Joshua Spodek: Thriving One Step After Huge Anxiety

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Full Transcription Of Joshua Spodek Interview

Intro [0:00]
When we’re young, we have an amazing positive outlook about how great life is going to be. But somewhere along the line we forget to dream and end up settling. Join Up Dots features amazing people who refuse to give up and chose to go after their dreams. This is your blueprint for greatness. So here’s your host live from the back of his garden in the UK. David Ralph.

David Ralph [0:26]
Yes, hello there everybody. Welcome to Join Up Dots Episode 271. This is a special show for me because this is a guest who is a man I’ve wanted to have on the show since the beginning even before I created the show, I’d sent out an email to this chap saying would you come on the show and the reason is, I read the words on his personal blog, and for yet that is what I want the show to be about. He says, I do what I love in life and I do my best to cut out what I don’t loving what you do means you will do more than if you don’t see Simple. So I’ve accomplished a few things to high levels whilst enjoying the process. I’ve also made my life easy and fun. And I think anyone can in fact, I think making life easy and fun is easy and fun. So love what you do while accomplishing more than you thought you could to. And it certainly seems that he is a man of his word, but unusually certainly in my experience the education which has led him to be a professor at NYU, holder of five Ivy League degrees, including a PhD in astrophysics and an MBA both from Columbia University, where he studied under a Nobel laureate, and also helping to build an X ray observational satellite orbiting the Earth as part of a multi billion dollar decade plus mission led by the European Space Agency with NASA. To name a few doesn’t normally lead to having the word fun as a former runner of life, but this man is different. He challenges himself to be the best that he can be. Even if he sometimes bites off a bit too much like the time we decided with a friend to swim across the Hudson River in New York and family experience some What tough to say the least. Now people ask him, so what do you do? And he doesn’t really know how to answer them. But what he does know Is he has the best relationships and friendships over his life with the most amazing people we can imagine. And he’s learned to keep active and healthy the whole time. Well, that sounds pretty good to me. So without further ado, let’s bring onto the show to start Join Up Dots with the one and only Mr. Joshua Spodek. How are you, Joshua?

Joshua Spodek [2:26]
I’m great. How are you? And I have to say, Listen to that makes me feel great. It’s Thank you.

David Ralph [2:32]
Well, you you have got a thing about you, haven’t you? As I say, it’s a real weird thing for me. But this is Episode 271. And I remember sending out the email, even before the microphone had been turned on, there was no show. And I was saying to you, I don’t know if you remember the email. You probably don’t. But I was saying to you, I’m thinking of going seven days a week and you came back with all that seems a lot of work. And you’re absolutely right. It is a Lots of work. But here we are 271 shows in and you are you on the show you are Joshua baudette. professor, Dr and all the other things. So what is life like for you? Is it all education? Is it all fun? Where’s the balance?

Joshua Spodek [3:17]
You know, it’s funny because I look at both of those things. Learning and fun are two of my highest values, things that I like to do in life. And a lot of time it’s funny that a lot of times you have a there’s like a there’s a mix between things that are fun, often you don’t learn as much and things we learn often aren’t that much fun. Like we learned so much my failures, that can be fun, but you know, not so much but I, to me, I as long as I got one or both of those. As long as I’m one of those I feel like I’m doing pretty well. And my life is pretty much that way. These days. Actually, it’s I’ve just posted on my blog maybe a week ago, that I am now more how I put I feel more enthusiasm For the current project that I’m on since the since I felt since when I started my first company, which was in the 90s. And I just haven’t felt this excited in a long time. It’s it’s like it’s fantastic.

David Ralph [4:12]
It’s the way that life should be, isn’t it? excitement is one of those things but you almost feel is confined to say theme parks where you go, but it should be exciting every day we should be able to tailor our life to feel what you’re feeling. Do you do you think that’s the the wider sense of how we should be operating?

Joshua Spodek [4:32]
Well, I certainly prefer it this way. I look at it. Like a theme park. I look at us as it’s passing in that you get on the roller coaster. The roller coaster provides the thrill for you. I like it much more when you you can create it by choosing your environment and who you hang out with and things like that. So I think more important than the excitement is the skills to be able to create excitement or whatever you want in your life. Exciting this One of the things I like the most, I mean, sometimes I like to be calm sometimes I like to be fascinated sometimes I like to be in love and things like that.

David Ralph [5:08]
Well, you have covered literally all the emotions I was reading about you, obviously. And you talking about calmness you actually meditated for 10 days. That’s, that’s, well, any more calm than that you’re in a coma? Manya

Joshua Spodek [5:24]
twice 10 days. Yeah, it was, yeah, this is the past No, no talking, no reading or writing the gestures. They provide everything for you. I mean, you shop with loose fitting clothes, and some toiletries, you know, toothbrush, and then they basically give you instructions for how to meditate. And you just yeah, it’s like eight to 10 hours a day meditation. It was. It’s funny talking about it so early on this conversation because I don’t really don’t talk about it that much. I still have this thing that I look at as kind of a little odd. It’s not like a mainstream sort of thing. I mean, it’s become means more mainstream all the time. The first time I went, I didn’t want my friends to know that I was doing it because I thought was a little weird. And so when you go you put all your stuff in a locker, and at the end you get extra I’m being 10. So nine days of no talking and attempt to you can you get your phone back? So I checked my message. And on the first day I was gone. A friend who lives in New Jersey, I’m live in Manhattan, so she happened to be in Manhattan, she gives gives me a call. So the message is like, hey, Josh, I’m in town, want to get together for coffee? So naturally, no response from me. So the next day, I got a call from her. And it saying, That’s funny. Are you are you there? I haven’t heard back from you. I was hear back from you. And then the next day, it’s like, Are you mad at me? And the next day, you know, I talked to a couple of friends. No one’s heard from you. And the next day she’s like, I want your building in your dorm and let me into like look at your apartment. No one’s there by name by eight days eight. She’s like, almost calling the police like, Where’s Josh? So my attempt at keeping things secret were ended up getting All my friends completely freaked out about where I was. And so I had to be very public about it after that.

David Ralph [7:05]
But it is a key part to you, isn’t it that the seeking out of different experiences. So I wouldn’t think on something like that you would feel that you would need to keep it quiet from your friends, Surely your friends are used to you doing things on a slightly advanced form, but the rest of us? Well, you’re

Joshua Spodek [7:24]
looking at me from a certain period onward before that period. That was, I would say, it was more of the opposite. I was much more cerebral and much more. Not. I didn’t didn’t i didn’t learning things experientially didn’t make as much sense to me at the time. So that was early stages. And that actually was one of the things that accidentally propelled me to be more open about these things before that I wasn’t

David Ralph [7:47]
there. So what caused the change? Why are you now a different person? Why have you moved on a different path to the person we’re talking about? back then?

Joshua Spodek [7:56]
there’s a there’s a lot of things. The thing I normally talk about is going Business School, because I took classes and leadership there. And the classes were, you know, I realised that it wasn’t just knowledge, facts and rules, there was it’s fundamentally social, fundamentally emotional. And I think it’s fair to say that in those classes on the soft skills to put it calmly to myself, I had more to learn than most people. And it was a very humbling experience at the beginning. So that if I put, if I put my finger on one thing, it would do that. But the changes began early. I think it was really I think some of the biggest changes were when I left graduate school and I finished the PhD, but started a company and going on into the business world. Before I went, my idea of business was like, I just thought a big business like it was not a big business like Exxon Valdez tanker runs ashore destroys environment, no one’s bled and no one takes any blame. No one takes no responsibility and they’ll try to shirk it. But then when I started my company, and interacting with people and developing my dream, it was much more active and interactive. And, you know, at the time even, I learned a lot from the mistakes I made and the mistakes I made were like looking at people like not not looking at them as people and not realising that they have their hopes, their dreams, their emotions, the motivations of their own, so that going out and working with people as opposed to working in a laboratory. It changed a lot. And that led to business school that led to getting into understanding leadership and how leadership is taught and how all these social skills are taught.

David Ralph [9:38]
Have you always had the sort of entrepreneurial spirit or was back once again, another leap? Going from Little poetry?

Joshua Spodek [9:45]
Yeah, that was a big leap. When I was in graduate school. I was on a great experiment. It was, you know, I’ve gone into physics grad school because I had a passion for physics. I loved it. It was all I wanted to do. And when it switched from doing more classroom, work to doing Research. And during experiment, I found that what I got into it wasn’t really there anymore. And this is weird thing that happens to a lot of people with advanced science degrees and technical degrees is I feel like I can only do what my degree is for. So with maybe two or three years after my degree, I felt like I had only the either only three options, I could either continue and do continue to be professor, in which case, I would have to do something I had lost my passion for where I could go into industry, which would be probably like military industrial complex, which I don’t know if that’s the case, but that’s what I thought it would be. And then I could go to Wall Street, which is where almost everyone else go where most people go. And none of these options were really interesting to me and I felt really closed in I felt like I didn’t know what to do. I felt like hopeless and depressed. And it turned out that some friends of mine from undergrad from classes and classmates and teammates of mine from sports. They had independently decided that they wanted to start a company but didn’t know what to do. And they were just meeting for beers and seeing what would come of it. And then they came to me and they said, Hey, Josh, we want you to join us for some beers. We’re just talking about, if we can come up with an idea, you’re smart guy, and maybe maybe you’ll come up with a crazy idea. So I really had no idea what entrepreneurship meant. I didn’t know anything. I mean, I didn’t know how to balance anything like a balance sheet, or I didn’t know anything. But I came up with the idea that eventually became the first company. And one guy went to Boston to get married, but the other guy, we started the first company and I didn’t know what I was getting into. I just, I guess there were some entrepreneurial things because I knew that would help me to learn. And the business school is next door to the physics building on Columbia’s campus, so I would sneak out and audit some classes there to learn a little bit. So I took intro to venturing and marketing and things like that. And that taught me make a business plan, file a patent that like, things like that. So I think, you know, my working definition of entrepreneur is someone who acts without regard to the resources available. So if you think it can work, the mere lack of resources shouldn’t stop you if you can get over that hump. That’s not the only definition, but it’s the one I usually fall back on. And I think I did that. But I wouldn’t call myself entrepreneurial yet then it was too early. There’s too many things I haven’t done yet. Too many failures I hadn’t had. It’s fascinating

David Ralph [12:35]
to hear you talk being such a bright fella, but you are and being so driven through your education as you have been obviously to do so well. Many people would find it surprising that you can get to a crossroads and think Well, actually, I’ve done all this work towards it and I’m not sure I want to be this anymore. Did that surprise you yourself when you got to that point.

Joshua Spodek [13:01]
That’s an interesting question I hadn’t thought of I, you know, I didn’t go into it. But sometimes you read online, someone will say, is this degree worth it? Or is that degree worth it? And they’ll talk about the payoffs and the benefits and versus the costs. And I never thought about it that way. It was, it was a passion of mine, I didn’t doubt that I would be able to do something with it. And I certainly didn’t doubt that I wanted to follow in the footsteps of Newton and Galileo and Einstein and find many people like that. When I, when they came to me, I didn’t, I didn’t plan that it just worked out. hopelessness is, you know, it makes you open to other things. So that was a circumstance. I mean, in some ways, I got very lucky that they they approached me and they were that they had the gumption to act on the idea and try to make it happen. Yeah, there’s there’s a bit of luck there. That I’m the I’m speaking a little little bit of arms arms, because Because you making me think in a way that I hadn’t really thought about, like how lucky I was that things worked out that way. I mean, now I look back, having succeeded and a lot of things that that were difficult that followed from that stage. I like to look back and say that I’ve made a lot of choices deliberately, but I some things don’t work out. Quite so. They don’t fit such a perfect marriage. It

David Ralph [14:23]
doesn’t doesn’t education, like yours, help or hinder entrepreneurial ventures? I’ve been grappling with this for a while now. It seems to me that people that haven’t got much of an education, they almost aren’t constricted by the rules are set out. Did you find it was easier because of your education? Or do you think if you didn’t have the rule set out in front of you, you could have done it in a different way.

Joshua Spodek [14:48]
I don’t think it made much of a difference. I mean, if I’m talking to venture capitalists Sure, I’ll talk about the background that I have an MBA and a PhD as like credentials, but in terms of It doesn’t make. If you hire someone doesn’t make that person more enthusiastic to work for you, if you have a product and you’re trying to sell it, it doesn’t make the person like the product anymore. Ultimately, business. When I say business for me business is not just about dollars and cents, it’s about relationships where there’s give and take. And those relationships depend. No one’s like, I like this guy because he’s got credentials. It’s like you I mean, if you’re trying to sell a product, it’s like, this guy understands my needs. I feel like he’s credible about what he’s saying about his product. I think I’ll try it out or something like that. Ultimately. I don’t I don’t know. I mean, the the PhD it’s like certainly a big credential. Here’s what I say most to most people like. I certainly feel like I have a deeper appreciation for nature. And I think that fundamentally for me, physics is about and the study of nature is about finding beauty. And I think that I I listened to Richard Fineman, his descriptions of appreciation of nature. I think that I appreciate it in a deeper way than I could have had I not had that education. And I think that’s invaluable. I think the bigger thing, like the day to day value on it is that I can some people are insecure about will do this other person think I’m worthy or something like that. And a credential like that. It’s like you can’t take it away. It allows me to do things that other people, I can risk looking stupid and no one’s going to say that they’re stupid. And that gives me freedom to try things other people may not try.

David Ralph [16:32]
I think the key statement that you made there was hopelessness makes you more aware of opportunities. And I think it seems to be a trait in the Join Up Dots series of shows. But when people get to almost their lowest, that is when things start going for them because I start looking around and they’re more aware of what’s out there where previously they’d been on a path and almost didn’t want to lose what they got. So they they protected themselves and protected them in vironment do you do you see that as a sort of similar state where you work and personally in your own life?

Joshua Spodek [17:07]
Yeah, for sure. There’s something I’ve been wondering for a long time, probably wants to figure out if there’s an unnecessary correlation, or causation, that I think a lot of things for success. I mean, if you just want to go up the corporate ladder, you follow the rules and do what you’re supposed to do. If you want to succeed in something like entrepreneurship or in the arts or something like that. I feel like at some point, you have to let go of your safety net. I don’t know if you have to, but it seems like there’s a correlation between how much you get rid of your safety net and your potential to succeed. And yeah, there is something that if you have a lot invested in something and you might not feel free to risk letting it go. And so that might hamper people who have too much bought in but that’s that’s not a product of the education. That’s a product of their respective Not being able to let go of something. But that’s their choice. To me. I would say that’s the choice because they can also choose to risk it.

David Ralph [18:09]
Big problem No, isn’t it that risk that moment? I get loads of emails from my listeners. And they say, they’ve been listening to the shows, I’ve been listening to other shows, and they’re just not happy. And you start drilling down on why they’re not happy. And it takes you quite a while because more often than not, they’re not sure whether or not they’ve got the nice house. They’ve got the good job, they’ve got the wife, they’ve got everything that you would think makes success and what people strive for. But it’s just not enough. What is that a common trait now because I was reading something the other day, and especially in America, the suicide rate is now higher than the homicide rate. Were in the poorest countries on Earth. There’s hardly any suicide at all because they’re, they’re expected expectations are much lower, so they just deal with survival. When Nowadays, especially in the sort of the countries that we live in and yourself and myself, we are striving against what other people have attained, even though maybe that’s not our path. Do you? Do you see similarities in your own country in that?

Joshua Spodek [19:15]
Yeah, I mean, that’s where my clients come from is they you know, like, I’m successful, got a great, you know, there’s a strong message in society. At least two men, I think two women too, but I’m not a woman, but it’s to say, like, get a good job, get a good house, get a good car, everything will work out. And they leave out relationships and passions and, and people, I feel like we’re on our own to figure those things out. When you know where to look. There’s a lot of messages to help you. But I don’t feel like that’s the dominant message, the dominant message, you know, it’s much more like buy things that don’t make you happy. I don’t think that that’s, I don’t agree with that message, but it’s certainly out there. I think that when you know, how to bring about me, for me, I talked about how before, my life was a lot about knowledge, facts and rules. Now, it’s much more about relationships and emotions. And I find that leads to much greater success outwardly, but also much more happiness and much more emotional reward. And if you know how to create those things, create relationships, like create emotions that you like. It’s pretty easy and you don’t, the material stuff isn’t necessary. But I don’t think people learn that. And I don’t think there’s a whole lot of messages out there for how to figure that stuff out. Among so is it out there? I think it’s in. I mean, I know the United States better than most other places in the world. I think it’s probably the dominant thing in the United States is what you said is like people who are

Unknown Speaker [20:37]
what’s the word?

Joshua Spodek [20:39]
mean, like they’re on? They feel like this in disillusion that they followed the rules that they’re supposed to, and they did. They worked hard. And all they got to show for it is, you know, some stuff. And they’re like, isn’t it supposed to be something more? The thing is that in the people that I spend time with, that’s not the case, because I spend my spending my time with the people that enjoy spending time with in their will help each other to get more and more. I want to say cheap, I don’t just mean get stuff, I mean,

improve your life by whatever is important to you.

David Ralph [21:11]
Let’s play some words that really emphasise what we’re talking about now. And these were said by the actor Jim Carrey, last year, and so important, and I think it’s a message that really should be shared with the world. This is Jim Carrey.

Jim Carrey [21:23]
My father could have been a great comedian, but he didn’t believe that that was possible for him. And so he made a conservative choice. Instead, he got a safe job as an accountant. And when I was 12 years old, he was let go from that safe job. And our family had to do whatever we could to survive. I learned many great lessons from my father, not the least of which was that you can fail at what you don’t want. So you might as well take a chance on doing what you love.

David Ralph [21:50]
Is that the key message Joshua, should we take a chance and doing what we love?

Joshua Spodek [21:55]
This like my notes for like, completely resonates with the notes that I wrote for the For I don’t know if I should mention this, but like, you know, I was preparing for the Sermon on the mic. And I had a big choice in my life where I chose not to do something that I wanted to do. And it was one of the I don’t know that I was gonna say one of the biggest mistakes that made that I chose to do something I didn’t want to do. It’s not someone forced me into it. People give me advice, but I chose it. And the non safe thing I would have loved, I believe I would have loved and it may have led to a dead end. But if I didn’t, if I chose what I don’t like I’m at the I’m create the dead end for myself right here right now and I’m living through the dead end. I’m living in a dead end by my choice. That’s like, how much worse can you do for yourself and to choose to do something you don’t want to do. Now if there’s something you have to do, I don’t know you’re going to lose your apartment and you got to do whatever it takes to pay rent, something like that. Then I believe that if you really feel like you have to do it that’s saying that you value something in there’s something that you value so much that it overrides the other thing, in which case you can find joy in doing what you value. You might not like the work but at least you I find great joy is joy, the right word, something like joy in taking responsibility for what I feel I have to do. And you know, I, I learned a lot from, I guess Jim Carrey learned from his father, I learned from that mistake that I made of, I mean, the choice was to go into doing something physics that I didn’t really want to do. And it meant that at the end of the degree, doing something you don’t want to do makes you not like that thing, no matter how much you liked it before. It just makes the diploma a piece of paper instead of what it could be. That’s a terrible thing to do your own life. On the flip side, to discover what your values are, and to act on them. You know to Know thyself. Or, you know, the examined life is not worth living. If you examine your life and really find out what you want to do, then you can create a lot out of nothing. I mean, one of my great inspirations actually, not just me, like Viktor Frankl who I presume, I don’t know that people read Man’s Search for Meaning, but he was a psychologist to live in Germany when when the Nazis came through, he went through a series of extermination concentration camps, including Auschwitz, and he survived. And he wrote about how people were able still in what’s one of the worst environments humans have created for each other people still able to create meaningful in their lives. And one of the Why do I find that inspiring is that if he, if he, amidst material conditions, far worse, by any standards I’ve ever come across than anything I’ve ever been, if he can find meaning, then I can’t do i mean he doesn’t have anything I don’t have. He’s got the same emotional system and You know the interior of self as the same human being and so anytime that I look at things being really difficult I’m like well, someone in Auschwitz meeting maybe you can to

David Ralph [25:13]
teach you think though in in life that the word that you said dead end it could have led to a dead end I’m now on the point but I’m not sure that dead ends exist I would you know if I wanted to go down the road and it’s a dead end what would you do you would back up you would go a different direction but in your life you kind of think you’ve only got one way of going and it’s got to be the right way but I now think it doesn’t it you can change direction you can back up you can realise that it wasn’t quite right or it wasn’t quite what you wanted. And you can pivot you can turn so that should be a liberating for for the people out there should know that if they are working towards something. You don’t have to think that you got to do it in a straight line. It can be a squiggly curve.

Joshua Spodek [25:59]
Yeah, that’s Exactly why a minute a couple minutes ago, I stumbled at the word I described something that is making a mistake. And it’s only a mistake if you don’t learn from it. I mean, mistake failure dedenne these old terms that when me to me, and the people that I hang out with the word failures, usually, sometimes we will overplay it. It’s like a badge of honour, but it’s, you know, to me, it really means a learning experience. And these things happen, you don’t know what’s gonna, you know, a friend of mine said pretty well, if you knew what was going to happen every day of your life, you wouldn’t get out of bed in the morning. And life, you know, you know, you know what’s going to happen, the best things you learn off, the most important things you learn often come from the biggest mistakes. And, you know, a mistake that and these are labels that we put on them. If you don’t use that label, then it’s just an experience to learn from. And you know, all of our heroes tend to be people who make huge huge mistakes. You know, Michael Jordan, missed a lot of those game could have been gaming. Shafi may convey broodstock out and you know it’s it’s a skill, I believe to learn resilience to maintain or even increase your motivation for whatever goal you had when things didn’t work out as you planned,

David Ralph [27:12]
excites me. But when you’re saying that the thought of actually missing now, at my age, Herbalife excites me, I’m 44 years old. And I think for many, many years, I played the safe route. I played to my strengths, but no more. But now I can just see that just swinging, just swinging, swinging every now and again, you’re going to hit home run and you just don’t know what’s going to happen after bear. I was talking to a chap the other day Joshua. And it was fascinating. He said, the basically the whole theme of the show Join Up Dots is looking back over your life and pinpointing certain points but might have been successes or might have been failures. And he said for the last 15 years or so every two years. He assesses his last two years and he writes a timeline and he does a line across the page. He marks the things that were failures and things that work good all the way through. And then two years later, he does another one. But he has to go back and look at the one before. And he says more often than not, when he looks at the one before he realises that the failures were actually the stepping stones that have led him on to the next timeline as the success and he wouldn’t have got to where he was there without most failures. And I find that fascinating, fascinating point of view, but you can actually turn a failure into a success just by time.

Joshua Spodek [28:36]
Yeah, you know, there was a one of my clients was just talking about a huge lesson that I think is one of the great lessons to learn in life is that it’s not whether whatever happens to you, whether you like it or not, whether you call it good or bad. You can always use it to improve something. It’s always something you learn, I guess neutral with the whatever doesn’t kill me makes me stronger. I don’t Yeah, it’s something you have to learn them. I think anybody Learn maybe there’s some people if you hear that enough times it sinks in, but I think you just have to have a disaster. And then later look back and realise what you learn from it. Yeah, that safe route is just, it’s like it’s a disaster for improving your life. It’s it’s so easy to just follow what everyone tells you to do what I call blowing in the breeze. It’s just responsibility and accountability are so much more me to take responsibility for your own well being by whatever that means to us is so much more important. You know, a lot of people talk about, I haven’t found a passion. I haven’t found my dreams. As if, if you just turn over and have rocks, eventually you’ll find Oh, there’s my passion. I think it’s a way of letting people let themselves off the hook. Like they look at someone who achieved some passion and who achieved greatness and they say, well, they had a passion of course if I had a passion, I also would have achieved that unfortunately, what was me I haven’t found my passion, yet. But I don’t think that passion is something you find I think you can find things you like. But to make it a passionate to create it, you you, you can find things you like and they’re all candidates become passions, but only the things that you really devote energy and resources into, can be compassion. I think it’s maybe people fall in love at first sight, but I think you can, you can tell someone that you like, really quickly. But for that to turn into love, I think it has to be you have to share vulnerabilities and things like that, and put time and effort into and i think that i think the same thing happens with with projects. They’re not other people they don’t. They’re not living and breathing like people are although, as I said, I think some people would say that they you could say it in a sense that they are. But I think that it’s something that you create. I think it’s something that you have to put something into, I think exposing and sharing vulnerabilities and being willing to look down and to experience things that you don’t want experience value. Not sure what to say it. I think that’s an important element. And,

David Ralph [31:04]
yeah, I think he’s been tested really what you’re saying because as afternoon I was asked to write an article, and this is quite bizarre. And I wrote on the fact that stop looking for your passions, find something that you like doing, and do it until it becomes a passion. And exactly what you’re saying there is totally uncanny how this conversation is going back and forth. You wrote something down. I said it, you it’s blowing my mind, Joshua.

Joshua Spodek [31:34]
Well, I think that there are certain things that great things that people discover. I you know, I saw the scientific perspective, I think that we’re just talking about the human mind and things that how to improve our lives. I don’t think people are that different. So we’ve come to similar conclusions. It’s probably something that

that knows something that

I put it I mean, figured out something of a pattern that works. To make ourselves and our lives work better for us.

David Ralph [32:04]
So for the listeners out there, they’re in the queue because they’re on the trains, they’re on the underground and they’re going to work and they’re going to a job that they don’t like. What was it good starting point in your view, okay. It’s, it’s subjective, but what’s a good starting point to be able to change direction and find the thing that they they like that they can build into a passion?

Joshua Spodek [32:28]
Oh, man, that’s a good question. I wish I could say something that hasn’t already been said. When I work with people. It’s, you know, much more one on one. And people come to me because they, you know, they’ve read my blog or worked with someone that I’ve worked with or something like that. And they say, Look, they come to me, saying, here’s what I’ve tried. Nothing works. Maybe you can help me. And I think you have to start with that. I don’t like to give advice to people who haven’t asked me for it and even then, I don’t like to give it I you know, I I have to tell them, you know, if you want advice, I’ll give you advice. But it might not be something that you like to hear. I’m just going to tell you what I think, you know, I would want to hear if I were in your position, but giving advice to people who haven’t, you have to be open to it. And if they’re not open to it, I don’t know, you know, there’s a big I think people in that way, have a fixed view, not everybody, but a lot of them at least, about the ones that come to me. They’re a fixed view that like, this is the way it has to be. And there’s nothing I can do about it. And, you know, those people out there, they think they’re happy, but they’re not really happy. They’re just trudging along just like I am. And that absolute view of like, things are just that way. And sometimes sometimes people get very self righteous about it, you can give someone advice that they don’t want to hear it. They’re like, no, that’s not right. And then they convince you. I mean, they try to convince you why you should look at things the way they do. And that’s why you should be miserable, too. I’m like, Yeah, I lived that way for a long time, but you’re not convincing in anything. It’s, you know, it’s not about For me for a long time it was it was about right and wrong. And that’s what learning knowledge and rules was about. But now looking back, I felt like learning more rules and learning more facts was like a rat, learning more how the maze was set up, so, so he could finish the red, finish the maze faster and that but you’re still in rat race. And there’s a whole other world of, of getting to understand people and connecting with them and doing things, finding out what their passions are and sharing with them what your passions are. Now, sometimes people gonna laugh at you because they think it’s a stupid idea that you’re pursuing. But there’s another 7 billion people out there and you don’t have time to be all of them. So just spend the time with the ones that you want to work with and who are helping you do the things you want to do, and that you can help them back. And then you’re just doing joyful things that you’re helping each other. It’s just you becoming better and better people by whatever you in that Person work on. I don’t know how to wake. I don’t know how to wake someone up to that if they are not already interested in it. Because I’ve gotten such pushback, and it’s, I don’t know what to say to someone like that I just my choices, Let them wait for them to come to me because there’s a lot of people. I couldn’t have gone through myself back then. I don’t think I don’t know. I’ve been trying to think about that.

David Ralph [35:25]
There’s, there’s an awareness that is required isn’t there that I think so many people and, and you said the rat race and it’s absolutely true. They get up in the morning, the alarm goes off, they shower, they brush their teeth, they go off to work, they they’re in a rut, they’re in a routine constantly. And then they come back and they watch Telly and then they go to bed and they get up and they do it again for five days a week. And when it gets to Sunday afternoon, and they think Oh, God, I gotta be at work again. Oh, here we go again, and they’re not giving themselves a chance to be aware and see that there are other ways of operating and it’s incredibly difficult to find your passion Find the thing that you’d like, find the thing that you just fancy doing, if you aren’t giving yourself a chance for reflection. And I imagine when you did that meditation and we talked about at the beginning, that there must have been a lot of times when you were just thinking stuff I can’t imagine it was just a blank mind. And that is like the perfect opportunity that people don’t often get that that period of quiet disconnection, reflection and all those moments that would have passed through your mind and probably pointed you in a good direction of how to go when you came out. To do what I’m saying?

Joshua Spodek [36:35]
Yeah, you definitely learn a lot of things. Yeah, you I mean, you get a lot of your priorities straightened out. And one of the things that I have a distinct memory of one time, between meditations you walk around slowly, and it’s a kind of nice nature you place at the one near New York City. And they’re all over the world, these places that hosts these meditation retreats, and I remember walking along and it like hit me like a tonne of bricks. It was like Most of life is bullshit. of like, yeah, I gotta do my taxes. Yeah, I gotta pay my bills. Like, that’s not the value. That’s not work. Like, you have to do those things, but you can do them and not hang not like hang your hat on that. Like, I don’t really enjoy washing dishes, but I don’t let it get me down that that was like the big realisation is that you don’t have to focus on those things. And then when you look at the other things and realise what you enjoy and what you like, you can put the focus on those and gradually, the more you focus on them, the more they pick up in your life. That was that was my experience. There’s another thing that happens in meditation. That’s it’s awareness and it’s awareness of how some things about how your mind works. Your mind, you know, you have this inner monologue, it’s running all the time. At least when you’re awake. I’ve never been able to stop it that it tends toward judgement. And well, it tends to us a lot of things and a lot of times it gets stuck on some song and I think you had all that But judging others, judging yourself feeling bad. There’s a few stable states, like if you ever think of like some argument, you get stuck in an argument with someone else for hours, just running through your head, like, you know, maybe it’s like with your parents from when you were 10 years old, has nothing to do with what you’re doing at the time, but it drags you down. And when you learn how that part of the mind works, you can steer it and you can use it to create the you know, bring forward in your mind, the beliefs and the mental models that are more helpful for you in the moment. Not to say that the other thing isn’t important in some of the context. But I don’t need to run through an argument that I had with my parents when I was 10 when I’m trying to get some project done. And the more people dwell on those things, the more that they get stuck in them that it’s like people get stuck in it with and if you don’t have the realisation that the awareness of how your mind works, I don’t have this doesn’t sound too Whoo. But it becomes very clear when you get it that you can choose what beliefs you want to filter the world around you through When you do that, when you make the world and the world may not change, I think that the world stays the same, but the way that you perceive it and react to it changes a lot, and then you react to it and react back to you. So you set the tone for how you how your social world comes to be. Yeah,

David Ralph [39:16]
I agree with that. Totally. And I think that must have been one of your big dots on your Join Up Dots timeline, that suddenly awareness, but you can focus in on the things that you want to do and let the other things float somehow. I think that’s a key part, isn’t it? You changed your perspective from the need to do to want to do and once you do that, you’re going into the areas of playing to your strengths, surely.

Joshua Spodek [39:46]
Yeah, I certainly go a lot more for the things that I like. I’ll tell you one big.is that it was awesome business school. I did the class play called Follies. And it was an accident that I did. I was kind of talking to a friend about the sky. An idea for a sketch. And I went to the, to the trials, the semester after the first time seeing it. I hadn’t been on stage since third grade. I got kicked out of the class play when I was young. I didn’t want to do it. I was like, Yes, I misbehaved. And I got what I wanted, which was not doing the class play, which set the wrong tone because I didn’t misbehave of that school. But it also kept me off the stage. And when I was going up, oh, yeah, so the rules were that if you if you want your sketch to be in, you have to be in the group, the group. And if you’re in the group, you have to be on stage at some point. And also, like, I want to be on stage. They’re like, well, you choice Do you want to sketch in it or not? So like, okay, I’ll do it, thinking I was going to back on after it’s too late for them to replace to replace the sketch or something like that. But after enough rehearsal, I liked it. Okay, so now fast forward to before going up on stage. There’s about 500 people in the audience, which is you know, as I mentioned, 500 more than I’ve been in since Since I was like eight years old, and I was before going up on stage, I was anxious to the point of almost ready to throw up, and so scared to go up. And there’s nothing I could do, right? There’s no alternative, but you have to go up. And because it’s gonna be more embarrassing not to go up. And I should mention that I didn’t get my lines, right once every practice every rehearsal, and everyone in the stage was prepped to bail me out in some different way. And I was playing a professor sitting at a table and my name tag was in front of me and I’d written my lines on the back of the card, like as if no one in the audience is gonna notice me looking at this thing. So I go up on stage, I’m totally freaked out. But we had rehearsed enough that I did get my lines and I wasn’t acting it was just saying the lines but that’s, you know, with a low standard for success on that because it’s just a fun thing. And it got big applause and I didn’t get to give the big funny lines because people back in experience got those but When you pause came, it was like nothing I’d ever felt before. It was one of the high points of my life like I was walking on air. Because I’d written the sketch and I was on stage for the funniest parts, the audience went crazy. And I had this realisation that the greatest joys of my life almost always came from. When they entered my life, they came as the biggest anxieties. And the greater the anxiety, the greater the joy when I overcame it. And this was one of the biggest ones that was like, like, I don’t remember the other times when I was so nervous, I was ready to puke. And this was one and I don’t remember any times when I felt so good. It’s like hours before I was like, touching ground again, from how I felt. And I decided I’m going to look for the things in life that are my greatest anxieties because if I work on them, all indications show that they’re going to become my greatest joys and that that’s what got to be the case. I’ve one by one going after these things and and that’s what Very well, it was again, then this kind of locket that I haven’t been talking to this guy, a friend of mine, that led to writing that sketch that led to this big, big discovery.

David Ralph [43:12]
I think that’s brilliant. And that ties into what we call the body’s compass. When you are feeling really scared, that is leading you the way because that is leading you into the next area of your development. And if you’re feeling uncomfortable, you should be aware of that as well. You should think to yourself, why am I not feeling that way? So the fact that you go for the things that are gonna make you anxious, when you do land, after the adrenaline rush, you land in a different part and you land in the next part of your life, don’t you because you’ve achieved that you’re ready to move on. And I think that’s a key part of life. And I think that is what’s made you so successful, is the fact that you are following your body’s compass when it’s scary. You’re going towards it.

Joshua Spodek [43:59]
Yeah, I guess you can You are not you, I you slowly train your body to and your reactions. Like you like you take some big risk. Every now and then the worst case scenario realises and you’re like this is as bad as it gets. And then a little while later, like, that’s interesting. I’m not dead. I’m not. I mean, none of the things have resulted in me being in physical pain. I’ve lost some friends and relationships and things like that. But, you know, like, I lost control my company, the beginning. That’s why I went back to business school. And I’m like, okay, but I’m not dead. I’m not yet. It’s not over yet. And I might as well do something and the next thing you know, one day again, you’re having fun and you’re like, oh, that thing that was so bad wasn’t really that bad. And a little bit after that you like, you realise that? Oh, it helped me. I’ve gotten some emotional reward from that terrible thing. It came much later. But more and more practice. That feeling of emotional reward your Mind Body or whatever, associated more and more with the risk that you take. And you find risk. A risk can be rewarding, even in the moment that you’re doing it. Yeah, I guess. Yeah. If you call it training by this compass, that would make a lot of sense. It’s a, you have a sense of direction. And your reactions to things. give you that direction. It’s not Yeah, it’s, you can look for it outside. But I think you have to find something inside. A lot of people. They, I think another thing that people look at, you know, they look at someone else and they say, Oh, they have a passion. I wish I had a passion fully I did, then I would be like them. Another thing that they they look for a lot of times is I think people envy some people who’ve gone through some crucible, some horrible experience. And they’re like, Oh, they went through that horrible experience and that taught them to value great things or something like that. If only I had something that really tested my mettle in such a big way that I could to But that’s also not, it’s like absolving yourself of responsibility that if you didn’t take it, you don’t have to go through a crucible. For this to happen, you can take risks on your own. And I think that’s a great, I think one of the great ways to learn

David Ralph [46:18]
experientially, just that swim. If people go over to your blog, they will see a picture of you swimming, and you’re swimming the gap between somewhere, whoever and the Statue of Liberty Hudson River. Now, if you read the story on there, and I urge the listeners to go over and read the story that Joshua has, has put on there, it there’s a moment where you set off the swim across and your friend swims. And you hadn’t quite worked out that it was going to take more energy. Many he did, and you start panicking halfway through. Is that one of those things now that you look back on and you kind of laugh and go like that was a stupid thing to do, or do you look back on it and you think well Actually, it taught me another thing. It taught me to push through my, my limits. It taught me to go again when I thought I couldn’t go any further.

Joshua Spodek [47:09]
Amen. You know, no one’s asked me that. And it’s it seems like the question like the most important question to ask. It’s looking back on it. It’s a really crazy thing that I did, in a certain sense. I mean, I knew that I just couldn’t imagine not making it across. But I had nothing to base it on. I hadn’t swum. I don’t know if I swam the swimming pool and making years by that point. And I was, I mean, it’s almost a mile across. I don’t know it’s like, we wind up going about a mile but the current took us down a bit. So the actual swimming horizontal part horizontal because it was I know you know, I didn’t write out a note before I did to my parents saying, you know, if you guys haven’t seen me or I washed up somewhere, like I was doing because I wanted to, not because of regret or something like that, and was like, and give everything to my nieces and nephews.

David Ralph [48:02]
So you knew it was dangerous. He wasn’t just oblivious to the to the pebbles.

Joshua Spodek [48:07]
Yeah, I mean, I was inspired by that movie Motorcycle Diaries where the, the, the young Che Guevara swam across the Amazon. And he had asthma, which makes it you know, that much more dangerous. And I imagine Amazon was farther at that point. I’m not sure. And since I watch cartoons when I was a kid, I figured the Amazon is Bill Puranas. But yeah, I guess it turns out that my friend had open water swimming experience, which I didn’t know until afterward. So that made it a little safer, I guess. But I’m really know that at the time. No, I mean, when I got in the water, I did have this feeling like it’s me in the river. And I’m not going to count on Dave to bail me out of it. I heard that if a swimmer is drowning, they’ll push down another person and it’s not safe to try to help them. And neither was was a trained lifeguard. So I said, Look You’re not responsible for anything. And I am sorry to say it, but I’m not going to help you if you like. I don’t know what to do, and I don’t want to get pushed down and drown. And I hear that that can happen. And we both agreed that Okay, that’s fine. So it’s like this gut check that you do that. Whatever happens happens, the moment you talked about was really, I wouldn’t say that I panicked. I felt panic on entering my horizon. Because I got about three quarters the way across and realised that I was well over halfway, like I was, like, at the halfway point, I was not close to be halfway. The effort was getting more and more all the time,

David Ralph [49:40]
because I’m actually planning when I was reading it, though. Joshua, when I was reading it, I thought, Oh, my God, even though I knew you’d survived because you’d written the thing. I could, I could feel that moment. And I can’t believe that you didn’t panic.

Joshua Spodek [49:55]
Well, it wouldn’t help.

I mean, I don’t think a panic is In the middle of the river is going to get me across. And I mean, the the the peers are visible. And I wasn’t totally out of energy. I mean that part of the thing was that before I got in, I run marathons. And I figured, okay, in a marathon, if you’re running a long distance, you can always walk for a bit. And so two things got me that I didn’t expect. One was that it’s much more upper body than cardio, the ratio of upper body the cardio is much greater. And if you look at the pictures on the blog post, I’m like really skinny. And we just find for marathon running, but weak arms don’t, or you know, you need strong arms for swimming. And so I was unprepared for that. And the other thing was that the current was taking us down faster than expected, and Manhattan as you get farther down, curves away from New Jersey, which is where we were coming from, and I didn’t want to miss the bottom, it would get harder and harder. So I had and then at one point, Dave put in a big push and got to the pier. And once I saw him do that, I realised That I could do that too. So I kind of dug in and was like, All right, let’s make this happen if he hadn’t done that I might have been scared to try really hard. But since he did it, I did try really hard.

And I had a model of success ahead of me that I suppose

David Ralph [51:17]
that is the sort of the title of the whole show. But if you see somebody else succeed, it gives you internal belief that you can do it yourself. That’s what happened with the four minute mile, wasn’t it? No one could break the four minute mom and one person did it. And then suddenly everyone was doing it. Because you’ve got that internal belief.

Joshua Spodek [51:37]
Yeah, I mean, I said earlier, it’s hard to find like, I don’t know how to push that kind of experience on to someone I have to experience it. But I mean, that has been my big passion for the past eight years and it since business schools like how do you teach people how to create models, how to find the models that work for them and how to develop I mean, three, I call it leadership skills. Different people call it different things. There’s a big overlap with entrepreneurship and how you make that work effectively. And the more that there’s a scientist, to me still is like, some things, some things out there, some of this behaviour and some of these things to learn. It’s reproducible. It’s reproducible and predictable. And the scientist Meeow, it says it’s reproducible and predictable. They should be theory, it should be something, a model that explains it all. And, you know, now that I think everybody figures things out for themselves, as the more I figured out for myself, the more that I can make, make these results more and more predictable myself. Not enough that I was gonna say, not enough for some customers, but I still like to do crazy things, Dave, he’s constantly inviting me do things like that last time we went, it was relatively minor, it was just rappelling down his walls. But there’s a feeling where you have to go off the support, and there’s just a rope. Going through this little Figure Eight thing. And I know people do a lot crazier things in that, but it’s still like, you still have to do it. And yeah, now I’m like, well, it’s worked every time before I’ll see what happens and and then you have a lot of fun and

David Ralph [53:15]
you develop it’s the awareness isn’t it is the expanding yourself off time I’m going to play the words now that the theme of the show and these was said back in 2005 10 years ago now, and this is Steve Jobs.

Steve Jobs [53:27]
Of course, it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards 10 years later. Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward, you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something, your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever, because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart, even when it leads you off the well worn path. That will make all the difference.

David Ralph [54:03]
So can you join up your dots Joshua.

Joshua Spodek [54:06]
It’s funny looking forward and looking backward. I apologise I’m going a little off. But there’s something that’s been hitting me lately is that a lot of times, that when I look back, having learned so many things I’ve learned, not facts, but like a wisdom of kind of like, how things work and how I can make things happen. If I look back, I keep seeing all these mistakes that I made all these things. I’m like, all all these relationships that I burned and all these opportunities that I missed because I didn’t even see them. If I look backward, it makes me feel like almost like I want to regret things. If I look forward, on the other hand, I look forward and I think of anticipation of all the things that I can do and all the things I can’t wait to put these things into practice. And I I do look back for the pattern sometimes, but partly I also look back. I think of the past is something that I mean, I live in the present. And I create a future in the past is, I mean, it’s like a resource of things that I can look back on and find out what I did well, what I didn’t do well, patterns I can learn from and things like that. But increasingly, I look forward to the future of like, things that I can opportunities that come my way and that I can create, and I can find and that happened and, and that the challenges that come that I used to fear, and I know that still will bring me I mean, the ups and downs mean that feels you bad and people like all bad things will happen. I’ll weather the storm. I’ll handle it, no problem. But when it happens, it’s new. It never feels that way. You know, I don’t know if you guys have talked about empathy gaps. And like, when you say I’m going to do something, no matter how bad it gets, when it gets bad, you’re not thinking like I’m full strength. You’re like, Oh my God, this isn’t what I was counting on. This is like, you feel like a different person. But I’ve been able to handle increasingly bigger challenges and makes me enjoy Now even like these really difficult, painful experiences, emotionally physically painful, there’s still increasingly a bit of emotional reward attached to them. And when I say reward, I mean feeling like, yeah, the last time I felt this way things worked out. This is I know this is going to work out. This is working out. Maybe this is how I’m going to get through this.

And it wasn’t too far off topic from No, not at

David Ralph [56:24]
all. I think, to summarise that, really, you’re living life, you’re living life, you’re getting out there, you’re having experiences, you’re having feelings, and you are, you know, you’re not surviving. You’re living and that is a powerful statement to make, isn’t it?

Joshua Spodek [56:42]
Yeah, I I’m honoured and flattered by what you said. It feels really good to hear it. It’s I mean you with what you said in the beginning, it makes you feel very good. And so I feel like in right now, I’m in a moment that I’m really feeling good. There are some times when it’s like I don’t know how to describe it. The doldrums and how bad you can feel at times. But yeah, I mean, but they’re my those ones, ones that I’ve chosen the ones that I can blame anyone else for.

David Ralph [57:12]
Absolutely take take control of your own life. And you lead the way I’m absolutely convinced about well, but this is the end of the show. And this is the part that we call the Sermon on the mic when we send you back in time to have a one on one with your younger self. And although you’ve alluded to what you would say, I’m fascinated to actually hear it. So I’m going to play the theme tune and when it fades, you’re up. This is the Sermon on the mic.

Unknown Speaker [57:42]
We go with the best bit of the show.

Joshua Spodek [58:00]
Well, I’m going to pick two scenes. First one is one that I think is what I alluded to before. It’s graduate school. I’ve passed the qualifying exams. And now it’s my choice into what I want to do later when I do my own research. And the big decisions between theory and experiment. I’ve gotten into physics because I want to go into theory. And my advisor, and not my advisor, my undergraduate advisor, who’s not my crystal advisor, but I meet with him and he says, Josh, if you go into theory, there’s no jobs in theory, it’s very rare. And if you go into it, then you will end up on Wall Street just like everybody else. And you won’t get to do physics. So if you really want to do physics, shoes experiment, there’s a lot more money in it in there for a lot more jobs and ever you can keep doing that advice. So me Josh 2015 talking to that Josh, which was maybe 1995 1996. I would say that that advice sounded made a lot of sense. And he, that professor had your best interests at heart. But if you choose now to do something that you don’t want to do, that’s worse for you, then choosing to do something you do want to do and hitting a dead end later. If you choose to do something that you want, that you don’t want to do now, you’re going to dislike it more and more. Have faith in yourself that if you choose to do what you want, if it hits a dead end later, you’ll be able to figure out what to do them. So that is in response to what I consider one of the biggest choices that I made in a direction that I don’t like. Now, I have to say that there’s another piece of advice I would like to give, it’s just that I don’t know me, most of my life would have accepted something coming from someone else. So at virtually any other time in life. I would have said to myself, I would like to say to myself that it’s not about being right and wrong. If you want Be right all the time, you’re going to end up lonely. When other people see things differently, instead of thinking they’re wrong. Imagine that maybe they see, they see things, they have different values new things, because they see things differently, you have something to learn from them. And I would say, I know that you don’t want to listen to me that you don’t want to listen anybody. But it happens to be that I know everything you know, and a little bit more. And so it might be just from that, just knowing that that there might be a different perspective from someone who knows what you do and knows more than it might be worth exploring other ways that look at looking at things and being open to other ways of looking at things. And instead of trying to show how other Charlotte people that you know what’s best, learn from them, things that you don’t know, and you might find things that you couldn’t have imagined.

David Ralph [1:00:51]
Joshua, how can our audience connect with you, sir?

Joshua Spodek [1:00:54]
Well, the best way is through my webpage, which is Joshuaspodek.com JOSH. ua sp dk.com. And I mean, if they’re in New York City, there’s I teach at Columbia, I teach at NYU, I’m teaching NYU and doing some seminars at Columbia. I also do some things at General Assembly. But that’s the best way to find me is my webpage is I have a Twitter feed. So it’s a spoiler on Twitter.

David Ralph [1:01:20]
Okay, we will have all the links on the show notes. Thank you so much for spending time with us today, joining up those dots. And please come back again, when you have more dots to join up. Because I do believe that by joining up the dots and connecting our past is the best way to build our futures. Joshua codec. Thank you so much,

Joshua Spodek [1:01:35]
David, thank you. And I can’t finish without saying to you that you’ve been an inspiration to me that you mentioned at the beginning how a year had passed. And in that year, when I saw the accomplishments that you made, this guy really made something happen. happen. This is a very impressed and more importantly to me very inspired. Because I’m I think what you’ve done is is it’s very impressive, and I like it a lot but Thank you so much.

David Ralph [1:02:01]
Thank you.

Outro [1:02:03]
David doesn’t want you to become a fated version of the brilliant self you are wants to become. So he’s put together an amazing guide for you called the eight pieces of advice that every successful entrepreneur practices, including the two that changed his life. Head over to Join Up dots.com to download this amazing guide for free and we’ll see you tomorrow on Join Up Dots.