How to Navigate Change With Ease

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Jonathan Fields (00:00:12) - Okay, so change just the word makes so many people anxious. But why? Why do so many of us experience change or even the thought of it as something negative to be feared and resisted rather than something positive to be met with hope and excitement and embraced? That is the question that we're diving into today with author of the fascinating new book Flux April Renee So April has studied how cultures worldwide approach change for decades now, and she found we're all grappling with the same questions. It's just the tools our societies give us that differ. She has focused in on a particular type of change, though, which is the change that we didn't see coming. We didn't ask for and we don't want to happen. She calls that flux and we all have to deal with it more or less every day, especially these days. And through her research, April has identified eight powerful skills or reframes that she calls flux superpowers because they help anyone navigate change with so much more grace and ease, so much less fear and so much more possibility and energy.

Jonathan Fields (00:01:21) - And in this conversation, this conversation was so actionable and valuable, we went deep into all eight superpowers. And today we're sharing part one of this conversation. And you're going to want to be sure to not just take notes, but hit that follow button wherever you're listening so you don't miss part two, which will be coming up next week as well. Okay. Let's dive into part one of the world of change or flux and how we can move through it in a more grounded and powerful way. I'm Jonathan Fields. And this is sparked.

April Rinne (00:02:02) - So much for me, the line between work and life, whether we call it personal professional, But like even if you look at my resume, sure, you can see one version, one part of me and I've never hid the other stuff, but it's not resume material. But for me, it's not worker life, it's it's life. And so it's interesting a lot of what I've, you know, what I speak about and so on and so forth, we can put on the business strategy lens.

April Rinne (00:02:24) - But at some point we start pulling on that thread and it comes back to much more universal, fundamental principles.

Jonathan Fields (00:02:30) - Yeah, always 100%. I had the good fortune of being able to write a book on uncertainty back in 2011, actually, and it was focused on work as well. But like everything traces back to just how we as human beings handle the unknown, which is a general rule, is not good.

April Rinne (00:02:47) - As a general rule, it's not. But what's interesting and we can dive into this, the lens that I really try to bring to it is very much this global one that we're all asking the same questions. Your culture affects how you respond. Every culture has a limited toolkit, a limited, limited set of tools, you know, in that. But if you look globally, we're sitting on a mountain of human wisdom. Not that anyone has the answer, but like, that's what I love, Like, So how do you see it? How do I see it? How does this culture see it? How did they see it? You know, and and you mix that up and it actually becomes much more, much more uplifting, much more.

April Rinne (00:03:19) - I think it just it gives us more more than our own cultural silo from which to respond.

Jonathan Fields (00:03:25) - Yeah, I completely agree with you. You know, it's interesting because when I think about use the term flux, just really define a state of uncertainty and and that functions on a couple of different levels. Personal, cultural, societal also really business. You know, I've always believed that uncertainty cannot exist without possibility that the two sides of the same coin and if we're feeling the effects of ground lessness, if we don't know how it's going to end, we don't know if we're good enough, we don't know what's going on. Part of our work is to say, well, if this cannot exist without possibility, also coexisting, what's the possibility story and how can we tell that? I'm curious what your take is on.

April Rinne (00:04:01) - That very much aligned. And I would use it's interesting. We talk about possibility. I often frame it in terms of and my research has borne this out over the last almost 25 years of looking at this from many different lenses and sort of grinding those lenses to refine the perspective.

April Rinne (00:04:19) - But the way I like to frame it is when it comes to like, what do you do? What do I do when you don't know what to do? Like when when it just feels over what you just don't know. And no one really knows that the single factor that matters more than any other. It's not whether it change is big or small. It's not whether a change was a surprise or you'd seen it coming for a while that tried to pretend it wasn't there. Right? We can dig into the different kinds of change, even though it's one word. It's it's actually very messy and rich and complex. But the single factor that matters most is whether we see that change from a place of hope or fear. So this hope versus fear and, you know, these are things we often don't talk about at work. It's too woowoo. They don't belong in the meeting room or whatever. But hope and fear is where everything else resides. And to your point, hope is where the possibility is, right? So it's seeing it through hope.

April Rinne (00:05:12) - And then when you're able to do that and they've shown, you know, the neurobiology has shown as well that when you see from a place of hope that actually expands your vision, it increases your peripheral vision, it keeps you from feeling like you're falling down that rabbit hole, whatever. So it has lots of physiological implications as well as obviously psychological and professional and many of the others as well.

Jonathan Fields (00:05:37) - Okay. So then the question arises, if so many of us are presented on a really regular basis with opportunities, we'll call them opportunities to consider change. We may not want them. We may not see them that way. But, you know, there's uncertainty. There is there's there's a shift in the landscape that's being presented to us. If we tend towards either hope or fear. What has been your perception around patterns that you see? Do most people tend more just organically towards hope or more organically towards fear?

April Rinne (00:06:06) - And great question. And it's a it's a perfect tee up, a perfect segue to the question I had just referred to, which is like, change is messy and change is not one thing and it's one word.

April Rinne (00:06:17) - But I think a lot of people treat it like it's one thing. And I hear from people pretty much every day who either acknowledges I have some difficulty with some changes in here they are. But I hear from a lot of people who are like, I love change. I'm a change junkie. Like change is awesome and I'm always like, Hold on a minute, Like back up. Because you and I and most humans that I've met, I don't wish to speak for you, but like on the whole, most humans, we love changes. We choose changes we opt into. So that could be a new relationship, a new job, a new trip to take a new haircut, a new car like. Right. We love those changes. And when people tell me I love change, they're like, those are the changes they're talking about. But find me that human. I'm still looking for them. That loves the change that blindsides you and whipsaw you and throws your plans upside down and you didn't see it coming.

April Rinne (00:07:09) - That's the kind of change that we're really struggling with. And so back to your question, if we think about overlapping these things, we've got changes, we control changes we opt into and changes that are just, you know, that we don't control, that are thrust upon us. Okay? That's one sort of dynamic. And then the hope versus fear, because what's interesting is you can look at either of those kinds of change changes we choose. We typically choose because we're hopeful about them, because we see opportunity, we see possibility, whatever. Right? The piece that I'm most interested in is the changes. We don't choose the changes that are just that are thrown our way. And really that is flux. The changes we opt into, that's all upside, right? I mean, you might make a poor choice about a change, but you're willing to take that responsibility because you can remember, you know, typically that's okay. It's the changes. We don't choose the changes that blindside us. Can we still feel hopeful about those? Can we still see opportunity in those? And that is a mental muscle we can groove.

April Rinne (00:08:08) - And that is sort of the essence, if you will, of of a lot of my work to date. So that's the piece. And can we. Yes, we can. Does it come naturally? No. Is it universally possible? You know, I don't want to put anybody up to too much. It's not inevitable. But every single person can improve every single day, even if it's, you know, small and incremental, we can all strengthen these muscles.

Jonathan Fields (00:08:35) - Yeah, that makes so much sense to me. And but I don't want to move past what you dropped along the way there, which is, you know, you mentioned the distinction between the changes that we choose and the changes that we don't, but also woven in, you use the word control and that's got to be central to this because it immediately reminds me of some of the research that I've seen out of the world. The positive side where they phrase it as locus of control. You know, when you have a locus of control, a sense that there's something that I can do that will affect the outcome, it changes the way that you experience is, is is that the way that you're talking about it?

April Rinne (00:09:08) - Absolutely.

April Rinne (00:09:09) - Well, very much that's a that's a piece of it. And let's keep in mind as well, the inner versus outer control, right. That a lot of change that's dealt to us, these are external forces that we don't control and frankly, we never have controlled. But I think especially prior to 2020, there were a lot of forces at play in the world that a lot of people were led to believe we had some control over. Right. And you see how much can unravel, how quickly in terms of those expectations and that sense of I can control where I go and what I do and and to some degree. Right. But when that what I call Capital C, change hits like the big change that does just throw you sideways. What is your inner source of control in there? I would say a lot of it is around agency, but like your inner can you control your emotions, your reactions, your ability to stay even keeled and oriented and rooted and grounded when the world around you is in upheaval.

April Rinne (00:10:04) - Right. And so there's again, this interesting toggle between when we talk about control, what if that is external and what of that is internal? And to focus more on the inside out component. What I mean by that is, you know, the inner source of of agency and groundedness and orientation, which then it's not that it makes you better able to control what happens externally. It makes you better able to see the reality of the forces that are at play externally.

Jonathan Fields (00:10:33) - Yeah, that makes so much sense to me. You know, and it's it also it speaks to more broadly, you zoom the lens out a difference in and again sweeping generalization here but sort of like a difference in the approach to change when you look at Eastern philosophy versus Western philosophy. Westerner is all about controlling the circumstances. Eastern is about or the external circumstances. Eastern is much more about how do we find equanimity no matter what the external circumstances are. Let's what are the practices and the tools that we have there, knowing full well that we live in a world where we will never be able to control all of the external circumstances? So what will we still be able to actually have some sense of agency over?

April Rinne (00:11:19) - Yeah.

April Rinne (00:11:19) - Well, and I just want to riff on this for a little bit because as you know, a big piece of my work and what's in the book, but more broadly, I've always had an international career and so I've always been fascinated by global cultures. And how does one place or one people see not just change, but all kinds of things differently than others and how to sort of cross-pollinate because there's just so much human wisdom out there. For me, it is an appreciation and a celebration of all the diversity and all the different ways we can live and work and show up for the world. And what you just mentioned, right, is the east versus west, which does have a difference in how we relate to control. I would also say and you know, east versus west, there is very much legitimacy to that. If you look historically, I'm going to cast the net broader and say the real differences between whether it's an individualist or a collectivist culture. And what's fascinating is you have individualist cultures in both East and west and collectivist cultures in both the East and the West.

April Rinne (00:12:19) - And even within one city, you can find different. You know, it depends on where you live and your community and your ethos and to some degree your institutional design and so on and so forth. And that's been really fascinating because when you dig into so where does our sense of control, but also how do we react to change come about and individual versus collective. A lot of it is that kind of me versus we that when change hits in an individualist culture. And again, I think we both can we can make a blanket apology that there is some generalization here. I don't wish to speak for anyone, but at a certain point it's like. Right, Like like broad brush strokes that an individualist cultures when change hits the unwritten, sometimes written but unwritten social script is if each of us takes care of ourselves and responds or reacts to this change, we will be okay. And the collectivist culture is like big change hits. Hold on a minute. Come together. We've got to be okay. And if we are okay, then every single one of us, the individual eyes will be okay.

April Rinne (00:13:23) - And that's fascinating because as you reach research deeper, people often ask me, like, which is better, right? And I'm always like, there's there's no better or worse. These are different. And they all both of these and all cultures have benefits, have strengths and have challenges. Right? But when it comes to change, a lot of it is about what kind of change are you talking about? And even during the pandemic, it was a really good example. But when you looked at our approaches to the pandemic and how are we going to look at this and what are we going to do? There were some strategies, some approaches that such in the example I often use, is developing a vaccine when you're trying to develop a vaccine and you want as many ideas as fast as you can. In fact, individualist cultures just get a bunch, go, just get out there. And there's not a lot of we don't have to pass a lot of thresholds for the invention, for the innovation that was very well tuned for individualist cultures.

April Rinne (00:14:18) - Frankly, that race to do to develop new ideas. On the flip side masking I don't even need to probably bring this up but like that's a classic example of where a collectivist culture just ended up being not only better able to implement and have agreement on the need to protect the we, but also, you know, had lower, lower levels of infection. So anyway, it's interesting when you look at that and you're like, what kind of change are we looking at and which approach might be most suitable and most feasible and most practicable for this particular time?

Jonathan Fields (00:14:54) - Yeah, I mean, it is really interesting also and I love the fact that you said it's not of what like one is better than the other universally all the time thing here because a lot of what I've heard is that there's this almost like there's a battle going on between individualism and collectivism right now and like, which one is the better one? Which one do we say yes to and which one do we jettison? What you're saying is no, like it's context sensitive.

Jonathan Fields (00:15:17) - You know, like they each play a role. There are benefits to each. And let's look at the scenario and see what's happening here and figure out what is the most constructive and healthy approach.

April Rinne (00:15:26) - Absolutely. And for so many things, it's not either or. What I would hope is that if you live in an individualist society, that you develop a sensitivity to the collective good, to the collective. Like I look at it as having their different muscles and we both want to have both muscles be strong. You don't want to have your left arm strong and your right arm weak. You want both. And it's kind of like head and heart. It's like yin and yang. I mean, there's a lot of these things you do. Do not want one to overpower the other. Otherwise, you're out of balance. And I do feel like the individualist collectivist. Well, it's loaded with so much other baggage. I think today that goes far beyond the the initial intent of simply what kind of spirit are we showing up with? Right.

April Rinne (00:16:11) - It's now we can talk about economic models. We can talk about political models. I mean, there's a lot more at stake now. But understanding when and where and individualist approach is appropriate because it will lead to better collective benefits. And when a collective approach is more beneficial because it's going to lead to greater individual benefit, it's like these things toggle together, right? And some of this admittedly requires not a crystal ball, but, you know, not we don't have perfect information when we're trying to make these decisions, but raising the self awareness, raising our the basic knowledge that we're operating with and how we see these things is something that's accessible and useful for pretty much everyone right now.

Jonathan Fields (00:16:56) - Yeah, that makes so much sense to me. So when we think about the conversation around uncertainty or using your word flux, the uncertainty that we don't ask for or invite it into our lives, and yet we find ourselves presented with it, which we all do all the time. The other thing that really comes up for me is the role of stakes in how we handle this.

Jonathan Fields (00:17:15) - Because if the stakes are low and we have, we didn't ask for it and we don't have any sense of control over it, it's kind of like, who cares? But when the stakes are high, it's like all of a sudden, whoa. What's your take on the role of stakes in how people handle flux?

April Rinne (00:17:31) - Um, such a rich question. Like we could spend our whole time, actually, any of your questions, you could spend our whole time right on those. So when I think about stakes and vested interests and I mean it all comes back a lot to control of, like, this is what I own. And again, literally, figuratively, metaphorically like. And the more I feel like I own it, the more I'm going to want to grasp on to it. And the less I'm going to want to let it go, the less I'm going to want to see it change, the more I'm going to fear something happening to it. Right? And yet going back to hope and opportunity and possibility and all the rest, we know that when change happens, that's when growth can occur as well, but only if you know how to let go.

April Rinne (00:18:14) - And so now we're starting to get a little bit more into some of these superpowers. But I do talk a lot about what does it mean to let go? And when I say let go for so many people, we could have another conversation just about language and etymology and like what are our connotations? When I say let go, most people immediately think giving up, losing failure, something bad. And it's fascinating because then when you start looking at a lot of this historical literature and again cross-culturally etcetera, letting go, the ability to let go is actually one of the greatest sources of power and strength and ability to move forward. And it doesn't mean failure. It means being able to read the tea leaves in a slightly different way, being able, even within an organization, letting go of one thing. I get that you don't want to let it's not like you let go of the whole organization and budgets collapse and org charts fall apart. That's not what I'm talking about. Letting go of an outdated mode of how you do something, letting go of an outdated rule or policy which opens you up to new forms of innovation, creativity, teamwork, etcetera.

April Rinne (00:19:20) - And so knowing what's interesting and truly great leaders and I think I look at everyone as some kind of leader, even leading your own life, if you're not leading a team or an organization, truly great leaders are the ones who know when and where and how to responsibly let go and actively develop again. That ability to let go as a muscle. And I will often challenge people to think about to try to let go of one thing every day, one thing that is no longer serving you. And that's something you can do at a very small scale, but it helps you to think about and at very low risk as well. But it helps you to think through how might I look at letting go when the stakes are higher?

Jonathan Fields (00:20:00) - Yeah. So you introduced this notion of letting go. And as you shared, this is one of eight sort of superpowers for navigating flux that you write about and you speak about. I want to dive a little bit more into that because my curiosity, when you say the best folks understand how to do this and when to do it, whether it's in your personal life, could be a personal relationship that you've been in for years that's just increasingly showing that it's not right for you in the future.

Jonathan Fields (00:20:25) - And yet we just stay in it for a long time. It could be a business allocation, you know, like resources or projects that you've gotten behind. What stops people? What stops people from letting go, especially when it becomes increasingly obvious to almost like everyone but you that, okay, like this thing is no longer what it needs to be and it's no longer what you thought it could or would be. What stops it? What makes us grasp so fiercely and like the status quo and not be willing to just let go and explore other options?

April Rinne (00:20:57) - Yeah. Again, a great question, and I'm going to come back to what I was talking about earlier, that fundamentally, ultimately and I won't say this 100% of the time, but I will say very close to a lot most of the time. All of the time it comes back to the sphere. And what's fascinating, it's not that the fear would be on the surface. You might acknowledge that, yes, this relationship needs to end, but you're stuck in it and you're not fearful of the relationship.

April Rinne (00:21:24) - You may not be fearful of that other person, but you're fearful of what would happen if you broke that off. Now, what's fascinating is you often have to dig a few layers deep to get to the fear. It's not a fear of the person being angry or it's not a fear of a business collapsing, for example. And this is just one one pattern that I see show up. The real fear you have is fear of being alone, right? You're not going to get to that on question one, but you kind of peel back those layers. But oftentimes what's fascinating to me and again, I'm not the only person who who would say something like this or who has has developed expertise on this theme. A lot of times we're fearful of if things go well, if I let go, I fear my own. I fear not just my own power. I fear that I might have to make some really important decisions that might frighten me because they're beyond my wildest dreams. I mean, we have those kinds of fears as well, which is fascinating.

April Rinne (00:22:18) - But ultimately it comes down to fear of not knowing what that change might hold, what that decision might hold. And what's, again, fascinating, go back to something like a relationship. Ending a relationship actually falls into the bucket of changes that we have some control over. Not always, but in this context, we're talking about changes you control, which should bring hope and yet often bring fear. And so we kind of have to look at why. And now I'm bleeding a little bit into a different of the eight superpowers. But it's the issue of trust and why it's so hard for us to trust not just other people. For many people, the hardest person to trust is ourselves and so then you start unpacking that, you know, hornet's nest and you lead to some really interesting conversations as well.

Jonathan Fields (00:23:07) - Yeah. And by the way, one of your broader principles on on these eight superpowers is that the the flux superpowers amplify each other. So it's completely natural that we go from one to another here because there is overlap and there's amplification deletion in addition.

Jonathan Fields (00:23:22) - So if we bridge that gap, if we talk about, you know, like the notion of letting go and then fear and then trust being a critical factor, one of the superpowers is to start with trust. And the big question there is trust what and trust who and.

April Rinne (00:23:37) - I love absolutely love taking individuals and teams and leadership cohorts and whoever through this series of questions, reflective questions and small group conversations to better understand their relationship to trust. Because again, just like change, not only is it one word and we often take that again subconsciously, it's like one thing and then you're like, Oh, no, trust is complex and rich and multifaceted and beautiful, and we do not have a very good understanding of trust. The average human, we just haven't looked at it and we haven't looked at how we have ended up on the whole not trusting other people. I'll come back to that in a minute. But like just think about when we say trust, right? I will often talk about the framework where there's a kind of trust that comes from your head, which is cognitive trust, right? I trust that you'll show up when you say you will.

April Rinne (00:24:30) - I trust that you'll do good work. Like it's a very transactional trust, right? That's very different than I trust that you'll have my back when I go through tragedy. Or I trust that. That you won't fire me if I make a mistake. I trust that you you know, that's very much character, culture, psychological safety, right? That's the trust that comes from the heart. That's emotional trust. We've got cognitive and emotional trust. Very different. You need them both. They work in tandem. But to understand how they're different and then you start asking people because not. Not to go too far afield or to back too far back in time. But what's one of the first things that little children learn? Don't trust strangers, right? Humans are not born not trusting, that's for sure. We are taught not to trust and we're taught very young. Don't trust strangers. And you can understand why parents might say that. But play this out. We grow up. We are. We here don't trust strangers thousands of times before age five.

April Rinne (00:25:25) - Then we grow up, become adults, and wonder why we don't trust anybody. And you start looking at like, how did this societal narrative start to infect so much of how we see other people? I on the whole, tend to believe that there are a lot more people who are good and trustworthy than there are bad. At the same time, I'll acknowledge I don't mean blind trust or naive trust. There are bad apples in the bunch, but I would much prefer to live in a world where we look at we see those kinds of people as the exception rather than the rule. And that's where this whole idea of starting with trust, to be able to start with trust, you have to unpack your own relationship to trust and figure out when and where. Do I start with trust? Because most people have somebody in their life that they trust almost intuitively. But most people, if you don't know somebody, the default is don't trust. And where does that come from? And I often have to give a little bit of a caveat or an apology to people to say that, you know, many people have really good reason not to trust that they've been burned.

April Rinne (00:26:21) - Right. But I see this time and time and time again there's a very big difference between having your trust broken and that turning into never trusting anyone ever again. Right. And we fall down that slippery slope every day, often without realizing it. So you start there. And then particularly when you do this in small groups and whatnot, you get to know people so much better because many people have some kind of moment or experience that had a profound effect on their trust. Usually it was related to only 1 or 2 other people. But then from that point forward, they see everyone in a different light and better understanding where that comes from and helping each other kind of see that in a in a more healthy light is actually a really it's a really rewarding and fruitful process, not just for how you do business, but actually a lot of that emotional trust as well.

Jonathan Fields (00:27:09) - And I get that. For those who may still be wondering, though, take us to Final Mile here between why trusting is so important to the process of navigating change.

April Rinne (00:27:20) - Yeah, so the easiest way to phrase this is that the single most important factor to navigating change over time is trust. And what I mean by that is when the unknown hits, the one thing you do not want to have to do is figure it out yourself. Be alone to have to navigate change alone. And in order to not navigate change alone, you need trusted relationships in your life. And in order to have trusted relationships, you have to build trust. You have to know what trust is. You have to come back to this principle of trust. And so that's one piece of it. And then you can also think about it in more of the meta macro light, which is all the different kinds of trust, the kinds of change we deal with and the kinds of trust that that requires. It means trust in other people. It means trust in yourself. It means trust that the sun is going to rise another day. It means trust that you know your trusted relationship, the people who love you today are going to love you tomorrow.

April Rinne (00:28:15) - I mean, lots of different things, lots of different kinds of trust. But ultimately, when it comes to how do we navigate change well over time, trusted relationships, people who have an interestingly, it's mostly that emotional trust to know that if I'm dealt this big change, I have people in my life that will support me, that will at least make me feel not alone. And this is a small side note, but if I may mention it real quick, this is also directly related to our happiness. So I've done a lot of work on global metrics of happiness and the the World Happiness Index and so forth. And I've worked with Finland, which is the world's happiest country, and for various reasons we can talk about that if you want. But it's fascinating that one of the single largest factors of an individual and a society's level of happiness is feeling that you have someone in your life. It can only be it can be just one person, but one person in your life that you trust. So it's it's fascinating how much trust bleeds out into so many different elements of how humans thrive.

Jonathan Fields (00:29:24) - Yeah, I mean, it really does feel like it's it's this critical quality across so much of just human flourishing. So before we talk about some of the other things and the big question in my mind is whether you have been burned, whether you have been hurt, whether you just have been conditioned over a period of years not to trust, and that's your default and you find yourself in a place in your life where you're looking around and there's literally nobody that you feel like you can trust. And we're having this conversation saying this is mission critical in your ability to actually. Flourish through change, which we are all going to be navigating. What is that person to do? What's a first step that somebody can take to start to understand how do I actually is it find one person and just open the door to, well, what's the opening move here for that person?

April Rinne (00:30:17) - What a beautiful question. I almost tear up when I hear it because like that person, I just, like, want to reach out and hug them because there are people like that and they realize and it's not necessarily that they've been poorly intentioned about it, it's that they've been focused on the wrong kinds of metrics of success and the wrong ways of seeing other humans in our shared humanity, if you will.

April Rinne (00:30:36) - So the best way to start is what you said it is Start small. Start with one person. And what's fascinating, you can think about strengthening relationships you already have and like a person that you may not feel like you trust, learning to trust them, so to speak. But I will often talk about what I call tiny acts of trust, small gestures of trust, which you can do with a stranger. So one of my favorite examples is paying it forward, paying for the cup of coffee for the person behind you. You may or may not know them. They may or may not be expecting it. That's not trust in that. Like trusting that the person is going to drink the cup of coffee. But when that starts playing out at a societal level, then you've got like, we're just paying it forward. Everyone's being a bit more generous. You can think about opening a door for a stranger. You can think about striking up a conversation with a stranger and you're not looking for them to become your best friend, but trusting that they'll have a chat with you, trusting that you might learn something.

April Rinne (00:31:31) - There are these little things, too, that often for people who are struggling with interpersonal trust that they can get out of their own way a little bit. And these interactions, even with strangers, can feel a little bit less not threatening, but a little bit more like, Oh, I could practice that. You know, the dynamics are different than than when it's somebody who you might have a long term relationship with.

Jonathan Fields (00:31:51) - Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense to me. So let me close the loop here then also, because one of the types of trust that you described is self trust. Let's bring it back to the same person we're talking about. For whatever reason, they find themselves in a place of life where they just there's no one that they genuinely trust. But also part of what's going if you reach a point in your life where you legitimately do not have anyone in your orbit who you feel genuinely you can trust, my sense is you probably also are feeling some level of I'm questioning whether I can actually even trust myself, my own judgments, my own observations, like what is or is not real or true.

Jonathan Fields (00:32:26) - Do you have a sense for that being true? And if so, how do we start with that?

April Rinne (00:32:31) - Yes. So I do not have empirical evidence. I'm not sure that any such like in terms of a research study on this. But on the whole, in terms of research and just lived experience and observed in others for many years. Yes, yes, absolutely. These things are correlated. So when people who have fewer trusted relationships tend to trust others, much less including themselves. So it kind of, again, this notion of things enhancing or feeding or amplifying one another, it's definitely amplified. And, you know, chicken in an egg situation, two, in terms of which which started which provoked the other. But this is where two, it can be tricky depending on where people are. What kind of I don't work in mental health, but when we look on within the range of mental health challenges, you know, how far has someone drawn themselves inward and down? To what degree can we pull ourselves back up as it relates to self trust? Because oftentimes, depending on where a person is, you might want to start with trusting others to get to a point where you're able to think about trusting yourself much more.

April Rinne (00:33:35) - For most people, I would often say, like if possible, to start with trusting yourself. Start with practicing, trusting yourself in these tiny little ways, right? Trusting yourself that you can actually take care of yourself on a sunny day for an afternoon, trusting that if you, you know, go out. A lot of people are a frightened for example, of excess of like if I start doing something, I won't be able to stop and learning. But it shows up in all kinds of different ways or I'm I don't trust that if I, if I speak my truth or if I share my my real voice that others will like me. It's very not exaggerated. But like we take one thing and we blow it up as to like and everything in my life will be affected by this versus pick something small, pick a conversation you can have with someone, pick something you want to go do to to take care of yourself like and trusting yourself through that process. Even things that you may not have a lot of anxiety about, whether you trust yourself or not.

April Rinne (00:34:31) - Start with the things that you know you can do well and realize that doing those things well involves trusting yourself, that you will do them at all, and then expanding that, fanning that out into other parts of your life.

Jonathan Fields (00:34:42) - Yeah, I love that. It's sort of like microdosing trust to get to the place where you're like expanding and microdosing it. At some point.

April Rinne (00:34:49) - I'll just say I like the Microdosing trust that might be a new a new old tagline here. Thank you.

Jonathan Fields (00:34:57) - And with that, we have wrapped up part one. Of this enlightening conversation with change strategist April Rooney on navigating life's inherent uncertainties with hope, wisdom and flexibility. So join us again next week when we continue this talk, diving deeper into practices like slowing our pace to see previously invisible dynamics that impact our choices will also discuss curating fluid career portfolios and the value of really getting lost intentionally while journeying off well-worn paths. I hope you'll tune in to hear April's final superpowers and gain further clarity on navigating what's next with courage rather than apprehension.

Jonathan Fields (00:35:36) - So be sure to hit that follow button now so you don't miss part two. Until next time, I'm Jonathan Fields. And this is sparked.