No BS Coaching Advice Podcast

INTRO This is "The No BS Coaching Advice Podcast," episode 115. I'm your host, Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter and welcome. I like to spend some time regularly, these days, it's about once a week, talking with you about life, the universe, everything. And today's show is recorded on the morning after The Oscars.

SEGMENT 1. The Oscars are a spectacle and opportunity for Hollywood in the United States to love itself. And there were some wonderful stories there. I'm not going to go into them. I'll just simply talk in general about what it's like to be an actor performing. If you think it's an easy road to being successful, if you think these folks don't fail at times, you're not paying attention because so many of these great performers were bums earlier in their career. Complete unknowns. There were obviously exceptions but they face obstacles and, in facing the obstacles, do you think they gave up?

Seriously. Do you think they gave up? No. I think this is the lesson for all of us.

When you face an obstacle, you don't give up. It doesn't matter where it is in your life. What you do is reset yourself. It's kind of like when you face a wall, you can run into that wall four or five times and eventually learn that the wall isn't going to move.  What happens when you try and do it a little bit differently, like maybe walk around the wall.

I remember one time many years ago I got off the train in Newark, New Jersey. At that time, and I don't know if that's still the case, but at that time there was this huge building right opposite the train station and what it did was blocked the view of everything decrepit about the city.  Newark has changed a lot since. I just want to be absolutely clear about that. I'm not picking on Newark. I'm just telling a story from the past, where I'll just simply say what I did is I walked around it in order to get to where I wanted to go to, instead of walking through it  You can do that too, in more and more places in your life.

SEGMENT 2. When I was growing up, I want to be a pitcher for the Yankees. And I would practice throwing like the fan that I was, watching the players that I would watch as a kid growing up. I had a delivery that look like Bob Turley or Ralph Terry or whomever the star reliever was at a given period of time. But as passionate as I was about the idea of being a baseball player,  there was one problem. And I don't want you to think it negates the previous segment because it really doesn't.

It's not that I ran into an obstacle. As much passion as I had for being a baseball player, I couldn't throw the ball faster than 70 miles an hour. And in case you haven't noticed, baseball players, the pitchers all throw at least in the area of 90 miles an hour. I didn't have the talent.

That was true of me when I was in college, and I sang with a band and it just didn't have the talent to be a singer. As much passion as I had for both of those, I wasn't going to make it. Again, this wasn't about obstacles. It was about being realistic that as much as I rehearsed, as much as I practiced, I just didn't have it. So, as much passion as you have, and I know people get this notion that you're supposed to follow your passion and you'll never work another day in your life, you know, it's BS . . . and this is a No BS Coaching Advice show. So, the notion is don't just follow your passion, follow opportunity, and it's going to lead you to places that you can't really expect that this time because you have no idea that they exist.

SEGMENT 3. Now, there's some blocks that are very difficult to overcome- bigotry is the obvious example and it becomes hard to overcome it because it can be both overt or clandestine. There's a winner of one of the Oscars last night and he spoke about how bigotry is everywhere in the United States today, very similar to what it was like during the Holocaust. A very strong statement. I don't know if it's true or not. But I do know, bigotry exists. It rears its ugly head in many different ways. He's from Israel. He may be speaking about the rise of anti semitism. Now he may be just observing that gay people, blacks, Latinos, Latinas and many different people, people from Asia, from one nationality or another, there is the assumption that, you know, they don't speak well that they're different.

I remember when I did recruiting many years ago and used to be "Russians." They spoke badly. They had difficulty comprehending. Data-wise, that was true. But it just became a shortcut for people with a name and that ended in "ski," without any, any time taken to really see if those people spoke well or comprehended well.

Whenever you're making assumptions about broad categories of people, stop it. Seriously, stop it. Just notice the thought for a moment and say, "where do I get that from?" That everyone with this background, everyone like this is exactly the same way you know, it isn't true.  Seriously. No, it isn't true. And yet, we still do it reflexively.

Stop yourself. It doesn't serve you. And it makes for a less inclusive work environment and less rewarding life.

SEGMENT 4. We buy phones or computers. Each of these devices has an operating system. So far, I've been talking about blocks and how you overcome them.

Well, think in terms of designing an operating system for your life for your career, so that, instinctively, you respond, not react, respond to different types of situations, because you've been programmed to do that. We're in a situation where you might overeat and you know, you don't want to. See if you can change your programming so you get the results that you want.

When. you're dealing with different individuals with different sort of motivations, shall we say, can you redesign your programming in order to ensure that you pay attention and don't succumb to situations that you're not going to be happy in.

Winners find the way to win. Losers make excuses for why they failed. When push comes to shove, I want to help you be a winner. And in doing so, have the life that you want. It's your choice, whether it's me or someone else, get some help. It will make a huge difference to you.