In this episode of “Through a Therapist’s Eyes,” we explore the multifaceted nature of ambition—what it is, where it comes from, and how to cultivate it effectively. We discuss the balance between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, the role of personal values, upbringing, and even trauma in shaping our drive. While ambition can lead to success, we also examine its potential downsides, such as burnout and toxic behaviors. Finally, we provide practical tips on how to nurture ambition in a healthy way, focusing on goal setting, self-care, and learning from failures.
Tune in to see Ambition Through a Therapist’s Eyes.
Think about these three questions as you listen:
- What is ambition?
- Can you have too much?
- How do we cultivate ambition?
Links referenced during the show:
https://www.throughatherapistseyes.com/category/podcasts/mentalhealthtips
Intro Music by Reid Ferguson – https://reidtferguson.com/
@reidtferguson – https://www.instagram.com/reidtferguson/
https://www.facebook.com/reidtferguson
https://open.spotify.com/artist/3isWD3wykFcLXPUmBzpJxg
Audio Podcast Version Only
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Episode #283 Transcription
Chris Gazdik: [00:00:00] This is Through a Therapist’s Eyes on August the 8th. I am your host, Chris Gazdik, and I would like the honor of giving a shout out today to my brother on his birthday. We covered this on the YouTube part. Yeah, but it got a little weird so I’m not gonna say stop right there. Let’s just stop right there
John-Nelson Pope: It’s nice to have a brother.
Chris Gazdik: It is really nice to have a brother. I love him terribly, you know As a matter of fact, it really is because you know when your parents die I’ve always long believed and well known that Your siblings will have been the only persons to have known you your entire life If you think about that, so I value very much the relationship with my brother.
Love you, brother. Happy birthday August the 8th, we’re gonna be talking about ambition today, and we have mr. John Pope hanging out with us
John-Nelson Pope: It’s good to be here.
Chris Gazdik: Did you get through the rain? Yes, we did. It was [00:01:00] brutal. It was horrible We have Debbie parked over us. And
Victoria Pendergrass: yeah, we don’t like Debbie at the current moment No offense to all those people out there that are Oh
Chris Gazdik: Debbie Downpour.
The poorest dentist of the world. That’s, that’s rough. And then we have Victoria Pendergrass. Hang out with us. So, this is Through Therapist’s Eyes, where you get insights from a panel of therapists in your home, or your car, or wherever you might be, but not delivery of therapy services in any way. The three questions that we have about ambition, how do we get it, are, what is ambition?
Shocking that we would have a definition question, right? Can you have too much? Eh, we’ll leave it as a cliffhanger. And then do, how do we cultivate ambition? Actually create or get so we’re
John-Nelson Pope: gonna come out saying it’s there’s positive aspect to ambition. Oh, yeah
Chris Gazdik: Yeah. Oh, yeah ambition rocks. I want everyone to have a lot of it, but not too much maybe all right [00:02:00] We’ll talk about it Yes, I the book is out I have a picture that I put up for the YouTube people very excited about it December the 17th The volume 2 of through a therapist’s eyes on marriage.
That’s a good job Sam’s all around. John, what do these people need to do when they’re trying to
John-Nelson Pope: support the show? Give us five stars because if you get five stars and you truly enjoy this, it’ll rise to the top like cream and so we’ll be able to have more exposure.
Chris Gazdik: You, you have a beautiful way of putting these things.
That was really impressive. Victoria, you’re losing it. You’re good? Yeah.
Victoria Pendergrass: It’s
Chris Gazdik: delightful. Alright, contact at throughatherapisteyes. com is where you can email us questions and thoughts and we sometimes talk about like the last week on the air some of those and finally this is the human emotional experience which we endeavor to figure out together.
Welcome [00:03:00] Sandy Falls. We have a new YouTube. Yay! Welcome Sandy. And I learned from Neil, you don’t have your mic, do you Neil? Let me get this right. We don’t want to leave anybody out when we’re kind of decided we want to greet YouTube subscribers, but if they don’t have your settings put towards public, then it doesn’t notify us when you sign up.
Is that, am I saying that right? He’s shaking his head. So if you have your settings put towards public on your YouTube page or whatever, That is how you sign in, then we will see you and we will say hello. So that’s what, hello. Hello. Hello, Sandy. All right. Did I get everything? Did I do everything? Did I move it around?
Yeah, let’s get her
Victoria Pendergrass: going.
Chris Gazdik: Get her going? Let’s get her going. Who’s her?
John-Nelson Pope: She’s in a hurry.
Chris Gazdik: It seems like she wants to go hang out. Well, she had to see her kid today. I haven’t seen my kid all day. She’s, she’s wanting to see her little munchkin roll around and chew things and destroy things. And he goes to bed at eight.
So. Let’s get on. [00:04:00] Make the time go faster for Victoria.
Victoria Pendergrass: Everybody talk in two point speed.
Chris Gazdik: Oh boy. You do that normally. We need a capable of that. John is incapable of that. What do y’all think about the topic? Ambition? How do we get it? Do you think about ambitions or developing ambition in therapy? Very much.
Victoria Pendergrass: It’s a unique topic. Yes. I’m trying to think.
John-Nelson Pope: I’ve had a client that seemed Is on the spectrum and he does not have ambition. Oh, really? No, none being on the spectrum, but and it’s not just because he’s on the spectrum, but I think it’s his particular the way he’s built has absolutely no ambition
Chris Gazdik: operationally,
John-Nelson Pope: operationally.
What do you want to do? I don’t know. Yeah, he did. Do you have any hopes? I don’t [00:05:00] know. And it’s not just depression or anything in terms of depression or anxiety or anything,
Chris Gazdik: there’s an interesting question off the bat. Is it possible?
John-Nelson Pope: Well, I think he comes as close
Chris Gazdik: as close as you can, but I would argue actually that that’s impossible. I
John-Nelson Pope: mean, I think he did does because he knows how to drive. He knows he can shop, but he has no ability or volition to, to, to continue and say, I want to go to college. I want to go and, and do this. And yet,
Chris Gazdik: so it’s an interesting comment though, this person or that person seems to have no real ambition.
I hear that comment and I didn’t have it a part of my show prep, but the question is really. Is that question a myth? What? Is that statement a myth? That this person or that person just has no ambition?
Victoria Pendergrass: [00:06:00] I think, and I don’t know if we necessarily are going to talk about this later on, but I think it also depends on if we’re including ambition as like motivation.
And if we’re saying that that’s the same thing or not
Chris Gazdik: I there are two different words So they’re not I didn’t write them down. I mean to me You know the definition we have here desire and determination to achieve success a stronger definition, I think is a strong desire to do or to achieve something typically requiring determination and hard work.
So, so you might have
Victoria Pendergrass: ambition, but you might not have the motivation to do the ambition, to reach the ambition. Very much. Okay. Gotcha.
Chris Gazdik: Very, very correct.
Victoria Pendergrass: So then I think, I think the issue that I see in my office more often is people have the ambition, but they’re lacking the motivation to. Accomplish said ambition, and so therefore that’s sometimes why they’re in my [00:07:00] chair, not chair.
I have a sofa. What can I teach
Chris Gazdik: you? We have a chair to what would what connected John?
John-Nelson Pope: Well, I’m I’m hearing that. I agree with you. The person I’m thinking about on the spectrum. Is, and I would say he would be a like a level two autism spectrum. Okay. Okay. And resting it a little bit. Yeah. So he’s even, even though he had a very normal intelligence, there was no, no concept of motivation for him or ambition.
He had enough to be able to obviously to be able to learn how to drive and, but he could for example, If he wasn’t reminded to go shopping or to buy food for himself, he wouldn’t do it. He wouldn’t, he would not. He needed someone to supervise him to, in a sense, tell him what to do.
Chris Gazdik: It’s interesting, John, right?
Because on the one hand, I totally am [00:08:00] following you. I just hadn’t thought about exploring this question on the show, but I think it’s a really good question to really kick off with because we want to create ambition. But, you know, The idea of, is it possible to have no ambition? I think I’m going to argue no.
I think we’re all kind of agreeing, but what’s interesting is that motivation, as you said, Victoria can take a hit and the ambitions that we have can take a hit in the context of mental health. But here’s another, he would be
John-Nelson Pope: happy being just being there. That’s what.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah. And okay. So he’s progressed a little further to have a lot of self stimulation in a relationship with himself and avoiding other contacts and things.
But what’s interesting, I find with Asperger’s people or higher functioning autistic people, maybe autistic one, you say he’s on a higher level of two with that, that they have a lot of ambitions to have sex, to have a marriage, to have a relationship, to have maybe even kids and whatever they come saying they can.
John-Nelson Pope: But
Chris Gazdik: you [00:09:00] can get to a place where it, the Asperger’s or autism might take that away or depression might take that away or, you know, whatever, but that they still, I mean, that’s sometimes what can be so tormenting. It’s to have that ambition. Well, I
John-Nelson Pope: found it very frustrating because I’m someone who, even despite my advanced age is I’m doing that to myself, but is, is to, to want to motivate people.
Right. Yeah. To say, let’s live to the fullest of his of your potential. Absolutely. But he didn’t want it.
Chris Gazdik: You really didn’t want it.
John-Nelson Pope: Didn’t really want it.
Chris Gazdik: Well,
John-Nelson Pope: very nice person.
Chris Gazdik: It’s fascinating. Yeah. It’s, it’s an interesting question. I mean, so. So, so we, yeah, we, we definitely have things that take a hit in our system.
You know, we were talking about procrastination as well at one point, which I think I’m going to mention on the, throughout our journey today here. But we, we, we tend to think of these [00:10:00] things, this just occurred to me actually in real moment. Do, do we tend to think about things like procrastination, motivation, ambition, as characteristics that we either have or don’t have, or.
Are they the result of how we’re taking care of ourselves or not? Right, right. Because I learned that honestly, when I did the show on procrastination, that it’s not really a characteristic that we diagnose and whatnot. I know it’s actually literally on our symptoms lists with certain things, but that’s more of a result of how you’re feeling and how you’re doing.
So it’s an interesting difference. Does that make sense?
John-Nelson Pope: It sure does.
Chris Gazdik: And I wonder if ambition falls in the same. Sort of the same way, see that it might.
John-Nelson Pope: Well, I think that’s, I think we’re attuned in our Western culture to in the U. S. is to, to kind of [00:11:00] value people making progress or improving hard work and we value motivation.
Chris Gazdik: Well, we’ll definitely talk about you know, where it comes from for sure. And, and, and what all of that is and your culture has a big. Peace to play in how you experience the world. So for sure. Barbara says happy birthday to my brother. I appreciate that ma’am so he’s ron. He’s getting some shout outs.
That’s cool. His name’s ronnie, by the way
Victoria Pendergrass: You okay, Victoria? Yeah. Yeah, we’re just chillin My dad’s name is actually Ron.
Chris Gazdik: Oh, really?
Victoria Pendergrass: It’s his name, Ron, like Ronald. Well,
Chris Gazdik: it’s, yeah, I, well, yeah, Ronald Glenn Gasdick. We all family calls him Ronnie. It’s weird for me to hear. See, which is
Victoria Pendergrass: hilarious. Sorry, this song.
But my dad hates being called Ronnie. Being
Chris Gazdik: called Ronnie, yeah. Hates it. That’s a diminutive.
Victoria Pendergrass: Some of his family, like, From back in Virginia like call him that still yeah, I can’t call my
Chris Gazdik: brother Ron. It’s it’s it just doesn’t feel natural to me It’s not right. It makes me feel weird when people call him like it’s Ronnie.
What [00:12:00] are you doing? Yeah. All right so what are the components of Ambition so we’ve got really a strong desire to do so or achieve something Typically requiring determination and hard work and then we have the different components You That I look at what builds this what creates this and we already mentioned I
Victoria Pendergrass: already mentioned one which is motivation
Chris Gazdik: Closely tied together.
Yeah, how they operate you
Victoria Pendergrass: have like goal setting
Chris Gazdik: and
Victoria Pendergrass: then you have persistence Vision,
John-Nelson Pope: right? I got a question since you’re our ADHD She’s the consultant Is, is that part of with some of your clients difficult for some of the clients to be able to, to aggregate or bring together their motivation because there’s a sense of being distracted or not organized.
And so [00:13:00] part of this is you’ve the goal setting is difficult for some of your clients. You
Chris Gazdik: mean specifically with ADHD too? With
John-Nelson Pope: ADHD. Yeah. Yeah.
Victoria Pendergrass: I mean, I would say that there’s definitely some correlation between ADHD and like motivation, goal setting, all the things that like vision. So
John-Nelson Pope: somebody could be, let’s say ambitious.
Right. And ADHD and not able to get it together. Garner goal setting, Garner motivation. Yeah. Because
Victoria Pendergrass: it’s difficult for them to set goals. Right. And keep to the goals, like they might be able to set goals, but to be able to like, stay on track with the goals. Well, you’re right. It also occurs to me,
Chris Gazdik: even like with your vision, you know, you have a vision that you, you look for, you know, you create a goal through that.
And, but if you’re having a vision there and then you look over here and then you look over there, you know, you, you don’t get clarity for wow, motivation, goal setting or [00:14:00] vision. And then you throw in persistence. You know, you’re struggling with a lot of the components and
Victoria Pendergrass: you throw it like ADHD on top of all that.
Well,
Chris Gazdik: that’s what I’m saying. It, it, it erodes following now.
Victoria Pendergrass: Yeah. Sometimes one of my clients mentioned it earlier today, but sometimes I feel like I’m like, A race horse and I need like blinders on the side of me so I can keep in a straight line. Yeah. And that I won’t get distracted by line, like other serious.
Yeah. It’s like the crowd or like the, you know, the other horses or like the other stuff going on. I, I mean, it, it’s, it’s funny
Chris Gazdik: and, and John, I think you’re right. Just like with the spectrum, and we could do the same thing, I guess. You know, with depression or other facets where people are really struggling on a foundation level with things, though, I believe almost universally just with behavioralism or, you know, understanding human, you know, goals for Maslow’s.
We talked about all that, like people have high ambitions for themselves, [00:15:00] but struggle because things take away various components. Like we
just said, with ADHD, with what you need to, you know, Exercise ambition, right? It’s kind of a bummer. Yeah. So there’s
John-Nelson Pope: an internal structure that, that a person is born with that may be less organized.
And so that they’re not able to, to not more easily organized in their thoughts, be able to do things
Chris Gazdik: behavior,
John-Nelson Pope: but they still could have a very strong ambition.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah. What’s interesting is happening for me right now. I talk a lot about. An overview of mental health. I call it the tale of two tapes, right?
And on the one side you have the genetic biological realities Exercise nutrition, you know that drives a lot of how we feel but then on the other side You have the social and emotional realities as we know Primary life experiences primary life events the daily stress and the grind so I was actually thinking [00:16:00] That this issue with ambition, massaging it, managing it, understanding it is a lot on this side of the equation.
And emotional, right? So far, our whole conversation has been on this side because your body’s operating the way it’s operating with ADHD or autism, and it’s eroding your ability to exercise. Ambition. So there’s a big biological component here, isn’t there?
John-Nelson Pope: Yeah, I think so. Yeah, and I think that’s
Victoria Pendergrass: like, sorry, because even depression is like a kid has a chemical compound to it.
And so like that, the event has a biological compound to it. So I mean, like the thing that comes to my brain is like postpartum depression. And like, there’s, And like things after that that’s what came to my brain. Cause I think of, like I had no ambition after I pushed a baby out of my body. I literally could do not want to do anything.[00:17:00]
No. My main accomplishment is to make it through each day alive. Like at this point.
Chris Gazdik: Absolutely. But, yeah, I
Victoria Pendergrass: mean, I definitely think that there’s a, I think, again, You know how I think that it’s nature and nurture, not nature versus nurture. And so like, I think that’s very much the same thing. Like, I think it involves biological, but I also think, yes, you’re right.
It doesn’t involve like social too. Well, there’s
Chris Gazdik: a lot of, I really previously thought that was a much higher percentage, but I’m just recalibrating that.
John-Nelson Pope: Well. I’m just, I’m thinking too, where some people might be crushed by, by thinking, well, I should be more able to, to achieve my goals than I do. And so you get a lot of the shoulds.
Chris Gazdik: I think that’s a big part of this, this, this first segment, honestly, that I didn’t even plan is the shoulds. Yeah. Yeah. And, and I think this is a bit of a warning that I want to make a bold statement and put it out to the people. In general, but then also us therapists [00:18:00] specifically, I feel like we look at the motivation of somebody and we forget that they have a high level of ambition, likely, for what it is that they want, like, and enjoy, but that that’s getting taken away from them, sadly.
because of some of the landscape that we’re working with and then when we’re successful in working with people and alleviating those pressures, won’t their ambition rise to the surface and then fly with what it is that they want to do? That’s the hope. Yeah. Like cream.
Victoria Pendergrass: Like cream. Yeah, and I mean, in therapy we say, like, shitting on yourself.
Chris Gazdik: Right. Go explain that. Like, okay, so
Victoria Pendergrass: in therapy we have this term called shitting on yourself. Well, I think most people could get the inference. Put it that way. Yeah. Well, we say shitting on yourself because you’re using the word should. That sounds like Albert Ellis. Yeah. It probably is. Who’s Albert Ellis?
I’m sorry. R E B T.
Chris Gazdik: Oh, okay. And it’s basically saying. We had an eye roll on Victoria’s part. I might point out o
Victoria Pendergrass: But it’s basically saying that like with the word should comes a lot of shame and blame and weight carried on your shoulders. And so simply by changing your verbiage to like, could or would, then you can kind of ease that pressure, ease that weight and blame off your shoulders.
And so I’ll even say to my clients, I’m like, you’re shitting on yourself again. And like, you know, is that like, and I think it kind of goes to what John was saying about people feel like they should have this ambition, but no, I’m like, let’s like, you probably do. You just need to like, Find it
Chris Gazdik: right. Well, on, on, on earth that are unbearable because he gets buried under the weight, go to therapy or something we, we, we have no victory.
Thank you for that. That is a wonderful teaching moment of really powerful reality because I’m telling you that works a lot when you change should to could. I learned long ago in a conference that I was really, or [00:20:00] even would like next time I would
Victoria Pendergrass: do this. I would do that,
Chris Gazdik: but you’re right. You know, cause it,
Victoria Pendergrass: it still leaves up the opportunity for you to.
Make a different, because like should also kind of implies that like you did something wrong. And sometimes, yes, we do do wrong things, but sometimes that’s not a weight that we need to carry. Right. Like that’s not, you know, we don’t need to, it’s not our fault. It’s not something we did wrong. So maybe next time I would do this differently, or I could do this differently.
So.
Chris Gazdik: No, I like it. I like it a lot. I think there’s a, I think there’s a lot there. John, would you be willing to help us understand. Staying with the idea of components of ambition, intrinsic motivation versus extreme intrinsic
John-Nelson Pope: motivation would be that the, the internal engine basically internal, intrinsic.
Okay. Extrinsic, of course, is from outside motivation. Might be [00:21:00] from parents that could be from school pleasing people, pleasing people that could, that’s a whole nother set of things. In other words, conflict avoidance, a
lot of factors. Yeah. So, and then with the internal is you could. Shoot on yourself basically and, and do that, that would be the negative, but also the internal intrinsic could also be the very positive aspects of being self affirming and to be able to, to say, well, where am I going with this?
What’s my potential with this? And actually affirm yourself. positive. Did I do
Victoria Pendergrass: all right?
John-Nelson Pope: No,
Chris Gazdik: absolutely. I’m trying to please you. I appreciate that.
Victoria Pendergrass: I love that. I have not heard that phrase since I graduated college.
Chris Gazdik: What?
Victoria Pendergrass: Graduate school. Intrinsic motivation. Oh, really? I have worked with this a lot. I’m just going to forget about it.
Like
Chris Gazdik: I, I pull it back into your brain. I would say, because I think there’s a [00:22:00] lot to this and it has a lot to do with internal locus of control versus external. And that’s
John-Nelson Pope: why we should. And that’s another thing. Go with that. Make
Chris Gazdik: that sound like people can understand it.
John-Nelson Pope: Inculcate basically means, in other words, to, to actually build into the fiber of one’s being, the inculcate becomes an essential part of that, those positive messages that are reaffirming, that are strengthening, that would say you’re a person of, of, of wonderful worth.
And your dreams and your hopes are, are noble or good. And I’m putting some values into that by saying noble or good. And the thing is, is that you could there’s that old hackneyed saw that says you can lead a horse to water and you can’t make them drink. Okay. That would be it. Pardon?
Chris Gazdik: I That’s always driven me crazy.
Yeah. I said, but you can make ’em thirsty is what I, yeah. Like to add to the end of it. Well
John-Nelson Pope: see, that’s an [00:23:00] intrinsic, right? Right. The thi part, you can make ’em thirst Thirsty is the intrinsic. That’s the intrinsic, right. Okay. The extrinsic the in extrinsic would be you just, you’re gonna try to motivate ’em and push ’em from the outside.
Push ’em from the outside. But if they don’t want to go. They’re not going to. They’re not going. So you’re
Victoria Pendergrass: basically saying if they don’t have the intrinsic motivation to do it, then the extrinsic motivation isn’t going to be effective.
John-Nelson Pope: But you could set the, here I’m, we’re going on. You have to play with both.
Okay. You have to, yeah, you have to set the table for the intrinsic as well and give them the opportunity to say, well, wait.
Victoria Pendergrass: So they bounce off each other.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah, vice versa. And, and, but people get really in trouble with this. And then I get excited when Neil goes for the mic, that’s exciting. But I think the thing you have to realize is you, you, you potentially can get into real trouble when you mix them up, meaning you’re focused too much on [00:24:00] the external locus of control when you really need to take control of what you can control.
Right. Serenity prayer in reverse. Your internal locus of control struggles. When you’re really expecting outside sources to motivate you or to create ambition when it’s really an internal or vice versa, you’re not controlling the things you can control when you don’t do the internal it, right? It just works.
They, yeah. Victoria, I think they work together. Neil, what do you thinking, buddy?
Neil Robinson: Do you think that earlier, that someone figures out which one motivates them, the better they are? So basically the idea is, cause everyone’s different, you know, Elon Musk, Amazon, Jeff Bezos, intrinsic. They have ambition. They just wanted to go do it.
But some people do need that out, out external source. Do you think the sooner they just figure out which one compels to their nature, the sooner they can nurture it and then makes it better for them?
Chris Gazdik: Boy, that’s a dynamic question. Seriously. That’s a great question. Really? It’s dynamic. Yeah. What? I almost feel like I need to think about it for a minute.
What are you guys [00:25:00] thinking? John?
John-Nelson Pope: Well, there, I’m, I’m thinking on two levels and is that, that one reason why people go into military is, is that they have, they have a need for external structure and all of that. The beauty is that somewhere down the line. And this is where you make them thirsty is where the person will say, I can do this.
I, this is something that I want for myself and make it internalize it. I also, there’s another illustration that is. Biblical and at seminary, the word seminal is like a seed. And so that’s an internal sense. You can, you can plant a seed, you can prepare the soil and the seed has to germinate. And so one starts to develop desire and then it grows and it’s very complex and it, [00:26:00] it, it grows in its own way.
And it, it becomes a wonderful seed.
Chris Gazdik: I think what I’m struggling with though is, John, is that, you know, yeah, it’s, it’s a really good question because To paraphrase it though, again, you’re kind of like, look, wouldn’t it be helpful for a person to learn their tendencies? To know kind of what it is that they are motivated from, either internal or external, and then they can mature and grow and get ambitious quicker.
Like, that’s part of the way we want to try to grow ambition. Is that, is that paraphrased kind of close? I
Neil Robinson: think that kind of paraphrases it, but I think going back to nature versus nurture. The idea is the more you know about your nature, the more you know how to nurture it. And I think that’s, I think that’s key because I think if someone says, I don’t have motivation, you start talking to them or I don’t have ambition.
Well, you figure out, well, how do you get something done? You know, I think about my kids, you know, my oldest just got to college yesterday. Which is
really crazy, but I remember like seeing it, like he’s better about like [00:27:00] setting his schedules with school and that helps them motivate, get everything done.
My youngest is kind of like, he can kind of do his own thing. He does like schedule. So they kind of learning what motivates or what pushes them. To get to that next step they’ve learned. And I feel like if you don’t understand that it’s internal versus external, or I need deadlines, I need this, or I need that.
It’s hard for you to set that. Maybe, maybe you need deadlines, but if there’s a problem there, but if you don’t know it soon enough, you’re just going to be swimming in the sea and you don’t know what you need to do. It’s just this wide open thing. So if you don’t address or know. Whether you’re intrinsic or extrinsic, whatever that, however you pronounce that.
It’s hard to, how do you build that ambition if you don’t know where your strength is, right? Well, I think
Chris Gazdik: you got to have both though. You start out knowing your strength. There’s an inherent danger there, I feel like for people. Just take the word people pleasing, if you will. A lot of people identify, Oh, I’m a people pleaser.
That means that you have external locus of [00:28:00] control and you’re extrinsically interested in ambition motivated by pleasing the other people. And that might be your strength. You read the room, you, you know, are compliant and people love that. And you follow structure and we need. That we need good foot soldiers if you will john,
John-Nelson Pope: right?
Chris Gazdik: But at the same time you got to turn that around because we’re not going to give you structure throughout life And so you run a deficit if you don’t focus on building the skill up of having that internal locus of control
John-Nelson Pope: You need both. Yeah. Well, it’s like There’s like gravity in the sense that something can’t really grow when they take plants up into space or germinate in space, they grow all over the place.
Yeah. So you need some resistance. You need grounded. Okay. So in other words, you’ve got, yeah. So it’s a nuance, it’s a balance.
Victoria Pendergrass: Yeah.
John-Nelson Pope: There’s a sense that [00:29:00] maybe you, you have a little bit of adversity actually helps build one’s ambition in some ways. We’ll come into that. For sure.
Chris Gazdik: We’re going to do a section on what, where’s this come from?
And I think that we’re, we’re in the weeds with it. Let me move us on because I think we’ll get there. Because yeah, there’s a lot of, well, we need to
John-Nelson Pope: spray roundup on things.
Chris Gazdik: Okay. But real quick, there’s another couple of components I want to mention, which is important. We spent a lot of time episode 281, Victoria, right?
On that hierarchy of needs. You remember all that? Well, doesn’t that drive a lot of the internal ambition for safety and then the next level up the structure and The love and the belonging and these different things like that’s your ambition I think that’s what I mean by every human being has that to at least some degree.
Well, I mean, yes Well, yeah, I guess you read your mental acuity has there are limitations, but you know, we could still be self actualized if we were living You [00:30:00] Super well, even when we got some of these deficits, I feel like.
Victoria Pendergrass: Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: So, that’s a driving force.
Victoria Pendergrass: Go listen to our episode.
Chris Gazdik: You spent a lot of good time on that episode.
We had some shorts got created for you because you were banging out an explanation teaching us about Maslow. The last part here also though is having a growth mindset. I don’t know who
Victoria Pendergrass: that’s me. Let me take it over. Carol.
Chris Gazdik: Carol Dweck evidently is the person who created this concept whenever a long time ago.
Victoria Pendergrass: Yeah. So growth mindset is basically, so you have a growth mindset and a fixed mindset. So if a fixed mindset, we’ll start there. It’s kind of what it sounds like you’re fixated in one. You’re not going anywhere. So a thought you could put with that is I suck at math. I’m always going to suck at math, a fixed mindset.
You’re never going anywhere. You’re fixated right where you’re at. Well, then you have a growth mindset, which basically sounds what it is. This concept that you can always grow and learn and [00:31:00] further push yourself. So if you take the same comment of I suck at math, I’m always going to suck at math. If you reward that towards a growth mindset.
You could say, Okay, well, I suck at math. However, the school provides a tutor for math that I can get with and help improve my math skills. So, therefore, I can pass my math test on next week or whatever. So, it’s that, like, That you have room to grow that you can change something that you can like move forward and make progress you’re not just fixated in this like one specific spot not moving anywhere
Chris Gazdik: which goes to one of the concepts we didn’t spend a lot of time on with persistence
Victoria Pendergrass: I mean
Chris Gazdik: that’s I think honestly personally that’s one of my strongest traits like I am persistent if I set a goal I’m gonna figure out a way Yeah, you know how many times
Victoria Pendergrass: do you ask me a week if I’m done resting?
Yeah, you’re quite persistent, Chris. That’s
Chris Gazdik: consistent. That’s not [00:32:00] persistent.
Victoria Pendergrass: No, you’re consistent and persistent. There is
Chris Gazdik: both. You’re right. Those that know me would say there are both there. But yeah, that, that, that’s a good explanation of fixed and growth mindset.
Victoria Pendergrass: All my clients, if they’re listening to this, they’re going to know because I talk about it with everybody.
Is that
Chris Gazdik: a staple for you? Yeah. Yeah. It’s funny how we have different things that we kind of.
Victoria Pendergrass: Like gravitate towards. Yeah,
Chris Gazdik: or lean on. I mean this
Victoria Pendergrass: specifically says the belief that the belief that abilities can be developed through hard work and dedication.
Chris Gazdik: So that’s a big value that you have.
Victoria Pendergrass: Yes.
John-Nelson Pope: So are you trying to impose your values onto the rest of us, on your clients?
Chris Gazdik: Oh no. We square off. Go Victoria.
Victoria Pendergrass: No, I just present it as like, This is a thing. Most people have one or two, they have a fixed mindset or they have a growth mindset and it’s up to them to choose what they want.
John-Nelson Pope: Excellent. Are
Victoria Pendergrass: you
John-Nelson Pope: comfortable with that? Oh yeah, definitely. I was just pushing her [00:33:00] button a little bit there.
Chris Gazdik: Okay. Let’s go into where does this really come from? I think if you think about. The conversation thus far is, is really grasping the concepts and the full understanding of a word that people are drawn to, but really the, the, the nuances of how it, how it works. So let’s look at where does this come from?
That Tale of Two Tapes. Is this more nature or nurture? Is this on the nature side? The emotional, social, emotional? Or that’s not the nature side. Is it on the nature side, you know, with the biological, genetic kind of realities? Or is it on the social, emotional, you know, the nurture side? Where, where does ambitions come from?
What do we think? I
John-Nelson Pope: think
Victoria Pendergrass: it’s
John-Nelson Pope: both.
Victoria Pendergrass: Anger.
John-Nelson Pope: You said anger good old
Chris Gazdik: anger
Victoria Pendergrass: good old fashioned anger
Chris Gazdik: now. Did you get out that of the list or did you get off your brain? She’s listed. I
Victoria Pendergrass: had a little [00:34:00] half and half But now I do think like I was actually gonna say more like, Like proving people wrong?
John-Nelson Pope: Ooh, that would be, Would that be more of a people pleaser thing?
That was my, that was my 10th grade geometry teacher who said and insulted me in front of a classroom of people. Yeah. And I proved her wrong. It creates ambition. Or it
Victoria Pendergrass: creates motivation to reach your ambition. Yeah.
John-Nelson Pope: In my experience is that you, if people think that there’s someone who is close to unconditionally wants the best for them, they’re going to want to to excel or do their best and live up to their potential.
Yeah.
Victoria Pendergrass: But you also have things like. self confidence, self esteem, which are two different things.
Chris Gazdik: It is. [00:35:00] Go ahead, though. You’re stopping mid sentence again.
Victoria Pendergrass: No, that was it.
Chris Gazdik: Oh, that’s it?
Victoria Pendergrass: They’re two different things. Just, are we not listing things here, or do you want me to explain what self confidence and self esteem is?
I
Chris Gazdik: guess, yeah, I guess that’s what we’re doing. We’re listing areas that this comes from and stuff, and you’re saying that that comes from those. How so? Well, like,
Victoria Pendergrass: your self, okay, so self confidence is your, is Your ability to do something like you’re confident, like I am self confident in like my ability to or lack of ability to play basketball, we’ll say, okay, it’s an ability where self esteem is more like your Like qualities, your values.
Like, do I value myself? Do I like, am I worth something? That type of thing.
John-Nelson Pope: So, so, okay.
Victoria Pendergrass: Right. I don’t like to look on your face. No, no, no. You’re good. You’re good. You’re good. So anyways, but that, I think that that can [00:36:00] spear ambition because I mean, like when, if I feel better about myself, then I’m going to feel better about like trying to reach.
said goal, said ambition that I am like, want to If I believe that like I have good qualities and I have good worth and that I can do it That’s probably going to push me a little bit more than if I was like, you know Hiding away. I think
Chris Gazdik: the key here is is what what motivates you or as you just said what pushes you And there are very different sources that really kind of push you Into something that you would like to accomplish and whatnot So that’s really what we’re after in understanding kind of back to Neil’s kind of point, understanding kind of what your strengths are, but understanding what’s pushing you are two really important facets of being able to achieve your ambitions.
How’s that for a little bit of a mic drop? Does that make sense?
Victoria Pendergrass: Cause I love t
Chris Gazdik: out. I [00:37:00] think that’s really on point. I mean, just look at anger, for instance. I mean, you can get really, really pissed off about something or John, when you were talking, I was thinking about athletes that like search for that.
But, you know, you’re, you said professor, but they look for a coach or somebody that said something like Michael Jordan wasn’t picked for his high school basketball team and it pissed him off and he would go back to that constantly to feed his ambitions
Victoria Pendergrass: back to that feeling of what he felt during that.
Yes. And it was very
Chris Gazdik: motivating for him. for him to achieve his ambitions. So, you know, the Boston tea party, the whole creation of these United States based on a whole lot of anger about taxation without representation, mothers against drunk drivers. They are literally having the, they’re mad,
John-Nelson Pope: you know,
Chris Gazdik: that creates ambition because my Freaking son died from a drunk driver and I want to change this, right?
So so your ambitions really do what what’s driving you? What’s your passion? What [00:38:00] feeds your passion is another word your passions and ambitions? So that’s what we’re trying to figure out
Victoria Pendergrass: so then like your values and interest Can push what like?
Chris Gazdik: Another topic.
Victoria Pendergrass: Yeah, I’m like how if I like if an interest of mine Okay, like reading
Chris Gazdik: trying to create this.
Oh my god Reading is an interest of
Victoria Pendergrass: reading and so technically I do have a goal Of like to read 150 books by the year. I’m already on like almost on like 140. So i’m
almost there But like Like, and then my dad made a comment the other day about, he was like do you have any other goals for the year?
And I was like, yes, but like, this is something that like is an interest of mine. So like, yeah, I’m going to put forth effort into accomplishing like the thing that I want to accomplish because like, it’s something that makes me feel good. It’s something that like relaxes [00:39:00] me. I read for lots, plenty of different reasons.
And like,
Chris Gazdik: absolutely.
Victoria Pendergrass: Like that’s.
Chris Gazdik: And, and values. Go ahead, John.
John-Nelson Pope: Well, I’m, I’m from southeastern Kentucky originally. I’m so sorry. Well, that’s no, west, West Virginia winds, man. Yeah, we
Victoria Pendergrass: always will. Or I mean, at least you grew up with some good bourbon,
Chris Gazdik: right? This is true. Right? Hatfield though. Or your nemesis.
Sorry. I love Kentucky, buddy. I love Kentucky brother.
John-Nelson Pope: I do too. I do too. And I love my people. And one of which is, is that there’s generational poverty that’s there for, and it’s same in West Virginia. Yeah. Same in certain areas of South from here, Southwestern Virginia Appalachia,
Chris Gazdik: Appalachia, Southern Ohio.
John-Nelson Pope: Yeah. So I’m thinking about JD Vance and now he’s the vice president. Whether a candidate, no, he’s a candidate, but he’s but there was this sense of what set him apart. Yeah. Yeah. [00:40:00] And what, and so his, his. He had an internal locus of control where he was living in a world that would, would actually be very much an external locus of control.
His mother, for example, was a, was a kept going back to the wrong men, kept going back to drugs and, and having relapses. And then there was something in
him that motivated him. My goal and I think your goal as therapist is to be able to give hope to say that there’s an an opportunity. There’s education.
There’s, there’s a way out of this, the determinism. of generational poverty, for example,
Chris Gazdik: right,
John-Nelson Pope: or drugs.
Chris Gazdik: And I’m thinking about, you know, you’re, you’re, you’re making me think, John, about, you know, substance abuse families and what happens to the ambitions of people oftentimes in those systems. It could be good, but it could be bad.[00:41:00]
John-Nelson Pope: So, so how do, how does one nurture that nourish that so that in a, an impossible situation that one could actually excel and grow and go outside of basically what seemed like a pretty hopeless situation.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah.
John-Nelson Pope: And, and, and do that, I think. So there’s a, there’s a balance. So I think it was a great
Chris Gazdik: balance.
I really, I love this in the, in looking at the depths of what it is that we do, because I think that we’re on the front lines of helping people through to unleash their ambitions, you know I was thinking about that, John, as you were talking, my mind was in a journey of like, you know, is that what we are trying to do, but there’s a cautionary tale.
I think also. Because at the same time, we’re trying to help people with the different things that hold their ambitions down so they can unleash their ambitions. But what happens when we get, you know, these, these [00:42:00] tough life experiences through trauma and pain and hurt and substance abuse where we have, you know, ambitions that take us into a destructive zone?
John-Nelson Pope: Yeah. Oh, you see that in our, you read, you read so much, but Citizen Kane, for example, that great film, he’s, he’s on his deathbed. John Charles Foster Kane. He was a newspaper magnet and he was he pulled the strings of politics and he basically didn’t have any, he had a great fortune. He had everything the world At his fingertips.
Okay. And he lost, he died. Oh, okay. And he had this one little snow globe and he said, rose bud. And it was he, the only thing that he valued. It, his life was his sled that he had. And the reason why I’m bringing that up is that’s an ambition that’s gone [00:43:00] bad because he like, he ran over people, he destroyed people’s lives he used people.
And the only thing that he only really wanted was to have his sled that was taken away from him.
Chris Gazdik: So the answer to our question, can you have too much? Yes. Definitely.
John-Nelson Pope: Yeah, that was my point,
Chris Gazdik: right? So yeah, a long way. You know what? We’re pulling, we put, let’s pull these two sections together because, you know, absolutely any of these things can go bad.
Anger can go bad. We know angry people, right? You know hurts and pain points can really keep us down and stifle our motivation and ambition and such You go down through these things, you know family supports and the culture that you had You can have too much of that that stifles actually so too much is bad But what we want to do is harness the anger right harness the trauma Harness what you learned.
I tell people all the time in substance abuse families, man, the things that you learned in those [00:44:00] systems kept you alive. We don’t want to retrain those things. Those are amazing skills. I mean, powerful skills, street smarts are amazing. Right. But when you have too much of the pain, then it, then it hurts you into negative world.
Well,
Victoria Pendergrass: yeah. And I also think when like too much ambition comes into play is. When you don’t have to, oh god, I can’t talk straight. When you don’t have to like, moderate it, I guess is the right word? Or you like, yeah, where you like run yourself ragged because, and I’m sure we’ve all had clients who are like, to have done that because they don’t know how to like regulate
Chris Gazdik: might be guilty.
Sometimes my yeah, I might be guilty sometimes
Victoria Pendergrass: myself too, but they because they don’t know how to regulate. Okay. Like, when do I need, I haven’t eaten in five days because I’ve been so pushing to try to reach this goal, like, okay, well, maybe I need to like Some food inside my body like drink some water or like get some [00:45:00] sleep over ambition Yeah, right overachiever.
It’s a high goal. So great So you’re
John-Nelson Pope: talking not just like something that would be diagnosable in terms of like a mood disorders bipolar Right, you’re talking about just having this this almost this ambition that great ambition, that vision, that it would actually be detrimental for your health and, and so everything gets put by the wayside.
Victoria Pendergrass: Yeah. So you might be accomplishing something big, but at what cost?
John-Nelson Pope: You’re overcompensating.
Chris Gazdik: Don’t try too hard. Settle down. Relax. Yeah. These are some of the, yeah, there’s a lot of. I don’t know about y’all, but when I’m working with people and thinking about these things, it’s balance, balance, balance. Yeah.
Right. A couple of the other things trauma experience. I think we mentioned, Oh, a big one. I really want to focus on for a minute. I want to get to, you know, how can we foster this stuff though? But. [00:46:00] Failures or significant challenges in your face. Are these good for ambition or are they bad? Cause I happen to love them.
Victoria Pendergrass: I think again, when we go back to what we just talked about with harnessing and regulating,
Chris Gazdik: yeah,
Victoria Pendergrass: I think they can, it can be a good thing.
Chris Gazdik: Springboards into growth mindset and you fail. Yeah. And, but you can get stuck in failure and just stay, you know, well,
John-Nelson Pope: and it, and it depends also if somebody is let’s say they’re, they don’t have your best your best interest, interest in mind.
Thank you. They, they, basically what they do is that they try to thwart you and keep you down. Or, yeah, take advantage of you. So when you have people
Chris Gazdik: working against you. Yeah, and you fail. You have to be aware of that. Yeah. Okay. Like someone
Victoria Pendergrass: literally, like holding you down.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah, stifling you. Domestic violence is a more extreme example of that.
No [00:47:00] one will want you. Right. Those critical people are a loss. You’re too broken.
Victoria Pendergrass: You’re too damaged. Critical
Chris Gazdik: people really hurt. Don’t think
Victoria Pendergrass: you know who some of the most critical people are.
Chris Gazdik: Unfortunately,
Victoria Pendergrass: kids, kids are mean.
Chris Gazdik: Well,
Victoria Pendergrass: but they usually learn it from somewhere. So there’s where I thought you were going where
Chris Gazdik: parents.
Victoria Pendergrass: Oh yeah. Parents are too
Chris Gazdik: right. Oh, of themselves and of
Victoria Pendergrass: their, of their kids. I
Chris Gazdik: think some of the times I crushed my kid spirit inadvertently. I mean, obviously I didn’t mean to, Oh, why did I say that? You know what I mean? Yeah. You know, but it happens.
Victoria Pendergrass: Yeah,
Chris Gazdik: And they can take that criticism and use it to motivate them as we were talking about All right high achievers with adhd maybe anxiety or even as we said asperger’s syndrome John these types of things being a high achiever are great.
We don’t want overachievers with that balance But these high achiever motivations like anxiety. Oh, man, that can create some wonderful ambition [00:48:00]
Victoria Pendergrass: Well, yeah, and I was thinking about how we were talking about Like my AD, like, not just my ADHD, but just ADHD in general, earlier, how, if there’s like a correlation between if it like affects, I also think it can do the opposite because we can get so hyper focused on things that sometimes it can help us to like drive and reach our goals.
Chris Gazdik: Okay, here’s what we want to avoid, because in a word we can’t have too much ambition, and then we want to talk about how to cultivate it. We can have too much, and we use other words, you know, I was brainstorming this, right? Think of these other words that we have when we’re thinking about, you know, People that are too ambitious, air quotes, right?
Haughty, arrogance, behavior, condescension. All those condescending people, right?
John-Nelson Pope: I’m too good to be true. Can’t take my eyes off of me. Oh man. I’m just like heaven to touch. I wanna hold me so much.
Chris Gazdik: That would be a little haughty. Haughty, [00:49:00] yes. Toxicity, workaholic. Overachievers, burnt out folks, compassion fatigues, what we say in our field.
Oh, and
John-Nelson Pope: that’s how, that’s how we let ourselves off the hook as therapists. Right.
Victoria Pendergrass: We call it compassion fatigue.
Chris Gazdik: Well, yeah. I’ve got, I’ve got. Poor, yeah, well, that’s, you’re just saying rationalization there, John. Yeah, but then, you know, we disconnect and we have poor relationships. I wrote Lot Lizard.
Or other terms that are kind of derogatory and whatnot. The reason why I was thinking about that is because my son was called a lot lizard. And what that is, is a, a person who in a car, a car dealership or a used car salesman or whatever, they’re very competitive. And so my son was like hungry and ready to go and he wanted to get into sales.
And so somebody would jump on the lot and boom, he’s like jumping on them. You know, so he’s, he was, he was Nick dibs. I was called
John-Nelson Pope: a power tourist once a power tourist. Yeah. Cause I like to power through museums and see everything.
Chris Gazdik: [00:50:00] Okay. But you
Victoria Pendergrass: go quickly. You don’t take your time.
Chris Gazdik: You
John-Nelson Pope: know, I don’t take my time.
Chris Gazdik: Right. So there’s these critical things. And so definitely we want to build ambition. Now we’re going to answer the questions. How do we deal with that? But you know, we want to be careful to have a balance and not go overboard. Cause we’ll be, you know, these other not so nice. So how do we cultivate this?
What do you think? What do we do? Do you actively do this in therapy with people again? Yes, I do. Yes. I think so, too.
Victoria Pendergrass: Yeah. Well, how else are you going to be effective?
Chris Gazdik: Well, but have you thought about the actual word, ambition, in?
Victoria Pendergrass: Yeah. I don’t think I actually know. When you first, we first started this episode, I was kind of thinking, like, I don’t necessarily use the word ambition too often, but we use the words goal setting, motivation, those words.
Right. Like we use those words, but we don’t necessarily, at least for me personally.
John-Nelson Pope: Albums have a little value spin on it. Yes, it [00:51:00] does. Go with that. Yeah. And I think like. In my circles you can’t be too ambitious. I mean, ambitious is not a good thing. Looks, I come from a ministerial association and we put people down by calling them big steeple preachers.
Oh, okay. That’s a slam. And those were the two ambitious people. And then I had a. And then a big steeple guy talked to me and said, well, you know, you’re really not made for the big steeple, you know? Yeah. Yeah. What did he mean by that? I wanted a bloody his nose. Yeah. I
Chris Gazdik: was wondering how John was taken out.
I didn’t
John-Nelson Pope: take, I didn’t take that one very well. Hey,
Chris Gazdik: hey, John can get it all when he needs it. And I, I, I’m
John-Nelson Pope: doing this for Jesus.
Chris Gazdik: Right. So, what better ambition or stronger ambition. Yeah. Yeah, it was critical and it seems those things can sting. And honestly, if you have that self confidence, the internal locus of control, see how these things work together?
You can take [00:52:00] that motivation and be a big steeple preacher if you want to be,
John-Nelson Pope: right? But the thing is, is that you, we In some circles, that’s not being pious is to be ambitious is not to be pious and go ahead. So
Victoria Pendergrass: like, well, I was just like, one of the things you talk about as far as like cultivating it is the one five and 10 year plan.
Chris Gazdik: Love that. So kind of
Victoria Pendergrass: like a vision board type thing, whatever. Some people are more, some poor words are hard for me today.
John-Nelson Pope: I see that.
Victoria Pendergrass: Just like every day in my life, apparently. You speak
John-Nelson Pope: so quickly that your thoughts get ahead. Yeah, my
Victoria Pendergrass: brain works faster than my mouth. I wish that was my
John-Nelson Pope: problem.
Victoria Pendergrass: And I talk with clients about this all the time.
Like having a one, five and 10 year plan.
Chris Gazdik: So you do that now. Do you like the 10 instead of the five being the max? Cause that’s my big bias.
Victoria Pendergrass: I think it gives people more of like one time because like [00:53:00] some people’s goals that they set for themselves are good goals. They just like, Or physically not possible to achieve and like, like right now, if I wanted to, if I wanted to say I want to be a doctor in five years, that’s literally not possible.
Chris Gazdik: Like
Victoria Pendergrass: a medical doctor. I could be a doctor. You could be a doctor. I could be a doctor in less than five years. But if I wanted to be like a medical doctor in five years, that’s But
John-Nelson Pope: you think about it, you, you actually have as much or more education. But I’m just saying, but I’m just saying the point is,
Victoria Pendergrass: is like, I think it also helps people realistically set goals that they can actually like accomplish and maintain.
A lot of
Chris Gazdik: content creators or thought leaders really go about, you know, identifying vision boards and having your vision. Well known in business manuals and books and leadership conferences and all. And, but I have a really, really poignant things is why
John-Nelson Pope: organically, I think more of like a seven [00:54:00] year, a three and a five and a one, three and five and a seven years is, is more of an organic one in terms of, of seasons and
Victoria Pendergrass: breaking things up
John-Nelson Pope: days.
Yeah.
Victoria Pendergrass: Casey. Casey Morgan, our friend Casey, Casey Morgan when we worked for our previous employer, she had us create one year. She had us create vision boards for what we want to accomplish during the summer. Because if we did school based therapy and during the summers, things slack off a little bit because obviously the kids aren’t in school.
It’s hard to meet with people. People go on vacation, blah, blah, blah. But, anyways, so she had us create, she wanted us to create vision boards, so we all like, We got our poster boards. We like did it, got letters. We printed out photos. We like labeled things, but yeah, it actually got me thinking more. Like I was able to [00:55:00] also get ideas from what other people like suggested and talked about.
And like,
Chris Gazdik: there are people that struggle with having way too much of a focus on. External locus of control. And when you’re kind of going with the wind, you know, it’s good for flexibility. It’s good for patients. You know, that’s, those are, those are strengths, but, but what you do potentially is get lost because you don’t have the answer to the question.
What do you want in life? What are you really striving for? Well,
John-Nelson Pope: now here’s, here’s a thought in that is to go over like in terms of going over the, the, the client’s goals. And you do this on a regular basis, and you do it day one, day one. And maybe, I don’t know what you guys do, I think you need at least a couple of months, three months to say, okay, do we need, are we going in the right direction?
Do we need to look at a different way? Yeah. Re evaluate. Re evaluate. Re [00:56:00] appraise. I think good therapists do that. Yeah. Yeah. So I think that’s, so I, I think not being so diffuse and just saying, okay, I’m going to see, I’ll go this way or I go that way. You have to have some sort of a plan. So
Chris Gazdik: have to have a vision, have to have a plan, have to have a destination.
These are things that feed what it is that your ambition is. I like to say cornerstone of mental health. That’s what I think self care is. So, you know, focusing on. The process that you’re in and not the outcomes and if you’re not resting, you have got to rest and do self care and recharge and re engage what it is that your ambition is.
That’s how
John-Nelson Pope: you feed it. That’s what I do with my supervisees. Yeah. I think self care and is important. Absolutely wonderful. Numero uno.
Chris Gazdik: I had a session just yesterday where I had to spend about 15 minutes trying to get a committed answer about what it is [00:57:00] this person was going to do for self care this evening, and they really needed it.
So I will, I, seriously, I will spend time there, boy.
Victoria Pendergrass: Almost every session, regardless of who my client is, it probably comes up at least once every session.
Chris Gazdik: It’s important. Yeah, it’s, it’s a big deal. Even if it’s
Victoria Pendergrass: just a quick check in of like, Okay, how you doing with your self care? Okay, great.
Chris Gazdik: Okay, another thing that I thought was cool is from the book that I wrote, Through a Therapist’s Eyes, Re understanding Emotions and Becoming Your Best Self.
Right? What?
Victoria Pendergrass: Sorry.
Chris Gazdik: Did I say something wrong?
Victoria Pendergrass: No, I was looking at this abbreviation like the whole time and I was like, what the F is that? I was like, what the heck is that? Tate,
Chris Gazdik: you see him. Okay, come back to us. Come back to us, Victoria. I lost the battle with, with, with Neil and Kohlhoff long ago. We now refer to it as Tate.
Okay, that’s fine. I’ve never liked it. But smiling in his victory as we speak. But no, what I did in that book, right. As I took all of the chapters and I won and I, and I whittled them down to kind of, you know, group [00:58:00] them off and I had four groups of, of things in most of the chapters fit into one of those four groups.
So to me, it’s like a synthesized. Version of these are the four important pieces that you want to really engage to reinvent yourself, to build yourself up emotionally, to manage and re understand how you can function and action points was one of those four, like what actions can you take? Can we not say that the actions you choose to take should be feeding and getting more excited about what your ambitions are?
Victoria Pendergrass: Well, yeah, they need to correlate somehow.
Chris Gazdik: Right. You know, but I think I’m excited about that because I feel like people oftentimes Sit back and wait and fail to exercise the control over what it is, you know, the courage to control what they do control like this phrase, [00:59:00] John, it is what it is, drives me nuts for that very reason, right?
So what actions can you take any action at all? If you allow yourself to think, well, that’s a fatalism. It’ll come.
John-Nelson Pope: Yeah. So in, in other words. That’s something that I challenge my clients on is when they say it is what it is. That seems to be, say I’m helpless, I’m hopeless, I don’t have the agency to be able to do this.
And I don’t have empowerment, dude, dig deep into yourself a little bit. You can dig in there. You’re might be afraid to see what, what is there. You might not know your potential and to be able to love it. Okay, love it. Go for it.
Chris Gazdik: Love it. This is an important part of functioning, you know, and people really are afraid You know, to take an action.
I mean, now we have cancel culture around the world. This isn’t just in the States, by the way, people. It, that’s all around the world. And it’s, and it [01:00:00] has to do with putting stuff out on a screen, but people are afraid to
John-Nelson Pope: do that face to face. Afraid to be criticized or to even have their, their careers jeopardized.
Right. By cancel culture. What’s happened to comedy, for example? You can’t be funny anymore.
Chris Gazdik: Ha, ha, ha. Well, it’s funny. I like Rogan show with certain science people at all. And he said, yeah, we just kept on doing it. So I guess there’s certain pockets, you know but you’re not,
John-Nelson Pope: you’re not going to get that on, on Jimmy Fallon, for example, not Fallon, but who’s a Kimmel.
He’s afraid to say anything,
Chris Gazdik: Building self up self confidence, Victoria, I think you were talking about that writing out your values and your ethical beliefs, just like a vision board. It’s really important to actually write them out so that you know, what are my values? What are
Victoria Pendergrass: my ethics? I give out like a, I give out a list sometimes and like challenge people to actually
Chris Gazdik: identify.
Victoria Pendergrass: Yes.
Chris Gazdik: [01:01:00] Ethics and value? Well,
Victoria Pendergrass: yeah.
Chris Gazdik: They, in other
John-Nelson Pope: words, they write their own code of ethics.
Victoria Pendergrass: Yeah. Yeah. And basically what I do is I, I, sometimes depending on the person, I do an activity where like they, I tell them to pick a certain number, like circle a certain number. And then of that, I tell them to pick a smaller number.
And then eventually we get to one, which for them is like their core, like the one thing that like. Reigns above all as far as is like,
John-Nelson Pope: Oh, I like
Chris Gazdik: that. That’s a good activity. So they might pick like, yeah, they might
Victoria Pendergrass: pick like 10 of their top 10 out of the whole list. Okay. Then I might ask them to pick five of that 10.
Chris Gazdik: Right.
Victoria Pendergrass: Which are their top five? And then like three consciousness into one. And then like, this is really where my, like, If I didn’t have this one thing, I would not be who I am today or kind of thing.
Chris Gazdik: I love that. Yeah. That’s I actually just saw an icebreaker at a conference. I was at yesterday on the same theme and it was, [01:02:00] it made people cry.
It was like, wow. Anyway, but that’s can I. Yes. I know we’re getting close to the
John-Nelson Pope: end, but you said embrace failures. The best teacher I’ve ever had has been my failures. Absolutely. I didn’t think of that back in the, you used the example of SpaceX and I would like to contrast that with Boeing. Oh, okay.
With the Starliner. Go for it. What happens is Elon Musk, every time he did his, his SpaceX, he would, he would, he probably failed more than he succeeded. But once he started to succeed, it happened a lot more often. Boeing was afraid to fail. You cannot have any mistakes or anything like that. They can’t get, for example, the Starliner, you, they cannot get, they couldn’t get it off the ground.
for three years once they got it up there because they had [01:03:00] overengineered it, overthought it, over didn’t take risk and boom, instead of allowing themselves to fail. And instead of, you learn from your mistakes. And so we have two astronauts that have been up there for two months.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah.
John-Nelson Pope: That can’t come home.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah. Wow. I saw where you’re going with this and you’re absolutely on point. I love this a lot, John, because, you know, you do learn
from failure and you know, the SpaceX people will tell you, look, we, we know we’re going to lose rockets. We know we’re going to explosions. We, we, we bank on that because we learned so much from it with all the data that we get, and then we refine it and retune it and go at it.
And you’re right. Unfortunately, Starliner with Boeing just is arrested in their development.
Victoria Pendergrass: But I also think that failure allows you to This might be just repeating what you say, but in the sense of like, when you work on yourself, failure allows you to see like where you’re at. And so [01:04:00] like, okay, for example, at the gym I go to, we go until failure.
So like, if I’m doing like chest press, then I will go until I literally cannot pick, the way up off my chest because then I know where I’m at and then I can improve from there.
Chris Gazdik: And it’s, it’s awesome. We just had a YouTube quote that agrees with us. Like, you know, people are so afraid of failure. Yeah. I mean, it, it is something that will stop you before you start if you allow fear to go at it.
But again, action points, you know, learn from failures. These are things that can build your self esteem up, actually, and then foster your ambition. Yeah,
John-Nelson Pope: I don’t like to fail, but I fail so often.
Chris Gazdik: Well, sometimes
Victoria Pendergrass: you don’t know how far you make it until you, I mean, until you fail, and then you can push yourself even more.
Listen, when you’re
Chris Gazdik: lifting weights, you and I are working out, Victoria, right? You have to go to failure to know how far you go. And then the next time you try to do one more instead of the
Victoria Pendergrass: [01:05:00] 14 and then 16 instead of the 15, or you lift 35 pounds instead of 30 pounds. You know, it’s funny.
Chris Gazdik: Anytime I go to the elliptical, I’ve made a bargain with myself that I’ve got to go 0.
01 further every single week. It’s starting to get hard.
Victoria Pendergrass: Yeah, no, I think that’s great though.
Chris Gazdik: I’m going to say.
Victoria Pendergrass: But then it’s okay if, but sometimes then it’s okay if you stay at the same one for a while until you get the strength to go on to the only one
Chris Gazdik: that’s gonna be ripped are, are Victoria and Neil John.
I think we’re, we’re, we’ve lost the ability. It’s not gonna happen. Should I just speak for myself? Yes. Okay. Just speak for myself. Listen. Anyways. Actively choose role models, resolving failure and, or resolving family and resolving traumatic kind of things. You know, we’ll, we’ll talk more about these things as we go, but closing thoughts guys, and I’ll, I’ll take us out of here.
Victoria Pendergrass: No, I mean. Thank you. Just go for it. Do it. You got it. [01:06:00] You got this. Have grace for yourself.
John-Nelson Pope: Yes. So give yourself some grace. Just give yourself some grace and just keep at it. Keep trying and
Victoria Pendergrass: you got this, dude.
Chris Gazdik: I love that. So listen, yeah. This is a, a really cool topic that I think will apply to everyone.
If you tuned in. I hope that we’ve given you some things because. There’s really a lot that can knock you down. There’s really a lot in the world that can stress you out. There’s really a lot that can make you afraid, anxious, depressed, and these things erode away at what it is that you do have ambitions for as they get buried, you forget them, gain an awareness of yourself, create some vision and do some of these activities just a little bit at a time.
And I think that you’ll find you really free yourself up to explode into what it is that you want to make happen. So we’re along for the journey with you. As I always say, we’ll figure it out together. Take care till next week. We’ll see
Victoria Pendergrass: [01:07:00] you