In this episode of Grow the Good, I sat down with author and coach Jon Rosemberg for a conversation that felt both deeply practical and deeply personal. We talked about survival mode, somatic awareness, agency, and why so many of us confuse success with thriving.
Success Is Not the Same as Thriving
One of the biggest ideas from this episode is that success and thriving are not interchangeable. Success is often defined by external outcomes like money, titles, performance, recognition, but thriving is something much more internal. It has to do with agency, meaning, connection, and the felt experience of being alive and well.
That distinction really resonates with me. I’ve been asking some version of this question for years: Why are we defining success by outcomes that often don’t deliver the feeling we’re actually seeking? I’ve had moments where I’ve realized that another win or another accomplishment didn’t mean much to me, and that what I was really craving was connection.
What Survival Mode Can Look Like
Jon shares his own story of growing up in Caracas, Venezuela, in a constant state of vigilance and danger. That shaped how he moved through the world and eventually led him to realize that “high functioning” can still be a form of survival mode.
That matters because survival mode doesn’t always look dramatic. It can look like productivity. Achievement. Over-functioning. Hyper-focus. Chronic tension. You can look successful on the outside while your body is quietly carrying the cost.
The Body Is Telling the Truth
Another important theme in our conversation was somatic awareness. Jon emphasizes that the body often gives us information before the mind catches up: tight shoulders, headaches, shallow breathing, irritability, fatigue. These can all be signals that we’re operating from stress rather than alignment.
That really hit home for me as an athlete. I spent so many years prioritizing performance and cognitive goals that I often ignored what my body was trying to tell me. Learning to listen has become a huge part of redefining thriving.
The AIR Framework: Awareness, Inquiry, Reframing
Jon’s AIR framework offers a practical path forward:
- Awareness: Notice what’s happening in your thoughts, emotions, and body.
- Inquiry: Ask deeper questions about the beliefs driving your reactions.
- Reframing: Shift the story in a way that opens up more possibility and agency.
I love frameworks that are simple enough to remember but deep enough to keep practicing. AIR is one of those.
Why This Matters
This conversation reminded me that thriving isn’t about eliminating stress or becoming perfectly regulated. It’s about learning how to recognize when we’re stuck in survival mode and building the courage to choose something different.
For me, that often comes back to connection, purpose, and presence. And maybe that’s the point: not to win more, prove more, or hustle harder — but to feel more alive in the life we already have.
Listen to Jon
Jon’s Links + Similar Episodes
Follow Jon on Instagram
Learn More About Jon
Read “A Guide to Thriving” by Jon Rosemberg
Finding Meaningful Work with Tamara Myles and Wes Adams
Feeling and Defining Success – Grow the Good Podcast
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Transcript
Sonya Looney 0:00
Hmm, Hey, John, I’m so excited that we get to spend this time together on the podcast today.
Jon Rosemberg 0:07
Welcome me too, Sonya, thank you for having me. It’s a pleasure to be able to record our conversations.
Sonya Looney 0:13
Yes, we’ve had many and I’m just excited for today’s conversation, because every time that I’ve talked to you, either online or in person, you bring so much presence and just warmth and kindness to the conversations and also curiosity. So I’m just really excited to just share the space
Jon Rosemberg 0:31
with you today. Oh, please go on. Don’t stop.
Sonya Looney 0:38
Well, yeah, the first time that we connected, you were telling me, like, oh, like, I’m just finishing a book, or I just submitted my book. I can’t remember exactly where you were in the process. And it’s like, oh, like, a lot of these topics are things that I think about too. So like, Tell us, tell us about “A Guide to Thriving”, and then we’ll just kind of start jumping into it. Yeah.
Jon Rosemberg 0:59
So I think I spent most of my life in survival mode. I grew up in Caracas, Venezuela, and it was a very dangerous place. I moved to Canada in 2009 I’m in Toronto now with my family. The year I left Caracas, by some estimates, there were 52,000 violent murders in the country. So it was a very dangerous place to grow up. If you took the wrong, you know, the wrong turn, you could end up in a really bad situation. So survival mode really, really helped me. The state of survival, mode of hyper awareness, this state of really nervous system activation, was really, really useful for me for most of my life when I turned 40, then I spent about two and a half decades in the corporate world. And when I turned 40, I started doing some inner exploration, started working with a coach, started doing some somatic work, work, and eventually I ended up figuring out that I didn’t have to be in survival mode all the time. And this shift into thriving, which eventually led me to the program that you also did Sonya at UPenn, kind of created this tremendous curiosity about what does thriving look like? Because until that point in my life, I didn’t actually think there was a different way to go through the world. So it was, it was kind of like a life changing moment. And I can give you several epiphanies and this nice, neatly packed stories about how it happened. And I think it was a very long process with a lot of tiny, small moments that compounded over time.
Sonya Looney 2:33
Yeah, and like, in your book, you are so great at storytelling, like there is a visceral feeling whenever you’re reading about some of these stories of you, you know, working with your coach and in Venezuela. So I just wanted to affirm that. But you know, how did, how can people realize which mode they’re in? Because I think that a lot of people are in survival mode, but they don’t quite realize that they’re there. And maybe they think that they’re thriving, but they’re not so like, how can people begin to kind of bring the same curiosity you brought to understand kind of where they’re at? Yeah?
Jon Rosemberg 3:09
So three things, number one, you can go to my website and take a quiz. Set that aside, I’ve asked the question, have you ever been in survival mode to hundreds of people, and everybody except for two people, said, Yes, I have and they know exactly what it feels like. So I’m going to take a wild guess and say that most folks understand when they’re in survival mode. It’s a little bit harder to notice when we’re thriving. So what the way I see it is, there is this model, this map in the book, that has nine different dimensions, and that includes our thoughts, our emotions, our beliefs and our somatic states, how our body is feeling. And if we attune to that, we can sense whether we’re in survival mode or not. What I would say is that for most folks, survival mode feels a lot like a narrowing of vision, like there’s this hyper focus, this this fear, this negativity bias, this we notice everything that’s wrong, and it’s really hard for us to pick up on what’s good. It can also have a lot of somatic experiences, like 10 shoulders, feeling pressure in your chest, or shallow breathing, migraines or headaches or back pain. All of these things can be kind of the result of being in this state of survival mode. Now. Again, Survival Mode isn’t necessarily bad, because if you’re in Venezuela, like I was, it was really helpful. It is it can be really harmful if we get stuck in that mode, even though the threats that we’re facing are not necessarily physical, they’re psychological threats. So that’s what I’m suggesting in the book, that if we can create a work. Awareness around a state of survival mode, then we can find ways to go into this thriving mode.
Sonya Looney 5:06
Yeah, I love that you have the nine different dimensions of this. Because I’ll share a personal story. Like, I think of myself as, like, I am very adaptive. I can handle a lot of things, and, like, cognitively, I’m fine. Like, I have, like, really great strategies, I feel good, like I’m doing lots of things, but then sometimes my body tells me differently, and it’s, it’s and I used to ignore it, because I’m an athlete, so it’s like, well, you just, you just keep going, and you know, you ignore the feelings, or you ignore the hard things, and you just put you, you push through the pain in your body. And so something I’ve been really trying to pay attention to is, even though cognitively, I’m not stressed, is my body stressed? And so when you were talking about the somatic experiencing and the work that you’ve done in that section of the book, I found that very fascinating, because I think there are a lot of people that think, like, mentally, like, I’m fine, I can do lots of different things, but they’re not attuned to their body. So, like, if somebody’s like me, but haven’t, hasn’t actually got, like, actually realized this, what are some of the first steps that they can do to say, okay, like, mentally, I don’t feel stressed, but my body might be telling me otherwise.
Jon Rosemberg 6:13
It’s a wonderful question. I was one of those people who believe that my body was the servant of my mind, meat sack that I was driving around. There was a little, you know, a little person driving it around inside my brain and deciding what to do. Turns out that this the mind body connection. And of course, there are millinery cultures that have been saying, especially in the east, that have been saying this for 1000s of years. This is not new. Now, science is finally catching up to the idea that you cannot separate the two, that even even as it relates to consciousness in neuropsychology, now they’re understanding that the feeling the consciousness isn’t just in the mind that there is, there’s a connection between the two. Now to answer your question, I think for me, what worked for me, and by the way, what works for one person may not work for the for the next person, so I think it’s important to try and figure out what works best for you. I tried meditating. I have a meditation cushion right here in my office, and I tried meditating for two years, and I hated it. It was awful. And I just kept forcing myself to do it because my mind said you need to meditate. You need to
Sonya Looney 7:24
figure out everyone. Everyone else told you that you need to meditate Exactly.
Jon Rosemberg 7:29
And so I was sitting in my meditation cushion saying, clear my mind. Clear my mind. Clear my mind. Of course, it didn’t work. Then one day, a good friend of mine, she said, Have you ever tried a walk in meditation? And I tried to walk in meditation. It was life changing, just the fact that I was moving my body. And eventually, as I started doing that, I started noticing, you know, how I took every step, and I started bringing a little bit of awareness into every moment. And it’s a practice. It’s a skill like any other one. I think somatic awareness is something that we learn. Of course, we are not taught that when we’re kids, because, you know, after the cognitive revolution, we were told if you’re smart, then you’ll be successful, and if you’re successful, then you’re safe. That was kind of the logic around it. I think that’s slowly getting deconstructed now, because, I mean, AI is much smarter than any of us, and maybe success isn’t the end all of life, which is, which is an interesting kind of idea that came through as I was writing this book. This the difference. A lot of people define success as thriving and thriving as success. And I think they’re two very different things. I think success has a lot to do with money and status and power and extrinsic motivators, and those are all great. And by the way, I want to be as successful as the next person. I think that’s really important. I think thriving is more intrinsically driven. And what I suggest in the book is that thriving is driven by agency, which is a big theme, meaning and connection. And by connection, I mean social connection, or human connection, connection to nature, connection to the transcendent, to the transcendent. So so I think we decided at some point to trade off success for thriving. And so you have a ton of people who are incredibly successful by all those extrinsic metrics, but are not thriving at all. My hope is that at some point in the future somebody asked me, Hey, John, how you doing? Well, you know what? I’m not that successful, but my God, am I thriving? You know, can we? Can we change a little bit the way in which we look at what a good life is?
Sonya Looney 9:46
I love that. You know, it’s so funny. There’s so many things that I want to talk about. But like in 2015 I did a TED Talk defining success at 17,769 feet. And I’ve been also asking. Similar questions of like, why are we defining success based on these outcomes that don’t guarantee and most of the time don’t, do not deliver this feeling that we’re seeking this experience of thriving. But first I want to go back to what you said about mind body connection. Because I used to think that I had mind body connection, because I could feel my body like, everyone’s like, Oh, you’re an athlete. You’re so aware of, like, every little thing that your body is doing. You can feel your body, but it’s a one way arrow. It’s not a bi directional arrow. So like, mind body connection is a bi directional arrow. Of like, what wisdom and insight can you glean from what your body is trying to tell you, not you just being aware of what your body how your body is like moving in space.
Jon Rosemberg 10:46
I think that’s a very powerful reflection. And what I have found is that most of the times when we get really familiar and attached to this one way relationships, like logic, for example, that if A then B, we end up finding out that there is a, some sort of bi directional situation happening that and and we’re seeing this in the world people, you know, we’re seeing complexity increase because we’re learning more and more and more. So I think that’s a that’s a really powerful insight, Sonya, that that you saw the difference. Now, I got a question for you, if I can ask it, oh, let’s do it. What happened when you started noticing the what your body was trying to tell you, as opposed to just what you were trying to tell your body?
Sonya Looney 11:35
It was, oh, I’m doing too much. I’m expecting too much of myself. You know, I have six hours in the day to train and work, and the rest of the time I’m with my kids, and I just was cramming so many things into that space, and I wasn’t, I wasn’t actually appreciating that I don’t have as much time for the same amount of inputs that I used to have, or more. And what is that doing to me? And when do I feel it? When do I feel this like constricting feeling that is not leading to how I actually want to show up? And I realized for myself, I feel the worst when I’m rushing. And I was rushing, it was like the when I dropped my kids off at school or whatever. It’s like the timer started, like a stopwatch or like timer, and I just started rushing through my day. And that feeling is not a good feeling for me. So now I’m very aware of that feeling. And so my body is telling me, hey, like, this is too much for us. Like, stop pushing us. Even though you have the energy to do it, that doesn’t mean that you should do it. So, like, how do we, like, slow this down a little bit, and that’s, that’s my work is to slow it down a little bit, and I’ve gotten better at it, but I still fall into the old habit of, like, more and more,
Jon Rosemberg 12:43
yeah, and we’ve been trained. The system is built for more and more. That’s, that’s, that’s the system. So I was telling you that I spent, you know, about two and a half decades in the corporate world, and this idea of more and more and filling up my calendar. And we see this now, there’s all these trends, quite quitting and quiet cracking and, you know, office paranoia. There’s all these things where people, you know, we’re letting our calendar, we’re filling up our calendars to feel like we’re valuable, and then we’re learning, letting our calendars run our lives. So we’ve become subservient to this calendar that just has back to back to back to back meetings that that was my story. I so I left the corporate world to go into a startup. And this was of we were in the middle of trying to figure out if it was going to become, if it was going to go from a startup to a scale up. So it was brought in to raise some capital and to kind of fuel the expansion of the organization. We raised a series B of $150 million and I had the title, I had the team, I had all this stuff that I always wanted, and my calendar was running my life, 16 hours a day, seven days a week. It was really intense. And so after we finished the race, I went to Los Angeles to buy some facilities, and I was exhausted as I flew back, I got hit with covid. This is in 2021 early 2022 got hit with covid, and I was on a call with a technical team of the organization, and the call got heated up really, really quickly. I had no more resources, no more I was completely overwhelmed. Survival Mode completely took over my life. So I ended up shutting down my laptop, and I closed my laptop, shut up my phone, and I heard my two kids. I’m now in my home office. My two kids were playing down in the basement, and I went down, and I sat with them. They must have been nine and six at the time, and they were playing Legos. And I started playing Legos with them. And for the first time in I think eight months, I found myself being present because for the rest of the time. My thoughts were racing. I was answering one email, running from one meeting to the other, doing all the things that I had I thought I had to do, but I hadn’t been present. And my kids noticed that, and in that moment, I realized that I was, you know, building this incredible life, but it wasn’t the life that I wanted. So that evening, after we put the kids to bed, I was sitting in my favorite chair, and Adriana walks in, and she’s like, Hey, John, are you okay? And I said, I think I’m done. And so it took me two weeks to untangle myself from the organization and then go on this entrepreneurial journey and go to map and, you know, go back to school. So it was a life changing moment for me, but I needed to have that moment of presence, of being there with my children, and of actually becoming aware of what was happening in my life. Now, of course, hindsight is 2020 and the way I tell that story sounds much nicer. Now, at the time, I was in complete crisis. You know, it was a very difficult moment, but it it was helpful to have that moment of engaging the play, the play with my kids was a big part of my ability to have a little bit of distance from what I was experiencing.
Sonya Looney 16:12
Yeah, something you said earlier, you know, I all my work is in mattering accomplishments, driving and mattering. So of course, that’s the lens where I view everything. And you said something earlier, like, we pack our calendar so that we can feel valued, and part of mattering is I feel I feel valued, I feel important, I feel recognized. I feel like people would miss me if I wasn’t there. But one of your three, you said meaning agency and connection are three very important things, but when our connections are about our productivity or about our our title, or when we think that that is what brings us connection that is actually creates anti mattering, like we don’t actually feel valued. We feel like it’s conditional upon, you know, how well we’re doing, or how full my calendar is, and you talked about your kids and like, that type of connection, that presence, that moment, gave you that feeling of like, oh, like, this is where I need to be. I’ve had a similar experience, not, not quite as like, as you said, like it was, like, super, super hard in the moment in my bike racing, because before I had kids, like, I raced all over the world, all always going, going going going. And I had kids during the pandemic, and, like, everything slowed down for me. And then I just felt myself like trying to do that, trying to go back, like I got to train all this thought, I got to do all this stuff. And I realized I kept asking myself, this is like the clarity piece, the awareness piece is like, what is truly important to me here? Like, does winning another race actually mean anything to me? And the answer was no, it actually doesn’t mean anything. There’s no meaning in that for me. So I asked myself, well, what? What do I need? Like, if I don’t feel like I matter and I’m trying to push so hard to thrive, what do I need? And know what the answer was, connection, deeper connections with my friends, deeper connections with my family. And in order to do that, I had to stop working as hard in those areas. So I love that story, because I just heard a small reflection of my own experience. But how do we actually do that? Because I think a lot of people know, like, connection is important, and like, don’t do the extrinsic things. But like, how do you get from point A to point B where you’re actually prioritizing connection?
Jon Rosemberg 18:25
Yeah, so I’m going to jump into agency in a second, because that that’s the answer that I would go with. By the way, I don’t think it’s the only answer, but I think it’s the one that I have found, and that I found in the research that I was doing for the book that kept coming up over and over again, but I want to talk a little bit about mattering because it’s such an important concept, and I think it’s in the zeitgeist, and it’s something that’s gaining more and more traction because so many people feel like they don’t matter. And one the lens that I use in the book to talk about mattering is beliefs, and what I would say is one of the most pervasive beliefs in my work with clients that I see coming up over and over and over again, and it’s a huge driver of people’s lives has two sides. It’s like a coin with two sides. On one side is I’m not good enough, and on the other side is I have to prove myself. So they’re kind of both very similar, and that keeps coming up and coming up and coming up. And I think a lot of us are wired to feel that way. And by the way, the system that we operate in, especially in the Western world, and now, I would argue, most of the world has been westernized to a certain extent, is around you’re not good enough. Because if, if the idea is to get people to consume, saying you’re not good enough enough until you consume, it’s a really powerful tool. So there’s this, I would say, collective belief that keeps permeating all of these different environments around what good enough is. Is, and it’s interesting because I asked my clients sometimes, well, what happens? What would happen if suddenly you were in a comma in a hospital? Would you have any value? And people just kind of stumble because they’re like, Well, yeah, of course, because people would be able to take care of me. I’m like, no, no, you’re not producing anything. You’re not creating anything. You’re just you just are. Is there any value to pure, purely, just existing? And I think that’s an idea that hasn’t gained a lot of traction, and that it’s, it’s helping with the, I don’t know on mattering epidemic. How do we want to call it? I don’t know what the name is, but the mattering epidemic, the lack of mattering epidemic, but I think anti mattering, yeah, that is so. So I think that’s that’s an important question to or it’s an important belief to explore. Now, let me go back to your original question. That was a long winded way to get to it. So this idea of agency kept coming up. So people say, Okay, how do you define agency? The way I define agency in the book, to operationalize it, was the capacity to be active participants in our lives by making intentional choices. So intentional choices, that’s really important, and then that is supported by a belief, and it’s the belief that those choices matter and actually have impact. And we’re we said we weren’t going to geek out before we started recording, but I was just going to say that’s that’s a lot of the idea of Bandura and self efficacy around not only do you have to believe that you can make intentional choices and make intentional choices, but you have to believe that those choices actually matter. So that’s my kind of in summary, my definition of agency, and how I believe that agency is a skill that you get to develop. It’s not something that comes maybe it is divine. I don’t know. Somebody can argue that it might be, I don’t know. Maybe it comes from God, but I believe that the more agency you practice, the better you get at practicing your agency, and that it’s something that we can develop over our lifetimes. Now the question is, how do you develop agency? So three things kept coming up over and over again as I was going through the research and looking at the different things that and I decided to summarize them in an acronym, air, which stands for awareness, inquiry and reframing. So what I believe is that when we practice awareness, inquiry and reframing, we are developing our agency. And that’s the general thesis in the book,
Sonya Looney 22:43
I have a slightly nuanced question, when you’re talking about self efficacy and believing we can make an impact, this is a very personal question. So, like, I have a lot of self efficacy. I have a lot of agency, where I believe, like, I can, I can do the work. I can, I can make things happen. I can create the thing. But what about the gatekeeping piece of it? Because having an impact sometimes isn’t just about how, how well you can create something, or if you create something, or if you do something like there’s parts that are out of your control. So, you know, how do you, how do you wrestle with that, with the with the R, the reframing piece of air, whenever you’ve done all the things say, maybe you like, you’ve put yourself out there and you can’t make the deep connections, or you’re not making the deep connections you want. Or like, you’ve put this thing into the world that you always wanted to do, but nobody seems to notice or care. Like, how do you wrestle with those questions? Because I think a lot of people actually suffer from that. Yeah.
Jon Rosemberg 23:39
So are you willing to give it a try and see if we can, kind of, yeah, let’s do this live. So, so do you have an example in mind?
Sonya Looney 23:48
I’ll just make a really like, I have many examples. Okay, here’s one. I create a workshop online. This is, this has happened in the past. I know that it’s it’s really good, but nobody signs up. So then I start thinking to myself, well, nobody, I’m not good enough. People don’t don’t care. They’re not interested. And then the next time I create something, then I have this, this thinking trap where I’m stuck thinking like, well, I can create this thing, but nobody’s going to care. Nobody’s going to want this.
Jon Rosemberg 24:19
Okay, so, so let’s work through it, you name the belief I’m not good enough because I created this online program and people didn’t show up correct.
Sonya Looney 24:29
So let’s try uncomfortable in a good way. I just just like so people know, like I’m squirming here. So Well,
Jon Rosemberg 24:36
at any point, at any point, we could say, we could we could just switch. Nobody will notice. We can just change topics, and nobody will know it’s good.
Sonya Looney 24:44
I want people to have to, like, look at themselves and feel comfortable. Like, you know, they don’t have to say it out loud. But like, do this inquiry yourself, go to the squirmy place,
Jon Rosemberg 24:56
and I appreciate the vulnerability Sonya and so. Let’s test it out. This is, this is what I would call, like a three out of 10 in terms of but it’s uncomfortable because we’re recording a podcast, so let’s just acknowledge that people will listen to this, and that makes it we’re being observed, which makes it a little bit different than it would normally. But this is kind of how I would see the process. So So you, you worked your butt off to create this program and for people to join, and then people don’t join. So the belief that immediately comes up for you is, I’m not good enough because nobody showed up. So that’s you’re aware of, the belief now, now what’s the emotion that comes up for you in that moment? Frustration? Okay? Frustration is a perspective, is on, it’s a perception on what’s happening. But if you had to kind of distill it down to the to the emotion that you’re feeling in the moment, what would you say that is,
Sonya Looney 25:54
um, I’d say probably more. I don’t know if it’s anger or if it’s something else. I don’t really know, because I just, I was just labeling it as frustration. I’m trying to think, just give me a second of let me try and figure out, go into my body and listen to what it’s telling me. I think it’s, I think it’s probably sadness, okay?
Jon Rosemberg 26:14
So we, we’ve talked about potentially anger came up right away, and then maybe sadness underneath that anger. So since you were checking in with your body, how does that sadness feel in your body?
Sonya Looney 26:26
It feels heavy because, like, anger is more energetic. Sadness is like a heavier, like, kind of dragging down, feeling okay.
Jon Rosemberg 26:33
And where do you feel that? I feel
Sonya Looney 26:36
like, kind of in my like, it’s like the diaphragm sinking down, like, just
Jon Rosemberg 26:42
like, Yeah, so the diaphragm is sinking down. And so can we let that sadness be here for just a moment? If we were to talk to that sadness and ask it what it wants to say, what do you think it would say?
Sonya Looney 26:58
I just wish people could see me.
Jon Rosemberg 27:01
I just wish people could see me. That’s and it’s tough, right, not being seen, especially when we work so hard for something. So I’m curious, if people you know this desire for people to see you. What? What do you make of it?
Sonya Looney 27:24
Well, I think part of it is like, I know I’ve struggled, had struggles in my life, and I know I can be so helpful, and I just want to help alleviate the suffering, and I want to feel useful in the world.
Jon Rosemberg 27:35
Okay, so, so there’s, there’s a story of usefulness, and there’s a story of being seen and of helping people. So there’s a lot of really important things for you here. So So now that we have this kind of full awareness of of the situation, let’s kind of inquire a little bit more into it. Are you? Are you open to doing that? Sure. Okay, so what is it about making change in the world that is so important to you?
Sonya Looney 28:10
These are, I love this and okay, I’ll say, I’ll stay in system one and not go into the analysis of what you’re asking me what is so important. Because this is why, this is my purpose,
Jon Rosemberg 28:22
your purpose. And what is so important about having a purpose,
Sonya Looney 28:28
because it gives you a way, a way to like, a place to put your energy in a way that is meaningful to you.
Jon Rosemberg 28:35
Okay, so, so we’re talking now this emotions that came up for you, a little bit of anger, a little bit of sadness, the belief of I’m not good enough. All of this awareness that you created has now shown you that this work that you’re doing is really purposeful and really important, and it’s like part part of your life. Now, who would you be without that work?
Sonya Looney 29:00
I don’t know I would. I would just feel like aimless without it.
Jon Rosemberg 29:05
What does it mean to be aimless,
Sonya Looney 29:09
to be just like stuck, to be stuck.
Jon Rosemberg 29:12
So What? What? What would stuck look like for you?
Sonya Looney 29:19
Dark, no energy, not moving forward, no like, no interest or novelty, no connection.
Jon Rosemberg 29:31
So what we’ve come at now is a bit of a polarity, right? So one hand we have. I created this work, I did all of this and I put all of this effort in trying to create something amazing. And if people show up, I’m good enough. So that’s my purpose. And if I fulfill my purpose, then I have a happy life, or a thriving life, or whatever we want to call it. And on the other side, we have. This other side of the poll, which is, well, if I don’t get to do my work, then, you know, I go into this really dark space where my life has no meaning. You see how deep we’ve gone in just a couple of minutes, like now we’re getting to kind of the core of it. So there’s a bit of a pole, two poles here. And as we know, most things in life are some shade of gray, not not, you know, black or white. So I’m curious, what would it look like for you to move forward in this work that you’re doing somewhere in between the black and the white.
Sonya Looney 30:39
I think I already operate there in terms of actions. You just keep, you just keep going, and you keep, like, trying new things, and you keep learning, and you keep but like, this is like the the treadmill of trying, right? There’s like, this treadmill of like, I just got to, I just got to get it right. I just got to get it right. But then the polarity of the emotion is that what you’re asking me,
Jon Rosemberg 30:59
well, because you in terms of your behavior, your actions, as you said, you are trying to get from this dark place to the light place, right from from the shadow to the light, and and your actions, and you will push through and do whatever you need to do in order to get to the light that’s understood and and, I mean, that’s, I’m guessing, that’s one of the reasons why you were so incredibly successful in your career as an athlete, right? So it requires, well, it requires a tremendous amount of perseverance. And of you know, I’m going to keep going and keep going. What I’m asking for is assuming that life isn’t going to be this dark shadow place, and it’s also not going to be this light place where you’re actually fulfilling your purpose every day and doing all of the things, but life is actually going to be somewhere in the middle. What would be the most you know, kind of rational in your in your mind as an objective observer, if you were an objective observer, which you can’t, let’s just try it out, what would be a place in between those two poles that might work for you?
Sonya Looney 32:11
Well, it’s actually where I’m at now. I actually recorded mindfulness in action that came out about this is like, instead of trying to do go so big, go try to go smaller. And I learned this from Eileen Schaefer, and she did this. She’s in our alumni. She did this workshop on transitions, and she actually said, go smaller. So it’s like, okay, like, let’s, let’s slightly change our expectations. And I’m a, you know, I’m trying not to be perfectionist, but I’ve always been a perfectionist. I have very high expectations and stand and standards for things. So it’s like, how can I go smaller so that I could see the light?
Jon Rosemberg 32:46
Sorry, I’m just gonna, I’m just gonna jump in here, because there’s interesting another belief came up here, which we could again go through the cycle. But this, this idea of, I’ve always been a perfectionist, so your identity now is tied to this idea of perfectionist. And a perfectionist is somebody who achieves the light side. Remember we talked about the two poles, the shadow and the light. You would achieve this light side and stay in this light side, because that’s what perfect is. And it seems, by the work that you’re doing with Eileen, that you found some sort of middle ground. Now, if you were always living in the middle, in between these two poles, what would that say about you,
Sonya Looney 33:27
that I’m actually more balanced.
Jon Rosemberg 33:32
So now you’ve gone from being a perfectionist to being balanced.
Sonya Looney 33:37
Well, I don’t think I still am a perfectionist. I recognize the drive, and then I cannot do it.
Jon Rosemberg 33:44
I would say that’s the reframe this idea of you know, we tend to, we tend to have these beliefs about ourselves. I can, I can empathize with you deeply, Sonya, because I, I’m also somebody who thought perfectionism is what would keep me safe for most of my life. And then this, you introduce this idea of balance, which I think it’s a beautiful word and a really powerful word that doesn’t really there’s kind of a tension between the idea of being perfectionist and being balanced, because balance means that things are always changing, right?
Sonya Looney 34:24
Can I share the words that I use? I use the word intentional imbalance. Ooh, I love that, that I don’t believe in balance. Yeah, it’s, it’s intentional imbalance. It’s like, everyone’s like, how do you do all these things? It’s like, intentional imbalance. I choose the one or two things that is going to be the focus for now, and I know that everything can’t be number one.
Jon Rosemberg 34:44
I love that. So let’s close the loop now and look at the the original experience that you had that brought this sadness and this anger that you created this course and nobody signed up for it. So if you look at that through the lens of intentional imbalance, what does that say about you?
Sonya Looney 35:07
I actually don’t know. I would tell myself, though, this isn’t your fault. Like you can’t, you can’t force everything to happen. It’s not your fault. So like the imbalance would be, the intentional imbalance would be like, you can’t control everything. So in the control is like, yeah, so the imbalance piece is, I don’t have control all the time.
Jon Rosemberg 35:32
That’s beautiful. I don’t have control. And this is, this isn’t your fault. That’s a beautiful reframe for the situation. Now if next time you’re trying to launch a course, you go into it with this idea, okay, I’m going to do I’ve done the work. I’ve enjoyed building the course, or building whatever it is that I’m going to be teaching. But if nobody signs up, it isn’t your fault, and it’s not something you can control. How do you think you would react if nobody signs up, and this is hypothetical speculation that we’re doing here, yeah.
Sonya Looney 36:07
I mean, I probably would still feel the same things. Maybe the expectations would be lower, but I would still feel like, oh, like, Why isn’t this working now? Like, I’m trying again. Why isn’t this working now?
Jon Rosemberg 36:22
Yeah, so maybe that sadness and that anger might come back again. Maybe, do you think? And I’m just curious, maybe, maybe I’m wrong. But would there be space if you’re saying, you know, this is part of the imbalance, the intentional imbalance of me putting myself out there and throwing that horse and nobody signing up for it. What do you think are some other ways in which you could feel about the potential nobody signing off for by the way, I hope lots of people sign up now, because we’ve had this conversation. But anyway, how do you think? What do you think a different way to kind of react might be,
Sonya Looney 37:04
well, I think using your like, going back to agency meaning and connection, is using connection. Because I think a lot of people don’t normalize their experience like, I think we look around us and we see all the things everybody’s doing and think, Well, everybody has everybody. It’s working for them, and it’s just not working for me, and like, when other people do this, it’s successful for them, and it’s not for me. So whenever you go talk to people, you use your connection, you be you put that out there. You realize how hard things actually are, and that you’re not alone.
Jon Rosemberg 37:32
Yeah, it’s I love, that that’s beautiful. And you know what they say, social comparison is the thief of joy, but connection isn’t connection is the foundation for it. I really appreciate you being open to doing this with me. Sonya, kind of live on air, and I love this
Sonya Looney 37:52
on air and using air and using air.
Jon Rosemberg 37:56
Now I’ll share. I’m I’m in the interest of reciprocating, I’ll share one of my experiences as I was launching this book, and how air came to came to work for me, I think it was like the third podcast I was recording, or the fourth I was we I spent an hour talking to the host, and at the end, you Know, he, he presses stop on Riverside, the platform that he was using, which is the same as this one. And he says to me, John, I’ve recorded 436 episodes, and I’ve never done this, but I gotta tell you, man, we gotta re record this. And oh my gosh, sunk. I was like, what? So immediately in my mind, all of these things that you were sharing, Sonya came up for me. I’m not good enough. I suck. I blew it. And this deep, deep sense of shame came up for me. So the way air worked in that moment, I said, okay, the awareness is I’m feeling shame. My face is hard. Blood is rushing through my extremities. I have this really shallow breathing, and I want the earth to swallow me. And the thoughts that were going through my head was, I don’t want to promote this book. I don’t want to go on any more podcasts. Let somebody else do it. Of course, who’s gonna who’s gonna promote your book for you? And nobody’s gonna do that. And then I inquired, and I said, what is actually going on here? And what I realized is that I was doing acquiring a new skill, something that I hadn’t done ever. I hadn’t been I’ve been in a few podcasts, but not in that way. And by the way, nobody tells you when you’re writing a book. And I’m going to share this with you, Sonya, because I know it’s important that writing the book and talking about the book are two very different things. When you’re writing, you get to expand and add new ones, and, you know, entertain and flourish and edit and do all those things when you’re talking about it. People. Want a bite size nugget of information that will change their life, which is sad, because frankly, I think all of these ideas require a lot of nuance and complexity in order to actually change anybody’s life. But okay, set that aside. So that’s that was my reflection in the this is only in a matter of seconds. This is going through my head. Okay, I’m new skill. I’ve never done this. It’s different. I just realized that talking about the book is really hard and and the reframe for me is okay, you know what? I’m just going to look at each of these podcasts that I record, including, including the one you and I are doing today. Sonya as practice. That was my reframe. I was going to look at every single media appearance, conversation, anything that I did as practice. And the moment I reframed it, I took a deep breath and I responded, I said, we were recording on a Friday afternoon. And I said, How’s your Monday? And he said, How about 1pm I said, Okay, so I spent the weekend practicing. Adriana helped me practice a little bit. She asked me some questions, I wrote some and he still wasn’t perfect, but on Monday, we recorded, we were done, and he said that was great, awesome, and, and that was my little reframe, that instead of saying I failed and I’m not good enough, I said, this is practice for me, and, and that little change helped me go through. I don’t know how many podcasts I’ve recorded, and some were great and some weren’t, but when you’re practicing, you’re supposed to screw up sometimes. So that’s my story of air working for me.
Sonya Looney 41:33
Thanks for sharing that. And now I’m going to bring in some nerdy science because I have to. So, so, yeah, so like, my work, I’ve been doing this major taxonomy of all the different types of goals out there. There’s many different types. So where we are talking about, when we talk about achievement goals, we’re talking about performance goals, which are demonstrating competence, and then we’re talking about mastery goals, those are, like, two different kind of types of achievement goals. So like, if you’re thinking about performance goals, like, I need to demonstrate my competence on this podcast to show that I’m like, that’s a very different, constricted feeling than a mastery goal, which is like a learning goal. And Caroline Miller talks about this as well. But like, it’s a mastery goal, it’s like, Okay, I’m coming here with a learning mindset, so that each time I show up to the podcast the start line, whatever, like, the goal isn’t to show my competence or to, like, perform at the highest level. The goal is to learn. And there are times where you do need to have, like, more of the performance mindset, like, if you know, but, but oftentimes, this learning orientation, this mastery orientation, of of I need to continue honing my craft. And this is another experience, another opportunity to do that. The word opportunity goes so far, and it changes how you show up to the experience. And like you said, you still have to do the work.
Jon Rosemberg 42:53
I love that that’s that’s beautiful. I think I can’t I can’t wait to learn more about competence versus mastery goals. This is fascinating.
Sonya Looney 43:04
Oh my gosh, there’s so much. Okay, so I want to go into we talked about identity a little bit. You’re talking about you have a perfectionist identity. You and I have talked a little bit about performance based identities. And we had a, like, a friend, colleague that we both have. I think, I think we’ve both spoken with him. How does that performance based identity show up for you and in your book? Yeah.
Jon Rosemberg 43:27
So first, let me define identity in the way that because, you know, we’d like to define terms, because one person might be thinking about identity in a very different way that we are. I was hoping you would I define identity as a bundle of beliefs. That’s my definition of agency. When we have all of these beliefs that stack together, about ourselves, about our position, our role in the world, about the world itself. And once you stack all of that up, that creates an identity. Now what I have been working really, really hard on since I started. Well, I mean, the journey for writing this book really started about seven years ago, and I would say that’s when this work started, but about a year and a half ago, it’s when, when, you know, when I was finishing the manuscript and starting to submit it and all that stuff was that it finally landed for me, that one of the arguments I’m making in the book is that if most of what the what we see in the world is filtered through our beliefs, and our beliefs are kind of like this, lenses that we put, you know that that tint the world in different colors. If we can change our beliefs, then we can change our identity. So the way I look at it is that instead of looking at something as just an identity, if we can kind of break it down into little pieces and look at the beliefs that are underneath that identity. T then we can challenge those beliefs. And what I have found, at least in my experience, is that I haven’t yet found a belief that you cannot challenge. And I’m going to put this, this idea out there for anybody who’s who’s expert on beliefs, to see if they can propose a belief that you cannot challenge. So if most beliefs, and I’m not going to say all, because we try to not talk in all or nothing, in science, we don’t talk in all or nothing, but if most beliefs can be challenged, then most identities can be changed. So and this, I think it’s a very important point, especially today, because we’re holding on so tightly to our identity, right? I am I’m a perfectionist, or I am a Democrat, or I’m a Republican, or I’m a liberal, or I’m a conservative, and all of these different things, and then we’re attaching ourselves to all the beliefs that come with that identity. So if I’m a liberal, it means that I have to believe 1-234-567-8910, and if I’m a conservative, I have to believe 1234, so what I’m suggesting is that if we can kind of separate those out, we may be able to construct identities that feel more authentic to who we are. I don’t know if I answered your question. That was a
Sonya Looney 46:20
long No, I love that. I mean, we initially, I asked about, like, performance based identities. What we were talking about was like, Oh, how well I perform. Defines who I am. The type of performer I am defined so I am, the personal meanings that come from the way that I show up, the way that I perform. So there’s beliefs you’re saying, there’s beliefs we should challenge those beliefs that but I also think that the way that those beliefs are reinforced in the world make a difference, because you might have all these beliefs, but it’s not just about you. It’s about what’s reinforced by how you show up, right?
Jon Rosemberg 46:55
Yeah, and I think we our confirmation bias kicks in when we’re looking to support our beliefs in the world, we’re looking for all the evidence that our beliefs are correct, and we ignore all the evidence that challenges our beliefs, and we’re masterful at doing that. So what I would say is that if you have a performance based identity, it’s likely driven by the belief I’m not good enough, or I need to prove myself right? It’s likely driven by one of those beliefs that we’ve been talking about. And if you can challenge that and say, I am good enough, no matter how well or how poorly I perform, then suddenly you’re no longer identifying yourself with that identity. Then suddenly you’re kind of freeing, separating yourself from that. Now this is really, hard work, and it requires because, again, beliefs are how we navigate the world, just as they they tint the world, they also help us navigate it, and they’re very useful. So if we started questioning every single belief that we have, that would be a lot of work, and we wouldn’t have time to do anything else. But some beliefs are worth questioning. That’s that’s what I’m suggesting.
Sonya Looney 48:03
So what’s been the biggest belief that you’ve questioned and altered as part of who you are?
Jon Rosemberg 48:08
Well, the one we’ve been talking about here, you know, I It’s interesting because I had a meeting with my publisher a few we meet every week, and a few weeks after the book, a couple weeks after a book was publisher, he’s like, so okay, we’re going to be start sending you daily reports so you can track. And I said, you know, what are you happy with the performance of the book? And they said, We’re very happy. And I said, Okay, I don’t want to know anything else. Don’t send me reports. Yeah, I don’t want to see how many copies I’m selling. I don’t want to see i i had to protect myself, because I know the moment I started tracking that, you know, before I launched the book, I went on Instagram and Facebook. I hadn’t been on Instagram and Facebook for a really long time, but I wanted to promote and I started making videos and putting myself because people said you need to show your face and you need to and thank you, because I know you reposted a couple of things. So I’m really grateful Sonya, but and, but the impact that it was having on my mental health to be doing that. It was a real struggle. So I decided to pause for January, and now I think I’ve decided to pause for February too. I don’t know what’s going to happen in March, but So, so the moment I let go of the idea that only if I sell X 1000 copies, then I’ll be good enough, then I’m no longer feeding that belief that that’s still in there. I mean, if I transcend that belief, I’ll let you know one day, and then we maybe we can create a church together or something. I haven’t transcended it, but I work on it every day, and I do it by bringing awareness to it, then getting curious about what’s triggering the belief, and then trying to reframe it, and saying, for me, it was good enough that I got to publish a book, that I got to share my ideas in the world and that some people would read it. And that’s the reframe for me. And that’s worked.
Sonya Looney 49:53
And you used your agency to create those boundaries for yourself. To say, Listen. I don’t need to see these numbers and listen. I need to, I need to not be like online all the time. Like that also is part of agency.
Jon Rosemberg 50:08
Yeah, for agency to exist, there has to be another viable choice. When I first started going on Facebook and Instagram, in my mind, I was I cannot publish a book and not be on social media, publishing every day. I cannot do the two things. So I had no agency on the matter, because in my mind, this is what you do, second choice. Yes, once I realized the impact that I was having, I had a second choice. So then my agency went from very low to a little bit higher. And I would argue, really high agency is going to be the moment that I say, Okay, I’m going to go back to Facebook and Instagram, but I’m only going to go in it once a week, and then I’m only going to do two posts or one post, and I’m not going to respond to and so now suddenly I went from being only black or only white to black and white, both options to a full rainbow of options. And I would say that’s really high agency when we start seeing alternatives where we didn’t see them before, and choices that can be intentional where we didn’t see them before, and space and space. Yes, I love that.
Sonya Looney 51:17
Thanks for sharing that. You know, I understand this feeling, because as a former sponsored athlete, I no longer have sponsors. All those things are, how many likes are you getting? How many podcast downloads everybody wants? All these extrinsic numbers. And it got to the point where it was damaging my mental health, because I didn’t have any control over those numbers. You can control what you put out, but you can’t control like, whatever, all those numbers. So it was, like, years ago, like, I have no idea how many downloads this podcast gets. I have a team that handles that, and they track it, and they always say, want to look I’m like, No, I don’t want to know. It doesn’t, because it doesn’t help me. And I turn off all the likes on social media because it just doesn’t help me. I can’t see how many likes other people get, because those things can take you out of why you did it in the first place,
Jon Rosemberg 52:02
yeah, and I want to now that you brought up the word control, which has come up a couple times, yeah, conversation, that’s a, that’s a, that’s a word that I have a weird relationship with, Sonya, and I think it was William James who said that, that that the only thing that you can control is the effort of where you put your attention. And I’m budging the quote if James pawelski listens to this podcast. But you know William James font fans, you know, they can correct me, but, but I think this idea that the only thing we can control is the effort of where we put our attention is a is a really liberating and powerful idea
Sonya Looney 52:55
that, sorry, I’m gonna interrupt. I say, I have a quote, and I say, effort, attitude, actions,
Jon Rosemberg 53:01
beautiful, yeah, and, and, and it all stems from attention, right? So, yeah, where I put my attention matters tremendously, and that’s all we can control. If I put my attention to moving my arm, or if I put my attention to working out, or if I put my attention to writing a book or to posting on social media or to looking at how many likes I got, that’s the that’s the extent, that’s as far as my control goes. And I think that’s a To me that’s been a really liberating and powerful idea.
Sonya Looney 53:37
And, you know, to just like, wrap all these things together. It’s like error your framework directly impacts where you’re putting your attention. It’s like a cyclical experience. Your attention is such a huge mechanism of your thriving, or if you’re in survival mode, what you’re paying attention to,
Jon Rosemberg 54:00
yeah, and, and that’s why awareness is the number one part of the framework, because the first thing that we need to do is actually slow down enough to to focus our attention on what we’re trying to deal with. And that, by the way, air sounds so simple, and it’s three words, and it’s like, oh, awareness inquiry. Reframe it easy, from from my own experience, even the a the awareness, just bringing awareness to something. You know, it’s funny, because as I’ve been interviewing, people were like, Well, can you explain Aaron, can you explain air? It sounds so simple. And one of the things that I that I thought about my youngest son, Jack, who who’s 10 now, but last year was nine, three days before going to summer camp, he broke his arm, and while all his friends were jumping in the lake, he was with a cast. So he had. It up, we ended up he wrote me a note, and we ended up sending him a Rubik’s cube, which I have and I’m showing right now for the people who are listening. And as I was thinking about air, one idea came to mind. When we’re in a difficult situation, or we’re experiencing difficult emotions or difficult thoughts and we’re in the state of survival mode, what often happens is that we feel like the Rubik’s Cube is right next to our eye. It’s like, we have it like, right there. So we can’t even see that’s a cube. Maybe we see one of the little squares and one of the little colors, you know, some people say I’m seeing red, you know. So you only see that. You’re not actually even seeing the full object. What awareness does is it allows us to separate the cube from our face, you know, maybe 10, 1215, inches. It gives us enough distance from the situation or the experience for us to actually say, Oh, this is not just a collar. This is actually an object, and it’s a cube, and it has six sides, and each side has nine, nine squares. Each square has a different color. And so that’s the awareness piece. The inquiry piece is starting to play with the Rubik’s Cube, starting to try the different combinations and experience like, what happens if I move it this way or if I move it the other way? And I would say the reframing is when we find that a combination in the Rubik’s cube that works for us, and that combination may be solving the Rubik’s Cube, or it may be something completely different, but that combination that in the moment works for us, and it allows us to move from survival mode to thriving, even just a little bit, then we practice air, and I think that’s how we develop agency.
Sonya Looney 56:36
That is such a great metaphor to leave our listeners with something based on the context of the things we talked about today, what’s one exercise from the book that you think people would benefit going and doing right now?
Jon Rosemberg 56:49
That’s good question. I’m challenged by that question, and I’ll say, why Sonya? Because I think, like I said earlier, I think it’s different for everybody. And here’s what I would argue, if Eric caught your attention, especially, thank you Sonya, for humoring me and going through the
Sonya Looney 57:07
thanks for the free coaching session, that’s really why I did this.
Jon Rosemberg 57:14
If, if Eric caught your attention, and you feel like it’s something that you’re curious about, try and do it with somebody else, in connection, with a friend or with a with a spouse or with coach or a therapist, whoever it is in your life that you have. Try finding a situation that you’re struggling with, or an emotion or a thought that you’re struggling with, and then trying to bring as much awareness to it, trying to create that enough distance so you can actually look at all the sides of the cube in that situation. And after you bring awareness, just ask a lot of open ended non judgmental questions about it. And by open ended, what I what I mean is that the answer is not yes or no. And by non judgmental, I mean, you’re not trying to get to a specific answer. You’re actually getting curious about what’s happening there, and then see if a reframe comes up for you. It’s, it’s surprising that the more I have done, this, reframes start popping up all over the place, and it’s a really powerful thing. So I would say that’s probably a fun exercise to try out.
Sonya Looney 58:22
And while they’re at it, they can pick up the book. Yes,
Jon Rosemberg 58:27
tank copies, yeah,
Sonya Looney 58:29
but don’t tell us exactly how many.
Jon Rosemberg 58:33
I won’t let the publisher tell me either. Yeah.
Sonya Looney 58:37
Well, thank you so much for coming on today. It was so much fun to do this and to do a little bit of role play as well. So yeah, and I’m just so excited for you, and I’m just grateful that we’re, you know, in the same community.
Jon Rosemberg 58:51
Me too. Thank you, Sonya. I really appreciate the space, and I’m so grateful for the wonderful questions and the opportunity to do something a little bit different in our conversation.