Positive Intent and Life Lessons with Owen Fitzpatrick
Watch/Listen here or on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your podcasts“I believe as the leadership team goes, so goes the rest of the company. So if you don't have that consistent and significant sustainable growth, you've got some work to do.” — Mike Goldman
“You believe the other person is just trying to do the best they can with the resources they have. I call it the law of positive intent.”
–Mike Goldman
This episode is a switch from the usual format, where I am being interviewed by Owen Fitzpatrick.
1. Polarization in Society
Society, especially in political arenas, is highly polarized, with individuals focused on winning arguments rather than understanding different perspectives.
Effective leadership and healthy dialogue require curiosity and openness to learn from others, even those with opposing views.
The lack of genuine curiosity prevents people from exploring the reasons behind differing beliefs, further deepening divides.
2. The Law of Positive Intent
The idea of "positive intent" encourages viewing others' actions with the assumption that they are doing the best they can with the resources they have.
Approaching interactions with this mindset leads to less conflict and more productive conversations.
Positive intent is especially useful in personal relationships, helping to foster empathy and understanding, even when there are disagreements.
3. Family Dynamics and Asperger’s Syndrome
Navigating relationships with family members, particularly in challenging circumstances like special needs, benefits from adopting the principle of positive intent.
In difficult family dynamics, it is essential to understand that a person’s actions are not necessarily meant to cause harm, but may reflect their own struggles or limitations.
This mindset helps transform strained relationships by fostering empathy and support.
4. Leadership and Curiosity
Intellectual curiosity is a crucial trait for leaders. The best leaders are those who constantly seek to understand what others think, ask questions, and explore new ideas.
In contrast, many environments, especially political or conflict-driven settings, lack true curiosity, focusing more on interrogation than learning.
Genuine curiosity allows for growth, innovation, and a more cohesive team or group dynamic.
5. Aging and Legacy
Aging is often accompanied by a sense of reflection, but it’s essential to balance looking back with looking forward.
A mindset that continues to focus on growth and future possibilities keeps life vibrant, regardless of physical limitations that may come with age.
Rather than seeing aging as a decline, it can be viewed as a time for continued personal and professional development.
6. Death and Grief
Facing death or the loss of loved ones is a universal experience, and there are many ways to process grief.
For some, grief may involve focusing on positive memories and using those experiences to bring closure or peace.
Rather than fearing death, it can be helpful to focus on living fully in the present, creating meaningful experiences and connections.
Reflections on Parenting and Career
In relationships, especially with children or colleagues, fostering a sense of friendship and mutual support is essential.
Providing a positive example in work and life—where one finds joy and meaning in their career—can inspire others to pursue fulfilling paths.
Creating environments where people love what they do leads to greater fulfillment and success, both individually and collectively.
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Mike Goldman: This episode is going to be very different than any of my other episodes. Normally, I either interview someone or I do a, what I call a mic on the mic podcast, where it's just me solo. And this time around doing a little switch and I'm actually being interviewed on the podcast. About a month ago, I was, on a podcast called, the Changing Minds podcast with one of my, best friends in the world, Owen Fitzpatrick.
And if you haven't listened to his Changing Minds podcast, go listen to it. But I was on his podcast where he interviewed me and I was so pleased with how it came out and the conversation we had that I thought I would share it with you on this podcast as well. We talk about everything from polarization in the world today to leadership.
To aging, to death, believe it or not, to, the law of positive intent. You know, I think there's some great stuff here. You will get to know me a little bit better, but more importantly than that, I really think you'll learn something from it. Great conversations. I hope you enjoy it.
It feels like everybody's talking and nobody's listening, right? Like, like you say
Owen: that again, I'll stop. I'll stop now. The
Mike Goldman: opinions are so strong that everybody's so focused on winning the argument. They're not focused on what the best answer is or the right answer. The best leaders are curious about what their team is thinking or curious about other ideas.
But when it comes to the political, arena nobody's truly asking about what the other side believes and why they believe it. The other person is just trying to do the best they can with the resources they have.
I call it the law of positive intent. I feel like there's a lot of people, as you start getting older, start looking back more than they look forward.
They're looking back at what their life was. Was no, I'll never have that again, or I'll never have that again. I'm not doing that. I have so much more to look forward to that. I feel really positive about where I am and where I'm going. So my son, he grew up with some issues. He has Asperger's syndrome. We just couldn't communicate with each other.
I learned that if I was having a good week at work or my good days, interestingly enough, he would have really good days. And on my bad days. He was a horror. Holy crap. Was it him or was it me? Mm-Hmm. That's when I started learning about this idea of believing in positive intent. Started with my son. I called my son down to my office and I, and I debated doing this, but I said, rich, I'm writing a speech and, and I want you to read it.
Owen: Oh God. Okay.
Mike Goldman: And I wasn't, I, I frankly was not sure if this was a big mistake.
Owen: I'm nervous just listening to this.
Hello, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the changing minds podcast. I'm interviewing a very dear friend of mine. Mike Goldman is a phenomenal author and speaker and consultant. He's been working for about 35 years helping leadership teams. He coaches leadership teams, helping them to become a breakthrough leadership team and to optimize how effectively they're able to do the work that they do.
Mike is someone I've had on the podcast before in that particular episode, you'll learn a lot. About Mike's philosophy around business. But today we're going to dive into the way in which Mike thinks about life and about business and about family and friendship and relationships, because for me, one of the things that I'm fascinated with is how the way in which we think about the world determines our experience of the world.
This is a really phenomenal and fun conversation. One of the things that I did want to get into was really starting to look at some of the differences that I've experienced in being in the world. Ireland versus America, and it's very interesting to me the way in which they do things differently here from your own perspective, what has been different over the last 20 years or so, like what has led us to a place where, as we, I think both would agree, things are ridiculously toxic online, in the media.
In general, in, in terms, especially around the politics in, in the States.
Mike Goldman: Yeah. I mean, the, uh, the obvious answer, but I'll go a little deep. The obvious answer is the level of polarization. Right. And, and it feels like,
Owen: it
Mike Goldman: feels like everybody's talking and nobody's listening. Right. Like you say
Owen: that again, I'll stop.
Mike Goldman: But, but it, it feel everybody's talking and nobody's listening. The opinions are so strong that everybody's so focused on winning the argument. They're not focused on what the best answer is or the right answer. Or it's actually listening to one of your podcasts and the idea of, you know, it's black and it's white, right?
It's not just black or white or it's gray. It's, you know, there was all, I mean, two party system has been around for a long time. But. When I think about, I would say pre 2000s, once in the United States, once a president was elected, you wanted to see that president be successful. You wanted the country to be successful.
These days. It's more of if you're if you're a guy or gal doesn't get elected, you want to do everything in your power to see them succeed. And to me, that's the big difference and social media for all of the good it can do and good. It's done. It's so easy for us to just get in this vacuum chamber of talking to people who believe exactly what we believe.
Believe or, or, you know, the new, so, so that's, I mean, and I'm not saying anything we haven't heard a million times, but that's the biggest difference
Owen: for me, the real trick. And again, we won't spend all the time talking about this, but the real issue is when people are on one side, they won't admit anything.
That might that the other side might agree with, and that's, to me, one of the biggest problems is that if you're on the side of. Let's say the candidate on the left, you will not take anything that the candidate on the right says in any way and say it's true. If you're for the candidate on the right, you will not take anything.
The candidate. And to me, obviously there's a lot of people that are a, a lot more rational. We don't often hear about them 'cause they're not on social media. They're, they're, they're not absolutely a hundred percent convinced of their perspective. So they're not screaming on the media and social media with their own narratives.
But still, to me, that's the biggest thing. And I think in general, in life. Whenever you have a person that's absolutely convinced of a certain point of view, and they're not willing to, you know, find some sort of steel man argument of the other person's side. The idea that the other person has a strong argument in this context or that context, it effectively means that you're living in a different reality tunnel.
It's like you're not able to hear another person because you're not looking to just make sure I'm right. You're wrong. It's like nothing you say is right. Everything I say is right
Mike Goldman: and what a lot of it come and by the regardless of who says it if your guy said something that Totally ridiculous. You're going to agree with it because it's your guy.
But I think what's missing and it, and it relates to something that I actually coach leaders on all the time from a business standpoint is, is the lack of curiosity. Like there's a book, Liz Weisman wrote a great book called multipliers. And one of the things she talks about is that the, me. She believes the most important quality of a leader of a strong leader is true intellectual curiosity, like that's what it's about.
And, and in business, the best leaders are curious about what their team is thinking or curious about other ideas or curious about the marketplace. But when it comes to the political arena, Nobody's curious about nobody's truly asking about what the other side believes and why they believe it. They may ask the question, but it's a question that's more of a An interrogation type, you know, so you're telling me what you believe.
It's not really a question. It's basically saying you're a moron, but putting a question mark at the end. So I think curiosity has totally left the playing field.
Owen: I think, I think with curiosity as well, from a DEI perspective, diversity, inclusivity and whatnot. I think curiosity should be the goal, but a lot of time it's like tolerance.
Or it's like, you know, compliance, this is what we want to do. And what we really want people to do is whenever you see someone different to you, whether that's culturally different or, you know, in any way, shape or form different, it's about learning to be curious about them. And this also extends politically to the different points of view, because you mentioned the work you do with leadership teams.
Let me ask you when you're working with a leadership team and let's say two people on that leadership team absolutely hate each other, like can't stand each other. What is it that you're trying to do with the time that you have with them? Like, how do you try to get two people that just do not gel at all?
How do you get them to respond favorably to each other or at least get them to work together?
Mike Goldman: I'll start with what doesn't work. The, the, the communication techniques. Techniques in quotes don't work because I can, you know, I can say the right thing to someone or ask a question of someone, but if I think they're full of crap, that's going to come through in whatever my say in my whatever I say in my tone in my body language and I know in my own life.
The techniques don't work. I learned a technique early on. So I had a business for three years, staffing and recruiting business, and I had two staffing supervisors working for me and I was, had started to read a lot of business books and I had learned that it's important not to, not to think you're the smartest person in the room.
Ask your team questions. Don't always dictate the answer, ask them questions. So that's a great idea. I'm going to ask them questions. So I would ask questions, and I thought I was being this great leader, and I sat down with Jamie, who was one of my staffing supervisors, and also a good friend who could be open and honest with me.
And she said, Mike, I really wish you'd listen to us more. And I said, well, what are you talking about? I ask questions all the time. And she said, yeah, but we always come around to what you want. And what I realized is I had this technique to ask questions, but I still believed I was the smartest person in the room.
So, so back to your question of two people. It must've
Owen: been a very dumb room. Yeah,
Mike Goldman: it was a really small room, not a lot of people, but to get back to your question of two people in conflict is it's not about the technique because of one person thinks the other person's is a pain in the neck or a moron or, or they're up to no good.
No technique is going to help. It's got to start with an attitude. So what I try to help them understand, and this is a lesson I learned years ago in dealing with a special needs son. And I did a whole TED talk about it.
But the idea of getting to a point where you believe the other person is just trying to do the best they can with the resources they have.
I call it the law of positive intent. Is even if you vehemently disagree with the other person, whether it's left versus right in politics, or whether it's two very different ideas of how to grow a business from two different people on the leadership team. If I can get them, if I can get each of the leaders to truly believe that that other leader is not waking up in the morning saying, What can I screw up today that they're waking up in the morning with the same goals?
They're just trying to build the business just trying to do the right thing with the resources they have instead of getting angry if you and I totally disagree If I believe you're trying to do the right thing with the resources you have instead of me getting angry at you. What it causes me to do is get curious and say wait a minute If Owen's just trying to do the right thing, But he disagrees with me.
He must have some information that I don't have, or he must have some resources that I don't have. So the most beneficial thing, the most productive thing for me to do is to ask him questions, not as an interrogation, but to ask him, him questions out of true intellectual curiosity to say, hell, I know you disagree with me, help me understand what am I missing?
And if they can do that. They may or may not agree at the end of the day, a decision's got to get made in business and they may never agree and that's okay, but they could at least have a productive civil conversation if they believe they're both coming from a good place. So that's the thing I've got.
Once they do that. They could have a great conversation, agree or not, but if they can't buy that the other person is coming from a world of they're just trying to do the right thing, then they're just going to clash and not get anywhere.
Owen: What if you're not coming from the right place? So I agree with you.
I think that's a great approach. And I think that going in with the right mindset, regardless of whether or not it's true, helps you to be able to ask the right questions and dig in. That makes sense. The question I have is in an event, in the event where the person, let's say in the situation wants to get what they want, it doesn't give a shit about what you want or what anybody else wants.
They want to steamroll you. From that perspective, given the fact that their intention is not positive, the danger with, let's say, saying, uh, I believe that this person has a positive intention. Might lead you to be, for example, blindsided because you, to a degree, trust them because you're choosing to trust them because you're choosing to believe that they have a positive intent.
And as a result of that, you can easily get screwed over. I mean, in a negotiation, for example, if one party goes in, in good faith and the other party doesn't, the other party that doesn't has the advantage. It's like that whole, you know, the, the, the old, um, prisoner's dilemma. Yeah. It's like, if we both say, you know, that we're innocent, then we get off.
But if one of us says that the other person is guilty, then we're not guilty. Then depending on who it does, if both of us say we're guilty, we get put in prison. If one says the other person's guilty and the other one says we're innocent, then that person who says we're innocent loses. So it's like that kind of thing.
Mike Goldman: But I think that there's a couple of, and it's a great question. There are a couple of answers to it. One is, I think there's. Or let me not say, I think there is a difference between believing in someone's positive intention and trusting that they're going to do the right thing. Right. I'm not saying always trust the other person's going to do the right thing because you might get run over.
You might lose in a negotiation. Believing in the positive intent of someone else doesn't mean that you're not. That you, you may still argue pretty vehemently for your way, it just means you're going to get curious about how they are thinking. So, so I think, number one, don't, don't mistake, believing in positive intent to trusting and being run over by somebody that that's not the case, but maybe just as importantly or, or more importantly is I look at the opposite.
Okay. What if I believe if someone disagrees with me, I believe they are intentionally trying to do the wrong thing or intentionally trying to screw me over. I don't know where the, where, where can the conversation go other than me walking away or just going to battle with you on it where nobody wins, where even if your intentions are not as pure as I might ideally believe they are.
If I go at it from the standpoint of believing you're trying to do the best you can with the resources you have, I'm going to get curious and ask questions. That's still a better way to go. I still think we're going to wind up in a better place. Believing someone wakes up in the morning and says, how can I screw things up today?
I don't think that's ever going to end in a good place where if you believe the other person's just trying to do the best they can, I think there's at least a chance that you could end up in a good place.
Owen: I think It's not necessarily either or though, right? It's not like I'm either going to go, this person is positive intent.
They just doing the best they can, or this person, you know, despises everyone and wants to screw me over as much as I think there's a, the, the middle ground there. But at the same time, I agree with you. In many ways, it reminds me of the notion of the fact that like, if you think about any villains. No villain turns around and sees themselves as the villain, right?
Lex Luthor doesn't see himself as a bad guy. Darth Vader didn't even. Darth Vader just thought, look, all I'm trying to do,
Mike Goldman: all
Owen: I'm trying to do.
Mike Goldman: You know, those aren't real people, right? It was all, it's just,
Owen: look, I'm just reading a script. I'm just telling you, all I'm trying to do is bring order to the universe.
That's all he wanted to do. And all these people like Luke Skywalker screwed him over on it. But he was just trying to bring order to the universe. The point is, Darth Vader didn't even see himself as an inverted commas, bad guy. It was like, of course, he's going to use the dark side. The dark side could have helped him to save Padme. My point is, is I'm not going to go too much into this, but my point is, is that so often we tell ourselves a story and that story makes us look as if we've got the positive intention regardless.
So in many ways, that's what we're doing to ourselves.
Let me ask you on the same kind of area, but a little bit closer to home. What happens when you have two people that disagree in families, right? Now I've been blessed. I'm in a, my parents have a very close relationship with them. I've not had a situation where I haven't talked to a family member or I've had huge fights, right?
But there's an awful lot of people out there that will have strong fights with their, you know, their loved ones that will go home for Thanksgiving or for Christmas or whatever, or for any of the holidays, regardless of what religion they are or aren't. And During that time, it'll be very difficult for them because there's all of these anchors that have been set up, these triggers that have been set up over time.
When you have a situation where there's a fundamental, let's, let's imagine it could even be political because we're in the state. So it could be like you have a son or daughter that's very Republican or very liberal and their parent is the opposite. How do you, how do you heal that? How do you heal the rift between, you know, family members that are very close?
Cause there's an awful lot of emotional. You know, it's nuclear compared to, you know, the business world.
Mike Goldman: I mean, I've got a great example of that in my own life. I mean, God, well, yeah, the best example of that from my own life is me and my son. And it took years. I mean, this idea of, uh, of believing in the positive intent of others, that's not something I've, believed my whole life.
That's something that it's, it's more recent times that that's something I have started to, to understand that that, while to your point, it's not always true. I know not everybody is always, you know, there are some people that are trying to do some things that benefit them and nobody else. But, uh, It took me a long time to realize that that philosophy is something that does way more good in my life than bad.
And, and so my son, who's now got, he's about to turn 30 by the time this comes out, maybe he's 30 years old. Um, for the first 12 years of his life, we had a horrible relationship and it wasn't, obviously when he's, when he was five, six, seven, eight, 12 years old, it wasn't about left versus right in politics.
It was about the fact that. He grew up with some issues. He has, you know, Asperger's syndrome. It took us a while to get that, that diagnosed, but, but he was, um, he was not who I dreamt of, I mean, it's horrible as it sounds when I thought of being a dad, I thought of being in the backyard, having a catch with my son.
I thought of, you know, all the things you kind of envision and, and, and He was not that way. He had struggles and he was not into sports and, and getting him to do anything that a quote unquote normal kid. And that sounds horrible saying normal, but the average kid would do was not who he was. So,
Owen: so what, what is Asperger's syndrome just for anyone out there?
Yeah,
Mike Goldman: no, thanks for asking. So Asperger's is, and it's not even a formal diagnosis anymore. It used to be, but, but it's on the autism spectrum. So, uh, you know, when you think of. Autism. Most people think if you know the movie, you know, Rain Man, it may be someone who's not nonverbal or they repeat the same things over and over again.
That's kind of a low functioning, uh, part of the spectrum. And then there's the high functioning part of the spectrum, uh, which used to be called Asperger's. And it's basically where socially the things that you and I and most kids, uh, me. Automatically learn did not come easy. Very socially awkward. Um, things overwhelmed him where he would, you know, uh, kids or even adults with Asperger's typically have, they hyper focus on a few things and they may, uh, they may know the train schedule across the country.
Like that crazy level of they know these details, but they don't know how to tie their shoelace or they don't know how to have a conversation to someone. My son has a memory that you wouldn't believe when he was a kid. He was really, really good at math, but just didn't get the social cues and certain textures freaked him out.
Like when he was two years old, he wouldn't walk on the grass and bare feet like that freaked him out. Certain foods he wouldn't eat. Everything was just way harder. Now, I as a parent, and again I look back and I'm like, Man, I was a pretty crappy parent back then. Cause the way I thought of it was he was making everything harder on me.
I'm his dad, like, I ought to be focused on making things less hard on him, but because he was so different and because Asperger's is not like, it's not like he had, Down syndrome, or he had cerebral palsy, or he had something that, well, you can let go. Oh my God, there's something wrong. Like I have to have different expectations on the
Owen: outside.
It doesn't look like there's any, no.
Mike Goldman: And, and even on the inside, like there were days or hours within days where he would act like any other kid. And then there were times where. It was like, why can't he just go take a shower? Why can't he just come up for dinner? Why can't he, you know, do his schoolwork?
Why, why won't he, you know, play little league baseball like the other, like the, and it was just very frustrating cause there were, to look at him sometimes you'd say he can do that. And literally my thought was he just knows what buttons to push to piss me off. And it would cause my level of, and I wasn't a very, from the time I was a kid, I had no patience.
I was a kid who'd, who'd buy a model airplane and I couldn't get it to fit right. And I just break it and throw it on the floor. Like I didn't have a lot of patience and I didn't have the patience for him. So we spent years where we just couldn't communicate with each other and years where, uh, Where, where he would do things and, and, and I would say horrible things to him that I, I'd regret later, uh, and, and by the way, part of it was, I was, when he was at that age where things were toughest,
Owen: how, how old was he,
Mike Goldman: uh, from, we knew something was wrong from the time he was, About a year, a year and a half,
Owen: right?
Mike Goldman: When all of a sudden he lost words instead of gaining words. And, and, and it just like, we knew something was going on and it was tough because he wasn't diagnosed. We just knew something was wrong. So, but from that time of being like a year, two years old, um, you know, up through him being about 12. Is the later part of those years were my worst years from a business and career standpoint.
I went from a career where I had a job, and I was getting paid and just going my way to starting my own business. And that was a, Crazy struggle for, for a while. And, and, you know, put my family through financial hell for a number of years. And that was the same time that all of these issues started happening with my son, with Richie and.
I just had no patience for it and would yell and scream. And of course that wasn't going to do anything. So, you know, back to your question of how do you heal these things? It's right around when he was 12 years old, I had learned some things from a coach that knew the right questions to ask me. Um, and, and, you know, learned that.
On my good weeks, if I was having a good week at work or my good days, interestingly enough, he would have really good days. And on my bad days, he was a horror. Holy crap. Was it him or was it me? And I learned all that. And that's when I started learning about this idea of believing in positive tenants started with my son.
He's not trying to push my buttons and be a pain in the ass by not coming up for dinner or not taking a shower or, or not wanting to go to school or not doing his homework. That wasn't him trying to piss me off and waking up in the morning and saying, what can I do to piss off my dad today? Like I learned, like, Man, this kid is trying to do the best he can with the resources he has.
I'll never truly understand what's going through his head. I don't have Asperger's. I'm not seeing the world the way he's, he's seeing it that, you know, the world was so overwhelming to him that sometimes his only escape was to hyper focus on a TV show or a video game and screw the world. I've got a, the world's too overwhelming.
I'm going to hyper focus on this. And when I started learning. That that's what's going on and that he's trying to do the best he can. He's just having a tough time. All of a sudden I went from, how do I get him to do what I want? How do I, how do I get this pain in the neck kid to, to do the right thing? I went to, man, how could I help him?
How could I be a good dad for him? And it took me years. It took me years, not only to learn how to be a better dad, but to heal. To heal the stuff that frankly, the stuff I put him through that, you know, he's about to turn 30. And the fear in my head is some of this shit I put in his head, 20, 25 years ago is still impacting him.
Owen: If you, if you were to, if you were to talk to him and say to him something about the past, you know, you know, How you feel about the past? I mean, have you had that conversation? If
Mike Goldman: yeah, so, so we, so, so. The, the positive part of all this is because of the work I've done on myself and with him. And frankly, I think I'm not religious person, but I'm a spiritual person.
I do believe that there's some energy in the universe we don't totally understand. And, and, and there are things that happened to us for a reason to teach us things. I believe I became a coach. Because it challenges me to learn and grow as a person so I can better help my son. And by the way, I have a daughter that's really important to me too, but thankfully she was a lot easier.
I also believe that the universe gave me a son that has these kinds of challenges because it challenged me to be a better person. Like it, like I said, I've never had a lot of patience and now I have a lot more patience than I did. But interestingly enough, so I did a TED talk about, about all of this a couple of years ago.
And as I was writing The Ted talk and frankly, my first book was, it was a business book, but it was told in the form of a story and it was about a dad with a, with a son with Asperger's and how he learns thing, things from his son with Asperger's that helped him build his business. And that's true. So number of years ago, I had him read my book and then I was writing my Ted talk.
And the first half of the Ted talk is about my anger. About the situation and the last half is about how what I've learned helped me turn things around because by the way, by the way, my son and I are, are, are great friends right now. We have an amazing relationship,
Owen: but when you, when you say the first part of the TED talk, that was you, as you were describing it to, to, to us.
It was the anger you were going through because why isn't he this? Why isn't he that? Okay.
Mike Goldman: Yeah. So, so I actually, uh, when I was writing the script for the Ted talk between a year and a half, two years ago, I did the Ted talk about a year and a half ago. I'm writing the script and it's making me kind of emotional cause I'm, uh, uh, it's kind of causing me to rethink all these things and you know, that happened years ago and, and emotional from a positive standpoint about where our relationship is now, but.
I called my son down to my office and I, and I debated doing this, but I said, Rich, I'm writing a speech and I want you to read it.
Owen: Oh God. Okay.
Mike Goldman: And I wasn't, I frankly was not sure if this was a big mistake.
Owen: I'm nervous just listening to this.
Mike Goldman: So I'm like, I want you to read this thing. And he reads it. Well, well, he, he got about, A third of the way through
Owen: the first third where you're angry.
Mike Goldman: Yeah, and he stops reading and he looks at me and he says, he says, yeah, and I'm getting emotional, but he wasn't emotional. My son doesn't get very he does, but he wasn't emotional. And he said, he said, Yeah, I was a real asshole back then. And I said, rich, wait till you get to the end of the speech. It turns out I was the asshole.
And he read the whole speech. And we hugged afterwards. And it was beautiful. Because I don't hide from him that, that I believe I screwed up back then. And he's a, You know, he still has his issues and he's about to turn 30. He's still living at home. He may always live with us. He's got he's got a job now.
He's doing great. He's putting money away. I'm so friggin proud of him, but he still has his issues and living on his own would be a struggle. I think at some point he will, but he's still living with us. Um, but you know, just You know, his, both of our ability now to look back at what happened and he knows that he was, he was a, he was a handful, but it's important for him also to know from me that.
I was a handful too, and we were both to blame and I take more of the blame than he does. Uh, but, but it's taken us a long time to heal from that. And man, we, I mean, I can't imagine having a better relationship
Owen: with him.
Now, how do you want, like, let's say in many, many years from now, when you pass away, how do you want him to describe you?
Mike Goldman: First off, I'm not passing away. I'm going to figure out how do I want him to describe me. Um, that's a great question.
First, most importantly, I want him to describe me as a friend. As a friend, you know, he is and that's important to me for two reasons. Number one, the obvious reason is. You know, especially given the relationship we had way back, which was very, very far from that when I was yelling and screaming, screaming and getting, you know, getting crazy with him.
Um, so there's the obvious reason, but because of who he is and the challenges he still has, he doesn't have a lot of friends, you know, and, and I'm. I'm probably his best friend right now, and part of that makes me proud and happy, and part of that makes me sad because I want him to have others, um, that he's close with.
So when I say I want him to say I was a great friend, It's not only for the obvious reasons, but he needs a great friend because of the challenges he's got. So that's more important than anything is. I want him to believe I'm someone he can talk to and have fun with. And, you know, we street, you know, there are TV shows that if I watch it without him, he will kill me.
We have to watch it together. We just went to go see a, uh, a movie together, uh, last night. Um,
Owen: what you go see,
Mike Goldman: we went to see, uh, Dead Deadpool and Wolverine. Which he thought was amazing. I thought it was good. It was amazing. Um, but, but number one, I want him to, to, what I want him to say about me is I was a great friend.
Um, I also want to be, and this is a tougher one because he doesn't, he doesn't have a lot of confidence in who he could become. Which, which pains me, um, you know, he drives a truck and delivers food and he's doing great and he's putting money away. And man, I didn't think he'd keep a job for six days when, when he was younger.
I'm like, how's this guy going to keep a job? And he's had this job for seven years. So I'm super proud of him, but I also want to be an example of. You know, if you work hard and believe in yourself, what you can become, I think he can do more and he can become more. And I hope, I hope I've got a lot of years to keep being an example for him.
So, so I want, I want to be an example of not only, not only the, the, I want to be an example of what you could become in life, but the fact that I frigging love what I do. Every single day. And, and I want to be an example that, that he can, he can continue to kind of one day find something he loves where it's not just a job or a career and he's making money, but I want to be an example for both, for both my kids of, of loving what you want to do, loving what you do, being able to be successful at it, but also loving it.
I mean, we spend so many hours at work to think of it as, just a job. And one day we'll retire for me. It's more than that. And I'd love to be an example for my kids of that.
Owen: Do you think they're both proud of you?
Mike Goldman: Yeah. Yeah. I think they are. I think they are. I think they are both very different.
You know, neither of my kids. Believe their careers is all that important. They believe it's a means to an end. You know, my daughter who's doing great. She's 28 years old. She's living down in Maryland. She's such an amazing kid. Biggest heart I've ever seen in a human being. I don't know how she came from me.
I don't think my heart is, is as big as hers. Um, but just super smart, works her ass off. But. Work is just kind of a way of her living the lifestyle that she wants to live. It's not, you know, for me, my work has always been more important than that. And I'm not even saying that's a good thing. Like when I was younger, when I was.
23, 24, 25 years old working for a, I was a management consultant, work for a big, for a big consulting firm. My attitude was you could beat me, whip me, kick me, work me 24 hours a day. I'm making partner in this place and I want the big house and the nice car and the, and that, that's who I was. I don't think that was a very balanced way of looking at my life.
When I look at. And I'll talk about my daughter now, not, you know, not my son. When I look at my daughter, I'm super proud of her. And I also look at her and a lot of her generation. As you know, there's so much different than I would say. I think they have a she has a much more holistic way to look at her life, which I think is very healthy.
I also think there's nothing wrong with kind of building a career and working hard towards something. And that's such a big part of who I am. It's not a big part of who she is. It's not a big part of who my son is. So do I think they're proud of me? I think they are. I think I, I've, you know, provided for my family and done a lot of great things and we travel and we travel together.
Um, I also think my daughter probably, it wouldn't surprise me if she looked and said, I wish he didn't work as hard. Like why, why does he think, why does he think his career and his business is so important? He travels, he's working all the time. He should probably relax a little bit.
Owen: Speaking of which, what drives you?
What, what, what drives you? You, you talked about passion in your work. Why do you do what you do?
Mike Goldman: What drives me is it's, it's really a combination of two things, but the main thing that drives me is freedom. And, and let me talk about what that means, because we may have very different definitions of what that is, but freedom to me is having, having the freedom to make the choices I want to make.
So let's, let's talk about money to me. Thankfully, I have built after many years of struggle, I built, you know, a lucrative business. I want to build it much bigger, but I build a lucrative, built a lucrative business, building a business that brings in a lot of revenue and profit for me is not about being able to say, I've got a business that's, that's this big, or, uh, it's not about, it's not about the pride that I've built, built a business that big.
Having a business that's lucrative is important for me because it gives me the freedom to make choices that I want to make. It gives me the freedom to travel more. If I want to travel, it gives me the freedom to have my wife, not hat, like makes sound like it's me, gives me the freedom to allow my wife to make decisions on what she wants to do.
She was working a job for many years. Thank God, she had a real job as I was trying to build my business because if she didn't have a real job making decent money, she had a very nice career. We would have lost our house, you know, 15 years ago, I would have not been able to pay the mortgage. We would have lost the house, but freedom to me means now she's got the ability as she did, you know, to say, I'm done, you know, I've retired from the corporate career and I'm going to go.
Get a three different health coaching certification and build that business and do different things to me. Building my business big is about having the freedom to do the things I want to do. And thankfully it's given me A lot of that freedom and the freedom to build my business now bigger if I want or, or, or keep it where it is.
So part of what drives me is freedom. And, and part of what drives me is the idea that, and this, this is a little bit more what drives me and working with my clients, but that's important. Such a big part of my life is doing what I do with clients. For me personally, it's about freedom working with my clients.
It's about. Helping the companies I work with create fulfilling environments where the people that go to work there every day could feel great about what they do, where they're not just, I've seen so many people starting with my grandfather. And we can dig into that if you want to dig into it. But, but I learned a lesson from my grandfather that retirement is not always a beautiful thing.
And there's so many people that I know that I'm sure, you know, that work at a job or even work in a business. If they're entrepreneurs work at a job in our business and a business and their major goal in life is to hit 65 and retire that to me, to me, There's nothing wrong with, so I don't want to put anybody down if they want to hit 65 and retire, but to me, why would I want, why would I want to spend 40, 45 years of my life doing something that doesn't fulfill me so that at some magical age, I can stop doing it and travel the world.
Owen: I want to, I want to challenge you on that, Mike, because, look, if you ask me and you know me at this stage, I've worked for myself since as long as I can remember when I first left college, even when I was in college, I started. So I started the business when I was 17 as a therapist initially. And then, you know, the story.
30 years on, if you ask me about retirement, my thoughts are I never, ever, ever want to retire. It's literally the worst thing I can possibly imagine doing. I want to die on stage or I want to die when I'm in the middle of my book, preferably not in the next few weeks. But you know, over the course of my life, I don't want to retire because for me, I've set up my life in such a way that I'm lucky and blessed that I can do the kinds of things I've traveled to over a hundred countries.
I've done all the things I wanted to do. The reason I bring it up is I get you when you talk about retirement. However, the overwhelming majority of people that I know. Don't love their jobs and aren't necessarily in the position that we're in. Like it's very easy for us in the personal development or coaching world to turn around and go on social media and go, Hey, do you want to be a coach?
Do you want to do this and position it? Like this beautiful look at Tony Robbins, getting thousands of people on it. You can be like Tony too. All you have to do is follow the formula. And to me, there's this sort of. Notion, which is, it's, it's obviously going to be more here because we live in the land of the opportunity, land of opportunity over in the States, but there's this notion that, you know, it's almost like being a solopreneur, being an entrepreneur, working for yourself, that's the pinnacle and all those people in nine to five jobs who might be doing everything from garbage collection to, you know, you know, Working in a business that isn't that interesting for them.
It's a job. And at the end of the job, they look forward. I know back home. I know a lot of people, an awful lot of people I would know. They look forward to their pints at the end of the day or their pint at the end of the week. They look forward to. Triathlons or, you know, duatilons or whatever they do, or Ironman.
Like they have something to look forward to that, uh, the football that's on the weekend, they go every week to watch the, the GAA game, or if it's in, you know, the, the football game or whatever it is. And that's their life. And they have that stuff to look forward to. And they go for two holidays a year.
And for them, the idea is I don't particularly enjoy my job. I don't hate it. But I got to put a roof over my head. I don't have the opportunity to be able to just listen to this advice of this guru and that guru and go, right, I'm going to become a self employed, whatever.
And I'm going to do it. Maybe they don't even have the ambition to be self employed. Maybe they don't have the skill to be self employed. So for all of those people, they. Can't wait to retire because it's 60 or 65 or whatever it is that they do, it means that they no longer have to do that. And maybe they can spend time.
Now I would agree with you in the sense that if ever you want to be able to spend the time that you, you, you want to spend, it's when you're younger that you can actually do something with it. Right. But I just wanted to check in on your perspective on that because I think it's easy for us to say it. Me and you, you've built up your business over 35 years.
You're doing brilliantly. I'm very proud of you as a friend. I'm doing very well for myself as well. We're lucky in that sense. And part of it is skill and intelligence and whatnot. A big part of it's luck and a big part of it's circumstances and a bunch of other stuff. So I just wanted to throw that out because I think it's very easy to fall into the trap that a lot of people do, which is like, you know, Retirement is for people who hate their job and you shouldn't, you should find what you're passionate about.
It would be great if you can, but not everyone's in that space.
Mike Goldman: Yeah, no, I think it's a great point. And, and this is what drives me, right? I can't, I'm not going to put this out, retirement's an evil thing. Don't, you know, don't retire. But for me, he, he, here's where it kind of got implanted in my head.
So my grandfather.
Was when I was young, he was the best man I ever knew. He, we, I grew up in the Bronx in an apartment building and we lived on the sixth floor. My grandparents lived on the fifth. So we saw them every day. We had dinner together, everything. And my grandfather, blue collar guy, never made a lot of money, never, but, but he always worked blue collar guy.
And he was. So proud of his family. Like his eyes would fill up whenever he talked about his family. And he was kind of this rough exterior. Like he's a tough guy, but all mushy and all heart on the inside once you got to know him. But he was, he was like the strong, and I don't mean physical strength, although he's pretty strong, not fit, but he was like the strongest man I knew.
Like not, you can't screw with pop. Like, don't, don't screw with pop, you know? And so. He was kind of my idol growing up. Now he was always had a job. He was driving a cab until he was, I think it was 83 years old. Now he had no business driving a cab. He couldn't see very well, got into to a few accidents and he gets fired one day from the cab company.
Owen: How old was he?
Mike Goldman: He was 83 or 84. I think it was 83. Like I said, no business driving a cab, but he was very,
Owen: sorry, what did you say? You're fired.
Mike Goldman: And he, you know, and, and his whole life, like he drove a truck delivery. It was all blue collar stuff. And for the last, I think 10 years of his life, he was driving this cab and he was very unceremoniously fired.
They were real pricks about it. Um, but I wouldn't want to get gotten in his cab at that point, but anyway, so. He was a guy that always had this gleam in his eye, this fire in his belly, strongest guy I knew. And he gets fired that day. And he didn't even tell us. My grandmother told us like he, he didn't have the, it was tough for him to say cause he always was important for him to be useful.
And. After dinner, we'd always have dinner together. We'd watch, we'd watch the Yankee game on TV. We do something and he had the chair, he'd sit in and whatever. And all of a sudden the gleam went out of his eye. The fire went out of his belly and he just sit there and he wasn't, wasn't pop anymore. And I can remember saying, you know, that the TV would be on.
I knew he was starting to get hard of hearing. And I'd say, pop, could you hear the TV? And he'd go, nah, but don't worry about it. Like he was just waiting around to die.
Owen: He checked out.
Mike Goldman: Yeah. And, and he lived two more years, but there was no life in, in those. He wasn't pop anymore. And what that imprinted for me, right or wrong, good or bad, doesn't matter.
What it imprinted in my brain is that for him, once he was forced to retire, His whole life was about looking back. There was nothing to look forward to. It didn't feel useful anymore. And he was just waiting around. To die. And, and he grew up on, uh, uh, the intersection of, of Christie and Hester street in lower Manhattan, which now I think is probably part of Chinatown.
But back when he was a kid, it was low, you know, the, the Lower East side, it was all Jews and Italians. And I actually have in my office behind me, if you, if you're ever on a zoom call or see one of my podcasts, there's the Hester street sign behind and it's to remind me of him and it, it just implanted in my brain that That I want to keep being useful.
I always want, I want my peak to be ahead of me. I'm 59 years old and I still feel like. I'm going to, I'm going to keep growing. I hope when I'm 75 years old, my, I'm looking forward to it, but by the time I'm 80, you know, I want to do this and that's just me, that's what drives me.
Now, the way I think about that with the companies I work with is not that nobody should ever retire.
It's not that everybody always has to love their job. You're right. I get that. But what it drives for me is because I think in my mind of retirement is a dirty word because once my grandfather retired, it was like the life was gone in him and I don't want that to happen for me and my work is so important to me that if I stop today, I'd be like, what am I going to do if I won the lottery?
If I won 500 million today, I would do the same thing tomorrow that I plan to do tomorrow. And I know I don't put that on everybody. Some people would say, I'm going to quit this damn job. And that's beautiful. But what it imprinted that me. So when I think of the, the, the companies I work with, I want to help them create environments where people feel great about what they're doing, where people want to go to work every day, they still may choose to retire, but, but I want to help my Clients create environments where people don't spend every day because looking forward to retirement, that's their major goal.
I want them to feel good about what they're doing now as well. And you don't have to have your own business. You don't have to be an entrepreneur. You could work from nine to five, but still work in an environment where you love what you do every day.
Owen: I think there's a, there's an extra piece, an extra lesson or learning from what you're saying.
And that is the notion that it's not just about, you know, whether you retire or don't retire is that when you retire. It's about what can you do to be able to make that more fulfilling? So what can you do to be able to have stuff to look forward to? What can you do to find meaning in your retirement?
Cause the real problem with your, with, with your grandpa was he lost his meaning in that situation. And to me, that's the key is that when you're looking ahead at your future, if you're planning to retire, it's not a, just a case of, okay, I'm going to go to retire. You have to have that meaning. You have to still feel useful and meaningful.
And not everyone, by the way, not everyone needs to feel you could
Mike Goldman: lose meaning before you retire.
Owen: Yeah.
Mike Goldman: Well, I was talking to you too early that there's a band that I used to love from the eighties called squeeze. And I saw them play at Bergen performing arts center, which is a semi small place in Northern New Jersey.
And this is a place, this is a band. Yeah. That used to play big, like Madison Square Garden. They used to play big places. They peaked 30 years ago. I saw them five years ago. They looked frigging miserable. They looked like they didn't want to be on stage. And I looked and I thought, imagine peaking that early in your life.
And the rest of your life is just kind of an echo of stuff you did Now they're not retired, but, and I may be. Putting too much on them that, you know, I'm just, what I saw was they looked miserable. I couldn't wait for them to get, get off stage because they looked like they couldn't wait to get off stage.
And I just looked at him like, I can't imagine if my best years were, were 30 years ago. And so I always want to, I always want to, I want to have a life where I keep my best years ahead of me. And you asked what drives me. That's part of what drives me.
Owen: So one of the things that I wanted to ask you was about growing older, right?
You're 60 years old, right? 59,
Mike Goldman: 59.
Owen: Yeah. So pretty much 60. So, so as someone who is 59, uh, one of the things that I've noticed for myself is that I'm training for the marathon at the moment, the difference between me training when I was in my early twenties versus now is quite significant and it's significant physically and it's significant mentally.
Now, obviously. I can't remember back perfectly to 25 years ago when I, when I did my first marathon, right? But I want to ask you, cause there's also your beliefs about yourself. So, you know, me, I'm into the whole area of belief. So therefore I've looked at Ellen Langer's work about your beliefs, affect your age and whole biological age thing and whatnot.
And you've got a lot of people online that are all like, Oh, look, I'm 50 years old and I drink kale all the time. And I have this kind of supplement and look at me. And this is, I feel like I do when I'm 20 and I'm not saying they're lying. At all. But then on the flip side, you have people turning around saying growing old is a nightmare.
Soon as you get over 40, your body starts falling apart. You get aches and pains. You got this disc and that disc and the other disc and your hip goes out of joint and you get sick easy. So you got two, let's say, hypnotic suggestions. One is you're perfect and you should be just as healthy as you are at 20, 30 or whatever.
Then on the flip side, you've got the other ones who's the, you know, the tormentors of doom saying, listen, you, your body's going to break apart until finally you're in your seventies and eighties. If you've tortured yourself that long and then eventually you're gone. I don't like either of those. And I'll, the obvious one I don't like is the second one.
Yeah. The first one, though, I'm also not a big fan of because while I agree that it's great to have the right mindset, the right attitude, a better age, I also think there's a little bit of this Pollyanna head in the clouds. You know, yes, if you believe that you're only 20, you'll only be acting 20. You'll only feel 20.
You'll only have your body will respond. I'm like, all right, hyperbole, take a seat. Relax, eat some popcorn, chill out, and let's get on with the real world. So from that perspective, with that nice little setup, how do you see growing old? Like what is your, how do you feel about the fact? And you said earlier, you kind of don't feel as old as you actually are, but how do you feel about growing older and getting closer to death?
Mike Goldman: I didn't hear a word you said. Cause my hearing aid battery is dying. Um, you know, I don't. Okay. I don't look at it as like, like about to turn 60 is kind of like a big thing. And you know, I have a friend that just turned 50 and he's freaking out about it. My son is about to turn 30 and he's like, Oh, don't talk to me about turning 30.
I'm not looking at this as some negative thing. Like, yeah, my body's not what it was. 25 years ago, my body wasn't that great 25 years ago. Um, you know, am I taking some more? You know, uh, uh, prescription pills that I was back then. Sure, cause I'm not listening to my health coach, coach wife about what to eat.
So, so yeah, I mean, I'm, I'm, I'm not, Oh, I'm in the best shape of my life. No, that's BS. I'm getting older and I, and I can't do some of the things I used to do. But I think the reason why the age, It doesn't scare me or depress me or, or, or any of those things. And it goes back to what I was saying a little earlier is from a life standpoint, not my body or not specific things from a life standpoint.
I still feel like I haven't peaked like my wife and I are traveling like, you know, we just, you know, we, we went to Scotland and we've got our next trip planned to New Zealand and we're already planning our trip to Iceland. And from a business standpoint, I'm writing my new book and I'm developing software and I'm trying to do more, more keynote speaking.
And, and, you know, there's so much ahead of me. I'm still looking forward to stuff. So I, I think, you know, the way, and maybe the reason why I still feel really good, whether I'm 59 or I hope I feel the same way at 69 is not because I feel like I'm the picture of health and I feel great, but it's cause I, you know, I feel like there's a lot of people as you start getting older, start looking back more than they look forward.
They're looking back at what their life was, and oh, I'll never have that again, or I'll never have that again, or, and I'm not doing that. Yeah, I look back, and in some cases look back at anger at what a jerk I was, and in some cases look back at pride that I was able to, Work through a business that wasn't working at first and build it into something over, over, uh, over many years.
But I have so much more to look forward to that, that I feel really positive about where I am and where I'm going. I don't feel like, Oh my God, I'm getting old. Things are going to start breaking down. No, I'm getting old. And there's a lot more I want to do that I'm going to go do.
Owen: Just to keep it on the positive.
What about death? Like, the fact is, you're gonna die, we're all gonna die, how do you feel or think about, and I'm asking this from a serious perspective, I'll tell you why. No, I get
Mike Goldman: it. I get it.
Owen: It's because I really, like, the whole stoicism thing, and, you know, Memento Mori, and the whole thing of you're going to die, As a reminder to us that we must look at the life that we have currently and make the most of it in whatever way that makes sense for us.
But I think, again, something that I kind of rebel against is this notion that we just be positive, like just plaster everything off, avoid any kind of topics that might be in any way uncomfortable for people and just be super positive. The bottom line is I think some of the most beautiful pieces of art and by pieces of art, I mean, movies or books written or anything are the ones that make us feel.
So impacted and that has the darkness and the light in it. And when I say death, you know, how do you deal with like, how do you feel about death? How do you feel about like grief, right? You've gone through, I'm sure, situations of grief where you've lost people. Like how, how do you philosophize around the fact that one day you're not going to be here anymore?
I'm not going to be here anymore.
Mike Goldman: First, I will tell you, I, I know when I'm going to die because my son and I have a deal together. Angela and I, my wife and I went to a barbecue about 10 years ago and one of our friend's grandmother was still alive, was 96 years old. She had no quality of life. It was, it was just horrible.
And, and she was a, you know, more of a burden on her family. So I got home that day and I said to my son, I said, and, and you know, it was probably longer. I was probably, I was probably, maybe 45, so it was like 15 years ago, and I said, Rich, do me a favor. I said, I don't want to be a burden. I don't want to live to a point that I'm just existing and, and, and causing you kids stress.
So here's the deal. When I turn 70. Kill me. I said, don't let me know it's coming. And, and he's, he's, you know, he, he's such a wise ass that he's probably going to wait until the last day of my 70th year, just so I'm freaking out every single day. So first off, there's that. But, but the honest. And I bet
Owen: you he remembers it because of his parents.
Mike Goldman: Oh, so, so I thought now, now, so when I said to him 70, I said, I said, Richie, one day, I'm sure I will come to you as I get older and say, Rich, remember I said 70, make it 75. And I want you to look me in the eye and go, okay, dad. So
Owen: I have friends
Mike Goldman: over and I swore it's years later. This is like five years ago.
And I, I swore, I thought I told him 75, so I'm telling friends and Richie's in the room and I said, and by the way, I told him when I hit 75, he said, dad, it was 70. And I said, rich. No, I know. I told you 75. He looked at me. What? Okay, dad. Like, oh man. So now I think the only, my plan is to kill him when I'm 69 is my only way.
Sure. But you know, it's a hard question for me to answer about death. Because I, I haven't been one, of course, I've had people in my life pass away. I love my father in law and he, he passed, uh, God, it's, it's probably almost 20 years now that he passed. Uh, my dad passed two and a half years ago. My mom just passed this last October.
And of course, all of that was hard on me, but I looked at it was in my, I have an older brother who's, who's about four years older than I am. And he was always kind of growing up. He was like, you know, don't you have any emotions? Like he never was emotional about anything. And he took those deaths harder than I did.
And my grandfather passed away. He took it much harder than I did. And, and I don't, I don't know what it is. Maybe it's, I don't know. Maybe I'm just so damn self centered that that life is all about me anyway. Um, I really don't know what it is, but I find that, that I have dealt with death. I don't, I don't spend a lot of time thinking about my own death and fearing that one day it's going to happen and I hope it happens quick and I'm doing something I love, but I don't fear it.
I don't think about it. Um, interestingly enough, when, when my mom passed. Which is the most recent. Um,
I didn't cry when she, I was in the hospital when she passed. I didn't cry when she passed. I cried when I told people I loved that she passed. When I had to call my wife and tell her, she wasn't at the hospital with us. When I got home and told my son, I totally broke down. When I had to call my daughter, totally broke down.
Um, but, yeah. Was, was, you know, I think I thought grieved in a healthy way, but it's interesting as, as I think about it, my mom passed and I had, I had a lot of travel to do right after I had a keynote speech I was doing at a bunch of clients I traveled for and had a bunch going on. So. So, you know, I, I, you know, we had our ceremony and then the Jewish religion, you sit Shiva, which I think is a, I'm not a religious person, but I think that's one of the things that Jews get right is the way they do death and sitting Shiva where, where we did a short, we did three days at my brother's house where people came over and brought food and we told stories about my mom and laughed.
Um, but, but I didn't have much time after that. I went right into. travel and work and stuff I had to do. And then the interesting thing is where I thought I was dealing with it. Well, I had some things that had not gone great from a business standpoint as well. And all of a sudden when I kind of stopped moving from the stuff I did after my mother's death on the business side, I remember describing it to my coach where I felt like I had a Layer of shit around me about an inch thick, like I just felt like I was covered and I don't know what, and it was just like my, I just wasn't thinking right.
I wasn't feeling right. And I didn't know what to do about it. And I'd never felt that way before. And when my dad died. I didn't feel that way. I dealt with it. Okay. And I kind of moved on. So I wasn't even necessarily thinking, Oh, it's cause my mom died because I had dealt with others before and didn't feel that way.
And I remember a couple of weeks later and I was feeling really bad. Uh, my wife went on a. retreat, a yoga retreat with some friends of hers. So it was just, so I had a bachelor long weekend and I decided to go back to, I don't live too far from my old neighborhood where I grew up. I live in New Jersey. I grew up in the Bronx and I went back to my old neighborhood cause I'd like nothing to do for a day.
And I drove around where I went to school, where I played stick ball, where my father had his, Luncheonette, his store when we were kids, um, walked around all these places and, you know, where me and my buddies would sit on a wall in front of a private school and get drunk and get chased out of the neighborhood, went by all those places.
And it was almost as if I was grieving both my parents. You know, maybe I didn't grieve, grieve for my father the way I should have. And it didn't impact me until my mother died. But going back, I was kind of reminiscing in a positive way. And I guess what I'm, as I'm saying this, it's helping me realize that for me, grieving was not sitting and crying my eyes out until I couldn't cry anymore.
For me, My family life was always a very positive thing. I, you know, love my parents to death. We never had a lot of money growing up. It wasn't about money. We struggled money wise, but we always had fun and we always laughed and me and my brother still did. We all, my son loves to be with me and my brother because we tell stories from when we were kids and all the crazy stuff we did and going back to the old neighborhood and reminiscing about, uh, All the great times we had together and playing basketball in the park across the street from my house and all the stuff we did By the time that day was done and it what there were no tears that day.
It was all smiles and reminiscing all of a sudden that one inch layer of crap that I felt around my whole body was gone
Owen: How do you The reason I'm asking you this is because if I think about my life, I'm not scared of much. I'm quite confident. I'm quite secure in myself. I've worked a lot on myself, but the thing that petrifies me more than anything I can imagine is anything happening to my parents, right?
I'm very close. What is it that you say to yourself inside your head that helps you to cope?
Mike Goldman: Man, I wish I knew. I wish I I wish I had the magic. Oh, here's what I say. And it makes me feel okay. I think, cause I don't, I don't know if it's, if it's something I say or something, I think, you know, I wonder if it's just an accumulation over the years and just the way I think about.
My own life. I don't know. I'm I think I'm probably rambling, but I'm not sure what I say. I mean, I certainly think of them and I think of them a lot. Um, and there are times where, you know, I used to, especially after my dad passed. Um, I talked to my mother every day. Not because we had anything to say to each other.
There wasn't that much of an update, but my mother was kind of the typical Jewish mother who was always worried about something. And I think she wanted to talk to me every day. It was more like, Oh, let's just check in and make sure we're both alive. I mean the conversations were literally sometimes 60 seconds.
How are you doing? Good, good. And then go, okay, good, good. All right. I'll talk to you tomorrow. And there are times where, I'll be in my car driving and my mother passed. Now it's, it's, uh, God, it's about eight, nine months ago. And there's still times I'm in my car and I'm like, Oh, I haven't called mom. I've got to call her or something good will happen.
And I'm like, Ooh, I've got to call my mother. And, and, and, and it makes me smile. It doesn't, it happens, but it makes me smile. It doesn't make me down. It doesn't make me sad. I feel like They, they gave me everything they can give me while they were alive. And I did the same for them. Um, I don't feel like there's, there were any words left unsaid or any deeds left undone.
I feel like, I guess I just feel like it's okay. Like I'm, I could still go on and, and, and live my life and I have the support of, of, you know, friends and family around me. I don't know. I don't know. It's, I don't think it's anything in particular that I think maybe, maybe it goes back to. Feeling really good about the relationship I have with them while they were alive, because I think if I didn't say, I love you, if I didn't show them that if I didn't, maybe I'd feel worse than like, Oh my God, they're not here.
And I need to, uh, need to do these things, but I think we had a great relationship while they were here, which maybe makes it easy for me, easier for me to say goodbye.
Owen: But the one thing that bothers me in particular over here, is that And I want to hear your perspective on it, is this notion of boundaries.
I want to talk to you about this. You get an idea that hits in the personal development world, right? So, for example, let's take trauma. Trauma is a big word. Now, is there such a thing as trauma? Absolutely. Are people severely affected by trauma? Absolutely. Is there a situation where culturally the word trauma has been again, taken over and hijacked to the perspective where I'm traumatized because you stopped me playing my video game.
I'm traumatized because you put now, to be fair, if I go into McDonald's and I order a plain burger with just the bread and the meat. And they put a tomato on it or tomato on it. That's traumatic. I'm with you. I can't,
Mike Goldman: I take tomatoes off of all sandwiches.
Owen: Yes. Correct. I don't, I don't even want them. I wonder what friends.
I don't even want them on my sandwich. I don't want cheese. I don't want nothing. Anyway. My point is everything's traumatic from that perspective. Like I think
Mike Goldman: of similar to that. It's a weapon. These days, everybody's offended.
Owen: Yes. Everyone's triggered. And, and, and, and again, I, Without going into the whole woke thing, cause that's another discussion.
But my, my point is, is that when we take the word boundaries and we start to say. I don't want to do this. Therefore, I'm going to use the excuse of boundaries. We're using psychobabble, right? This term to excuse our behavior. When you say something and I want to cancel you or make you feel bad or make you look bad, or I don't want any sort of conflict in my life, I then can say you're triggering me.
So I want you to say what I want you to say. And I'm pointing deliberately. I want you to say what I want you to say, because if you don't, all hell break loose. So to me, there's, there's, that's a big issue that I see occurring. And I really feel that one of, as a psychologist, one of the things that I'm ashamed of is to see a field, which I care a lot about, a lot of stuff being taken from that field and used.
To be able to excuse bad behavior or to excuse the desire that some people have for the poor me syndrome or victimization. So just wanted to get your thoughts overall of that. And also what are the things that frustrate you about not modern society? Cause we could be here all night, but about the personal development world or professional development, the gurus, the experts, all that sort of jazz.
Mike Goldman: You know, back, back to, to the boundaries thing, I think
part of what that triggers for me to use, to use that word, but in a different way is people not taking responsibility for their own lives. In other words, it's very easy to say, well, I'm feeling this way because you triggered me by doing this, or because this happened in my past or because, you know, what, or because that word don't use that word, that word triggers me.
And I think, and maybe this is my, you know, pushing 60, uh, you know, starting to sound like an old man, but to me. That's all about saying the world is happening to me, right? It's this idea of an external locus of control. I'm being controlled by the, you've triggered me and whether that's at a macro level or that's two people talking and saying, well, I'm, I'm, I'm acting this way because, because you said this and it's forcing me to do this.
No, you're a. You know, put on your big boy pants or your big girl pants on and take responsibility for your life. So, so I, I, I, you know, are there, are there times, you know, Hey, there's a lot when I think of, you know, more of the, the woke culture.
There are a lot of words I used when I was a kid. There are a lot of things. I did and were acceptable when I was a kid that are totally not acceptable now. And I look at it and go, Oh my God, thank God. Thank God. When I think about what I used to say and how I used to act, there are times that I look at that and go, thank God the world has changed.
And that's not acceptable anymore. And I also think that people are. Much too easily offended and impacted by things today that are excuses to not take responsibility for their own lives. You know, I, you know, I, I'll be honest, I, I, and I say this in, in, in, with all honesty, I can't remember the last time I was offended.
By something or, or someone like, I just, for me, someone can say something I can agree with or disagree with it, but, but I'm not offended by it. It doesn't trigger me. I know you can't say that to me. No, I could agree or disagree, but you could say it.
Owen: I, I, I agree with you. I'm on the same side as you in this issue in the sense that everything you've said makes sense.
The one thing I'll say is that from that perspective, and as you quite rightly pointed out back in the day, you said certain words and you think to yourself, Oh my goodness, I can't believe we said that. Thank goodness. The world has moved on. I think the most important thing to really see this is, is that the whole nature of taking responsibility is important and we want to balance that.
Because one of the biggest mistakes I see is if you're offended by everything, Then what you're doing is you're galvanizing the other side to say, and I've said this myself, and I'm ashamed that I have said this myself, but it's something that I think can well be proven true in some cases. Inverted commas, well, not proven true, but you can't say anything these days.
Now that's just hyperbole. That's an exaggeration. And that's an excuse that a lot of people will make. Because they want to get permission to say whatever. And the problem is, if you're offended by everything, you're offended by nothing. And therefore it just becomes two sides. Whereas if it's more judicious, and you go, These words are hurtful because of this.
This is hurtful because of that. And you're more understanding and putting that across. I think that's a route forward because it's not like the worst way to try to change someone's mind is to demonize them because they don't do what you tell them. Yeah, and
Mike Goldman: what becomes difficult is. You know, it's like, wait a minute, are we allowed to call it this today?
Like we called it this yesterday. What do we call like sometimes the, the words change like every year, what we can do, I literally saw, this is, this is true, but it's crazy extreme on social media, someone, instead of using the word died, said someone was unalived and I'm like, wha, what?
Owen: I, I can, I can like
Mike Goldman: is I'm like, is is that really a thing now?
Uh, no. I hope that's not a thing. I don't think it's a thing.
Owen: I can't believe you don't know that Bro,
Mike Goldman: but
Owen: I'm so embarrassed I can wound up you so Sorry. I
Mike Goldman: said my mother died. She, she was unlived eight months ago. I, I
Owen: gonna one up you because there was an example, I can't remember, is it a couple of, a few months ago, maybe last year actually.
And some celebrity came out and sort of said, and I'm pretty sure it was legit. It wasn't like just a parody. Uh, they said something along the lines of, uh, uh, from their perspective, they think that aliens should not be called aliens anymore. They should be called extraterrestrials or maybe it was the opposite.
No, I think it was aliens should not be called aliens anymore. They should be called extraterrestrials because again, the aliens start, sorry, the, the extraterrestrials might be offended. But if you're extraterrestrial, I presume that's less offensive. So that's, that's the worst I've heard or the best I've heard, depending on your point of view.
One more question for you, um, pal, uh, from your own point of view, who is one thinker or writer that you believe more people should know about, right? So one person that maybe they've written a book, maybe they've got a podcast, maybe they've. Influenced you when you were younger and you read their teachings or whatever.
Mike Goldman: Hmm. It's a tough one because I told you earlier, I've gone on a diet from reading anything. I've been reading history books a lot lately. Um, a thinker that people ought to know more about.
Owen: And this could be a more grandiose than just someone that you've read about recently, you know, something that of all time.
Mike Goldman: Wow, you're gonna, you're gonna have to edit some pauses out of this cause you're causing me to
Owen: think. Don't worry, we're editing a lot of this.
I don't know.
Mike Goldman: I'm thinking of a lot of people but, but they're not, they're not a secret. Everybody knows who they are
Owen: just because they know who they are. It doesn't mean that they're well, like people read them or study them.
So
Mike Goldman: one, so it's actually, it's a particular book. Um, there is a, organization called the Arbinger Institute. and the first book that came out was called leadership and self deception. Have you read that to me? And, and that's. That's a book you can't, it's very difficult to describe real quickly, but, but it's, you know, when I read it, it helped me to realize that the way I looked at the world was that I was kind of the star of this movie and everyone around were just extras in my way to getting what I wanted.
And the book really, Kind of sets you straight and, and, and taught me a lot about how to look at other people in, in a much more productive way than I was. And that book and those ideas, and I, I have most of my clients read it and it's kind of life changing for them as it was for me. Um, it's, it's the kind of ideas that, that I believe, and I don't think I'm exaggerating.
if everyone in the Middle East believed in what they, they communicate and they kind of preach in that book, I think there'd be peace in the Middle East. It, it's that big. An idea.
Owen: Wow.
Mike Goldman: So I think, you know, the, the leadership and self deception's, their second book is called the Anatomy of Peace.
Mm-Hmm. .they have the third one that's not quite as good, um, but just. Getting a better understanding of how we think of ourselves related to other people, as simplistic as that concept seems, um, most of us do it wrong. I did it wrong for many years and still mostly get it wrong, but I need books like that to remind me every once in a while to say, Wait a minute.
I got to think about other people differently than I'm thinking about them. So I'd say that those ideas and that book is something I wish more people knew about.
Owen: Where can people find out more about you and tell us a little bit about your podcast and the kind of people that you help in the work that you do?
Mike Goldman: Best place for people to find out about me is
That's my website, the how to everything. My podcast is called the Better Leadership Team Show. And you know what? I do all day every day when I'm not doing something like this is work with leadership teams to help them. Uh, you know, my whole goal in life is to create great leadership teams so they can create great companies.
I've got a new book I'm working on. That's all about how to make sure you're, uh, assessing, developing, Coaching talent and making the right decisions to cut the cord, you know, on talent. So, you know, the way I do that is through, being a leadership team coach with a small number of clients doing workshops and keynotes with a bigger group of folks, uh, writing books and soon enough software is going to be on the way.
Owen: As always mate, an absolute pleasure. Love our chats and thanks very much for being a part of the podcast. Thanks
Mike Goldman: for having me. It was fun.
Owen: That's all from us. Thank you very much. You've been watching the Changing Minds Podcast. May the Force be with all of you. And may you continue to live the best life possible.
See you soon.