In this intentional episode, Marcy Axelrod, CEO of Choose To Show Up, shares how her decades of research resulted in a framework already helping thousands of people choose to show up in a meaningful way for the most meaningful moments in their lives.
You will discover:
– What it means to truly Show Up
– Why you were never taught how to Show Up
– How to choose the right moments to go all in
Episode Transcript
Scott Ritzheimer
Hello, hello and welcome, welcome once again to the secrets of the high demand. Coach and I am here with an unbelievable guest. You are in for an absolute delight. Delight. We are here with Miss Marcy Axelrod. She is a 25 plus year keynote speaker and award winning author of on your game and strategy and innovation consultant. She’s worked with top high tech firms to accelerate growth and individual achievement globally. Her books include on your game, which is a guide to succeeding in a world designed to knock you off your game, and how we choose to show up, how we choose to show up. They combine consulting strategies, neuroscience, psychology and behavioral economics to help people and companies succeed. How we choose to show up is already receiving advanced praise from educators and researchers at Harvard, Yale, Columbia and Cornell. Well, Marcy, I mean, with an opening like that, what a treat. Thank you so much for being here. So excited to have you can’t wait to dive into some of the big concepts in your book, because I know they’re making a massive impact around the world already before we get there. Why? Why choose to write how we choose to show up? What was the inspiration for the book?
Marcy Axelrod
Well, I very much, Scott, believe that I’m called to write this book. My entire life revolves around this. I started stuttering when I was six years old, and I could no longer show up as I chose. So I became an observer, this avid disciple of, well, how is everyone else showing up? Right? And then, of course, with the you know, fury and the stress of dealing with not being able to show up as I chose. I just started to endlessly read and research. I mean, I started, you know, really diving into neuroscience when I was 12. We’re talking the early 80s, before it was really a big thing. So living through that led me to recognize that most people throw their choice away. They’re not choosing how they show up now, absolutely, a lot of us, Scott, think about, what do we want to achieve in a given day? Right? What are we doing? What are our goals? But how often do we ask questions? Scott like, how do I want this person to feel in my presence? That’s a show up question. So anyway, that was the beginning the stuttering. You know, I was sent to a rehabilitation hospital at age 12, where it was very clear to me these elders with wisdom, working with experts and, you know, really good plans to help them learn how to speak again, how to walk, how to feed them themselves. They struggled. So it was very clear to me the message of how to achieve the way that we want to show up. You know, no one really knows where’s the blueprint if we all struggle with this across our life, from age six to age, you know, 80. So did a ton of research, and got 20 years of my own research. Of course, I reference many, many, many, you know, highly accomplished thinkers put it together. And basically it’s a model. It’s a nature designed us, Scott to show up a certain way. And the moment I show you, people are gonna think, oh my goodness, this makes so much sense. Then what a lot of people say is, why aren’t we taught this in school? I just had a principal of a high school in Westchester, New York, asked me. She said, Marcy, at graduation, is it okay with you if we pass out copies of your book to our graduates? Because we we didn’t teach this, and I just came across it, and I said, My God, absolutely, I’ll give it to you. So amazing. Why? That’s how I got here.
Scott Ritzheimer
So I’m gonna have you define it in just a second, but, and maybe you might choose to define a first answer this question, but why is it that we’re not taught how to show up?
Marcy Axelrod
Why are we not taught? Okay, so 80% of us do what I call just show up, 80% of the time. And I feel like society just shows up. So just showing up is kind of, you know, you wake up, you get things done, you’re largely in the left hemisphere of your brain, not your right. You’re succumbing to the patterns. You’re succumbing to everything that the environment has taught us so all of our society, the messages, our culture, right, that we need to buy things that don’t make us happy or create meaning. I mean, all of this, there’s a there’s an entire system that is conspiring to lead us to just show up, which is. Kind of default space that that we live in. And I think because of that, like no one’s just kind of put it out there. And I mean, the moment people see it, it’s going to be so, so clear. But different people are seeing different things that are all pieces up. And what I’ve done is just, is just put it together.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, I love that. So what is it that? How do we show up? What does showing up really look like, and why is it so important that we choose to do that? Will it happen automatically?
Marcy Axelrod
No, unless you live in a family that really actively teaches you that everything is relational, that really taking the time to think, what are we doing? How is it meaningful? Right to just expand our lens, because it’s not about a given action, which is a very narrow, small thing. It’s about meaning of the action, why we’re doing it and it’s imported to others, so we aren’t going to naturally happen upon this basically the model, right? So nature designed us in three roles. We’re not in one role. We’re in three at all times. Okay? And this is a fundamental about nature, right? We aren’t just selves. When you picture a human, human, even back when we lived in caves, our three roles, we are selves, yes, but we’re also in a situation. There’s always something going on, and that thing is what leads us often, to do what we do, to feel, feel and to think what we think. So the role of being a member of a situation, even if we’re just laying in bed, that literally designs a lot of of what we choose to do, think and feel, beyond that member of something larger. I call it society. You can think of it as a family, a company, a sports team, a neighborhood, a religious group, an ethnic group, a racial group. We’re a member of something larger than us, self, situation, society. Those are our three roles. And you might say, well, Marcy, so what right? Why does it matter? It matters because when you understand what a self truly is, which is not what you think, what a situation truly is, and what society really is like, all of them just design us, and when you when we understand how that works, we can then show up to them in a skilled way. So every role has a skill you want to be grounded in yourself. What does that mean? Know who you are and why, and I, I’ve got a chapter on this. What does it mean to be a member of a situation? What it means is that you recognize there’s this reverberative process. So Scott, right now, the way you are listening to me, the way you are looking at me, it’s changing my chemistry. It’s changing my physiology. It’s changing how I sit, changing what I it’s almost designing what I’m choosing to say. So we are co creating each other. Now that’s just a little taste of what a situation is. When you think about that, are you going to show up to someone the same way? Now that you know this, and that’s just 10 seconds worth of insight into what’s really going on, you’re not going to show up the same way again to your kids, to your spouse, to your work, to an idea, because now you know that you change the idea the moment you interact with it. And this, by the way physics, it’s quantum physics. We all know this, right? Electrons, far apart, mimic each other’s actions. We’re the same way, right? Our societal role as as well. But the point is, we need to understand what the roles are and the skills. The skill for the situational role, is being ready. But what does that mean? What does it mean to be ready? Maybe it’s something you planned, but maybe it’s impromptu. Let’s face it, 99% of what goes on, we didn’t plan it’s right. Part of it just happened. And then the skill for our societal role, it’s being connected with intent to serve the word I put on it is all intelligent. Why? Because intelligence makes no sense. The skills and knowledge God that we need to succeed. Are they all inside of us? No, right? Are they inside of us? No, it’s not in like the books and movies out there. It’s in all. It’s in the universe. It’s in nature. So nature? Do. Designed us to move through life in these three roles, and once we understand that, here I put some really simple little visuals on it. Oh, and then there’s a level of showing up. You know, nature, everything has inherent levels, 123, at every moment, you’re either barely there, your genes showing up, which 80% of us do, 80% of the time, or you’re fully showing up. And I go to chapter each explaining what is barely there, when is it acceptable to be there? Yeah, what is just showing up? When is it acceptable to be there? And like, 50 plus percent of the time we’re going to just show up. Let’s just accept it. But what are the few times each day when you really want to truly show up? And how do you do how do you actually do that? So what I want people on your podcast to to lead with is we bounce around this continuum all day long, and everyone and everything does, yeah? Because showing up isn’t a peripheral feature of our operating system. Scott, it’s our defining characteristic. Yeah, yeah, right. And you can walk outside and just look and know they’re just showing up. They’re just showing their children, right? Because you can see how someone’s attending to their moments. Yeah. Anyway, it’s more right, right hemisphere. And I can get into that another time. I mean, in in 20 minutes, we aren’t going to get there, but
Scott Ritzheimer
It’s so good. Now there’s, I want to dive in one. I just love the the idea that it is okay to show up in these three modes, but it’s about choosing the right mode to show up for the right time. And I want to dial in particularly on those times when we need to show up, when we need to choose to show up. Yeah. How do you, as we’re looking at a day, lots of founders leaders listening to this, you know, they’re, you know, they’re getting ready for a full day. How do they look at their day and say, what are those moments that I really need to make sure that I’m making the choice.
Marcy Axelrod
Absolutely. So it’s all so life is relational. Everything, everything is relational. When you really get down to it, it’s not about his topic, it’s about the person, right? You can so the moments that I recommend founders and really all people focus on are the ones when you’re with a human being who you care about and who you want to move forward in a kind of productive, meaningful way with. If it’s a colleague at work and you think this is just someone I work with. This is not my kid, my my spouse, right? What, what you need to do is see them as a human being, right? And one of, one of the main things that that people tell me, makes all the difference when it comes to really understanding, choosing how we show up is the reality that we interact largely with people as objects. Why? Because we’re stuck in one of four things. We’re feeling other better than we’re feeling less than we’re feeling like I deserve, or it’s I need to be seen as that’s a huge one. These are actually the categories from the Arbinger Institute. I found them. I find them so useful. When we’re in any of those modes, we’re justifying, we’re justifying that in some way, and then everyone around us becomes an object that we want to control, because we need them to view us a certain way, or to do something for us. So I’m going to show you a continuum in the in the book here that explains when you choose your person or whatever you want to get done with with them, and I’ll send you this. It shows how when we’re barely there, we’re in our self mode. We have low grounding ourselves, low readiness for our situations and low intelligence in our broader roles. But it’s a self focus. But as we move through just showing up to truly showing up, we go through noticing and then tuning in right right? And then here’s the key where we’re really effective, we get to feeling with and enacting care. And is the continuum of how we go from just showing up to like manipulative from manipulating the world, which is what we do way too often, even without knowing it, to to truly enact and care for others. And they feel that. And the moment they feel that, guess what? Now they hear you, maybe for the first time. Yeah. How they you? Yeah. And. Because they care about you, even if it’s something that they like, disagree with, if it’s a political thing, they’re gonna they’re more likely to see you a question about it and to truly want to understand that is the holy grail.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, yeah. It’s so good that that there’s a question, and I think this is an excellent opportunity to kind of bottle this up, but there’s a question I like to ask. Oh, my guess it is this. What would you say is the biggest secret that you wish wasn’t a secret at all? What’s that one thing you wish everybody watching or listening today knew?
Marcy Axelrod
Yeah, we have a choice. We matter. Everything we do matters tremendously, because it goes three people deep into society like those, ripples out. Make your choice, and if you want help doing it, what showing up truly is, you know, the book is now a best seller. I totally recommend it. Ebook’s 99 cents, obviously, the soft cover’s out there. But make your choice and know that your choice tremendously matters on the global landscape.
Scott Ritzheimer
It is so true. It’s so true. So folks, you mentioned this, will make sure that folks know where they can get a copy. They want to dive deeper. They want to learn more, maybe even check out some of your other books as well. Where can they find you and your books? How can they connect with you?
Marcy Axelrod
Sure. Well, Amazon has the book How We Choose to Show Up, and the website is by that same the website is choosetoshowup.com there’s a Contact Me button. I love hearing from folks so be in touch.
Scott Ritzheimer
Brilliant Marcy, just fantastic. So many years of work, and it shows there’s just a clarity and an insight and just a compelling narrative running the whole way through it. Absolutely love the continuum and everything that it does both change the way that we think and show up and do it in a really practical and helpful way. So thank you so much. Loved every minute of it. For those of you watching or listening, you know that your time and attention mean the world to us, I hope you got as much out of this conversation as I know I did, and I cannot wait to see you next time. Take care.
Contact Guest Name
Marcy Axelrod is a 25+ year keynote speaker, award-winning author of On Your Game!, and strategy and innovation consultant. She has worked with top high-tech firms to accelerate growth and individual achievement globally. Her books include On Your Game, a guide to succeeding in a world designed to knock you off your game, and How We Choose to Show Up. They combine consulting strategies, neuroscience, psychology, and behavioral economics to help people and companies succeed. How We Choose to Show Up is already receiving advance praise from educators and researchers at Harvard, Yale, Columbia, and Cornell.
Want to learn more about Marcy Axelrod’s work at Choose To Show Up? Check out her website at https://choosetoshowup.com/
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