Let’s talk Newton's 3rd law and how much it sucks when you’re tired and don’t see it working. Plus, tips for dealing with it!
Let’s talk Newton’s 3rd law and how much it sucks when you’re tired and don’t see it working. Plus, tips for dealing with it! We can’t just grind forever without seeing some results! Newtons’ 3rd law promises that for every action there is an equal and opposite one.
But what if you can’t see it? Burnout, wanting to quit? But there’s another way. Listen in.
Get some of our resources to help you lead with who you are. Have you checked out our Resources page lately? Click here.
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Check out all things Dia Bondi here.
Dia Bondi 00:03
After recording this episode, I'll be going on on a writing retreat five days with a best selling author to start to actually develop craft of writing and, and get called out by like, writers who write for a living.
Arthur 00:17
You know, it's good to develop your writing craft after you've already written the book
Dia Bondi 00:21
100%. Hey, everyone, this is Lead With You Are and I'm Dia Bondi, on this show, we are exploring and discovering what it means for you to lead with who you are. And we're doing it with me, and maybe Arthur, our Producer, and a whole bunch of different guests, leadership guests, folks who are running their own small businesses, folks who are successful in their careers and folks who write about all things, leadership and life in this episode, I'm mad at Newton. Today's is going to be a solo episode, you're gonna hear a little bit from Baby A as well. But specifically, when it comes to being mad at Newton, I'm mad at his third law, that whole equal and opposite reaction thing. And if you get if you get frustrated with all your effort and little outcome, stick with me here because me, too. In this episode, I'm going to share five or six things I do and you can do, to check to see if there's actually an equal and opposite reaction to your efforts, but you're just not seeing it. When to keep going. When to quit. Stick around. Hey, just a quick reminder, you can subscribe to this show on your podcast platform of choice. We're live nearly everywhere. And you can always listen to the show at diabondi.com. If there's a leader or innovator in your life, who is it there shiniest when they lead with who they truly are, Please share the show with them. And rate subscribe, and leave us a review makes a huge difference in the reach that the show has when you let everyone else know what you love about the show. Thanks so much. You love audio right? That's why you're here right now. Well Ask Like An Auctioneer. The audio book is available for pre order now. Or if you're listening to this episode after November 14, 2023. It's live right now. Head to your favorite audio book source and add it to your queue you won't regret it because it has jokes in it. Kinda learn to ask like an auctioneer with me right in your headphones. Hi, Baby A. I for those of you listening who are like who's Baby A, so Baby A is Arthur Leon Adams, the third he started yet he started when this podcast was at was the do body show first iteration before we expanded it to kind of include all the work not just helping women ask for more and get it that I do. He was always your voice is always on the show.
Arthur 03:18
Yeah, a little bit.
Dia Bondi 03:19
At the front end, the back end,
Arthur 03:21
we used to deconstruct the ideas that were brought in show.
Dia Bondi 03:27
Exactly, which is just longhand for like we just dig it up a little bit. And so now that I had my like, creative freak out a couple of episodes ago, and I was like that's it. I'm wanting to do more free speaking and do more writing and I want to be a little less scripted. Then now he's back. Say hi, everybody. Hi, everybody. Okay, today I want this is so I'm going to call this a solo episode even though baby is here. Because we're just not having like a, you know, third party guest so and by the way, folks, as you listen to the show, baby is always here. Basically, you just don't hear him. And for those of you who are like why do you call him baby? Yeah, that sounds insulting. Can you just remind everybody yet again?
Arthur 04:05
Yes. Now I just did this on the last episode we did together. Do you think we need to recap it again?
Dia Bondi 04:11
I guess maybe not.
Arthur 04:12
Yeah. My name is Baby A.
Dia Bondi 04:14
... the end. Okay. Great. So um, so today I want to talk about Newton's third law, because it's pissing me off. I'm so mad at him and so mad at it right now. And I am not like, okay, so there are laws about like, in nature, every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Right? This is familiar to you, baby A.
Arthur 04:39
Yes, yes.
Dia Bondi 04:41
Okay. But right now I have a few notes. But I'm just going to jam on this. Like right now. That ratio for me, feels like it sucks. Maybe for folks who are listening. You're also like, Yeah, I've been doing a lot of things lately, and not seeing the equal and opposite right? actually doing a lot of effort, running a lot of campaigns, building a lot of stuff. I don't know, making a lot of tough calls, doing a lot of, you know, exerting a lot of energy. Like taking a lot of action actually doing things, not just talking about things. And maybe like me, you're frustrated with not seeing the equal and opposite reaction to all of those actions. This is a thing in life and leadership is not where you go out and do stuff. And you cannot immediately see the callback, the equal and opposite reaction. So what's the problem with that? I mean, the problem with that, obviously, is like, it can totally lead to burnout, you can lose faith really easily, which is hard to not do in the middle of doing a lot of things and not seeing that equal and opposite reaction within a timeframe. And it makes you go, Oh, I did this thing. And it caused a particular outcome. Maybe in your business, maybe in your own leadership, maybe in the way that you're changing leading your teams, or you're reordering something or the you've switched in approach to how you're doing something or you had a particular goal, and you took a bunch of actions that made you think that you would get there sooner than you actually are. Or it's not playing out the way that you thought. And so it feels like all of the opposite reactions are just kind of invisible to you, you know, it's like a ripple in a lake that just went, it just, it's still traveling across the lake, but you're not seeing it bounced back at you yet. That can be a Bernie outie kind of feeling. It can really cause us to lose a little faith or like, even have a temptation to quit, like, why am I doing this? And most of those feelings often happen, right before the baby comes for those of you listening, if you've had children through birthing them, you know, that feeling of or that moment where things are really crazy, and it's like, it's never gonna happen. And that means it's just about to happen. And to not, you know, in our lives and work. I just made a birthing reference, baby A, is that bad?
Arthur 07:05
Yeah, no, I thought it was a very apt metaphor.
Dia Bondi 07:09
Okay, thanks so much. So I'm gonna keep going, it's gonna, that's gonna forge on, I'm gonna imagine you do not cut it out of this episode. Cuz it's true. There's a thing that happens in birth, called transition. And it's like, literally, that part where your your body shakes, and you get the quivers, and you get really emotional, and you're kind of like, this is never going to end and it feels you feel like disoriented, and crazy. And you could do all this work and no progress. And that's always the time you asked for drugs, if you haven't already had them, like, you know, painkillers, and is also exactly the sign that that baby is just about to come. And you think about this in our creative endeavors, right? When things how many founder stories do we hear when like, where people say it was all crazy, and everything felt like all was lost. And then something happened, and we got our first biggest customer that floated us for the next year or right when things feel like they're falling apart is actually the time when something came together in an unexpected way. So there's something about when we're not feeling these, you know, equal and opposite reactions, and you're really tempted can can cause us to be want to give up when maybe it's not quite time to give up. But at the same time, if we ignore the ratios that are not working, like there's the other side to say, like, Okay, I did a bunch of stuff, and I'm not seeing the results, I want that if the ratio isn't good. If you know, if you're not seeing something bounce back to you. It's okay to quit. Like there is such a thing as going, oh, that didn't work. Let me try something else. We don't want to barrel ahead with 10s of 1000s of calories worth of more effort for things that are just never going to cause even a half ass equal or half half equal, half assed equal opposite reaction to the actions that we're taking. So there's like this weird tug and pull of like, tug and pull. What does that tug of war? I don't know what tug and pull is.
Arthur 09:12
Yeah, I think you mean, push and pull, I think.
Dia Bondi 09:15
push and pull, that's what I meant to say that thanks so much. Thanks so much. This kind of funny tension between Holding faith that the that the effort that you're exerting and not seeing that equal and opposite reaction come back to you for you know, against not giving up because you're not seeing it immediately. It's like it can be a little stuck in a hard place, right? Do I keep going do I cut ties. And what you can do is burn yourself all the way to the ground, making effort that doesn't produce anything, but also give up constantly when you don't have that instant gratification, which is sort of the down and dirty way of saying equal and opposite reaction to the action that you're taking and the The world in your in your work and your household in your, in your art and whatever the thing is, we have to kind of play the long game, knowing that I look in my business, there are things that come to there are things equal and opposite reactions to actions I took two years ago that are just coming back to me now. And I had kind of given up on them. Like, Oh, I did that thing made no difference. And then actually know that ripple moved its way all the way across the lake, had the other shore and came back to me, it just took a really long time, or there were equal and opposite reactions that I didn't even see or notice. Because I was so busy. I hate the word busy. Maybe I was so engaged or excited about something else. Maybe I saw a squirrel, and it caught my eye. So I want to talk about like, how do we, I am in this space. Right now. I'm noticing it right now. mad at Newton because I'm not seeing my equal and opposite reactions. And knowing also that probably I need to keep the faith and not give up. So what do you do in these moments where you're looking at? Do I let go? Do I keep going? Because you're not getting that loop back. So here's a couple thoughts, some things that I'm doing and you might do to gauge whether it's time to tug or pull now what do we say push or pull? Yeah, that that? Yeah. Push that number one,
Arthur 11:33
because tugging and pulling is the same.
Dia Bondi 11:35
Is it? Right? Because it's toward me, and then the pulling is toward you got it? So there are there are a couple of things that I hold on to to help me go do I keep going? Or do I let go? One is a really take a minute to look for the signs. Because they because the equal and opposite reaction might not be coming back to you in the form you expected. You might think, you know, I don't know. Yesterday, I was on our local news channel. Okay, maybe I thought, Oh, all right, I'm on the news, I'm gonna sell 100 books, because I'm on the news. And that's not at all, what may have happened, I have no idea actually, because I'm not looking at the pre order list. But, for example, I may have had an expectation that that was the kind of equal and opposite reaction I got. But maybe something else is going to happen in the next couple of days as a result of that. But I might not make the connection, that the effort that I put into, you know, being a guest, a guest expert, because that was not low stress. You know, that was a that was like a performance moment for me, that might not cause a reaction that I can directly connect to it. But if I take a minute and look that all this thing swung around to me, and maybe a sign that that other effort that I exerted was the cause of it. So look for those signs to adjust your timetable. Sometimes we can have an unrealistic expectation of the time it takes for that ripple to make its way across the lake. And back. Now that I'm moving into more long game kinds of plays, like writing and launching my first book, this is not, I'm not gonna get the instant feedback that I'm used to getting in, let's say, my sort of tight timeline strategic projects I engaged with, like, you know, I've worked on a couple of Olympic bids. And when we're when we're engaged in that we know there's vote day. And we will know if we won, or we lost, it's a pretty clear timeline. But the timelines and a lot of these other places where you might be feeling into something new, you might be operating in a domain that that doesn't have a timeline that that is aligned to what you're used to, you've got to check that out and adjust in that way. So you can see that equal and opposite. Third, is like see what is actually sticky about what you're doing? Weirdly, I was on this is a teeny, tiny example. I was in a conversation the other day on a podcast with a woman who was in my very first workshop for our second auctioneer. And she said back to me. I mean, it was like four and a half years ago, maybe she said back to me three or four of the key ideas that are now in the book that I had, I was shocked and amazed, stuck with her for those four and a half years. And she's I mean, she said the back to me like verbatim voluntarily. And it was such an equal and opposite reaction moment for me because I was like, Oh, these are the ideas Stuck with her, she can say them back to me in a way that is incredibly accurate on how they're delivered. And she was able to tell me how she used them to double her role and excuse me double her salary in the last four years was no joke. And what was amazing about it, was it I recognized that moment like, Oh, I could ask for that what stuck with you about it? How did you use those, we can go and ask and find out what was sticky about the actions that we took. So that we can kind of feel their equal and opposite reaction, because I can expect everybody who ever comes across the content that I create, including you, dear listener, to let me know whether it had an impact or not. And so I can feel very far away. From the idea that like I did this effort produced this podcast right now at 2:48pm, on the west coast on a Wednesday, sandwiched between a million other things that I'm doing. This is an effort, does it have an equal and opposite reaction? I would never know because I'm not talking to you. So finding opportunities to talk to the people. I'm talking to you, but I'm not talking with you, dear listener. So it's my job if I want to sense the equal and opposite to ask, what was sticky about it was stuck with you what was interesting about it, how did you use it? What do you want more of? So that I can see, it did actually have some semblance of an equal and opposite. So we want to find out what sticky and we can do that by asking for reflections from others, because we never know what kind of impact we have as leaders, as content creators. And I don't even think of myself as a content creator, but somebody who deals in developing and articulating ideas. And then to take inventory of your progress. I was on in conversation a couple of weeks ago, somebody said, look at you in the last four years, look what happened. And I looked around, I was like, I don't know what did happen. And she enumerated all these things, all this progress that she saw that I had accomplished things that I had created, movements I had made, while I'm mired still, even to this day, in struggle, meaning I'm doing work every day, you know, and I can't see my we can't see where we are. So taking inventory of your progress yourself or with the peers in your network or with people who are your fans and champions and mentors, to enumerate the things that have come about because of your efforts can help you again, feel that ripple come back to you from the other side of the lake, when you feel like you've maybe lost sight of it. And then in that process, take a look at and decide how much of an opposite reaction is enough to let you keep going. And how much is not enough and tells you it's time to give up on that effort, it's time to walk away from a strategy that's not working. We can't measure that unless we actually take a little bit of that inventory. So if you're feeling frustrated at all, at the lack of that satisfaction you can get by seeing the impact of your work, the impact of your leadership. The impact of your incredible effort, thinking effort, physical effort, creative effort, difficult decision making effort, you can do these little things to help you notice if there's some an unequal or a fully equal and opposite reaction to those actions you've taken, look for those signs. Adjust your timetable, see what sticky and ask for reflections from other, take some inventory with the help of people around you who are witnessing the great work that you're doing and decide how much of a reaction is necessary for you to hold on. And how much is not enough can help you say, oh, that's just not worth doing anymore.
Arthur 19:14
Maybe I do yeah. Yeah. What's up?
Dia Bondi 19:17
I launched I launched a substack.
Arthur 19:19
I know I saw that I got an email about it.
Dia Bondi 19:22
Yeah, it's called Farfetch and there's like seven people subscribed. It's so exciting.
Arthur 19:28
Nice, and there'll be eight subscribed here in a second.
Dia Bondi 19:31
Okay, excellent. And you know what I got the other day. I got my very first paid subscriber. At first I was like, Ah, I'm not gonna put any paid. So this is really so far fetched is a set of impossible, impossible ideas and takes on life and leadership. It's the place where I'm going to be practicing my writing craft through an essay format around ideas that hit me that I want to write about that I feel I can get you You know, 1100 to 1500 words out around, I made my first posts last week, it was super fun. It's all going to be in one takes everybody. So I'm going to, I'm going to jam through an essay, I'm gonna take one pass to clean it up, it might have typos in it, I don't know what to tell you. It's really about at bats. It's about shipping words. Okay, so I'm gonna ship it. And sometimes you're gonna get audio of a paid subscriber, or you're gonna get audio commentary from me just talking about how that piece ended out ended up what you know whether I liked it or not, because I'll ship stuff I don't like, right. And I want to talk about why I didn't like it. Because the whole point of these essays is for me to develop, to find and develop and claim my writing voice to get into understanding what my writing voice is. And I want to do it in the open with you. Now at first, I was like, I'm not going to do a paid tier then I was like, You know what, I'm gonna let people tip me five bucks a month. I'm gonna let you do that. And weirdly, I got one subscriber. That's not weird. I was like, Oh, look, somebody somebody wants to tip me. That's amazing. Actually, I knew who it was. And I sent him a text and said, Hey, you're number one. You're number one, you're number one. And he was beyond honored to be my very first one. So if you want to head over to my far fetched substack, you can just find me on substack. And look for far fetched is the only publication that I have right now. I will ship things fairly frequently. I don't know it'll be every month, or maybe it'll be three in one week. And then nothing for three weeks. I don't know what it's going to be. But you can come along for the ride. You're gonna see weird stuff about leadership and life, I'm gonna probably do a post about this idea of, you know, equal and opposite pissing me off. But it'll be a little tidier, because it won't just be me talking into a mic. It'll be a little tidier and actually trying to trying to write something with writing craft next week. After recording this episode, I'll be going on on a writing retreat five days with a best selling author to start to actually develop craft of writing and, and get called out by like, writers who write for a living,
Arthur 22:02
you know, it's good to develop your writing craft after you've already written a book
Dia Bondi 22:07
100%. When I was talking to the woman who's going to run this retreat, she was like, so where are you in your writing journey? And I was like, Well, I just wrote a book. I don't think about the beginning. I think I said that a few episodes. Right? It's true. Yeah. I mean, is it you're a musician isn't a thing where you're like, I just taught myself to play guitar. And then later you go, like, take lessons? Is that your thing?
Arthur 22:31
Or you just develop your Yeah, you develop your craft over many, many years. And it's not like you hate every song you wrote when you were 20. But you just get better and better at it.
Dia Bondi 22:42
Right? And you kind of learn how you learn how you do it. Right?
Arthur 22:45
Yeah, totally. You become you as a songwriter, or as a whatever. Yeah,
Dia Bondi 22:51
right. What's that quote? I think Miles Davis said, it takes a lifetime to sound like yourself. Hmm. He's a lifetime two. Yeah, it can take a lifetime to sound like yourself or think something like that. And so that's the journey that I'm on, but I'm, I'm gonna do it. I mean, I went got a coaching certification after 10 years of doing coaching is coaching was wasn't a word yet. And there was so much about it that I was like, oh, yeah, I already do that. Oh, yeah, I already do that. Oh, yeah, I already do that. But I was getting concrete frameworks, I kind of gave me a language for approaching what I was already doing. And I got leveled up 100% At that time, and I feel like investing and writing is going like not just doing the writing because it's fun, but to go like, Oh, when you do this in an essay, it's called that and I can kind of use that as a tool in my toolbox instead of just intuitively doing it. You know what I mean? Sure. So anyway, I head on over to my substack and subscribe today. Also, last thing to say is that our our, our audio book is for our second auctioneer is up so hope folks will find it it will be up on Audible on launch day, November 14, 2023. It is available on a bunch of other platforms including including Apple books right now. Maybe it was so nice to be mad at Newton with you. Thanks for sitting and listening. And thanks everyone here for listening.
Arthur 24:10
He's been dead 300 years but we can still be mad at 100%
Dia Bondi 24:14
See you next time everybody.
Arthur 24:15
All right, bye.
Dia Bondi 24:18
Lead With Who You Are is a production of Dia Bondi Communications and is scored, mixed, and produced by Arthur Leon Adams the third. Have a question or an inquiry? Reach out to us at hello@diabondi.com. You can like, share, rate and subscribe at Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your favorite shows. Go to diabondi.com for the show notes to find our tools, frameworks, content and programs to help you and your team speak powerfully and lead with who you are.