Robert Greene – 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

Some of the most fabricated stories we will ever hear are the ones we tell ourselves. They keep us spellbound — holding our attention so completely that we can barely focus on anything else.

If you have ever doubted that you possess a wild imagination and a flair for creative writing, look no further than the many stories that you tell yourself during the course of one normal day.

We are so skilled at crafting these stories that often we don’t even realize we’ve actually taken the time to pen them with invisible ink in our minds. Sometimes it even feels as though we’ve used permanent markers to write them. The stories we tell ourselves impact our lives in ways we can’t even imagine.

During the course of one ordinary day, we can tell ourselves more stories than a two year old demands at bedtime.

The alarm goes off and you hit the snooze button, telling yourself that 15 more minutes in bed won’t make a big difference. Later when you are frantically searching for your car keys, chugging coffee and yelling at everyone to hurry up and get in the car, you create another story. Now you tell yourself are undisciplined for hitting that snooze button yet again; when will you learn and why can’t you ever catch a break? Next thing you know, your car’s GPS announces there are traffic delays on your route and presto, your inner critic becomes a personal ghost writer. You can almost hear the melodramatic music accompanying the litany of ways you will be forever doomed to failure as your inner critics pounds those typewriter keys.

Those early morning story lines can become a snowball rolling down a hill. Let’s face it, once the inner critic takes over, the plot doesn’t change much and there is very little room for character development. The stories we tell ourselves can block us from the very change we so desperately want.

We are natural born storytellers, each and every one of us. Our brains and bodies are these phenomenal meaning making machines. It is a core function of our brains to make sense of the world by constructing narratives and understanding based on our past history and our unique perspectives. We tell ourselves the story we need to hear in order to process and integrate our lived experience.

When we are crafting those stories we tell ourselves, we can find ourselves rummaging through the old card catalog files in our brain’s database looking for the genre that matches how we feel. Picture a dimly lit basement in an old library with sections labeled “Scaredy Cat” “Underachiever” “Timid Wallflower” “Too Much” or “Born Loser”. (I hope that imagery makes you laugh – It’s intended to help you get the bigger picture.)

If we keep going back to the same old resources as the basis for the stories we tell ourselves, then our series is not going to evolve. And there will be little room for our own character development. This is how we get stuck in the stories of our own making.

How often have you read a book or heard a podcast where someone shares just how stuck they were in an old narrative? They let a strong identity from a past chapter of their life take the lead role in all their unfolding newer stories. Once an addict, always an addict. Once a lost soul, always a lost soul.

Take a few minutes right now to think about all those things you believed were true about who you were as a child – and how you have shattered those limiting beliefs by all that you have actually done and accomplished over the years. Were you told you weren’t athletic but now you run races, play competitive tennis or belong to a local hiking club? Were you told you weren’t very smart, yet you have earned a degree or certification in a field that fascinates you?

Those limiting narratives stored in our dimly lit library are so outdated. It is mindlessly going back to that old reference material that limits our ability to shift our narratives. Of course we have changed — and so should the script for the stories we tell ourselves.

The proof is in the pudding.

The very same set of circumstances on any given day will end up with strikingly different stories. Many of the stories we tell ourselves depend greatly on how we are feeling in the moment and our ability to effectively regulate our emotions. The stories we tell ourselves are rather like a “choose your own adventure” book. There are endless possibilities.

We go in search of data from our past. We simply copy, cut and paste all the old familiar plots into the present story we are creating.

We do our best to make sense of what is happening right now pulling from past experiences – and frequently without any editing or updated research.

We even let our inner critic tell the story without a single challenge. This is precisely how we let something from our past foreshadow what might happen in the future – by staying in an old narrative that was never revised.

You landed that dream job but you tell yourself you will likely be unsuccessful, just like the last dream job you had. You make a new friend but you predict that over time, this friendship will also fade away like so many others. You pursue a new hobby but you tell yourself you will never master it like the others.

Not only are our brains meaning making machines, they are also prediction machines — and these two go hand in hand. If we don’t update old narratives, then we also limit our ability to accurately make better predictions.

Even if we don’t intentionally go in and update our old databases, we are ever-changing. Each experience we have shapes us in some way. We are constantly taking in new information, expanding our inner libraries and making genuine progress in many areas of our lives. The reality is that we don’t often flip the switch and explore the newest additions to our database.

Just imagine what incredible material you might find there! Dr. Ellen Langer, author of the Mindful Body, tells us that when we stay current with all the changes and experiences we have, we vastly expand our inner library. We can make any decision the right decision, because we have viewfinders that are more like kaleidoscopes than microscopes.

Dr. Langer reminds us that we have no way of knowing which was the optimum decision – staying in the old job or pursuing the new dream job. The pivot is in making the decision the right one. Was there something we could have done differently in the old job that would have restimulated our passion for it? How we will go into this new job — with a better prediction for its outcome, supported with new approaches to the opportunity? Either choice then becomes right choice.

The best way to help yourself become better at telling yourself stories that support you in positive ways is update your inner library resources. It is two fold — you need to update those old narratives and limiting beliefs and you need to get more creative with your predictions.

There is one more thing that requires our attention — we can work toward getting more comfortable with uncertainty. None of us knows what the future holds. We can stay gridlocked in our fears about the unknown or we can reflect on just how much uncertainty we have already experienced. Not only did we survive uncertainty, we grew through it!

When we were kids we had no way of knowing what our adult lives would look like. When we became parents, we had no idea what our babies would teach us and how remarkably unique each child would be. We learned to drive cars without power steering and we used paper maps for road trips. Today we drive cars with more technology built in than we could have ever imagined. We once took paper checks to a brick and mortar bank to deposit and get cash. Today, our phones have replaced every aspect of cash transactions.

We are not afraid of change in so many aspects of our daily lives. The last frontier to be explored when it comes to change and uncertainty are in the stories we tell ourselves.

When we tell ourselves better stories — chock full of diverse, colorful and rich real life experiences in our well lit, expansive inner database, we will live with more self awareness and creativity. The possibilities will be endless.

NOTEWORTHY RESOURCES:

Dr. Ellen Langer is an engaging and dynamic person who views life through a kaleidoscope lens. She opens us up to how remarkable it is to live life in a constant state of curiosity.

Get out of your head and into your life by harnessing that inner voice/inner critic that blindsides us time and again. You can also listen to Ethan Kross discuss his book on the Huberman Lab podcast.

Check out this Podcast episode with Dr. Marc Brackett and Dr. Becky Kennedy. Even if you aren’t a parent, what they discuss will expand your knowledge of emotional integration and regulation for the stories you tell yourself. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6KYwizMW94

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.

RECOMMENDED RESOURCES: