everybody. This is Stelly,

F T. And this is Heat and Shah. And today, on the startup chat, we're gonna talk about how do you negotiate with yourself? Way like talking about

more than just sales and marketing. We just wanna bullshit and chat about business in life. Hopefully, while we're doing that, provide along value to people The world's best business podcast E for people trying to get shit done. Yeah, we don't want to give you feedback. That's bullshit.

If you want you to do your best, this is based on a tweet. I think it was James clear on Twitter that tweeted it. And then I retweeted it Stelly saw it, put it on our list, uh, to talk about. So we're jumping in. We're gonna talk about how you negotiate with yourself, So I think that's a very interesting concept. It's something that, like, you know, one of those things that when you read it, you're like, huh? What does that mean?

How do I do that? And I think that's that's really where the discussions start. So So to me, it's like negotiating with yourself is almost like it's like usually you negotiate those. There's two parties on. They want different things. They're not aligned yet. Eso, I think, like in a way you could you could say, like either because I'm watching too many shows right now and random things. But like there's a show called Limitless, where they when there's also a movie called Limitless and and the main character takes a pill, the pill makes him super smart. But when he does that, and pretty much when everyone takes the pill,

they see a part of their psyche, whether it's somebody else they love or themselves. Um, and they start talking themselves and literally, what they're doing is to negotiate about what to dio, because now all of a sudden they're super smart, so they need someone to talk to you, apparently. But it's all in their own psyche, but it's someone to talk Thio to negotiate what they should do.

That's interesting. I saw the movie, I've never watched the show, but the reason I put this on the list of potential topics was that I don't retweet that many tweets, and when I saw this in my timeline, you had retreated it. I instantly retreated it, and then and then after the fact. I was like, Why did I retreat this alright, what about it was compelling. What made me want to share this more widely? And to me, I think that the biggest battles that we fight, the biggest impact we can have is mostly inward and not outward. It's like, you know,

being in competition with yourself. The negotiations we have with ourselves is improving ourselves. I think that an incredible amount of value can be created when you see all the versions of yourself that exist when you're observant and mindful and present to your thoughts, your feelings, your mental states, your habits and you don't just kind of you're not just the victim of your impulses and your thoughts and your character, but you're in negotiation with that and you're aware of it and you're molding it and forming it. I think there's a lot of impact that can be had that way. And I think that most of us spent a significant significantly more time outwardly like How do I negotiate with customers? How do I become a better negotiator with investors, or how do I make people? How do I manage people effectively so they do what I want them to do, like that's, I think, a much more attractive world, the outside world to people.

But I think it's the internal world where we win or we lose and where we really have the chance to have impact. So this idea of becoming well, first, the question. When do we negotiate with ourselves, consciously or subconsciously, and how do we get better? Had negotiated with ourselves. I felt like it's a super compelling question, right? So let me, let me ask you, um, you know what are what are some of the things that you do when you negotiate with yourself? If you want to use that framework when you have, let's say,

an inner voice that goes, Maybe I should do this. Maybe I should do that or I really wanted to do this, but I'm not quite sure when you're when there's some kind off push and pull when it's not crystal clear what you're going to do and you're just gonna do it. But there's some thinking before going on, or some contemplating before going on. You know, how do you do this? How do you make yourself do things I mean, I'll take that framework off, like, how do you make yourself do things that you wanted to do? But maybe in the moment you don't feel like doing. Or maybe there's another side of you that is fighting you around

these things. E. I think for me, it's not. It's a very difficult task because usually if I want to do something, e tend Thio like just, you know, think through it and figure out if it's the right thing to do. So to me, it's really about like figuring out if it's with what I want to do is the right thing to do, or if there are better options, it's already kind of negotiating all right to start with them negotiating that makes sense, like I'm already at the place where it's like anything. I wanted to do anything in the key of them, like, Wow, that the right thing to do or not.

So it's almost like everything starts with some form of negotiation. I don't know how that is for other people, but for me, like there's like constant negotiation about things to do. Sometimes it's even about what to say

and then how do you? What are the When we say, How do you negotiate with yourself? Who is the you that is negotiating with the self? Like, please separate? How do we even think about? Maybe this is too much of a philosophical question, but I think it might be an interesting one of, like, you know, realizing that we're not a single unit off existence, our bodies, our feelings are thoughts. Um, our habits, our impulses.

Those are obviously all part off our organism and are being, but they're not always in unity and and they're not always completely aligned. And we could even like, I think once I I had written about this concept off, you know, the inner voices that we carry around with us, Um, that we all kind of carry a village inside of us, and we're not just like one character were multiple different characters and different types and different biases in different situations, and like paying attention to which character is currently dominating your mind and your body and your thought process, and is that character is doing things that are helping you and others or if it's a destructive voice inside your head, can be can be super useful. So you said everything starts with the question. You know, what's the right thing to do? Is this the right thing to do?

And then there's probably some far process. Maybe sometimes there's research, or there is reaching out and asking for advice of collecting information or collecting data to try to get to the answer. The question Is this the right thing to do or not? Or how to do this right? But and sometimes that process is pretty straightforward, right? You collect this stuff or you follow that you tryto come up with an answer to that question. And the answer, in a fairly straightforward way, crystallizes as yes, no, do this or do that. Cool. Um, but what do you do?

What's your process when it's when you've done all that work or you follow that question, you don't arrive at a crystal clear point of a yes or no. There's some pros and cons. There's some internal conflict. There's some push and pull inside of you. Uh, maybe I should do this. Maybe should do that. I mean, you're an amazing human being, but you I would assume even you are at times in the situation where you're, like, not quite sure where you go back and forth aware you said you would do something, But then, yeah, you're still acting a little bit differently or is that really something that you're kind of,

um, left behind? So you rarely in this in this internal conflict situation, I would say like a negotiation with yourself inherently means there's two sides that are fighting something out, either with words or with something else. Like, there's a back and forth that's going on. What do you do when you're in that situation?

I guess I have a lot of practice. So if I'm always trying to figure out what's the right thing to do, are always like debating something before doing it, uh, saying it, you know, whatever. Then you know, it's like a If you've never

tried it, you should just try it.

And the easiest way to do this is like whatever you're thinking, just think the opposite and see what comes up. E think it's just it's just a practicing. Just try it, just like oh, I'm gonna eat pizza. Well, instead of that, I'm gonna eat some broccoli, right like I mean, it could be a simple is something just ridiculous, right? Like whatever it is, just, like start practicing, thinking about the opposite thing that you actually plan on doing. Play that out.

I love that because that requires a level of mental flexibility that I think is gonna be surprising to most people. Like even I had. This had this situation with the current crisis that is going on, and there's a lot of there's a lot off groups of people that I'm part of in WhatsApp or whatever that basically are right now at a point where they're arguing between it's much worse than we think it is not as bad as we think, right, And they're they're sending each other different articles and YouTube links and podcasts and different expert opinions or different data. And, you know, whenever I have learned to whenever I am overly committed to an idea or a position, and I find that even when somebody offers me an opposing position, I instinctively rejected before consuming it or considering it, um, I I've build up the habit to notice that and go who see I'm very like my thinking is very rigid, like I already wanna say no to something. Although I only read the headline I don't want to even entertain that the other party is right And I think flipping the switch and going let me actually try to convince myself today that I'm wrong, right? Let me actually think the opposite that I thought before,

or you know, the opposite date. Let me dio Let me do exactly the opposite of what my instincts are telling me to do. I think that that requires I mean, there's some playfulness in it the way I'm describing it, but it requires riel mental flexibility. And maybe that is at the core of negotiating effectively with yourself is that you need some level of flexibility where you don't just rigidly respond to your thoughts or your feelings, or the mental states that you're in in the exact same kind of automatic way, every single time, your entire life. We have the flexibility you build up with the mental flexibility to switch things up, to change your thoughts, to change how you feel to try, you know, on opposite approach and opposite perspective, and you're willing to to fight these things out of times versus just acting out anything that's going on in kind of the same pattern that you always do.

That's the key, right? You're it's and this is where the practice comes in. The only way to like, actually get good at that, basically, negotiating with yourself. I mean, ultimately, making better decisions as a result is basically by doing it. And so, in any tiny way or big way, you should just try to do it and see how you feel. And then, you know, eventually you'll realize that like it just helps you make better decisions If you're willing to take an opposing viewpoint, I mean,

you know, and and the thing you said earlier when started, did that about the current crisis and people debating. I mean, this is just a classic key like example of nobody really knows him. And the future is a lot more uncertain than it was like, you know, in January, let's say, or December for men. So it's like, this is this is the best time to practice something like this, where you're actually negotiating with yourself and seeing what you can come up with. A lot of times you know, like at some point, I think What would you do this?

Enough? You just realized that, like most decisions don't matter that much. And the negotiation is really about picking and choosing which decisions are actually worth negotiating with yourself. E think broccoli or pizza? Not the biggest deal. But if you do broccoli or pizza like 100 days in a row and we need that choice to go with pizza, it's probably a big deal, right? But that's a different like that. That has something to do with some other choice that you're making around. Should I be, you know, eating healthy or not? Or should I lose blade or not? Or should I?

Whatever. So, yeah, I think like, for example, this whole debate about what's gonna happen. Is it worse than people are saying or or not? Like, Honestly, nobody knows. We still know because we really don't know. And in a lot of cases, if you just look at the information out there actually depends. Ray

let yeah, the other thing is also like noticing. You know, maybe we'll we'll wrap this up around around this idea, this thought, but I think that people are just inherently uncomfortable with E. We don't know. Yeah, part of everything. And so they wanna believe something. And then that makes them chase down all the evidence and all the people and all the articles they confined. That puts them at ease and makes them makes them go. See, I knew I am right. This article says the thing I'm thinking or the thing I want it to be and this person also agrees with me. And then the funny thing is like the last two weeks, I noticed,

like the people that are sharing lots of articles and stuff, they always share the same stuff, and it's like what is happening here. It's not like information gathering. It's not like all these interesting new facts and ideas and thoughts. It's basically trying to champion and convince everybody else they know. I'm probably convince themselves. See, I'm finding more and more evidence every day that my original position is right and yeah, I mean, there's there's, uh there's very few pros, but lots of concert on this, and maybe we'll do an episode at some point about, like how to notice your own bias and when your biases dangerous to yourself. It might be something interesting there,

but I think just very, um just for people, especially in uncertain times, noticing what you want to do, what thoughts you have, what your feelings are, what's going on in your life and then ask you whenever you can. Whenever you end the day. You're disappointed with your actions of the results you're generated. Maybe you didn't negotiate successfully enough with the right side of yourself. And just ask yourself What? When did things go wrong? When did I? You know, when was at the crossroad between Should I do X or why? And why did I choose something that ultimately and very quickly I knew I e was regretting.

And how can I get better at negotiating with myself? How do I get better at making myself do the things I want myself to do? Versus not? This is an interesting, weird, curious, compelling topic. So it's always for those of you that have an idea or story you like. I wish I could tell he'd been silly this right now about this episode Just get in touch with us. We always love to hear from you Stelea close dot com, h h i g mail dot com and until next time, stay safe and we'll hear very

soon. Be negotiating with yourself,