About André Alphonso
André Alphonso has more than thirty years of business and consulting experience gained predominantly in Australia and Asia. He has been with the Forum Corporation – a leading management consulting company – for over 19 years and in this time has performed many roles encompassing sales, consulting, design, executive coaching, and facilitation.
André’s clients have included the major professional services, financial services, healthcare, retail, manufacturing, energy, hospitality, information technology, telecommunication, and business process outsourcing organisations.
Episode Notes
Lesson 1: Don’t eat your lunch on the way to work 07m57s.
Lesson 2: Hand craft your personal solar system 12m 48s.
Lesson 3: Banish psychic vampires 17m 14s.
Lesson 4: Engineer a halftime pause 20m 45s.
Lesson 5: Collect adventures not things 28m 30s.
Lesson 6: Dare to be curious…Dare to be present 33m56s.
Lesson 7: Let light entre through your wounds 39m 37s.
Lesson 8: From Cavemen to Neuroscientists 45m 27s.
Lesson 9: Use noise cancelling headphones to filter out the dirty noise 53m 12s.
Lesson 10: Burn your masks 57m 37s.
André
Alphonso – 10Lessons50Years
Duff Watkins: [00:00:00]
Hello, and welcome to the podcast 10 lessons. It took me 50 years to learn
where we dispense wisdom, not just information or mere fact to an international
audience of rising leaders. My name is Duff Watkins and I’m your host. This
podcast is sponsored by the professional development forum, which helps young professionals
of any age accelerate their performance in the modern workplace. And today
you’ll hear honest, practical advice that you can hear in a textbook because it
took us half a century to learn this stuff that he’s guest is André Alphonso,
André welcome to the show.
André Alphonso: [00:00:35]
Hi Duff, really glad to be here.
Duff Watkins: [00:00:37]
André is the director of Ariel Group Australia, and they help professionals and
improve their communication skills.
But, but there’s more to it than that. It’s deeper than
that. What they actually do is. Teach you you, how to inspire and influence
other people in order to create a more human workplace. Does that sum it up
André? Did I get that right?
André Alphonso: [00:01:03]
Yep. A hole in one Duff. And I think the other thing which I, I really liked
talking about because it’s so, so integral to what we do is the sorts of ways
that we do it is by teaching businesspeople the same skills that actors learn
in acting school and I think that kind of makes it really funky.
Duff Watkins: [00:01:25]
André is also coauthor of this book, strategic connections. A lot of people I
talk to are connected, but they think they’re networked. There is a difference
between networking and connections. If you want to learn how to connect
strategically in that networks work for you.
This was the book, strategic connections and André Alphonso
is one of the co-authors more about this later. I just wanted to make sure I
got that in André. Let’s begin. You’ve had, you’ve held a number of senior
positions in large companies. Do you remember what your first business lesson
was?
André Alphonso: [00:01:55]
yeah, look, you know, this was, this was can I just tell you a quick story?
It’s mid-eighties, I’m on my first business trip and I’m in
London and. I invite an ex-colleague of mine, not a client, an ex-colleague of
mine who works in a competitive company out for dinner. And I said, I’m going
to pay you choose. So, he was a really nice guy. And we went to this place in
Covent Garden, which was a Michelin star restaurant.
And we had an amazing dinner and after dinner, which was
quite expensive he had this. penchant for Almanac, which is at, and we see on
the menu, there is a 1918 Almanac. So, this is like 70 years old, been bottled.
Right? So, we, we sort of in the, in the, in the spirit of the moment, so we’ve
got to try one.
So, we have a 1918 Almanac, and then he goes, I thought was
really good. Let’s see if the T if we can do 10-year increments of what we
think. And we went from 1918, 28, 38, 48. 50 68, by which time we were kind of
pretty smashed. The bill comes, it is 650 pounds, right? 650 pounds, which in
those days was equivalent to about 1600 bucks in today’s terms.
It’s about $3,000 right now. Now I. I had to figure out how
I get this across on expenses. And I was sweating cause I didn’t have 1500
bucks laying around to spend. I was I was a manager, a middle manager in the
company that stage.
Duff Watkins: [00:03:28]
You’re about to be a former manager.
André Alphonso: [00:03:32]
So, how do I and so I was feeling this amazing stress and I, and I spoke to a
couple of colleagues of mine and they said, Oh, look, you know, cover it up,
say you had, you know, four or five different meals at different places.
And I thought, you know what? I actually started writing out
the expense report with all these four or five different. And I thought, no,
I’m going to just go and eyeball my boss and tell him what I did. So, I owned
it and told the truth, and I went and spoke to him and he looked at me and he
says, okay.
Give me some time to think about what I’m going to do over
here. And I walked out of the office, went back to my office and those days we had
offices and he gives me a call and he goes, put the expense form in it’s
through. And, and I said, wow. I said, thank you. And he goes, it’s about trust
André. He said the fact that you told me what you did and didn’t try to cover
it up. Is the thing that makes the difference here. And I think that
relationship that we had ever since there was one to this day, actually of
immense trust. So, I think the first business lesson I learned was own your
mistakes. You know, don’t try and kind of cover it up and tell the damn truth
as opposed to faking your expenses.
That was the first one. I think that was a pretty positive.
And to this day, it’s, it’s still something I tell all of the people who work
with me and for me.
Duff Watkins: [00:05:01]
Just making a mental note here, next lunch with André, he buys,
André Alphonso: [00:05:06]
I’m a bit more prudent about where we go to these days.
Duff Watkins: [00:05:10]
and, and you’re, you’re a fortunate, he had a good boss, but you know what
you’re saying?
Reminds me speaking the truth. It really isn’t that hard. I
mean, initially when you think about it, but when you actually do it, it just
isn’t that difficult. It makes me wonder why people put it off. So, it makes
such a big deal about it. Okay. What about second question? What about, what
have you unlearned lately?
And you know what I mean by that? You know, there’s a lot of
things that you absolutely positively held to be true then, but now today
you’re a bit wiser, but smarter and, and maybe even recently you learn. You
unlearned something that you thought was gospel truth.
André Alphonso: [00:05:50]
Yeah, it is. And you sort of come into this world with all of these beliefs
that you hold pretty dear to your heart.
So, one of the, so I do a lot of exec coaching and I’ve
always had this view for I’ve been doing it for pretty close to 20 years now
that if we’re doing it, we’re going to meet in person. And we would structure
it in a way that, you know, that was that. So, I basically didn’t do any
coaching, which wasn’t face-to-face.
And then with COVID-19 everything stopped. And I had, I was
forced to switch to doing it virtually you know, zoom or whatever the thing was
and blow me down. I found that it was different. In some instances, better and
as powerful come at the end of it. So, what happened is typically I would do,
you know, we’d meet together once every two or three weeks, we’d have a
two-hour session.
We’d go through all the stuff. Now with zoom, people can
drop, ring me up and say, Hey, we’ve got an issue tomorrow. Can we get on a
zoom call? 30 minutes and we’re done. So, we’ve moved from this very structured
approach to this very organic, flexible approach. And I think it’s much more
powerful. And it’s opened up the rest of the world to me because before I would
only operate in my little patch over here.
Right. And now I believe that. With a little bit of skill
and using the technology. I can do that. So, that’s something I’ve had to
unlearn and smash that belief, which I’ve kind of held for a long, long, long,
long time. Yeah.
Duff Watkins: [00:07:27]
That resonates for me. I also do a bit of management performance coaching and
the same thing.
I mean, what I find it actually liberates in some ways, I
mean, I used to be like, you can obviously devastated face to face. Gotta be,
face-to-face gotta be one-on-one. No, it doesn’t. As what we’ve learned. No.
Okay. No, thank you for that. Let’s go to the 10 lessons. It took you 50 years
to learn and Lesson, number one, don’t eat your lunch on the way to work.
I’m thinking, but what if I’m hungry?
André Alphonso: [00:07:54]
Well have breakfast. It’s the answer to that, right. So, so what happens and,
and, and, you know, if you have a lunch on the way to work, lunchtime comes,
and it’s all gone. There’s nothing there. And I used that as a, as a line
because the lesson really here is around health.
So, let me tell you a quick story, just about 60 seconds or
so. 2015, and I’m in hospital upside down in emergency and people are getting
the defibrillators ready and I’m in a state of panic. And I say to the nurse
next to me, what’s happened. What’s going on? She said, André, you have just
reached critical and we’re trying to save your life. Right.
And every movie I’ve
seen Duff movie I’ve seen when they do that, the patient never comes back. They
always eventually die. I don’t know about you. So, it’s like defibrillators
don’t have in my head, in my, in my experience that doesn’t have a great
outcome, but I thought to myself, you know, here I am in my fifties, what the hell?
Is this it, am I going to die? And it’s interesting when you
kind of make eye contact with death, everything shifts, everything shifts. So,
I guess since, since then, I have been, because I was diagnosed with heart
disease in my forties. All right. 42. I had my first heart attack, and I was
messing around. You know, a bit of this, but at that, yeah. Look, I’ll watch my
diet do a bit of a walk over here but didn’t really take anything seriously.
And the last five years I’ve been seriously re trying to reverse my heart
disease. And according to my cardiologist the, my last visit, he thinks I’m
pretty much there.
But the point I’m trying to make in terms of don’t eat your
lunch on the way to work is when you’re 20 something, even 30 something you’re
Bulletproof, right. Kind of invincible. I can put it off to, to a later date.
And now I knew when I was my twenties and thirties, both my parents had heart
disease.
That it was something that was going to come knocking on my
door. I’d wait until I was 50 before I had sort of started to take it
seriously, you know, 42, boom. Hit me almost died. And even after that first
instance, I kind of kept putting it off because one of the things is if you
cash your chips into early in life later in life when you actually need it,
it’s not there.
And hence eating your lunch on the way to work. You know,
you’ve got to put some bit into the future, and this is really an investment in
your health, and it’s not just your physical health, it’s your mental health as
well. And I think as we are getting more and more aware of the sorts of
stresses and pressures we have. Growing up, I was, I smoked. I ate really bad
food, not much exercise stress, God stress was, you’ve all stress on your arm.
Like a badge of honor. Yeah. Boom. You know, you’re lying upside down in a bed
and you go. What, what the hell and yeah. So, I think to do any people who are
out there listening to this who might be in their twenties, thirties, or
forties it’s, it’s, it’s just to be cognizant of not cashing your chips in way
too early.
Duff Watkins: [00:11:09]
You know, it rings a bell. Cause I used to run psychotherapy groups and
psychiatric hospitals, and I’m hanging out with the psychiatrist, the young
trainees. And I love those guys, but some of them were changed smoking. They
were overweight. They had clearly unhealthy lifestyles and it, I deduced that
they thought health was the absence of illness.
When in fact health, as you say is an investment is the
state that needs to be created and perpetuated, and I’d say protected and
preserved. And I don’t know why that’s hard for, for some people to accept.
There’s a responsibility that we have to keep ourselves healthy. I mean, if.
Yeah. If it’s not for you, although that’s enough, you know, maybe for the ones
that love you.
André Alphonso: [00:11:55]
Yeah, no it’s pretty common. I think if, and what I’ve found in the last five
years is because I’m really focused on my health. I have this amazing energy
right now, amazing energy. You know, my wife and myself, we’re about to launch
a new business. Right. And, and people are saying to me, well, what the hell?
You know, you should be taking it easy, André and I’m okay.
I don’t want to so all of a sudden, it’s like, if I had this kind of vitality,
you know, boom, yeah, 10, 15 years ago, what would have happened anyway? Yeah,
and I look back.
Duff Watkins: [00:12:28]
well, what I’m hearing, it’s never too late.
André Alphonso: [00:12:31]
Yeah. It’s never too late.
Duff Watkins: [00:12:32] Lesson, number two, handcraft your personal solar system.
Now tell me more. I know what a solar system is, and I
really like to be able to more godlike and create one. So, tell me how to do
that.
André Alphonso: [00:12:45]
Okay. So, if you think about a solar system it’s critical to our survival,
right? It gives us heat. It gives us light. It gives us gravity without it. We
probably wouldn’t exist as a species.
Well, if you take that metaphor and extend it in terms of
the relationships we have in life, we actually have a solar system that kind of
happened. It’s through happenstance that it forms it’s not. Strategically. And
hence the book, strategic connections.
And what the point I’m trying to make over here is, is take time to kind
of handcraft the people you want to come into your lives.
They say you have friends for a reason, friends for a season
and friends for life. And you know, as well as I do, you come across as, as we
walked this planet, we come across people. That we want to hold on to, there’s
something about the chemistry that happens and you go, you know what. That’s
someone I want to be in touch with for the rest of my life.
So, crafting your personal solar system is to make sure that
you’re strategic and intentional about the people that you want to be around
and in your life. But there’s a couple of things I would say to you in terms of
making that happen. The first one is there’s a tendency to surround yourself by
cheerleaders and cheerleaders are great.
They make you feel good. Yeah, but it could also be like a
bit like the Hans Christian Anderson fable of the emperor’s new clothes, the
cheerleaders don’t actually tell you stuff that might upset you. So, I think as
you go about crafting your personal solar system, you’ve got to have in it,
people that are going to bring out the very best in you.
And one of those is, is what I call a personal critic. It’s
a term I only came across recently and I love the idea of a personal critic.
That means someone. Who is willing to tell you what they think and feel?
Without any consequence. They do so because they come from a place of love.
Right. And, and, and, and I, I, I do have a couple of those people in my life
and I always seek them out to say, well, what do you think about this idea?
What do you think I should do over here? And I know that the
advice I’m going to get back. It’s going to be based on their truth and it’s
not going to be, you know, sugarcoated in any way. And, and, you know, you can
always say, you know, that is often your spouse and that is true. I think if
you have that sort of relationship I do with my wife, she tells me a lot of
stuff.
I’d probably say, yeah, yes. However, when you’re involved
in a romantic or an emotional relationship, but there are, there are dynamics
over there, which, you know, people kind of. They have to live with every day.
So, people sometimes hold back in terms of what they want to say, but having a
personal critic, which is someone outside of that that’s willing to tell you, I
think, is really important as well as those people that are going to take out
of your comfort zone and inspire you to kind of do those sorts of things.
So. So, yeah, I think for me you know, being strategic in
the connections from the book, if you like is, is part of it. But it is about
your personal network as well as it’s your life network, as well as just your
business and other things. But it is that solar system that’s going to make you
bring out the very best in you as humans.
Duff Watkins: [00:16:11]
and, and choosing it consciously crafting it.
André Alphonso: [00:16:15]
Absolutely again, investing in it, making sure that people are getting
something back from you from being connected with you. So, to speak really
intentional, it’s about, it’s a, there’s a generosity of spirit that exists in
these special relationships. Right. And, and it, it actually. It just gives you
energy. It gives you inspiration and it gives you truth.
Duff Watkins: [00:16:37]
Generosity of spirit now that’s it, man. You know, to me, I think you nailed it
because it’s not a chore. You know, it’s not a, it’s not a drag to be around
those people, even if you know, they’re going to give it to you straight it’s
okay. That’s what separates them.
André Alphonso: [00:16:53]
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.
Duff Watkins: [00:16:54]
Similar to that point. Lesson number three banished psychic vampires.
Now I’ve been anti vampires, my whole life, André. I say round them up, ship
them back to Transylvania or in the U S build a wall, whatever it takes. But
the psychic vampires. Tell me what you mean.
André Alphonso: [00:17:10]
It’s actually the other side of the coin to what I was talking about before.
And the quick story is I used to work with the guy about 15
years ago and he used to, we used to run workshops. I used to run a training
company and he often come back and go, ah, I said, how was the, how was the
workshop Garrett? He goes, it was fantastic except for a couple of psychic
vampires in the room.
And, and, and, you know, you know what I mean? It’s as if
those of you who’ve been in a classroom would know exactly what that is. It’s
those people that kind of suck the energy out. They’re negative. They’re,
they’re not they’re mismatches. They don’t want to be there. They’re cynical.
So, you know, those are the psychic vampires and I’ve realized as you know, as
I’ve gone through life, that I’ve kind of led a lot of them into my life.
And I find that they used to suck the energy.
Duff Watkins: [00:17:57]
In so many ways they suck.
André Alphonso: [00:18:01]
And again, this is probably one of the hardest things I’ve had to do, which is
about making sure I limit or banish those relationships that, and it could be
from clients. It could be from colleagues. It could be for people that work for
you, it could be friends and it could even be family members at some stage.
I’m not immediate family, but usually extended family
members, right. Where you just feel this energy, you know, they leave and you
go, I just want to shoot myself. No, and, and life is too short. I don’t want
that in my life. I don’t want people making me as, so, you know, your personal
soul system at one hand brings out the very best in you.
Psychic vampires actually bring out the very worst in you.
And I think banish them get rid of them, move them out. You know, there’s a guy
I used to work with a long time ago, work for me. And he was just one of those.
You know, he’d show up late for meetings. If he was sitting there, he’d be
looking at the newspaper and, in our sales meetings, he’d be mismatching
everything.
If you say blue, they would say gray. You know, everything
was cynical. That’s not gonna work kind of approach. And it was just bringing
everyone down and eventually he had to go. And I remember going to my boss at
the time and saying, look, here’s the situation. This is the guy he’s bringing
the whole team down.
And you know, we just not. Being able to hit our straps. And
I remember what he said to me. He said, you said, André, no breath is better
than bad breath. Yeah. And I think that’s kind of that phrase has stuck in my
head for some reason, for a long time. And I think that’s it. Banish, psychic
vampires. Get them out of your life.
Duff Watkins: [00:19:43]
Yeah. Easier said than done sometimes, but, but then again is it now that I
think about it, but the point is it’s important to get rid of those. Cause you
say, are you, are you saying that they have a disproportionate influence on
your life? I mean, their negativity sort of outweighs their presence in some
way.
André Alphonso: [00:20:02]
Yeah. So, one comment or one interaction can send you down a spiral for days,
weeks and months. Right. Days, weeks, and months. And you know, it’s just not
worth it. It’s not worth it.
Duff Watkins: [00:20:18]
Mm. All right. Point number four, engineer A halftime pause.
André Alphonso: [00:20:24]
Yeah, this is something I really. Practice and believe in it. And when I coach
people really encourage them to do this as well.
Again, a story back in the mid-nineties, I was running a
workshop for one of the big banks and we had the senior managers sitting in it
and this workshop is about 30 people and we thought we’d be clever. And I was
facilitating it. We would invite an executive to come and just a bit of a
fireside chat for us.
So, this was the BRW. Executive of the year or something
like that in the nineties. And he came and sat, and we were having this
fireside chat. He talked about stuff. And I asked the question. I said, look,
we’re a bunch of young leaders sitting around over here. If there’s one bit of
advice you could give them, what would that be?
And he leaned back in his chair and he thought about it. And
there was this silence that seemed to go for a little bit too long. But he was
thinking. And he said, okay, here it is. It’s going to sound stupid. But here
it is. He said every Wednesday, every Wednesday at two o’clock to three o’clock,
my calendar has been locked.
Nobody can access it at all. The only thing that can. That
can access that time I have is a family personal family crisis or a customer
crisis. He says, because what I do in that one hour, he says, I shut the door,
put my feet up or I go for a walk and I spend the time reflecting on what I’ve
done that week. And what I need to do going, going forward in that week. And it
struck me that, you know, Covey came up with, you know, use the Eisenhower
matrix as we all familiar with, which is, you know, in terms of looking at the
things we spend our time on are being urgent and important. So, we tend to.
Duff Watkins: [00:22:06]
Let me just show people, this is an Eisenhower matrix. You can find it online
there are many versions of it. The point is about finding what’s important and
what’s not. And classifying them do it. You delegate this, did you delete this?
Is it urgent? And does it not matter as many forms of that? Stephen Covey
popularized it, but it’s attributed to general Eisenhower who led the world war
II allied forces in as a former president of the United States. Sorry, go
ahead.
André Alphonso: [00:22:33]
Yeah. Yes. It’s, it’s a fantastic tool and one that keeps giving because I keep
coming back to it. The whole idea of the Eisenhower matrix is that yes, the
things that are urgent and important we do first, but then what we find is as
we go through life, we then drop into what’s urgent, but not important.
Also known as someone else’s agenda, you know, someone else
telling us to do that. And then, you know, we get this cycle of going into the
not urgent, not important, where we spend time on, you know, Facebook or social
media or surfing the net. And the thing that always. Always gets ignored or put
on the back is what we call quadrant two, which is the urgent, sorry, the not
urgent but important.
These are things like your health relationships you know,
setting up some goals, the things that, you know, your own learning, these are
things that are not urgent, but really, really important and tend to get thrown
out. So, when I come back to the story of this executive, that was his way of
doing a review of the Eisenhower matrix to sit down and take that pause or
engineer that pause.
So, I can sit down and say, what has how’s my week gone? And
I think we can extend that. And I do extend that to doing it on a daily basis.
You know, the importance of what happens at lunchtime. Is, it gives you a
chance to reflect. So, the idea has to reflect on how I spent the first month
in the morning and what am I going to do in the afternoon?
And that can happen. At any period of time, you know, we
look at a year and typically we do that exercise on New Year’s Eve while we all
sitting around a barbecue or watching the fireworks and thinking about what we
have to do in the next year, too late, we should be doing that on the 30th of
June and saying, well, what’s the year been like so far?
What have I done? And what do I need to focus on? What are
the important, not urgent things that I need to do? And I think Duff, if you
look at life itself and I have a really strong and fundamental belief in this.
That when you get to your early fifties, you’re only halfway through your adult
life it’s halftime, right?
And in any game, what happens at halftime? You go into the
dressing rooms and the coach sits down and talks to you and says, well, how do
we play the first half? How are we going to play the second half? What do we
need to do? The game has always, usually one in the second half. Right? So, so
the whole idea of making sure in this busy, busy, busy world that we have is to
engineer a pause point to reflect. I think. That really gives you just so much
kind of vitality and perspective.
Duff Watkins: [00:25:23]
I have arrived at this consciously or independently of what you’re saying. And
what you’re saying resonates every morning. I do a review of yesterday with
pluses and minuses and evaluation, and then. Talk about what I need to do, what
disciplines do I need to emphasize today in order to progress what I want to
do. And I find that it helps. And a lot of the minuses keep occurring.
Oddly enough, basically bad habits are stuff I just haven’t
mastered yet. And that’s okay. That’s okay. You know, cause that’s the way life
is. But the idea of reflecting every day, I find have been very helpful and it
helps other people as well. And there is a strong psychological basis for it
about. Journaling writing, being able to process things, because it literally
helps a person. It helps you process information and helps you advance,
whatever. However, you define that it helps you advance in your life.
Basically. It’s just being conscious and being mindful of things.
André Alphonso: [00:26:22]
Yeah, just, just quick. But for my dad, probably a few months before he died, we
were out having a coffee. And I said, dad, you know, if you could get one of
those throwaway lines, if you could kind of give me one bit of advice going
forward.
What would that be? What have you learned in life? And he
said, look, buy me a coffee next week. I’ll let you know. So, he went away and
thought about it and took the assignment pretty seriously. And he came back and
what he said to me, is he, as you said, just really simply spend more time
reflecting where you are.
It’s the same thing. You know that power of reflection on
life, because he said, you can just go down this path and then it’s too late.
The more points you have along the way to reflect the better you will be. And
I, and I’ve taken that on board, and I do it to this day and it kind of
translates into this lesson as well.
Duff Watkins: [00:27:08]
And your dad is an educated guy, but he was a, he was an Indian, an Indian, but
he relocated the family to Australia and that’s a big deal, you know, that’s a
big deal. And I remember, I, I think you said you were, you know, you were the
only Brown boy and all the white boy schools. And this is when Australia is not
quite as enlightened as it is now, whatever level that may be.
So, so there are some stories there, but that’s, that’s
coming from a guy who made a big move for himself and his family.
André Alphonso: [00:27:34]
Huge, huge moves, huge move you know, And I often think about that in terms of
the gifts that he gave us and the sacrifice kind of he had to make. But yeah,
but it was his wisdom that he parted along the way that I still kind of adored.
Yeah.
Duff Watkins: [00:27:51]
Lesson number five. This is probably one of the most psychologically validated
points that I, that you will see in print over and over again. Lesson number
five collected ventures, not things.
André Alphonso: [00:28:03]
Yeah. Well, I think I’ve found in life that, you know, Things are great. They
make us feel good and give us a spike adventures kind of the, the, the payoff
of adventures lasts a lifetime, right? A new car is great for a few weeks and a
few months. But you know, ultimately the, the, the, the learning and the
experience we have from adventure is that my belief is that we should stop
collecting things and start collecting adventures.
Now, the only caveat I’d put to that is, you know, there are
people out there who make their lives. As being collectors and of course that’s
different, right? Yeah. Well, that’s the passion and that’s okay. But often we
just get so caught up in, in just getting the latest and greatest phone or the
latest and greatest car or whatever, you know, whatever the, the, the summer or
winter collection is going to be in terms of clothing that we actually lose
sight of it.
And, and I learnt this because. I was a collector. And I
think what happens is we go through our lives. You know, we spent the first
half of our lives, collecting stuff, you know, cars, houses, mortgages,
families all sorts of things. And then you get to 50 and you go that was all
great. What next? Where’s the significance?
And I think the whole idea of an adventure and I got to that
place, right? I got to that place at 50. I sort of thought I want to throw in
this corporate life, and I’m going to go and start up my own business. And I
took my wife, Kathy. Who’s. Australian born in Australia, our kids, our two
girls were in primary school at the time I’ve got four daughters and a son.
Our two youngest girls were in primary school. We relocated
them to India to start up a new business. And it was a huge adventure, probably
the adventure of a lifetime for all of us in many different ways. And we went
there with a very clear outcome focus, which is. Yeah, we’ve got to make so
much money we’re going to do this. We’re going to do that. But on reflection,
the real value that came out of it was none of that. It was the experiences
that we had. It was the adventure that we had individually and collectively.
And now when I sit down and think about goal setting, I talk about it as an
adventure.
Right. And for example, I said, I mentioned earlier that my
wife and myself, we’re going to start up a new business on, you know, wellness
on mindfulness and yoga and. You know, yes, it’d be great if we can get a
financial return on it, but our view is, Hey, let’s start another adventure
together. And I think that changes your entire mindset as to success of
failure.
Because if you look at it as an adventure, it’s never a
failure that, right. There’s never a failure. Yes. You’ve got to strive. You’ve
got to make the best of what you can do, but if you go into it with that
mindset, you never fail as opposed kind of as opposed to kind of being outcome
focused. Here’s the return here’s the goal is a milestone I’ve got to get, and
then you wake up and go out and didn’t achieve any of those. I’m a failure. No,
not at all. Every, I think every goal you should look at it should be changed
into an adventure. And I, I believe that, and I do that now and I find it gives
me a lot more passion and vigor in terms of pursuing different things.
Duff Watkins: [00:31:19]
Well here, here’s an example. We’ve already talked about his health. I tell
people, yeah. If anyone asks me about where we’re discussing diet or exercise
protocols, somethings, and I say, it’s an adventure, you know, you walk that
path yourself and you will discover for yourself and, and, Oh, don’t forget to
have fun on the journey because it’s an adventure you’re supposed to enjoy it.
It’s not slogged through it in a me occupied territory.
Yeah. At night by yourself. It didn’t like it’s not supposed to be like that.
As Robert Louis Stevenson said better to travel expectantly than to arrive and
enjoying the process. The psychological reference that I made earlier as every
study of happiness that I’ve read, every book talks about that happiness
actually occurs within an experience, not by the accumulation of stuff. It
isn’t things which give you that, that joy, that happiness, that experience.
You are talking about taking the family to India or, you know, it could be a
diet, could be any bloody thing and that’s the point.
André Alphonso: [00:32:21]
Absolutely. Right. Absolutely. And in fact, it doesn’t have to be these big
things Duff, right? It could be little things. It could be, it could be going
to the supermarket to pick up some stuff on an evening and say, you know, if
you, if you look at it, well, Hey, what am I going to experience? What am I
going to see? What might be some interesting things along the way. It actually
changes your mindset. You smile a bit more; you talk a little bit longer to the
shopkeeper and your experience becomes a whole lot better.
So, I think if you look at adventures, even at the micro
levels on a daily basis, it shifts your thinking a little bit and makes you a
little bit more open to the sorts of experiences rather than head down,
straight in there. Pick up what you need to do, speak to know and get the hell
out. So, I think adventures the whole idea for the adventure mindset. Maybe
that’s what it is. This is just giving us a lot more in terms of in terms of
how we show up in this world.
Duff Watkins: [00:33:18]
All right. Lesson number, number six, dare to be curious. Dare to be present.
André Alphonso: [00:33:23]
Yeah. So, that’s a recent one. And again, a story. It was my daughter, Molly
she’s she was just 22 and we were having a conversation and she’s having a
rough time at work a little while ago, a few months ago.
And you know, and she was telling me about this. She was
quite emotional about it. And of course, like a father, a businessman. Coach, I
was dishing out all this advice and wisdom and, you know, she looked at me
halfway through the conversation and she said, and I’m paraphrasing. This is
probably not exactly what she said, but it was a bit how I received it was
“Dad I don’t enjoy talking to anymore because I don’t think you really try
to understand”.
And it just knocked me senseless. I thought, you know, hang
on. You know, I’m a communicator. It’s what I do for a living here. And my
daughter’s saying I cannot communicate. And it struck me that I had just
stopped being curious. You know, I stopped being curious and I stopped being
present and it, it reminded me of this guy called Jadoo Krishnamurthy who’s,
she’s got a quote, which I’ve always followed kind of most of my life.
And for, for some reason, I’d kind of dropped the ball on
it. I’m just going to read it out. It’s very, very good. So, Krishna Murthy,
for those of you don’t know is, you know, an Indian scholar theologian, stuff
like that. It’s very, very. Thought provoking person very well renown too. Yes,
yes.
And he says this, “if we try to listen, we find it
extraordinary difficult, because we are always projecting our opinions and
ideas, our prejudices, our backgrounds, our inclinations, our impulses. When
they dominate, we hardly listen at all to what is being said. In that state,
there is no value at all. One listens and therefore learns only in a state of
attention. A state of silence in which this whole background is in abeyance is
quiet. And then it seems to me, it is possible to communicate”. And you
know, when Molly was talking to me of that, I just realized that what I was
doing was projecting my opinions, my ideas, my prejudices, my background, my
impulses, right on her.
And. It’s it. And it’s, I’ve consciously from it was like a
wakeup call. Even in my coaching work I do right now, the whole focus is to be
curious and, and the metaphor I use, it’s a bit like driving through a school
zone, a 40-kilometer school zone. It seems unnaturally slow, but that’s kind of
how it feels when you are curious, you put everything on hold and slow it right
down and really say, well, what’s going on.
You know, what’s happening? Why is she, why might this be
happening rather than thinking through, well, here’s a solution. This is what’s
going to happen. And that’s the second thing, which is just kind of being
present in the moment. So, when people are curious, you’ve also got to be
present. So, you dare to be curious. Because you’re putting yourself out there
just to be there and dare to be present. I think that is such a powerful way to
be when you’re with other people who might be in some position of distress or
challenge.
Duff Watkins: [00:36:44]
Yes. And what you’re saying, I can prove what you’re saying. Because in
psychotherapy, all forms of psychotherapy is just that André, you sit there and
you bloody listened to the person and you listen actively, you’re engaged and
you, you interact, but not as much as in a normal conversation because you’ve
got a certain function there and let the person express, and you’ll ask
questions, clarify, even if that’s all you do that will have a therapeutic
effect and that’s been proven for a couple of centuries now, and that just
points out how important is the need of Molly, you, me, every person you’ve
ever met, every person you ever will meet is that need to feel understood.
Feel, not just be, but to feel understood. Of course, you’re a dad, by the way,
I’m thinking he already gave you cut yourself some Slack. If you go into dad
though, that’s, that’s a bit different.
André Alphonso: [00:37:37]
Yeah, and I think that’s part of the prejudices we bring into here is I’m the
father I’m supposed to dish out advice. Well, now sometimes you just gotta
listen, look there. You’re always going to get curiosity and judgment don’t
make good bedfellows. They just don’t. And we are so quick to judge right now
in this world of pace. You know, we’re constantly trying to judge something
very, very fast. That’s the thing we’ve got to slow down. You’re always going
to get to judgment. You’re always going to get the judgment but slow down the
process of running towards it by being curious.
Duff Watkins: [00:38:11]
The, thing that strikes me is a person who is not curious is leaning towards
rigidity. And if there’s one thing that I know about from psychotherapy my days
in working in psychiatry. Rigidity is the kiss of death. Once you become
hardened, a hardening of the attitudes, as we say, you know, it’s you’re, the
clock is ticking for you because you’re beginning to close down and that ain’t
good.
André Alphonso: [00:38:36]
As I go through life and living in the second half of my life right now is, is
this is about learning and newness and being aware. And it’s, it’s such an
amazing world really, and that we live and to be curious is a gift.
Duff Watkins: [00:38:53]
Yeah, don’t shut it down too early is what I’m thinking tonight. Lesson
number seven you’ll have to explain this one to me. Let light enter
through your wounds.
André Alphonso: [00:39:03]
Yes. So, this is around about the best insights and learning and growth. We
have come through adversity. Yep. So, it’s actually based on a quote from Rumi,
who is the Persian philosopher. Most people would have heard about it.
And I think he said the wound is where the light enters you.
That’s this quite the wound is where the light enters you. And I’ve. I’ve
always kind of been captured by that. And, and there was this lady called Edith
Eger. Who’s just released a book. I’m not sure if you’ve heard about it. She’s,
she’s actually causing quite a, quite a splash out there.
So, she was she’s 90 now. So, she was an Auschwitz. She was
separated from her mother’s ex you know, a mother disappeared and she and
assister kind of survived that whole. Holocaust experience. And then the death
March, which is brutal, that happened after Auschwitz. And she survived that I
had and the carried through her and stuff like that.
And, you know, so. So, you think about the adversity that
she does now, she’s a psychotherapist and she’s written this book called the
choice embrace the possible it’s it’s. If you want to check her out, Edith
EGER, on Ted, she’s got a few Ted things and the book is brilliant, but this is
what she says, our painful experiences aren’t a liability, they’re a gift. They
give us perspective and meaning and opportunity to find our unique purpose and
our strength. And Duff, you know, often think about that because for me, five
years ago, almost dying totally changed my life in so many, many ways. And for
me it was a gift. It was not why me, why did this happen to me? It was like,
okay, well, what next. What do I learn from this? And it took me a while to get
to it. I’m not that evolved as a human being. There was a little bit of, you
know, why me, why, why is this happening to me? Kind of thing. But I think I
moved on and I think that is something that I do carry with me today and
working with people and working with my friends, family coaching clients, it’s
about embraced the adversity that you’re in now and ask yourself, what are you
learning? What are you learning from what you’re going through right now? And
if you cannot find the learning, you’re not looking hard enough when you find
the learning, the adversity is a gift rather than a death sentence or a
sentence.
Right? And, and, and, and, and so let light enter through
your wounds is really trying to reframe the adversity that you have. And I
think young leaders who are growing up and they’ve got. All of us have still
have lots of adversity in front of us in so many different parts of our lives.
It’s not nice to be there and if you can avoid it absolutely. But when we are.
In it extract as much as you can from it. And I guess that’s the whole idea of
what this lesson is. I really believe it. And I say to, you know my kids, when
they go through a rough time right now is to kind of in, into it. It’s okay.
What are you learning from it? What is the teaching? If it doesn’t teach you
anything, you’re not looking hard enough.
Duff Watkins: [00:42:23]
The reframing is so important. Psychologically I you’re making what you’re
saying resonates with me. I’ve worked with. I’ve done a lot of outplacement
consultant with people who’ve been fired and sometimes they’re just blown away.
I mean, they just, they just devastated.
And I tell them, I say, look, you know, it’s, it’s not so
bad. The company’s paying you, their
funding your next your job search. And you get to work with a pro like me who
knows more about this than anybody on the planet. So, you know, and you’re, and
you’re, you still got to pay out, so it could be worse.
And then they kind of jacks them up, you know, and they
think. Well, yeah, I mean, it’s, you know, you’re not on the street. Exactly
pal. So, you know, life goes on, so let’s turn the page and we do, and they do.
But the key, I think, is to reframe these periods of adversity, acknowledging
that they heard that they, that you feel what you feel.
André Alphonso: [00:43:16]
Absolutely. I think, yes, you do have to have that empathy that goes with it
and people have to work through the stages of the personal challenge of
Elizabeth Kubler ross talked about denial, anger, bargaining, depression,
acceptance. Yes. People do work through that but extract what you can from it.
It’s okay. It’s okay. In fact, there’s this, this this idea
of a thing called this guy, he’s just come out. It’s got this concept called
antifragile. Yeah Taleb. Nicholas Taleb. And the whole idea of anti-fragile is
about it’s beyond resilience because everyone’s talking about resilience,
right?
Resilience is this idea that, you know, you fall, and you
bounce back. Well, antifragile is about, you bounce forward not back because
what happens is in the drop, you learn all these things that actually take you
forward. And then he uses the metaphor of, you know, we go and do weights at a
gym and that causes tension and stress on your bones, but it also makes your
bones stronger.
You know, it’s old quote, I guess, at all. Cliche of what
doesn’t I know you said it, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. I think
there’s a lot of truth in that actually.
Duff Watkins: [00:44:35]
Niche Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Lesson
number eight from cavemen to neuroscientists.
André Alphonso: [00:44:43]
Okay, so this is a little bit cryptic. And it’s about storytelling. And I think
this is the skill of our times, and it’s a skill for us to, to master. And I
talk about it from caveman to storytelling is because if you’ve read and most
people would have heard of sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari. And he talks about how
homo sapiens dominated this earth and, and basically the Neanderthals, which
were a physically stronger, more imposing faded away and the homo sapiens
survived and thrived. And he says, the reason that happens is this ability of
homo sapiens to organize in mass numbers. And the thing that makes them
organize in mass numbers is storytelling. And if you think about that and you
look through the history books, you know, if you look at religions, it’s around
a story, you look at political politics, it’s around the story. You look at
organizations it’s around the story. You know, you say Apple, it goes Steve
jobs. You know, it Wosniak, you know, you said Microsoft, you’ve got Bill Gates
at seeker Branson. You go Virgin. I mean, these are stories in terms of
organizations and of course the political politics and religions. So, the
ability to tell stories then becomes really, really, really important.
So, at the company that I run in Australia Ariel which is
the one we were talking about at the start, which is about tardy, take the
skills actors learned into business. We’ve been focusing, focusing on
storytelling for a long time, Duff, you know, I know their stories and their
stories, right? There are some stories that, you know, grandpa’s telling you at
the end of, at the end of the evening meal you got, Oh, that’s fine. Just slows
down. Well, you start people stop looking at their watches and get the kids
time to go. Right. And then those stories where people just in the Palm of your
hand. So, there’s stories in the stories, right? And the skill is to be able to
have people in the Palm of your hand by telling stories, because if you’re a
communicator, if you’re serious about being a communicator, get serious about
being a great storyteller.
Duff Watkins: [00:46:56]
Yeah. Okay. What do you think of this? What do you think of here’s the trouble
that I have with storytelling? I mean, agreeing with you so far, the trouble
with storytelling is that it’s such a great vehicle for bullshit, and we see it
online. We see it in the press every day. These lies these deceits. These
falsities are propagated. I see it in sports. Boards, particularly American
sports. They’re always looking for the storyline about this player. There’s
two, there is no story. It’s just, you know, they’re just guys playing. And so,
the writer will create a story that has the makeup, some sort of human interest
angle, and it’s a conceit, it’s a fantasy why clickbait?
They want to tension. And so, to me, it’s a. It’s a great
work of modern fiction, perhaps, but it’s not a legitimate story. And that
works the hell out of me. And I see businesses do it too. You know, they’ll
spin their story, which is just. Manufactured nonsense or not actually
bullshit’s the quick word. So, now the trick, why does that work? Because the
brain is a sense-making machine and we always spawn positively to stories. And
we always will because stories help us make sense of the world. But these
stories get appropriated by the forces of marketing or commerce or capitalism
or politics, whatever, and, and jeez, they get destroyed in the process.
André Alphonso: [00:48:20]
Yes. And you’re absolutely right. There is this huge flow of, of attending,
gathering around stories. Absolutely. Right. And, and our point of view, it’s
about being authentic and being real with the story. For example, when we run
our workshops, we often say to people, let’s put the M the marketing message
aside let’s stop worrying about the product. Tell me about the biggest
challenge you face growing up as a child and, you know, people say, well, you
know, you know my, my mum left or, you know, I was sent away to a boarding
school or I was bullied. And so, they tell a story about the challenge. And
then you ask the question, well, how has that affected how you lead people or
how you do business today?
And you know, what. There is always something over there and
that’s where the inspiration comes from. So, it’s got to come from here, not
here. You know, we talk about head and mind. There’s so much cognitive
bullshit, as you say right now, clickbait that is pushing people down these
rabbit holes that they really don’t want to go through, that we actually lose
sight of the heart.
And in my view that the best stories come from here, not
from here. Mm. Yeah. And, and, and, and Ariel, we don’t talk about how to
structure a story that much we don’t actually talk about. This is the opening.
This is the middle; this is the end. And we just say, tell your story, but say
it with passion and authenticity, and it show you some techniques on how to,
how to share it with, with amazing impact.
Keep it short, not like grandpa. Right. And, and, and have
people there, but it’s got to come from here. If it’s not from here, you kinda
lost me.
Duff Watkins: [00:50:02]
You know, a good example of that is, and we see it everywhere. Movies, movies,
good movies, communicate truth. They don’t communicate actual correct facts.
Those are not important. And that’s one thing we need stories are about the
truth. Not about. Facticity necessarily. So, a good story will communicate
human truth. The Adam and Eve story communicates truth. Was there a serpent,
was there a garden? Not really important to the story? It’s, it’s the truth
that it conveys good movies do that as well.
And I guess that’s what you’re saying. A person needs to
communicate there. Truth their essence.
André Alphonso: [00:50:36]
Yeah. In a marketing sense. Yes. It’s,
it’s about that. But even in trying to capture an audience, I mean, I look back
to Steve Jobs, his commencement speech at Stanford as being probably one of the
most inspirational business talks speeches in my lifetime.
And it’s based on three stories. Story one. It’s not about
amazing Apple and how we did this. But story one is I was, I dropped out of
college story. Number two was I was fired by the company I helped create. And
story number three is I’ve been diagnosed with a terrible disease. Right. It’s
not about all of this marketing BS, although there was a bit of stuff around
that, for sure.
But you know, that to me is about capturing the hearts and
minds of people through storytelling, which is a personal it’s about him. It’s
not about the company. And I think when we sit down and show up in this world,
we’ve got to tell most stories about who we are. You know, as human beings, I
think that’s it.
And that’s the whole idea of from caveman to neuroscience,
because as you, as you’re right. Duff, and what you’re saying, just kind of
blow up that tagline because neuroscientists are now proving that what caveman
we knew at caveman days is the truth. As you say, stories, light up more parts
of your brain than just facts and data do. So, how do we then in this world of
capturing attention, how do we capture the heart? Well, just the mind, the heart.
Duff Watkins: [00:52:06]
Well, Hollywood spends a lot of time trying to figure that out. And indeed, we
all do because we’re all desperately hungry for a good story. And by that, I
mean a true story. One that conveys true lesson number nine, you’re suggesting
we use noise canceling headphones to filter out the dirty noise.
Yep. Just like these, this, this stays. Yeah. I love that as
a metaphor because it’s what we were just talking about a candle. Rolls on from
the conversation we’ve had is about in this world where everybody’s trying to
capture your attention. Right now, we are in this battle of attention. You
know, we have devices and technology, which pervades our lives to such an
extent that every moment.
That you’re awake. Someone is trying to grab your attention.
And consequently, we allow a lot of stuff into our heads. We allow a lot of
noise in, and a lot of crap that comes with it and kind of sometimes lose the
essence of what we’re doing over here. So, so part of putting on the noise
canceling headphones is to try and filter out some of the crap that is actually
coming in over here and get to the essence of what we’re doing.
That’s one part of it, but. The more important thing Duff in
terms of noise, canceling headphones is your Self-talk yourself, narrative
you’re in a, in a monologue or whatever you want to call it. It’s the
conversation you’re having with yourself. And, and in the same way, as we allow
a lot of crap to come in, a lot of the conversations we have with ourselves are
pretty terrible.
And I often talk about this amazing story that I came across
our years ago of native American grandfather and grandson going for a walk on
the Prairie. And as they’re going for a walk, the grandson seems troubled and
the grandfather says, you know, son, in your mind, there are two wolves. There
is a black Wolf and a white Wolf.
And the grandson says, tell me about the black Wolf. And he
says, the black Wolf brings negativity and anger and hatred and shame and, and
all of those things that are negative. And he goes, okay. And he says, what
about the white Wolf? And he says, the white, full brings hope and support and
help and optimism, and all of the things that kind of push you towards life.
And, and grandson says grandfather or grandfather, which one
wins the fight and the grandfather says, it’s the one you feed. Yeah, it’s the
one you feed. And I think as I work with executives today, their self-talk and
in a monologue is one of the things I’ve got to work with because, and the good
thing about it is you can change it once it’s brought to your attention, that
is happening with a few skills and, and, and really.
That’s kind of what we’re talking about. So, John Milton is
another great quote. I love quotes. John Milton, the guy who wrote a thing
called paradise lost, probably considered one of the best bits of literature
ever written actually says the mind is its own place it can make heaven of how
or hell of heaven.
Yeah. And I love that quote because That talks so much about
that black Wolf and the white Wolf in the, in a monologue that’d be going
through. So, noise canceling headphones are really a metaphor to get us to pay
attention, to filter out the crap. Right. And let them know the essence
through.
Mm mm. The psychological lesson in there is learning to
dispute that inner voice, because it’s just a voice it’s not always correct,
just because it happens to be occurring inside you, you can dispute it and
debate it. And I always say argue with it. Don’t, don’t start a civil war
within yourself. Don’t do that, but, but it’s fair enough to dispute just
because you tell yourself something doesn’t necessarily make it true.
André Alphonso: [00:55:57]
Not at all. Not at all.
Duff Watkins: [00:55:59]
You
I mean, it’d be, you make a suggestion to me. I might
dispute it. I would hear it. I would take it seriously woods. I might do some
research about it. I wouldn’t automatically necessarily if I disagree, I ponder
it, but I wouldn’t necessarily imbibe it and critically. And the same thing
when I tell myself something stupid, which I do on a regular basis, you know,
you can feel free to reject and Reject and accept your own advice.
André Alphonso: [00:56:22]
Very much so, very much so I think that’s it, right? That’s the power because
how you show up in this world is so much to do with your own narrative. That’s
going on there.
Duff Watkins: [00:56:32]
You can change the internal monologue. A lot of evidence to that. A lot of
people are surprised by that, but you can change it. In fact, it’s probably
bloody well ought to.
All right, our 10th final lesson, burn your masks.
Wait a minute. André. Are you one of their friends of Corona virus? Do you
think we should all burn our masks? You don’t think you don’t take it
seriously? Is that what you’re talking about?
André Alphonso: [00:56:53]
No. No. Good. Your Corona virus, mask at all time. Absolutely. You should know.
These are the mass that we put on to cover up insecurities.
As we go through life, right? So, you mentioned earlier Def you know, my parents
immigrated to Australia when I was 11 years old and I was put into a fantastic
school, but I was the only Brown kid in a completely, you know, Anglo-Saxon
school, so to speak.
So, you know, I find a tough going and, you know, the, the
sort of the, the dog eat dog world of the school yard of a boy’s school of. You
know, people are bad to get into teenage and testosterone coming on.
Duff Watkins: [00:57:33]
You got picked on. Surely you got, you got bullied. Surely.
André Alphonso: [00:57:36]
Hello. Look at this face. Look at this face. Right?
Absolutely. You know, what happens is, is there’s a couple
of things that happened with that. One is your own sense of belief and worth
worthiness in this world just goes down a lot. The second thing is that there’s
a shame associated with that. There’s this, that I’m not, you know, that I feel
shameful of who I am.
So, the way you deal with that is you put on masks. Right.
So, I started putting on mask at a very young age and I realized that I had to
do a couple of things. One is I had to lose my Indian accent really quick. And
to this day, you know, you’re a psychotherapist. You can probably help me with
this. I cannot do an Indian accent.
Duff Watkins: [00:58:21]
You sound pretty Aussie to me, man.
André Alphonso: [00:58:23]
No, I cannot. And you know, people laugh at me and say, come on, do an Indian
accent. And then they laugh even more because I can’t do it because I kind of
programmed it out of my head. And the other thing, which is to try and be cool
rather than this dirty different Brown skin kid was to play guitar.
Right. So, I picked up an electric guitar. It wasn’t a, you
know, and try to be a rock star, rock God, if you liked, because that was one
way of putting on another mask. Yeah. To cover everything else up. So, you
know, the, the, the accent went, the head wobble went the guitar came on and
all these masks came on and I can’t award them most of my life.
I remember as when I first got my first job after school, I
fell madly in love with this girl called Sandy. She was blonde and beautiful,
and I, you know, still had all of those bruises from school. Never had the guts
to ask her out. And eventually I did. I did in ask her out and, and, and she
said, yes.
And I remember going to my friend at the time, a good mate
of mine and said, Hey, guess what? I’ve got a date with Sandy on Saturday
night. And he goes, André, you got gotta, you got to borrow dad’s Mercedes.
Because if you show up in a nice-looking car, she’s going to marry you. Yeah.
And then you have these images,
Duff Watkins: [00:59:35]
That’s a deeper understanding of the feminine psyche.
André Alphonso: [00:59:38]
Absolutely. And then of course I have these images of Sandy and myself living
on this beautiful cake top, you know, so I kept that beautiful cliff face w you
know, running along the beach with beautiful kids behind us, in a lovely house,
all of these things happen, and I showed up. Then Gary’s dad’s because his
father was out of town, red, Mercedes to pick up this girl called Sandy.
And I knocked on the door and the father who was there, she
was living with the dad, opened the door. And the first thing he said is that
your car? And I was like shocked because I kind of expected him to be a little
bit more, you know, interested in my car rather than judgment at all. And I
kind of didn’t know what to say, but it was a really, it’s a really good
example of the mask that I put on to cover up the fact that you know, I wasn’t
worthy enough. And if I had a good car, it would make me so much more worthy
and alter my life. Duff I’ve put masks on. Right. So, I got a career. I fell in
love with my career. It was an amazing career that I had in, in, you know,
going up through the corporate ranks and organizations. And that was my career
mask.
It made me feel good. But halfway through that, praise, my
marriage failed. My first marriage failed miserably, and I realized that, you
know, my. My marriage had become an inconvenient truth because I had allowed
this mask of being this career corporate guy to take over my life and, and, you
know, and, and so on and so forth.
It wasn’t until five years ago when I was having, you know,
upside down in the bed. With the defibrillators ready to go, that I kind of
realize, and that when perspective comes back and hits you it was that I’m not
ready to go yet because I haven’t lived my truth. I’ve got to rip these bloody
masks off and be who I am.
And my wife, Cathy today says to me, geez, André, you know,
you’ve changed so much since that heart attack. And to some degree, that is the
case because I think I’m, I’m walking this planet. Without those masks anymore
and being true to myself and being true to others and the relationships not
trying to be the people pleaser and the yes, man that says yes to everything,
but actually speaks the truth.
So, I think the best thing I can tell any people who are
coming up in this world is to be conscious of the masks you wear and ask
yourself this question, who are you trying to please today? And that’s not that
if you don’t want to please the customer that’s okay. But, you know, who’s, are
you trying to please today and are they worthy of that honor?
Because sometimes we actually go out our way, trying to
please people who are not worthy of that honor. I mean, living in the world of
expectations of others. And I was for many times, you know, I can’t do the
Indian accent, you know, I had to play guitar, you know, I’ve had to love, fall
in love with the career because it gave me stuff that dealt with my
insecurities from a child.
And I think it held me back. And now it’s gone, and I’ve
burnt those masks. And look, there’s still some remnants of that still there. I
can’t say I’m a clean skin completely. There’s still masks that I put on from
time to time, but now I’m conscious of the ones that I wear. So, yeah, I think
so for anyone growing up is, get in touch with your authenticity and the best
way to do that, as you probably know, Duff is to just understand your values,
you have to do these values, clarification, exercises and stuff, but you know,
what are those values that you live by and live true to them? Because I think
that’s where fulfillment kind of comes from.
Duff Watkins: [01:03:05]
W what I’m hearing is when you burn those masks, that means you realize that
woke, you have those masks because you fear that you’re not enough.
Just not enough. And then at a point you realize that you
are enough, and you burnt those masks and the truth is you were always enough.
You just didn’t know it, or you didn’t want to believe it. Or that’s, that’s,
André Alphonso: [01:03:29]
that’s the psycho, that’s the psychotherapist in you, Duff. I’m feeling better.
I’m feeling better already, man.
Duff Watkins: [01:03:35]
And this that you, you always were enough. You didn’t, you know, you came
complete, but it is a good lesson to learn. Maybe it’s hard for some, for some
of us.
André Alphonso: [01:03:44]
Yup. Yup. Very much so.
Duff Watkins: [01:03:45]
Well, we will finish there on that note, André, I want to thank you for joining
with us. And I want to remind the listeners that you’ve been listening to the
international podcast, 10 lessons that took us 50 years to learn.
This episode is produced by Robert Hossary and is sponsored
by professional development forum. PDF provides webinars, social media
discussions, podcast, parties, anything, anything you want, everything you
need, you can find out more about them. www.Professionaldevelopmentforum.org
and it’s all free by the way.
And by the way, please contact us by email
podcast@tenlessonslearned.com. And if you’re interested in André’s book, which
he co altered strategic connections, send me an email. I will find way to get
it to you. Get a copy to you. And if you have any comments, we’d love to hear
from that as well. So, thank you for listening.
Thanks for joining us. And we’ll see you the next episode of
10 lessons that took us 50 years.