I am excited to share my conversation with Leah Smart, who I had the pleasure of meeting at the Culture Summit where we were both giving main stage talks. Leah is brilliant! She’s all about helping people become the authors of their lives, which she does through her work on the LinkedIn Editorial team and hosting her LinkedIn podcast, In the Arena with Leah Smart, which is out every week wherever you find your podcasts.
She loves facilitating human development work for leadership teams through coaching and workshops and sharing science-backed actionable concepts and strategies to transform your life, your work, and your relationship to everyone around you.
Today we talk about how she approaches designing her conversations with guests as a dance, how she molds her conversations with herself through personal mantras, and her perspectives on the power of intention.
Links, Quotes, Notes and Resources
Minute 2
Leah Smart:
I used to think that when I went into an interview, I had to show the person on the other side, that I was just as smart or close in knowledge, because I wanted to show them, "I'm your equal," in a way. What was really behind that, it for me probably, created more anxiety.
What was really behind that was, I have done a lot of work, and though I speak to so many people, who have gone the traditional educational route, I have a lot of experience and I read a lot and I learn a lot and what's funny is, it's like the more you know, the more you actually want to feel comfortable knowing very little and being more curious and a close friend of mine, who used to dance for the Royal Ballet of Denmark said to me, I was freaking out this one day, earlier last year, I was speaking to Deepak Chopra and he was my first in-person interview.
I was going to lose it. I call my friend Shelby, and I was like, "I don't even know, I'm so nervous. I can't even..." I was in my apartment waiting to go downtown to the office, to do this interview and she just said to me, "I used to dance." She used to dance for years and she said, "The thing I told myself, my mantra was, nothing to prove, only to share," and I've used that actually every time I've been in a situation, where I've felt my own performance anxiety jumping up. I'd say that's one, is realizing I do have expertise, but I'm not here to prove it to you.
I'm here to share with the other person in a conversation. I'm here to look at them as simply a human being, because that's all they are.
Minute 16
Leah Smart:
No matter where you sit on the socioeconomic spectrum, you are likely to experience some level of pain and/or suffering. I believe that we have put so much emphasis on what we have and what we succeed at and what we achieve at and I am totally guilty of this. I have dreams and goals and things I want to create and I think, "Gosh, all of us should have that, because it keeps you going," but what is missing, or I should say what we're doing, is putting all of our stock and investment in these external things. What do I have? How many people know me? What does my social following look like?
Do I look the right size today? Or is my hair okay today? How do people accept me? It's all these things, that are superficial that we all do it. We all fall victim to it. The challenge, is when you don't have anything to go back to, to re-tether you to what's real and to me, what is real, is not all of these things that have been created around us to keep us going, like little hamsters on a wheel.
It's the internal, it's the stuff in your inner world, where you want to invest and take stock and slow down and get connected and recognize how meaningful and small life is, right? It's the recognition that there is so much more beyond what you're experiencing now and that you are a small part of a huge world, but that your life is very meaningful and that you are so much more than the things that you are valued for, when you walk outside of your house or not valued for.
Minute 33
Leah Smart:
When we have a desire, the immediate thing to do, is to look at all the ways in which it's not happening and we're going, "I have a desire, and here are all the ways I lack. Here are all the ways, in which it's not going down." How do you feel when you have a desire and then you spend the next couple of days telling yourself how shitty it is, that you don't have it yet?
You feel pretty bad, and then you expect that thing to happen. If you just think about it logically, it's like, "I want a new job. I hate my job so much. I hate it. I hate it. I hate it. I hate it. I hate it. I hate it. I hate it," and then you think that your dream job's just going to show up and you're going to be happy? I haven't had that experience. The time that I hated my job, I went into another job, another company, that I also didn't love.
It wasn't like life turned around from that place. It's similar to, do you want to suffer on the way? And also, is the outcome of what you are trying to create, potentially is there an upside by not suffering along the way? For me to feel, is to feel the experience of what it will be like when, not from a place of lack, but from a place of familiarizing yourself, your brain, your body, to the experience of what it's going to be like when.
Minute 36
Leah Smart:
To truly experience something, can also show you that it's already yours. I'm 35, and a lot of women that I know and who are in my life, are are wanting partners and when you want a partner, what do you do?
You go, "I don't have one." You look at all the couples around. It's like there's couples everywhere. You're like, "I cannot walk a step, without seeing people who love each other," and you can either choose to get really pissed off and feel like you're never going to get it, or you can choose a little bit differently and what I realized was at the time when I was wanting partnership, if I could just sit in the feeling of love, I could realize that actually it was already mine.
Nobody was going to create that for me. It's actually just that there's someone I can point it toward, and that meant that I could feel it, without another person sitting in front of me. Because guess what? That person's going to come and they're going to piss you off sometimes and they're going to make you happy sometimes. They're going to... It's just the same. It's like, you have so much more autonomy and power when you can recognize what is inside of you and not that someone else is going to make it possible for you. It's just, they're presenting an opportunity for you to bring out what you already have.
AI Summary
Leah and Daniel discussed Leah's approach to interviews and the importance of being real in conversations. They also talked about the importance of investing in one's inner world, setting intentions before conversations, and creating what one desires through intentional action.
Meeting summary:
(3:56) - Leah discussed her recent interview with Rainn Wilson and her interest in exploring spirituality and ancient wisdoms in her work
(21:17) - Leah discusses LinkedIn's values and how they prioritize being a good person, doing the right thing, and acting like an owner
(24:46) - Leah emphasizes the importance of investing in one's inner world and recognizing the meaningfulness of life beyond external validation
(27:30) - Leah discusses the tension between accepting the current situation and driving towards what we want to create, and suggests focusing on changing our orientation to the gap between where we are and where we want to be to find contentment and calm along the way.
(30:41) - They talk about the importance of grounding oneself in spirituality or something greater, and how going inward can lead to being a better person when interacting with others
(35:54) - They discuss the need for human connection and meaningful conversations, and how everyone needs each other to function.
(45:30) - Daniel talks about the importance of being intentional in creating what one desires, rather than just running away from what they don't want
(46:52) - Leah discusses the importance of sitting with what one wants and becoming clear and intentional in their life, including routines and rituals that bring richness and ease
More About Leah
I'm on the LinkedIn Editorial team exploring the stories and ideas that increase clarity in our lives so we can work and live in a better world. My podcast, In the Arena with Leah Smart, is out every week wherever you find your podcasts. I'm also a keynote speaker for companies and events sharing science-backed actionable concepts and strategies to transform your life, your work, and your relationship to everyone around you.
With over 10 years of experience in learning, consulting, and coaching, I am passionate about human development and potential.
Previously, I was a Principal Learning Partner at LinkedIn, where I consulted, built, designed, and facilitated human development work for leadership teams through coaching and workshops.
Full Transcript
Daniel Stillman:
Oh, well now see, we'll just keep the messy intro.
Leah Smart:
Let's keep it.
Daniel Stillman:
Yeah. I officially welcome you to The Conversation Factory. I've been thinking about where to begin this conversation. Just generally speaking, what would you say are your favorite kinds of conversations?
Leah Smart:
I find that of all the interviews I've done, my favorite ones are the ones where I'm learning something or looking at something differently, where I get to be curious, where it feels more like a dance than a Q&A, where it's like you're just vibing and flowing and the outcome's going to be the outcome, but that the experience for the two people or however many people are in the conversation and then those who are listening and/or missing, because they're listening to a show weeks later or a month later, feel like they got to tune in to two friends. I was saying this yesterday, I got to speak with Rainn Wilson and afterward looking back, I was like, I really hope it felt like you got to peer into the window of two friends hanging out in a house, talking about something that you got to join in on and I want it to feel friendly, casual, but also interesting, respectful, relational, relatable, while also giving people space to learn something new and approach life differently.
Daniel Stillman:
Yeah. How do you think you do that, because you are a great interviewer. I've listened to some of your interviews. What are you bringing into that room? How do you feel like you're doing that?
Leah Smart:
Well, I think it starts with realizing what you're an expert in and what you are not an expert in and what you expect of yourself and what you shouldn't expect of yourself. I used to think that when I went into an interview, I had to show the person on the other side, that I was just as smart or close in knowledge, because I wanted to show them, "I'm your equal," in a way. What was really behind that, it for me probably, created more anxiety.
What was really behind that was, I have done a lot of work, and though I speak to so many people, who have gone the traditional educational route, I have a lot of experience and I read a lot and I learn a lot and what's funny is, it's like the more you know, the more you actually want to feel comfortable knowing very little and being more curious and a close friend of mine, who used to dance for the Royal Ballet of Denmark said to me, I was freaking out this one day, earlier last year, I was speaking to Deepak Chopra and he was my first in-person interview.
I was going to lose it. I call my friend Shelby, and I was like, "I don't even know, I'm so nervous. I can't even..." I was in my apartment waiting to go downtown to the office, to do this interview and she just said to me, "I used to dance." She used to dance for years and she said, "The thing I told myself, my mantra was, nothing to prove, only to share," and I've used that actually every time I've been in a situation, where I've felt my own performance anxiety jumping up. I'd say that's one, is realizing I do have expertise, but I'm not here to prove it to you.
I'm here to share with the other person in a conversation. I'm here to look at them as simply a human being, because that's all they are. We're not all that different and then finally, before I go into an interview, what I love to do, and it's not always easy, but is to take just two or three minutes to just sit quietly, whether that's just focusing on my breath or just sitting, setting intention. It allows me to just turn off my mind and then I can be fully present versus worrying about what I'm supposed to be asking next and how it's going to look, how it's going to sound, it's like you've got to be fully there.
Daniel Stillman:
Yeah. Do you feel like you come back to that, for lack of a better word, a mantra, that nothing to prove? Are you bringing that in as internal self-talk? Does it come up during the conversation, where you're just, "Serenity now," was always my classic internal mantra. It's like nothing to prove. Do you sometimes remind yourself of that, during the conversation?
Leah Smart:
Yeah. Yeah. Yesterday, and I don't know if the mantra specifically, the nothing to prove, only to share, specifically came up during the conversation, but really, that mantra is let go of performance anxiety. Let go of the fear you have of what people are supposed think of you and just show the hell up. Yesterday I was like, "All right, I'm sitting here. It's a live interview. There are 1,000 people watching. Just show up. That's it." Yeah.
Daniel Stillman:
I love that you use the term dance and this is interesting, because for me, I think about conversations 100% as a dance, but dance can either be totally unstructured, there's just fluid dance, but even then you're dancing to the music, you're responding to the music. What do you feel like are your moves, when you're dancing in these conversations?
Leah Smart:
I like that question. I go into most conversations, realizing that the people I've talked to, have done a million conversations like this before. They've had people who have moves that feel very structured, that feel like, "And then I will ask you this question next," and, "To follow this up," that have a harder time being in the moment or when I was becoming a coach, it was called dancing in the moment and that's what I mean. My dance moves are probably, they're not spontaneous, but in listening to this book and reading this book, Soul Boom by Rainn Wilson, he shared, and I've heard Oprah share this before, one of her favorite quotes and Marion Williamson also is, "God, use me. Use me. Have me go where you want me to go, do what you want me to do, say what you want me to say and be what you want me to be, all for the purpose of the highest good."
I honestly believe when I'm in an interview, I am truly in what Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, one of the positive psychology researchers early on, I'm in flow. It means that I am so there, that my dance moves are just about whatever's there. Something is clicking in my mind that's saying, "Grab that word, grab that phrase. This reminds me of this." It's like everything's firing, to the point where yesterday I had two interviews, but this big one I had, I got home and I had to just lay down. I went to sleep for three hours.
Daniel Stillman:
You left it all on the stage.
Leah Smart:
I leave it on the stage and how else are we supposed to live? If I can't amplify this person's incredible message, by putting everything on the dance floor and being so damned present, then I'm not really doing the kind of job I want to do, for this person's message. Now do you do that all the time? No. Sometimes my dance looks like, I'll go in and tell my producers, "This is a light conversation. I'm going to let it be fun and light and let's just see where it goes," or I'll go in and I'll say, "This is a short conversation. Let's see what that looks like," and I think my dance moves change, based on where I'm at, based on the person's message. It's like, "Read the room."
Daniel Stillman:
That seems like a good poster for us all to have, "Read the room, Daniel."
Leah Smart:
Read the room.
Daniel Stillman:
Well, something I'm sitting with is, your whole life is not doing the interview, right? Because, you also work as a one-on-one coach. All the conversations that happen, with all of the people you collaborate, to make all of these conversations happen and I wonder, the dance of those conversations and the mantras of those conversations, how you feel you are looking at those conversations and designing them, either differently or maybe exactly the same as you do.
Leah Smart:
The first thing that just came up for me is, what's needed now? I am not always designing conversations perfectly and sometimes what shows up, is the shit I'm bringing with me. Last week I had a bike accident, so I was not in a good mood. I was hurt. I'm okay. I lived. I have some...
Daniel Stillman:
How's the bike?
Leah Smart:
Bikes in great shape.
Daniel Stillman:
That's good.
Leah Smart:
Held up fine and there was no car involved and all that, but I wasn't in a good mood last week, and that's hard for me to really accept, when I'm not in a great mood and maybe I'm not being my best self with other people, but that was the reality. I think it's less of planning every conversation and more of, how am I showing up in this conversation? What am I potentially likely to have to apologize for later? Or what am I bringing right now? It's a great day. I'm happy. I'm in a great mood. Things are good, that's great. If it's not a great day, I'm not happy, I'm not in a great mood, I tone things down a little bit. Maybe that means we're a little more focused. Maybe that means we shorten the conversation. I think it's just knowing what's needed now.
Daniel Stillman:
Yeah. The phrase I sometimes think about is, is serving the conversation? And it seems like that's really what you're... You're serving the person in front of you in their message, sometimes and sometimes you're serving the conversation as a whole and you're in the conversation too, which means if your energy is what it is, you have to serve you. You have serve yourself as well and take care of yourself. That seems like all those things.
Leah Smart:
Yeah, I think we all do.
Daniel Stillman:
Yes.
Leah Smart:
Yeah. It's all of that and for you and I, we're not journalists. We don't go into conversations simply, not simply, but just to collect a story, collect the data, and then report out the story. We bring ourselves in a different way than many trained journalists. Most trained journalists are not taught to bring all of themselves and their opinions. That's the whole point of journalism in general, or at least it used, was that we get the objective story, unless it's an opinion and an op-ed. Yeah and I'd say, of course journalists are people too, so they're bringing their stuff too, but for us, it's a little more complex, because we want to bring our stuff and we're walking in saying, "I'm showing up with my stuff and how do I still serve, based on that?"
Daniel Stillman:
Yeah. I want to transition. I have an image here. It's actually a terrible drawing I did, of your wonderful talk from the Culture summit and.
Leah Smart:
Oh, I love...
Daniel Stillman:
The reason I was looking at this, when you were talking about needing something, our pre-chat about we need more, we need something in this modern era, there's this little sketch, something you said during your talk as the organization, as a church, a place for creating meaning and we do spend a lot of time at work and your work is at LinkedIn, which is a church for work, for sure and I'm wondering what you feel like, church has evolved a lot, what we need as people, is ever evolving. What do you think our work church should be like?
Leah Smart:
I feel really fortunate. I've worked at LinkedIn since 2010. I left for a year and a half. I came back, because that work, church quote, was the most intentional I'd ever had and I haven't worked at a lot of different places, but our values at LinkedIn have stayed the same. Yeah, light shifts and things like this, but generally, it's about being a good person. It's about doing the right thing. It's about acting like an owner. I remember when I first started out, there were only 400 employees. There are over 20,000 at LinkedIn now.
Daniel Stillman:
Wow.
Leah Smart:
Act like an owner was, pretend that you started this company and you're running it, what would you do?
Daniel Stillman:
Yeah.
Leah Smart:
Humor was a big one and still is, being open, honest and constructive and I think we've changed it since then. I can't remember what it is now, but it's all things that, if you raised a kid and told the kid, from the time they could speak and show them from the time they could watch you interact with the world, the values LinkedIn has, they'd lead a pretty good life.
That to me, told me all I needed to know, because not only was it something that LinkedIn said, it was something that I saw done. Now, do we all make mistakes? Of course. Are you going to hire only people who do that perfectly? Of course not, but to me, I'd say if I were picking a company today, and I think a lot of GenZers and millennials are picking their companies based on the company's values and their beliefs around social issues, around climate, around things that are happening in the world and how they're interacting with those things.
Daniel Stillman:
Yeah.
Leah Smart:
You have to act like you care and it's not just that you wrote it down or you gave a little bit of money here or there. It's like, you have to act like you care and I will say as a caveat too, I'll say, I don't know that workplaces should be our new churches. I do know, that church attendance is down. I know that people who ascribe to a religion has massively decreased and continues to decrease.
As I was saying that, I was illustrating that people put more trust in companies than they ever have before, in corporations and expect so much more out of CEOs and C-level executives, when it comes to social issues, that used to be the issues we'd talk about at home and then we'd walk over to work and we'd sit and do our job from nine to five and clock out and what I'm highlighting, is that there has been this in the last [inaudible 00:15:26]. That means that there's got to be something more given by workplaces, which many of them have, but also, I think that for us to put our faith into just that, another governing body, that also is associated with our paychecks, isn't necessarily the only way and it may not be the best way.
Daniel Stillman:
Yeah. I guess what are the other options, right? Because, you're talking about, we need more of something in the world, in our own lives. What do you want to bring more of into your conversation, broadly?
Leah Smart:
I think and listen, I'm just a normal person like you and everybody else, but when I turn on the news, when I walk around in the world, and I live in New York City and so do you, I think there's so much good, and I think there's a lot of suffering and a lot of struggling.
Daniel Stillman:
Yeah.
Leah Smart:
No matter where you sit on the socioeconomic spectrum, you are likely to experience some level of pain and/or suffering. I believe that we have put so much emphasis on what we have and what we succeed at and what we achieve at and I am totally guilty of this. I have dreams and goals and things I want to create and I think, "Gosh, all of us should have that, because it keeps you going," but what is missing, or I should say what we're doing, is putting all of our stock and investment in these external things. What do I have? How many people know me? What does my social following look like?
Do I look the right size today? Or is my hair okay today? How do people accept me? It's all these things, that are superficial that we all do it. We all fall victim to it. The challenge, is when you don't have anything to go back to, to re-tether you to what's real and to me, what is real, is not all of these things that have been created around us to keep us going, like little hamsters on a wheel.
It's the internal, it's the stuff in your inner world, where you want to invest and take stock and slow down and get connected and recognize how meaningful and small life is, right? It's the recognition that there is so much more beyond what you're experiencing now and that you are a small part of a huge world, but that your life is very meaningful and that you are so much more than the things that you are valued for, when you walk outside of your house or not valued for. Yeah.
Daniel Stillman:
Yeah. Yeah. This comes back to, I think I can connect this to this idea of, you talked about self-awareness and optimism, as two things we wanted to touch on and it seems like being grounded and tethered to who you really are and what you really want, is really important and powerful and I think there's a fundamental tension between what is and what we want to create, accepting the current situation and driving towards what we want to create. How do you think about balancing that out, when you think about the things we need to feed ourselves, to sustain ourselves?
Leah Smart:
I think there's always got to be tension between what's happening and what you want to see happening. I call that, when I'm working with someone and I'm coaching them or working with a team or whatever, we talk about different areas of this thing called the Wheel of Life. It's an eight sectioned wheel, that has all of the areas of life that we all concern ourselves with, career, romance, family and friends, our fun and recreation, where we live, our health, our money and I have people, don't have to tell me, but tell themselves, how satisfied they are with each area of that wheel, on a scale of zero to 10 and then I ask them, "What would contentment or satisfaction look like for you, in each of those areas?" And what we generally find, is at least in one or two, sometimes more, a gap.
A space between where I am and where I want to be. I don't think that life would be interesting or meaningful or fertile ground for growth, if there weren't a gap between point A and point B. Now, what we all fall victim to, and what I hope to support people in doing, and what I do my best to shift, is not your relationship, to the lack inside the gap, but your relationship to the understanding that there will always be a gap and if you can focus on changing yourself and your orientation to that, then life will change around you, versus, "I need to change that thing. I make $50,000 a year today, I need to make $100,000 and I'll be happy."
Well, no. Yes, we should all have goals, but that can't be the answer to your contentment, or I shouldn't say can't. I should say, how much do you want to struggle on the way to your goals? How much suffering do you want? If you make $50,000 today, how can you find some level of appreciation, gratitude, and calm in that, knowing that you're moving towards something else, something bigger, something greater, so that you're not suffering, as you get to that goal, in the same way.
Daniel Stillman:
Yeah. It's interesting, because you talked about the change equation in your talk, God, it seems like... It was so long ago. It was almost a year ago. Dissatisfaction, times vision, times first steps, if that's greater than the resistance, change happens, but what I'm hearing you talk about now, is dissatisfaction can be a positive motivator, for our internal dialogue, but you also don't want people that you're working with and trying to help, you don't want them to be suffering through that dissatisfaction and that is very subtle. It's like we want them to feel the dissatisfaction, we also want them to feel the vision, what they want and find movement that is not self-abuse.
Leah Smart:
Yeah. I want them to see the hole, but not jump in it.
Daniel Stillman:
Yeah.
Leah Smart:
You know what I mean? There's the hole. That's my dissatisfaction.
Daniel Stillman:
Like you say, I want them to feel the hole, but not jump in it.
Leah Smart:
See the hole, but don't jump in the hole. We all have it. We're all going to have dissatisfaction. You could call dissatisfaction desire too. If you want to reframe it, fine. It can be such intense desire, that moves you. It can also be really intense satisfaction. We've all had that dissatisfaction. We've all had that moment where we're like, "I'm so damned sick of myself. I've got to fix this," but then we also have that moment, where we're like, "Oh my God, I want... I feel this thing," and then the vision is then, let me paint that, paint done for me, paint the picture of it.
Daniel Stillman:
Yes.
Leah Smart:
But yeah, when it comes to dissatisfaction, there's the hole. See it, know it's there, change your relationship to it by shifting... The fact that you can look at the hole, without having to bury yourself.
Daniel Stillman:
That's really interesting. To use your word, to stay grounded and tethered to...
Leah Smart:
Tethered.
Daniel Stillman:
And what is that thing, going back to the conversation you were having with Rainn and this work on spirituality, what is it that we stay grounded and tethered to? What do you think we want to have more of, you want us all to have more of?
Leah Smart:
To me it's, you can call it whatever you want, God, spirituality, the universe. For me and according to Rainn, it's also 31% of millennials and many more GenZers, file ourselves as the nuns, the people who when you say, "What religion are you affiliated with?" We say none.
Daniel Stillman:
Yeah.
Leah Smart:
I remember OkCupid, when I first started dating, it was like, "Spiritual, but not religious," and I was like, "That's me."
Daniel Stillman:
Yeah. Yeah.
Leah Smart:
No, for me, that means it's creating the space in my life, to connect to myself, to remember and connect to something greater and to be connected deeply and meaningfully to someone else too and I added that recently. When I first started on my own, just like, how do I figure out what spirituality means to me? Because I realized that, that was missing from my life, I just went on a solo thing. I was like, "I'm going inward. I'm meditating every day, trying to do it for long periods of time, for an hour, for whatever, and I'm journaling and I'm doing all this stuff."
And it was so enriching, but what you realize over time and what studies have shown, they just finished this Harvard study, it was a 75-year longitudinal study, to say, "What makes a good life?" It was meaningful relationships. It didn't matter how much money you made, it doesn't matter who you are, where you are, that's it. I add that in to say, "Now, I recognize, you can't just go inward and stay inward. The point of going inward, is to be a better person when you go outward and then continue to do the work.
Daniel Stillman:
Yes.
Leah Smart:
And yeah.
Daniel Stillman:
What's interesting about what you're saying, one of my past interviewees, Michael Burin described, he's a more of a conversation design nerd, than I ever could hope to be and I used to think of conversations as a spectrum of size, from little to big, and he put it as an onion and in the center, is the conversations we have with ourself and it's the core in some sense, it's what it's all grounded in.
If we don't invest in the core, we are hollow and we don't have anything to bring to those bigger conversations, talking to other people, community, but you're talking about a much bigger conversation, that's containing it all, which is a, "What's it all about? What do I think this means to me? How do I ground it in my own sense of what life means?" Is that fair to say? Because, I see you as very much taking care of that conversation with myself and grounding myself, but that larger conversation seems to be what you are really tethered to, that makes you feel like you're not just flung out into the universe. It's like you see it as something's being held.
Leah Smart:
Yeah. Yeah, it's for the sake of. Self-care has become commercialized, right? It's like, "Take a bath, have a glass of wine, have a me day, get rid of toxic people."
Daniel Stillman:
That is such a trend. Getting rid of toxic people, is very on trend.
Leah Smart:
Yeah, and that's a whole other can of worms, because it's like, if everybody's toxic, then you might want to look in the mirror. We all have our own work to do.
Daniel Stillman:
You heard it here first, everyone. You are the constant in all your relationships.
Leah Smart:
You sure are. It's the quote, "If a fight breaks out in every bar you go to, maybe it's you." That's a whole set for me of like, you've got to be so careful. Yes, there are people out there who are not the right match for you, who are not the right people, who maybe aren't doing their work. All of that, but yeah, I think the focus goes here and for me, when I can focus here, I can focus there. When I'm not focused here, this becomes so much harder and it is what fuels me.
Daniel Stillman:
And for those of you who don't know, Leah's a hand talker. This is an audio podcast.
Leah Smart:
I sure am. I'm not a conversation designer.
Daniel Stillman:
No, no. Your hands are... That's a very common way. She's making the small gesture and then the big gesture, right? You're holding them both. You want to be there with both of those conversations.
Leah Smart:
Yeah. Yeah, and every part of the human body, in order to function, needs each other. We all need each other. I just happen to be a person who is so driven by this and driven by having deep and real and meaningful conversations and sharing them and getting them out there. Somebody else, might know that there are so many other people out there, who never want to have these conversations. They don't know how to go there. They don't want to go there. Whatever it is, their lives are too bad. I don't care. They have another role to play in this body of humanity. That's my job. If that's what I'm here for, which I do believe it is, then I've got to do my best to help reveal those things, so that people can have access to the information that can help them feel tethered and tethered isn't always bad. It's something to return to.
Daniel Stillman:
Yeah. Tethered is great, when you're doing a space walk.
Leah Smart:
Mm-hmm. Correct.
Daniel Stillman:
Really, really want to be tethered and we are. Tethered is great, when you want to feel connected to something. Tethered and grounded, we're using them as broad synonyms for each other, which I think is really great.
Leah Smart:
Yeah.
Daniel Stillman:
I want to make sure we have some time for talking about, I'm a big fan of, and I have fundamental tensions with this, recipes. I think recipes are really powerful ways of learning, because they're how we... I usually look at two or three recipes before I cook anything and then I take one, and then I just make it my own, which is I think, a great step that everyone needs to get to become a Chef, of their own life. We're not talking about recipes for cooking, we're talking about recipes for conversations and you shared one with me, "Desire it, feel it, experience it, create it," which seems like a very nice recipe, a very handy recipe, to whip up a journey of self-discovery. Is that fair to say?
Leah Smart:
Yeah. Well, in the kitchen, I am a follow the recipe to the tee, freak out if there's any more or any less of the thing.
Daniel Stillman:
You don't tap into your ancestors for the...
Leah Smart:
No ancestors have any information I am taking. Print out the recipe, are you sure that was a teaspoon? Yeah, don't mess with...
Daniel Stillman:
Well, first of all, this has nothing to do with what we're talking about, but I was saying this to my wife the other day. I was like, "There needs to be something better than... Teaspoon and Tablespoon, just sound so similar. They should have totally different names or it should be all metric.
Leah Smart:
Correct. Big spoon, little spoon would even work for me.
Daniel Stillman:
Big spoon, little spoon. Yeah. It's just totally dumb and I am a very, very well accomplished baker and each time I'm like, is there a TBL? Is that a TSP?
Leah Smart:
Yeah. Correct. TSP, yeah. What are we doing here?
Daniel Stillman:
It's way too much cognitive load. That being said, am I right about, because we haven't talked about this desire it, feel it, experience it, create it. Is that a recipe that you use, to map out a journey from where I am now, to where I want to be?
Leah Smart:
Yes. Yes. I think, like you said before, the natural tension between being in one place and wanting something different, is going to be the way of our lives. We will never be at a 10 in every area on the wheel of life and perfectly satisfied and nothing could change. That's life and I'm still learning that. It's like we're all still learning that. I hope some of us maybe believe that that's not the case, but on this idea of, we are all here, we do, I believe all have free will. We do have agency over how we experience our life.
I also think and believe and through experience and I'm like, "Experience is the best teacher," I've got evidence through experience, that when I get really clear and connected, that I have a desire. That desire has been for me, not like, "I want a green car." It's like, "This is what I want to be doing for work," or, "This is where I want to be living," or, "This is who I want to be partnered with." I have used those desires, to go inward and to really get clear on what that means for me. What's that feel like, to have that thing? And I don't want to get all woo-woo, but I'm going to a little bit, and now...
Daniel Stillman:
You can get woo-ish.
Leah Smart:
Great. Let's get woo-ish. I love that. When we have a desire, the immediate thing to do, is to look at all the ways in which it's not happening and we're going, "I have a desire, and here are all the ways I lack. Here are all the ways, in which it's not going down." How do you feel when you have a desire and then you spend the next couple of days telling yourself how shitty it is, that you don't have it yet?
You feel pretty bad, and then you expect that thing to happen. If you just think about it logically, it's like, "I want a new job. I hate my job so much. I hate it. I hate it. I hate it. I hate it. I hate it. I hate it. I hate it," and then you think that your dream job's just going to show up and you're going to be happy? I haven't had that experience. The time that I hated my job, I went into another job, another company, that I also didn't love.
It wasn't like life turned around from that place. It's similar to, do you want to suffer on the way? And also, is the outcome of what you are trying to create, potentially is there an upside by not suffering along the way? For me to feel, is to feel the experience of what it will be like when, not from a place of lack, but from a place of familiarizing yourself, your brain, your body, to the experience of what it's going to be like when. I have found that doing that, is what creates the experience.
Daniel Stillman:
Yeah.
Leah Smart:
I've truly focused on it three times, in three very clear ways, and I couldn't have told you how it was going to happen. I didn't know, but the fact that I was able to desire it, to feel it, to sit with the experience of it, to really sit with it and to believe in it, because sometimes we sit with it. It's doing your daily affirmations, it's like, "I am this." You don't believe it half the time. That's why I'm not necessarily a believer in only doing affirmations. I think they're great, but they only go so deep. To truly experience something, can also show you that it's already yours. I'm 35, and a lot of women that I know and who are in my life, are are wanting partners and when you want a partner, what do you do?
You go, "I don't have one." You look at all the couples around. It's like there's couples everywhere. You're like, "I cannot walk a step, without seeing people who love each other," and you can either choose to get really pissed off and feel like you're never going to get it, or you can choose a little bit differently and what I realized was at the time when I was wanting partnership, if I could just sit in the feeling of love, I could realize that actually it was already mine.
Nobody was going to create that for me. It's actually just that there's someone I can point it toward, and that meant that I could feel it, without another person sitting in front of me. Because guess what? That person's going to come and they're going to piss you off sometimes and they're going to make you happy sometimes. They're going to... It's just the same. It's like, you have so much more autonomy and power when you can recognize what is inside of you and not that someone else is going to make it possible for you. It's just, they're presenting an opportunity for you to bring out what you already have.
Daniel Stillman:
Yeah. Yeah. What's interesting about this to me, is I still have the change equation up on my screen and with the analogy of dating, it's a good one, but if we bring it back to the other one you talked about, which is your job, if you're just always running away from, "I hate this job," and you just keep running away and you just say, "Well, not this job," and eventually maybe somewhere down the line, you'll say, "Oh, this feels good. This job feels better," but you won't be as intentional, in terms of creating it and what I like about this model of desire it, feel it, experiences it, to me, I sometimes use this idea of double stitching, and really, you're not just saying desire it, you're saying, "No, no. Desire it, then feel it, and then really know what it's like to have something that you really want."
Look around, what does it look like? How do you know? And this is why reverse interviews are so powerful. A lot of people are going to an interview and think, "I'm just here to answer all their questions," but if you really know what you're trying to create, you could say, "Oh, well, can you tell me more about blank, because I'm looking for blank," and that's where creating it really comes in, because the more you really understand what it is that you do want, not what you don't want, you have the capacity to know whether or not you are creating it.
Leah Smart:
Yeah. Most people don't know what they actually want, if it slapped them in the face, because they haven't actually thought about it. They just know what they don't want, but they forget the other part of that is, what you said, "When you know what you don't want, you know what you do want," but actually sit with that. Sit with that, sit with that, sit with that. Because then when it shows up, you can go, "Nope, I don't want that. Moving on. Yes, this is what I want," and then, the whole purpose of this, is to become more clear and intentional about the way that you operate within your life.
And in your life, I do believe there are recipes. I do believe there are routines and rituals, that will just make your life feel richer and I used to not believe that. I used to think, "I want pure freedom. I want to do what I want to do," all that. Once I started connecting more with myself and getting closer to my own experience of spirituality, I was like, "Oh, I want this," and I'm doing this with my hands, and "I want calm. I want contentment, I want ease," and a lot of that for me, gets created through the routines, through the recipes, and through the ability to sit and just show up for my life, in an intentional way.
Daniel Stillman:
Well, man, and we're running out of time, which is crazy. If there was another recipe...
Leah Smart:
I hate it.
Daniel Stillman:
Do you have another favorite recipe for designing amazing, powerful conversations, that you feel like is in your back pocket, that you'd like to share with the world?
Leah Smart:
I got this from Oprah, who I grew up watching every day. There wasn't a day I got home most days, that Oprah wasn't on at 4:00 PT and I've listened to a million of her podcasts. She's probably so deeply ingrained in me and her work and all that, but she shares a story about an interview she'd done, and I believe it was with two members of some white supremacy group, that she'd had on the show and they were live, and they were sitting with her and you can imagine how that went.
Daniel Stillman:
Yeah.
Leah Smart:
It wasn't long after, that she decided with her team, that she would force herself and them to, every single time they were going to have a conversation or pitch a guest, they'd say, "What's the intention behind this?" And she forced that. I actually forced it on myself and my team the beginning of this year. We have a document that has the guests we're all pitching, and it's, "What's the intention?"
If we can't check off a good intention or an intention that's aligned to the work that we're doing and what we're trying to put into the world, then we don't interview that person. We don't reach out, but when I get on an interview and when I'm interviewing and when I'm interviewing someone else, I ask them, before we even start, I'm like, "What's the intention for you, for this conversation or for this work that you're doing?" And that, talk about conversation design, the floodgates open, because that's their heart. If they're truly doing a work that they can get behind, that they believe in, their heart opens right up, and then you flow from there. To me, that's an amazing conversation design, and it lets guards down.
It lets my guard down. When I'm jumping into an interview and I'm running from meeting to meeting, I'm sitting down and I'm like, "Okay, I have to interview this person, and I didn't have time to meditate and da, da, da, da, 18 things happening. What is my intention for this conversation?" And I'm like, "Got it." And to me, let's put it this way, you don't have all the control over where the conversation's going to go. We didn't have it today or exactly what it's going to become, but when you set an intention, you set a direction, and that's a navigational path toward what you're hoping to create and then the rest to me, is faith, that both of you can show up and figure it out together and make magic.
Daniel Stillman:
Yeah. Dance the dance.
Leah Smart:
Dance the dance.
Daniel Stillman:
Oh man. That is so good. That's so powerful. Is there something I haven't asked you, that I should have asked you? Something we haven't talked about, that we should talk about?
Leah Smart:
I don't think so. Oh, wow. Maybe the one thing I'll say, is in all this, I've had multiple experiences, that I get the opportunity to share about the life I'm creating for myself and what I'm learning and I'm wanting to share that with so many people and that it's all a series of trial and error. Even when you've created the thing, you've done the thing, the dream came true, you have your this, you have your that, you're going to come right back to status quo at some point, or you're going to lose yourself and you're going to have to refine the thing.
Daniel Stillman:
Yeah.
Leah Smart:
I've certainly experienced that in the last six months is, "What is my vision? What am I doing? What does good look like now?" And I come back to this idea of, "You'll get it, you'll experience it, you'll feel it. You'll be so appreciative of it, and then it will become a fold in your life. It'll fold right in, and it'll be unrecognizable that you ever lived without it." It'll be life all over and you finding your way again, and you losing yourself again and figuring out and that's something that I think people also don't like hearing, because we like a happy ending and there sure is one, I think, but I think it happens over and over and over again.
Daniel Stillman:
In a way, this is what you talked about last year. It's not a ladder. It's a series of growth and homeostasis and then stagnation, and then more growth, if we are constantly looking at ourselves and what we really want.
Leah Smart:
Mm-hmm. Yeah. It's like summiting a mountain. You climb a bit, you make base camp, you set up, put your stuff down, okay, feel good and then, you've got to keep going.
Daniel Stillman:
Yeah. Yeah.
Leah Smart:
You've got to keep climbing. There's more to go.
Daniel Stillman:
If you were to give this whole conversation a title, what's the title of this episode? Top three titles.
Leah Smart:
How to Stop the Crazy, is one.
Daniel Stillman:
That's good. That's good.
Leah Smart:
I would also call it just Tethered or Re-Tethered is actually what I would call it.
Daniel Stillman:
Oh, it's a good title for a book, if you're thinking about your first magnum opus.
Leah Smart:
It's on the list. I'm currently at base camp right now, but it is on the list.
Daniel Stillman:
Re-Tethered. Could be.
Leah Smart:
Re-Tethered. Yeah.
Daniel Stillman:
Third option, not that I don't like the first two. They're great.
Leah Smart:
The Importance of Intention. Yeah.
Daniel Stillman:
I love it. I like that one. I like that one a lot.
Leah Smart:
I like literative types of things. Anyway, so there we go.
Daniel Stillman:
I love that you dug deep for that one too, with moments to spare, where should people go to learn about all things Smart, IE Leah Smart?
Leah Smart:
Yeah.
Daniel Stillman:
Where should we direct them?
Leah Smart:
Yeah, you can go to my podcast, which today is called In the Arena with Leah Smart. It's a LinkedIn podcast. You can go to my LinkedIn profile. Leah Smart on LinkedIn. You can find me on Instagram. I'm just starting to get myself back into social media. Leah__Smart and my website, Leahsmart.co.
Daniel Stillman:
Sweet. All right. Thank you so much for the conversation. I learned a lot. This was great.
Leah Smart:
Yeah. This was great. Thank you for having me. So easy. We danced, we flowed. Here we are and we didn't even set intention, but we knew.
Daniel Stillman:
Well, I'll call scene.