What do we value? How do we want to pick our core values? You look at the lists and the words. They’re usually words a single word responsibility, respect, compassion, whatever the words are. And they mean different things to different people. So if the word respect is there and you come from a military background, that means something really different than somebody who is trying to make change in the world.

Nancy Shapiro 00:24:43  Policy change in the world, let’s say, in respect, might look a little bit different. And so when you look at those words, there’s a lot of different interpretations of them. In addition, what we wanted to do was to have actionable behaviors so that, you know, if I think about, oh, we have to be respectful, you know, that’s really hard. But if I. Well, that’s that’s not the best example.

Steven Shapiro 00:25:03  Indian culture isn’t what you believe.

Speaker 5 00:25:05  It’s what you do. It’s what you do, right? That’s what that’s.

Steven Shapiro 00:25:07  How you know.

Speaker 5 00:25:08  People.

Steven Shapiro 00:25:08  You know, you can go into the locker room and say a whole bunch of stuff, right? But the question is like, now what? Now what.

Speaker 5 00:25:14  Do you you know.

Steven Shapiro 00:25:15  If you’re I mean, coaches are great culture builders. Every, every team has a coach is trying to build a particular culture that has to show up at practice, that has to show up in in the way you talk to your team, that has to show up in how you respond when people violate.

Steven Shapiro 00:25:28  So behavior is what drives culture. For sure there are no underlying fundamental beliefs or values that shape that, but its behavior. That is the face of culture, right?

Eric Zimmer 00:25:39  What I think is really interesting about this is I do a lot of work with people on figuring out values. And you’re right. You give somebody a list of 50 values. And at least for me, that exercise was always paralyzing. Yeah, right. It was just like, well, I agree with all of them. Like, who doesn’t want respect? Who doesn’t want honesty, who doesn’t want adventure? Who doesn’t want kindness, who doesn’t want. Sign me up for all of them. And you know, my old, the old maxim in project management was if everything’s a priority, nothing’s a priority. So choosing is is difficult. And I think in your program, it’s still difficult.

Eric Zimmer 00:26:12  You got 50 words. But I like this idea of instead of having to define a value and then define an action that goes with that value. You’re kind of right to the actions. And it seems like there’s a that’s a nice it’s a nice step that I mean, life is complex. No system gives you the answers for everything that you come across in reality. But this is a is a shortcut, you know. Leave it better than you found. It is a I mean, I could tell you what the value is underneath it exactly. But it’s a pretty straightforward thing. Bounce back. Same thing. The ability to okay, I bounce back when I’m in a difficult situation.

Steven Shapiro 00:26:51  Should be fun. Like we have a we have a fundamental called love yourself.  But not too much. Right. And so that’s like. Confidence plus modesty.

Steven Shapiro 00:27:00  Love yourself but not too much. So you know, it’s when your kid is down on themselves. Love yourself when your kids overdoing it but not too much. And so it’s it’s in some ways these are shorthand. So we can actually talk to each other about the way the actions are shaping up.

Steven Shapiro 00:27:13  And I think to a point you were making earlier, I think a lot of parents join up with our family culture because they want their kids to be a certain way, but what they realize in the process is it’s not just about what your kids are going to be like, it’s about what you’re going to be like 100%. Yeah, this is this is family culture isn’t just for the kids. We’re all in this thing, right?

Eric Zimmer 00:27:30  Because as you said before, behavior is is critical. You can say all you want. You can have all the conversations you want about, showing up for others. This is another one from your list. But if you don’t show up for your kids, it doesn’t really matter. I mean, right? Having the conversation is better than doing nothing.

Steven Shapiro 00:27:47  And hilarious thing about this, I think a beautiful thing really, is that if you say we show up for others and then you know somebody, you know, you know, somebody dies and you’re like, I should go to the funeral, but I don’t really want to.

Steven Shapiro 00:27:58  There’s a show I have on your kid is going to say to you, hey, dad, what about show up for others? I feel like you need to go to that funeral. And suddenly, like, our kids can actually push us towards our cultures, our family, culture, values. And so that’s a beautiful thing, is when we’re in this together with kids, I mean, a big part of what we’re trying to do is shape family culture, not just fix kids. And I think creating these conversations in your family is powerful. And one of the things that we have amongst our daily prompts is something we call vulnerability questions. And these are questions that ask parents to get vulnerable with their kids and talk about maybe where they fell short in living out that fundamental in their youth. And this is a really interesting conversation. So if you’re practicing kindness this week, and the prompt may be parents, tell your kid about a time when you were unkind to someone. Tell them a story about what happened and ask them for advice on what they think you should have done, or maybe what you should do now.

Steven Shapiro 00:28:53  And so suddenly, a parent sitting down with a kid and saying, you know, when I was in high school, there was this kid, and they’re telling the story. They’re acknowledging their own failings, they’re showing their own vulnerability. And the kid is saying, oh, geez, dad. Like, that wasn’t very nice. He was like, I know, I still feel like I’m I’m this old and I still feel bad.

Nancy Shapiro 00:29:10  We all have those, right? We all have.

Eric Zimmer 00:29:11  Those. I’m glad to know that because I have one for sure. For sure that I, you know, I run through, I think I even when I was doing like aa amends tracked this person down and I’m sure they were like, oh, like. Why are you coming to me to talk.

Nancy Shapiro 00:29:24  About as a school counselor? You have no idea how tempting it was to be like, Trust me, you’re gonna regret this later.

Steven Shapiro 00:29:31  But it’s so, so special when a parent can share that vulnerability and the kid can then say, dad, you know, here’s what I think you should have done, or here’s what I would like to think I would do in that situation.

Steven Shapiro 00:29:38  Or maybe the kid says, dad, can you find that person on social media? Have you ever, like, apologize to them? And suddenly you’re talking about what it looks like to practice kindness with your kid where they’re advising you instead of you’re advising them. And that’s really what culture is.

Nancy Shapiro 00:29:52  It’s so empowering.

Eric Zimmer 00:29:54  To I think that’s when I say speak when spoken to it. Is that on the list?

Eric Zimmer 00:30:07  So I want to go back for a second to this issue of being overwhelmed by all the choices, so we could get a values list of 50 values. And you look at them and they go, they all sound good. I look at your list of values translated into action, same thing. They tend right. They tend to all look pretty good. How do you encourage people to narrow this down to what’s foundational to you?

Nancy Shapiro 00:30:36  Yeah, yeah, that’s a good question. We get overwhelmed sometimes when we look at it and when we talk about the fundamentals, which one is.

Nancy Shapiro 00:30:44  So we have a lot of discussion about the different fundamentals, what we recommend when families start when parents start this, this endeavor is that they take the list of fundamentals separately and they go through them and look at them and see like which ones are the most important to me. And so if you’re parenting with a partner, then each of you does the list separately. You come together, the ones that you both have. Well that’s easy. And then the ones that maybe one of you has but the other doesn’t, then you have a conversation and you and you figure it out, which is one of our fundamentals. Figure it out. But the other thing that is also true is that some of the fundamentals sort of overlap, right. And that’s okay, because you’re just going to pick the ones that you want to do, and then you’re going to not worry about the other ones. So pick the one that sort of best fits you and what it is you’re trying to do.

Steven Shapiro 00:31:36  Yeah. And I would say we encourage parents to think about.  I mean, everything’s good like you say, but if everything’s important, nothing’s important. What are the things that really matter to you? And so, for example, one of the questions might be if you went in to a parent teacher conference, what could the parent what could the teacher say about your kid that you’d think, yes that’s fine. Yes. And I’ll give you an example. I would go into a parent teacher conference for my kids, and the teacher would say, and they’d always set the gradebook out, especially as the kids got older and they’d say, oh, well, your kids turned in all their assignments and I’d be like, okay. Like, I’m glad they turned in all their assignments. But like, compliance is not really a core. Like, it didn’t make my heart sing. That wasn’t the thing

Eric Zimmer 00:32:13  Unless you’re me. In which case compliance is a really big step.

Speaker 6 00:32:16  Yeah, exactly.

Nancy Shapiro 00:32:18  Exactly.

Speaker 6 00:32:18  So if it is.

Steven Shapiro 00:32:19  That might be like, oh my God, thank.

Speaker 6 00:32:20  God my kid is on there. It showed up this week through. Yeah. If that’s the thing, then that would make your sound. That’s why I wouldn’t.

Steven Shapiro 00:32:27  Choose itm Maybe you would.

Steven Shapiro 00:32:28  But, you know, like, one time I went in for a conference and the teacher said, you know, this was middle school. And they said, you know, your daughter Caroline. Every day when the bell rings, she gets up, she walks out of the room and she stops at my desk on the way out and she says, thank you. And I thought, that’s my kid. Yeah, yeah, that’s my kid. and so you you have to think, what are the things that really make your heart sing? We have a fundamental called include others. And if you practice, include others in your family. And you make that a core part of your conversation. And so you know that you have to include others. Week every 16 or 18 weeks, however many fundamentals you have.

Steven Shapiro 00:33:06  And then you go in for that parent conference. And the teacher said, you know, we had a new student move in and your kid went over and said, hey, I know you probably don’t have any place to eat. Would you like to have lunch with us? You think that’s my kid? Yeah, yeah. And so it’s when you think about what are the things your kids could do that would make your heart sing? Like, that’s the kind of kid. For some people it’s, it’s it’s put in the work. We have a fundamental call put in the work. Some people will go into that conference and say, you know, your kid’s not a natural student, but I’ve never had a student that will work and work and work at something until they get it right. And some people are like, that’s my kid, right? So I think it’s like thinking about those things. What are the things that you will really light up with joy when you see your kid exhibiting?

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When I think about doing values work with people, there is a number of different exercises that that people can do. One that I particularly like is called Pick a Guide. And you think about someone you admire, and then you reverse engineer what it is. What is it about that person that makes me admire them? What are the qualities of that of that person? There’s also a you know what? Think about when you were happiest, when you were proudest and when you were most fulfilled.

Eric Zimmer 00:35:06  Okay. What does that point at? And as a family culture, I think for me, thinking about the things that did make my son happy and fulfilled would be important parts of me choosing. Because yes, of course, culture I’m bringing most of it, but I also want to imbue it with some aspect of who they are. I mean, now again, if you’re if you’re starting this with a six month old, you may not may not be a whole lot to work with. A six year old may not have, you know, has not been very proud or fulfilled. Yet. Some moments of happiness and many other moments of what.

Speaker 6 00:35:40  The hell is going on. Because when you look at all the baby, it’s just like there.

Steven Shapiro 00:35:45  You know, I think you raise an important point because people are entering this work with us at very different stages. You know, some people are at the early stage where their kids are three and four and they’re like, we’re just really forming who we are.

Steven Shapiro 00:35:57  Other people may enter where they have a 14 year old and a ten year old, and it’s never too late to focus on your family’s culture. It’s not I mean, you know, high school coaches get kids who are juniors in high school, and they create a powerful culture on a team with a bunch of 17-year-olds.

Eric Zimmer 00:36:11  Oh, yeah. I mean, I had a high school teacher who created a culture around him that totally, you know, made a huge difference.

Steven Shapiro 00:36:19  Yeah. So, you know, we can create culture at any stage of the game. But I think there are two things I would say about this. One is when you have kids that are already behaving a certain way, some people will choose fundamentals because this is really important to me. Some people will choose fundamentals because my kid really needs this. So, for example, if you have a kid that really struggles with flexibility, you might choose roll with it as a fundamental. And the reason you want to practice roll with it is because, you know, your kid struggles with like adjusting when things.

Steven Shapiro 00:36:50  And so if we practice, roll with it as a family and we make that a family culture thing, it will make it easier for my kid to be flexible. And that’s great. So that’s one. You know, you may choose it because you care about it, or you may choose it because it’s important for that kid. Yeah. I think the other thing I would say about this is that when you have older kids and I think this is really exciting, if you have older kids, is the choosing of the family fundamentals doesn’t have to be done exclusively by the parents. Right. When your kids are old enough, you can actually engage them in building the family culture with you, and they may do it for the same reason. They may say, this is really important to me. you know, they may be really committed to social justice, and they may want to fight for what’s right to be one of your family’s fundamentals. And that may challenge you to be a little more socially conscious, because that.

Nancy Shapiro 00:37:34  Or they may choose one that they want their parent to improve on. Totally. Yeah. So listen generously. Well, you never you know, when I, when I talk, you just give me answers or give me, solutions. I just want you to listen to me, listen generously. Can we practice that?

Steven Shapiro 00:37:48  So that’s really special when the kids are, kids are participating in creating the culture now. They own it with you. And I think even if you have a kid that’s, you know, a senior in high school and a junior in high school, like, what an amazing last couple of years with your kids in the home. I think I saw a statistic that I think parents will spend 90% of the time with their kids before they turn 19, almost all the time you’re going to spend with your kids when they’re young. Once they’re gone, you’ll see them in bits.

Speaker 6 00:38:13  You know, we all yeah we know. Yeah. You see them in bits. Yep.

Steven Shapiro 00:38:16  So if you really want to have that impact even if they’re 16 or 17.They’re still with you every day.

Eric Zimmer 00:38:20  Still have some time

Eric Zimmer 00:38:44  Let’s talk a little bit about how doing this work has changed you guys. You’ve both said that your kids are up and out on their own, so it’s not going to have changed your direct family culture in that way. What ways has it changed you personally?

Nancy Shapiro 00:39:03  I think it just elevated our consciousness as well. It’s we’ve had a lot of very interesting talks about just what our parents taught us and what our family culture growing up was like. and, you know, for example, our father passed away at the age of 56. We were both in. I was in my early 20s. Stephen is, of course, older than me,  but my dad was very, just naturally good at being an attentive parent and meeting us where we were. And so there are a lot of things that he taught us without being as intentional as, as we’re trying to, to help people be.

Nancy Shapiro 00:39:48  But what’s interesting for us is that we see in our children. Our children, of course, never met our dad because he died before we got married. And so they espouse some of his values. We see it in them because it was just passed through us because it was so important. And and now they are living those values as well. And so to, to me, like, that’s one of the most beautiful things that has come out of it It’s like just even our noticing of. Oh my gosh, look at what? What? You know, Emily just did. That was something that dad would have been so, so excited about, right.

Steven Shapiro 00:40:25  It speaks to generational legacy. It makes you think, like what I’m doing raising my kids will exist in my family after I’m gone.

Eric Zimmer 00:40:32  In both good and bad, hopefully. Right. For better. Yeah. So it’s like, that’s our challenge. You know, if I were to be doing some of those things, my father has passed. However, there’s a lot of behaviors there that I would be very unhappy to see of in my child. Right. Of course. But it’s the intentionality that allows you to kind of know that.

Nancy Shapiro 00:40:51  When we started doing this work and and talking about how we wanted to bring this work into the world, and there have been many iterations. One of the things we used to talk about was that people parent one of two ways. They either parent the way they were parented, or the exact opposite.

Nancy Shapiro 00:41:11  And not many people like say, you know, pick and choose like, oh, that was that was something that was really useful. But let’s try and avoid talking to our kids this way.

Steven Shapiro 00:41:21   Right. Both. Both. Doing what your parents did unthoughtfully or doing the opposite. Neither one of those are choices. They’re both just reactions.

Eric Zimmer 00:41:27  Yeah, exactly. Yes, 100%. And I think that is the the importance of intentionality is that who knows where the things that happen automatically come from? They come from countless, you know, countless causes and conditions. We could never unravel them.

Steven Shapiro 00:41:43  We’ve thought about generational legacy a lot more. We thought about what the legacy of our impact on our kids is going to be, and our kids are entering the age where they might consider having kids. And we’ve thought a lot about how this system can help support them in bringing some of the things that we brought to our family, to their kids in a more intentional way. And then I think, just to be honest with you, I feel like I just become a better person in small ways over and over again, not because I’m practicing the fundamentals, but because I wrote them and because I wrote the content and because I watched all the videos, and because all the work that we’re doing surrounding these is just heightening my consciousness daily, all the time. I’m seeing places, and Nancy and I laugh because we can’t watch. You know, if you watch the team win the championship, I guarantee you guarantee you on that podium when they’re talking about what it meant to be a champion, they’re going to mention 3 or 4 different fundamentals.

Steven Shapiro 00:42:36  They’re going to say them. We did this. We did the bounce back. We always said we we stick with 0:42:37  it. We look. We look.

Nancy Shapiro 00:42:42  At each other and we put it in the work. Yeah, yeah. We put it the.

Steven Shapiro 00:42:44  Way whatever it is, it’s like, yes, we see the fundamentals everywhere. It’s like they just show they just like shine out. And so we’re just being in this work has actually heightened our own personal consciousness as we love our lives about you know, I do want to make a difference. I want my life to matter. And so I think about how am I making a difference every day I think about leaving it better than I found it. You know, I think about, you know, bounce back is a big one. I mean, my daughter was diagnosed with type one diabetes when she was three years old, and it was such a hit to our family. We had a baby and we had these three year old and like.

Steven Shapiro 00:43:16  And the first thing we did was after we suffered for a little bit is like, we have to help raise money to, to solve this problem. And we organized a family walk team for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, and we invited people we we were raising 20, 30, eventually $40,000, our family team every year. And the money that we raised help advanced diabetes research. But it did way more than that. What it did was it showed our kids that this is how we respond to hardship in the show. This is what Shapiro’s do. This is the Shapiro way. When you get hit. You bounce back. You take action. You take, you know, positive, forceful response as opposed to just letting yourself be a victim of hard times. And all the money we raised probably pales in comparison to what we taught our kids about how to show up when things get hard. This is what we do, and I think this is the thing that every family searches for is how do we how do we teach our kids through our example and through our conversations, the way to be in the world that’s going to be really an example of what we value the most. And it’s a conversation we’re having, unfortunately, very rarely, unless we have some intentional way to do it.

Eric Zimmer 00:44:24  Well, we are as a culture, everybody is unmoored.

Steven Shapiro 00:44:28   We’re all too busy to think about anything.

Eric Zimmer 00:44:30 00:44:29  We all, race around. Meaning is it doesn’t exist for a lot. A lot of people, myself included. It only exists to the extent that I take the time to find meaning and for me, articulate it and then make whatever halting attempts I make to live it. Because I could see why kids could feel so unmoored. Here’s something that’s interesting, though, to think about, is when the values that the family has actually end up being at odds with. What? Yes, the kid who comes of age and starts to, right. You may have a family that values being successful in the world. Now, we could argue whether that’s a good value or not, but but that is okay. You are. You are going to be a success.  And the and and the child is like, that’s not the way I want to live my life. I don’t want to orient my life around success. Right. And so all of a sudden, you know what? How does this play out in that scenario?

Nancy Shapiro 00:45:25  Well, we’re such we’re so early we don’t even know. But it’s a great it’s a great question. Because it all falls.

Speaker 6 00:45:30  Apart. But you know I may have seven. First of all, we were careful not to create fundamentals that are like specific like I want my kid to make a lot of money.

Speaker 6 00:45:41  Right.

Steven Shapiro 00:45:41  Like it’s not there’s nothing like that in there. These are these are kind of core fundamental things. So and so you may say, you know, I want my kid to put in the work and in your mind you might have been thinking, I want them to put in the work so they can get into med school. And they may think, I want to put in the work on my art, you know, or I want to put in the work on my in my fitness or in my relationships. So I think that the fundamentals are flexible enough that they can be applied in different ways. but I also think there’s probably some interesting conversations that happen as well.

Eric Zimmer 00:46:07  And I think that’s the important thing, though, is if you’re doing this work, the conversations are happening. Right. And that’s where for me, the problem was and I and I see happening is that the conversation isn’t happening. There’s just someone saying this is what’s important or this is what we believe in. And the other person who doesn’t believe that is either retreating into the corner and trying to hide, or they’re coming full bore in a fight. But there’s not a respectful discussion about how, like you said, we could talk about, okay, maybe you don’t value working, you know, to the extent in the ways that I have, but do you value x, y or z? And so I think it’s this it’s back to the intentionality that I think this gives people in guiding what they want their family to look.

Nancy Shapiro 00:46:51  And the openness to be able to have that conversation is, is critical.

Steven Shapiro 00:46:56  Talk about I mean, one of the things we say is, you know, raising emotionally healthy kids in close knit families. And so part of this is, is not just about raising kids who are amazing and live out amazing values, but it’s also about being connected to each other. Yeah. And I think I’m sure you’ve seen it. You’re out of the restaurant and, you know, family’s out to dinner and everyone’s on their phone. Yeah. And I’m thinking this might be a good time for you guys to talk to each other. There’s probably some interesting. But again, it’s hard sometimes. You know, one of the things I trained teachers, I was a teacher for many years, but I also trained teachers at Ohio State for probably 20 years. And I didn’t fully realize how hard it is to ask a good question until I trained teachers who were trying to lead a discussion. Yeah. Incredibly. Unsuccessfully.

Eric Zimmer 00:47:37  And getting certain kids to engage and even a good question is often a eyeroll.

Steven Shapiro 00:47:43  For us, part of what we’re doing is we are taking all of our experience to design good questions for you. And also we have support videos in the app. So you can like how to have a great conversation. Here’s six tips on how to have a conversation work. And so we’re trying to help parents not just raise kids with these values, but also train parents in how to have effective and healthy conversations with their kids around those values and those in addition to the values that you shape and the way the fundamentals come to life, it’s just teaching you to be more connected to your children and teaching them to be more connected to each other. And, you know, my wife and I raised three kids, and I retired from education recently. And somebody said, what’s your greatest accomplishment? And really, I’m so proud of all the work I did in schools and with kids. But I’m like, my greatest accomplishment is my wife and I raised three kids who absolutely love each other and will take care of each other for life. Like if the two of us were to perish tomorrow, they’ve got each other and that’s a parent can rest easy when they know that.

Nancy Shapiro 00:48:40  That’s a very healthy model, right? Not every person who is going to engage with, our family culture or who even just is a parent engaging in life. It’s hard out there. It’s hard. It’s hard to be a parent. It’s hard to be a parent who works. It’s hard to be a parent who doesn’t have a partner. It’s hard to be a parent who had a partner and is not with that partner anymore, or the partner no longer is alive. I mean, there are so many versions of family, and I.

Eric Zimmer 00:49:09  A parent that’s wrestling with their own emotional and mental issues.

Nancy Shapiro 00:49:14  Oh, I could tell you so many stories of of of people like adults who would come into my office and exhibit the exact behaviors that their kids exhibit, and they can’t figure out why their kids are acting that way. It happened all the time because there wasn’t that awareness.

Nancy Shapiro 00:49:31  But I think I think it’s really important to point out that you don’t have to be a married couple. I mean, Steven’s family and my family were very different. I was a I was divorced, I had two kids. One of my kids is autistic and, and, needed and continues to need a lot of different kinds of supports. then our other kids and it impacted our family tremendously. And so we’re very intentional about saying your parenting partner because the parenting partner could be a spouse, or it could be a parent of your like, it could be the grandparent of the child. It could be your neighbor across the street who you support each other on things. It could be one of your closest friends, a parent care provider. It could be so many different things. And so I don’t I don’t want people to think, oh, well, if we do this then we’re going to have x, y, z outcome. It’s like, no, if we do this, then what we’re doing is making a commitment to trying to to build the healthiest family culture possible and put out the best kids and the best vibes we can in this world, because the world needs it.

Eric Zimmer 00:50:37  Yeah, absolutely. I think that you could do all of this. You can take your program and do it all perfectly and still have family problems.

Eric Zimmer 00:50:44  Life is just complicated and complex and difficult. And I also believe there are always, no matter the circumstance. Wherever we are, there are ways to move in a positive direction. They may not be huge steps, right? A single mother with an autistic child has less just free cycles to pour into this. Then maybe someone like Stephen did. And there are ways that you can make things better for yourself and your family. Little ways by being intentional about what matters. That always sort of steers the ship in a better direction.

Steven Shapiro 00:51:22  Yes, and there’s no guarantees, of course. Like this. We all know as parents.  We know. You learn quickly. You don’t control all this.

Steven Shapiro 00:51:30  But we certainly have probably more impact and the potential for more impact than we realize. And I think one of the things that Nancy and I have really struggled with is super hard. We’ve had so many focus groups with parents and parents of kids who are grown, and parental regret is so painful. It’s so painful to talk to a parent who said, I wish we had. I wish I had spent more time with this. Or, you know, a really common one is self-reliance. People are like, my kid doesn’t know how to take care of themselves. I wish I had given them more responsibilities or put them in charge. I mean, practice self-reliance is one of our fundamentals. And it’s like and there are activities like, have your kid changed the air filter in your car? Your eight.

Speaker 6 00:52:09  Year.

Steven Shapiro 00:52:09  Old can change. I mean, I’m.

Speaker 6 00:52:10  Telling you, you’re I’m.

Steven Shapiro 00:52:11  Telling you, if you get on YouTube and look at how to change the air filter, you.

Speaker 6 00:52:14  Just unscrew.

Steven Shapiro 00:52:15  A thing, you open it up, you.

Speaker 6 00:52:16  Go to. It’s really amazing. Look at Riley’s auto parts and you ask, what’s for that model?

Steven Shapiro 00:52:20  And you just drop it in.

Steven Shapiro 00:52:21  But most people are like, I don’t know how to change any. And totally you do if you just saw how easy it was. And so it’s.

Speaker 6 00:52:27  Like.

Nancy Shapiro 00:52:27  He tried to get me to do it.

Steven Shapiro 00:52:28  And she wouldn’t do it. I say, that’s it.

Eric Zimmer 00:52:30  It brings flashbacks to me of any project I tried to do with my father, and I was not good at it. Like, I can’t get the screw off and all of a sudden it’s anger and fear.

Steven Shapiro 00:52:42  Laundry. My kids don’t know how to, you know, there’s so many things, you know, there’s that snowplow parent they used to talk about helicopter parent. Now they talk about snowplow parent. And snowplow parenting is the parent that gets in front of the kid and plows all the problems away from them so that they can drive easily down the street. And if you want to raise a self-reliant kid, you have to let the kid shovel some of the snow themselves.

Steven Shapiro 00:53:01  You have to give them. And so again, it’s it’s all of this stuff where you start to give the opportunity for kids to, you know, you don’t have to look back and go, like, I wish I had given my kid more of a chance to grow up in this way or to develop this thing. It’s sad to reach that point, and we get one shot at this and we’re never going to do it perfect. But our hope and the reason that we’re pouring our lives into this, we’re retired. It’s like people are like, how’s retirement are like. I don’t really know, why are we working so hard.

Steven Shapiro 00:53:28  We’re working so hard because we really want to help parents have less parental regret and feel great about the kids that they’re raising and feel like they’ve done their best. They’ve left it all on the field.

Nancy Shapiro 00:53:36  We want to make a difference.

Steven Shapiro 00:53:37  That’s it. One family at a time. That’s what we’re trying to do.

Eric Zimmer 00:53:40  Before you check out, pick one insight from today and ask, how will I practice this before bedtime? Need help turning ideas into action? My free weekly Bites of Wisdom email lands every Wednesday with simple practices, reflection and links to former guests who can guide you even on the tough stuff like anxiety, purpose and habit change.

 Feed your good wolf at oneyoufeed.net/newsletter again oneyoufeed.net/newsletter. I think that’s a great place for us to wrap up. We will have links in the show notes to where people can get the app. There’s a coupon code you’ll have there for people to get a discount. Absolutely. And thank you both so much. It’s been a real pleasure.

Nancy Shapiro 00:54:23  This was a lot of fun. Eric. Thank you.

Steven Shapiro 00:54:24  Great talking with you. Thanks, Eric.

Eric Zimmer 00:54:26  Thank you so much for listening to the show. If you found this conversation helpful, inspiring, or thought provoking, I’d love for you to share it with a friend. Share it from one person to another is the lifeblood of what we do. We don’t have a big budget, and I’m certainly not a celebrity. But we have something even better. And that’s you just hit the share button on your podcast app, or send a quick text with the episode link to someone who might enjoy it. Your support means the world, and together we can spread wisdom one episode at a time.  Thank you for being part of the One You Feed community.