612: Lawrence Yeo - Dissolving Envy, Practicing Curiosity, Writing to Think, Establishing Values, Building Confidence, Being Ambitious, Moving People to Tears, & The Power of Consistency

30:21And that was the whole point of this podcast. But what happens is then when they say, hey, will you come give a speech here? Will you write a book? Will you advise my company? Will you work one-on-one with our leaders? And that's the market telling you it wants to give you money for what you do. And I think that can be a telling sign of, hey, maybe if you actually devoted all of your time to this thing you love, it could be a business because the market spoke up before I even showed any desire for wanting to make a single dollar. And I think that's part of how this stuff works in a great way because not only did I not make money, I lost money on this for three years because it costs money to do these things.

31:05And I think that's a telling sign to it. What would you do if it actually cost you money to do it? And then if you could somehow turn that into a business, even without any intention to that is, is at least in my experience, a really beautiful way to go about it. Yeah, I think that question, it just depends on your tolerance for risk. And I'll tell you right now, I'm not a very risk averse person, or I am risk averse. I mean, yeah, I was gonna say, wait, what? No, I am risk averse in the sense that, yeah, if I was going to lose a lot of money doing what I'm doing and I didn't have a job or some way to support myself, then I would be like, I don't know if that's what I want to do right now.

31:45I felt like I needed to have some sort of reliable signal, but also know that the craft I'm in, and this is, it depends on the person. It's like, what does it require from you financially in the first place, right? So for me, writing, it doesn't require much from a financial perspective. I just need somewhere to host my blog. And the way you aptly put it is as the market speaks up, then you can start thinking about, all right, what are some other platforms or something like that? But for writing and teaching and so forth, the main costs are platform-related, software-related or something like that.

32:28Of course, the more you put in, though, it's like you're putting more signals out into the market that, hey, I'm worth more and worth more. And then people start paying you and so forth for that. But once again, it all depends on your tolerance for risk. If you're I don't know if you're going to go into a capital intensive business like self storage or something like that. right, then you're going to have to think, OK, well, what does my runway look like if I have if I'm going to go at this for six months and set up a facility and all that stuff? But when it comes to the arts, I don't think that's as salient of a question.

33:06But yeah, like I said, you have to consider the practicality of the situation. and it's not this irrational fear. Like it's something that you really have to think about because you want to give your purposeful work as bright of attention as possible, right? Like you want to give it the highest quality of your attention. And when it is mired in financial worry or my runway is going to go to zero in X months, for some that may fuel them and inspire them, But for others, that could feel pretty deflating. So once again, this all goes back to the question of knowing yourself. Which of the two are you?

33:53If there's a flame under your butt, is that going to put you on fire or is that going to make you leap and jump and really propel you? So you got to figure out the questions, the answers to these questions first and then decide on your strategies accordingly. Part of the way you would figure out those answers, I think, are having a code, having some belief system. You write about values. You've written your values are as unique as your genes because no one shares the exact set of experiences and insights that were required to form them. They are the fingerprints of your being, and they are the invisible forces that guide everything you touch.

34:37Integrity is the ability to navigate the outer world without discounting your inner values. There is an anchor of authenticity that you're unwilling to budge no matter how fervently people want you to. Can you talk to me, Lawrence, about defining your values, maybe the process that you've used to do that and how that helps you understand what it is that you should be doing out in the world? yeah i think your values it's funny it really is just tied to your intuitive belief of the world right like what are the things that really propel a sense of action in you and what is the world that you envision for not just your children but just for your loved ones really if your loved ones could espouse these kind of values, you genuinely think that the world would be a better place.

35:38What would those values be? And it's no surprise that the values of compassion and kindness and integrity always float towards the top, because those are the values where when you think about the people you love, you want them to espouse, because you know that the impact they have will continue to radiate. You know, integrity is this interesting thing, because I think a lot of the time we feel that we are facing an uphill battle against what the world expects of us, right? We want to exercise our curiosity, we want to exercise our creativity. But a lot of time, it feels like we're just facing a lot of downhill pressure.

36:21Hey, that's not going to work out. Hey, look what this other person is doing. You should do that too. A lot of these shoulds. And when I mentioned it's about not discounting your inner values, it's about still staying strong to what you feel like contributes to the world being a better place and to embody that. And if you don't know what that is, a great place to start is by writing about it. And one practical way that I do this is that I journal a lot. I journal every single day. And I want to make a quick distinction between a journal and a diary. And I think that this is where some folks get a little bit mixed up.

37:00But a journal is not necessarily a cataloging of what has happened in your life. I think that's more of a diary, right? Like today I did this and then I did that, proceeded by this. A journal is more when you ask about why, why you felt a certain way. So if you felt anxious before you're giving a talk or something, ask yourself, why did I feel that? Why did I feel that? And when you ask these whys behind what you feel, you get a lot closer to the kind of value stack that you're operating off of. Because everything really stems from your values. Like you mentioned, It's the fingerprints of your being.

37:39And if you understand your motives behind your feelings, your emotions, what's driving them, then you really get a very resonant understanding of the values that you live by. So I always go back to writing. I'm biased, of course, but there is something about just thinking through the why behind your day-to-day life that brings you so close to that. What are your values?

38:10the first one for me is i just think that compassion is the the overarching value for me and i want to take a moment to just define what you what we mean by compassion because compassion is not being nice. It's not being empathetic, right? Because empathy is a kind of double-edged sword because you have to kind of see yourself in that person to be empathetic, right? There's almost a selfish component behind that. Compassion is when you could kind of see past all of that, where you are just trying to understand the world from another person's perspective. and sometimes compassion is being like not not being it's like giving someone the harsh truth right you need to be able to tell people things that they may not want to hear because you're like hey i understand your perspective but let's try to blend our perspectives together here and the openness to do that is i think what breeds real compassion to see beyond things like status and so forth, right?

39:26You're just trying to see someone for who they are and not for what they have to offer. I think that is a really central component of what makes a fluid and frankly meaningful relationship. And integrity, I think integrity is definitely one of my values too. It's like, how do I navigate this chaotic world with all these expectations, but also stay true what I feel like I would like to see in the world and to embody that through action. And I really feel that if you have compassion, if you have integrity, everything else takes care of itself in an interesting way. I think the wonderful thing about compassion is that, or even, let's say, declining status or something like that, is that there is a magnetism to it, right?

40:16There is a sense of, oh, I like being around this person because this person treats everyone the same. There is no hierarchy or anything like that. And it's very hard to embody that at various moments, but I try to do my best. You write about ambition. And you said ambition is critical to the development of a healthy mind. Not only does it allow you to know who you truly are, but it also acts as a gateway to humility. Since ambition is about putting the bar ahead of you, you'll understand your shortcomings in a visceral way. So can you talk to me more, Lawrence, about maybe the positive and potential negative aspects of being an ambitious person?

41:08ambition does breed humility for the because yeah you're always setting the bar ahead of where you're at now it's this interesting thing and you're like it's just i'm not quite there yet that's what ambition means if you were to put it into one sentence it's i'm not quite there yet and you're and that there's this latent belief in your potential right and potential is a very humbling thing, knowing that where you're at now isn't where you could be. It's very humbling. And that's what allows you to learn. That's what allows you to keep an open mind. That's what makes you put on this podcast, for example.

41:46Right. And that's and that's what you're helping people do, Ryan. And of course, the downside of ambition is when a is when your ambition starts to morph into greed. And there is a clear delineation. Ambition is a kind of self-actualizing force. It's this awareness that you can be something else, but it's more internal. Greed is external, meaning that greed is when you start thirsting for the rewards of your ambition. So it's like money, status, like these are all things that you want ahead of the endeavor itself, right? When you're ambitious, these kind of rewards just kind of come when you are on the self actualizing path.

42:30But when you enter Endeavor thinking, I just want those rewards, that's what I'm after. That's when the pitfalls of ambition become very clear. And it's not ambition anymore. As I mentioned, it's greed. So you want to be very careful. And also another pitfall of ambition is that this inner critic that becomes so loud that says you're not doing enough. and there's actually this philosopher named Byung Cheol Han who I love. He has a book called The Burnout Society and he has this interesting observation that a capitalistic society, it has produced so much wonder in the world, right, in terms of technological progress.

43:17But the little trick it smuggles in is that it promises its people freedom, saying that, hey, hey, if you are ambitious, if you put your mind to it, then you can have all the things you want. You could be financially free. You could have autonomy over your choices. But what that does is that it puts the onus on the individual. So if they feel like they're not financially free, they'll say, what am I not doing right? What am I doing wrong? What am I not doing enough of? So Byung-Chul Han states that throughout most of human history, people were controlled by oppression, right? Some sort of government or something that prevented them from doing things.

43:58Now we're controlled by what he calls depression, where people feel like they basically are not doing anything themselves and they fall into this depression because they feel terrible about themselves because they view themselves as the agent that's not able to do enough. So that's where the ambition starts to take a nosedive is when you keep telling yourself that you're not hitting your goals, your objectives, and there's something fundamentally flawed with who you are as a human being. And in that state, you have to do a refresh and then you have to go into that element of what am I doing right now that's enough?

44:33How do I sense that about myself? And it's a delicate balance. I think curiosity is a part of my love language, Lawrence. And so but your curiosity and some of your writing about questions really, I feel, in a big way. You write, ask more questions to those you love. It's quite shocking how few questions you ask when you're with people you're comfortable with. If you are no longer curious to know about the person in front of you, like a friend, wife, parent, then that relationship is devoid of life. I love this advice. Even if it's not advice, I just love this idea of being more curious. Robert Green said on this podcast, it's about being genuinely fascinated about people and their stories.

45:30Being interested is what leads to you becoming an interesting person. So can you talk more about asking more questions to those you love? Yeah, it's fascinating because this is default behavior we go on when we meet someone for the first time. We don't know this person that well. And whether it's because we have some aversion to silence, or we just feel like, hey, I'm supposed to get to know this person better, right? Then you have all these questions. Oh, where are you from? What are you interested in? The questions just flow out. But then the moment you're sitting at the dinner table with your parents or someone that you've known for your whole life or even your close friends.

46:12And you're like, you know, you see those dinner tables at restaurants, people just looking at their phones, the families looking at their phones. And it's like this interesting paradox where it's like the closer we are, the more love we have for someone. We just our curiosity towards them wanes. And it's this feeling of taking that person's company for granted, really. And what that does is that it, like I say in that piece, it just robs that relationship of life. And the truth, though, is that there is so much to every single person you know that you love. They've gone through such an incredible life journey, incredible life journey.

46:59Think about a person you've known 20 years ago and where they're at now. Probably unrecognizable in the same way that you are, right? So aren't you curious about that? How that happened? And to just have, and it doesn't have to be like, hey, tell me your life story about what happened in 20 years. It could just be a little question about, hey, remember that time you were working at that job and then you left? What was going through your mind when you were in that phase? Or like, yeah, what's a big win you've had in the last, I don't know, a couple months or so? Like a simple question like that, we find uncomfortable to ask the people that are closest to us.

47:39But when you actually take the time to do it, and that person is receptive and responds to it, you're going to walk away from it learning so much about that person that you just didn't know, or you felt like this light bulb moment. If I just do it more often, I'll learn so much. And if anything, you'll be so much more open to learning too from someone that you know has integrity or someone that you know you want in your life right so that's why i say ask more questions to those you love don't just reserve it for strangers and small talk like we usually do use it for those where you feel like the depths of your love your appreciation for them has no bounds and you're going to see something really amazing come from them.

48:25This might be a weird question, but when you are just at random places in life and you're meeting up with somebody, whether you know them a lot, a medium amount, or a little bit, or not at all, given your, I feel like, nature of being a curious person, do you find that you ask the majority of the questions in your interactions with just anybody throughout your day-to-day life? Yeah, I think I do. I think I do, which is interesting being on this podcast where I'm being asked the questions. I always feel this temptation to turn it back, but I'm like, all right, let's just stick with the program here.

49:05Well, I bring it up selfishly. Sometimes you probably get the same thing where somebody says, can I pick your brain or can I take you out to lunch or can we have a call? and my natural inclination is to try to learn and be curious that's a genuine thing it's not fake it's just part one of my core four core values is being curious right thoughtful thankful curious and consistent are my my core values and so that's just like a natural thing that's developed over time that happens and so i just ask them questions but then they never ask any questions back. And this happens all the time, everywhere.

49:41Kids sporting events, meeting up with friends, literally everywhere. And I can name the people that are really good at asking questions on probably one hand. And I'm like, maybe this is a me issue. I don't know. Do I not leave space for it? But I find that there is such a lack of curiosity in the world of people to ask questions and it's bothersome. But the ones who do, I love them. I want to hang out with them. I want to be around them a lot, but it's not as many as I would like. Yeah. You know, it's so interesting you asked that. I was just talking to a friend the other day and he's the kind of friend that also asks a lot of questions.

50:20So we were just asking a bunch of questions and then he just kind of paused and said, Hey, you know what, man? I got to say most people don't ask questions. And true. But, but there's just, that's why this interaction is so cool. Right. And, And when you have that dynamic where two people are asking questions, the time just flies by. Oh, yeah. It's kind of constant back and forth. But that point of, yeah, is it just me that asks a bunch of questions? I totally resonate with that because I feel that a lot. I feel the sense of, yeah, people just don't ask many questions. And part of it is that I do think that it's not a skill that is taught.

51:02I think asking questions is a skill, right? And if you employ it, one, there's this immediate sense of, I think, trust that develops between that person and you. My wife has this acronym for me. She calls me the LSE. It's the Life Story Extractor. So she calls me that because when we travel and stuff and I talk to somebody, like next thing you know in the next couple minutes they're like telling me their life story all right and what i've recognized is that it just takes one or two questions before this person's i want to tell this person more about my life so it could be like i'm at a store and i see that this person happens to have a guitar in the back and a guitar maybe is not i'm not expecting that so i asked them hey what's what's behind that guitar there that one thing of like it being slightly unexpected but But you could kind of get an idea that it's a little personal to that person.

52:01And you are curious about that story. Like if you have those components combined, then that person will just pour their heart out. And I think like it's a skill that you cultivate. But maybe the issue is that a lot of folks don't know that it's a skill. They kind of feel like, oh, am I being a nuisance if I ask questions? Yeah, I think there are some that think that. I think a tangible thing that I noticed Lawrence, and this has happened 20 times more in the last year, if you're going out to lunch with somebody, okay. And it's just you and the other person and you look down at your plates of food and you have not eaten anything yet.

52:41And their food is gone. That means you're not asking any questions and you're just talking about yourself the whole time. And they are asking questions and then listening because they're eating. And this is what I notice happens all the time. My food is gone and they haven't even put a fork on their food yet. I'm like, this is weird. And then I start thinking like, I must not be leaving space or need to do a better job of making it more two way than just making it like, boom, boom. Am I peppering them? I don't know. Like, so it's a personal thing, but it also is because I think part of it is this show.

53:15I've gotten a countless amount of repetitions at it for a decade. And so Getting that many reps is a good thing, but also it just conditions you to anytime you see anybody at all to try to be the LSE, to try to be the life story extractor. It feels like, and given that how curious you are in your writing, I could see why you'd become the life story extractor. Well, let me ask you this. When you're sitting down and you're with that person and you're in that state of asking questions, are you doing it because you're like, oh, it's like this, I want to keep exercising this muscle I have or is it purely from, oh, I'm just in this space.

54:01I want to know more about that person because I imagine sometimes it's either or, right? It could be like you're intentional about it and other times it just kind of happens because that's you. Now I just think it happens. I think without even thinking about it, It just 45 minutes later, it just is where we're at. Usually, as I told you before we started recording, I think the best questions, usually the best questions are follow ups. So you kick off a lunch conversation or dinner conversation with a person by asking a question about the guitar or whatever that you saw. and they're going to say something over the course of that that's going to pique my curiosity where I just can't help it but want to ask about the next thing and then there's usually something like that in almost every answer that you find and before you know it you've learned a lot and I think one of the things that I love is is learning from the unique experiences of other people.

55:02I mean, I host the podcast. This is what I do for a living. And I think that has been so beneficial to my life to be able to learn, like learning your story today. And I know a lot of it because I've read almost everything you've published, but now it's, I just feel like, God, what a productive day. And I, you just posted something about productivity, but what a productive day to learn more about how Lawrence thinks. So I think that's how it just now is like my default setting. And that's just what happens over the course of meeting with literally anybody at any place at any time. Yeah. And I think the thing is, Ryan, is that you are actually an outlier, right?

55:46You are fundamentally an outlier in that sense, because this is the line of not only is it your work, but it's also it just feels very purposeful to learn from people in this direct way. And I think, you know, a lot of society sadly isn't incentivized to have that continuous curiosity. It's like, okay, you work up to a point or whatever, and then, okay, here is where your responsibilities are. This is the scope of your responsibilities. Operate within here. Don't try to like peek too much out of there. Just operate in your zone of comfort and you're good, right and i think that is a default script a lot of the time but then when you start getting into whether it's more creative work or work whether where you're interfacing with more people then you understand that okay whatever i know is kind of like distributed amongst everybody here and like everything is going to be a summation of the parts right like the more i know about the people that i'm here with talking to the more it's not only gonna be beneficial for me but it's can be more enriching for my life.

56:57And this aligns with your values. It's like your habit of asking questions aligns with your values of being thoughtful, curious, consistent, all that stuff is aligned. So the element of asking questions, if you want to cultivate that more, I think is also a question of what your values are. Do your values stack up in a way where asking questions is conducive to propelling your values. Or if your values are more so in rooted in, I don't know, just like security, for example, like I just want what I have now, then maybe being that curious and so forth doesn't really fit that, right? And asking questions.

57:37So it's more about, yeah, are you the kind of person and when you view the world, you see a world where asking questions is very beneficial and you see the power of that. And if the answer to that is yes, then you don't even have to second guess it. You're just going to start doing it in the way that you do. Yeah, so good. One more, Lawrence, before we run, man. Let's say you're meeting with, I know you teach, right? You teach storytelling. So you have students probably of all ages coming to you to learn. And this isn't necessarily about storytelling, but I guess it could be. It depends on what you want to say.

58:11And that is, they're earlier in their career, maybe just a college grad, early to mid-20s. They don't fully know what they want to do, but they do want to leave a positive dent in the world. What are some pieces of life slash career advice you'd give to them? hmm well one is definitely learn storytelling learn storytelling especially now especially in the age of ai and so forth where information really doesn't mean much right information you could get at your fingertips anything you want to know is there but if you want it to be compelling if you want it to resonate, if you want to imbue it with some attracting force, then you have to learn how to encase that in a story or in a narrative.

59:04It's very, very important. No matter what field you go to, learn storytelling. The second is, yeah, I think that consistency element is such a cliche thing to say, but it really is the driving force of any of your curiosity, right? Like the consistency is the action that you put out. And you could do all the reflecting, you could do all the thinking that you want, but it has to be kinetic. It has to, it has to transform into some sort of energy release. And that's what consistency is. And like, whatever you choose to do, just know that you have to do it for a sustained long period of time. And in an age where impatience is no longer, you know, like, it's like, it's tolerate impatience is something we all have.

1:00:02And it's almost perpetuated. Like patience is really what is going to help you stand out. And it's really going to not only help you stand out, but give you that mental fortitude to continue onwards. It's really important thing to embody. So in an inpatient world, patience is the key. Love it, man. I highly recommend everybody go to more to that.com more to that.com that more to that.com. And if you haven't had a chance to read Lawrence's writing yet, man, you're in for a treat because there's a lot there. Super grateful for you having the guts and willingness to ship your work on a consistent basis over an extended period of time.

1:00:42It certainly changed my life for the better. So thank you so much, Lawrence. I'd love to continue our dialogue as we both progress, man. Yeah, I really love this conversation, Ryan. I look forward to chatting again. Awesome. Thanks, man.

1:00:58It is the end of the podcast club. Thank you for being a member of the end of the podcast club. If you are, send me a note, ryan at learningleader.com. Let me know what you learned from This is a great conversation with Lawrence Yeo. A few takeaways from my notes. Envy is inversely correlated with self-examination. The less you know yourself, the more you look to others to get an idea of your worth. But the more you delve into who you are, the less you seek from others, and the disillusion of envy begins. This is why it's so helpful to do the work, to understand your core values, your purpose, the critical behaviors that make your core values true.

1:01:40You do this and you'll see your level of envy will go down or go away completely. And then curiosity is gratitude for the unknown. Love that. The key to cultivating curiosity is to have a healthy relationship with uncertainty. And then ask more questions to those you love. It's quite shocking how few questions you ask when you're with people you're comfortable with. If you're no longer curious to know about the person in front of you, like a friend or a spouse or your parents, then that relationship is devoid of life. And this is why it's important, I think, to approach people with a genuine curiosity to understand them and get to know more about their life stories, as I think Lawrence seems to do a really good job of.

1:02:29And that helps him be more of a professional noticer of things, which then makes his writing more entertaining and useful for his readers. Once again, I would say thank you so much for continuing to spread the message and telling a friend or two. Hey, you should listen to this episode of The Learning Leader Show with Lawrence Gough. I think it will help you become a more effective leader. And because you continue to do that, and you also go to Spotify and Apple Podcasts, and you subscribe to the show, and you write a thoughtful review, and you rate it hopefully five stars by doing all of that, you are giving me the opportunity to do what I love on a daily basis.

1:03:04And for that, I will forever be grateful. Thank you so, so much. Talk to you soon. Can't wait.

1:03:13Thank you.