The host greets the audience and explains she's free-ranging today's episode to share overlooked rules of engagement and guidelines. She previews that she has a new rule to add to her list. She presents the aphorism 'treat the symptom, heal the wound' and reflects on its symbolic meaning.
The host greets the audience and explains she's free-ranging today's episode to share overlooked rules of engagement and guidelines. She previews that she has a new rule to add to her list.
She presents the aphorism 'treat the symptom, heal the wound' and reflects on its symbolic meaning. She explains how this guides her approach to anxiety—treating immediate symptoms while doing deeper healing and adjusting pace.
She adds 'capture the insight' to her overlooked rules and describes how she journals, takes voice memos, or writes notes to prevent losing ideas. She explains this practice reduces frustration and helps track learning over time.
Quoting John Acuff's advice, she adopts 'go get that problem' as a rule of engagement and discusses how imagined downstream problems shouldn't paralyze action. She gives examples—from social media criticism to sobriety at parties—and urges trusting your future self to handle consequences.
She shares another guideline—'it's either a success or a story'—and encourages practicing bravery by taking inconsequential bold swings. She offers practical examples of how repeated attempts build opportunities and resilience.
She explains her belief that everyone would make sense if we knew their whole story, using her mother's life and parenting as an example to understand difficult behaviors. She relates this perspective to reconciling and reclaiming relationships from her past.
She closes the free-ranging episode by thanking the audience and summarizing the discussion. She invites viewers to reflect on and think about their own personal guidelines and rules of engagement.
Hey there, cadre. Hello. I was just making myself laugh because I am free-ranging my rules of engagement today. Look at how short I am. free-ranging my rules of engagement today, meaning I'm choosing my own topic and my own topic. Hi, Speak Wonder. Hello. And my topic that I'm choosing are my overlooked rules of engagement and guidelines, like ones I don't talk about that much. Maybe because they haven't been relevant or what have you. Plus I have a brand new one. I'll start with a brand new one.
The brand new one is treat the symptom, heal the wound. Treat the symptom, heal the wound. I read that somewhere. It's like an aphorism that's used in some medical profession. But of course it's symbolic, right? And that helps me to remember, like for my anxiety, I'm doing my best to heal all my wounds. You're shorter than I am. I don't know. How tall do you think I am? You know, with my anxiety, I've treated a lot of wounds, right? Like those early hurts that I have managed to process and work through and heal them so greatly, but I still have these flares of anxiety.
And so as I do that deeper work, yes, treat the symptom, heal the wound. As I do that deeper work, I still get to treat my anxiety. Whatever that means for me, whatever that means for you. For me, It means understanding that I have to take things more slowly, understanding one of my rules of engagement, which I've said over and over on days like today. I am not choosing between doing the most important thing and the second most important thing. I am choosing between doing something and doing nothing.
And Rule engagement #2, start from where you are, not from where you wish you were or think you should be, right? I wish that I did not have anxiety. I wish that it did not slow me down. I wish some days that I could just operate on top of it the way I did for so long. But no, I have chosen a life to be as present as I can and to heal the wound, which means some days I just treat the symptom. So She says, you have the stature of a mare. So to me, you are 6 feet tall. Laugh out loud. Okay. I do have the stature of a mare.
I am not 6 feet tall. I'm not going to tell you how tall I am. I'm so fascinated to see what people's guesses are. So that's the newest one. I read it the other day and immediately just opened up the note I keep on my rules of engagement in and just added that to the list. We're almost at 40, which is so hard to believe. But it's funny because that ended up just because it's new at number 39, which made me realize number 38 is on my list of overlooked rules of engagement. Capture the insight. And that one is just a very practical rule of engagement.
It's if you have an idea for a project you're working on, write it down somewhere. Do a voice memo, tell somebody, just capture that insight. But also for me, it's Speak Wonder is five two. Five foot two, eyes of blue Oh, what those five feet could do Has anybody seen my gal I know that song. I am two inches taller than you, which is not very tall. Well, hello, Ro. Hello there. So glad you're here. We're talking about my overlooked rules of engagement because I'm free-ranging topics today. I'm free-ranging topics today.
Capture the insight, but capture the insight for me. I do a lot of journaling and then when I look back at my journals, you know, there's an insight I had about me and my life, I don't know, 10 years ago, where the fact that it's captured, I can see that I've learned that lesson over and over. But also, sometimes when I capture the insight, I've remembered it. And I, or I will have an insight, I'm on the treadmill or something and I'll have this insight and I was like, oh, I'll remember it later.
Some big insight, like about me and my life. And then I don't. And then I don't remember, which is not. helpful. That frustrates me. So capture the insight prevents frustration, but also captures insights. It prevents the frustration of that tip of the tongue phenomena. What was I thinking of? I have it all written down. I have so many little pieces of paper with notes on it. Usually I either do it in my notebook or on my phone, but sometimes it's just piece of paper because I heard something in an online meeting and it was all I had to bear.
And then occasionally I gather them and get the collective wisdom. Look at Speak Wonders. She says, I always take lots of notes when you go live. I love that. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. I take notes to go live, so appreciate it. And then number 37. This is a John Acuff. You all have heard me talk a lot about John Acuff. I am part of his Remarkable You community and he has a new book coming out a week from today, Procrastination Proof, his book about procrastination, which I have an early copy of and I can already tell you it's fantastic.
I'm a big fan of his. So this is straight from him. Although I've heard it other places as well, but I always like to give John credit for stuff. Number 37, go get that problem. Because when I'm thinking about doing something, especially if I'm thinking about taking a bold action in some direction or another, immediately my brain starts to come up with all the new problems it'll create in my life. Well, If I start posting a lot of videos on Instagram, if I do it four or five times a week, then what if somebody says a mean comment and then what if that mean comment goes a little bit viral and then people pile on?
Now, this fear for me is particularly vibrant because it has happened to me so many times because I was a mayor, right? And so people would criticize everything I did all day long and then it had an impact on my job, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Okay, so I am, what is it? It's 2026. I'm 8 years out of office, 8 1/2 years out of office. I post stuff. Maybe people will pile on, but A, I have the skills because I've handled it so many times. And B, who cares? I'm not gonna get fired, you know? I'm not gonna have to do 36 mayoral forums talking about whatever it is I just said, right?
That's just not happening. So go get that problem. Go get the problem of like being so popular on social media that the trolls come out to play. Like go get that problem, Betsy. That would be a very quality problem for me to have at this point in my career talking about this racial equity work, to just have it be so everywhere that like the trolls are coming out to play. Go get that problem. I love go get that problem. I have it written right here. I was listening to him and I wrote this on a piece of scratch paper in an old page a day calendar.
And I just wrote it down and it's been posted on my desk ever since. And then I made it one of my own rules of engagement. Go get that problem. Tip of the tongue phenomena. Yes, I suffer from that as well. I also suffered, somebody sent me a photo the other day of them with a friend of mine or somebody, a colleague of mine from years ago. I was like, who is that? And I had the tip of the tongue phenomenon with the photograph. I was like, I know this person. Why do I know this person? Did I go to high school with this person?
No. You know, and eventually they told me who it was and it was someone I had worked with pretty intensively, but not necessarily in person when I was in office. So, and someone I love deeply who changed my life forever, frankly. It was just not a great picture. Go get that problem, speak wonder. Go get that problem. Like in the mental health world, if I get sober, what am I going to do if I go to the, I hear this a lot from newcomers and sponsees, what happens if I go to the party and everybody's drinking and I'm not drinking?
I'm going to feel weird and they're going to be weird. And 2 things about that. One, I have found almost no one cares. No one is thinking about you and your drinking, at all, really. And 2, the people who do care are usually people who are questioning their own use of alcohol themselves. And so they are, they are keeping track of what other people are doing because they're so worried about what they're doing. they're doing. But #3, go get that problem. Go have like a sober life, a sober social life where your life is super great and like the biggest problem you had that day was one guy at the party was awkward with you because you told him no, you didn't want to drink three times.
I mean, go get that problem. You can handle that problem. Or the future you, trust your future self to handle future problems, another rule of engagement. trust your future self to handle that future problem. Today you, if you are drinking and you definitely have a problem drinking, is handling much bigger problems, much more consequential problems than one guy being awkward with you at a party every three years, you know? So check, agreed. So Those are some of my overlooked rules of engagement.
I also have some of the guidelines that I'm thinking about. One is another, this is another John Acuff, and I have used this so many times. He says, try something, take bold action. It'll either be a success or a story. And John has this story of his own where he had a blog and he was going to a conference and he rented a room and thought all these people are going to come talk to me and maybe he had a book at that time. I don't remember. And he made this huge roll of stickers just thinking all these people were going to come and he was going to give out all these stickers.
And he walks into the room with a bag and like two people came. two people poked their head in, basically. And he has a picture of him sitting there kind of forlorn with this bag of stickers. And it wasn't a made-up photo. It's a candid photo. This was like from, I think, even before everybody had cameras on their phones. But he tells that story all the time. It's either a success or a story. And that story is a story of boldness and taking action. And now, you know, I think this is His new book is like his 11th or 12th book for crying out loud.
Like he is a success, right? He is a public speaker. He is a great writer. I'm a huge fan. He's a great guy. It's either a success or a story. I use that with myself so much. Like if I'm just about to press send on an e-mail that I'm nervous about sending, it's either a success or a story. Side note, as I'm just free ranging here. This morning was the second time this idea has come across my eyeballs, which is this woman online was talking about every month she practices bravery by just taking a wild swing or applies for something that she's got no shot for and cold calling people and asking for stuff, things that are impossible.
She just does it to practice bravery. all this amazing stuff has happened in her life as a result. Sometimes I think to myself, that must be what it's like to live as a white guy, is just, take the swing all the time. So I'm figuring out how I want to incorporate that in my life. Just take the swing. I will probably start, this is advice I give people I coach A lot, I will start with something that is completely inconsequential to me. Just take a wild swing, like I don't know, call a company and ask for a discount.
probably there's, I am in charge of my father's finances, so I'll probably call the credit card company and negotiate a lower monthly payment since we're just paying off the card at this point. He's not making new charges. Anyway, That was a side note. It had a little bit to do with a success or a story because you take a big swing like that, it's either a success or a story. It might be part of the story of, I took 100 swings and here are the 17 great things that came back at me as a result. My number 19 on my guidelines, everybody makes sense if you know their whole story.
Everybody, I truly believe this to the depths of my soul. that if we understood the ins and outs of everyone's story, they would make complete sense to us. And that is something I use when I read a news article about people who have done something cruel or are supporting someone despotic. I think to myself, if I knew that person's entire story, I would understand why this stance in this moment makes sense to them. Because it doesn't make sense to me. But it's because I've done so much work on my own story that such confusing things about myself suddenly made sense to me that I believe that has to be true for everyone.
And my mother did that work as well. There are things about my mother that were very hard for me to handle. My mother was great. I was blessed with a mother who did her own work. And I understand how lucky I am, sorry, as a result of that. I love my mom very much and she is dead. Hello, Anna. You came on just as I started crying about my mom and how great she was. But because my mother did her work, she told me parts about her story that explained things about her that had seemed so difficult to me before, right?
My mother was a tomboy growing up in part because, well, in part because she was and she played a lot of sports, but it helped me to understand why she struggled with The issues I had with 7th grade girls in the Midwest in a public school was because my mother was a tomboy at a boarding school. She just didn't engage in these internecine wars that teenage girls go through with each other as part of the locking in of the internalized sexism that we are designed to compete with each other. She just didn't.
And so she eventually had tools to guide me through it. But they were the tools of recovery, actually. They weren't the tools of 14 or 15 year old girls. So like in high school when my best friend just stopped talking to me and got mad at me and wouldn't talk to me about why and then was making fun of me from like 2 rows behind me at a show, my mother was like, just don't engage. Like clearly something's going on for her. You don't know what it is. And engaging with her is just going to make it worse for you and for her.
And somehow I could listen to my mother on that and I didn't engage. And years later, that friend and I, we reconciled. We are still friends to this day. And I think if I had returned cruelty for cruelty in high school, I think it would have gone very differently. Or I would have had many more amends to make, many more amends to make. So maybe someday we'll talk about like, how I reclaimed so many relationships from my early life and what a joy it is to realize that so many people grow up really well.
They just grow up really well. So I'll put a little pin in that because the most popular boy in junior high was not very nice to me and then we met as adults and it's a great story. So that's what I have for you this week. I was just free-ranging it. free arranging it, some of my favorite, not overlooked, rules of engagement and guidelines that I don't talk about very much, either because they haven't been relevant or because I don't know why. So we talked about them and it's so fun to be here with you all.
Thank you all for being here. I look forward reconciling reclaimed relationships. Yes, speak wonder. I hate having relationships that don't have, that I don't feel closure with. I don't need the other person to have closure, but There's only one or two of those hanging chads remaining in my life that I just get to let go of. But that's for another time. And yes, a mother's wisdom carries with for so long, depending on your mom, I guess. I am aware a lot of people were not, see, again, a lot of people were not blessed with the gift to the world that my mother was, but I was, and it kept me alive in the middle of some really difficult things.
So Maybe sometime I'll tell the story of how my mother made amends to me for things that happened when I was young. So yes, mother's wisdom sticks with you a long time. I'm so excited to be here with you all. You all are the best. I love cadre. And I will see you again next week. Until then, think about your own guidelines. Think about your own rules of engagement.
