Dr. Michael Gervais – Inspired New Horizons

Build a Sophisticated Toolshed

Imagine my surprise to hear a male guest on a podcast sharing that he and his wife are now using more “sophisticated” tools to navigate life. Wow — I love that impactful word and could even feel myself leaning into it and embracing the full scope of what it feels like.

It is remarkable how one word can shift us quickly into the next level of our personal growth — and do so in a way that feels amazing.

I could see it in the body language of this middle-aged man – he was owning how empowered he felt by proactively choosing a “sophisticated” way to support his wife deal with an emotional situation. There was a sense of pride and accomplishment.

His personal story was a sliding door experience for him — one where he could see how he used to handle situations like this that usually only made things worse; and how he attended to his wife’s needs now in a more mature and skillful way. Not only did his wife get what she needed most, their personal connection deepened.

The stark contrast of how his old ways of dealing with relationship struggles pulled them further apart – and how his new and improved ways, strengthened their relationship was undeniably magical. The “before” and “after” results of using “sophisticated” tools was proof positive that he was growing in the right direction.

He had handled a common relationship issue with aplomb.

Admittedly, he shared that he used to match her emotions and they’d get in an emotional tug of war. This could lead to a stand off and for the next few hours, they’d avoid each other or poke at each other’s shortcomings. Not fun.

His new and improved approach of validating her feelings and her experience, of listening to understand and co-regulating her by remaining calm, felt surprisingly good to him too. A simple shift in his approach was the fast-acting remedy that produced incredible results. They were hugging and smiling in just a few minutes. For hours afterwards, they could still feel the strong intimate connection they’d made.

Build a Sophisticated Toolshed:

That young man inspired me to see what is possible as we reframe personal growth and self discovery. Yes, of course — we want to be using sophisticated tools in skillful ways to build the life we want. To become better versions of ourselves over time and to support those we love in ways that build trust, resilience and self-confidence.

We can become master craftsmen and craftswomen with some simple, impactful shifts in our language and our awareness. Who wouldn’t want to become confident enough to use “power tools” in our most treasured relationships?

In his book, Shift, author and psychologist, Ethan Kross, reveals just how easy it is to step into using the “power tools” that proactively shift our mindsets, perspectives, emotions and perceived limitations. In fact, the concepts he details in his book could be the Starter Kit for building your own sophisticated toolshed.

These power tools are really pretty straightforward but we frequently get hijacked by the stimulus of a situation and just reach for a hammer.

It’s our natural human tendency to rely on familiar methods or tools, even when they are not the most appropriate for a situation.

As Abraham Maslow reminded us: “If the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”

It is precisely why Victor Frankl urges us to use the pause between stimulus and response to think about what is the best course of action in the long run.

Reminding ourselves that we want to be reaching for “sophisticated” power tools while we are taking that pivotal pause might be all that is needed to remind us to be more mature and intentional about our reactions. Drop the hammer and reach for the more contemporary, state of the art, power tools.

Instead of over-reacting, consider reframing a situation.

Rather than be singularly focused, take a broader perspective and consider how others are feeling or could be impacted.

Validate what you are experiencing instead of projecting your pain onto others.

Lower the temperature on your heated emotions and let them cool down before boiling over.

Ask for help rather than complaining or blaming.

Validate other’s experiences and emotions with respect and empathy rather than dismissing them.

Zoom out and ask yourself if what’s happening now will matter as much in a few hours, a few days or next week.

A Method and a Motto:

There is a method to stop the madness of using a hammer for everything that pops off in our lives and crops up in our relationships. It is recognizing that we human beings have a lot of variation in the way we show up day in and day out.

Some days we are far better resourced to handle blunders, mistakes and miscommunications. We can let things roll with grace and generosity.

Other days, not so much. We are irritable, easily distracted, have limited bandwidth and are running on fumes.

Even when we want to do our best, it may feel nearly impossible to pull that rabbit out of a hat.

Enter a colleague of Ethan Kross – author and neuroscientist Emily Falk to help us when we are feeling out of sorts and prone to knee jerk reactions, swinging a hammer with wild abandon.

In her book, What We Value, Dr. Falk shares how we rely too much on yet another human default system that is our biggest obstacle to changing how we show up under pressure.

Turns out, we unconsciously overweight and overrate what we can get in the short term. We make snap decisions and have knee jerk reactions to get satisfaction right away. We don’t like feeling uncomfortable, we want relief immediately. Winning a shouting match feels good.

But winning that shouting match only feels good for a hot minute.

That’s the unfortunate reality of overweighting what feels good in the heat of the moment. We unconsciously give too much weight to winning a fight or avoiding a conflict. We make a value calculation that is fleeting.

Dr. Falk reminds us that where we “place our attention” is the lever we can pull to override our tendency to overweight the value of a short term outcome. Play the long game. Turn attention to what matters most. Are you the kind of person who saves the day?

We aren’t little kids in a sandbox anymore. We are grown ups who calmly come in and help each other get along. We can clearly assess the situation and get back to having fun together.

In her book, What We Value, Dr. Emily Falk urges us to get intentional (especially in the heat of the moment) about shifting our attention to the long game. We will find it much easier to reach for our sophisticated relationship power tools when we focus on what we value most in the long term.

It may seem small and highly unlikely to be effective to “shift” to the long game – but it is an elevated form of delayed gratification. Do you want one marshmallow now or would you be willing to wait so that you get two marshmallows later?

Play the long game.

Turning our attention to think about what we are working towards in becoming a better person, in how we show up for others especially when it is challenging — that shifts our focus and puts more weight in the ‘value calculation” that drives our choices, behaviors and actions.

When we play the long game, we make the most of that pause between stimulus and response, by asking ourselves – “Wait a minute – let’s think about what I value most and make the better decision that aligns with my values.”

The method we can use to help us reach for power tools instead of a hammer is to shift our focus to playing the long game and matching our responses to our long term goals and core values.

The motto we create for ourselves becomes the lever we pull that opens our sophisticated tool shed. Something as simple as the golden rule can be a magical shifter in how we meet life’s moments.

Sophisticated Power Tools and Lots of Practice:

When our kids are little, we give them those brightly colored plastic replicas of lawn mowers, weed whackers and leaf blowers. Many times our kids love to store their pint-sized imitation power tools right next to the real thing in the backyard toolshed.

We would never give our kids the real deal power tools until they are old enough and mature enough to use them with great care and skill. But we do plant the seeds that they will be quite capable to use the real tools in the future.

What we know now that is backed by advances in science and psychology is that for far too long is that most of us were only taught to use a hammer to fix just about everything. But a hammer and duct tape do not build strong relationship foundations and deep connections.

As we begin to incorporate more advanced relationship tools into our daily lives, we reinforce the positive benefits we reap – and we also teach by osmosis how effective sophisticated power tools truly are – in the long run.

Think about using the mental image of a magical toolshed full of dynamic power tools that are fun to use and get the job done right the first time. We can all build that kind of toolshed, well equipped with sophisticated tools and skills easily accessed each and every day.

What motto would you put on the sign that hangs over the door of your sophisticated toolshed?

RECOMMENDED RESOURCES:

BREAK FREE FROM A VICTIM MINDSET: June 6th, 2025 episode with Scott Barry Kauffman. Prepare to be amazed at how often we get trapped in our own victim mindset. This dynamic conversation will shift you quickly to an “empowering mindset”

The Stories We Tell Ourselves – Part 2

Grab some paper and a pen. Make a list of the many roles you have in your life. Start with an ordinary day — and then expand it out to a week, then a month. Be thorough and thoughtful about the many places you show up and play a part. Start with your immediate family then expand the lens to work and your community.

You may be a spouse and a parent, an employee or entrepreneur, a sibling, a grandparent, aunt or uncle, a best friend, a youth soccer coach, a golfer or triathlete, a musician in the local orchestra, a training buddy, a book club member, a podcaster, a creator, a caregiver, a community volunteer. Chances are the list is much longer than you think.

No wonder we are so complex, fascinating and mind-boggling all at once! We wear a lot of hats and juggle many responsibilities and have a host of hobbies and interests. But wait — there’s more!

Did you know that embedded in all the different roles we have, we also have a specific identity associated with each one. These multiple identities are like the unique blueprints we bring to the roles we play. There is a lot of nuance in these multiple identities because we draw on different characteristics of who we are to highlight the ones that best fit the role we are in.

Ryan Holiday tells us that a great tool for helping us show up as the best version of ourselves in any given situation is to ask: What is my role right now?

This simple question quickly crystallizes our responsibility and our strengths that we bring to the table in the role we now play. Our identity for that specific role becomes the template and the filter for how we show up. It is our unique blueprint.

Ryan’s poignant question grounds by reminding us of the identity we assume as a parent, a spouse, a work colleague, sibling or friend. When we connect with our role, we also connect with our goal. That identity we bring to each role becomes the framework and guardrails for how we show up.

If we fail to ask this question about the role we play in any given situation, we may unconsciously default to another of our roles and bring the wrong attributes to the table. We’ve all done this and in hindsight, we readily recognize we played a part in the clumsy, confusing way things unfolded.

Mel Robbins tells us that we all have an inner 8 year old that can show up unchecked, disregulated and unruly — and if we let that character step in to a role well beyond his or her job description and matching skills, that’s a recipe for disaster.

Most of us never stop to reflect on the many roles we have in our lives and the blueprint we have curated to help us do our best in each one. And here’s a surprising revelation – if we don’t consciously develop a strong job description for each role we play, we are going to default to the inner child quite often. This is often referred to as our “unconscious” self – and that’s where so many of the old stories we tell ourselves become the script for knee jerk reactions.

Knee jerk emotional reactions come from the past. Old stories we’ve told ourselves trap us in our amygdala; it links our current emotions to old memories. Which is precisely why we can act like an 8 year instead of a rational, mature adult. We viscerally feel our emotions and our amygdala supplies all the data we need to remind us of past times when we felt just like that — and underscores a feeling of helplessness (a lack of personal agency). When we were 8, we didn’t have skills and tools to help us understand and regulate our emotions. We only had the warning signs and basic reactions. We hadn’t yet developed our strong sense of self and built reliance on our own agency.

Ryan’s question prompts us to remember that we are no longer a helpless, overwhelmed kid. We have adult roles now and the ability to shift into the executive function of our brains. That one simple question flips the switch in our brain — and gets us running on the right track — our executive function. We can catch ourselves before we shrink ourselves to age 8 and pivot to our better equipped grown up self.

How does this dovetail with our roles and our identities? Well, we develop blueprints for how we want to show up in the various roles we have. We even start this process as kids — when we tell ourselves that when we grow up, we will parent differently or we will handle life’s challenges more responsibly. Those blueprints help us craft the identities we rely on for each role.

As we move through our lives, we update those identities much like we update our resumes. As we become more skilled in any of our roles, we add and subtract from the identity we’ve created for each role. We are always a “work in progress” and we thrive when we have a very strong sense of self and tap into our personal agency frequently. We get to choose how we conduct ourselves in each role — and we feel good when our emotions match our actions.

This is where we can pair Ryan’s question – “what is my role right now” with Arthur Brook’s question: “How do I want to be feeling right now?” This is how we sync up our roles with our identity blueprints and our emotional and behavioral responses. We play the “match” game.

We can cross-pollinate our identity blueprints that we use in the outside world to build stronger and more reliable identities for our family relationships. If you stop to think about it, you readily recognize how reliant you are on your identity at work or out in your community. That identity provides the guardrails that keep you from losing your cool, having a meltdown or curling into a ball. Your actions and responses match the identity you crafted.

Most of us are less clear about our identities in the roles we play within our families. We drop our guard at home with the people we love the most – and in that process, we drop the very guardrails that would help us bring our better selves to the most important roles we have.

Home and family is the one place where we should feel the safest, where we should feel seen, heard and valued. Yet our family relationships are the one place where we have most of our day to day conflicts. Could it be a simple mismatch between the role we play and the actions and behaviors we bring to that role?

Dr. Becky Kennedy has coined the phrase “sturdy leader” for the role of a parent. She uses the analogy of an airline pilot to give us a strong mental image of what a sturdy leader looks and acts like. A competent pilot does not come frantically racing out of the cockpit freaking out about turbulence. We expect a competent pilot to tell us the truth about what is happening, assure us that all efforts are being taken to keep us safe and offering the actions we can take to help the collective effort.

Is this how we show up in our family relationships — as sturdy leaders – those calm, competent pilots?

Are you laughing to yourself right now now? I think most of us can agree that is not our “go to” when we experience emotional turbulence in the kitchen cockpit.

What usually happens at home is a bad case of emotional contagion. We match the emotions of our kids, our spouses, our siblings or parents. We are playing the wrong match game.

The better match game is the adult version. The one where we can readily identify our role, how we “want” to be feeling and we match our responses, behaviors and actions to that blueprint. We become sturdy leaders at home just like we do at work or in public spaces.

The basic blueprint of sturdy leader is a great template for our roles at home. Who wouldn’t want to have a sturdy leader as a parent or a partner? Think of all the skills and personal attributes you bring to the workplace and repurpose them for your roles at home. Add them to your identity blueprint. Are you good in a crisis at work? Do you work well under pressure? Are you a wizard at time management and effective delegation? Can you rally the troops? Do you build a strong team by tapping into the key strengths of each person? Do you provide breaks to reset and recharge when others are on overload?

There is yet another emotional and psychological tool that can be utilized in meaningful ways when we are nailing down our identity blueprints for our family relationships. It is “distancing”. When we are able to zoom out and get a broader perspective, we see the bigger picture. Distancing is a great tool for helping us to pivot to sturdy leader. When we can step out of the fray and turn on our executive function, we often realize we already possess the very skills we need to bring our better selves home.

Distancing helps us see the calm and competent pilot we are at work or out in our community. We show up like this with ease – consistently. As James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, would tell us we have deployed the compounding effect of consistency and frequent practice in the workplace. We practice keeping our emotions in check and our responses mature – day in and day out, several times each day.

Now just think about the difference that would make in your roles at home. All this time, you have been missing the golden opportunity to put in countless reps every day to become a sturdy leader! Practice doesn’t make us perfect, but it surely makes us more skillful, resilient, reliable and easier to live with.

Give yourself a honest evaluation about how you show up at work – and how you show up at home. Are you matching other’s emotions or are you matching your role with your identity blueprint, your skills sets and the goal you have for that role?

Remember that your old emotional database can pull you back into outdated reference material. You want to be operating on better, current data with greater agency and a strong sense of self.

Want some extra motivation for crafting sturdy leader identities for the roles that you play in your life? Just imagine helping those you love amass an incredible library of reference material for the stories they tell themselves. Who wouldn’t want the people they love to immersed in possibility and potential instead of limiting stories about who they are and will become?

RECOMMENDED RESOURCES:

Check out Dr. Becky Kennedy’s book, website and app to discover science-backed parenting tools for raising emotionally intelligent, resilient and empowered kids

Check out Ryan Holiday’s collection of books . Right Thing, Right Now is his latest. The Obstacle is the Way is great for seeing opportunities where we blindly believe we forever stuck. If you are a parent — check out Daily Dad.

Mel Robbins’ latest book is quickly becoming a fast-track resource for letting go – and stepping into your own agency. Let others be thernselves, especially family, and Let You be your best self. This book is so relatable, you won’t be able to put it down.

If you want to fast track what is packed into Mel’s new book, take a listen to this We Can Do Hard Things podcast episode. Mel and host Glennon Doyle crack open the book, the theory and relatable real life stories. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/we-can-do-hard-things/id1564530722?i=1000682368717

Good Bones

In my last blog post, I shared how integral it is to really know ourselves well — so that we stop the shape shifting we do unconsciously as we move in and out of the many roles we play daily. What we are striving for is a strong, consistent foundation for moving through life – no matter our role and responsibility, no matter the opportunity or the problem.

We have a whole new way of viewing self discovery and personal growth now. We are normalizing the obvious — we are always “works in progress”. We are going to be re-shaped and impacted in remarkable ways by life. The transformational pivot is how we re-frame this ever evolving, organic process. We start with a solid foundation of who we are, grounded in our values. Any renovation starts with the bare bones; the good bones are the core of who we are and who we are becoming.

If we use this metaphor of renovating an old house into our dream home, we can get clarity very quickly about self-discovery and meaningful change. When we see the potential in the “good bones” of a neglected house, we get super-charged about what is possible — and we get to work. We can apply this same approach to personal growth. It shifts our attitude in a whole new direction — it is fascinating, motivating and empowering.

Bear in mind that we are also bringing new tools and skills to our personal renovation process. We now know that the old parenting models hijacked emotional integration which is the most impactful key to really knowing ourselves and what matters most to us. We also know with great clarity that social norms compounded the problem and kept us stuck in limiting beliefs about our full potential.

There is a compelling reason that so many leaders in parenting, psychology, behavioral science and neuroscience point us to childhood to look for the root causes of our insecurities, poor coping skills and problematic behavioral patterns: Childhood beliefs can have a very strong grip on our sense of self, our beliefs about our potential and even our understanding of the world at large.

Here is the story of Florence Nightingale, one of the most heroic figures of the 19th century who saved countless lives on battlefields and in hospitals. Florence knew as a young girl that she wanted to be a nurse – it was her calling, her destiny. She wanted to revolutionize medicine and sanitary conditions. But it took her 18 long years to fulfill her childhood dream. What held her back? Not financial means – she came from a wealthy family. Not acumen – she learned, studied and had practical experience. What held her back was limiting beliefs – her own and others. She was afraid of “what a woman’s role was supposed to be.” It was also the fear of other people’s opinions – her parents held her back, her sister held her back and other people’s opinions hold her back. It was only when she freed herself from these limiting beliefs that she embraced and pursued her true destiny. As Florence journaled about her frustrations, she realized that she’d been “tied down with straw all along” — and she cut through the bonds that held her back. (special thanks to Ryan Holiday for sharing this story recently)

The story of Florence Nightingale shines a powerful light on the reality that old parenting paradigms, gender stereotyping and social conditioning keep most of us from tapping into the best versions of ourselves and discovering our incredible hidden potential. I often ponder how many inventions, advancements and breakthroughs were missed all throughout history due to the grip of limiting beliefs.

In his book, Hidden Potential, Adam Grant does a deep dive into the many ways we got things wrong about our ever evolving potential. He unpacks the distinctions between (a) character and personality and (b) values and beliefs. This sets the stage for building a strong sense of our own identity.

Have you had an overreaction to someone or something and later admonished yourself for “acting out of character?” What were you using as a benchmark for your character?

Most likely, you were acting from your personality and out of alignment with your values.

“Character is often confused with personality, but they’re not the same. Personality is your predisposition — your basic instincts for how to think, feel and act. Character is your capacity to prioritize your values over your instincts. Character doesn’t set like plaster – it retains its plasticity. — excerpted from Hidden Potential by Adam Grant

Kids operate instinctively on “personality” with young developing brains. Children need adult guidance to role model and teach character skills — and be the training wheels for emotional regulation.

If you grew up in a family environment where the adults operated mostly on personality themselves, or had a double standard for family values, it’s no wonder there is real confusion around your personality and your character. Many of us were labeled by adults for our personality traits — our basic instincts for how to think, feel and act. Those labels stuck. And the accompanying limiting beliefs gripped tight.

“The true test of character is whether you manage to stand by your values when the deck is stacked against you. If personality is how you respond on a typical day, character is how you show up on hard day. Personality is not your destiny – it’s your tendency. Character skills enable you to transcend that tendency to be true to your principles. It’s not about the traits you have — it’s what you decide to do with them.” — Excerpted from Hidden Potential by Adam Grant.

Dr. Becky Kennedy, the child psychologist who is championing the game-changing parenting paradigm shift, stresses the importance of emotional integration and teaching character skills throughout the 18 year apprenticeship that our kids have inside their family units.

Just imagine growing up and growing through life free of personality labels and limiting beliefs – scaffolded by parents and family members, as you build your own strong sense of self and foundational core values. There is no better springboard for entering adulthood.

Adam Grant next offers the critical distinction between our values and our beliefs. When we understand the integral difference between the two, we can see clearly that values become the foundation of our real identify (our strong sense of self) that we can build upon for the rest of our lives. This is why values become the springboard for building our lives. Beliefs can hold us back.

Values are what you think is important.

Beliefs are what we think is true.

Our personal foundation is built on our values — what we think is important. Our values create the focal point for where we spend our time, our energy and our resources. Our core values stand the test of time, are both durable and flexible. They become the scaffolding and building blocks for lifelong learning and evolving.

Our beliefs are subject to change and in reality should be updated and refreshed as we acquire new knowledge, more experiences, set new goals and broaden our perspectives.

Did you go into adulthood, marriage or parenthood with a strong sense of what mattered most to you? Were you determined not to do some of the things that your own parents did? Did you make a mad dash for the door when you reached adulthood so that you could go out and live your life just the way you wanted to? What a great place to start looking for the “good bones” of your foundation.

One of the biggest problems we have with separating out our “values” from our “beliefs” is that those childhood beliefs became very intertwined in our life stories growing up. It is hard to even see or think differently with all that overgrown prickly brush covering up the “good bones.” Florence Nightingale’s story is proof positive.

Whatever you long to be “free of” is entangled in limiting beliefs. Do you think you aren’t smart enough or courageous enough to pursue your “dream” career or start your own business? Are you overly concerned with what others might think if you colored outside the lines, took a big risk or moved far away? Do you make yourself small so that others feel better about themselves – and then find yourself resentful for not investing in your own big dreams, ideas and goals? Letting go of those limiting beliefs gives you the wiggle room you need to reimagine and reclaim who you are — and who you want to become.

Malcolm Gladwell invites us to hold our beliefs lightly. He will often offer his perspective on something and add the disclaimer — “for now” or “at this time”. He is clearly acknowledging that what he believes about a subject or idea is subject to change. For any of us who have lived multiple decades, we get this on a very visceral level. So many things in our daily lives have changed in the most astounding ways over the least 20, 40 and 60 years. What we once resisted is now a normal part of our everyday lives.

Take some time to reflect on your own childhood beliefs that got in your way growing up. Identify one or two things that you proved wrong to yourself and others. Reflect on some beliefs you once had that make you laugh today.

Adam Grant pointed out something that is integrally important to understand about an identity that gets built around beliefs. When our identity, our sense of self, is too closely linked to our beliefs (rather than our values), we will feel threatened when we change our mind about something. We will feel like we are “wishy washy”. We might even tell ourselves that we aren’t being true to ourselves if we change our minds about a strongly held belief.

If we are grounded in our values rather than our beliefs, changing our minds is as natural as changing our clothes. Of course we are going to change our minds — and our beliefs — about all kinds of things in our lives. If not, we would stunt our growth.

Adam Grant cleverly named his popular podcast “Rethinking”. Breakthroughs in neuroscience, technology and psychology are coming at us fast and furiously these days. Why not stay current and “rethink” old beliefs?

In his book, The First Rule of Mastery; Stop Worrying About What Other People Think of You, Dr. Michael Gervais adds even more context to limiting beliefs. Just like the vine that has a stranglehold on this tall tree, a narrow identity can never capture the full essence of who we are. The fear of other’s opinions can keep us playing a “narrow” game. Florence Nightingale didn’t want to rock the boat or risk being outcast from her family, so she limited herself to stay connected to them.

“When we have fused ourselves to an identity that is not true to who we are, or to an identity that’s too narrow to contain the whole of who we are, or to an identity incapable of incorporating new information and growing, the opinion of another can feel like an assault where our survival is at stake.” — excerpted from The First Rule of Mastery by Dr. Michael Gervais.

Returning to the metaphor of recovering the good bones of a solid old house, take some time to think about what you may have misunderstood about personality and character, values and beliefs. Take stock of the messaging you received in childhood and take into consideration what the social norms were when you were a kid. Begin your own personal growth renovations by building a foundation of core values that are just right for who you are today and who you are becoming.

Start to challenge your limiting beliefs — do they still hold true?

Once you really know yourself well, and you are anchored in your core values, you will find yourself using those values as a filter more consciously. You will discover that there are far fewer times when you feel like you acted “out of character.” This is living mindfully — noticing what is going through your mind before you act — and being more discerning in your response.

You’ll worry less about what other’s might think (and for the record, they are rarely thinking about you as much as you believe) and you’ll make decisions based on what is truly right for you.

Let Florence Nightingale be your reminder not to let your biggest dreams be sidelined.

RECOMMENDED RESOURCES:

Adam Grant gives us a whole new framework for raising our aspirations and exceeding expectations. He shows us that progress depends less on how hard we work and more on how well we learn! Growth is about the genius we possess — it’s about the character we develop.

If FOPO – Fear of Other Peoples Opinions is a concern for you — you will love this book. Dr. Michael Gervais is a sports psychologist who has works with elite athletes, professional sports teams and entrepreneurs. The stories he shares will surprise you.

Arthur Brooks and Oprah Winfrey combine art and science to encourage us to Build the Life We Truly Want. The goal is not to arrive at a final destination of happy — but rather to be happier each and every day.

Connective Tissue

A few years ago, I started to notice that the more I was really getting to know myself, the greater my curiosity about others. Even when I watched a Netflix series or read a compelling fiction book, I found that I was more empathetic with the characters and their backstories. Truth to be told, I discovered that I could see parts of my own life reflected back to me in their experiences and reactions. It was also easy to see the patterns of cause and effect that we messy human beings bring to our relationships.

It dawned on me that I was now engaging with books and shows on a deeper level and I loved it. I was able to feel and relate to so many characters almost as if I knew them personally. The story lines and plot twists of shows like This is Us or Parenthood were intimately familiar. Some felt like they had been pulled right out of my own family history. It was easy to readily identify with characters and events because I too “have been there”.

Conversations with some of my closest friends revealed that the same thing was happening for them. As they deepened their own self awareness, they too were more intrigued by the complexity of their favorite characters in a book or tv series. They could recognize blind spots and insecurities that contributed to missteps and bad decisions.

Discussing episodes of these shows with friends was much like being in book club with a fascinating twist — our focus was on the whole of the family dynamics and how one issue could cause a cascade of varying problems amongst the family members. We could clearly see the through line that ran from childhood experiences right into the adult lives of each family member.

These mini series became a classroom for recognizing familiar behavior patterns and coping mechanisms. We got a zoomed-out view of how complicated families are. We gained a deeper understanding of what drives people to make some of the choices they do; again, because in many cases, we too “had been there”.

While my friends and I laughed that it is easy to recognize the many fault lines in family dynamics when we simply watching a show, we did agree that we gained from observing the bigger picture. These programs give the viewer a different vantage point; we get an abundance of nuance and context from so many different perspectives and experiences. That is rarely the same lens we use in our own complex family dynamics.

Perhaps the biggest takeaway is that we rarely know our family members as well as we think we do.

Another is that we rarely know the “whole” of each other.

The Bigger Picture:

I titled this blog post “connective tissue” because that is what we are growing and strengthening when we become cycle breakers and agents of change.

I am a firm believer that replacing that tightly woven yet constantly unraveling fabric of complicated family dynamics with healthy “connective tissue” is the ultimate safety net for our families and relationships.

Dr. Michael Gervais (one of the world’s top high-performance psychologists) shares this wisdom with us: “To lay the foundation for a strong sense of self, the prime dictum is to not focus on the self. The way to do this is not to think less of yourself, but to think of yourself less often.”

The real value of personal growth and self discovery happens in relationship with others. When we truly get to know ourselves well and change how we show up, that’s where meaningful change occurs. When we take Dr. Gervais’ advice to heart, we build a strong foundation of who we are and who we wish to become. We pay attention to how we get unmoored from ourselves in our relationships with others.

This is a giant step in building healthy connective tissue. It’s sticking to our core values and getting more consistent in behaviors and skills that match who we want to be. We can cultivate greater self awareness about how we show up at work vs. how we behave at home, how we act with parents and siblings vs. our own kids and friends. It’s exhausting to shape shift and adapt to all these different relationships if we are constantly matching the environment instead of who we really are at the core.

So often in the self help space, we are told to shed outgrown behavioral patterns that we learned in childhood. Yet they are second nature to us and fit like our favorite pair of comfy jeans. Eventually a good friend or our spouse is going to tell us that it is time to ditch the well worn jeans — they look terrible, no longer fit the body we now have and surely don’t match who we are today.

The same is true with childhood coping skills and poor emotional regulation. They are just old jeans that need to be tossed and replaced with something that makes us feel like a million bucks when we put them on. And while the jeans become a staple in our wardrobe, we can dress them up or down depending on what we are stepping into. Our strong sense of self is that great pair of new jeans. The jacket, the hat, shoes or other accessories are all the skills and tools we use when stepping into relationships with others.

A strong sense of self is our core foundation for everything we do and all the relationships we are in. We become more consistent in how we show up whether we are at home, work or community. When people describe us to others, they capture the essence of who we really are — across all our relationships.

A core reason why family dynamics are the most challenging is that we have a long history of shape shifting, people pleasing, shrinking or puffing up to get our needs met and to also feel a sense of belonging. One false move and we become an outcast. Misunderstandings, rifts and estrangements are so commonplace for this very reason.

Remember that takeaway from the mini series I mentioned above — We have no idea of all the nuance and context of our family members unique emotions and experiences. If we don’t even know ourselves well, how could we possibly know others? And if we are all donning different behavioral patterns to “make things work”, it’s unlikely anything actually stands a chance of working.

A little perspective here: Even if your sibling is only two years older or younger than you, their childhood experiences can be remarkably different. First of all your parents were not the same that they were when you came into the world. They learned a lot from raising you and they adapted in a lot of new ways. What might have changed in your parent’s lives in that time span? Job change, relocation, loss of a parent, health issues, financial struggles? Life events have an impact on parents and kids. If there is a five year or greater age difference in siblings, then essentially it can be like being raised in two remarkably different families.

Healthy connective tissue for family dynamics has to replace the old tangled web we weave by losing ourselves in multiple identities. No wonder our relationships are so complicated.

Our sense of self, our identity, gets shaped and molded like Playdoh when we are growing up. By the time we reach adulthood, we’ve been cut, pounded, stretched and kneaded so many times that we have a hard time figuring out who we really are. It’s unfortunate that most of our self worth and self identity is under constant scrutiny and subject to change at any given moment throughout childhood.

“The world will ask you who you are, and if you don’t know, the world will tell you.” — Carl Jung

Being a change agent and breaking generational family cycles, starts with us. Once we free ourselves of behavioral patterns that keep us stuck, we have more wiggle room for self discovery — and to forge the identity we truly want. We can spend our energy on getting consistent with who we are, rather than exhausting ourselves to fit in.

We need to get very clear on our own identity and self worth. Again, this is a familiar refrain in psychology and the self help space, but it is not cheap talk. It is only when we know our worth and what is critically important to us that we can use a relationship tool like boundaries. Boundaries help others recognize how we want to be treated. Every time you set a boundary, you are getting clearer with yourself about your value and worth.

For the record, when we use boundaries in parenting instead of punishment or dismissive attitudes, we are leading by example. We teach our children not only how to treat us and be respectful, but also how to use this invaluable tool in their own lives (both when they are young and when they are adults).

The fear of other people’s opinions is yet another detriment to really getting to know ourselves intimately.

Most of us lived in this thick fog of other’s opinions all throughout childhood; especially with those old parenting models that did not integrate emotions into our experiences. Kids were told they were too much, too sensitive, too bossy, too timid. First and foremost, we were labeled by behaviors and those identifies stuck with us. — you’re a jerk, you’re a good girl, you’re perfect, you’ll never amount to anything. Secondly, we had to wrestle with these assessments of who we were while trying to figure that out for ourselves. Most of our childhood behavioral patterns and coping skills are rooted in the “fear of other’s opinions” – at home, in school and beyond.

“Identity is our subjective sense of self built on our experiences, beliefs, values, memories and culture. It’s a set of physical and psychological characteristics that is not shared with anyone else. Often derived in relationship or comparison to others, our identity provides a framework to better understand our place in a complicated social world. “ — excerpted from the book The First Rule of Mastery by Dr. Michael Gervais.

“When we have fused ourselves to an identity that is not true to who we are, or to an identity that’s too narrow to contain the whole of who we are, or to an identity incapable of incorporating new information and growing, the opinion of another can feel like an assault where our survival is at stake.” – excerpted from The First Rule of Mastery by Dr. Michael Gervais.

When you let these two excerpts soak in, you can see why we get so confused about who we are. The first excerpt addresses how we make sense of the world when we are kids. It is a private internal narrative we create about who we are. We create it when we are young and powerless and that identify feels vulnerable and in need of protection even when we are older.

The second excerpt reveals why we develop coping skills and behavioral patterns. Our identity does leave us vulnerable to the slings and arrows of other’s opinions so we develop armor to protect who we believe we are.

It’s that armor that gets in the way of us really knowing who we are; and it gets very complicated by the fact that we keep returning to home base to figure it out. Yet, that identity we created at home when we were young no longer feels like it fits who we’ve become.

Without honest self-awareness, it is incredibly hard to see how we stay stuck in an identity we’ve long outgrown and how we stay trapped (especially in our families) in old limiting beliefs about who we are.

We are not the same person we were when we were 5, 10 or 15. We are works in progress throughout our entire lives. A pivotal shift in our mindset around our personal identity is to recognize and embrace this.

We change over time and that is a marvelous thing. We are not forever stuck in an old story, or shackled to a troubled childhood, or doomed to relive an old trauma like a recurring nightmare. We would never want this for our children. When we get clear about who we are, we can parent from our most authentic sense of self. It frees us from protecting our kids unnecessarily from the things that once had a big impact on us.

The benefits of “connective tissue”:

Just imagine the positive difference we are making for younger generations, when we steer them clear of the pitfalls that derailed us from building the life we wanted. Today we have better life skills and relationship tools to teach them. We have a much-improved parenting model and are integrating their emotions into their developing complex brains. We are validating each other’s emotions and experiences which is the preventative medicine for suppressed emotions and unprocessed trauma. We recognize that rupture and repair strengthens our relationships and builds enduring trust. In fact, we normalize the fact that ruptures happen in life and we have a responsibility to repair our most valued relationships. We are learning the integral role body budget plays in our daily lives and the importance of sleep for our brain health.

Most importantly, we can help our young people develop a strong sense of self and be the scaffolding they need through all the growth spurts and life changes they will surely have.

This is an extensive list of key components of “connective tissue” for our families. It’s so much more beneficial than what most of us experienced — because we don’t put each other in boxes, but rather we give each other room to grow – with a big safety net underneath. We encourage each other to explore, discover, stretch, try new things, experiment — with the confidence that they can express themselves honestly and will have the support and guidance they need and deserve.

Dr. Michael Gervais has a nugget of wisdom that he shares on his Finding Mastery podcast that serves as a core reminder for the changes we want to make: No one does it alone.

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