Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:04 Make it right. The manufacturing podcast.
Speaker 1 00:09 Welcome to the makeup right podcast. I'm Janet Eastman. One of our most popular makeup rights shows aired earlier this year. It was episode 38 the leader as psychologist rallying the troops for a business turnaround and on that show, my guess was manufacturing executive and CEO of Asia solutions. Steve Polasky has held high level positions throughout his career, even becoming a director at a fortune 100 company by the age of 28 he was able to retire early in his career, but return to the business world, built his own businesses, but now he is on a leadership path of a completely different kind. Steve is the author of a brand new book called infinite choices, wisdom and change and I am very pleased to have Steve on make it right again. Great to speak to you again Steve.
Speaker 2 00:59 Well thanks Janet and then it's always a pleasure to speak to you too.
Speaker 1 01:02 I think you have been on a very interesting journey throughout your career. You're a talented, highly sought after manufacturing leader and consultant. So just tell me briefly how you ended up deciding to enter this life coaching phase.
Speaker 2 01:19 Well, I feel kind of like it was my destiny. Um, you know, I've always enjoyed helping people and in companies, um, you know, companies are a collection of people and a collection of problems, uh, people problems. And you know, only time ago, I'm, I remember back in the late eighties, uh, actually starting coaching people, uh, by just helping them and helping them to focus on life balance and things. And that kinda got more what I'll call formal over the years, although I was always, uh, in the industry sector. But I just found that, um, I was quite good at helping people to understand their personal issues or help them to overcome problems they had. And it just felt natural. So I decided, um, that I would start doing this pretty much full time, which is what I do now.
Speaker 1 02:10 Okay. So you've been there, I'm sure you've seen it every day. You've been helping these people. We've all felt it at some point where, you know, feeling like we're leading these lives of quiet desperation. And if you listen to the news, it seems like it's just permeating society. What are we getting so wrong?
Speaker 2 02:30 Well, you're absolutely right. I mean, and it's becoming very prevalent. Um, what I see is that I feel that people are just moving further and further away from happiness. They're being driven by things that they think will make them happy, but when in reality it's not really making them happy. Um, I feel it's a state of disconnection. Uh, what I call focusing on eye consciousness, which is focusing on themselves versus what we call one consciousness. Um, people tend to be driven by obsession, by attachment to things and they w what I found even with myself was I was maintaining the self image, um, of something that I was really not, I guess from the beginning. And it goes back to childhood. Uh, it's us versus them mentality. We've really lost our purpose. And you know, this is what I want to do is I really want to start helping people to regain, uh, what they were meant to be and to help them to find happiness, help them to be successful. Also, I'm not teaching people to be monks, but I'm teaching people to be successful and happy at the same time, which is possible.
Speaker 1 03:42 So when you say happy, how do you define happy? I mean, I guess everybody defines it differently, but you know, people are defining it by the things that they own and then they're finding out that those things don't make them happy. So what's happiness?
Speaker 2 03:59 Well, happiness. I mean, we can look at it two ways. So one is it's the absence of negative emotions, which negative emotions would be stressed, anger, sadness, disappointment, depression, et cetera. So it's the absence of those things, but it's this feeling where, you know, I guess you feel content, bliss and it's not, it's not a, um, a feeling where you're like, you know, it's not like a Prozac feeling where you have to be like just absolutely happy all the time, but it's just this content feeling where you feel like, you know, life is not a problem and you can make decisions easily and things go the way you want to go more often than they don't. Um, I guess this is how I would describe it, Janet.
Speaker 1 04:46 Yeah. Okay. So when people are feeling happy and things they, they feel that way, then I guess they are better at everything in their lives, even in their work lives. When they go to work every day, there's a certain approach that they take that has removed that negativity. And I guess they're just better at at being an employee, a manager, a leader, a boss, correct.
Speaker 2 05:13 Yes, absolutely. Um, you know, people when, when you make decisions and you make it from, let's call it a beautiful state, um, the decisions are typically good. They're sustainable, they're the right decisions, they don't offend other people. They, um, they're consistent. And you kind of like, let's say, go with the flow of, of everything. And it's important with people to, um, you know, to feel and make decisions from the state versus a reactionary state or a, a, um, a, a depression state or an anger state. Those are what I call reaction States where if we want to do things, we want to do it in a purpose driven state where we're trying to achieve something. But we're doing it from a, a beautiful state, a happy state, a, um, not a reactionary state.
Speaker 1 06:04 <inaudible> you have a great line in your book that says we're all trapped by our history. So explain how this happens.
Speaker 2 06:13 Well, it's true because I mean, you know, I've studied a lot of NLP and I've studied a lot of psychology and things and so it goes back to our childhood. Um, you know, we one more born, we pretty much have no memory. We have no nothing other than just wants. I mean, we want to eat and we want to sleep. Uh, but as we get a little bit older, uh, we run into problems. We might not do what our parents want us to do and we might get disciplined. We might, you know, fall and hurt ourselves. And so we start developing, um, these things in our subconscious mind. These, the, we start storing everything in our subconscious mind and in the store of these things start to affect how we behave. It affects our decision making in the future. So it's an accumulation of things over many years.
Speaker 2 07:06 Um, that we, it's, it's like a disc drive, you know, our brain is a just drive and just records these things. And then when we're faced with a new situation, instead of looking at the new situation without prejudice, what we do instead is we, our subconscious mind plays tricks with us and says, Whoa, Whoa, you've had this situation before, or you've met a person like this before and this was the outcome. Therefore that influences your decision making. And what we try to do, what I try to teach people is we try to get rid of that and we try to focus on things without prejudice. We try to focus on things where, um, we give everything, every situation and every person in equal and new opportunity all the time.
Speaker 1 07:52 In a manufacturing situation. How do you, how do you go about not being trapped by your own history and the things that have happened to you in the past and how people have reacted to you and you've reacted to them? How do you not come to the situation with all that baggage?
Speaker 2 08:11 Well, you know, I've learned some new tools, uh, since I was the big boss in big companies. Um, the new tools are really, uh, is one of the answers is going to be awareness and awareness is being, being aware of the present. Um, so there's three points in time you have the past, which is an accumulation of memories, which is, which was no longer real anymore. It's something that happened in the past. We have the future, which is imagination only. It hasn't happened yet either, but we tend to imagine a lot and we have the present, which is now. And so what I do is you can only really be, be thinking about one of these points in time at any, any given time. So it's to yourself with the president and say, okay, what's, what's really going on here now? Uh, and you know, in NLP we have five modalities, which are our senses.
Speaker 2 09:05 And it interrupt you there. Can you explain to us what NLP is so that people know what we're talking about here? Sure. So NLP is, is a study that was done or it's a, a process that was done back in the 70s, but a couple of guys and basically it's called neuro linguistic programming. And it's the way that <inaudible> it's the way that uh, some people and a lot of people think that the mind works in the way we, uh, form our behaviors and things. So just to give a quick overview, you have reality which is outside of you. Um, so it's an accumulation of all the events that are going on. Then you have your senses. Okay. And NLP, we call them modality. So there's five senses are, these are your standard five senses of vision, hearing, taste, smell and feeling. And so everything that occurs outside of you has to come through what we call our filters, which are these senses.
Speaker 2 10:01 And the problem is, is that there's so much stuff going on out there. They estimate it to be something in the order of 1 million bits per second of information that your filters have to restrict this information going into your mind. A, so we do what we call generalized the store. And delete information. And so then it goes into what we call our internal representation system, which, which is then what we react on. It's what we, it's what we, we actually see and think about. And then we create our state, we create our beliefs or values and all these things as a result of that. So, um, you know, the belief is, is that everything that comes into us is partially filtered because we can't absorb all the information at the same time. Therefore, it's not necessarily a hundred percent accurate yet. We're making decisions based on all this.
Speaker 2 10:54 So when I work with people, I help them to change, um, what they have stored in their, uh, their minds by different NLP techniques, which helps them to look at things and let's say in a different way. Does this answer your question, Janet? As far as what does that help you could put in layman's terms, you know, but it's, um, that makes sense. Yup. Yup. Yeah. I mean, it's a, you know, just the basic NLP course. There's something like 80 hours. I mean it's, um, quite, quite detailed, but you know, we start with, with what we sense and it, it's, it's what we think about and it's how we interpret things. So you can interpret a situation any way you want as long as somebody's not physically confronting you or something. You know, if somebody just says something bad about you and you hear it, you have a, you have a choice, you can interpret that as well, that bothers me or that doesn't bother me or it has no meaning to me. Um, and so this is the basic premise, uh, is to understand how the human mind works so that we can then, like you said, in the workplace, the workplace is an accumulation of all different types of problems, uh, people's problems with balance in their life, uh, people's problems with getting their job done, with motivation, all these things. But it's all based on psychology and LP. Um, and there's ways to change it and improve it.
Speaker 1 12:20 <inaudible> you also say in your book that your thoughts create your state. And I think that's true because you know, people say you get up in the morning, you have two choices, you can, you can be miserable or you can decide to be happy no matter what the situation is, right? So if your thoughts create your state, this is something that you have to do when you go to work every day is say, I have to make sure I don't let this filter that is my filter mess up the communication that we're trying to have here because of, you know, your own biases and whatnot. Right?
Speaker 2 12:56 Yeah. Well I do it in a little bit of a different way. And in my book I actually created a, a word called graph formation. Um, it's gratitude affirmations. Um, and so what I believe is, is that, you know, if we, if what you just said, if I were to say what you just said and that is okay, today I go in and go to work and I'm not gonna have any problems and I'm going to be happy or whatever. What that suggest to our mind is is that we probably have problems or we probably will have problems or whatever. So it creates a gap. And so what I like to do is instead I said, you know, here I am right now in the present and I will change because linguistics is the key in NLP and it's, it's our language. And I will change the language because the language is so important of what we say.
Speaker 2 13:42 I will instead say, you know, thank you so much for today already being such a great day. It's like I'm already living the fact that it's going to be a great day. I don't ask for it to be a great day. I don't want it to be, I feel it already is. And because everything works on emotion and feelings and I can talk about frequencies of the brain and how it connects and everything. That to me is the most powerful way for people to change a is by not saying I want, but instead saying, thank you. I have already
Speaker 1 14:15 <inaudible> so how hard is it when you're working with people to get them to see that?
Speaker 2 14:23 Well, it's, it's a journey. Okay. So those go end of the journey. It's not a destination that we're, we're, we're out. Life is a journey. It's about continuously improving. Like in, in manufacturing, we have continuous improvement of processes, quality and so forth. Life is the same thing. Okay? It's not about a step function. Hey, tomorrow I wake up and I feel perfect. It's an accumulation of little things that you do every single day. What I call habits that will get you to improve. So what I do when I work with people is I help them to realize that, you know, to change, um, it requires just a lot of little habits that they start doing every day that are different than what they've been doing. And when those habits, when you do these things enough, they become automatic. They become reflex. And then that's when you find, you don't even recognize it. Um, but eventually you start changing and then people around you, it'd be like, well, you're a lot different. What happened? Um, so it's, it's more about that I think
Speaker 1 15:24 <inaudible> and we've all learned our habits from a very young age. And in the book you talk about how from that very young age, zero to five, we get, you know, a lot of our thoughts and habits and actions. It's just part of our survival instinct. So in order to master your habits and sort of weed out the bad ones, how do you even recognize that you have a bad habit? Because some of them are just so natural to you, you don't even know that you're doing them
Speaker 2 15:54 right. Um, well it's about being aware. It's about being aware of your thoughts about being aware of your actions, your behavior. Uh, you get feedback constantly for all the people or situations yourself. Um, you know, you have to break, break yourself back. People are so far, uh, in, in trouble, let's say. Um, you've got to go back to the basic, just say, what was my purpose? What was I brought here for? And you know, the ultimate goal of everybody really is to be happy. I mean, this is what we're all searching for. We do search for it in different ways. We avoid pain and we search for pleasure. This is Tony Robbins' favorite saying. Um, and so I think that, you know, number one is when you're growing up and stuff, you accumulate all these thoughts, 80% of which are negative. And these are the things you remember.
Speaker 2 16:48 And so it's about changing your focus because what you think about and what you focus on becomes what happens. And you know, even if you look at like, um, things like the law of attraction, there was a great movie called the secret. Uh, it's about the fact that your thoughts become your reality because what you think about creates a subtraction of a bench to come into your life. And these are, these are like much different thinking than I used to think about. I mean, being an engineer, I always thought logically, but you know, now I've taken the logic and I've added to it a step of the emotional mastery, let's say. And, and my life is totally different. It's amazing. And I can watch people change. I've changed a lot of people now.
Speaker 1 17:31 So in manufacturing, if you're, um, a leader of a manufacturing unit and you look down the line, like you've got people who are on the front line and then you've got the management and all the way up, how do you, how do you bring that mental change through the, through the system there?
Speaker 2 17:52 Well, it starts with being genuine and showing compassion. So, you know, some of my studies about, about the mind and everything. Um, you know, I, I researched some things and there's a really good guy. His name's Greg Braden and he does a lot of, um, very good videos on, uh, Gaia, gaia.com and basically he hit it on the nail and he was apparently into bed at some, some, uh, high level, um, high altitude, let's call it a place where there was some very, there were people that studied this all the time and he asked the question to them. And the answer was that when you show compassion to people and it's not, it's not the physical showing of compassion, but it's the feeling showing of compassion when you can show compassion to other people and other things. It doesn't just have to be people. That's when things begin to change.
Speaker 2 18:44 And so even when I was, you know, my last job, I mean I was managing a large organization as managing director in aerospace. And you know, I used to just show compassion to people, show that you care, ask the right questions because they can tell if you're asking questions to gain, you know, an advantage, let's say, or if you're asking questions out of genuine careness. And when you do this, people respond in a much different way. Um, it's not about business anymore. They look at you as a person that cares about them. And when they see that their workout that everything changes, it improves.
Speaker 1 19:23 How many managers are business leaders? Have you spoken to who get this?
Speaker 2 19:31 Well, it's interesting because you know that I've, I've been living in Asia for 20 years now, so we're going to have to talk about Asian business leaders. Um, but actually, um, you know, I've been coaching, uh, you know, CEOs of companies, high level management people, VPs, things like this. And I would say the answer is everybody. Um, that I have talked to so far. Now of course you can't just, you know, go in and start talking about things like this without having rapport first. And this was the first element in NLP is developer or with the other person. There's many techniques to do that. But before you start trying to get a person to change, you have to have rapport, deep connection with the person. Once you've established that, then the rest this, I've been able to get people to readily accept it and, and, and be like, Oh my God, where have I been all my life? And you know, this is awesome. And just, just basic things to me. I mean, um, have made huge changes in their ability to manage their teams
Speaker 1 20:37 that Steve Polasky as a business executive, he has successfully turned manufacturing businesses around and led large teams of people throughout his career. He's focused on leading by example and coaching people to personal success. He now leads infinity achievers as a life coach and he has a new book entitled infinite choices, wisdom and change. Next week on the show, he's going to share some processes and activities that can help business leaders and individuals open up their potential to get more out of life, business and the people they lead.
Speaker 0 21:13 I hope you'll join us then. That's our show for this week. Please check out our Twitter and LinkedIn feeds that are on our podcast page and subscribe and share this podcast with your friends and colleagues through iTunes, Google play, Stitcher, Spotify, and YouTube. The make it right podcast is brought to you by Kevin Snoop, leadership advisor and author of the bestselling book. Make it right, five steps to align your manufacturing business from your prep line to the bottom line I did at Eastman. Thanks very much for listening to make a right podcast.
