“The only thing that will change your life, change your business, change your relationship, is that you must raise your standards.”
We have goals in life, and nothing in this world has the power to set us in the right direction more than ourselves. We are the authors of our own book. And it’s up to us how we write it and how we act accordingly. Behavior is always something that we overlook, but it is the most important part of success. Nothing in this world is so elusive yet so powerful as our beliefs. When you surround yourself with positivity, you’re more likely to adapt to empowering beliefs and see life happening through your own lens. To reach new heights of success, you must surround yourself with people who not only inspire you but challenge you. Shifting your energy to a more positive one. Hannah Gfeller is a behavioral consultant who has mastered the art of connecting human behavior science to our daily lives.
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Empowering Beliefs and Behaviors To Live By With Hannah Gfeller
Welcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. Today, I’d like to talk to you about behavior. Now, on previous episodes, we’ve talked a little bit about the idea of personality, the idea of finding yourself. What I envision is that there’s a lot of people out there who have done the work of figuring out, okay, who is it that you are, but then, beyond that, how does that manifest into how you are perceived in the world, how you go about creating what you want to create because once you know yourself, you know what you want but does your behavior line up with that and does your actions bring the right people, the right opportunities to you or are you still acting in a way that’s confusing the people around you? My guest today, Hannah Gfeller, is a behavioral consultant with her own business.
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Hannah, welcome to the program.
Thank you for having me. Very excited to be here.
Oh, thank you, Hannah. Let’s first start talking about behavioral consulting. I’m envisioning that there might be a couple people out there that aren’t even aware that that’s a profession that someone can pursue. So, describe a little bit what it means to be a behavioral consultant.
Yes. Yeah, nobody knows what I do. So, technically, I’m a behavior analyst and a lot of people like to call themselves behaviorists but they’re not board certified. So, just for clarification, you have people who say that they do that type of work but I had to go through grad school and supervision and hours of that and then sit for a massive board exam, but not everyone passes. And so then you can work behavior analytically. And I call it behavioral consulting because I come in as a third party usually. People looking for advice to change habits. And I do it in a lot of different ways. Most people when they hear behavior analyst, they think ABA, and that is synonymous a lot with autism, but it’s not.
Okay.
It didn’t come from that. The field of applied behavior analysis is what I do and that can go into anything with living humans. We always joke if it’s a dead man, they’re not behaving, so like you just lay there, it’s not a behavior. You got to do something. But I can look at individuals and look at how they want to change their habits or maybe you’re a caregiver and you have a little one that needs to change their habits, for safety or life skills or whatever it is, and I can work in that arena. But then I can also look at massive systems within a company because you have lots of people and, as a big company, in a sense it behaves. It has its habits. But you got to break it down into those little cycles of habits in order to make big change. So I do it in the corporate world and I also do it within the healthcare field as well and that’s, in sum, behavioral consulting.
And so, when you’re consulting someone on their behavior, let’s start with the individual person before we get into big companies because that might be a little bit less complicated, when you’re looking at an individual person’s behavior, what are you usually looking for when you’re analyzing someone’s behavior in a consultant fashion?
Yeah, most of my friends are like, “Are you analyzing me?” I’m like, no, no, no, I try to turn it off. When I am working with someone, I want to find out what they need. Usually, they look at it as they have a problem because they have a habit they want to break. Often, it might be a caregiver with a child with excessive tantrums or something like that or maybe it’s an adult who wants to change their eating habits or something like that, right? And I would first find out where they want to go because if you don’t know where you going, you don’t know what to change. So what do they want? I don’t like to come in and say, “You have to do this,” because then I’m imposing my values on someone else. There is a rep in the field where behavioral consultants come in and they just tell people what to do. They don’t take into account this individual’s needs and wants.
Once I know where they want to go and what they might be there for, then I would work with them and I like to do what I like from doctors. These are all the options you could do. But I do have to gather information first. And I’ll ask, like, let’s say surrounding you eat late at night, I will start talking about all the different factors that go into play. When are you eating dinner? How much are you drinking? When are you sleeping? Why do you not want to do that? Is there a time of day? Is there another habit, let’s say, nail biting? There’s a lot of factors that come into that of when are you biting your nails? What, like are you sitting? Are you standing? Are you stressed? You have the internal and you have the external that I like to take into account. Even though I can’t see the internal, it helps me understand it better and make a better suggestion and then often people can try it. And if I don’t have enough information in the beginning, it might not work. So, often, you try it and then you make some tweaks and it should work.
I don’t know if anyone else listening out here envisioned the same thing but, for some reason, I imagined you following someone around for a couple days and just finding out, okay, this is where you do this behavior, oh, this is where you do that.
No. I actually, like currently as a side thing, I am actually reading people’s documents with developmental disabilities. Everyone’s got everything documented, right? I read through and I can actually read their why factors of why they’re doing what they’re doing just from the paperwork. If I know a few pieces of information of like the situations that these behaviors happen in, I look at what do you know how to do and what are you doing in excess, because if someone does something in excess, let me backtrack, this is how I view humans. This is a visual that comes to mind. We’re all a vase, the vase has to be completely full. When we’re little people, we’re a teeny tiny vase. There’s not many things that we could know how to do. So, as an adult, you have this massive vase and it should be filled with water, but it’s not. We all have bad habits. So with dirt, some have muddier water than others, but that’s okay because our vase is full so our excess things, things we do extra, are the dirt that we usually want to get rid of. The only way to get rid of an old habit and put a new one in is to pour more water in your vase, because your vase always has to be full. So if you went in and scooped the dirt out successfully, because you know how like you pick up dirt, it doesn’t all come out anyways, you scoop the dirt, your vase is then, the water’s gone down. Water won’t automatically get back in; you have to physically pour it in. But the dirt will magically end up back in the vase. So, if you’re trying to change a habit to bite your nails and you don’t teach yourself to do something else, that habit of biting your nails is going to go back in.
If you want to get rid of a habit, you need to replace it with a new habit, which is a lot of people will oftentimes intervene, for the lack of a better way to put it, and say, “I feel like you need to stop doing this so much. You need to stop doing that so much,” but there always needs to be a new behavior to map into your brain.
Yeah, that’s exactly how it works. So I look at replacing things. So, yeah, I don’t follow people around and that’s what I’m really looking at. What do you want to do instead? Now, if you look at people dieting, why do they do, what’s it called when they are going back and forth on diets?
Oh, the yoyo dieting?
Yes. You’re going back and forth. Why? Because here’s another thing, not only does have to replace it, it has to also meet your basic wants, whether you want to admit it or not. You want it and so if you go on this extreme diet, like from eating “regular” to keto, like when I did that, I craved sugar, but it was always at four o’clock. And I was like, oh, then I found out it was because I’m tired. Like, okay, so I need something sweet, just got to follow the guidelines, it’s got to be at four o’clock or maybe right before in anticipation of me cheating on the keto. So then I was like, okay, I’ll do tea and setia and it didn’t work. I still wanted something. It didn’t work. I had to try something else so then I tried like bubbly drinks and I was like, oh, and I started craving bubbly drinks instead of sugar. That part of science, I don’t know why that happened. I’ve heard other people when they started drinking fizzy drinks, they start craving those instead of sugar or they start craving that fizzy drink.
Interesting.
I enjoyed my fizzy drinks. It was easier for me to stay on the diet. Just like going through the pain of it. That’s another factor you have to look at when you are changing habits. Whether it’s big scope or little scope is that human getting what they originally wanted, like, in my case, I was craving something I enjoyed like sugar and the bubbly replaced that.
And so one thing that comes to my mind, of course, is the amount of people right now that want to reduce the amount of mindless scrolling through social media or any other webpage that we see prevalent so much and what I’m wondering is if you have any ideas about behaviors someone could use to replace that hole, “Okay, the moment I’m bored, I’m gonna pull the phone out and just start scrolling through the seven or eight or thirty different feeds that you have.”
Okay, so that’s got a lot of big pieces, but it’s a really good question. I had thought about this off and on just for fun because I’m like, like, you know, how do we change this? Because, first of all, it’s already on the most addictive what we would call behaviorally as the reinforcement schedule. Because sometimes you get a message and sometimes you don’t, it’s unpredictable. Plus, it’s got the social component and we’re all humans, social beings, and during COVID, when we couldn’t go get physical social, we defaulted to the media. So I know the schedule, the social, the fact that there are multiple apps, so you get different types of fun, adds way more value. You also, when you’re doing it, get to escape the rest of the world because it’s unpleasant to deal with stuff. I know I’m guilty of this. I used to check out on Netflix.
Yeah.
That’s my thing, just check out. Or if I didn’t want to do the dishes, run the Netflix. Run the Netflix so I don’t have to like attend to the pain of washing dishes, or folding laundry. I find ways around it. So, in and of itself, it’s highly addictive so you have to be aware of that. And then when you are changing your habits, and I’ve been doing this personally a lot lately, it’s not fun.
When you want to change your habits, you have to go through the unpleasantness of changing it and you have to find something else to do. Share on X
I don’t think there’s a one size fits all for everyone. If you’re outside and you want to not do your phone, it might be easier because you have a lot of distractions and you’re moving. If it’s at night before you go to sleep that you don’t want to be on your phone, you need to specifically find something else. Again, you have to replace it. But it depends on your needs for different things. Like I personally need a way to check out. Books don’t help me check out. I’m like, “Let me soak it in.”
I know some people like to listen to audio and do that kind of thing, that has been their replacement. I think it honestly depends on are you looking to decrease it all day? And then, in that sense, do you need to keep your hands busy or do you need to keep your brain busy? And then you have to be okay with that weird feeling that you want it but you can’t have it and you need to go find something else to do.
I haven’t targeted this goal in my life because I get too busy with my kids. Actually, no, mine has increased because when starting my business, just being on like all these platforms. Well, now, my friends found me on the platforms so now my phone’s going off all the time. I’m like, okay, this is not good. I do use it sometimes in breaks when I’m like report writing, I’m like, okay, I just need to like leave, I need to like not analyze something for a moment so I use the screen time, but as far as replacements for screen time, it depends on you. If you love audio and you can replace it for listening to something. If it’s visual, you need to be seeing, or if it’s you need to be busy, or you using it as an actual escape from even processing where you are in life.
And that creates a completely different need as well as from a psychological standpoint because I’ve always thought of escapes as it’s okay to have your escapes and to be doing some of these activities as long as it’s not half your life or a third of your life where you’re always escaping, which is effectively what alcohol, drug addiction, and other similar endeavors are.
Escape can be anything. It can be work. It can be social media. It can be just watching shows. It can be — going to the gym can be an escape because you don’t want to face it, it’s more of — now you do need those escapes. Your brain can only take so much at a time. I can tell when my brain is at its limit because I have this ridiculous game on my phone that I don’t want to tell what I’m playing, it is so dumb, I’m like embarrassed that I play it. I’m like a three-year-old would be playing it. But I can tell when my brain needs that, that I need sleep, I need to get outside, it means I’ve hit my max and I need to take care of me. You have to be self-aware of those things. Like for years, I did not realize I was checking out of problems by going to Netflix. I love Netflix, nothing against it, it’s just that was my thing. Or I’d work. Because, you know, you got to help people, you got to improve lives.
An escape can be anything if you’re not going through the mental processing because the way you’re processing information in your brain, now I’m not a brain specialist at all, but from what I’ve learned, it has to go through the emotional part and then get stored in the long term but we all have triggers and things like that, right? Well, it has to process accurately and thoroughly and that’s painful. We want to escape pain as humans. We’re not wired to enjoy pain. This is why we need pain because we would be losing limbs all the time. If you touched fire and it didn’t burn, you will touch it again, and so we’d all be walking around with one limb. It would be like if we had both legs if you have no pain, so pain is necessary, like we’ve survived as a human race because of pain. But we also don’t like that pain of like processing internal things. Most humans. Some people enjoy it but not everyone.
Yeah. Sounds like most don’t.
So phones are nice for an escape but it also gives us the why factors of social, the why factors if we can shop, we get tangibles, because there’s the four why factors: escape, sensory, social, and tangibles.
So it sounds like there’s a lot we’re going up against. The clients that you work with, is it usually about a behavioral change or do you ever have clients, whether it be in the one on one or in the organization, that just says, “Hey, you know, my life is manifesting like this and I want to attract more of these types of people in my life, attract more of these types of opportunities and how does my behavior play into that?”
I think a lot of it in professional world has been more of they see it as a problem. That’s especially so in the healthcare field because if you get a diagnosis, you see it as, “Oh, I have a problem, I need this fixed.” In personal, just with friends and things like that, it would be the second part of what you described. And that’s what I’m applying even in my own life, because I’m like it’s not just the external. You have to have your internal perspective in order to change your external habits. But not everyone likes change. Sometimes it’s a personality type that doesn’t like change too. It just depends on the person and what they’re wanting. But, usually, it’s, “I have a problem, let’s fix this.” But sometimes, I don’t think it should be looked at as a problem. It should be looked at as, well, this is what’s happening and you would like it different. Let’s make it different. How would you like to do it different if you could envision and describe what’s going to happen? And if you can’t describe what’s going to happen or what to replace, I usually try to just come up with ideas because sometimes people don’t know where they want to go. They just know they want to change and fix.
That’s a common problem. When people feel stuck, they just — and I’ve had a previous podcast guests describe this feeling as, “I don’t know what I want. I just know I can’t keep doing this.”
Yeah, I get that. That’s very true. That’s very true across who I’ve worked with, and I think that’s where like behavior analysts get the rep of they come in and tell people what to do because they’re like, “Oh, we’ll just tell you what to do,” and I don’t — I think there’s different reasons. I think it’s an internal. It could be fear, it could be confusion, it could be a lot of different variables to find out what you actually want, but I think, over time, you can figure that out. But once you have a goal, like I couldn’t do treatment without having a goal and I have to write it like by X amount of time. This has to happen this many times every month, like every so many times or so many years now. But you need that because you don’t know if you’re having progress. You don’t see the change. But, yeah, it’s more of they view it as a problem when it shouldn’t, like just because it’s an excess and you might see this dirt in your vase, maybe it’s not actually dirt, maybe it’s just something that you’re doing that you would like to change, but it’s your value so you see it as dirt.
Yeah, because everyone has the things they value and I’ve seen those values tests where you have that list of 100 words and people ask, you know, which ones resonate with you, which ones don’t. One of the things I was curious about is that we have I guess a general consensus amongst groups, say, like Alcoholic Anonymous and all these others, is that the person you have to want to change, it can’t be externally imposed. I know you work with organizations where that can get into a little bit of a gray area as opposed to an individual who’ll come to you genuinely wanting to change. What do you think is the key to, if you have someone in your life that you think they should, you know, like the intervention or anything else, should look into their behavior, getting them to actually want to do it? Or is it possible through behavioral consulting on the organizational level to convince people to change their behaviors for other reasons?
That’s a big question. But, no, it’s good. To convince people to change. When I’m working in an organization, I like to start with understanding the person first, because you have all the different assessments, right? You have DISC for communication, you have Myers Briggs that tends to give you behavior habits. What are some of the other ones? The big five?
Yeah, the Big Five. Sometimes there’s that Emergenetics, the Clifton StrengthsFinder.
If you know your — because we’ll just talk kind of like, because I would do it a little bit different with a massive group versus one person because when you have a massive group, you need the top down. I’ve worked where I’ve been working at the mid-level, things don’t work if you target them that level because it has to come from the head down in business. So I would get the buy in first. Does the leader want this change, okay? You want the change, let’s figure out the “personality” of your company. So I like the personality assessments because it gives me a gauge on what type of “personality” is this company. Let’s say it was a DISC assessment with S, right?
Yep.
S is known for not wanting change. They like to keep the peace. I accidentally got gauged as an S once and they’re like, “Okay, go sit with the S group,” and I sat there and I was like, “I can’t do this.” I was like I’m going to be sitting around with like flowers and singing and I was like, “I’m gonna die, yes, I love you, guys, but this is to chill for me. I need my energy, people.” If you have a lot of S’s, you have to be aware that change will come slowly and you need to still keep the peace in process. So I would address a “S company” different than I had a D and a D are people who is short and sweet and moved the point and make it happen. I love meetings with D’s. Yes, we’re gonna change. But also I have to be careful that I don’t waste the D’s time because I’ll chat so long.
Oh, yeah, and they don’t — D’s don’t have — I’m an I so I love the chat and the getting things done, but the D’s, they don’t want that.
Yes. Now, if they’re a sub-I, I usually have a lot of fun because I’m like, okay, you can handle my storytelling a little bit. I joke, I’ve worked with a lot of C’s. My field has I think a lot of C’s and I don’t give enough details for C’s and so I struggle with that one question, I don’t know. I just gave you 99 pieces of information and it was insufficient. Like I lose it.
Anyways, I like to look at the gauge of what’s your overall type of persons in your company? What is your company doing? What are your current processes? What do you think the breakdowns are? But I also like the feedback from the rest of the levels because, you know, the further up you go, the more disconnected you get from the groundwork, the ground where people know their stuff. They know what’s happening. And if you can get the buy-in from the top down and the top knows they’re gonna have to change their habits in order to affect change the rest of the way, it can work. When you’re “fixing” things, if the system is already in place, you do have to be aware that you have probably already accidentally broken trust. Well, in any friendship, if you feel trust has been violated, it takes a long time to get back to okay. And I think one factor that gets missed even in the behavioral field is that in your brain, you need to feel safe. If you feel safe, you feel open to be able to say, “I don’t think this is gonna work.” But most companies don’t foster that type of behavior.
And I read this book where this leader was very authentic but he had to be authentic in order for the rest of the chain to be authentic.
Yeah.
And it comes down to communication, authenticity, but you have to feel safe, the “lower down” from like the top. It does have to come the top down because if the mid-level and lower level are like, “Yes, we’re doing this,” but the top down says, “No, go back to the old way,” they’re going to get all upset and be like no and it’s not going to be good.
There was actually a story and I love this because it’s called organizational behavioral management, it’s a subcategory of what my field does. This behavior analyst did some consulting with this company. He came in, took in all the information, it was basically like a factory type of a company where they put stuff together on assembly lines and they wanted whatever quota hit. And let’s say their quota was 100, right? They found out the employees loved breaks so they said, “In an hour, if you hit your quota, the rest of the hour, you can do nothing.” Their output quadrupled. The company did amazing. Well, the CEO decided to come take a stroll through the break room and it’s like, “Why am I paying all these people to sit here?” So they reverted and took that incentive out. I’m like, “Dude, I would love to just sit there for an hour. If I hit my quota, I just get to do nothing? Sure.” And it went back to the original 100 output.
Like a middle manager can say I found this great way to work with my people but if that CEO comes in and I’ve been in experiences kind of similar to that, where, first of all, in the case of the CEO, it’s just weird perception that people are not working because they happen to be sitting around without looking at the numbers, without looking at the bigger picture, all these things, which is something that I’ve probably ranted about a few too many times in my life because it reminds me of something that I read about a while back which is where this all began. You’ve probably read this whole history, I believe the guy’s named Frederick Winslow Taylor that went to these factories in Pennsylvania and decided that he thought everyone was lazy and stupid and they needed strict regimens on everyone’s work schedules and because of the way that work happened, his numbers were hit and then people started replicating his theories all over the place.
Now, there is a certain personality that needs that structure. As an ENFP, I would die. The only reason I survived this field, because most ENFPs for Myers Briggs don’t survive as behavioral consultants.
Oh, wow.
They die before they get to the board because we’re known for not taking good data. We’re known for connecting with people. We can affect change but the numbers are not very good. But when I’m under stress, I turn into a different personality type so that’s how I also survived. But if that specific example happened to have a lot of people that needed structure, that’s why I was successful. And this is just a theory I have. In different fields, I think you happen to have a large quantity of the same personality type.
That’s probably where your personality of the company really comes from because people look to hire a certain type of person and you end up with very similar people, because that’s the people you hire.
But you need all the different wiring. And I know some people are against personality types. They’re like, “Oh, you put me in a box.”
Yeah.
And I’m like, no, it’s more of understanding, and not even like for your own self, but if you’re self-aware of how you behave and understand how other people behave, it’s like if you have someone that doesn’t put their laundry away and likes to just leave it on the floor.
Yep.
Uh huh, yeah, no, that annoys the snot out of me, I’m like, “Can you not put it in a drawer? I don’t want to look at this pile, this stresses me out,” well, then, I find out the other person sees it as too big to take care of so they avoid it. I’m like, okay, this is something you’re coping with, that you can’t just put it in a drawer. You feel like you need to sort it and have a relationship with all 3,000 pieces of paper. Okay, we’ll get there. This is not your forte. And you can be better understanding of people. When you have a big company, you have different pockets of different personalities, understanding how your people work and how they’re different. That also leads into your incentive systems. If you have extroverts in your company, things that have to do with people, they’re going to love those type of a thing, versus your introverts who are going to be like, “Are you serious? We have another party? Why are we having another party?”
Yeah.
And they start freaking out on you. Like I have a friend who goes MIA and I’m like, “Girl, are we still friends?” She’s like, “Oh, no, we’re still friends,” she just literally doesn’t talk to people. I’m like, “How can you not talk to people?” So, yeah.
Yeah. It is very different and I firmly believe that, especially in some of these smaller organizations, like you said, like people need different personality types, you need the starters, the idea people, then you need the people that are good at like taking the idea and actually bringing it into fruition. All those things need to be put together. What makes the personality of a company? Is it the sum of the personality of the workers or does it have something to do with also the policy structures that are in place?
I think it’s a combination. Just like why do we have our habits now, nature versus nurture? I think when you start the company, you can set things going, like, let’s say you have someone like me who’s not as good at executing. Yeah, I’m not good at writing down 18 million details. I’m like, “We’re gonna wing it, people. We’re just gonna make this happen.” Well, not everyone can wing it.
Yeah.
And so I have to step outside of my comfort zone and go write it all down because if I don’t write it down, they’re not going to know what to do. But I also think I have to model what to do. And, to me, authenticity is really big. If you’re not going to be real, you’re not able to live the life you want, I’m not able to live the life I want. So, to me, I would add that as a component.
Oh, yeah, for sure.
But some people need that structure also and they are very comfortable with structure. If that’s not your strength, you still need to accommodate the different types because I think that’s what makes a well-rounded company is those that are really good at creating structure and redoing it over and over, they’re going to make your company become consistent. But if you’re not always generating new ideas on how to break the mold to be better, your company could potentially become stagnant because maybe you’re not meeting with the new generation who’s not liking your product from 20 years ago. There’s just no connecting with people.
Oh, why are 16-year-olds not on Facebook anymore?
There’s so many platforms and so many behaviors and like even swiping, one app’s one way and the other is another and other apps do back and forth. Just behaviors of knowing the different things. We say you need a well-rounded education. Well, well-rounded company is you have people who gets stuff done and you have the people who can connect and you have the people who can keep it stable and the people who can make the changes. I think you need all of it, in a way.
Well, that makes sense. First of all, I want to give a shout out to the Enneagram test because I know there are some Enneagram fans out there and I kind of snubbed it when we were listing out all the tests there. Also, it seemed interesting, because what we want is, first of all, to have people in the right place. So, if you’re naturally the person that needs to have structure, you should be in one of those structural roles, but we shouldn’t try to like make you be someone else, the same way we shouldn’t try to make an ideas person or a connector be that diligent structure, handle everything properly. And it sounds like what’s also needed is to check all the boxes, per se, to make sure you have in your company a little bit of everything. You have the people that are going to maintain the product as it is, the people that are going to ideate improvements, upgrades, stuff like that, the people that are going to go out and connect with other people, connect with the right business partners, connect with customers. I mean, that’s sales pretty much and networking. And then the people that are going to direct workflows.
You’re exactly right. That’s — if the way you’re wired does not fit the job you’re in, you will burn out. That’s what leads to burnout, because what you’re having to do are things that you don’t enjoy, and you have to do it over and over. That’s actually really big in the ABA field. A lot of BCBAs get burned out. It’s just a known thing. They’re burned out. And it’s because you have a field of people that just want to help people and care for them. They like the change but they also like the consistency. But, because of funding agencies, we’re bombarded with paperwork. Well, if your personality type is not the tedious checklist, details, over and over and repeating it, you’re going to drown. You’re not going to succeed. I kind of went rogue. I was in the corporate field for a while, I was like I just can’t do this system. And, for me, it was scheduling. I can’t schedule. I will miss schedule three or four times in the same day for a meeting, dead serious. This has happened this year.
Oh, wow.
I have been practicing scheduling for decades now. It’s not my strength. I just signed up for Calendly because I’m like, “I can’t do this anymore, it’s taking hours,” and I keep looking unprofessional because I can’t schedule and other people, for years, were like, “Hannah, why don’t you just schedule?” It literally falls apart. It’s not my strength, and forever might be working on it. I’m getting better. It’s now color coded and a whole bunch of things all over my calendar, but, man, I get support when I need it and I think that’s another thing with burnout is people don’t speak up and say, “I need this,” or, “I can’t,” because they don’t feel safe that they can open up within a company and do that.
And I think there’s still a lot of companies out there, even to this day, where you’re not safe and as soon as you speak up and say, “I feel like I’m doing too much of this,” they’ll say, “All right, this is not the wrong role for you so we’re gonna — not the right role for you, sorry, so we’re just gonna let you go.” That fear of being, I don’t know, off boarded, I would say.
Yeah, no, I’ve talked to people in ethical situations and in all kinds of situations, they won’t speak up because they’re afraid to lose your job.
Yeah.
It’s scary to lose a job.
Yeah, and it’s way more comfortable even if you’re constantly getting burned out to keep trying to be someone else over and over again and then, after a few years, it’ll add up to you on your stress on your liver or wherever, you’ve decided to take it out.
Yeah, and that has to do with your internal view of things. Like I remember when I was having to do scheduling, I would stay five hours after work just inputting my part of my schedule, if not all of it, for the next month, and that was every single month. I was spending hours just inputting my schedule. It’s like, “Well, I have to do this, I have to keep my job. This is part of the expectations,” and I just can’t reach the standard. I just have to reach more and do more. But I seemingly can’t. I think you feel helpless so I’ve been taking on in a lot of realms, the Rich Man Poor Man mindset. I think often we get into, “Oh, I can’t say this because I’ll lose my job,” or, “I can’t,” and say, “Well, how could I speak up?” And sometimes it doesn’t mean you lose your job but, in the long run, if you looked back and you were like, okay, I did three years there and then six months with nothing, what did I learn? To not do that again.
Yeah, because it would be great and one of the goals I have with starting this podcast is to get more people to the place where it matches how they’re wired so that everyone out there, if you’re doing what you were meant to be doing as opposed to in the wrong spot, then we’d all be happier and more productive. And it still shocks me every time I think about where we are right now with what percentage of the population actually is in the wrong spot. It’s, whether you look at that 66 percent disengagement number or the 84 percent dissatisfaction number, something along those lines, something, for sure, is amiss. One thing I’m wondering is, we have these processes of self-discovery, which is what all these personality tests, these assessments are, and then you have the process of behavior and, okay, now that you know who you are, how does that reflect outward? How often do you see a misalignment and do you think that part of that process when people discover who they are, they get their Myers Briggs or their Enneagram or anything else, then think about, “Okay, what am I doing in my day to day life to reflect that so that the things that come back to me are an authentic representation of who I am?”
I don’t think we think like that. I don’t think we take that step. I think we take the test, we understand ourselves. It’s kind of like creating awareness. People become aware of something but it doesn’t mean your habits will change. So I’ve been doing what they say to do in business, they say you need to network, which I love that, I get to meet these new people, this is great. Not everyone likes to do that. I have one friend who’s like, “Oh, that would be terrible.”
But in networking, I’m noticing that there are some people who you just give information and they will connect the dots to what they need to do to change. And they’ll realize, “Oh, I don’t know how to do this.” Like 2 years ago, somebody told me to my face, because I was like, oh, yeah, I can kind of work out I’m “trying” to work out, and they looked straight at me and they told, “Behaviorist, you are not working out,” and in my head, it clicked. I have certain behaviors happening, oh, junk, that means I’m not actually doing it. But they had to like say that information and the light bulb had to go off.
I’m very susceptible to information so I like to take it in and account and like I like those variables. I don’t think all people like taking in that information and then mulling it over. It’s more of, “Oh, this doesn’t fit in my box of information so it’s not gonna go in.” So I think it depends on how you’re wired on if you’re going to that self-discovery because it’s hard to make those habit changes, whether it’s a diet, whether it’s your sleep pattern, and sometimes it’s a change of perspective, like oversleeping, right? If you listen to a motivational podcast or speech, they say, “You gotta wake up at four AM,” I’m like, “I can’t wake up at four.”
Yeah.
I’m like literally been panicked for, I don’t know, a year now that I don’t wake up at four. I’m like, “I’m never gonna be successful, I wake up at 6. And the world is gonna end and like I’ve never made a difference,” like I’ve literally been distraught, and the other day someone’s like, “Does it matter? What’s the hurry?” And instead of looking at like, oh, did I get up at four? I’m like, okay, I’m going to make a new rule for myself, six hours and I get to nap in the middle of the day. Because they’re like, “Well, why can’t you nap?” I’m like, “But I’m not doing anything ’cause I’m napping. It’s not successful to nap.” But if you only get six hours at night, my body needs more than six hours, so then 20 minutes in the middle of the day, I’m like, oh, I can do better quality work now. But I had to switch my mindset.
Yeah.
Instead of, “Oh, no, I’m not,” or, “I can’t get up at four,” okay, well, how could I make better use of my time? And then I had to look at sleep as a behavior, not as a, “Oh, I don’t need it.” It’s a behavior I have to do which in the field of behavior, we’d be like, “Well, that’s a dead man’s thing. You lay there, it’s not a behavior.” I’m like, no, no, hold on. We need sleep. But perspective has to change first and information does not always change perspective.
So what usually does change perspective?
That’s a big one. Sometimes it’s life events. Sometimes it’s how bad you want something that you’ll keep looking until you find it.
Like a trial and error type of thing where you’re saying, “I don’t like this, I’m gonna look at this, I’m gonna look at this,” and then the fifth thing will click or the twelfth thing will click, but, eventually, something will click.
Okay, for an example, I’ve been trying to change my eating habits and working out because, you know, like when you have kids, you’re like, “Oh, I used to be this and now I’m that,” so like I’m trying to change my habits and be healthy, long term, right? And so almost every single month, that would be the shortest span, the longest span is three months, I would make a change. Because I’m like, “Oh, it’s not working. Something’s not working,” but you can’t make too many changes too fast. Other people might be like, “It’s not working,” give up, and just be done. Depends on how bad you want it.
And, yeah, I had like 3 to 6 months where I kind of floated because I’m like I don’t know what to do, nothing’s working, but you have to keep looking and you have to want it so the perspective has to change. Your want has to be big enough to keep looking to find the replacement that works for you, because not everything’s going to work for everyone.
Yeah. I always think of that whenever I think of those motivational videos where they’re always like, “Wake up at four AM.” There’s like no one formula. And there’s a few YouTube videos that parody that too. There was this one guy who makes videos like, “I woke up for today at noon yesterday.”
Oh, yeah. So you feel like you’re not successful because you’re not copying the habits of the successful people.
Well, it’s interesting, one of the things is I’ve read that the average CEO reads 60 books a year but I’ve also read blog entries about really successful people that openly admit, “I don’t read books, I only read blogs,” and it works for them.
But they’re still taking in content.
Yeah.
Oh. That’s cool. But you’re right, we would think we need 60 books. Instantly, you think you have to hit 60.
Yeah, but there’s no one formula.
I think that’s the tricky part because how do you know what formula is going to work for you? But you have to keep looking and do actions to look for it.
Yeah, reminds me of what rapper Pitbull and a lot of other people have said, it’s not how you fall down, it’s how you get back up.
Yes. I just heard that the other day. Because, yeah, it’s painful, you’re gonna fail because, like me, every single day not waking up at four, I’m like, “Oh, I failed again today. I didn’t wake up at four,” and then you’re off to a bad start, like how is your day supposed to get better from there? And then they say, “Well, make your bed, because at least by the end of the day, you will have done something successful that day and you made your bed,” and I’m like we’re going to start with the little thing.
And I think too like if you’re looking at your internal perspective and how much you want, you need to change your internal dialogue and there’s different ways to do that too. It just depends on what works for you.
And then as far as how our behaviors are then perceived by others, do you believe that that all begins with the internal dialogue as well, like if I want my ENFP personality to be what people see when they see how I act, I need to give myself permission to just be myself everywhere I go.
Yeah, it starts from the inside. It does. Because I’ve even had people — it was one of the assessments you mentioned, something with colors, I’m not as familiar with it, anyways, it’s an assessment with colors and they’re like, “I think you’re this color,” and then I go to take it, I’m like, “No, dude, I’m this color,” and they’re like, “What?” It’s because I exhibited specific external behaviors with different people.
Yeah. And so it’s a matter of allowing yourself to have that because I feel like we all modify our behaviors based on our settings in some capacity or another. The question is like how much do we do it and how does what we do affect how people think of who you are today, have an accurate idea of who you are based on their interactions with you.
I think we get caught up on what other people see us as. If you are being your authentic self, that’s the best version of you anyways, your actions do need to come from empathy. And a lot of people keep talking about all over LinkedIn and different people, like you have to have empathy and you have to and I’m like, “Well, don’t we all? We’re supposed to but not all our actions match empathy. And it comes from a perspective. Sometimes, I see in businesses, the leaders can act in fear by accident. I don’t think there’s any ill intent. It’s just that’s the perspective they’re coming from and they don’t realize the effects that actions connected to fear do. That breaks relationships too.
If there’s any element of fear, whatever bond you had with that person is going to start going another way. Share on X
It’s like when I look at patterns of behavior, I think of a snowball. Your snowball is going down and gets bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. If somebody started a company and they have a specific direction of behaviors, it can’t just stop on a dime. It’s going to have to go a certain way. But in order for that snowball, the internal has to be okay, we’re not going to go this way anymore, but what are we open to doing and changing? And then you have to look at different people. Some people change fast and some people slow, it just depends on what works with them.
Interesting. So it sounds like there’s a lot of different considerations, but one of the big things and something that comes up quite a bit in other episodes is this idea of acting out of fear and some people will say there’s a dichotomy, you’re either acting out of fear or you’re acting out of love, which seems to be like where empathy comes from. Do you believe we need to manage our fears better? Like fear is something we’re always going to have, it’s part of our evolution, it’s why we survived as a human species, but how do we manage our fears in a way that doesn’t reflect in a way that creates these behaviors, like micromanagement and other manners in which we sever these ties and ruin these relationships?
And, again, there’s not just one answer. Okay, so if you have fear that aids and you have fear that doesn’t aid in situations, you have a lot of different pieces to look at, of how it even got there in the first place so I think you have to look at how to reduce it in the future for people who are growing up now but then how do you make the changes that are happening right now. Those are two different things to look at. I think that’s a value thing because, yes, you need fear to survive as humans. If we were not afraid, we’d stand up to the bear and roar back.
Yeah.
And then get mauled. So we need a little bit of element of fear or to get burned, we need that fear because that’s part of the escape factor. We need to escape some things. And I think it depends on your values. Your values can come from your culture, it can come from your race, it can come from your gender. It can come from your household as a subculture within another culture. It can come from how many different cultures have you come in contact with to be even aware. It’s like in the field working with kids in the US, people say, “Oh, your child has to sleep in their crib by this age,” but you go to other countries and kids live in the parents’ bed for like years.
Yeah.
So if you go in and say your child needs to sleep in a bed and they’re only one, you better make sure that parents’ value is lined up with that and you don’t just go in and tell them what to do. But as a parent, they could be afraid to speak up to the professional. Now, that is a cultural thing. In some cultures, I have found that they’re afraid to speak up to a professional. And if you have the client afraid to speak up and the professional not even aware that that’s there, that that fear is there, they’re not going to accommodate and say, “What would you like?” I think fear depends on the context.
Definitely. And then one thing I’m wondering Is anyone out there listening that is interested in talking with you a little bit further, I know you do both organizational behavioral consulting as well as based on individual so if anyone’s like looking to talk to you, what would be the best way that someone would get a hold of you?
I have a website that’s coming, it’s hannahspero.org, but you can send an email there. You have my email, which is hsperollc@gmail.com. And I’m all over socials at spero_BC or hannahspero.
Hannahsperro, spero_BC. Hannah, I would like to thank you so much for joining us today on Action’s Antidotes, talking with everyone about kind of what we can do from a behavioral standpoint. We all have the reminder that the first wave is internal, as Gretchen Rubin puts it, the first thing you’ve got to do is change your own perception, your own attitudes, and then the outward reflection will change and then the people around you will change and everything else about your scenario will change. And I wish you and I wish everyone listening the best in all your behavioral assessments or anything that you’re planning to do going forward to get to that place in life where your life really is aligned with what it is that you do best, what it is that’s not going to burn you out, what’s going to fill up your cup, your vase, however, you want to put it, with the right stuff and get to the point where you’re just living your authentic truth.
Important Link:
- Hannah’s website – Coming Soon: hannahspero.org
- Email Address: hsperollc@gmail.com
- Socials: hannahspero; spero_BC
About Hannah Gfeller
As an entrepreneur, Hanna provides behavioral coaching, innovation and design consulting, and host a podcast connecting the science of human behavior to everyday life. She has evolved into these roles since starting in the field of behavior change in 2007 and becoming board-certified as a behavior analyst in 2015. As a person, she considers herself a nomadic, having lived around the world. She loves being a mom of two, being outdoors, going to the gym, sailing, connecting with people, and positively empowering those who cross my path in life.