The Big Why
What if your reason is something bigger than something beyond just you? If I consider my reasons for starting this podcast, it comes down to knowing that my decades-long career has inevitably netted me some valuable wisdom and insights that could be really useful for others who are interested in expanding their capacity, capability, and confidence to go out in the world and do what they want to do.
In this podcast, I’ll do the deep diving into those crucial topics where you don’t have the time or energy to go. I’ll squeeze the juice to reveal the deeper layers and nuance and cutting through the frustratingly superficial narratives normalized on social media. I’m not going to fix anything. I don’t have a magic wand – they’re perpetually back-ordered on those things. But if you feel like exploring a few rabbit holes with me, things like history, the nature of mind, artificial intelligence, consciousness and brain research, social anthropology, neuropsychology, power, and more, come along for the ride.
And as with everything I share on the podcast, this is what I believe based on what I’ve read and researched. But please don’t take my word for it. Keep what sticks, discard the rest and for goodness sakes, go out and test drive it!
What You’ll Learn In Today’s Episode:
Why I started this podcast.
My background, history, and experience.
What you can expect from The Squeeze!
What Was Mentioned:
Ideas Worth Sharing:
“The whole world is playing a kind of game when it comes to navigating our individual paths” – Christina Sestan
“But what if your reason is something bigger? Something beyond just you?” – Christina Sestan
“I have not ever been, nor do I ever want to be, a guru who tells you how to live. I’m just going to lay things out and you decide.” – Christina Sestan
“There’s something much bigger than the headlines or stories. The way we make sense of it. How we fit it into our worldview (or don’t) and what, if anything, we need to do about it.” – Christina Sestan
“Change can only happen one conversation at a time.” – Christina Sestan
“But the further you get into the jigsaw, the easier it is because the picture is clearer.” – Christina Sestan
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Speaker 1 0:01
Hey, it's Christina. Thanks for joining us. And welcome to The Squeeze. The whole world is playing a kind of game when it comes to navigating our own path, I Well, it's official. I'm finally, finally, finally launching a podcast. And for those of you who know me, you're probably thinking it's about time. You've been talking about this for ages, but for those of you who don't know me, you may well be wondering, like, what exactly are you gonna add to the world of podcasting conversations. Truth is, I have actually got no idea. There are so many podcasts out there, and, like, how do I know there isn't one that's already covering the ground I want to cover, and doing it, you know, in an arguably better way. I don't know, but in spite of this, I'm starting, and well, that leads me to the big why of launching this podcast. So, for a lot of my life, I thought there was just one pie, and only so much to go around, and once it was gone, it was gone. I'm talking about pie, right, blueberry, apple, etc. The pie was anything that I wanted or imagined myself doing, so starting my own business, or going back to school, or applying for my manager's job, or starting a podcast. And by the way, I've done all of these things, and to secure a piece of the pie, I could simply become super competitive, or I could develop some smart, stealthy strategies, or I could simply bow out of the race altogether, because I found it stressful, and again, I've done all of these things too. Clearly, my worldview came about from growing up in a big-ish family. There were four kids, and often there was quite literally not enough to go around, so when it came to determining my approach to get the thing I wanted, should I try to be the first one there or carefully strategize the most successful approach or bow out all together? I have to confess I often chose to bow out. Now, if you were to look at my life CV, you'd be hard pressed to imagine that I did much bowing out of things. I've been up to a lot in this life of five plus decades, but there was something about the quote unquote game of going for things that I wanted that was like, I don't know, I want to say distasteful. I don't know why I felt that way exactly, except maybe I was born with a very dominant fairness gene, but yeah, I know that's not right. The truth is, it's probably just some good old-fashioned Judeo-Christian belief of right and wrong. I really, really thought good things come to those who wait, and while that's not entirely untrue, it's not a great way to really get anywhere, it's.. it's just where I developed a bit of stealthy approach of being assertive without appearing to be, and it's funny now when I recollect the work that I put into looking like I wasn't working. I mean, it was messy, it was time consuming, and decidedly not fun, but I suppose it was a bit like running a race with a piano tied to my leg. Yeah, we all have our peccadillos. The thing is, I know I'm not alone in my tendencies. I've coached a lot of people over the years, and many of them have confessed to bowing out of the organizational arenas that contain, you know, those obvious sociopolitical games that anyone with their eyes half open, can see, and they report some version of kind of feeling grimy and self-serving and selfish if they have to get involved, and even the university business students that I teach, they always have a hard time with the module on politics and influence, they think that, like, knowingly leveraging influence tactics feels manipulative and somehow deceptive, but you see, here's the problem. Here's why I had to learn to change my worldview, and perhaps you do as well. The whole world is playing a kind of game when it comes to navigating our own path, so when we opt out, our expectation, and in my case, that you know people should be fair, and if I just continue to do my best, you know, good things will come.
Speaker 1 4:22
My expectation collides with the reality that, frankly, with rare exceptions, people aren't generally thinking about us or watching us or ensuring we are treated fairly. I cannot tell you how many people I've worked with over the years who believe their work will speak for itself. It doesn't, so I've had the opportunity to accompany a lot of these people on their journeys to reframe their relationship to the game. I call it, don't let your expectation of reality, or your expectation, I should say, of how it should be. E blind you to the reality of how it is and the trick I found is to ask yourself a simple question, Where are you coming from? Let me explain what I mean. I mean, what was my motivation for starting my own business, or going back to school, or applying for my manager manager job, or starting a podcast, was it a small self-serving reason? Like, hey, I just want to make more money, I want to be known. Hey, I want some status. If any of that is true for you, that's your jam. That's fine. I'm not judging. I'm just saying that when it comes to motivation, and we're going to be talking about motivation in an upcoming show, that's a pretty small frame. Think of it this way, when your alarm clock goes off in the morning, how quickly do you leap out of bed when you're just getting out of bed to collect a paycheck, or because you have a new title, or because you want some recognition? But what if your reason is something bigger, something beyond just you, so if I put it into my own life and why I started this podcast, then it looks like this. I'm pretty sure my decades long career has netted me some valuable wisdom and insights that could be useful for you and for people who are interested in expanding their capacity and their capability and their confidence to go out in the world and do even more of what they're already doing, so when I think about my alarm clock going off in the morning, and you know, just to be clear, I don't use an alarm clock, so I'll just say when I wake up, and I know that I'm going to be recording a podcast on a topic that I'm super interested in, and one I know others will probably find interesting and useful too. There's like, there's no issue. It's like, yes, I'm gonna get up and I'm gonna do that. And truthfully, that's maybe why I don't even use an alarm clock. But I think the reason I felt so much itchiness around not getting this podcast up and running for so long is because I'm not doing something that adds that value out there in the world, and if this sounds woo and fluffy, just, just trust me, I am not those things, I really am not. I just mean that I found so much more direction and drive in my life when I look bigger, and that usually entails contributing to others of one sort or another. But don't take my word for it. You've got to go out and test drive this stuff. I have not ever been, nor do I ever want to be a guru who tells you how to live. I'm just going to lay stuff out and you decide in full transparency. I've just finished listening to a great BBC podcast series on gurus, highly recommended, and it's gurus through different spheres like technology, dating, wellness, crypto, et cetera, and you know there is a real slippery slope once you start gaining followers and they keep looking to you to tell them how to live, that is not my jam, so I want to bring you a little bit more into a deeper dive into my big why, and I want to ask you a question. How do you currently make sense of what's going on around you in the world right now? But actually, that question is not the best question, because we need to back up a little bit further. I need to say, how do you even find out what's going on in the world around you right now? Because, honestly, those are two different things, and that's a super important distinction when it comes to understanding the purpose behind this podcast.
Speaker 1 8:27
So, there's what you read on, let's just call mainstream media outlets, you know, CBC, CNN, New York Times, Al Jazeera, BBC, Financial Post, take your pick. So, I just sort of, you know, Googled, and what are those headlines coming from those outlets? You know, lots of stuff around the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Trump's tax returns just got released. Proposed firearm buyback program in Canada. Covid restrictions on passengers from China and Croatia just entered the European Union. So that's the sort of mainstream media outlets, but then there's what you read on Somi, or that's.. I'm just slipping that in there. It's apparently a form, a short form of social media, S O M E. I hear it's kind of a big deal in Europe, so I'm just trying to, you know, sound really cool and with it. But anyway, I'll just say social media, so the Twitters, Reddits, etc. YouTubes, even. And you know what you get there, a lot of talk about Musk's behavior on Twitter these days, the inflated grocery store pricing in Canada, death of Barbara Walters, Idaho slings, the FTX cyber currency fraud, and then there's something much bigger than the headlines or the stories, and the way we make sense of it, it's how we fit it into our world view or don't, and what, if anything, we need to do about what we're learning about. Hey, you're listening to the Squeeze, and if you like what you're hearing, there's a whole world of citrus couching to discover. We've got an online leadership program, it's called Citrus You, and it features those three key tools you need to be a better leader, well, to be a better human. We also have a number of mini learning bundles that you can get into, and there's plenty more. If you're interested, you can follow us on Instagram, or check out our website@www.citruscoaching.com and the show resumes now. If you're anything like me, there's so much information disseminated every day that we somehow need to either navigate or ignore, and that's not saying anything about the larger chronic issues that I think everybody's kind of aware of, even our kids, things like climate change, the threat of, you know, the shifting weather patterns, human rights violations, threats to democracy, de-globalization, mental health, artificial intelligence, violent conflict, Russian nuclear threat isn't your day just getting lighter, and then yeah, let's make it even more complicated than it already is, because you know, I really just really want my listeners to have a good time. So our everyday garden variety interpersonal challenges, our health, the dizzying array of online resources. Hey, Dr. Google, what's this spot on my arm? Well, we really just want to address and lose those COVID 19 pounds that never really went away, or maybe some conflict at work we're avoiding because we don't have our emotional intelligence up to par. We don't know how to wield that. And then there's our financial well-being, our family's well-being, where we live in the ridiculous West Coast market. If you live in Western Canada, the noticeable supply disruptions at the grocery stores, you know, maybe we should just go all organic. I don't know. I'm dizzy just from laying this all out for you, and I'm no stranger to considering all of these layers. So, here goes my UPS, or what we used to call in the olden days of marketing, my unique selling proposition for the podcast. In this podcast, I'll do the deep diving into those topics where you don't have time or energy to go, and I'll squeeze the juice to help reveal the deeper layers and the nuance. I'll cut through the superficial narratives that is so normalized in our social media worlds. My drive is to understand, and there, boy, thereby point out what I call the emperor's nakedness or new clothes from the old storyline, and all of that desire. This is just me, this is my passion. It's really propelled me deeper and deeper down the rabbit's holes of history and the nature of mind and artificial intelligence and consciousness and brain research and social anthropology, and I could go on and on and on. What I'm proposing here in this podcast, it's an approach that's intended to net you a couple of outcomes.
Speaker 1 12:58
Firstly, you're going to understand complex issues a little better, the nuance, the context, the relatedness to other issues, kind of like expanding your map of how you make sense of the world, something that may provide a bit more peace of mind, that's the hope anyway. And secondly, as you listen, your own critical thinking muscle may start to become a little more toned, you may observe yourself interacting with others in a way that is a bit more measured, a bit more open, and a bit less polarized and positional. One of the biggest challenges that I see facing us locally and globally right now, it's our inability to have conversations around difference without it rapidly becoming personal and downgrading into a divisive argument, I'm talking about talking to someone who might be sitting on the other side of an issue that you happen to have a lot of skin in the game over. To our egos, this is downright irresistible, and if we're not conscious of it, our need to be right will sink us, and it's so amplified in these times we're living in a time of tension and tentativeness and fear and hesitancy when it comes to having conversations about anything divergent, we're so afraid of being called out that we don't risk sharing our view, and the conversations become superficial and mundane. If we want to shift any of what is known in human systems dynamics as those big sticky issues, we have to be able to keep talking. Change can only happen one conversation at a time. Look, I'm no Pollyanna. I'm not going to lay out a step-by-step process for solving said issues, and I'm not going to do that, because, frankly, the issues I'm interested in, the ones surrounding us daily, they're far too complex for me to provide a single solution. It doesn't work that way, but what I am going to do is pick up these issues and look at them from multiple angles, look at the issues adjacent to them, look at the history that shaped them, and paint a much broader picture for you to consider. So a number of years back. When I was working on my master's program, I remember getting pretty excited being introduced to something called systems theory. Now I'm no maestro by any means, but the overarching impetus behind systems theory is something I can really get behind. So systems such as a health court, a health care organization, that's something I've spent a lot of time working inside of systems are far too complicated for us to apply sort of algorithmic approaches to problem solving. We don't have time to slice and dice and then catalog the parts in order to find out what is broken, so we can replace it, because by the time we've made the initial cut, the world around has already shifted, and that forces us back to the drawing board. It doesn't work. Instead, system theory prompts us to look at the patterns of interaction between the different parts, and it relies on a heuristic approach to change. Simply put, learning as you go, learning from inside the system, action and learning. What happens if I make one small change to the meeting format with my team, or what happens if I involve my stakeholders one week earlier? We shift something, and then we look for the outcome, we reflect, and we make another tweak. It's learning in action. We seek those small differences that will net the biggest difference in the direction we want to go and to engage with complexity this way, we have to let go of some measure of control. The adage that, and I'm sure you've heard this, well, we've always done it this way. It's got to die. It must die out as surely as the dinosaurs. We must become more comfortable with a little discomfort, and we have to call on our agility and our flexibility and our dexterity and our adaptability and our resilience, and this doesn't just apply to organizational life, of course, it applies to all parts of life, because remember when success depended on being the big fish who ate the small fish, and then that metaphor changed to the fast fish eating the slow fish, but I think we've moved even further afield.
Speaker 1 17:05
I'm not sure exactly how to do the metaphor, but maybe something like the fish who can change direction the fastest, grow wings, and learn to fly will beat everyone else. I don't know, it's a bit weak, but you see what I'm pointing to. So, for a long time, I know that I inhabited what I think felt like an overwhelmingly complex world that was full of scary challenges and very few solutions, and I know what that can do to our mental health and outlook. Before you know it, you can be caught in a downward spiral that gets going faster and faster until you lose your footing entirely. But, as I said before, I'm not going to fix anything. I don't have a magic wand, and besides that, they're perpetually back ordered on those things anyway. But if you feel like exploring a few rabbit holes with me, you know things like history, the nature of mind, artificial intelligence, consciousness, brain research, social anthropology, neuropsychology, it's a tongue twister, power, and more, then come along for the ride. I'm not going to come to these topics lightly or balance precariously on top of some really compelling sounding opinions, of course. I have opinions, and I'll share those when they, you know, when they show up. But don't you agree? Half the problem of navigating all the voices out there in cyberspace is that it's, it's really tough to tell those who actually know what they're talking about, based on research and experience and wisdom from those who just happen to be particularly good at the gift of the gab, and they, you know, they have a large base of followers they can rely on, but unfortunately that seems to be what passes for credentialing these days. I'm not really interested in going in that direction, so you should know that, in addition to coaching individuals, groups at all organizational levels in a variety of industries over the last couple of decades, I've also done my share of designing, developing, delivering a plethora of organizational workshops, leadership cohort programs, training sessions that you know target the usual common pain points for leaders. I've also sharpened my viewpoint with academics, and most recently a master's degree. Well, recent is relatively speaking, but that was all focused on leadership, but it went a lot more into the depth of human nature. And by the way, everyone in my view is a leader, so this podcast I'm not targeting it strictly for people inside organizations. It's like, if you're human, yeah, you qualify. Enough said. Lastly, you know, I teach university students, third year business students, and frankly, that's where some of my favorite discussions are hatched, and some of the best insights seem to come from those students. So, bottom line, I'm a voracious learner. The more I know, the more I know I don't know, but really want to know, and I've heard this referred to as crystallized intelligence. This is learning that is based on sort of the accumulation of everything that I've learned to this point, and then it's stored, and then I use it to make new connections when I encounter new information. So it's kind of like when you're doing a jigsaw puzzle, like it's really tough at the start, because you can't really see. Anything, and like, especially if some sadist is hidden the box top, and that's another story. But the further you get into the jigsaw, the easier it is, because the picture becomes clearer. Someone can tell me, for instance, about a vacation they went on in Maui, and I suddenly realized I don't know how many Hawaiian islands there are, how far apart they are. So I have to go check out Google Earth to see. Now I'm suddenly interested in the size of the Pacific Ocean. I mean, it's immense. And then that leads me to the Mariana Trench, and how deep that is. How cool is that? And so on. Everything new that I learn opens up a broader vista. And I just wish someone had told me when I was young that I had this to look forward to.
Speaker 1 20:37
You know, just don't come with me to the library unless you've got a lot of time to kill, so if you're ready to expand your horizons and sharpen your perspective, join me. Hi, this is Christina, and welcome to The Squeeze. I'll talk to you again soon, so So you've been listening to The Squeeze. Thanks for joining us today. If you want to continue tuning in, don't forget to click subscribe, and as always, we want to hear your thoughts, your comments, your feedback, and challenges. If there's anything you don't agree with, thanks for joining us, and see you next time.
Unknown Speaker 21:21
Bye.