Episode Transcript
Gary (00:00): My name is Gary LeBlanc, and I'm with Andrew Parr. Hey, Andrew.
AP (00:04): Hey, Gary, what's up, man?
Gary (00:06): It's all good. It's a Saturday morning. It's beautiful outside. And what better day to talk about character. So, Andrew, if people don't know, Andrew's my partner. We developed the character code, which is essentially digging into these eight pillars of character, these ambiguous pillars that we usually talk about so abstractly, now putting a little more detail, a little more that we can connect with, we find adds a lot of value. So we've put this together, and today we want to get into, as I mentioned, we have our character code episodes. We want to get into what they are but really for us to mostly understand why we're talking about this, the importance of talking about this, what we're sacrificing by not focusing on character, and really what we can do going forward from an awareness perspective to keep this top of mind such that it affects and influences our behavior for the better. Um, does that capture it, Andrew? Every time it's a little different. Yeah. Alright. So we're going to kind of freestyle a bit on really the why, right? We started talking about it, you know, yesterday and, you know, it kind of gets down to the point of what people are focused on, and, you know, I'll kick it off.
AP (01:14): Perfectly, perfectly. Go for it.
Gary (01:35): Andrew, you have a very similar bent on it, but for me, I think really why things have been amplified and why this needs to be part of the conversation, and ironically it is less and less part of the conversation, or actually, it's probably how it always has been, right? The more need we have for something, the more it's in absence, right? So right now, you know, when we look at what changed in the past couple of decades, it's social media and specifically Instagram because it's something easy for us to understand from an ego perspective. What works on Instagram? You know, what are people doing on Instagram? Well, people want attention, right? They want to belong and they want to feel validated, like their life is a great life, and their ego needs to be stroked to make sure that they feel like they've made it. So everybody's putting these photos up that are one, a caricature of their life, but even after the actual photos of caricature, we then manipulate it exactly how we think people are going to better accept us. And what it's typically selecting for is, you know, all of our, you know, vices really, greed, vanity, ego. And it's not that there's anything wrong with that. However, since that is so incentivized right now, we've forgotten the fact that being a good person, being generous, being kind, we forgot that although those aren't celebrated, they're super, super important.
AP (03:08): Yeah, yeah, I definitely feel that, and I see that in this social media world of trying to be, trying to have value, and be validated by what we're sharing. And I was going to talk about a Chris Rock thing, but I'll stay away from that for now. You know, I mostly work with athletes and professional athletes and people really trying to attain some level of excellence at a world-class level. So even if we're talking about vanity or we're talking about high performance, character still comes into it because there's a million things you can do to be better at what you're trying to be better at. And I think although character is simple, it's not easy. And for me, it's actually where all the juice is. So we can look at these eight character pillars and I'll let you sort of share those in a moment and point to one of those things or potentially a couple of these things. These are the friction points that are really keeping us from performance. And then later on, we'll talk about how they're also impacting us on a fulfillment level outside of what we're trying to be excellent at.
Gary (04:16): Hmm. Yeah. It's, look, it's in every aspect of our lives and it's hard to notice, right? Because we're so focused on what's right in front of us. So it's hard to notice the root of why we're having all this friction and what we want to get done or why there's so much friction kind of in our motivation to get things done. And I think that's what the complication is, right? So we set the stage. I think everybody can agree. Even though it's not a sexy conversation, they wouldn't say this generation, this society is oozing with character, right? It doesn't roll off the tongue, like let's say, the World War II generation, you know, we associate character with integrity, with generosity. And, you know, back then it was a necessity because we were suffering so much. And I say we, I wasn't there obviously, but we as a people, a country, were suffering a lot then. So we needed our better angels to survive. So that's not the case now. So we all agree on that. Now the complication for us is it's really not comfortable to focus on being a good person in a lot of ways, right? Because being a good person means you're generous, you're trusting. Um, and when everybody's playing a zero-sum game in a lot of cases, it's hard to not play that game. So I think what we've created as an environment is not conducive... right, It doesn't create that vacuum for good character. It creates the opposite. And Andrew, when we talk about the characteristics, you always bring up the vices. And it's a good point because we can quickly identify with the vices a lot easier than we can identify with what good character looks like. So that's the complication. And these are deep-rooted, right? Like it's like the Titanic, you know, you can't do a U-turn in a hundred feet with the Titanic. These pillars, these personalities, you know, I think Joe Dispenza says these personal realities. So that's what he calls a personal personality, the personal reality, you know, that's really our character expressed, that's what people see, and these things are hard to change. And Andrew, you talk about this all the time. It's super hard to change because that friction is really fear. It's so rooted in fear, the deeper rooted our behavior, the deeper rooted, the source, being fear. And, you know, I think you'd agree. And that's really what sets the stage for why this is so hard to tackle.
AP (06:51): Yeah, I think just to give some context for the rest of the conversation, why don't we just share what the eight pillars are and then maybe what the counter vices are, Gary? So why don't you do that and then we can continue on.
Gary (07:01): Yeah. So if we look at the character pillars, our first one's compassion. So compassion is the ring that rules them all. Now, all these character pillars are action-oriented. They're verbs, right? And we can talk about why we chose to like that later. But compassion, the opposite of compassion, the vice would be judgment. So that's, that's our first example. Honesty. The vice would be deception, right? If we look at integrity, we could say it's unreliability, right? You can't really count on. If you look at generosity, greed, and finally, humility would be ego, would be arrogance, exactly. So those are the five, those are essentially the pro-social characteristics, the characteristics dealing more with relationships and how we interact. Then we have the three that you could say are focused more on leveling up.
AP (07:42): Arrogance.
Gary (07:59): More on self-growth, you know, we look at curiosity, you know, what's the opposite of curiosity, closed-mindedness, right? If we look at self-mastery, you know, it could be apathy, it could be sloth. Um, and finally, if we look at bravery, that's obvious. It could be cowardice. And again, there's no judgment. When we talk about the vices, these are all spectrums. So this is simply to make something ambiguous, more objective, so that we can talk about it, and we can ingrain it in our psyche.
AP (08:33): Yeah, you mentioned something along with these previous generations. Our generation didn't have any sort of initiation or rites of passage, right? So we weren't guided in a small community of generosity, compassion, integrity, honesty. So these pillars, although they may exist within all of us in some capacity...
Gary (08:53): Hmm.
AP (09:01): They aren't the forefront of how the community has not only survived but maybe thrived in certain instances. So if we're not given these things, we actually don't have a roadmap of where we want to go. And so we get lost. It's so easily to get lost and let's call them ego traps, but basically chasing, um, chasing money, uh, get laid, get paid and look hot, right? We see this all over the world. Um, again, there's nothing wrong with these things.
Gary (09:14): Mm-hmm.
AP (09:32): But when they, with or without character, they come out very differently. And so I think that's the biggest opportunity for all of us. And for this, this is a conversation. We're not trying to be self-righteous. We're not using this as a weapon to be better than other people. We're using this as information so we can better understand ourselves and our environment.
Gary (09:38): Mm-hmm. Hmm. Yeah. You know what? The time is now for a reason. Like this conversation is happening more and more. Like we don't talk about character often in the zeitgeist of pop culture, let's say, but it's popping up. It's popping up in a lot of conversations. I've been hearing about it more and more, and people are realizing that it is the source of noise for pretty much everything in our lives. You know, this absolution of responsibility for our lives, that's kind of coming to an end, right? It's the time of agency. People are calling us all on our crap, you know? People are calling us on taking responsibility for our actions and our behavior. And again, this isn't coming from a place of righteousness. We all have these same challenges. You know, Andrew and I were focused on this for a reason. You know, it's because we became hyperaware that it was important to us for some reason. And we became hyperaware of the areas that just didn't feel good. And it really is something where you could make a decision. And that's why it's so impactful. Like, you know, we talk about, look, Huberman's very popular now because people are learning about leveling up from a health perspective. And there's a crazy, crazy appetite for this right now, a crazy appetite for people doing things because they believe it's going to work. And the problem is with character, it's hard to get that belief that that's going to work. It's super hard because you don't see it in two weeks or three weeks. You know, you're not celebrated like you are for a lot of these other material successes. So this is really kind of the long tail. This is the long game, but I'm telling you, it is by far going to be the most impactful. And when you start to play that game for a while, it's a game changer, like full stop, you know, I come from a far, I don't know. It's a crazy chasm for me to be comfortable with what's going to happen in life. And I'm telling you, I'm starting to get that optimism back. And it took me a long time. My wife, Keysi mentioned it this morning and it's true. You don't observe these things in the moment. It's just over time. When you integrate under that function, you realize, wow, most of the time I had a good outlook, and that's not always how it's been. So I don't know how it manifests for you, Andrew, but you know, that's how it's changed my life.
AP (12:24): Yeah, for me personally, I come from a world of playing professional golf. Before I was doing that, I was playing amateur golf at a world-class level. So basically, from the age of let's call it 16 to when I stopped playing pro golf, I was consumed and obsessed with excellence. And so what ends up happening is in the golf world, as in many athletic worlds, you're only rewarded when you perform. So we're constantly dissecting, dissecting our day, trying to find the ways to get better. And it becomes so obsessive. So I also work with people like this, right? And it's so clear when you're not aligned with your mind and your body and your heart that something's off and your performance suffers, right? So the end game is performance, but it actually impacts all of our lives, or it impacts our life directly, these other characteristics. So for me, you know, going through this with you for, you know, a few years and really sifting through these different characteristics that are not only impacting performance, but also impacting relationships, which also impact performance. For me, any source of suffering I see in my life results from my own responsibility to these characteristics. So...
Gary (13:39): Mm-hmm.
AP (13:53): If we look at sort of the vices, as you mentioned, sort of deception, greed, judgment, whatever, laziness, on and on, these are actually no connection. There's zero connection with yourself or anyone else, right? So for me, I started to look at what kind of world do I wanna live in, meaning I'm creating what's happening.
Gary (14:20): Mm-hmm.
AP (14:23): And for me, I prefer connection rather than just, you know, being a jerk because it doesn't feel good. And in the long term, I also don't want to be surrounded by that.
Gary (14:28): Yeah. Yeah, I like you bringing up connection. You know, it gets to the full circle root of what we've been talking about. If you go back to Instagram, well, what's promoted on Instagram? Self-actualization, right? And it's this bastardization of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. We've deluded ourselves into thinking that self-actualization was the point of everything where it wasn't. Self-actualization was simply to get yourself whole so that you can better connect with others. The next level was transcendence. And that's really about beyond yourself. That's really about community. That's really about connection. And that's what he realized later in his career. And I think we've gotten so bogged down, you know, and trust me, I can't stand it. Like to be honest, I can't stand it. I can't stand when I hear, I don't care what people think. Well, what does that even mean? Like, information about what people think is how we survive. Like it's, it's fundamental. Now, am I going to think I'm a bad person because so and so thinks I'm an asshole? No, they're dealing with their own reasons and I integrate those reasons and I hear what they say. Like I put it all into account. Otherwise, you're just getting parts of information. You're just getting what you think about people without really hearing what they're saying. It's hard to calibrate anything around you. It's kind of like proprioception, you know, without really listening to what people say, you really can't feel your way around the social framework of everything. So when I hear, I don't care. Okay. I get it. You know, self-love and everything. And this is great. Of course. Like, of course. However, that doesn't absolve yourself of being part of a society and trying to be a good person and trying to do things beyond yourself. I just think we use all these things to absolve ourselves of having agency to be better people. And it obviously, it gets me a little frustrated. But all gets back to connection. So anyway, I railed on that for a bit.
AP (16:45): And the thing that you mentioned a little bit earlier that, you know, segues into this is we don't oftentimes really recognize the people that are either high in a certain in a certain characteristic or over flex in a certain characteristic. It's not obvious, right? And so we always see as these vices and social media, news, et
Gary (17:05): Mm-hmm.
AP (17:10): All media is sort of using these things to stir the pot, right? But if we really think, and I think this is a really great exercise that we use all the time with our clients, is let's start off with our parents. And let's take these eight characteristics. And we can do this right now. This isn't something that requires a lot of capacity, but let's take compassion, integrity, honesty, humility, generosity, mastery.
Gary (17:23): Yeah.
AP (17:39): Bravery and curiosity. So, if we were to rate, yeah, they'll be popped up here. If we rate our parents from one to ten, so ten would be the high end, of where they are in these certain verticals, and then rate ourselves, right? So we just do this to
Gary (17:44): Everybody's going to get these notes after.
AP (18:07): Get a calibration, where are we coming from? And I think this is a very important thing. We really begin to see the imprints of how we evolved. And then the second thing is, one thing I see often is, if a parent was, I don't know, like super, super stingy, and there's an opportunity for us to be generous, people will take that opportunity. If someone's very, very judgmental,
Gary (18:29): Mm-hmm.
AP (18:34): We might go the other way and be very compassionate, right? So there are these counterpoints that I see within people, let's call them personalities, whatever you want to call them, we're given a certain environment. Our parents are definitely one of the main contributors to that early on. And there are many of these things that we take and there are some certain things that go the other way. So I think this is a really good way to start to calibrate where we're coming from.
Gary (18:38): Mm-hmm. And it's super valuable because, you know, you can observe it. Like you're observing it in action. You know how your mother or your father made you feel when they behaved a certain way. Like, you know it, you observed it, you know how it feels. So, you know, oftentimes I feel we have all this information and we ignore it. So now you can say, okay, okay. Okay. I get it. I'm not judging my mom. Of course I'm not. She had her life. There's nothing to judge. But this happened and okay, that made me feel like that. Okay, okay, I get that. Okay, now I can internalize it and you know what? I'm gonna set the intention to be different because I know that doesn't feel good. And I know it probably didn't feel good for my mother either. So, this is super valuable. So to your point, Andrew, these might be little gimmicks or games and simple, but it shines a light and that's kind of the point. Like we shine our light on the wrong things. And if we can shine our light on, you know, some things that are just going to plant some seeds, um, super easy, super beneficial. And, uh, yeah, I learned a lot from it. And, you know, it's one of a million, um, exercises we have just to kind of poke around what we do know, you know, without it being about us and trying to kind of decipher our character from scratch, which is really tough to do, honestly.
AP (20:24): Yeah, and the first thing you mentioned is compassion, right? So with doing this exercise without compassion looks very different. And so if we, I don't wanna say master what compassion really feels like, this isn't an idea. All these characteristics aren't ideas, they're feelings, they're ways of being, they're ways of relating that other people feel as well. Right? So if we can begin to master how these things feel, our life certainly and definitely feels different. And this is sort of the jump that some of these things will come easier, some of these characteristics will come easier, and some may be more difficult. Right, go ahead.
Gary (21:16): Yes. Well, again, it's all about spectrums, right? Of the pain, you know, and you bring it up all the time, Andrew. Like it's all about, you know, how deep that, uh, that characteristic was either over flexed or under flexed. And you know, it's, it's almost mathematical at that point. It's just going to, you don't really know where those triggers are. When I got Luna, you know, our puppy, there were weird behaviors or weird feelings, weird compulsions that came up. It was the first thing I was really responsible for, like a first live being, let's say. And it kind of, um, it kind of reminded me of how I felt with my mom in a lot of weird ways. So you don't know where these triggers are often times, and you don't know how deep rooted they are. So that's why it, it takes some, some process, you know, you can't just give up because it's so ambiguous. And that's, what we're talking about here is just a bit of process, right?
AP (22:18): And for me, the process is very important, right? So we look at the behavior, okay, we're feeling this trigger. I'm trying to think of something specific so I can give a specific example.
Gary (22:29): I could talk about stuttering. Okay. So here's a good one, Andrew. Well, I stuttered profusely when I was a kid, like really bad, you know, until I was about 13, this isn't a sob story. It was, it was debilitating in class. You'd have to read and you'd be, you know, looking at the paragraphs and you'd count what paragraph was yours. You'd see the first letter and it was fucking terror, just terror. And this was all the time.
AP (22:31): Okay, sure, go for it. Let's hear it, let's hear it.
Gary (22:59): So that left a deep, deep-rooted pain that happened so often. I can't even remember stuttering once. I literally can't. Like, and I stuttered until I was 13. I have no memory of me literally stuttering. I think once in grade nine, I was 15. I said my name and I can remember stuttering and how petrified I was. And what that did is if we look at all the characteristics, it basically set a foundation for me to have a scarcity mentality, zero-sum mentality, fear, um, bruised ego, insecurity for the first 40 years of my life. And I just started to unpeel that when I was 40. So just an example of how one deep-rooted specific thing can just change your whole life.
AP (23:53): Yeah, and the thing I see with that is safety. We wanna feel safe, we wanna feel accepted by our community. And when that safety is compromised, the fear is so debilitating. And you mentioned this, and this goes with a million other things that myself and other people are also experiencing, right? So if safety's the thing, and sort of this thing that's getting conflated with safety is
Gary (23:58): Mm-hmm.
AP (24:23): Likes or this sort of validation, right? So we wanna feel that people like us, et cetera, think we're important or valuable, right? So that stems from, I believe, a deep-rooted fear of not feeling that. So the ego, whatever you wanna call it, is a safety mechanism. So how are we feeling here? Is everything good? And if it's not, it's feeling fear, right?
Gary (24:25): Yeah, validation.
AP (24:52): And I think if we can get to the bottom of these fears, and these are things that we do all the time with athletes or teams that we're working with is, hey, if we can really understand it and have compassion from where it's coming from, then this fear's not overriding how we're behaving in all of our life, right? So these things, it requires some depth, but actually not a lot of depth, just to understand our fear. And then the counter to that is bravery.
Gary (25:10): Hmm.
AP (25:22): So whenever I'm working with an athlete, if we just over flex bravery a little bit more, it has a compound effect on everything else, right? So we have compassion, understanding, hey, we're experiencing so many things, we want so many things, we wanna feel safe, we wanna feel accepted. And then also we're trying to do something that could be a simple task or whatever, trying to win a world championship.
Gary (25:49): Mm-hmm.
AP (25:51): We need some bravery because it's gonna feel uncomfortable. Doing something new, doing something that you really wanna do in your life is gonna feel uncomfortable. So you're going to need to bypass this fear. And bravery is the only thing I know that we need to dig in a little bit. And so we use this sort of fear. Well, what are you so afraid of? And this is where does the cost of not taking action, is it?
Gary (25:55): Yeah.
AP (26:20): More than the cost of, you know, of becoming who you want to be.
Gary (26:28): Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. It's like, you know, it's funny. If we look at, let's call it our psychographic, you know, not ninety-year-olds per se, you know, and not, not toddlers, you know, if we look at what people are paying attention to, I mentioned some of the podcasts before, but just think of cold plunging. You know what I mean? Like think of the things we're doing. So what's cold plunging at an acute level? Well, okay. One, there's a lot of validation online, so that's fine. But let's look at how it started. Something you really don't want to do. It's going to be acutely uncomfortable, but it's not going to last that long. And you're going to get high social validation for it. And look at what we're drawn to. Right? So this is an example of everything we do, how rewarding it is right after we do it. And this is so common right now that it's just something we can all relate to. So everybody's doing that. So we're doing that, you know, we're doing the saunas. We're doing the saunas because the heat shock proteins and all of these cool things that are happening in the body. Yet we don't want to be uncomfortable necessarily emotionally, you know. We don't want to be uncomfortable potentially spiritually. There's a certain level of physical discomfort we can handle, maybe a certain amount of mental discomfort. But what we're doing is we're not really seeing all these areas that are fruitful, these huge sources of noise, where if we could just get a discomfort like 2 on 10, it would get us further, or a 3 on 10. It's just we don't even focus on it. We're focused on what everybody's looking at. There's a theory for that, and I wish I knew it because I'm usually so good with remembering these things, but I can't. But it's kind of when everybody's running down the street, nobody knows why they're running, but everybody's just running there. They assume there's something coming, it could be Godzilla, but it's kind of the same thing. We're doing the same thing right now, but nobody's really paying attention to the bigger opportunity here, and that's what we're talking about. And honestly, we both believe, like, it's everything. Like, I kind of obsess over this every day. It becomes such a part of how you judge, how you assess, audit your behavior that you can't unlearn it. And it's super cool because it affects everything you do. And I know you believe that, Andrew, we talk about all the time. You know, you literally ask yourself a question, you know, when you do something, is this in character?
AP (29:14): Yeah, and I think we have an immune response to feeling shitty, right? So we feel shitty when we're deceiving someone, right? We don't feel good when we're being stingy. We don't feel good when we're judging. You know, we don't feel good when we're being cowardly or not in integrity. You know these leave these icky things that, and so we're trying to overcome this when really the solution is quite simple. It doesn't mean it's easy, right? And I think just the awareness of these things. And for me, if we just picked one of them, right? Let's just pick one. What if that was all we were aware of for a year? It would drastically change your life. If bravery was one thing, you just tried to flex a little more, like one decimal of one, it would change your life. If compassion was something you flexed a decimal of one, it would change your life instantly, right? So we don't need to do all of these things all the time. Yeah, yeah.
Gary (30:12): Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, they're nudges, right? Yeah. You know, maybe we finish off on this, Andrew, everything we've been talking about what you're describing. It's all examples of hormesis, right? Hormetic adaptation, right? It's about, it's about introducing the right amount of stress, you would use the word exposure, Andrew, it's pretty much the same thing, the right amount of stress to the system. So, you know, you're playing around the boundaries. Right. You think of a balloon, right. Around that boundary, it's expanding. There's more and more stress. There's more and more resistance. Right. So we're trying to constantly do this and hormesis is about this. It's about all these different areas in your life to just stress it somewhat. And the things you don't want to do. We already know that, you know, we've all watched, you know, the podcast and seen the research, the things you don't want to do the most are things that leave the biggest mark. It's such common sense. Of course it does. So that's what we're talking about. We're thinking about, let's just start to shine a light here. Let's start to see these opportunities for what they are. And fundamentally in everything we do, it's gonna change our behavior, which I can't think of anything that could be more valuable than that, especially when you have so much runway left. So I know, Andrew, if you have a few kind of parting thoughts like where do you wanna take this from here. Where do we see this going?
AP (31:49): I think we're gonna expand on all these characteristics and the costs and the incentives, right, later on. But for me, this is a great intro and always happy to jam on this and look forward to digging in always. And I think for me, to know that my behavior changes my life, and you mentioned this a couple of weeks ago, is this sort of imprint of energy can be felt with our interactions with everyone. Right, so how, and it's not to people please, I'm not saying that, I'm saying how can I be true to who I am and in doing so that also strengthens the web of connection with everyone else. And so it is about transcendence and we also have the opportunity right now to make a decision on how we do wanna behave.
Gary (32:34): Yeah. Yeah. And it's going to be super cool. Like for people listening, it's going to be super cool. Trust me. We have eight pillars of meaning like the meaning matrix. We're going to have this heavily, tactically based. So, you know, although we're all about feelings, that's what we're trying to change. We're trying to change our feelings by behaving differently, right? Remember this is a Titanic. It takes some time. So Although we want to change how we feel about things, we got to start somewhere. And tactically is the way we can do that. So the beauty about this is every episode, we're going to have either show notes or PDFs that are tactical that you can follow along with. And it might be about a specific pillar. It might be about mapping out these sources of meaning. Because again, sources of meaning is where we show up in life. So... How we show up is great, right? We can work on character, but where we show up in life and what we value, that direction is as important, you know, as far as how you're going to express yourself. So what we wanna do is we wanna map all that out. So every episode, we're gonna be tackling something different. It's all gonna be about diminishing the noise in our lives. And again, you know, in Quiet the Noise, we talk about life engineering, we talk about eliminating noise, we talk about leveling up. But you have to kind of have both, right? You want to have the quick wins and then you want to have that slow long game. And so, you know what, you got to flex both. We want the quick wins on the life engineering side, these tactics, but you know what? It's the long game we're playing. So we're going to walk everybody through this in such a beautiful way. We're super pumped about this. And you know what? We'll see what happens after and getting people's perspective, creating that mosaic.
AP (34:27): Thanks.
Gary (34:37): You know, of different tactics is going to be super beautiful too. And you know what, we've been at this for four years, so we're both super pumped. And, uh, anyway, Andrew, this is, uh, this is the first one that we, we got in. And, um, yeah, we'll do this as frequently as we feel like it.
AP (34:56): Always a pleasure.
Gary (34:58): All right, buddy. We'll catch you later.
