Perry Maughmer [00:00:00]:

Welcome to The Relentless Few Podcast. I'm your host, Perry Maughmer. And this is episode two of a three episode arc. And the arc itself is called if this is the end. And the first one, the first episode was the point was never the podcast. And this episode is silence is still a response. So this episode really kind of centers on dwelling in the tension. So we're not.

Perry Maughmer [00:00:28]:

I'm not trying to resolve anything. It honors the discomfort of uncertainty, which I love. It it naming that not knowing isn't a weakness, but wisdom. And we're going to continue the reckoning that we started with the last episode and set the stage for the final evaluation of this podcast in episode three. And, and I mentioned it at the end of last week or last. Yeah, what? Well, last week, if you're listening. Yeah, last week. But I mentioned if you have thoughts or insights or opinions that you want voiced, feel free to email me@perry thereelentless few.comperry atherelentlessfew.com I welcome all opinions, thoughts and insights, snide remarks, spontaneous exaltations, whatever you want to throw in there, we'll give it a read.

Perry Maughmer [00:01:20]:

So this is part two. And if you're here, that means you've chosen to stay with it and with me in this tension. And that says something, because this isn't clarity, it isn't certainty, not a call to action. This is the in between. This is the place we usually avoid. This is what I refer to. This. This is the discomfort.

Perry Maughmer [00:01:40]:

And too often we try to avoid discomfort. We try to make decisions and move quickly. In fact, we have this horrible thing that we refer to all the time called a bias to action. Right? I hear people all this, all the time say they want everybody to act with a sense of urgency. That's a big thing, right? Sense of urgency. We got to act with a sense of urgency, which I think is complete and utter bullshit. Right? Because all that is is a way to hurry through discomfort. Because we don't like sitting with discomfort.

Perry Maughmer [00:02:13]:

So we just make a decision, because any decision is better than no decision, which sometimes is true and oftentimes isn't. So we have to be able to sit with the discomfort because sometimes sitting with the question is better than faking an answer and driving something quickly that should take a while. And, and so this is not absolute. This is not always or never. This is. You have to have the discernment to know when, because sometimes discomfort is required. So in this episode, we're staying put because maybe the point isn't to figure it out. Maybe the point is to sit with long enough to know what's real, to see what emerges, what evolves.

Perry Maughmer [00:02:57]:

Because it isn't always about forcing an answer. It isn't always about arriving at a decision. It isn't always about coming to a conclusion. Because again, we have to understand our intent. Is our intent to relieve our anxiety. Because we'd just rather decide than sit with it any longer. And I will say, a huge percentage of the time you're good with that. Like if you have all the facts in front of you, you should decide.

Perry Maughmer [00:03:20]:

But there are meaningful things in your life that just require discomfort. And it's, guess what? It's going to be discomfort. It's going to be uncomfortable whether you make a decision or not. Because there's this old saying that lessons in life will be repeated until they're learned. So one way or another you'll find discomfort. So I think there's kind of a cultural addiction to clarity. You know, have a plan, make a call, move on. But sometimes, again, rushing to an answer is just our way of avoiding the question.

Perry Maughmer [00:03:55]:

I mean, think about that, think about the statement. Rushing to an answer is our way of avoiding the question. So somebody asks you something that's uncomfortable, I would just do this because now I'm done. Good, bad or indifferent, I'm done. And I felt it, I feel it all the time, the pull. I mean, I have a, a hyper pronounced sense of urgency. Like that's my, my natural state is move fast, like decide, move on, decide, move on at, at my own expense many times and considerable expense sometimes. But recently I've created this space for myself.

Perry Maughmer [00:04:34]:

And I think it was intentional. Like I remember trying to work this out and planning out how this would work. And suddenly it kind of happened where I have these significant blocks of time that I have no requirement for. So I have kind of figured out a different way of being, for lack of a better term. And I find myself slowing down. And I don't mean this in any kind of negative connotation. What I mean is, is I'm able to, I take a different pace. So if you'll.

Perry Maughmer [00:05:15]:

And it kind of leads to. They say this about athletes sometimes you'll hear people, you'll hear announcers say the game slowed down for that person. Right. Because think they, they've become, they acknowledged enough, they've put enough time in to where these things slow down. Like they see things differently because time is relative. I mean, Einstein proved that. You don't believe me? You know, put your hand on a table for a minute or put your hand on a really hot burner for a minute and tell me which minute feels longer. Right? So time is relative.

Perry Maughmer [00:05:51]:

So, I mean, I felt that, like, pull to decide that. Do I keep the podcast going? Do I end it, declare it, publish it, control the narrative, do all those things? But what if silence isn't indecision? What if being quiet isn't indecision? What if it's more like integrity? What if silence is the only honest thing to offer when everything else would be performance? What if sitting with it in that discomfort is the point? And again, not about everything. You shouldn't do this about everything, but you should do it about the things that matter. There are things you shouldn't rush to decide that you can't just. And I think the only way to figure that out for yourself is to figure out why you're rushing to be able to ask yourself to slow down and ask yourself a couple layers deep, why am I in such a hurry to get this figured out? Why am I in a hurry to make this decision? Is it because the decision is time sensitive? Because here's the other thing. A lot of these decisions are not time sensitive. Nobody else is waiting for you to make the decision. In fact, nobody really gives a shit if you make the decision or not.

Perry Maughmer [00:07:04]:

But we convince ourselves. We create a burning platform for ourselves. We create that sense of urgency, oh, we have to do this. I have to do this. To move on. I have to do this. I have all these things I got to do. So this is the first domino that has to fall.

Perry Maughmer [00:07:14]:

And that's all ridiculous because it's untrue. It's just stories we tell ourselves. So let me. Let me tell you what I feel as I record this right now. I feel a sense of relief that I'm talking about it. I feel a little restlessness. There's a little trepidation. There's a little fear.

Perry Maughmer [00:07:41]:

There might be some modicum of guilt. Not a lot. There is. There is also some level of confusion. I'm not clear on the metrics of how I should be making this decision. And that's part of my. Part of my effort to talk through it is so I can maybe come to some of that clarity of what matters and what doesn't. And.

Perry Maughmer [00:08:06]:

And. And again, I can feel the weight of expectations that I never agreed to carry. I feel the possibility of letting go. I feel the question, who am I if this stops? It's kind of funny because whenever we're anywhere, and Lisa, my wife, is with me, and we're meeting anybody. We're meeting people that we don't know or people that we know casually. And they asked me what I do. She inevitably. The things she always throws out.

Perry Maughmer [00:08:38]:

There is way. As a podcast, which I never talk about. And it's funny because there. And this is just. Okay, this is just. You're inside my head right now. You just get the benefit or the. I don't know if it's a benefit or not, but to me, there's a difference between I have a podcast versus saying I'm a podcaster.

Perry Maughmer [00:08:59]:

Those are two very different things in my head. I have no idea which one I am or if I have either. If I'm either, but I do. It's funny. She says that, and she's like, well, tell them. You know, they're like, well, what's it about? And I'm like. And then I just make up some bullshit answer and move on. Like, I don't have any interest in talking about it, you know, because then it inevitably leads to more questions which I don't want to answer, which I don't care.

Perry Maughmer [00:09:22]:

I don't. I don't care if they listen to it or not. I don't. It doesn't matter. Like, I'm not trying to build anything, which is one of the reasons I'm sitting here talking about this. It's just the. The. The lack of clarity for myself is, why am I doing this if I don't want to talk about it, if I don't anybody to listen to it, if I don't want to promote it, if I don't want to go around, you know, claiming that I do this, and why am I doing it? Because I don't know.

Perry Maughmer [00:09:46]:

It's always one of my favorite episodes of the Office. When Creed says that he has a blog, he tells. He's there. They're talking to him. He says, you should check out my blog. And then they interview Ryan. And Ryan's like, oh, no. I.

Perry Maughmer [00:09:58]:

I read some of Creed's thoughts, and the world's not ready for it. So I just sent up a Word document. It was like, you know, www.you know, creedsblog.com backslash. It's just a Word document that he opens up and types and thinks he has a blog. I mean, I could do that. I could just sit at home and. I mean, there's plenty of things I could just talk into and then listen back if I. If it's therapeutic, just to talk it out loud.

Perry Maughmer [00:10:19]:

So if I'm Missing that I could just do that. I guess maybe I'm better off just doing that. But I think that for all of us, some of you may be asking the same thing about things in your own life, things that you're doing that maybe have become. Maybe they haven't become performative, but maybe they just have outlived their usefulness. Or maybe it's just things. We should always stop at some point and do kind of an audit of what we're doing. And should all the stuff we're doing continue to be done, does it matter now? Like it mattered then? No judgment Again, we're bracketing our assumptions about it. We're not judging the thing.

Perry Maughmer [00:10:57]:

We're just asking ourselves, why are we still doing it? Does it still fulfill the thing that it did when we started doing it, whatever that might be? We should all have some routine of doing that. Because, you know, over time, again, things just. We get into a routine and we just keep doing things. And I'm not sure that the thing itself matters like it did before it mattered at some point. That was fine. We're not judging the thing. We're just saying, does it matter now? So this isn't just about a podcast. It's about a role and a rhythm and a story that you've kept going that's long past its truth.

Perry Maughmer [00:11:35]:

Sometimes the bravest thing you can say is, I don't know. That's the best thing you can say. The bravest thing you can say is, I don't know. But that's the first step to thinking about, maybe it is, maybe it isn't. Again, back to that need for certainty. We don't have to decide quickly because we live in a noisy world. And even truth, when said too often too easily, can become part of that noise. There's a lot of podcasts out there, and so part of me, the wrestling here is wrestling with adding to that noise.

Perry Maughmer [00:12:19]:

Why this one? Does this matter? Why do it? There's plenty of stuff out there, there's plenty that you can listen to that fall into the same, I guess, genre as this, I guess. But what makes it different? Why? If it. If it isn't adding, it's subtracting. If it isn't, if it isn't standing aside, it's adding to the noise. And that's just one thing I don't want to do. I don't want to add to the noise. And I'm not interested in repeating myself just to stay relevant. I'm not interested in filling your ears just because I can And I was talking to Brett before we started, and I said, you know, one of the challenges is just from a very kind of core issue, is how over the last several months, what's really become clear to me is my desire to shift all the work that I do to have a heavily phenomenological foundation.

Perry Maughmer [00:13:21]:

And what that means is this isn't about the new shiny thing, that nobody's coming to save you. And that's good news, because you didn't need save to start with that. Everything you have is inside of you. And really, it's about. It's about that rhythm, to access that and to revitalize that and to start believing in that. Because everybody's journey is their own. And so there is no. I mean, there's all kinds of things.

Perry Maughmer [00:13:48]:

It's a flavor of the month, right? Every podcast, a lot of people listen to this because there's the new thing. The. This new person comes on to write a book about this. So now this is the answer. Well, wait a minute. And then two months from now, this is going to be the answer. And then. So do we stick with anything? Do we actually stick with something that aligns with our core? Because every leader and organization I work with is genuinely unique, and we can't just add on a framework over top of every company.

Perry Maughmer [00:14:17]:

It works everywhere. That's just utter and complete. It's nonsense. Everybody has to invent it for themselves. We certainly can learn from everything, but we have to make it uniquely our own. Because you have unique humans working for you. You're a unique human. You have to come up with your own thing that matters.

Perry Maughmer [00:14:43]:

And the silence is what unnerves us, because it can't be commodified. It can't be measured. It doesn't feed into the algorithm. But silence speaks. It speaks to whether or not this still cost me something, because if it doesn't, then I've already lost that thread. So here's the experiment I'm running. What happens if I don't rush to a conclusion? What happens if I let go of performance and just lean into presence? These three episodes, this series isn't content. It's a confrontation with my ego, with my fear, and with my need to be useful.

Perry Maughmer [00:15:25]:

In this second episode, especially this one, is the hardest one, because I'm not offering closure. I'm offering more ambiguity. And if you're still here, you're choosing to sit in it with me. And that matters because we're not trying to come to a conclusion. We're just giving voice to the Things that matter. And you might think that the stakes are about continuing the podcast. They're not. The stakes are about whether I'm willing to keep living in alignment with what I preach.

Perry Maughmer [00:15:54]:

I talk about truth. I talk about tension. I talk about being relentless. Not an output, but in honesty. And this is where I have to live it. To speak when it's real, to shut up when it's not. Because presence without purpose is just performance. And I don't want to perform for you.

Perry Maughmer [00:16:13]:

I don't want to perform for anyone. I don't want to perform for me. So now let's turn the mirror. What in your life has been continuing just because it's always been there? What noise are you generating to avoid your own silence? What, have you been afraid to pause because you're terrified of what that pause might reveal? We don't ask those questions because we're strong. We ask them because we're ready. There is always an issue with readiness, and that's the biggest issue for all of us, is we have to do it all when we're ready. So being able to assess our own readiness is imperative. So this isn't a cliffhanger.

Perry Maughmer [00:17:06]:

It's more of a clearing. It's a space between what was and what might be. So episode three is coming, and with it, the final decision. But today, today we sit in the not knowing, and we let that be enough. Because sometimes silence is an absence. Sometimes silence is sacred. So we're going to wrap up. Silence is still a response.

Perry Maughmer [00:17:42]:

Last month we did the Point, or last week it was the Point was Never the podcast. And then coming up, the next episode is going to be titled this Is the Threshold. Now, I do want to tell you again, if you have thoughts, comments, insights, you can email me at perry@therelentlessfew.com and we'll see what happens in episode three of if this Is the End. Thanks for joining me. Stay relentless and I'll talk to you soon.