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Hello, Sounds True friends, and welcome in this episode of Insights at the Edge. My guests are Tony Schwartz and Kimberly Manns. Let me tell you a little bit more. Kimberly Manns is the CEO of H3Diversity, a consulting firm that enables leaders to bring their whole selves—head, heart, and hands—to the cultivation and creation of inclusive leadership, inclusive teams, and inclusive organizations. Kimberly’s here with Tony Schwartz. Tony’s someone I’ve known for a long time, something like two and a half decades. He’s a journalist, a bestselling author, and the founder and CEO of the Energy Project, a consulting firm that helps individuals and organizations more skillfully manage their energy so they can thrive in a world of relentlessly rising demand and complexity. Together Kim and Tony have created a new audio series with Sounds True. It’s called The Reckoning: Why Are You Who You Are and Who Can You Become?
And here to start, Tony and Kim, I want to have you address something you say at the very beginning of The Reckoning, you say the work of The Reckoning is to see more of what you’re not seeing and feel more of what you’re not feeling. Oh, wow, that’s a lot. That’s a big tall order. So if you could tell me each what you mean by that. See what we’re not seeing? I mean there’s so much we’re not seeing. Feel what we’re not feeling—well. There’s a reason I’m not feeling it, thank you very much. How is this the work of The Reckoning?
Tony Schwartz: Well, I think I’ve been on this very journey, Tami, for decades probably, and maybe more because the whole notion of development, and specifically of childhood development, is that, let me start this over. Can I do that?
Tami Simon: You can because we’re friends.
Tony Schwartz: I won’t do it again.
Tami Simon: We will edit it. You can do it again. It doesn’t matter. We’re friends. Jen’s my friend too. Kim’s our, we’re all friends. We can do whatever the heck we want. It’s tape.
Tony Schwartz: Great. OK, here we go. So if you think about, Tami, childhood development, it happens kind of automatically. And what happens, actually, is that over time you see more and you feel more, you’re conscious of more. And so that’s why if you have a house and you’ve got a ten-year-old and a five-year-old in it and you happen to walk down the street to get something and the house catches on fire, you want the ten-year-old to be in charge, not the five-year-old. Because the ten-year-old, in almost every single case, is going to be able to see more and is therefore going to be able to handle it with more skills and more capacity. If it’s a 15-year-old and a ten-year-old, same thing applies. You want the 15-year-old instead of the ten-year-old.
But the thing is that around 18 or 19 or 20, we hit this moment in our lives where the constant increase in what we can see and in our own growth and development slows—and it slows really considerably. And what happens is that we shift into something we call confirmation bias. So we’ve spent all these years as we’ve been growing up, trying to develop an identity, a sense of who we are, and what we’ve discovered is that now we want to be grown-ups, we’re tired of being growing-ups. You know what, I’m struggling because I’m not as awake as I hoped I would be.
Kimberly Manns: Do you want me to take a stab at it?
Tony Schwartz: Why don’t you start, Kim? OK, thank you.
Kimberly Manns: Yeah. What comes to mind when I think about those questions is, I think about how Tony and I first met. We met right after the murder of George Floyd and everybody was grappling with the question of, what do you do in this moment? How can I be of service in the moment? How do you actually solve the problems of all the polarities that we’re now facing as a society? And I think as he and I started to have the conversation—and it was a much larger group than he and I—that it became increasingly clear that at least one of the answers was to help all of us be bigger human beings and therefore better leaders.
So how do we help people get beyond their own mental model, which gets us into these either-or polarities that we’ve been experiencing so much in our society lately, to expand into something larger that not only allows us to deepen into more of who we are but then also see more of who each other are and actually see others in ourselves. And so it was this big dream that we had. And then we started asking question, how do we do that? And so it began this long conversation and journey of what a leadership program looked like that really helped individuals see more and be more.
Tami Simon: Now of course you could create a leadership program, each of you on your own, and yet you decided to create The Reckoning together. Why?
Tony Schwartz: Yeah. Well actually, originally, we created a version of The Reckoning that Kim joined in the pilot version of it. And we were, because of what had happened with George Floyd, our original thought was, we’re really interested in how people can grow and develop on their own. And then suddenly we were faced with a situation where it was so obvious that we needed to be also thinking about this in terms of how people connect with others. And we were taking—Kim and about a dozen other people—through this process. And at a certain point in it, Kim came to us and said, “We’re starting to talk about race and about identity and about belonging.” And essentially she said, she could speak for herself, but essentially she said, you can’t really do this by yourself. You really don’t have the lived experience to be able to reflect back, in a way, our experience. Because the group was half people of color in a way that resonates for us. You need to be able to have another perspective in this.
And I think both my daughter Emily and I realized, yep, that makes a lot of sense. And so we started talking with Kim about what it would look like if we brought the two sets of skills and experiences together. And it was off to the races from there.
Tami Simon: And when it comes to this notion of seeing more and feeling more, I wonder how working together has, if you will, pressurized you both to do that. And if you can share a bit about that.
Kimberly Manns: We’re both smiling because it’s been an amazing journey between the two of us. And we’ve had both these extreme highs and, honestly, some lows because of the differences in our lived experiences, the differences in our mental models, the differences in how we approach the work. And so there’s been a lot of rupture and repair between us all in the service of thinking about what really needs to happen in order for us to bring this broad view of what leadership could look like. So not only have we figured out, what do our participants need to see and feel more? We’ve had to go through the process ourselves, individually and with each other.
Tony Schwartz: I’d also add, Tami, that when you think about this notion of seeing more implicitly, what we’re saying is, there’s a lot you’re not seeing. What is it you’re not seeing? You’re not seeing all the things that it’s incredibly uncomfortable to see. You’re not seeing all the ways in which all the things that you build to protect and defend yourself in the face of the internal experience that, fundamentally, you’re not good enough. Because that’s such a universal experience for people, to greater and lesser degrees, in different ways.
And so you get a whole range of things, starting with belief systems and mindset and biases and habits and rationalizations—all of these things that are going on inside you, mostly unconsciously, that are determining how you show up in the world but that you mostly don’t realize. So really seeing more is about embracing all of who you are. It’s about the capacity to look at both the best and the worst of your own instincts and behaviors and to accept all of it. Because the reality is, when you can truly embrace all of who you are, you have nothing left to defend. And what a spectacular saving of energy it is not to be spending as much of it in defense.
Tami Simon: And I want to talk a lot more about that, but before we get there, Tony, I want to ask you just a very direct question, which is, did you have to reckon with certain aspects of white male privilege and power as part of even the creation of The Reckoning? And how did that process go for you by partnering with Kim and sharing the power of the stage to create this program?
Tony Schwartz: Well, that reckoning is ongoing. I’m still in that reckoning. I think it was a huge factor and remains so and it’s, first and foremost, it’s about race. Because race is so inescapably an issue. If you are a person of color, you walk out of your house every morning and the world is going to confront you with the fact that you’re a person of color. If you are white and you had my experience, you probably walked out of your house fairly oblivious to the idea that there would be any issue in your walking down the street and showing up in the world. So oblivious—I think that would probably describe the way I came to this at the beginning. My heart was in the right place. I grew up with a mother who was actually a civil rights pioneer, also a very active and well-known feminist.
So I grew up in a household where these were issues that we talked about, but that’s very different than actually having the experience of dealing with that in the world. And half this group, as I said, were people of color. The person who runs the energy project now is a woman of color, many of our facilitators are people of color. So this is an issue that I have felt compelled to engage with a lot. It’s not only though race, it’s also gender, it’s age, it’s geography, it’s power as you say. So for example, I am the person who owns and runs The Energy Project. So by definition, there’s a power dynamic that’s different and I’m constantly in the experience of, is my concern here? Kim has referred to the fact that we’ve had our ups and downs, is my, is the way I’m, what I’m feeling and the way I’m showing up—because is there a part of me that isn’t seeing what the impact is of my power, what the impact is of being white versus black, male versus female, older versus younger? Yeah, it’s all part of it.
Tami Simon: One of the ideas that hit me hard in listening to The Reckoning was this notion that there’s a part of us, often, that wants to be better than other people. That’s comparing ourselves to other people. And that is one of the ways that we quote, unquote, “defend,” as you said. And I’d love to understand from both of you how you’ve gone through the process of identifying, oh, these are the parts of me that are the heavy defenders.
And I mean, I just will just bring myself forward in the discussion to share that when I heard that I go, yeah, I want to be better than other people. So I don’t actually feel how possibly neutrally not worth very much I am. So if I’m better, oh my God, I’m worth a lot. And that’s defending from this very vulnerable sense of, it’s possible I’m not really worth a whole lot. And it’s like, oh wow, that’s running so much of my life. That’s a kind of reckoning. So I’d like to learn from both of you, what have been the big defender personas, if you will, but they’re even more than that. They’re kind of character formations that you’ve discovered are running your lives. And how have you gone through a transformation process around that? Kim, you want to go?
Kimberly Manns: Sure. So it’s an ongoing process of reflection and I was reviewing the audio today and it helped me get back into the space when we were taping not too long ago. And I was able to remember some of the either/or in comparisons that we were journeying through at that time—and we still are in this moment. But what I recognize for myself is that there are times when Tony, not intentionally, but because of, I think, maybe even my own stuff, replicates experiences of hierarchy and power that have not been great experiences for me.
And so even before him, I’ve had experiences with hierarchy and power that haven’t been positive. And so him, as a white male who has had this very long career in this field, who has been doing this for a while, all these different power dynamics, older than I am, has at times replicated an experience that I’ve had to take a step back from and say, what’s coming up for me at this moment that I need to take responsibility for?
So I know that that’s a deep journey of mine, and at times I’ve had to even take space from the situation in our partnership just so I can just solely deal with what’s happening with me internally versus some of what the external exchange of us is replicating.
Tony Schwartz: Yeah, better than and less than, it’s like a losing game because—
Tami Simon: Or it could be a winning and losing. I mean that’s the whole nature of it, better than/less than.
Tony Schwartz: Yeah, the thing is, it’s a losing game, because the moment that you begin to feel “better than,” even if you can martial evidence that you’re “better than,” you’re at risk of being “less than” instantly. So the minute you’re on top in a hierarchical situation, there’s a part of you that’s worrying that you won’t be OK unless you stay on top. So you’re always oscillating between “better than” and “less than,” and neither one is a secure place to find yourself. And the other piece of this is that I really do believe, and I know we’ll get into this, but I really do believe that we’re not a single self. There are—we have multiple parts. Everyone knows this because everyone has had the experience in saying, a part of me right now feels really angry and a part of me is fine with the way things are going.
So we all know that we have these different parts, and I do believe that the most core part of who we are, that what we call the core Self, actually isn’t—never lives in the experience of “better than” or “less than.” It doesn’t worry about its own value. It’s that we know you know that experience. You know that experience if you’ve had any form of a flow experience, where you are just basically one with the experience you’re having, you’re calm, you feel clear, you have a sense of compassion—that’s actually a core state. It’s an essential state. The problem is, most of the time, the vast majority of the time, you are living in one of your defenders, you are living in a “better than” or “less than.” You’re living in an angry part or in a part that withdraws, or you are not actually bringing all of your capacity to the table, because you can’t grow and defend at the same time.
So just one little more thing about this, if you think about, Tami, the difference between growth spending and defense spending, and from a governmental perspective, it’s a zero-sum game. Meaning if you spend a $100 million on defense, that’s exactly a $100 million not available for growth. There’s no disputing that. So if, in fact, we are living most of our lives unconsciously so from a defender’s perspective—and you can defend yourself in dysfunctional ways and you can defend yourself in very socially acceptable ways—it’s a defender if you feel a compulsion to do it. So a high achiever can be from a place of defense. In fact very often it’s a person who’s a real giver, who’s a caretaker for other people. If that’s compulsive, it can be from a socially acceptable place. You can also be an angry person. You can also be a person who drinks in order to numb yourself. So really understanding that the parts of you that are in the business of defending are not serving you, they’re not allowing you to be the best of who you’re capable of being.
Tami Simon: And let’s make this really explicit for people. What are we defending against, these defenders?
Tony Schwartz: Worthlessness. I’m going to let Kim expound on that. But basically, what’s at stake when you are triggered in your life, when you move into a state of fight or flight, when the stress hormones start to circulate in your body, if you trace it backwards and you ask yourself, what am I so agitated about? It’s almost always a threat to your value and worthiness.
Kimberly Manns: Yeah. So when I was talking earlier about, you had asked what were situations that came up for us during this where we were able to explore some of our defenders, I was also referring to what Tony’s alluding to, which is a framework of what we call the three selves that we introduce as a part of this course. [We have] this core Self that Tony was talking about, which is not a self that has this idea of “better than” or “less than” or either-or—a comparison. But then there’s this other self that’s a child self that at some point in our lives feels helpless. And so before we have a chance to really connect to what we call our deepest Self, the essence of who we are, our core Self, many of us have been, and I think actually all of us have this experience of being in this child self where we feel helpless.
And then our immediate reaction, before we really understand the power of the core Self, is to create what we call what Tony’s referring to as defenders. And so these defenders can show up in very acceptable ways. They can show up as perfectionists, they can show up as people who are caretakers, always there for everybody. And they can show up in very ineffective ways—people who get very angry and express it in ways that are very unproductive. And so again, those ways that we get triggered that we then mistake for all of who we are and our personality is what we call our defenders.
And our goal here in this work is to get deep enough into our core Self, which doesn’t have an either-or, a “better than” or “less than,” that is actually able to take each one of those parts of ourself—the child self, the defender—and accept all of them and give them what they need to serve at their highest purpose for us versus being in what we call these unconscious states, where there are these either-ors in this binary ways of being.
Tami Simon: Is it fair to say that part of the core journey of The Reckoning is to become aware of these defenders and to say, oh, I know what they’re doing, I know why they’re doing it, and I also think I am starting to sense my inherent worth outside of the defender. And if so, then what I’d like to know from each of you is, how did you encounter and know your core Self, your core energy? Was there an initial moment where you were like, oh my, it happened when I was sitting on the meditation cushion. It happened in this inquiry practice. It happened when I took psilocybin, reading this book. Or has it just been a gradual dawning of, oh my God, I think I might be kind of OK underneath it all. So I’d be curious to hear that from both of you.
Tony Schwartz: Well, let me just give credit where credit is due. These are reformulations of ideas that come from Internal Family Systems therapy, Dick Schwartz’s work.
Tami Simon: And I’m sure many people are recognizing that as we’re speaking. You’ve taken them and made them very business-friendly. So thank you for that, and just also accessible and usable. So I appreciate that. Thank you.
Tony Schwartz: Yes. So I was introduced to this conceptually through Dick’s work, but I’d say for me, perhaps one of the most life-changing moments was actually a cognitive insight and it was an experience of waking up one morning. I’m almost making it sound like, it almost felt like an epiphany. And it dawned on me that all of the worst things that people had ever said about me, no small number, or that I’d said about myself, which was an even bigger number, were not only true, but they were truer than I could bear to tolerate. But they weren’t all that was true. And that there was a part of me that could actually look at those aspects of me, what I now call defenders, and recognize that they weren’t the whole story. And I think a lot of people live in the experience of their defenders, assuming that it’s reality.
Most of us look out in the world and we think what we see is reality, but in fact, it’s only a slice of reality. It’s the reality that we have created for ourselves, in large part, to be able to move forward in the world. If you think about the enneagram, which most of the folks listening to this are familiar with, but the personality typing system that posits that there are nine different types that characterize human beings. And we have recognized that they’re actually nine defenders. There are nine different ways, the enneagram types that people define themselves as in order to get the feeling of value and love that, to one degree or another, they don’t have. So for me, in beginning to actually see that these defenders were out there, it helped me to also see that somebody had to be seeing that, there had to be another part that was seeing that.
And as I began to experience that, and I want to tell you, Tami, that it takes a long time. We can introduce the idea that there’s a core Self, but the actual direct experience of it, it’s really—it takes a long time before most people begin to tune into it. And there’s no bell that rings that can tell you, this is it. It is just a felt sense. But over time I began to notice that and I began to notice that when I was feeling that its relationship to my defenders was one of protection, was one almost of parenting. It was like the core Self will step in and begin to take over from the defender, the role it has felt compelled to play, but isn’t really well-equipped to play.
Tami Simon: Can you give me a concrete example, Tony? Give me a concrete example from your life?
Tony Schwartz: So one of my primary defenders is anger, is certainty. I’m an eight on the enneagram, which is the boss. And if I feel a sense of threat or danger, my first impulse is to try to take control of the situation and simultaneously to push away the feelings of vulnerability and potentially of weakness. And as Kim was saying, that feeling of vulnerability or weakness is the feeling of a child. The child is, in fact, defenseless. And if the child is left alone or isn’t fed or is treated badly, the child really doesn’t have any recourse. That’s why the defender shows up. But the defender shows up to protect the child at an early age itself. I think if you ask most people when they’re in a defender, so I’m feeling really angry right now. How old are you? They will not tell you their own age.
What they’ll tell you is 9, 11, 7. What they’ll realize is that there are actually children in grown-ups clothing, they’re little soldiers. We have a bunch of little soldiers in us that jump into help. Now when the Self comes into play, so you ask me what happens? Well when the Self comes into play, the Self doesn’t have a fear about its own value. The Self can embrace, the Self can feel compassion.
So the Self can act in much the same way that a parent would if a child fell off a jungle gym and was bleeding and screaming and needed to be comforted. The adult, the core Self, the older part of you is capable of taking care of your child, taking care of your vulnerabilities in an entirely different way. So then it becomes OK for somebody like me to acknowledge, which I can now. I can acknowledge those feelings of weakness or vulnerability without feeling, I’m going to die. Now it does depend on the stress level I’m living in, but it’s part of my repertoire now where it was not before.
Tami Simon: And Kim, what about you? The discovery of this core Self-energy? What’s been your journey with that?
Kimberly Manns: I would say that all of us, probably including myself, have had glimpses of the core Self all throughout life. These times where you kind of feel like you’re in a flow and you don’t know how to name it, but it feels like something greater than yourself that you’re operating in. But it really hasn’t been until the past few years that I’ve gotten acquainted with kind of somatic work and Internal Family Systems that I’ve been able to more skillfully be, have my consciousness directed at the core Self, where I now identify or much more frequently can identify that that’s my true Self.
Because before I would feel glimpses of it, but I just thought, OK, that’s just a part of me. But then I would equally identify with parts of me that were sad from bad experiences or parts of me that needed to plan everything that were, now I understand, parts of me that I formed for important reasons to defend myself. And so really, my journey of liberation from these defenders has been more skillfully managed and more thoughtfully created over the past few years that I’ve been able to almost go through an identity change, to say, oh, OK, this is really who I am. And so I have a much better sense of the essence of who I am. And really these tools have been transformational for me.
Tami Simon: When you say somatic work, can you be explicit? What are you doing? What are you feeling? How has that shifted things for you?
Kimberly Manns: Well, I would say, trauma lives in your body for the most part. And so I spent a long period of my life running from being associated with my body. And it wasn’t until I got introduced to somatic work, which helped me separate from just identifying with my emotions and the cognitive part of my intelligence that I was able to almost expand an understanding of who I was into my entire body and create spaciousness in who I was. So specifically, something as simple as this exercise of having my hands open up like this and being able to identify with the fact that these are my hands and being able to understand that in these hands are the experiences of not only my current self but my three-year-old self, my teenage self, and being able to literally feel all those parts of myself as I just do something simple like this.
So the somatic work is really deepening into this experience of your body as a place of safety, which I didn’t have for a long time. And so I would say those exercises on a daily basis has really helped strengthen and deepen the spaciousness within me to have some separation.
And I feel like all this work is about just getting just a little bit of separation from what we’ve identified in the past, whether it’s emotions, whether it’s our intellect, whether it’s our race, our gender—just getting just a little bit of space to be able to say, OK, that’s a part of me, but that’s not all of me. And what does that part of me need in order to be expressed in the fullest, deepest way? And so sometimes it’s a little bit hard until you actually experience it, but that core Self really does have the ability to offer compassion and courage and curiosity to all these parts of us that we thought just were completely who we were—enough so that they can be kind of liberated into their fullest and greatest selves.
Tami Simon: OK, let me see if you two can help me make a connection here for a moment if that’s OK. Because when I hear something like The Reckoning, just that title, I think, OK, I’m getting older and I am getting older. Oh, oh, we all are. And there’s this sense of, did I live my true genuine heart’s life, my soul’s life? Or did I live my true life? My real, so what’s the connection between this true person? We want to be like The Reckoning, like come on, help me sort this out. I don’t want this false self. The false self is quote, unquote, are these defender personalities. How do you see that?
Tony Schwartz: I don’t see the defenders as false personalities, by the way. And in fact the Self itself, the core Self doesn’t really have personality. I almost prefer to think of it as an energy. You have self-energy, but it’s not highly, in the core Self, it’s not highly differentiated. It doesn’t have, for example, an agenda. It doesn’t have personality characteristics, it has a healing desire, it has an equanimity. But so the defenders, as you do this work, what you are really trying to connect with is that they are there. They’re not to be hated and to be disdained and to be run over. They were there for only one reason, to help you. They were there to help you. And by the way, it was an unfair demand on them because they weren’t equipped to do that job. They stepped in and took on that burden because, relative to the child, your child’s self-ability to deal with it, they had at least more capacity.
So The Reckoning is really the shift, Tami, I’ll make it in a way very simple. It’s the shift from our largely external orientation in the world—how are we doing with other people, how are we achieving or not achieving, do we have the right relationships, are we measuring up—to a turn inside, in which you’re asking yourself those fundamental questions that are part of the title of this audio series. Why are you the way you are? Because all of these defenders, all of who you are, you developed for a reason. And we don’t usually think about that. So you developed the way you did for a reason. And then the question becomes, who can you become when you begin to do what Kim was talking about, which is get a little space from these defenders, these definers of you. Who can you become? Or another way of putting that would be, what do you really want?
So in coaching, for example, the primary question I’m asking my coachees is: What do you really want? What do you want apart from what you think you should be, from what you’re been expected to be, from what you think will keep you safe, from what will make you respectable? So that’s that second piece of the puzzle. Who could you become if you actually allowed yourself to accept what you really want and go for it? And then finally, what’s standing in your way? That’s The Reckoning, Tami. That’s The Reckoning. And most people don’t reckon. Why? Because it’s too painful. Why? Because if you start to think about all those ways in which you’ve—things you’re protected yourself from feeling again, around worthlessness and not being good enough, it feels too painful. So people turn away from it in a thousand ways. We have a thousand ways of doing that.
But I love the provocativeness of The Reckoning. And the people I admire most in the world, and Kim is one of them, through all this stuff, Kim is one of them. And why is Kim one of them? Because she freaking reckons. I know that this is a person who will not accept that, “Oh, it’s just that way. That’s just me.” If it’s not working for her, she’s going to look into it. And I have a handful of people in my life for whom that’s really true in an everyday sense. So The Reckoning is an act of bravery.
Tami Simon: That’s beautiful, Tony when you were talking about why we don’t do it and how painful it is. Kim, I wrote down something you teach in the series, which is, 75% of our brain developed by age three, 90% of our brain developed by age five. And I mean, I think that was the moment when I was like, no way. That’s a whole lot of formation. Before I even really had a say in what was going on and what was going on in that family context, there was a lot of dysfunction, as is true for many of us—and 90% of our brain was formed. But we have to reckon with that is what you’re saying.
Kimberly Manns: Yeah, I mean, I like to bring up that statistic because I want people to have so much compassion for themselves and others about how much of us is hardwired before what you say happens, where we actually have the agency to support and take care of ourselves. And so that if, in an early childhood stage, you’re dealing with any type of toxic stress, then that actually changes the way your brain is formed and the way your neurons connect, and the complexity of which your brain is able to develop. So there’s scientific research behind why those first zero to five years are so important. But the most interesting thing is what buffers that pain and really helps your brain develop is having positive relationships with adults that care for you.
And so what we’re doing here with The Reckoning is really teaching, how do you re-parent yourself in the places where you weren’t able to have access to that loving and caring support. For whatever reason, many of us have had parents that maybe did the best that they can, or maybe we didn’t have parents that did the best that they could, but all of us at some point or the other have to go through that process of re-parenting part of ourselves that didn’t get the love and the care that it needed, in order to not be so defensive and to not be so reactive. And so all of us have to have compassion for why we are the way that we are. But it is possible to recreate those connections at any age. It just takes a lot of persistence and a lot of kind of deepening into the core of who you are.
Tony Schwartz: I’d add to that, implicit in what Kim just said is, trauma is normative. Trauma’s not the exception. The terrifying experience that your needs are not going to be met is a universal experience. It’s built into the fabric of your growth from the time, from that period where you are helpless. And there are times when your needs are not going to be met no matter how wonderful your caretakers are. That legacy that you carry inside you is what we need to reckon with. And until we acknowledge that it’s happened, you cannot change what you do not notice. So noticing is a profound starting place. And to notice, you have to be willing to notice all of it because otherwise, you’re back in the protecting, censoring game. So I really feel like it’s a gift to people to help them see that it’s not that they went off the rails, they did what happens by being human beings, and being human is incredibly difficult. Period. Full stop.
It’s hard and it does have pain in it. And if you look at the time we’re in, because The Reckoning that we’re talking about, we’ve brought to the world in 2022, 2023, and we have coming at us more demands, disruptors, uncertainties, fears than we’ve ever had in our lives. And I’ve been around a long time, Tami, you’ve been around a long time. And I find this unprecedented.
I took a break today in the middle of the day from the regular work I was doing, and I just started flipping through the internet. I went on to either the Washington Post or the New York Times, and there’s a little article saying in five years, 98% chance that we’re going to have a radical increase in temperature on the planet. Not in 20 or 30 years, not maybe someday, but in five years. That’s just one little piece of the day I spent. But it’s monumental and it feels as if there are tons of those impositions on our life at this point.
So I remembered meeting Ram Dass back in 1975, and maybe I was listening to him give a talk or maybe I was interviewing him, but he said, “We’re going to need people who are able to stay regulated in a very, very difficult, stressful world.” The Reckoning is also about, how do you regulate yourself in the face of very, very challenging circumstances. And when you do, when you can regulate yourself, when you can tap into that core Self, it’s contagious. In The Energy Project, we call it the Chief Energy Officer. You’re a Chief Energy Officer,f for better or for worse. So when you can radiate some of those feelings, you are having an impact that’s much bigger than just you.
Tami Simon: And as you’re talking about the time we’re in, Tony, it makes me aware—and just your partnership, you and Kim working together makes me aware of this—the collective reckoning that we’re in as a human species. So yes, we’re having to face the pain of our individual early childhood dysfunction and how we reacted to that, but humans are in the midst of having to confront the horrible mess we’ve created. And so I’m curious what you think that connection is, of developing these reckoning skills at the individual level and what we’re faced with collectively.
Kimberly Manns: It makes me think of an Audrey Lorde quote that says, “You can’t dismantle the master’s house with the master’s tools.” And basically what she’s saying is, we can’t use the same ways of being and thinking if we want to create something new. And so what I view right now, with all this grappling with each other and all this polarization, is a need not just for new policies to address the issues that we have, but a new way of being so that we can get to the complexity of policies that we need to address the complexity of issues that we have today. And I believe that our current ways of being in our current mental models that really, really—the Western world really identifies with our cognitive intelligence—is just not what’s going to help us move into the future in a productive way.
Tony Schwartz: Yeah, I think another way to think about this, just to pick up on what Kim’s saying, is that we have an operating system inside us that is inadequate to the tasks that we’re being asked to—the challenges we’re being asked to address. So again, part of The Reckoning is the upgrading of the operating system. It’s literally being able to say—this is why that Audrey Lorde quote is so apt—is the way we’ve been doing things is not going to be the vehicle through which we transform. And that involves a lot of dismantling and that involves a lot of re-imagining the possible.
So if you think of it just in the terms, Kim started to mention a moment ago, we tend to think that we can operate by one center or one form of intelligence, which is cognitive. That’s the highest level you can reach when you’re logical and rational.
That’s what Piaget said is, what you’re trying to get to formal operational thinking. And when you get there, the smartest guy in the room is the person, it’s usually the guy who’s getting that role. The smartest guy in the room is the person who gets the prize and gets to run the show. But actually, there are multiple other centers of intelligence that we’ve drawn on as a culture much, much less. Three of them, just as an example, are the intelligence of the heart. So what is that feelings take? Because we started out this conversation talking a lot about, well, what about seeing more and feeling more? So what does the heart bring to this in terms of relationship? What about the body? Because the body, not only is it the repository of trauma, as Kim was pointing out, but it’s also the repository of wisdom.
The mind can move from rational to rationalizing very easily. So the mind can become, instead of your friend, it can become your distorter and it can tell, make up stories. The body is in effect a potential antidote to that, because if you are calm, if you’re regulated, the body will tell you what’s true. The gut feeling, the instinct, the intuition, those are all real forms of intelligence. They don’t have language the way the mind does, which gives it an unfair advantage. But that’s a very powerful source of intelligence.
And finally, the spirit. I’m aware of, when I sort of sort through those four centers of intelligence, the spirit is a powerful piece of what I draw on to move through the world. Because the spirit for me is about, what about the greater good? What about that which is beyond me that I need to be taking into account? What about when I step away from my own self-absorption? What am I here to serve? And I know that’s something that you can certainly resonate with in your own work. So there’s four centers of intelligence, which in The Reckoning we’re almost introducing people or reintroducing them to their existence, or three of the four we’re reintroducing, because we tend to devalue three of the four.
Tami Simon: And I think most people have an intuitive ready connection. At least they understand when you say the intelligence of the heart, their heart may be closed. They may not want to feel what’s there, but they know what you’re talking about. Bodily intelligence and gut instincts. I think people know what you’re talking about there too. They may be disembodied, etcetera, but they still know what you’re talking about. Then when you say I think this quote, unquote, “spiritual intelligence,” I imagine that there’s a lot of question marks out there and kind of mouths that are going, what? What are you talking about? So, Kim, I wonder if you can say a little bit more about, what is that for you?
Kimberly Manns: Yeah, this is the one that we try to be the most broad about in our trainings, our leadership programs, because it really varies from person to person. Some people identify it as God, some as universe, some as energy. And so it’s really kind of, what Tony alluded to, for me, which is what I deepen into to understand my highest Self and my highest purpose.
And so anytime I’m in a place where I’m feeling triggered and I’m feeling stuck, I try to move to just a deeper Self inside of me that has an understanding and an intuition of what is my higher purpose that I’m seeking after, so I can answer the question, what’s my next step based on what I’m really trying to move towards. So it’s just like this constant guide that I always have access to that, if I can remember, can really give me the wisdom and the intuition in the moment to make sure that I’m moving toward a higher purpose. And in my perspective, a higher power.
Tami Simon: What does that mean?
Tony Schwartz: Serving.
Tami Simon: What am I serving? That’s a good question. And Kim, what do you mean when you say a higher power?
Kimberly Manns: Well, we kind of talk about this in The Reckoning, which is a power that comes from within us that, when matched with our external power, can do the best service to the world and to others. And so there is an internal power that we all have that, again, doesn’t have the either/or, “better than/less than,” that really is in the highest service of ourselves and others, that we leverage appropriately with the external power we have—whether it’s our positions, whether it’s our race, gender, other identities—to really do the best good in the world and the best service to others.
Tami Simon: So for me, the highlight of our conversation so far was when Tony was talking about you, Kim, and he very excitedly said, “She freaking reckons.” And I thought to myself, oh, that’s interesting. What would be the characteristics, the qualities, the requirements to be somebody who freaking reckons? What does it mean to be that person? And I think that might be a good note for us to end on if you can both comment on that and maybe think of people you know who are reckoning heroes and heroines, if you will, courageous reckoners, what are they like? What do they do?
Kimberly Manns: Yeah. So that despite any differences that we have, that’s where me and Tony really align—in that admiration and respect for each other’s own path. And Tony doesn’t have to be reckoning right now, given where he is in life and given what he’s accomplished, but there is something inside of him that wants to keep going down that journey. So that’s something I’ve always been kind of astounded by.
Tami Simon: What does that mean, Kim, can you explain more? What does that mean?
Kimberly Manns: To me, it’s the courage to look within and say, what am I responsible for in this moment? It’s saying there might be something on the outside that’s causing my reaction, but there, it’s mirroring something internally that, if I dig deep enough and I love hard enough, will stop reacting. I will get enough spaciousness to be able to offer love not only to ourselves but to others. And that’s really what we’re trying to get to, is enough space inside of ourselves to where, as Tony says, we have nothing left to defend. And so what people get from us is the core Self as a reflection. So they’re able to get to love and compassion and courage from within us to support themselves.
Tony Schwartz: Yeah. And so I’ll give you a little bit of mine, which is a lot of similarity to Kim’s. She used the word responsibility. The other word that occurs to me is ownership. Are you willing to own it? Are you willing to own all of it? The beautiful and the ugly, the good, the bad, and the whatever the phrase is. So ownership, which as I’ve said and as she’s now said, is an act of courage. Because it doesn’t feel comfortable a lot of the time to own. It is such a big part of it.
The other part that I think is actually being able to step past your own stuff. So it sounds ironic when we’ve been talking all about dealing with your stuff, but ultimately it has to have a higher purpose. Ultimately, at this stage in my life, I’m more acutely aware than I have ever been that really it comes down to what am I, how am I adding value in the world?
And it doesn’t mean I have a measuring stick that says, if I’m not adding this much, it’s not OK. It means is my intent, my core intent, that I wake up in the morning committed to try to add value in the world. And my way to add value in the world is to share this knowledge about reckoning. There are lots of ways to be of service in the world, but in the absence of it, what you are missing from the ingredients you need to live at the best and highest level, you’re missing meaning. Because I don’t have the question, Tami, when I wake up in the morning, why am I here? I got it. I know why I am here. And it’s not about me.
Tami Simon: I’ve been speaking with Tony Schwartz and Kimberly Manns. They’ve joined together, and the effort and earned net of their work together is The Reckoning itself as they teach about the reckoning. It’s so beautiful how you can feel that in the audio teaching series that you’ve created, The Reckoning: Why Are You Who You Are and Who Can You Become? It’s a beautiful seven-session audio series. Thank you both so much for your deep commitment to be of service and to be true. Thank you.
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