Brittany S. Hale: 0:32

Hi Karen.

Karen McFarlane: 0:33

Hi, brittany, it's good to see you, I'm good.

Brittany S. Hale: 0:39

Oh, it's good to see you too.

Karen McFarlane: 0:42

I am good. I am good. It's been a good week, you know, and I'm hoping that the I love hearing that, how about you?

Brittany S. Hale: 0:54

I'm doing well. I'm doing well, I'm doing well. You know, it is my favorite season, which is autumn, and I think, at least where I live right, there's always a very visible shift from summer into autumn. Leaves get golden, the sunlight looks a little bit different. Seeing that golden light in the morning peeking through the, the leaves that are falling on, it's all very um beautiful and it makes me feel like I'm in a nancy meyer film, which is like um enjoyable. So for now, I I think that we could, every now and then we have some episodes that are a little bit, add some levity to the space, and I just think that that now is a time where we can bring a little bit more light right.

Karen McFarlane: 1:53

let's do it. Let's totally do it. You know, we want to live in a space of joy, right, and so let's do it.

Brittany S. Hale: 2:03

Awesome, Awesome, Looking forward to that. So to our listeners, you know we're focusing on Aristotle's five virtues. We have the spent framework, and so I spent pun intended some time thinking about some of my favorite things or things that may bring me joy according to that spent framework. So I thought maybe we could challenge ourselves to mention things that either bring us joy, things that we're focused on, or things in the past that we found interesting using that framework. What do you think?

Karen McFarlane: 2:48

Let's give it a go, let's totally do it. I mean, I think that makes sense, and we also want people to understand how to apply it, and we may have different ways of applying it, which is cool, right, like it's not meant to be rigid. It's meant for us to be reflective and thoughtful about how we approach life.

Brittany S. Hale: 3:08

Yes, absolutely Absolutely. So. The first one, of course, is Sophia, which is the philosophic wisdom, and I am currently reading a book. This is not an endorsement. I haven't gotten all the way through the book right now, but it's something that at this point in time, I find really interesting to engage with, and that is the Prosperous Power of your Subconscious Mind, by Joseph Murphy. Have you read this? I have not. Ah, okay, so this book at this point is at least where I'm at now. It's really kind of teaching you how to use the conscious mind to deposit constructive thoughts into the subconscious mind. So I am someone who I always have very vivid dreams. You know I, in one night I can remember multiple dreams, which I've heard is pretty unusual.

Karen McFarlane: 4:15

That is unusual. By the way, this is one dream I do remember. You were in it, we were at the airport. I'm only remembering it now because we're talking. We were at the airport and you had a whole team that was following us around for content. That's all I remember, okay, but you were absolutely Okay.

Brittany S. Hale: 4:36

So we're going to take that subconscious thought and amplify it and apply our conscious mind to it. I love that we're going to be there. And so you know the book is essentially just saying by changing thought patterns you can reprogram your subconscious to live a life that's more aligned with where you are. So I don't know, for anybody listening, if you're having dreams of your teeth falling out, or you know you're on stage and you know you experience a sort of fright. That suggests that subconsciously you may feel vulnerable, you may feel powerless, you may feel a number of different things. And so the book suggests that, even if consciously you're saying, oh yeah, I love being positive, or you know I, yeah, I absolutely feel empowered, and then subconsciously you're having either dreams or situations happening in your life that don't align with what you're espousing, it suggests that there's some work to do.

Brittany S. Hale: 5:52

So I just I really enjoy reading some of the case studies in the book and seeing how people are able to reprogram themselves. I've been doing a little bit of it myself, and my dreams are normally again. I have a number of dreams. For the most part they're not bad at all, but I found myself being more aware in my dream, like, oh, this is a dream and this is really cool, so I can do what I want. So right now I'm going to make XYZ happen.

Karen McFarlane: 6:24

So I like that, I like that, so I like the fact that you are yeah, I like the fact that you're like actively speaking out educational resources to do that and then trying to apply them to your real life. That's a really smart way to do it. I'm not doing it that way. So for my Sophia, it's really trying to understand my why, and that has changed for me over time, and I actually view this time as a era of recalibration around my purpose, and so I have defined my purpose as just being better than before. So being better than before for myself, but also in my engagements with clients or in my volunteer roles or however I'm engaging in the world. And so I ask that question and apply that mantra, that philosophy, to, I would say, most of the things that I'm doing. I'm practicing it, so it's not 100 percent right.

Karen McFarlane: 7:34

So what is my why and does it apply to my mantra? And so once I do that, I can hopefully manifest these things in a way that supports those goals, and then I will feel more aligned. And it's about my thinking also. So even before I go to sleep, just to kind of piggyback on your dreams, I try to center those thoughts before I go to bed. Maybe they're coming up in my dreams and I don't remember. I don't remember a lot of things that happen in the daytime when I'm conscious Fair enough in the daytime when I'm conscious, fair enough. But I'm hoping that by doing that I'm taking steps to make all of those things come to reality. I know I need to do more, I can't just think about it, but that's just a starting point for me.

Brittany S. Hale: 8:31

I love that. I love that and I'm looking forward to updates. I know you said it's starting, so I'm looking forward to updates as it continues.

Karen McFarlane: 8:42

It's a work in progress, right, definitely.

Brittany S. Hale: 8:48

Totally into it. Okay, so the next is the P in our SPINT framework, which is phronesis, and that's practical wisdom, I believe. Yeah, using your good judgment. Yeah, do you want to kick this off?

Karen McFarlane: 9:05

Well. So I guess that would be like the next step in my purpose-driven approach, right? Like really asking myself what is the approach I'm taking in the interactions that I have with the world and with what I'm doing, right? So I'm now just not thinking about it. How am I, what's my methodology for achieving it?

Karen McFarlane: 9:33

Now, this is something that I have to work on, okay, continuously, because I have lots of thoughts, lots of thoughts, and my mind has always been this way since I've been young. I have lots of ideas. I can write of ideas. I can, you know, write them down, but they also take a certain amount of discipline to activate them, and the more ideas I have, the more bandwidth I need and I need to prioritize more. So that's something that I have to focus on is how do I prioritize not only the idea or the initiative, but the levels of effort that are required to achieve them?

Karen McFarlane: 10:24

You know, I'm not a person that will focus on just one thing. I need to have a couple of things to focus on. That's just how my mind works. It jumps around, but that's an area of opportunity for me, but also something that I'm good at, right. So it's just about having more discipline around that and then also understanding which kind of flows into the other one, so I won't get into them like what is my intuition versus what is factual information versus what is something else right, and so that's just really honing my methodology around the judgment aspect of it.

Brittany S. Hale: 11:02

How about you? I think it's really cool. I love that. Actually, I was just thinking about the practicalism, and I agree with you. At any given time I'm probably reading like between three and five books, and they're all so different, but they all feed and nourish me, you know. So I can't choose very often, so I admire the ability to prioritize. So my phrenesis, my practical wisdom, is looking out for future me.

Brittany S. Hale: 11:39

Here's what I mean when I say that I don't know if you've ever had a moment where, let's say, you changed purses and for people who don't carry purses, that can always be challenging, because you may have something in one purse that you need later on. You know it could be something as practical as your wallet. Or you know lip balm, sunscreen, you know hand sanitizer, whatever it is. Have you ever had a moment where you thought you forgot something? You look in and you feel that sigh of relief oh my gosh, it's here All the time.

Karen McFarlane: 12:15

I think I forget stuff all the time. Yes, I make fun of relief. Oh my gosh, it's here.

Brittany S. Hale: 12:17

Yeah, all the time I think I forget stuff all the time.

Karen McFarlane: 12:18

Yes, so when I don't, I'm like yay.

Brittany S. Hale: 12:23

Exactly so. I've had these moments where I'm just like thank you, past me, oh, look at past me, looking out for future me, and it could be something like buying an extra pack of paper towels.

Brittany S. Hale: 12:38

So when I run out and I think, man, I have to go to the grocery store, I look in my pantry and I see, oh my gosh, you know, I have another 12 rolls to go. Thank you, fast Me. But more recently, I can't remember where I got it. Maybe it was, I don't know, some home store, but I got this mini griddle.

Brittany S. Hale: 13:01

It's a little circular griddle and it is the perfect size for making breakfast sandwiches. So on the bottom you can put like an English muffin and it's a layered griddle. So on a separate layer you can like crack an egg and the egg will cook like meat, veggies, whatever you want to put on there, and then there's another layer that will also grill the top of the um, the english muffin. But what's really interesting, it has like a little, a little slide, so the egg, once it's cooked, will now just perfectly drop on top of the English muffin. Oh, wow, I know this sounds silly, but for someone I love my mornings and more recently I have to every now and then I have to get going an earlier time than I normally would. So to make my breakfast at night, to make my iced coffee, to make my little breakfast sandwich that I can heat up and then just go and let go. It feels like such a practical and loving act to do for my future self, so that I can guarantee ease going forward. So, yeah, that's my practical wisdom.

Karen McFarlane: 14:25

First of all, I just want to say that the whole thanking your past self, I think, is just an amazing thing to do, because we often don't give ourselves credit for thinking ahead. I know I don't so like in my present me moment, I'm more likely to acknowledge my past me in a frustrating sense, right Like oh gosh, I didn't do this before, I didn't think about this, or whatever. But when you are happy with yourself, reflecting on what you did, right, I think is an important step that I know that I miss. So that's awesome that you do that. I can put that into practice now.

Brittany S. Hale: 15:11

Future Karen and Brittany will appreciate us recording now More content to share, absolutely.

Karen McFarlane: 15:20

Absolutely.

Brittany S. Hale: 15:24

I love that, all right.

Karen McFarlane: 15:27

You want to take our E Episteme is just like knowing the facts. So you know. This is like how are you backing up your assumptions overall? Right, and that's you know, doing the research you know. You know you may have, like I may have a thought right and I believe my thought to be true, but how do I know it's true? And so I'm always trying to validate myself with more information.

Karen McFarlane: 16:01

Right, I am an avid user of, you know, ai, right, so I may start there. But also just general reading, you know, at the end of the day, but sometimes, because, as I said earlier, I have all these ideas and all these thoughts, it's just very easy for me to plug that in to chat GPT or Claude. I use a couple of different ones and seek out resources to help me think more critically about whatever that idea is, and sometimes it validates me and sometimes it doesn't. I actually ask the tool to point out what's wrong, what's missing, what the challenges are. I know it's there to please me and I'm like I don't need you to make me feel good, I need you to give me the information.

Karen McFarlane: 16:53

As a side note, and I hope I saved it because I meant to implement this. There's a prompt out there that encourages ChatGPT to be very brutal with you and, like all of the fluff and all of that, I've tried to write instructions to that extent because I want the no nonsense. But anyway, that's one of the tools that I use in addition to seeking my own resources through Google or just reading. You just have to expand your mind, whether it's a magazine I subscribe to, hbr and Entrepreneur, some of these different things, and just get that perspective.

Brittany S. Hale: 17:34

Absolutely. I could not agree with you more. You know there's a book called Empire of AI I don't know if you've read it by Karen Howe, and I find it fascinating to get scientific knowledge on what AI is and is capable of, what it is not capable of and the consequences not only to myself but to my environment but to my own ability to reason and think critically. So that is my episteme.

Karen McFarlane: 18:15

Well, you're an avid reader, so you're always gathering facts data points constantly.

Brittany S. Hale: 18:25

um, if you've ever done the clifton strengths, one of my top five strengths is input, which is, you know, just kind of being this seemingly endless consumer of information and being able to kind of pull it out as needed.

Karen McFarlane: 18:45

So yeah, yeah, that's one of your, that's definitely one of your strengths and superpowers is the ability to get all that data but also think about it critically and form your own opinions about it, right To kind of use it holistically, so that totally tracks.

Brittany S. Hale: 19:06

All right, and then you alluded to noose. Do you want to go into that a little bit?

Karen McFarlane: 19:32

Yeah. So this one's interesting. This is about strong, a strong intuition about things. Right, I have a high IQ, I have these, I have these attributes that I didn't think were important for a very long time and I didn't lean on. And so now I do, because I've proven to myself year after year after year that my gut is usually right. Now will I go solely with my gut? No, I will give my gut an opportunity to have. I will have to prove if my gut is still true, but in a different way. Right.

Karen McFarlane: 20:16

So now I was was before. I was like, well, I shouldn't really go with my gut and may or may not be true, like it was just a hedging. Now I'm like, well, it's likely true. However, you still have to use the other tools in order to validate or invalidate and the the point there is be willing to invalidate as well, because if you're looking for what you want to be true, you will find evidence to back that up. So this is why all these things kind of work together, but it is an attribute that I do have, naturally, and I shouldn't ignore it. I should use it as a data point for everything that I'm thinking of, to either pursue or not pursue, or to support or not support the original thought or idea that I'm thinking about. So that's kind of how I think about my intuition. Now it's to accept it and to appreciate it in a way that I haven't in the past.

Brittany S. Hale: 21:20

You said a word and I'm just. I'm thinking of it almost as a muscle, right.

Brittany S. Hale: 21:24

And continuing to use it so you can develop a better relationship with it. Yes, well said Self. Yeah, I think self-trust has been one of the biggest hurdles. You know I mean I for listeners maybe you understand this. If you're the eldest child, especially the eldest daughter, if you're in any way type A, if you've had to be the first to do anything, be the first to do anything, that fear of not even failing but just to be seen trying without achieving immediately is terrifying. You know, there's a joke about the millennials who were gifted and talented all their lives and now they're just completely burnt out as adults because they followed the script right. You did the program, you got the straight A's, you did the fellowships, you did everything you were supposed to do, and you arrive to adulthood to see that there is no script, there is no roadmap and it's really just you having to figure out what works best for you, and that can be terrifying. And so to your point about self-trust and developing that intuition. That's something that I'm leaning into With EQ. So there's something called the Cohen test. I don't know if you're familiar with it. Many of our listeners may be familiar with Sasha Baron Cohen, who's actually a cousin.

Brittany S. Hale: 23:06

The Cohen test is very often used to gauge whether or not people are on the spectrum. It's not definitive, I want to be very clear about that, but it gauges EQ and the test is just you seeing a series of eyes and you were supposed to guess the emotion based on the eyes alone. And of course you know there are perhaps cultural differences and things like that, but on the whole it gives people a sense of where people are. So during times like the pandemic, where a lot of times people were wearing a mask and all you could see were eyes, you would think that the population's eq would have risen, but it dropped. So, uh, the average person's eq is usually on the the cohen test.

Brittany S. Hale: 24:10

People usually score somewhere between like a 40 to 60 percent um. And so I remember I was speaking with, uh, the professor I was, I was working with, and so I told her my score because I'd gotten a 96, and she, her face, she, she freaked out, she's oh, oh, that's amazing. So to your point, because I would love to hear all of the ways that your news, your intuition, has helped you in marketing. I know it's helped me when partnerships and find spaces of connection, because you're able to calculate right to take into account all of the different points. Oh, you know her. She's nodding, her eyebrow moved. Maybe she agrees with this point, maybe she doesn't. Maybe that's a point for us to delve further into.

Karen McFarlane: 25:24

All of these things are happening at rapid speed, right In milliseconds. So it's interesting. And the only reason I say that is because, although it is correct most of the time in my approach to marketing strategy, I can't use that alone One, because people don't believe me. So it's not fair. I think that's like 90% of the reason. Like people are just not going to well, karen just thinks that's the way it should go.

Karen McFarlane: 25:57

You know it needs to be backed up by data, and so I distinctly remember, just earlier on in my career, being challenged on my noose around my marketing strategy, and I remember being very annoyed by that because I'm like I just know it's right, like this is the way it's supposed to be. I know I understand people, I understand their intentions, I know what makes them tick or what their pain points are. I know this, okay, but people don't believe that. I just know it. They want to see why I knew it. I knew it, and they wanted the data to back it up.

Karen McFarlane: 26:37

This early in my career I was like, oh, you need data why I know it to be true, and so I learned that I had to back up what they thought were assumptions, and I guess you could. Yeah, so it does help in terms of understanding the direction you may want to go into, but you still need episteme. You need to partner with episteme right in order to move people along with you. Again, you're supposed to validate right, but you also need buy-in and cooperation, and so you have to pair it with something else.

Brittany S. Hale: 27:24

And so you have to pair it with something else, absolutely, and I think we see that often, right. So I think when we look at leaders who have been able to tap into their intuition, they do quite well. I'm thinking of the CEO of Costco, right, who, when paired with certain knowledge, just say hey, hey, this is what a lot of these other big box retailers are doing, this is what we should do. The instinct to say no, we're gonna, we're gonna keep our hot dogs at a dollar fifty, we're going to keep certain initiatives, we're going to do things our way, regardless of what the market is doing. Yeah, and to see anybody who's invested in Costco has had a really great year, because the episteme of it all shows that is proof positive of that intuition, to see that those instincts are paying off real dividends to folks.

Karen McFarlane: 28:31

Yeah, and over the past I don't know 10, 15, 20 years we've become a very data-driven society, and there's nothing wrong with that. But for the times before that we weren't, and we did rely on our instincts. We did rely more on having higher EQs, I would say right, because we took time to understand people differently than we do now, which is essentially reducing them to metrics. Right, and especially in the consumer market. Right, those metrics are fickle because people change their mind instantly. Right, to try to understand, for example, you know, if I go into a store, why I would buy this over that.

Karen McFarlane: 29:29

I think it's very difficult because you have no idea really and truly what's going on inside here, what's going to motivate me.

Karen McFarlane: 29:38

You can influence motivation, right, you could try to basically for lack of a better term manipulate or trick me into something different, but you really had no idea and that, and even if I told you the day before, it might've changed the day after.

Karen McFarlane: 30:02

And so it's always tricky in terms of developing meaningful, long-term, authentic relationships with people where you have to actually talk to them, and it's hard to do that at scale, and we're trying to do everything at scale, but there's so much of a difference when I have a conversation with you rather than when I look at a survey you filled out, right, and that's where your instincts built on potentially years of work and study and research and using the SPENT framework, even if you didn't know you were using it or not come into play so that, like you said, you can trust your instincts and those instincts are more likely to be correct because of your past practices and your critical thinking and your depth of understanding of who your audience is.

Karen McFarlane: 31:03

So maybe back then, earlier in my career, although I had good instincts and people didn't believe me, now they're even better. So, while you may or may not have the data, my instincts are closer to the data that you would receive. Not saying you shouldn't still prove it, but if you didn't have it at this point in time, you're probably still in good hands with me, right, because my past, oh, I like. So there's something that you've done for instincts in a positive way.

Brittany S. Hale: 31:41

Exactly Do you want to round us out?

Karen McFarlane: 31:47

So techne is just about making it all real. So you know, that's just like how do you activate your goals or your project or whatever with intention, and I think that for me, it has to link back to my purpose. So it starts with the Sophia. All over again, I've thought about my why. I'm trying to exercise good judgment in terms of my approach. I'm sourcing the facts, I'm leveraging my intuition and I'm taking all of those things in order to put that into action, whether it's a very specific plan or whether it's hey, you know what am I going to do today to make my future self happy? And it's the thought that you put into at the end of the day, whether it's a small thing or a larger thing, in activating it from idea to execution. I love that. How about you? How do you make it real for yourself?

Brittany S. Hale: 33:10

Every time you share something, I'm like, yes, let me just let me compute. So you're absolutely right in that these are all tied together right, and I think that's the point of the framework is to have each of these virtues interwoven into and feed into what you do, how you think, say, and what you interact with. So, because you know we've spoken a lot about books and reading, and input and data, one of the things that I love, that I keep on me at all times, is my phone, but I engage with apps that help me more meaningfully engage, and one of them is the Nebby app. Have you heard of the Nebby?

Karen McFarlane: 34:05

app. I'm always learning about new stuff from you, so tell me about the Nebby app. Have you heard of the Nebby app? I'm always learning about new stuff from you, so tell me about the Nebby app. I love it. How do you spell?

Brittany S. Hale: 34:11

it Okay. So Nebby is N, as in Nancy E, b as in Brittany B as in Brittany I. So it's called the Nebby app and it is a wellness companion. It identifies itself as a daily mood coach and it use psychology backed tools and prompts to help you feel calmer, clearer and more in control, one step at a time. So it's grounded in cognitive behavioral therapy CBT. If anybody's ever had any sort of engagement with therapy, that is a methodology and it has a human first approach.

Brittany S. Hale: 34:50

So I like the idea of even though I'm engaging with my phone, I'm still focusing on being human first, and it's designed to build emotional regulation and reset your mental state. So it is fascinating to see these kind of check-ins because you can check in and it'll say you know, how are you feeling right now, what emotion feels strongest at this moment? And because we live in a world that is so quick, sometimes we're acting on emotions before we identify them. So we might be sending off that email, sending off that text message response when, if we kind of paused a moment to say I'm actually operating from fear, that might not be something that I want to do, or I just want to prove that I'm being responsive, or I just want to prove that I'm being responsive, and that doesn't necessarily mean that I am.

Brittany S. Hale: 35:54

Or I'm being reactive doesn't mean that I'm being responsive. I might not actually be hitting on what this person is asking of me. I may just want to show that I'm available. I'm available, but not necessarily being of value, which is challenging, and so this is an app that was created by Nina Westbrook. I don't know if you're a basketball fan, excuse me, but Russell Westbrook, his wife fan. Excuse me, but Russell Westbrook, his wife. She is a mental health advocate, she's an entrepreneur, and so she helped develop this app.

Brittany S. Hale: 36:33

I believe it is her app, so I thought that was really cool, that was very cool, yeah To see, see how how this helps me engage more meaningfully in my one-to-one interactions, but especially in my interactions that are asynchronous, so I can kind of check in with myself to say am I stressed out, am I annoyed? Where do I go from here? How do I engage in a way that's consistent with my own self-concept and how I want to come across to other people?

Karen McFarlane: 37:16

I mean, that's reflection, right? So you should always be thinking about your interactions with people and the world and how you're showing up.

Karen McFarlane: 37:26

I think my Nebby is one of my best friends, cassandra, so she gets the phone call where if I'm frustrated by something or need to talk something out, she gets the phone call. I rant and rave on the phone with her. She's very good at not really giving me her opinion, which is really annoying sometimes, but she's serving as an outlet and I actually hear myself. I hear myself turning the issue around in my head and I can say how I actually feel about it in a very safe space. Oftentimes she has no idea even like what, who these people are or what. So she's also a vault, because she doesn't have any concept for what these people are, who they are, the relation. She's just listening. And by the time I'm done talking to her, I have done verbal self-reflection, because sometimes you know I can enumerate in my head but I need to get it out and I know that I need to say the words in order for me to move past it, and so she's my outlet to do that. So she's my Nebby. And then by the time I'm done, I know how I'm feeling. I know I need to take a beat, especially if I'm aggravated or frustrated. I need to give myself at least a day.

Karen McFarlane: 38:53

And as I've gotten older and sometimes it's less, but as I've gotten older, I realize I don't have to care as much. That sounds really bad, but I don't need to sit in this. Bad, but I don't need to sit in this. I can assign a level of importance or priority to it and then mold my reaction around it. And now I'm like is this really affecting my world? Is this really my problem, because I do take on other people's things and so now I'm better at separating.

Karen McFarlane: 39:29

Is this truly my problem, or am I being helpful? And how can I best be helpful with also, you know, also without affecting myself negatively, cause I'm no good to anyone if I'm emotionally compromised, right? So, um, you have to. I think my point there is that everyone has their own thing in a way that they have to express themselves in their own outlets. But it's important, like what you just talked about, to be self-reflective in these moments all the time, even in positive situations, right, like you said, thank your past self right, that's a reflection and understand how you really want to move through the world and find peace and joy and happiness and productivity in what you want to accomplish. That's making it real.

Brittany S. Hale: 40:25

Love it. Wasn't that such a good conversation? I know, I know I want listeners. I want to hear from you, I want to know what your favorite five from the SPIT framework are, how you're engaging with that day to day. Let us know.

Karen McFarlane: 40:49

Definitely. And you know what the best part is and this is really to all the listeners Brittany and I talk every single week, but every single week I learn something new, so we're constantly growing.

Brittany S. Hale: 41:02

That's why you got to talk to people, exactly, exactly.

Karen McFarlane: 41:09

All right, Brittany, you're going to teach me something new next week, so I'll be looking forward to that Ditto. Bye Carious.