Jay Mattisson – Be a Stradivarius Among Ordinary Violins.

Diana White: Hello and welcome to 10 Lessons Learned, where we talk to leaders and luminaries from all over the world to dispense wisdom for career, business, and life in order to make the world wiser lesson by lesson.
My name is Diana White, and I’m your host for this episode.
Our guest today is Jay Mattisson. Jay, welcome to the show and tell us a little bit about yourself.
Jay Mattisson: Well, thank you Diana, and it’s a pleasure to be on this show. I’ve learned so many things from previous guests on the 10 lessons learned, so I’m really honored and pleased to be on the, call today.
So, I’m Jay Mattisson. President of the Swedish American Chamber of Commerce in Arizona. Our mission is to promote trade and investment between Sweden and Arizona. Sweden is, a small country, but [00:01:00] we are the 12th largest foreign direct investor in the US in dollar amounts. If you think about that, Sweden is a country of about 11 million people.
We are pretty big per capita. My goal and, SAC Arizona’s goal is to raise the Swedish foreign direct investment in Arizona to at least the top 10. So that’s our mission.
Diana White: and you’re going to do it. I have had the pleasure of joining many events, and there’s no event like a SAC event you guys really know what you’re doing small but mighty team as well.
I love that.
Jay Mattisson: Yeah, it’s absolutely teamwork, and I’m really happy that you noticed that what we are doing to reach the top 10 of foreign direct investment in Arizona is building community. Creating networks, making sure that companies, organizations, and individuals are aware of what Sweden and Swedish companies can bring to the table.
We look forward to having you at many more events, Diana, and [00:02:00] bring some friends.
Diana White: Oh yeah. You can’t keep me away if not for the food alone. I love it. So, I’m going to get started here. I’m going to throw you a curve ball question before we get into your amazing lessons. What would you tell your 30-year-old self?
Jay Mattisson: My 30-year-old self? That’s going to be quite a few years ago. I think I would sit him down and tell him that your biggest adventures are ahead of you. You haven’t reached the summit yet. You are still on the slope up to the wonderful view and the amazing distance that you will reach both professionally and personally.
I think that’s what I would tell him and I also would tell my younger self that there are so many supporters, people who are cheering you on, whether you succeed or fail, you might not have met all your supporters yet, but they are out there waiting to meet you
Diana White: I think that’s a fundamental thing that when we are [00:03:00] younger, thirties and younger, we cannot see where we will be in another 20 to 30 years. It’s so difficult for us to see that. I really wish most of us would have some kind of fairy god, something that would come down and say, hey, hey, don’t give up. You’re going to be here. Just keep going. And I love that. Usually when I ask guests this question, they say the same thing somewhere along those lines of, I would tell my younger self, keep going. It gets better. Love it. But We’re going to start with

Lesson 1: Dare to be Vulnerable.

Diana White: lesson one. Lesson one, dare to be vulnerable.
Talk to me about that.
Jay Mattisson: When I started preparing for these 10 lessons and trying to condense my life’s lessons into only 10, I started with a long list. When I looked over that list, I realized that a lot of the lessons, I learned as a young professional, were aimed at fitting into a business culture, [00:04:00] a corporate culture, fitting into a social culture.
And I was starting to think hang on, that’s not really what made me reach my point where I’m at today in life. I had to meditate on that list for a bit, and I realized that what brought me here is being vulnerable, being open to failure.
Being open to rejection, and still putting myself in situations where it might happen, right? I’m from Sweden. I’m born and raised in Sweden. I’m an introverted Sweden. You can be, Sweden in general are quite introverted compared to Americans at least. So, you can imagine how introverted I was when I came to the US 11 years ago now. but one of the advice my wife, who is American, gave me very early was that you need to learn how to network. You need to get out, meet new people, businesspeople, other random persons, and put [00:05:00] yourself out there, which was extremely scary for me at that point in time.
But I started doing it and it was, the fear of being ignored, the fear of saying the wrong things not being interesting enough to a stranger. All of that took over me, but I started setting up goals for networking events. If I went to a networking event, I told myself, I’m going to talk to five people I’ve never met.
I love it. And when I’ve done that, I’m good. I’ve done my quota for the day, right? So, I can relax. like, I will collect 10 business cards from people I’ve never met, I built on those goals and made sure I was out there and met people. And, and after a while I realized it was really fun meeting people and getting to know a little bit better and maybe share something personal that we had in common or did not have in common.
There’s a lady I met who loves capybaras. Do you know what a capybara is?
Diana White: Yes, I do. It’s a looking, [00:06:00] yeah.
Jay Mattisson: And She started talking about how she’s been to Kabira encounters and bunch of stuff around this animal. I’m like, I learned something new today. About capybara. I will never have any use for it, but it was really fun and interesting to meet her and see the passion she had for that weird animal.
And so, that’s what I meant by dare to be vulnerable and especially business situations. I think it’s easy to set up a shield or a Teflon suit, where everything is supposed to bounce off. Everybody’s trying to do that. So do the different thing. Dare to be vulnerable and tell them like, hey, we really want this.
Event or project to succeed because it means much to us here inside in our hearts and our minds. You saying yes to us, letting us do this project on your behalf would mean a lot. So that’s the kind of vulnerability I’m talking about.
Diana White: I think it also goes to, [00:07:00] just being your authentic self.
Showing, you know, hey, I have needs, I have wants, some things are pretty important to me. Others may not be, and not necessarily always feeling like you have to be stoic to walk through the world and have no emotion whatsoever. It’s okay to have those emotions. It’s okay to show somebody.
I need this just as much as you need it, that being vulnerable and being your authentic self. I think it’s a delicate balance. It’s hard for people to do because they’re so frightened of being judged just for being who they are. If we would just all be who we are, nobody would have cause to judge because we’re all human.
It’s amazing and fascinating that in this day and age, with all of the education that we have at our fingertips, all the psychology that we have at our fingertips, people still feel like they have to send their representative out into the world every day.
Jay Mattisson: I don’t say that we should always be an open book to anybody but I mean, we, we, [00:08:00] we get to choose who get to read us, but we can open up more to those people who we feel we have some kind of connection with. Because it will make the time you spend with that person more valuable.
Being our authentic self and daring to be it a little bit more, will pay dividends.
Diana White: So, I think we got a bonus lesson out of that. Viewers and listeners, we got a bonus lesson of you don’t have to be an open book to everyone.
You get to choose who reads you. That’s a bonus lesson compliments of Mr. Mattisson.

Lesson 2: Work on bigger problems earlier

Diana White: Lesson number two, work on bigger problems earlier. Oh, for the procrastinators. Myself included.
Jay Mattisson: It was something that hit me when I was looking back on what I was doing, as a 30-year-old or even younger. I found out that people who work on bigger problems early in their career, build resilience. They build daring, they [00:09:00] build problem solving that they can use going forward.
And what the bigger problem might be for you is, that’s up to you. back in the day, back in Sweden, I was at the University as the youngest information officer we had a problem of, raising our profile market, our university to students to raise how many people applied to our courses.
We didn’t have a lot of money for marketing. One of the things that we did, was we created a student championship in fireworks. In pyrotechnics. Why did we do that? All the big universities had student groups who were shooting fireworks for, celebrations, New Year’s Eve, and we wanted to create the image of our university having a vibrant student life, extracurricular activities outside of studies.
It would be a fun [00:10:00] place to study. So, we created this student championship of pyrotechnics and invited all the well-known universities to us. That way we could, as a very small university, barely known at that time, we could mix and mingle and get associated with the bigger universities and showcase that, it is pretty fun studying at that fairly unknown place in Jönköping.
The bigger problem for me has usually been about building communities, meet interesting people and bring cool people together to create something together. And that lesson from that big problem that I worked on as 22, 23-year-old, I’ve been utilizing my entire life, both per, professionally and also my personal, affairs.
Working on bigger problems earlier will teach you a lot.
Diana White: I know it will, but it [00:11:00] goes against every instinct, it’s like, if it’s a big problem, you want to run away. So, changing that mindset is critical. I’m so glad that you had that lesson because it pops up quite a bit and I think it’s the universe trying to tell me, and some of my viewers and listeners that are in the same boat to, change those ways.
It’s never too late.
Jay Mattisson: Here’s the thing, if you feel like you want to run away from that big problem, is it a meaningful problem for you? Is it meaningful enough for you to walk through the problem instead of trying to circumvent it or run away from it? I think that’s part of this, is finding, is this meaningful enough for me to put my time, energy, skills, and friends into solving this problem, or at least trying to solve it.
Diana White: That is such a good aspect to look at the fact that not all problems that come your way are yours [00:12:00] to solve, right? You really do have to pick and choose where you’re going to put your energy. And I’ve never thought about it that way before, especially as a woman, we’re quote unquote nurturers, right?
And so, we’re supposed to solve every problem, even if we’re not asked to. That’s an amazing mindset and, more fuel for me, figuring out how to change that aspect of how I approach problems in my life. So, thank you for that.

Lesson 3: Focus on what is right.

Diana White: Lesson number three, focus on what is right.
Jay Mattisson: Focus on what is right. And I think that ties into what you said previously like small problems, big problems, trying to solve them. We are not going to solve every problem coming our way. We will fail. That’s just how it is. I mean, we look at any Olympic games, all these people have been training their entire lives, the best of the best in their countries, and they come to Olympic games and the absolute [00:13:00] majority, fail.
They will not come to the podium. It doesn’t matter how skilled you are, what background you have, what your preparations are, you will probably fail at some point. But I think it’s important since we know that we’re going to fail, look at what did we do right? Did we have the right approach?
Did we ask the right questions? Did we do the right steps to try to solve this problem or reach the goal we wanted to reach? The same thing goes when we see other people, coworkers, friends, family members who might fail, look at what they did right? And call that out.
Like, hey, I know you didn’t manage to raise that amount of money you wanted for your charitable cause. That hey, look, you did this outreach, you printed postcards or hosted home parties, whatever it is, you did the right steps. And that’s fantastic. I can see what you did. Right? That unlocks a lot of benefit for [00:14:00] future events where you can, I did do those things right.
I will do those again, and add a few other things to reach, the goal I’m reaching for. It’s all about trying. If we only sit around and plan nothing will actually happen, we have to take action, and when we take action, we might fail, but if we focus on what we did right we will learn something and get the benefit from it.
Next time we’ll get closer to the intended goal we’re reaching for,
Diana White: I feel like those are the building blocks of any triumph. You know, you think about a child learning how to ride a bike, they make mistakes, but they figure out what they did, right? They keep doing the right things, they change the mistakes.
Get a little bit further along, and they keep those iterations until they’re riding that bike, and then one day the training wheels come off. I think that’s such a perfect analogy for [00:15:00] life. You’re not going to get everything right, but remember the stuff you did, right. Keep doing those things and pick up new right habits.
Pretty soon you’re going to be riding without those training wheels.

Lesson 4: Normalize Excellence

Diana White: talk to me about lesson number four, normalize excellence.
Jay Mattisson: So, it sounds like talking against myself and lesson number three, which is the focus on what you’re doing, even if you don’t succeed. And now I’m talking about normalizing excellence.
But normalizing excellence is exactly that. Realize when you are doing something fantastic that is top of your capabilities, your skills and your, knowledge and you leverage that to the top level we say, yeah, I did good, and then that’s it.
We don’t really celebrate that we were excellent. So instead, take a moment, say, hey, that was fantastic. That’s what excellence looked like for me, feeling this, level of happiness and excitement for job [00:16:00] well done. That’s my level, that’s what I aspire to going forward when it comes to work personal hobbies make sure that thank yourself for doing that. And same thing with coworkers, colleagues, or family members. When you see somebody do something excellent that is. Top of their skill, top of their experience, top of their, willingness to put time and effort into something.
Thank them. And now Let them know that you noticed that that was excellent. That’s the of execution. I look forward to seeing more from you. This is an excellent bar try to jump to that level every time.
Diana White: So, in this case, which I absolutely love, the word excellence is not being used as a monolith comparison to everyone that’s doing the same thing.
It’s your personal best; it’s your level of excellence. If I have [00:17:00] a worker or a coworker and they’ve done something to the best of their ability.
I celebrate that excellence because it was their personal best and not necessarily the excellence of all of the previous workers or the best worker in this particular field in the world.
It’s just what they were able to deliver that was their personal best. I think that’s awesome. And I think we need to give ourselves the credit too.
Jay Mattisson: Exactly. Which I believe that too few of us do. It’s too easy. We, the, we are our strongest critics. We criticize ourself much stronger than outsiders do usually.
So, giving the permission to celebrate our excellence, is a pretty good, mood booster and it’s a motivational booster. So yes, giving ourself the enjoyment of celebrating. Our own achievements. It’s a pretty big one. It’s a big lesson in my life so,

Lesson 5:   Be a Stradivarius among ordinary Violins.

Diana White: Now lesson number five, I’m [00:18:00] going to admit it.
This was my favorite. It really was, because I never thought of this, but be a Stradivarius among ordinary violins. Be a Stradivarius among ordinary violins.
Jay Mattisson: Well, it’s interesting because I’ve heard about Stradivarius and being famous violin maker from many years ago, and all these violins, this sell for. Insane amount of money. And I just never realized what was the big deal. I’m not a musician. But I had an opportunity to meet a, a musical historian who talked about Stradivarius.
One of the things he mentioned is that a violinist who gets to play on a Stradivarius and can’t feel the difference of playing a Stradivarius against a normal violin. They are not yet at a level where they will benefit from playing a Stradivarius. An excellent violin player will bring [00:19:00] out the width and the depth of that instrument that an ordinary or mediocre player, musician would not be able to.
So, we take that concept and bring it a workplace. Working with people who bring out your width and depth, the emotional range, the skills you have, the attention to detail that you are capable of? Or are you playing among ordinary people who might not bring out that within you?
That’s the kind of concept be a Stradivarius. And that’s about not only you being an amazing instrument. It is about being among other amazing instruments, among other amazing people who together widen the spectrum and deepening the level of, of excellence that you are able to produce together.
It’s about finding your [00:20:00] people, your tribe, who brings out the best in you. It doesn’t have to be workplace, even though that would be fantastic. For instance, I’m part of a trivia group.
We go to pub trivia and sometimes with this group, we just get this, we are bouncing associations off each other. We mention, oh, that was in 1942. And then suddenly we all swing together and get to the answer elevating each other until we reach where we’re trying to go as a group.
Diana White: It’s an amazing lesson. You know, you think about it from the standpoint of an orchestra, right? You can’t have the most elite orchestra using worn out untuned musical instruments, right? Yeah. it’s true. You really do have to make sure that you are bringing your best and that the resources you have are the best that they can be at the moment. And that your team your family, your spouse, your [00:21:00] partner. Everybody around you is bringing their best instruments.
Jay Mattisson: Yeah.
Diana White: To this ensemble. I think that’s amazing.
Jay Mattisson: It is a little bit more, but hey, we are together with other people. We are hopefully bigger as a group than the individuals by themselves. So, putting a high achiever, a highly skilled person in the group of not as high achievers, it won’t work, right?
You have to get together. You have to vibe together. We are doing this together to our very best abilities to, as a group reach where we’re trying to go. Right? It is not as individualistic. It’s more like a group community with team, get together and work as a team and deliver as a team.
Diana White: That’s the way it should be.

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Diana White: Let’s welcome back Jay Mattisson and continue with lesson number six.

Lesson 6: If you get upset over small stuff, you’re not bigger than that.

Diana White: Lesson number six. If you get upset over the small stuff, then you’re not bigger than that.
Another wow from me.
Jay Mattisson: Yeah, it’s a good one. It’s a famous Swedish author called Astrid Lindgre. She’s mostly known for writing children’s books like Pippi Longstocking, The Brothers Lion Heart and a whole series of very well-known Swedish Children’s book. [00:23:00] And she, uh, she said that if you, if you get upset over the small stuff, then you’re not a big person that is something I try to keep in mind if I ever get upset, over small things, mistakes, or people who not doing what they’re supposed to do. And I’m also say, is this big enough for me to get upset about? Or is it small enough for me to not lower myself to that level and get upset about small thing?
And like if we were going to get upset about every small thing, we would fill our days, we would not be able to work on the bigger problems. That we try to solve, so it’s also about time management, like focus on the big issues, the big problems, ignore the small stuff.
And for me it’s also a lesson about not giving into, perfectionism. Perfectionism, like every single detail has to be correct in the right order and the same color or whatever it is. No, don’t give into that focus on getting [00:24:00] to the goal. Where do you want to go? Where do you want to move this process towards and focus on that bigger issue, that bigger problem that you want to solve.
It’s fascinating. I recently, I was, parked, uh, my car in the parking lot and you know, we are in Arizona, right? Every shaded spot is gold, so I found two parking spots that had shade. One of them was already taken, so I backed in next to that car and I could see the, the, there was man in the car, and he was talking loudly to himself, and I realized he was talking to me.
So, I rolled down my window and he said, really all this parking lot and you have to park next to me. You didn’t even leave the space. And I said, I’m just trying to get the shade. And he’s like, well, it’s common courtesy to leave the space in between the cars, so you don’t get a dinged door side.
It resolved itself. I told him that’s why I parked next to the most expensive car I can find it seemed to appease him, but also, I was like, [00:25:00] is that the biggest thing for you to get upset about? Today, that a car parks next to your car in a public parking lot. Hopefully, I will never be on that low level that I have time to put energy and emotion into that. And it especially funny is because we were parked that if anybody would get a dinged door side, it would be me because I was on his driver’s side. Focus on the bigger challenges.
That’s what this is about. Put your energy, time, and effort into the bigger problems you want to solve.
Diana White: I’m going to out myself here. Many moons ago I had an extremely short fuse due to a lot of insecurity. It was literally the Chihuahua syndrome.
I was going to bark the loudest and bark the harshest, because I didn’t want to have to face, certain demons about myself. I remember when I was married, we were taking our first couples’ trip, and we didn’t [00:26:00] have a lot of money. This was a pretty significant deal.
We lived in New York. We were going to Key West Florida. I remember that when we got to the airport, I asked my ex-husband did you remember to take out the trash? We were going to be gone for about a week, a week, and a half. This was our first trip. We were both excited. When you get excited about stuff like that, you tend to slip. Things fall through the cracks, I spent the entire time while we waited to board that plane, and at that time you got to the airport, you know, significant amount of time earlier, right?
You should still do that. Instead of embracing and enjoying this first time experience, I spent the entire time lamenting and nagging and harping on the fact that the garbage is going to smell when we get back. How could you do that? This is ridiculous. I look at that [00:27:00] woman now and my heart for her because I didn’t experience what I was supposed to experience, which is, whoa, this is the first time I’m taking a real adult trip with my partner out of state. This is awesome. No, I was focused on trash. If that doesn’t symbolize focusing on the small stuff, I don’t know what does.
And so, I had to learn how to not be that person anymore. And it was hard.
Jay Mattisson: It is,
It is because it is asking yourself to step outside of your comfort zone. The comfort zone might, in your case have been the home, having everything done. Now, you were on a trip with a person you might not have been married to for long.
You were stepping outside of your well-known, world into something unknown. So, you were like, I want to retreat back to this well-known corner of the world where I know everything and where the trash is supposed to be taken out. Instead of looking at this horizon, this adventure we [00:28:00] have ahead of us, where we are going to be together on a major trip and enjoy ourselves and enjoy the weather and beach wherever you were going.
So, I can understand.
Diana White: And, and jay, I just had an epiphany. Do you know what that was? That truly was me being so afraid of this unknown adventure that I probably didn’t think I was worthy of, I had to control something. I had to keep something the same and keeping something the same meant going back to my narrative of control.
I had a con, why didn’t you do this if you would’ve listened to me? And that made me comfortable when it really didn’t, it made the whole situation uncomfortable. It’s the food for thought. Viewers and listeners food for thought, if you are fixated on small things like that, you got to ask yourself, where’s it coming from?
It’s coming from [00:29:00] something you haven’t decided to work on yet.
Jay Mattisson: Well, thank you for sharing that, Diana, because what you’re pointing to is important. Listening to yourself is, is pretty important.
Yeah. Like, why am I doing this? Why am I talking like this to myself or to others? And listening to that voice and be aware of what you’re bringing up. Thank you.
Diana White: It’s not just about the moment. Like if you ask yourself, I’m angry in this moment, or I’m frustrated in this moment, what is the why of this?
Jay Mattisson: Mm-hmm.
Diana White: You got to ask yourself several whys to get down to the layer of the onion of the real reason, because nine times out of 10, it’s not just that incident that you had with the gentleman with the luxury vehicle, there was something else bothering him and this was the outlet to get it out.
Jay Mattisson: Yeah.
Diana White: We had to think about those things and how they affect ourselves, our psyche and most importantly, the people around us that we say we care [00:30:00] about.
Jay Mattisson: Yeah.

Lesson 7: Be aware of your shadow.

Diana White: Lesson number seven, be aware of your shadow.
Jay Mattisson: Yes. What we were just talking about. For me, the shadow is the dark side of our skills and what we are really good at there is a shadow, the bad version of that superpower.
For instance, if we are organized, maybe our shadow is that we are perfectionists. We want everything exactly the way I want it, otherwise it’s not going to happen. Or if we are, extremely creative, maybe it is that we don’t have patience with people who don’t understand our ideas.
They don’t get me. I don’t want to talk to them. That is kind of the shadow. I think it’s Jung, the psychoanalyst Jung mentioned the shadow in one of his books. I try to think about it when I’m at my very best leading a project or trying to get something done, and I use my skills expertise and energy to make that happen into the world.
Do I have a shadow that scares people away? Or [00:31:00] where I throw shade on somebody else? And it’s just something, again, listening to ourselves and being aware what we are doing that impact both ourselves and, and people around us, will help us mitigate the negative of our superpowers, or our very strong sides.
For instance, I know one of my shadows is that I’m an action taker. I like to get things done. I like to move things towards a goal and just get it over the goal line. If there’s a deadline, it should be done at the deadline or before. So, I, my shadow is that I get irritated people who want to plan out every last single step for me, stop talking, start doing, jump in and start swim.
Let’s not stand around on the beach any longer. Let’s get into the water and start trying to swim towards where we want to go. And that’s, that’s my shadow. I try to be [00:32:00] aware of it and try to not throw as much shade as I used to do as a younger person.

Lesson 8: You can still lose.

Diana White: And lesson number eight, we’ve already touched on this a little bit as well, but I want to drive this point home. You can, still lose. yeah.
Jay Mattisson: Yeah. Look at any Olympic athlete over the many years of the Olympic games, the majority of them fail. If we consider success being on the podium and getting a medal, the absolute majority of every Olympian fail.
If failure is inevitable in that sense, then we need to win something else from that. We have to gain something else from that. It can be, a new lesson, strengthening a skill, creating a new relationship, finding out something about yourself or about the people around you.
It’s more about the process than the actual goal. We might miss [00:33:00] the goal. We might not reach the finish line, but what did we gain from the process in trying to get there? That was a pretty big, mental shift for me, realizing this when I was, older than I should have been.
Realizing that it’s the process, it’s the way, it’s the road. It is the journey that is the valuable part. Getting across the finish line, that’s just the receipt. Sometimes we don’t get receipts in life. That’s how I viewed failure going forward. As long as I learned something, it was a win.
Diana White: Love that. I Love that.

Lesson 9: Dual use

Diana White: Now, lesson number nine confused me a little bit.
Jay Mattisson: Yes.
Diana White: I want you to explain it. So, lesson number nine, dual use.
Jay Mattisson: Dual use. The basic concept for me is that anything in your life from relationships, friends, coworkers, [00:34:00] items, have more than one use.
If you only consider your job as a way to get money, that’s a single use. That’s okay. But if you consider your job as a way to get money hang out with cool people, learn new things, then you have three uses out of the same resource. Right? If we start to think about what else can I get out of this resource that I’m putting time or money into?
Can I connect closer with coworkers and invite them to join a nonprofit that I’m supporting, then I get a dual use from that coworker. I’m not saying using people, that’s not what I’m meaning. No. Yes, totally understand. But you’re deepen, you deepen your relationship. You get a wider experience of that individual bring more into the world by thinking what else can I do with this skill I have [00:35:00] or this item that I’ve acquired? I have a pen here I have to write with it. But I can also scratch my back. That’s what dual use means for me.
I will get more value out of the things I put my time emotions or efforts into. If I think about dual use,
Diana White: That’s kind of blowing my mind because I do that without thinking about it. I’m always trying to figure out how many benefits can I get from this interaction, collaboration, agreement, friendship.
And it’s not necessarily a selfish thing, because I want to give as well, I want it to be reciprocal, but I always ask myself, it can’t just be one dimensional. And One of the things that I see, and, and it breaks my heart sometimes, is people will talk to me and say, I have this thing in my life, whatever it is, you know, you mentioned a job for money.
And then they’ll [00:36:00] say, but I’m still feeling unfulfilled because I’m searching for X and I can clearly see that x lies within what they already have. But because they only see it as that one purpose, they’re never going to see what they can get out of it. And they’re going to be searching for that thing somewhere else when it’s in front of them all along.
And that’s horrific. So, hate to say this duality. Pun intended of that lesson. ‘Cause it really makes a lot of sense.
Jay Mattisson: We are not one dimensional.
None of us are, we have so many different personalities and approaches. Depending on if we’re at work at a hobby or with family, everything has more than one use. It’s just for us to realize how can I reach that other Level, that other dimension of this individual. How can I potentially support him in that other dimension or maybe they can support something in me [00:37:00] that they wouldn’t have experienced without us trying to figure out the other version of Jay?
What is he like when he’s doing something for fun? Or what is he doing when he is focused on some hard issues at work? That’s when we widen our spectrum on understanding other people and our relations.

Lesson 10: It’s never too late to have a fantastic childhood.

Diana White: I agree. Number 10 gets me in trouble with my adult daughter all the time because, I wholeheartedly believe this philosophy.
Lesson number 10. It is never too late to have a fantastic childhood.
Jay Mattisson: No, it’s not. It is. And I know it sounds facetious saying it, and I’m not talking about people who have had a terrible childhood. That is not what I’m talking about. But this is more about honoring your inner child.
Yes. Or looking back to who you were as an eight, 10, 12-year-old and say, hey, I brought this to you. [00:38:00] You got to experience this. Sure, it’s 30 or 40 years late, but here is your childhood dream come true. I did it for you, kid. What it is. And to find out what our childhood dreams are, again, I think we have to be, vulnerable with ourselves and be able to listen to our own inner conversations where we talk about what’s important to us, what we want to avoid, what we like, what we want to stay away from, figure out what is this that makes up me and my persona? What can I do to feed the positive sides and bring out the best in me, as opposed to feeding the negative sides that will try to push other people away.
I believe I was 12 years old back in Sweden. My mom took me to deposit my, weekly allowance at the bank. They stamped, a little book. They stamped it, they signed it, and I handed back. And I remember as a [00:39:00] 12-year-old, I was thinking to myself that.
I’m going to own a bank, and that way I will be giving money to myself as childhood dreams, I mean, rarely, we rarely have an opportunity to fulfill our childhood dreams, but when I came to the US I did get involved in starting a community bank a few years ago. We never opened the doors.
It wasn’t the right time, but at least I could turn around, look my 12-year-old in the eyes, and say, we did it. We tried. You got there. We almost started a bank that sense of, I fulfilled some old unspoken promise to myself and to the inner child.
It’s very uplifting. To me, it was very releasing I took myself seriously. I took my childhood dreams serious, and I did my very best at an adult age to honor my wishes. I learned a lot on the journey. I learned quite a few lessons. We tried to start a community bank.
It was a dual use from that [00:40:00] childhood dream. The adult version of me learned something at the same time as I honored a childhood version of son.
Diana White: I love that. I absolutely love that. So, all of the wisdom that you have. And how you navigated your life experiences to get there and get that wisdom.
There had to be some beliefs or some things that you had to shed. So, tell me, what have you had to unlearn?
Jay Mattisson: For me, something I really had to unlearn is that I don’t have to please people to be successful in what I chose to be successful at, or what I chose to put my time and effort into because I’m not always successful. Most of the things I’ve done in my life has been successful. Great successes or abysmal of fiascos.
I don’t have a lot in between. It’s either success or failure. It is a [00:41:00] little bit weird because I’m, I’m usually more of a grey scale person. But looking back, most of the projects that I’ve started or been involved in is either been a huge roaring success or a terrible fiasco.
So, understanding that we not have to please other people to be a success was a big one for me because early in my life I thought if people are happy with me, that is success. No, not necessary. We only see and meet very few people who are impacted what we are working on usually.
There’s a huge silent group of end users who benefit from your success. Even if the smaller group around your coworkers, family, colleagues, whatever it is, are not happy with how that happened, the end users will benefit from. So be a success without pleasing [00:42:00] people at all times was a big, thing I had to unlearn.
Diana White: Love that. And I think people pleasing is, an insidious kind of thing that it takes you a while to dig yourself out of that personality if that’s what you’ve created, right?
Jay Mattisson: Yeah. And I mean, personally when I first realized this was, my mother was displeased, with, my career trajectory back in Sweden.
She had some opinions of where I should have been and what I should be doing. And I realized that, we are both miserable right now. She’s miserable and I’m miserable because I can’t achieve what she’s envisioning for me.
Right. So, I thought to myself, what would happen if only she is unhappy? At least I’m happy. Yeah. Instead of two, unhappy people in the world. That’s only going to be one. I will have the number of unhappy people involved in my career. So that’s when I realized I can’t make anybody else [00:43:00] beside myself happy with the choices and the direction I’m going in.
I can’t please everybody. To be a success, you can, I can be a success without pleasing everybody.
Diana White: So now you, this isn’t the first time this has happened, as a guest, but there’s something that I love in this. Viewers and listeners, Jay gave me his lessons and then he also gave me some random lessons.
Some random nuggets, and I just want to go over one because I thought it was so cool. I have no idea what it means, and I want him to explain it to us. So random nugget wrap, fish in it. Daily newspaper lesson. Go, go.
Jay Mattisson: I well, so I just, I just, jotted down a couple of things that I tried to, think about and be aware of and use in my daily life. I was working at the Daily newspaper back in Sweden. I was a reporter and assistant news editor, it’s a [00:44:00] pretty stressful job. We have to get a newspaper done every day. It has to go to the printers at midnight. There’s strict deadlines. It’s really has to be done at the same time. The content of the newspaper has to be as good as we can, as fulfilling as possible, and, as factual as possible.
And every night we were working to get the newspaper together, follow up on leads, double check quotes, make sure the figures and the numbers and the articles are correct before we send it to the printers. And then in the morning, this newspaper lands on people’s, breakfast tables. This was back when we still had printed newspapers.
It was the most important time of the day for a lot of people. A lot of our readers, it was the highlight of the day. They open it, read all the things, and then by people are wrapping fish in it because it’s outdated. It will lose its value at some point and people will wrap fish. [00:45:00]
It doesn’t mean you should stop putting your heart and soul and skill into what you’re doing. It’s just be aware. Nothing is forever. Some things is less than 12 hours. Some things might be several years, but at some point, it will be wrapping fish.
Diana White: Viewers and listeners, if you don’t understand why I wanted Jay on my show so badly now, you know, very, very good advice.
I want to thank Jay for being a guest and sharing his lessons with us today. Absolutely amazing. Jay, tell us, well, first of all, I should have done this in the very beginning. Jay is a name that you’ve allowed the world to use because some of us cannot pronounce your first name. Jay, please pronounce your name for the audience.
Jay Mattisson: My given name is Joacim; that’s my Swedish name. It’s spelled in a slightly [00:46:00] different way than most Swedish Joacims. So, it’s a little confusing when you see it in print, you can call me Jay, and that’s the name I go by here in the US. So yeah, he,
Diana White: he has been so gracious.
Jay, tell us where can we find you? What are you doing so we can keep up with your great working lessons?
Jay Mattisson: I’m probably easiest to find on LinkedIn. That would be Jay Mattisson, M-A-T-T-I-S-S-O-N.
Two T’s and two S’s, the Swedish Way. Feel free to reach out and let me know you heard me on the 10 Lessons Learned podcast. So, I know where you’re coming from. Other than that, I am heavily involved in, nonprofit in Arizona called Global Ties, Arizona, which is a. Grassroots diplomacy organization.
We have almost monthly events, and I hope you can join us at one of those events. Also, with the Swedish American Chamber of Commerce, in [00:47:00] Arizona, we have speaker events panels and, sometimes social events look us up I would be happy to meet you in person and continue our conversations.
Diana White: I love it. I love it. You’ve been listening to 10 Lessons Learned. This episode is produced by Robert Hossary. Please tell us what you think of today’s lessons. You can email us at podcast@10lessonslearned.com. That’s podcast at the number ten one zero lessons learned.com. Go ahead and hit that like button, subscribe, and turn on a notification bell so you don’t miss an episode of the only podcast that makes the world wiser lesson by lesson.
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