Unni Turrettini - Combatting Loneliness with the Three C's (Part 1)
As we kick off Mental Health Awareness Month 2024, we welcome Unni Turrettini. As a consultant, author, and speaker, Unni helps us understand how loneliness (especially in leadership) can become overwhelming to the point that it stifles our effectiveness and sours our relationships. Middle managers are experiencing burnout which often includes a sense of loneliness. Great guidance will be found here.
Links and Resources from the Episode:
Click here to see and purchase Unni's books
Click here for Unni's Instagram
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Click here for Unni's LinkedIn page
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The Bosshole® Chronicles
“Unni Turrettini - Combatting Loneliness with the Three C’s - Part 1”
Original Publish Date: 5/7/2024
Host: Sara Best
Sara Best: Hi everybody, welcome back to the Bosshole Chronicles. This is Sara Best, your co-host. Actually, today I'm your host, as John Broer is away on assignment. He will be missed. Today is an important subject matter episode and it's the start of a very special four-part series for the month of May.
You may be aware that May is Mental Health Awareness Month. Did you know that we've been emphasizing and trying to de-stigmatize treatment for mental health since 1949? And I think it continues to create challenges for many of us? One in five of us are likely to experience some form of mental health challenge and actually I found some statistics rather concerning. If an issue is identified, you know it's generally about 11 years before a person may seek treatment. So one in five of us may experience a mental illness, but only half of us are reaching out and it's taking us a long time to find that support. So I was doing some research for our May series and I found some great information from the National Alliance on Mental Health, which is NAMI. Hopefully each of you are aware of your local chapter of NAMI. The whole idea of mental health awareness really is just to foster dialogue and cultivate some empathy and understanding and just encourage people to take an action. The NAMI campaign for this year is "Take the Moment, and I'm hoping that each of our four episodes for the month of May may shine a spotlight on an idea or an action that will help you take the moment. The moment is what begins your mental health journey and well-being journey.
So our first guest of our four-part series is Unni Turrettini. Unni is an author, speaker, trainer. I had occasion to listen to her at a global summit speaker trainer. She's a human connection expert who helps professionals and teams amplify human connection for engagement, well-being and productivity. Unni actually comes to us from Oslo, Norway. Unni has some very specific guidance for us, especially women leaders, to find ways to build connection. So let's dig in.
Announcer: The Bosshole Chronicles are brought to you by Real Good Ventures, a talent optimization firm helping organizations diagnose their most critical people and execution issues with world-class analytics. Make sure to check out all the resources in the show notes and be sure to follow us and share your feedback. Enjoy today's episode.
SB: Unni, welcome to the Bosshole Chronicles. It is such a blessing to have you here today.
Unni Turrettini: Sara, thank you so much. I've been looking so much forward to this conversation with you. Thank you for having me.
SB: Me too, and I go back to the first time I got to hear you speak, which was at a global summit. Your message about connection just kind of seared my soul, and I knew that our listeners would have a gift in hearing this directly from you today. So could we start Unni? Share with us and our listeners how you got to where you are today. Give us your story, yeah.
UT: It's a little bit. It kind of happened by coincidence, but you and I both know that nothing happens by coincidence, right? So I come from this very corporate. I was a corporate lawyer international. I worked in finance as well.
I'm Norwegian by nationality, but I lived abroad, outside of Norway most of my adult life in the United States, in Paris. I lived in Switzerland and now we moved back to Oslo again seven years ago. So I never thought I would be talking about these things. I saw myself perhaps being a partner at a firm one day, or at least staying in that world, and when my kids were small I took a break from working. And then we had this horrific incident in Norway where this young man, 32 year old young man, killed 77 people in one day, and I just knew that I had to understand how that could happen. Someone who looked like me, who grew up like me, who went to the same school system, who could have been my younger brother. So I decided to do some digging and research him, and then I started researching similar mass killers around the world, and I ended up writing a book about it.
Mass killers around the world and I ended up writing a book about it. And what I found in this process, Sara, was that all of these killers struggled with belonging. They didn't feel like they had a place in our society. They felt very lonely and I knew that feeling because that's how I had felt growing up not feeling that I could be myself really.
And that I didn't really fit into that little box that society wanted me to fit into, and that's also why I moved so much when I was younger to try and figure out like where is my home, when can I feel at home? And I never really found that place, that one place of belonging like a physical place, like all my friends had that, you know, with their families and and community. And so that's when I started, you know, really being interested in that whole loneliness, human connection, and so I started already then back in 2012, to, you know, study human connection, read about it, read about loneliness. And I started talking about loneliness and when I was out there promoting my first book about these lone wolf mass shooters and killers, I was talking about loneliness and I could feel that it resonated with people. But when I was hired to speak, funnily enough, nobody wanted me to talk about loneliness.
They told me you can talk about whatever you want, but just don't mention that word loneliness. We don't like to talk about that, and I knew that. Uh-oh, I'm onto something. There's something deeper here, but people weren't like companies and they weren't ready for it yet. Right, right, yes.
And then, in 2017, the US Surgeon General, Dr. Vivek Murthy, who's also US Surgeon General now, he started talking about the dangers of loneliness and also mentions the cost that it has to our society and to companies. So I know now that I'm definitely talking about something that is relevant and it wasn't something that you know. It was a little bit reluctant. I have to say that I started talking about this because it also means that I have to talk about my own loneliness and my own disconnection. Right, because that's how it started for me, how that you know how, how I got interested into that, and also to that humility. I think it takes at least for me to realize that, okay, so I'm studying these horrible mass shooters. Okay, so I'm studying these horrible mass shooters around the world, and to realize that we're not that different.
We actually have a lot of things in common. So I think that really hit home for me. And now you know, post-pandemic, I actually call loneliness our new current pandemic because so many of us I mean one in four globally is dealing with loneliness. In the United States it's one out of two, half the country.
SB: Wow, yeah, I guess I'm not surprised by that, but I'm saddened by it for sure. I can certainly see it. So you are full-time now speaking and sharing and cultivating the opposite of loneliness, which is connection, which is so powerful. Tell us more about that.
UT: Yeah. So when I first started with this whole loneliness and also trying to figure out my own loneliness, how could it be that that I seemingly has it all? Yes, I, I've had a, you know, a great career, international, something that people you know aspire to, right? I mean I worked really hard for that and already back then I was married, I had two small kids, healthy kids. I had a large network of people around the world and still I feel I felt lonely. I couldn't really figure out. How is it that I'm feeling lonely? If I'm feeling lonely, a lot of people has to be feeling lonely, right? So I just decided to, you know, and I went to see doctors, therapists, coaches, you know, even healers, I mean. I tried it all Like sure.
SB: Did you think that something was wrong with you? Like this was not okay.
UT: Yeah, I mean, I thought, I definitely thought something was wrong with me. And, yes, there is something wrong there is. It's not that there's. Yes, I was. There was something lacking in me because I felt so empty despite having it all. And when I realized really realized this was, was about a year and a half ago. I shared this short video, this reel, on Instagram about this exact thing, about feeling so dissatisfied and empty and lonely despite having it all, and I showed these like just little clips from my life, just video clips from, you know, the years when I was seemingly happily married, like all those happy pictures, right, and my kids and all that while I was talking about feeling so dissatisfied and empty.
And that reel got over a million views on social media and I received hundreds of messages from people all over the world telling me that they felt the same way, and I knew that I had to, you know, really talk about this. Yeah, and I also know that leaders at companies are dealing with this. The people that are the least likely, the people we think will never feel lonely, because the fact is that the people who deal with loneliness right now have people around them. We have friends, we have family, we have colleagues, we have people around us, and yet we feel lonely.
So that's what you know, and I went to see all these, like doctors and therapies and coaches, trying to figure out what is this? How can you help me? And nobody could help me, nobody could answer my questions, and so I ended up just trying to figure this stuff out on my own and developing my own method, which I'm now using to help leaders and also teams and companies feel more connected and I'm a big fan of simple.
SB: I need it to be simple. I think what you discovered about yourself and many others this loneliness, this sense of disconnection, this isolation, the emptiness I think that's such a powerful word, but I know people who are listening can resonate with that. What you discovered about the fix for that, or a pathway through that and potentially out of that, is simple and so I would love for you to share. I think you call it the three C's. That's part of what you promote. Will you tell us about the three C's?
UT: Yeah, absolutely, I'm happy to. It has to be simple, it has to be I found it has to be practical. Yes, you know, I like to lead people with tools that they can start using immediately. You know, then I feel that I've done my job. At least, you know that people can start doing one thing in their life that will help feel more connected. So I call them the three C's, and they are connection, confidence and contribution. So I'll start with connection, because I think that's the. You know, that's what we think of when we think of connection. Right, but connection there's. There's two sides to connection. There's the connection that we have with other people, but then there's a connection that we have with ourselves, and I always say that if you are disconnected from your own self, you cannot create connection with other people, at least not in a fulfilling way. So that's where we need to start and think about this.
Sara, we are coming out of this pandemic and people are still in fear. There's so many things to feel fearful about now, like all these wars going on, the economy, inflation. A lot of people are struggling and we're fearful. I was speaking to someone and a friend of mine in LA just last week and we were talking about that and she's a little older than us and she was talking about that. This was the first time that she felt since the Cold War that she was worried about the future. She was worried about where is this going to end, the polarity, everything that we're going through. So we have a lot of fear.
What research shows us is that most people live in survival mode, which is fight or flight, yes, 70% of the time. That's a lot of survival mode. And what happens? What most people don't know about we know that survival mode. It gets triggered when we feel unsafe, when we feel threatened.
Right, and what happens is that when we go into survival mode, the chemicals, these hormones, are being triggered, they're flushed into our bodies, are being triggered, they're flushed into our bodies, stress chemicals and blood sugar is increased, our heart rate, our blood pressure, all to prepare us for either running away from an enemy, fighting it, or freezing. We've spoken a lot about in recent couple of years few years about what happens when we are actually not in physical danger, but these chemicals are still in our bodies and they're not being flushed out because we're not using them. So then we start, they start tearing us down, they start eating us up from the inside. So we become sick, we feel depressed, we get tired, because it's really exhausting to be in fight or flight over a long period of time. We were never meant to be running from an enemy every minute of the day.
SB: You know right, that's what modern life often feels like, if we can pause there for a minute. I think many people are unaware of the toxic influence these chemicals, the ones that happen during fight or flight. And how about the ones that are sent to calm the storm and to help create that stability and that wholeness back in our body, like cortisol? Those are the things that are annihilating our immune systems, creating all kinds of weird issues and diagnoses adrenal fatigue these are real medical diagnoses now that are a result of this constant state of survival mode so powerful.
UT: And we know that. What happens then is that we go out of balance. And when we're imbalanced, that's when our bodies, our minds, our brain is working on overtime to keep us healthy and can't overtime. Right, so we're in balance. But what we don't talk about as much is the other side of survival mode. Because when we're in survival mode we become suspicious of other people. We see potential threats all around us, we get tunnel vision, we lose trust, we try to control every outcome. We become these control freaks, right, and what happens is that in survival mode, part of the brain shuts off, so we no longer have access to the front, low part of our brain, which is the CEO.
So it's really hard to make long-term decisions, it's really hard to think, to take a step back and see perspective. You lose that side of you. That also makes us very tired when we try to make decisions, as we have to, right in our work, in our companies, and we really can't because we're in that survival mode. And also, survival mode is not a time to connect, it's not a time to collaborate. Mode is not a time to connect, it's not a time to collaborate, it's not a time to open our hearts and to see the and to understand the other person's perspective, which is why we're seeing this polarity in our society too, not only in companies, but in society in general, because we are no longer able to stay in relationship with people who do not agree with us.
Right, it's so sad, but I think many people don't know that it's actually survival mode that makes this so difficult. So the number one thing that I work on with people and teams is to teach them tools to deactivate survival mode so that they can connect with themselves. And this is something that I teach this to leaders as well, because they need to help their people deactivate survival mode. And it's not a one and done, because fear is there and our society new cycle everything is there to make us fearful. We have to deactivate it on a daily basis.
SB: It's a daily practice and I'm glad you mentioned that I personally have doubled down on a daily basis. It's a daily practice and I'm glad you mentioned that I personally have doubled down on a daily practice. My personality and my nature is such that I don't necessarily stick with things for very long, but wow, having done this consistently, say since January of 2024, I feel like a totally different person today, inside and out. I just wonder, Unni, if you could share with our listeners what are some examples of what we could include in a daily practice.
UT: I'll share mine, but I would love to hear yours as well, because I think everyone has to find what works for them, right? So I can give tools, but I'd love to hear your tools as well. So for me, what works is that I get up a little earlier in the morning and then I do a little bit of meditation. Sometimes I do longer meditations too, but I try to do a little bit and I sit down and I just breathe, breathing deeply, not only with the nose but also with the mouth. So I like to breathe in with my nose and then out through the mouth, because what happens when we do that is that we come back to the present moment, and when we're in the present moment, you cannot worry about the future and you cannot ruminate the past, right?
So, you know, coming back to that present moment and just sitting there, closing my eyes and just breathing, and sometimes I need to tell myself. I put one hand on my heart and I just tell myself that you know you're safe, you're okay, you know you're, you're safe, you're okay, I, you know. I repeat this like you're, you're, I can also, sometimes I repeat that I'm loved, I'm safe, I'm okay, you know. Just telling myself, telling my system, that it's okay like you're good, you're not, nobody's gonna attack you right now, it's all good like you're not dying. Right, because our, our prehistoric brain actually believes that we're dying so we have to reassure it.
So I like meditating. I also like to journal, and I journal not by writing, typing on my computer or my phone. I journal by actually having a book and I write in that book every single day and I like to write down in my journal. I'd like to write down how do I want to feel today, how do I want to think today, how do I want to behave, and what I do is I. This is also a practice and it's not about manifesting, really, but it's about rewriting your story and I'd like to see myself the way I want to see myself, maybe five years from now.
Where am I? What am I doing? What have I accomplished? Who do I spend time with? You know how, how do I feel like? And I and I see my, and I really feel those happy feelings, the excitement, the, you know, feeling grateful, all those like nice feelings, feeling confident, feeling successful, feeling all these things Right. And then I, from that place, I decide how I want, how I want to feel, think and behave today, and I just find that that really sets me up for success in a way.
And whenever during the day, I forget because I do all the time I remind myself, I bring myself back to that point, and I know this point because I've written it down. It's in my journal, right, and it can be different, for, like, it's slightly different every day, but I write it down every day to remind me. It becomes this like, oh, oh, that's how I want to feel, and then I give myself a minute to really feel those feelings, because we can't change unless our emotions are with us. Right, we have to get it's not enough to do the mindfulness in our minds, we actually have to get our body, and the emotions are stored in our bodies. We have to get the body with us because it's in the body that that's our subconscious brain, if you will Sure.
SB: Yeah, so good. I would offer that my morning practice includes movement and I think I've tried a lot of different things, but I've settled on this like 20, 20, 20, or it might be like 30, 30, 30, depending on the day and what I have to do in the morning, but 20 minutes of pretty rigorous exercise, 20 minutes of reading, being filled up with the things that will guide me throughout the day the positive thoughts. I always do a page in this book called the Daily Stoic. I like to follow the wisdom of the Stoics, but there are also some other spiritual books that are just there every day, so I read those in. And then the last 20 is kind of a combination of journaling, writing down, which I have avoided like the plague my entire life, like, oh, I could journal, and then I'll do it for three days and not for another six months. So the journaling has become key to synthesizing and kind of fully breathing in what I'm reading and what wisdom and guidance I'm being provided, and I trust in that guidance. And then the quiet time that is included in there.
Some people call it meditation. I sometimes do guided meditation or I use my Calm app or I'll sit completely in silence and it's amazing how much more comfortable I am in that quiet today than I was even five or six months ago. The quiet brings a connection, a connection to my core, and I believe God is at my core. I just want to recenter there. So for me it's very similar kind of idea, but the end result is a peacefulness that you're already experiencing and living into, and I love what you said, uni.
These are the feelings. These are the things I want to have or experience today. Well, I already am and I'm in those feelings. I feel those feelings and therefore they're much more likely to be sustained. I mean, don't get me wrong, it could be 10 minutes later. I have a thing happen or I have a reaction to something. You know, I have a thing happen or I have a reaction to something, but over time, the pathways that are created in the brain, they're new pathways of peacefulness and it's not the default crazy fight or flight response. Every time it's something very different, but I think that only happens from a consistent practice.
UT: Yeah, I love that and what you say about the newer pathways being formed. You know new, new, newer pathways being formed so important, and something that Joe Dispenza talks about a lot and I and I use his meditations for myself and it's just really powerful the way he talks about and other people too. There are other people who talk about this, of course, but it's never too late to change. We can always change who we are and how we react, and actually it's possible to completely change and be a different person if we want to. Right and by rehearsing these new practices, we can become another person, and it's even proven now that we even change our biology by doing this. We change our gene expression, we change our biology by doing this. We change our gene expression, we change our biology by doing this and we create those new neural pathways and it's absolutely possible. People are doing it every day in the work and healing themselves. Even so, it's amazing, but I always you know, I have a lot of people, especially these high achievers and leaders and very successful people that come to me and they tell me I can't meditate. I can't like. My mind is so. I'm so like turned on in my brain. I cannot turn it off. Get, get to that silent place and that happens to me too.
And that's what I loved about what you said about movement, because meditation doesn't necessarily mean sitting down and being still. You can meditate taking a walk in nature, yes, or taking a swim, or doing a yoga flow practice or running. Actually, a lot of people love running for that reason, because when you run, you get into that flow and you have a lot of ideas. That's how I actually, when I'm creating new content or I'm creating a new talk, I walk a lot or run or I train, because that's when I get my like oh, this is a great idea. So I always have something to take a note on, or my phone or something. That's a really powerful meditation actually. So I don't want to discourage anyone that. You know that if sitting down and being still for 20 minutes is really hard for you, try walking instead Take a walk.
SB: Yeah, I love that guidance, and this connection to self then makes it more possible to have connection to others, which is the second part of connection that you talked about.
UT: Share with us about that? Yeah, so because, exactly because, when we are disconnected from our own selves, because we're in survival mode, we cannot have fulfilling connection with other people, because we're the only thing that is important to our prehistoric brain is to stay safe. So all those other parts of the brain where connection is possible are not available to us. So we have to create connection and to release other types of hormones that are bonding. You know the bonding between people. What's that hormone? One of those hormones that is so famous.
Now everybody talks about oxytocin. Oh sure, yeah, but it's oxytocin. That's one of those chemicals that create bonds. You know connection with other people? You know we call it like the love hormone, but that's actually a little bit inaccurate. It's really like creating bonds and feelings of connection really with others. So we want to deactivate survival mode first, and then we can connect with others, and then it's actually quite easy to create connection with other people.
When I talk about connection with others, it's really about creating relational energy, and relational energy is really just the energy that is created in all of our social interactions and we want to have as much of it as possible. Sure, and to sort of understand what it is is easier to understand what it isn't. I think we've all been to, you know, been at a dinner party or spend time with someone and then come home and you feel completely drained. Yes, you feel like like that just gave you nothing. And you go to bed and you're just like exhausted. You know like, and you ask yourself, why am I doing this? But you sort of feel that you can't even get out of it.
That's negative relational energy. So positive relational energy is then. The opposite is when you feel energized, you feel recharge your batteries. Basically, and that is valid for introverts and extroverts, it doesn't really matter, we all need relational energy. It's not that introverts need need less relational energy. Right, and this is some you know some misunderstanding about the whole sort of introverts, extroverts. Introverts tend to fill up their cup more easily than extroverts, so they need less contact with others in order to fill their cup.
SB: That makes sense. That makes sense. I was wondering about you know what about the CEO who's very strategic, very private and analytical, moves very fast and is very focused on efficiencies and correctness and doing things perfectly? We meet a lot of people like that, that they might believe that the people part, or the relational energy is inconsequential to the results. In fact, some of what they do is what got them promoted to that highest level. But at the highest level is where the relational energy is least present. What would you say to that guy or gal?
UT: Which is why so many of our leaders feel lonely. Sure, there was a recent study here in Norway where one of the three issues most important issues that leadership, like top leadership, deal with is loneliness, and that was so shocking to a lot of people. But I knew that it isn't because we're not prioritizing relational energy right and relational energy and I think what the resistance that we have to it is, that we think that relationships takes hard work, takes a lot of effort, takes a lot of energy right.
SB: But it really doesn't.
UT: Maybe I can just share this like short story about that, that we can understand relational energy a little easier. Yeah, and this is like years ago when I was working at a bank in Geneva and I was pretty new at this particular job and my boss sent me to this big finance conference in Moscow and I didn't know anyone and the only other woman there was Madeline Albright. I couldn't really hang out with her, right. So I felt, you know, I felt out of place, I felt I felt a bit lonely, I felt that, you know, I wasn't as competent as as everyone else you know, the sort of these big shots from New York and all that. And one morning I'm in the elevator going down to the hotel lobby when this man enters and he looks at me and he goes hey, Unni, how are you doing today? I said I'm good and, Sara, I had met this man briefly at one of the events earlier in the week and I hardly remembered him and I certainly didn't remember his name. But he recognized me and he knew my name and that just gave me such a boost. The rest of the conference I was on fire. I talked with everyone I met and I actually met a lot of new investors to our fund. I didn't mean to, but that's what happened.
And that's the power of relational energy. It takes so little, and I think that if we can just treat everyone that we meet during our day as if they were the most important person in the world, Give them our full attention, undivided attention, for just a few seconds, you know, be present. That's actually something that people will tell stories about Bill Clinton that when you're in I mean, I've never met him in person, but apparently when you're in the same room, when you're speaking with him, he has that he's so charismatic. And what is that charisma? It's really about making you feel important, Like you are the most important, but like no one else matters for those 20 seconds that it lasts, but that leaves you with this incredible feeling, and that's what relational energy does.
It sparks this chain of reactions that is so important to us. First of all, it makes us feel really good, and the second reaction is that we become increasingly focused, get more clarity and increased concentration, and that makes us more productive. Absolutely that's what we want and that's what employers want. We want people who feel like that. So relational energy is really about think of it this way. I mean today, with our phones. We're constantly on our phones, on our screens, and we are distracted so easily. Giving someone undivided attention for just a few seconds. What a gift, what a gift that is.
Sara Best
Host
32:55
And, Unni, do you believe that really all that's required is to maybe take a breath and bring yourself to that present moment and to that person? Is it that simple that we can switch channels, so to speak, and just come to the here and now?
UT: That we could switch channels, so to speak, and just come to the here and now. It's really that simple, but it also requires you not to be in survival mode yeah. Because you can't make someone feel like that if you are in survival mode. No, no.
SB: Right, yes, I think it was Elon Musk who said no one can make a good decision when they're being chased by a tiger. Figuratively, that's exactly what the body is responding to. So that's a powerful point. All right, so we have another. We actually have two more C's. Right, absolutely two more C's, and I sense I already know this is going to be two parts. So let's make sure that we cover these last two C's and, Unni, I want to do part two of this so that we can cover the hope that you have for people, literally and figuratively, the hope also what you've discovered most recently in your research that will be coming up in our next episode. But to kind of bring us into the home stretch, tell us about the other two C's.
UT: Okay. So the first C is then connection, which is connection to self and connection to others. Yes, second C is confidence. Some people ask me why is my confidence relevant to how we connect? Well, confidence is everything, because when people say they're lonely, what they're really saying is I don't believe I'm worthy of love and connection.
SB: Oh my gosh, will you say that one more time please? Yeah, that's so huge.
UT: When people say they're lonely, what they're really saying is I don't believe I'm worthy of love and connection.
SB: I want to stop for a minute and say man, I hope everybody is breathing that in, because that would not occur to many, many people. They just have never ventured into that forest at all. Wow, that's huge. Okay, yeah.
UT: And so when we say that we have a loneliness epidemic, or pandemic as I call it, what we're really having is a pandemic of unworthiness. So many people I think most people I have still to this day, Sara and I've talked to a lot of leaders and interviewed a lot of leaders I've still, to this day, to find a person who does not struggle with self-worth, believe you have more opportunities presented to them, they are more liked, they have more connections. Everything is easier when you are self-confident. And I'm not talking about in a narcissistic, cocky way.
I'm talking about the knowing who you are, and knowing that you are worthy of love and connection. Knowing that I have something to contribute. I bring something to the table. Knowing that that you are here for a reason, you are working at this company for a reason. You are exactly where you are for a reason and you are important. Knowing that about ourselves is key. I often tell people that I don't care who you are. You can be the most successful person in the world, but we all need to build confidence, because what we're seeing as a compensation for lack of confidence is an increasing narcissism. People think that narcissists love themselves too much. That's actually not the case. Think that narcissists love themselves too much. That's actually not the case. Narcissists hate themselves, which is why they have to compensate by like bring it all, like all the attention on me, because they think that's going to fill up their empty cup. It's not. It will never be enough.
SB: Sure, I'm sure that's helpful for a lot of people to hear. I've been hearing the word narcissist a lot lately.
UT: Everyone's talking about narcissism. Most people that we call narcissists or like on social media that people call narcissists or in the news, are actually not narcissists. They're actually disconnected from themselves and they're feeling unworthy and they don't know what to do about it. They overcompensate by being over-focused on themselves because they are so disconnected and feeling so unworthy. So it's really just really sad and there is hope for them, because, I mean, narcissism in a clinical term is more complicated, I believe, to get out of. I mean, I'm not a psychologist so don't quote me on this, but that's what my understanding is that that's something a little different, it's hard to get out of, but the narcissism that we have a lot, that we see a lot in leadership and in a lot of people today, is something that if you were to be able to deactivate your survival mode and connect with yourself and build that sense of self, sure we wouldn't have that problem.
SB: Wow, I believe that that makes sense. Yeah, right.
UT: And so confidence. The thing is, you know I can talk about confidence, we can all talk about confidence all day long, but the only way really to build confidence is to start doing, is to take those risks, and you know you want to get to a certain place. You have to start taking steps to get there, even if it's uncomfortable, and you only build confidence if it's uncomfortable, if it's something new, if it's something that you haven't done before. That's when you really build that muscle of confidence. But here's the thing that a lot of people don't talk about, and that is that it's really hard to take those steps if you don't trust yourself. So self-confidence and trust in oneself are linked. You cannot, you know, you cannot take them apart.
I remember this, this also long time ago, when I was I was a student, I had just finished the New York bar exam and I was back in Paris where I lived at the time. I needed a job. I have massive student loans and I was desperate for a job. And out of the blue, this Norwegian girlfriend calls me up. She's also living in Paris and she tells me that she started a company with her partner who was a lot older than us, and they want me to come work for them as legal counsel. And so we meet up and I talk with her partner and although he says all the right things and he's clearly intelligent and has lots of experience, I can feel something is off. And yet I take the job anyway, because while I did a job, and like my, my whole, like everyone, was telling me you need to take that job. It's just too good to pass.
And then I discovered, you know, a few months into it, that the whole thing is a scam. And now, because I'm legal counsel and I've signed some documents that I shouldn't have signed, I'm implicated in criminal activity. Oh boy yeah. And I have no other choice but to go to the French authorities and blow the whistle. This is 18 years ago and I'm still in lawsuits to this day because of this, right. So the lesson that I take from this is that when we don't listen to our inner knowing, when we disregard our inner knowing and listen more to the voices out there than to our inner voice, we betray ourselves and we lose confidence.
SB: That's right. Yeah, ooh-wee, that's a powerful story.
UT: Yeah. So to build confidence and to trust ourselves, we have to get really still and we have to practice that muscle of listening to ourselves, because a lot of people, well, how do I listen to myself, how do I, how do I know which voice is mine and which voice is someone else's, you know? Or in societies and expectations, and that we can only feel in our body. Right, okay, only feel it. Is it a yes, is it a no? We can only feel it in our body, and the way that I feel it now this might be different for other people the way I feel it is, if it's a yes, then it's like a lightness. I feel light. I feel I can sometimes feel colors like light, colors like yellow, pink, and if it's a no, then I feel this heaviness in my body.
But that has taken me a while, Sara, to develop this, you know, sense of what is right and what is my inner knowing, sure. So I recommend start with easy things like do I want to go to that party tonight and have a drink and, you know, maybe have some fun and meet some people. Or do I want to wake up tomorrow morning feeling refreshed and, you know, getting to do what I actually need to do, like make those decisions easy and just feel what feels right in the moment, sure, and then respect it. Yes, when you feel it like, go for that, don't betray yourself.
SB: Well, and I think this is such an important message for many, many people, because the domestication we've all received would say oh, you can't back out once you said yes, it's not a very nice thing to do for that person who's having this party, or you insert any other millions of ideas and thoughts that are stuck in our brain that are not true, and then we succumb to oh, I wouldn't want to let that person down or I wouldn't want to look bad, and so the betrayal is deep and easy.
UT: It's easy to go there, absolutely. I was raised to be a good girl, right, right thing by everyone and all that, so it took it. That was a long, deep programming, but it is possible. And what I say to myself now every single day and I tell this to my client as well is that your job is to disappoint as many people as it takes in order not to betray yourself.
SB: Oh, that's a good one.
UT: Okay, will you say that one more time, so we can hear it one more time, in order to build self-trust and self-confidence, we have to disappoint as many people as it takes in order not to betray ourselves.
SB: Got it. I'm definitely writing that one down.
UT: And it's not easy, right, it's simple. It's not necessarily easy to do. That's why, you know, also, we have to go easy on ourselves, right, become the observer of okay now. Okay, I betrayed myself there. I forgive myself. Yes, I'll do better next time. Right, love, that it's just like observing when it's happening, because most of the time right now, for a lot of people, they don't even notice when it's happening. So we have to become aware of it.
SB: First, as you've outlined these steps getting out of survival mode is the first step, and finding connection to self, drawing from relational energy that you then develop connection with others. And then it's about creating that confidence in yourself by saying yes to yourself, by trusting that intuition. This is a great flow, okay, so bring us home with the final C.
UT: Okay, so the final C is contribution, and contribution is one of our basic human needs, because giving of ourselves makes us feel important, makes us feel that we matter, and this is somewhat undervalued in a society where our focus is on individual success, right, and that I have to get to this point. But really, success is when you have a purpose that is bigger than yourself, when you can make this world, whatever part of that world, a little better, because the beautiful thing about that is that when you do that, you are also more successful. I do not know any successful people who do not give back or have a way of making people feel good, so I think that's it's so important. So I don't know if you wanted to talk about this now or not, but I think it's important to mention that contribution doesn't have to take a lot of time, it doesn't have to take a lot of energy, right, and I think that the easiest way to do that is just to have as a daily practice in a way.
Again back to the daily practice of doing something nice, giving a helping hand to someone every single day. I call this hope. It's not me who called it that, I just borrow that from I can't remember who right now, but help one person every day. Oh, I love this, right, it's so simple. It can be so simple as you. You listen to a podcast like this one and you think it's good and you go and rate it and you write a short review, you send it to someone, you share it, you share someone's posts on social media. You figure out a way that someone we all need help no one is above needing something, right, very true, so we can be creative in that way too. And the beauty about that is that it comes back to. It goes back to the connection piece of creating relational energy, because when you help someone out, when you do something nice for someone else, you create that beautiful relational energy between you and the other person. And relational energy it's just as important for the giver as the receiver right.
SB: Yes, I'm guessing there are people listening who would say, well, I really don't have time to give back, I'm busy doing all these things. And so you've offered just very simple sharing a link in a text message, sending something to somebody. Very simple, and I think about it even more expansively. You don't have to be on a board necessarily, but some people would like that and maybe they're afraid to do that because they don't think they could offer enough. But we have no idea what becomes available when we open up our heart to the opportunity and generally the opportunity finds you. Someone will ask you for me.
I always have to like I know I bump up against this wall that says, oh, I don't think I could do that, for whatever reason, I'm too busy, I don't want to give up my freedom, all kinds of other things, but I know what that is now and I just kind of walk right through it and say what is the opportunity and what's been placed in my pathway for me to learn or for me to contribute? So there's a spectrum and it doesn't have to take hours and every day or weeks and months, but the benefit is for you, yeah.
UT: Also, Sara, you never know. You know, things come around and things happen in mysterious ways, right, so, you never know how this is going to come back to you. Being giving, being loving, having that open heart and helping people in general, having that attitude always comes back to us. Yeah, maybe not from the same people, probably not from the same people, it doesn't really matter, but it always comes back to us and that I believe the most generous people are those who also receive most.
SB: That's right. Yeah, yeah, gosh Unni, I could listen to you all day. I love the simplistic yet powerful tools you offer. I love your thinking about this. I definitely want to continue our conversation. So, just so our listeners know, for today, though, in this episode, in the show notes, we will include a link to that Instagram reel you talked about, the one that kind of started you down this path and brought you a million followers in a short order of time. I'll also place in a link to your book, the Mystery of the Lone Wolf Killer, which I think you've referenced early on in our conversation. It's an Amazon bestseller and I think it's a worthy read, and then a link to how to find you, because you are available to speak, to work with teams, to work with leaders and to be more involved in a more intimate conversation with an organization. So we'll make sure we do that, and for now, I want to say thank you and we'll see you next time on our next episode Unni.
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