Welcome to my second conversation with Judith Glaser. This conversation was more challenging for me because we never got to talking about what I consider the environment. I’m including it to give an alternative perspective, well, mainly because I enjoyed talking to Judith so much but most of all to learn others perspectives because there’s a view that I have but I don’t consider leadership to involve telling others what to do or imposing my values or my perspective on them. I don’t pretend that I have the only or best perspective on the environment and I have to learn how others look at things. Still I can’t help but feel something was missing for me measurable results because I feel like the environment reacts to our behavior, not our perspectives no matter how different they are. So please listen, tell me what you think. I would love to hear feedback on how it sounded to listeners. Basically I’m still just starting so I’m looking for guidance. So let me know.

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Joshua: Hey, how are you doing?

Judith: Oh my goodness. I’m still recovering from what happened last night.

Joshua: Oh, you mean in the news?

Judith: Yeah. Yeah. It’s just so unbelievable. The thing that someone who knows what’s going on in this life but boy that’s, I mean the worst… There are 58 people dead and 500 plus still in hospitals.

Joshua: I mean it sounds like we will never know what was going on. I mean maybe he left a note somewhere but…

Judith: They just contacted his brother. They got a hold of his girlfriend and what they can’t understand is that he moved into a community. He took on a house, two-story, whatever it was. There’s nothing that they are finding anywhere that shows signs of any kind of a stream of what happened that would have led to that.

Joshua: Yeah, I was just reading an article the Islamic State claimed responsibility but they just did that. Like probably there’s not a responsibility, they just said it.

Judith: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I’m sure that they want to take credit for any kind of you know killing, trashing, hurting, whatever. That’s power. And how are we going to know?

Joshua: Is it so getting over that you prefer to postpone?

Judith: I’m okay now. I’m okay now. I mean I watched too much of it but I was waiting to hear if there was anything. They got his brother and started to talk to his brother so we’ll find out more about what it is but it just I feel my body going into like “Why would he do that?” I watched the people, I saw the windows, the way he staged it, the amount of ammunitions that he had envisioned that he would be blasting out at people. I mean, well, that’s just hard to even envision. I can’t even envision one person harming a person, let alone 600-700 and all the families and the sadness.

Anyway, they were going to pass a law about silencing guns which I don’t think they’re going to pass now because without hearing it, there would have been a thousand people, a bigger tragedy because people wouldn’t have known what’s happening. So I think they might stop that law from going through. What do you think?

Joshua: There’s a couple of things. One that comes to mind is there’s an Onion article, you know the Onion is satirical, you know the Onion I presume the satire newspaper. Oh, well there’s a satirical newspaper called The Onion and they did an article after another recent shooting and they just said, “This is the world we live in today.” That wasn’t particularly funny, like they are usually funny but it’s like that’s the world we live in today. This is what happens.

Judith: So my reaction to all of this – Donald Trump released aggression in the world. For him to be our president and stand up and constantly castigate people and say how horrible and stupid and idiotic they are and bad they are. To use language like that to another human being is so inappropriate for a president to even fathom doing and yet doing it all the time. And thank God, his chief of staff Kelly is starting to have such a big impact on honing him in and helping guide him towards what he should be doing as a president. He has a very strong and very good voice if he uses it for the right things. And whatever he’s getting over in his life when somebody did that crap to him and he’s now got to release it on other people because of some issue that he hasn’t resolved it’s beside me that and it sets off fires everywhere.

We see that more things happen like this, mass suicides. People taking buses and creaming them into people in the middle of Times Square or wherever it is. That never happened before in the history of the world and it’s in parallel with his presidency and I think he’s released that “It’s okay to do that.” So I just can’t wait until we figure out how to tame that and I think Kelly is helping because I see a difference but he’s still… Like his language when he’s now talking about going to Puerto Rico, it’s a different person. He’s got that person in him to be the president. He does. He doesn’t even realize what good looks like unfortunately. So, anyway.

Joshua: Well, I’m not going to hold my breath for him to turn around. I think he views himself as pretty right no matter what he does and tens of millions of people who voted for him.

Judith: I’ve seen interviews, which I watch all the time, of people that voted…

Joshua: Oh, they regret it now?

Judith: They regret it now. Yeah. They did it because they were trying to shift things to help people that didn’t go to college and needed more money. And he sounded like he was on the side of the you know the guys, the men that needed to find new jobs and get them back into the coal, you know doing coal because that’s what they can do. He sounded like he and that’s the middle of the United States. So he had a tremendously sophisticated team of people helping him pick who he was going to target. Does he like that group of people? Does he connect with them? No. He did it because it gave them a platform and some of those people are sticking and other even Republicans are saying this makes no sense. But you have to have enough people rally so that you don’t feel like you’re alone. Because lone wolves get shot.

And you know these Republicans didn’t want to get shot and lose their jobs and you know whatever all the things that happen when you stand up against the president but when you get a bunch and they start there’s a movement, a wave, then it makes the difference. We’ll see what happens. Yeah, that’s what he says, “We’ll see.”

Joshua: The reason for this podcast is that when he got elected I said to myself I’m not going to wait four years for someone who doesn’t call climate change a hoax. Climate change being one part of environmental things. So to me I said, “What can I do?” And I picked one area where I think I can make a difference and which is not to say there are not other areas that are important. But you know I’m strongly influenced by the idea of you know… Marshall says it really well and it’s a Buddhist concept as he presents it. It’s like “If you can’t do something about something don’t let it get you down. But work on what you can work on.” I don’t say that doesn’t sound eloquent at all when I said. It sounded like…

Judith: Well, it goes like this. In other words, let it go. Don’t keep hanging on. And I get that. Now let’s focus where you can make a good difference.

Joshua: That’s my. Yeah. I feel like I can make a difference here. And it’s something that’s important to me and that’s not to say that other things are not important. But if I’m spreading myself everywhere then I’m not going to get anything done. So that’s part of how I look at it.

Judith: Well, that’s a good way to look at it.

Joshua: Thank you. I guess I mean there’s no right answer to everything. You just got to do the best you can.

Judith: No. And you have to do wherever your heart takes a go. So I hope all of the interviews… How many of you made? Done?

Joshua: I’m in like 30, maybe 35 now. And people at the beginning were telling me you’re going have a really hard time getting guests and it’s been the opposite. I just interviewed Marshall and Seth Godin had said, “Contact me at number 50.” So I’m getting pretty close to contact him. And you know Dov Baron? He’s a coaching guy.

Judith: He interviewed me so I met him.

Joshua: Okay. He took on his personal challenge was for one month, I think it was one month. He’s got this Jaguar that was like this big aspirational car for him to get. And so he said, “For one month I’m going to prom no more than 100 kilometers.” And like for him he really loves driving it. So that was like it pollutes. So at the end of the month he did put on 90 kilometers. So he did it. And now what he did instead of driving it there’s a lot of walking. There’s a lot of transportation other ways. And also there’s a lot of middle steps. But he’s now thinking about getting rid of the jaguar. He’s like what… The value of it to him he can get without the car. And then meanwhile the car has a lot of stuff that he doesn’t… Now that he’s thinking about he’s like, “I don’t need that car.” I didn’t ask him if he’s got…I presume he’s got another car but I didn’t say to him think about getting rid of the car. I just said to him, “What’s valuable to you and what’s something you could consistent with your values?” And he took that on himself. And he’s not the first person to… Actually, a lot of people do this big next… Anyway, so you’ll get the interview if you choose one when it eventually goes up.

But you know this started from a lot of frustration me trying to talk to a bunch of people and getting nowhere of just people pushing back and ‘m trying all these different things. I’m not saying that I’m going to be able to influence like billions of people. I don’t know. Maybe I will, maybe I won’t. But I’m definitely farther along than I was before. And satisfying but more than that it’s encouraging because if I do a couple of dozen people here and there, it’s like not that big of a deal on a global scale but maybe it’ll lead to something and it’s really gratifying when things like that happen. There of course are other people who are like, “I did it for a couple of days and I fell apart and I don’t know what to do.” But no one has given up. No one has said, “And that’s the end of that. I don’t care anymore.” And that’s why I think that despite what my original hopes were that people would all would be like, everyone be like, “This is great. I love it. Thank you, Josh.” But I’m getting a lot of people saying like, “This is harder than I expected. This is you know this isn’t what I thought.” But I think ultimately for the listeners I think that’s going to be more valuable because they don’t need to hear. I don’t think a Disney story is what will… I think they want to hear what actually happens with people. And I think it’s really cool to hear like, “Oh, this person who wrote this book and is awesome, it is incredible. Like it just like me.” I think that will be more helpful in the long run despite my original expectations.

Judith: Oh, yeah. Exactly. I think I mean for somebody to say, “Oh, I love my car. I can’t imagine not driving it.” And a week later saying, “I don’t really need that car.” You know that’s especially something that your ego is attached to. That’s hard. So what did I say I was going to work on?

Joshua: Did you get the audio that I sent? Because I took like the roughly 10 minutes that was like 70 minutes of the conversation unedited and I sent it in the last e-mail too.

Judith: I haven’t listened to it. But you did.

Joshua: I didn’t quite understand it fully either because you mean… One of the big things you said was, “I’m going to challenge you Josh about what environment means” and you are not interpreting it to mean, your environment is much more the people around you. And what you’re going to do with people to implement something that you have been building for some time.

Judith: So, my God, remember remembering is that I am completely fixated and focused and driven by bringing conversational intelligence around the world. Now why am I saying it that way? I don’t have any other way to say it yet but I do know that going to Ireland for example where I was for eight days and having people talk about bringing it to all of Ireland and that’s bigger than I would have envisioned on my own. Somebody call me from Delaware and saying it, “We’re bringing it to Delaware. We’re starting with our government and we’re going to bring it to Delaware” and things like that where people are reframing my desire to help people have better conversations and healthier conversations around the world. I’m getting people who are now in front of me saying, “No, the flag is down here. Pull this way” and that way is infinitely bigger than I ever envisioned and as of that it’s causing other thought processes.

For example, last night I had a talk with Tracy who’s on my direct team and we’re talking about getting a board of directors together who have bigger ideas than even we have had to help inform the growth of this idea. And so those are the things that are happening for me and they’re enlightening for me, freeing, exciting, the idea of having extraordinary people beyond my wildest imaginations and be part of this. That is just amazing. So that’s what my focus is and that’s what’s happening and that’s where my energy is.

Joshua: It sounds very, what’s the word? Sounds like something I’m enjoying hearing about her. So what happened? What are the facts of what happened?

Judith: I thought that I had in my mind a framework for helping conversational intelligence go around the world and the feedback I was getting was, “Oh, we need it in government.” Great! I didn’t know who the audiences were but I was getting feedback we need it in government, we need it in education. So audiences were telling me I didn’t go in with a researched map that says, “OK, these are the industries.” I’m getting feedback saying, “We want it, we need it” which is fantastic because it means that this idea has legs or energy or a neuronal connection to people and it’s out there.

And it’s just like when I did work with the museum I can’t tell you which museum what the name is but it’s the most famous museum in the world. And they had 18 curators who were having difficulty getting along because a request to take their best pieces and put it in the middle of the museum to have a special exhibit of the best pieces. Well, when you took them, the best pieces out of their individual exhibits they were no longer the best pieces. They were only the best pieces in their individual exhibits and they fought for three years and I got to work with them to undo this and make it better.

And when I got them in the room when we start to talk about things that they had never talked about in the way they never talked about it they realized that they were coming up with something new that nobody had looked at which is what if, and this was their idea, what if around the world there’s a certain energetic field that seems to be existing everywhere that is defining something but because we’re so far apart and we don’t talk to each other we don’t know it’s happening.

But what if there were people like curators who come from these parts of the world who if they had the right kind of conversations would discover something that happened to all of their areas in the world in 1867? And that they had they were some of the few people that could talk about that and discover it. And that’s what happened. They discovered things like a certain color blue that appeared around the globe at the same time in every country but only the curators would know because they studied that world, that part of the world and those kinds of things. And they started to create special exhibits called pods that brought together these universal themes that were happening around the world.

Joshua: I want to go back a step. When last we spoke to you talked about a map and you’re jumping in and talking about it and you’re saying “it”. What is “it”?

Judith: It’s magic.

Joshua: You mean like David Blaine? I mean what’s magic?

Judith: No. What’s magic is that there are influences in the world that if we don’t even know that… We’re so I-centric often that we don’t even realize that we’re having we-centric experiences and as we move into the world of talking about we-centrism and what we have in common and what’s going on in the world and we talk about questions for which we don’t have answers. We start to see that there are patterns that are out there that are how the Earth was built and that those patterns include people having simultaneity, simultaneous experiences around the globe but don’t know it because either we don’t talk to each other or we don’t even know to look for it because we’ve already decided it’s crazy. And what we’re learning is that this work by helping people understand how to ask those crazy questions for which we don’t have answers, we’re beginning to reveal another world that is living with us at the same time as our world. And the more we do it, the more we might find that there are ways to bring peace in the world, create global connectivity and excel beyond our wildest imaginations. We’ve just been taught to look at conflict taught to define issues and problems as opposed to having a language that brings us all together and creates harmony and peace and expands our capacity. So I think that I’m sitting in the middle of that and I’m learning. I’m like at level 1, level .01 but I sit in a place…

Joshua: I know the feeling.

Judith: Yeah. You know that feeling? I feel like I’m in a place of magic all the time and I love sharing it with other people and having them come back and share stories of amazing things that nobody said could happen but are happening good things, not bad things. Not like today, not like what happened with that guy. Maybe he was all alone in his body, heart and mind that he just couldn’t deal with it. I don’t know what happened to him but for me those are the things that I’m excited about, learning more about and engaging with people about and now I have all these 2500 people around the globe who are sharing stories with me of amazing things or who want to do things with their in their industry sector. Government wants to do something and communities and cities and states and countries and I’m blown away and excited.

Joshua: I’m sure that I am oversimplifying it but it’s that you’re tapping into a communication or community or harmony that’s been there but without the tools to connect with it and to communicate and to act. I’m sorry the terminology is not going to be right.

Judith: Activate or…

Joshua: Yeah, to activate it.

Judith: That’s right. Part of it is that we don’t know the words yet for what’s going on.

Joshua: And so you started to tap into it and you started to make these connections of people responding to it more than you expected. Not just more in quantity but also in quality and in emotions and so forth. And you are excited about it. And I feel like you sound like you’re even caught off guard if that you got a tenth of what’s happening you’d be like, ”All the while that is more than I thought” or something like that. Not to quantify…

Judith: Yeah, I know but that’s what I’m getting. And the other day I got a chance to speak to Tracey who’s working with me on this. She’s one of the key people and we started to plan and talk about bringing in other coaches that are in the program who seem to have the same kind of high level of passion and belief systems about what’s possible and how they can help contribute. And I woke up the next morning… I dreamt it was the best dreams I’ve ever had, first of all, that I can remember in my life and then I woke up really happy. My chemistry had completely shifted from where I… Look I have my chemo that I’m still doing so that’s a downer sometimes you know knowing that I’m still on chemotherapy for the pancreatic cancer that dissolved but went into my lungs and so I have all these to help things that are going on and yet I just felt like I turned a corner and that I was somehow reaching infinitely more people than I ever envisioned. From our group it was going to reach many, many, many more people than I envision.

Joshua: There’s something about what you are saying that really makes me think of Rachel Carson. I don’t know if Silent Spring was an important book for you or if you read it. But she also tapped into something it was more of a not people connection but nature connection. In any case, it made you very happy. What are the emotions that this has bring about?

Judith: What was Rachel’s last name by the… Spring?

Joshua: Oh, Rachel Carson.

Judith: Oh, Carson. Yeah, I’ve heard her name before. OK. What are the emotions?

Joshua: Yeah, I mean you said happy and I feel like I’m mostly curious of like more you know satisfaction is different than exuberance, which is different than enthusiasm. It’s a mix of everything.

Judith: Yeah, it’s not about, it’s not emotions in that sense of I’m proud, I’m excited. It’s peacefulness. There were different times at my life where I knew that I was going to be involved with something that was core to the planet. I even drew pictures of what that would look like and the circles and going down into this core and all these kinds of things but I didn’t know what that meant. And then I start to do the batiking, which is wax and dye. It’s a technique for doing artwork that’s always started with those circles and the whole thing because I knew that there was something that was like pulling me into some vortex that that was some type of wisdom. And it caused me to stay up late at night sometimes and working in this art medium to see if I could find the mysterious answers in the artwork. And there’s just a lot of things in my life that and I just felt so at peace with this understanding that I wasn’t alone. There were other people who wanted to find these answers and that I was really in a community of people that were going to help with this and be part of the team. And so it’s that not alone feeling that’s what it’s about. It’s not a word that we already know about emotions. For mean not alone is an emotion.

Joshua: Yeah, it’s funny that I’ve also discovered emotions that we don’t have names for in other areas of life and it’s kind of weird like it would be nice to create a word for it. I actually spent time trying to create a word for an emotion because I wanted the world to know the feeling of being understood. Like, being understood doesn’t quite capture it. And it’s very interesting to me to hear you. Last time I think it was your words you said, “Josh, I want to push back on you in what environment means.” And you took on a different way than most people but what you’re describing emotionally is very similar of feeling connected and feeling “Oh, what I do does make a difference” and this connection with other people. There’s a big mental shift that a lot of people talk about.

And I’m also wondering you sound extraordinarily positive which I love hearing. It makes me feel very positive. Was it all easy? Were there any challenges? Were there things that were unforeseen that you had to handle or has it just been an unfolding of easy… It doesn’t sound easy but has it all been rewarding? Have there been challenges?

Judith: I’m not thinking about them. If it is I don’t even… I mean I don’t dwell on things like that in general so if I had something happened, it happened. You know it’s just there and it’s gone. I don’t have any memories over the last month of spending a lot of time on what didn’t happen or did, was it a challenge or things like that. What I think happened is I was just waiting for the right connections to click and when it did I said, “Oh, that’s what I’m waiting for.”

So I saw some videos of children, babies, young children, teenagers and adults who for the first time we’re hearing. Have you seen this video on online yet? Have you seen what… No? You’ve got to see it. They put a little piece of equipment right back here behind their ears and they let them here for the first time. It’s a new piece of equipment. And the most amazing piece of equipment was this little baby who maybe was 3 months old or 4 months old. And the little baby for the first time was hearing, actually hearing people talk and the baby goes and then you see this look on his face and it goes like the smile is like, “Oh, this is what heaven is like?” Oh, it was amazing. And that’s kind of where I want my head to be.

Look I’ve been in an illness space for two years. I was told I was going to die. I was told I had two weeks, two months or two years to live. I’m coming to the end of my two-year period and I’m still alive. So no matter what I do there are little bumps in the road now compared to what I went through over the last two years. And so I don’t spend too much time on the bumps now. I spend time on, you know the good, I will remember Ireland forever. Eight days in Ireland were one of the most amazing things that I’ve ever done in my life in terms of people, vacation, speaking engagements, what happened, how they felt about me, how I felt about them. It validated every morsel of effort in my life. I got validated when I was in Ireland.

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Joshua: The way that you’re talking sounds like someone who’s early in her career and you sound like, what it makes me think of as someone like I’m 46 and every now and then I’ll meet someone I’m like. I feel like I’m in high school again. I love that feeling and you sound like that. I didn’t mean to say you sound… It’s the fascination and joy that comes from like my first big break or something like that but you’ve had big breaks.

Judith: No, not really.

Joshua: And this is something on a different scale. I don’t mean big breaks like your script got sold but like you’re well stablished.

Judith: Yes. And this is now a different scale. So it’s like matching up with… I grew up in a family where my dad went around the world bringing dentistry. So I saw a model when I was little – 7 or 8 years old – he was already doing that kind of stuff for the government and that’s a pretty audacious model to see. Very few people grow up in that kind of family to tell you the truth and get to live in foreign countries and that kind of stuff. But I got a taste for… He showed me ways of making it easy to bring people together and coalesce and work together. And so I feel like I’m now hitting my stride. I am high school. I am. I am. I am high school.

Joshua: It’s a great feeling, isn’t it?

Judith: Yeah.

Joshua: Like I love that feeling it’s like I’m in high school again. For me it connects with relationships with girls. But it’s that sort of thing. And if someone is interested in getting to know more, do they find you on online? Do they email you? Do they read you books?

Judith: What we get are people that go on to either Creating WE, which is one of our web sites. Our Conversational Intelligence, which is another .com, both are .coms, and they say contact us and they’ll write a note to me saying, “I heard you speaking or I read the book or I want to get certified. And how do I do it?” And so we get people every day sending us notes. That’s how people contact us. Some people get my e-mails from some place and they’ll write me 18 paragraphs of how I must be the right person to hear them talk about their dream because they know for sure that I could help them. So I get some of those too.

Joshua: Have you been… I don’t mean necessarily consciously but have you been preparing for this for a long time? Was this like when you look back with the dots to connect or…

Judith: I don’t know if this happens to you and you can tell me, Josh, that I have things that happen in my lifetime and when certain moments happen my body goes, “Oh, say that that’s going to be important. That will help you.” It’s like a little cookie that somebody was dropping for me to you know make it through Joseph-Campbell-kind of journey, the hero’s journey where you kind of get clues and cues and whatever.

So when I was about 31 or something like that our kids were young. And a friend of ours, my son Marcus Treadwell was one of my son’s best friends and his father worked for someone who started Odor Eaters, that’s one of his products and 14 other products. And it was a couple and they were both 70, and they were launching this company at the age of 70. And I marked that. I said, “Remember that. That’s going to come into play someday in your life.” That’s what I did. And that’s I get those moments where I say, “Oh, mark that. That’s going to help me on my journey” because it’s me being able to see forward and say, “OK, well if it didn’t happen just like McDonald’s hamburgers,” I don’t think he was… He was 50 or 60 when he started McDonald’s hamburgers or something like that. And those moments locked in my brain to tell me it’s going to be OK if it takes you that long. And so I do feel like I’m just starting out. And I do feel like that little experience with this couple, the Odor Eaters and all the other things they did were telling me that it’s going to come later in life for you and that’s ok. And that’s ok.

Joshua: Yeah, yeah. I guess a lot of us feel like something’s not okay and if we don’t examine that thought or have something to challenge it, we’ll have these inhibitions or feel like it’s not ok.

Judith: Yeah. Like everybody else is having this happen this time. And what happened to you? Like why didn’t you have that? And how come yours? And you know you start to feel you know “I am missing out” and all those things that we go through. And these moments I started to realize were some little angel from the universe saying, “Twinkle, twinkle. Guess what? Yours is coming later and it’s going to be better. Don’t worry about it.” You know those kinds of things. I don’t know if that’s real or it’s just my fabrication, my [29:15] and that’s how my brain works. I don’t know.

Joshua: I mean you talking about it for me… You know I’ve been doing leadership since roughly business school so a dozen years ago or so before that I had about 10 years of physics and I hadn’t been doing physics for a long time. I mean in a certain sense it’s how I view the world. To me it’s just exploring nature and find beauty in nature and so forth so that’s always been there. But there’s also now that I am more on the environment stuff, all the stuff that I studied it’s very useful. That’s why I think I’m going from leadership in general to leadership and environment in particular. I mean certainly the current state of affairs it’s getting more and more acute. That’s my perception. But also it’s I don’t know…To narrow the focus from leadership in general to something specific although you would have thought, “Oh, I’m closing down options.” But now I think, “No, I am specifying more and it gives me a greater focus.” But you are making me think. I can’t help but share.

Judith: That’s fun!

Joshua: I mean I’m curious for you. I mean are you able to see… How far ahead are you able to see? And do you know what’s coming next?

Judith: What I’m feeling and what I’m seeing and what I’m experiencing is there’s this amazing excitement that I feel in people saying, “Ah!” It’s like when you were doing a puzzle and there was one piece missing and then all of a sudden boom! This fits in. And then now the puzzle piece makes sense. I’m feeling a lot of that metaphor coming from people like we knew we wanted to get involved with something big. We tried a lot of stuff. This wasn’t right, that’s not right. But somehow when you describe what you’re doing it’s like dead center in what we need to be doing. And I’m so glad you know and so I have all these coaches who are saying things like that. I have some new potential clients that are saying things like that. And that’s such a wonderful thing. It’s like we found each other. That’s such a beautiful… That’s a love story.

Joshua: Like you are in high school.

Judith: Like you are in high school. Exactly.

Joshua: Now I’m going to ask something. I’m afraid to ask this but I’ll ask it anyway. It sounds like a lot of stuff is unrolling unveiling itself and happening. Did our conversation before make a difference? Or was this going to happen anyway? Like did it accelerate it? Did it change anything?

Judith: I can’t remember because I didn’t track that but I did indirectly. And my indirect was whatever you asked me, it’s going to amplify whatever I’m doing and that’s what I said to myself. In other words I wasn’t quite sure where the conversation was going to go, number one. Number two, I don’t give up on, you said some people might give up, some people might not want to do it, some people might… You know whatever happens, happens for people. I don’t ever give up on anything intentionally. And so I said, “Well, forget you for saying that. It’s not going to happen that way.” I remember saying that to myself you know. And it’s going to tie in to whatever I’m doing because that’s where my energy is. I don’t know if I can make it a separate path. But I certainly can you know integrate it into whatever it is that I’m doing with passion. It’s another impetus to keep going. That’s I kind of remember saying that to myself when we first talked.

Joshua: You definitely challenged me. This is definitely part of me. It’s like how to put it? My vision is about environment carbon dioxide levels and pollution levels and things like that. But fundamentally one of my big learning things here is my goal is to support the person I’m talking to in their values because I think that the imposition that I see other people [32:30] not only ineffective but I think often counterproductive. So this is one of more challenging interviews because I’m like I think that I am forcing myself to keep myself from that my perspective into the background because you’re going through something that I did for some listeners is much more meaningful than what I would be able to do myself. And I don’t know. I’m just sharing some things.

Judith: Yeah, you could try to steer the car if I’m the car as an example and help the car go where it’s supposed to go based on what your criteria are for the project. And I decided that I would stay in the project only if it helps me do is steer my car better towards my end game. Because whether I have two months to live, two years, two weeks, two months or two years to live, or two decades and I’m heading for three. That’s what my goal is because I want to be at least 100 by the time I you know whatever my day has ended.

Joshua: Or something about a mortal coil.

Judith: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And then everything has to… I can’t have too many fragmented things happening otherwise they’re totally ineffective so have one thing is to this work to the next level and hand it over to the next generation of people that are going to use it or whatever this is it’s going to activate inside of people knowledge that they already own that’s part of it what it means to be human. And we just haven’t had enough people asking us about that knowledge so we didn’t even know we had it. Or I think there’s something about… Kids have amazing wisdom until they’re about 7 when their parents overwhelm them with things they couldn’t do and can’t think about because it’s not right, good or whatever and then they start to give up their intuition a little bit. And I’m constantly wanting to turn over those rules that say kids prefrontal cortex can’t open up until they’re 21. Well, that’s not true. I’ve already gotten experiments going where they do. You know so I’m like here to expand humanity in some way. That’s the environment that I live in.

Joshua: I like how you said something that I think most people say in a different way. I like how you said it that you described it as “they have something until parents judge tell them they can’t.” And it’s an inhibition. And I think a lot of people think that something goes away. But I don’t think it goes away. I think it gets inhibited. And I think it’s more useful to take away that inhibition than it is to try to create something that’s I think is already there.

Judith: It’s already there.

Joshua: Yeah.

Judith: It is. That’s right. It’s totally, exactly, absolutely 100 percent right. That’s a great way to say it.

Joshua: That’s a reset!

Judith: Well, I like what you said.

Joshua: I mean that’s one of my big themes in how I coach and teach leadership is that people want to share what they love and what they care about. They just don’t be judged or they don’t even mind being judge but they’re kind of afraid of it. Or they might be laughed at or humiliated or something like that. And if you address that inhibition generally by conveying that you’re not going to judge them, you can’t just say this, anyone can just say it. Talk is cheap. But if you behave in ways that show that they will be supported, then they’ll share those things.

Judith: Right. And again there’s so many things that like the guy that did FedEx that he had this idea that you could get stuff around the world in 24 hours. And his teacher gave him a D minus for that idea. Right. And that happens a lot. That’s the kind of stuff that that we have in our…Every teacher should be taught about how the mind works, that the mind works big, really big…

Joshua: And not just taught but like walked through, he should experience it not just be lectured.

Judith: Yeah. And when we get kids and we say oh, OK there’s certain kids that are very innovative and then there are others that are very analytical and the innovative are different and better in some way is the right idea of making them the analytical and all that crap is crap. And you can be [a thing or do or into or failure] or whatever part of the brain that you have that’s well integrated but that doesn’t mean you don’t have the other parts. And we minimize people too much in schools and in business. And I’m about expanding, living from limiting to expanding. So I have all these things. I’m a fighter. I am… What’s the word? Contrarian. My brother is a contrarian.

Joshua: [36:22]

Judith: Yeah, he is and he gets in trouble for and he has gotten in trouble for it. And he loves it what he does. So I don’t know. I want to have fun for the rest of my life.

Joshua: You sound like you’re off to a good start. I want to see if we can leave off with…Is there a message that you can… You’ve been sharing your experience. Anything you can, for a listener anything to leave them with, advice or feelings or I don’t know or whatever…

Judith: I’m going to share with you the absolute thing that came to my mind. I’ve met a couple of people like Stew Leonard’s who created this incredible store that was expanded 19 times and they now have eight stores and it’s just an amazing. I don’t know if you know about it in Norwalk, Connecticut but it’s a food store.

Joshua: I’ve heard of it. Yeah. I’ve never been there.

Judith: Yes, Stew Leonard’s. They were written up in Standard of Excellence. And people like that who are amazing people who think out of a box called the universe or Earth or whatever it is and at some point they around the age of 30 are feeling so alone in their ideas that they commit suicide or they almost do or however that works but you know they get to a place where they feel very alone because their ideas have been germinating inside and had they haven’t gotten a lot of support for them and so they just at some point say, “That’s the end. You know it’s over.” And there are a lot of people like that who have these unusual ideas and I wish that I knew how to help create a school system where those ideas are so honored, that those kids never have to step in front of cars or trucks or whatever they do. And some of those are famous people who have lived beyond that moment because their wives like with Stew Leonard his wife stopped him from committing suicide. You know there are other people.

Joshua: I remember last time you talked about the guy who ultimately connected with Stephen Hawking who was like diagnosed with autism.

Judith: Yeah. Jacob Barnett. I mean that’s it. We’re people. Because their ideas are so different. So Jacob Barnett is a great example that they got his mother and father never believed that he was where they had all diagnosed him. Thank God my grandson Gideon. Gideon, they were told in school that my daughter had to get him on drugs right away because it was impossible to keep him in the classroom. And my daughter fought it and fought it and fought it. She tested Gideon and once he got sick and threw up and she said, “Please, let me take care of this myself” and it turned out like Jake Barnett. Gideon had a brain for mathematics and science. He was 6 years old, 7 years old and they got him a tutor for 10th grade kids and all of a sudden he was in a better place. You know it’s like that.

So the judgment that we put around human beings that we need to be like this. Marcus my little grandson was born 20 days early. The doctors almost got him in the hospital because they said he’s not speaking, he’s not walking, he’s not this, he is not that and something’s wrong. And we have to diagnose it blah blah blah blah blah. And it turned out that he wasn’t walking because everybody loved him so much they wouldn’t let him walk. They kicked him up and carried him everywhere. It wasn’t that he could walk, he developmentally was ready but people weren’t letting him because everybody loved carrying him around. That was the walking thing. And the speaking thing is that he was picking up sounds that other little kids don’t hear. He had an extraordinary… And he would make sounds like [39:44]. Like all these clucky things that he was hearing when people were talking. And he had when he started to talk he had three syllable words as he was constructing bigger things than what they told him he should learn. It’s that kind of stuff, that judgment that stops people from just… And I must have had that in my life otherwise I wouldn’t be so impassioned by it.

Joshua: Well, I feel like you’ve shared where things are going or at a direction where things are going how you are now, how you’re feeling now and also where this has come from. And I have a feeling that we will be on again because I’m very curious to know how things are going and I feel like you want to share that.

Judith: And I will. I will do that.

Joshua: OK. And so for people who are listening you give the URLs, I will have them all the links to be available and I have a feeling this is sort of thing that that will percolate out also in many other different ways than just what you’ve said here and the web page and so forth.

Judith: Yeah. Thank you. Actually I really appreciate that I think every human being was made with a unique fingerprint in the world. And we do so much comparison that we take away that spirit of uniqueness that’s just trying to make its way into the world. And whether it happens when you’re 3 or 2 or 1 like my grandkids that I just talked about or about the couple that did it at 70 or what Rich and are doing now. There are times for it. And we have to allow those times to be unique to each human being and for us to discover how special we are, even if that special means that you only have one arm or one leg. It’s not critical, it’s not judgment, it’s just who you are. What you do with it is what’s so fantastic. And so I want this freedom to exist for everyone.

Joshua: I think that’s a beautiful note to end on the million things I want to talk about.

Judith: Next time.

Joshua: Yeah, next time.

Judith: Write them down.

Joshua: Next time we’ll start, we’ll pick up here next time and maybe I’ll tell you about my mom whose first marathon was at age 67 as a grandmother of five, never having run more than five kilometers at once.

Judith: Oh my God. That’s great! Can’t wait to hear it.

Joshua: So, we’ll start there. Thank you very much. And I love that you shared this and I believe that it will resonate with people and we will pick up here next time.

Judith: Good. Thank you.

Joshua: Thank you. Bye

Judith: Take care. Bye.

***

So we had a lovely conversation. I enjoyed talking to Judith and I hope for more interaction with her and to hear how her projects go. To me again it lacked rigor and actually changing behavior that reduces pollution or global warming or resource depletion or something like that, something measurable. That’s not to say that what she did wasn’t valuable, it just didn’t fit in with what I was looking for. But for all I know this resonated very strongly with others listening to this and I hope it did. Again, I would love to hear feedback on how it sounded to you the listeners, if it worked and so forth. Again, I’m still just starting so I’m looking for guidance but I hope you enjoyed it.

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