Hatching Creativity: Conversations on Success, Innovation, and Growth
Welcome to "Hatching Creativity: Conversations on Success, Innovation, and Growth"! Join us as we dive deep into the world of creativity and explore the minds of remarkable individuals who have achieved extraordinary success in their respective fields.
In this podcast, we believe that creativity is not limited to the realm of art and design; it encompasses every aspect of life and business. Through engaging interviews and thought-provoking discussions, we'll uncover the secrets behind harnessing creativity to drive innovation and fuel personal and professional growth.
Discover the strategies, mindset, and experiences that have propelled our guests to new heights. We'll explore guests journeys, challenges, and breakthrough moments. Be inspired by their stories, learn from their failures, and gain practical insights to apply in your own creative endeavors.
Get ready to tap into the boundless potential of your own creativity, ignite your passion, and embark on a transformative journey of success, innovation, and growth. Subscribe now and join us on this exciting adventure!
Hatching Creativity: Conversations on Success, Innovation, and Growth
Exploring the Power of Personal Style and Authenticity: A Conversation with David Whitesock of Commonly Well
Buckle up for a captivating discussion with David Whitesock, the trailblazing founder and CEO of Commonly Well. What if the way you dress could not only boost your confidence but also alter your performance in professional settings? We promise a riveting conversation that dives deep into the power of personal style and its implications for behavioral health practice.
Welcome to Hatching Creativity. This isn't just another behavioral health podcast. This is the place where thought leaders converge to talk about real life challenges, breakthroughs and pivotal aha moments.
Speaker 2:I am really excited for today's guest, david Whitesock. David is with Commonly Well, he is a veteran in the industry and I'd love to have David share some of his experiences and some of the knowledge that he's gained from his years in the behavioral health care field to be able to give you guys some information and some things you can walk away from.
Speaker 3:I'm a CEO and founder of Commonly Well, a recovery intelligence company. I think data analytics, but really trying to take the combination of clinical and qualitative quality social data bring it together in a series of process. Intelligence to keep organizations and behavioral health moving like other businesses do, as opposed to sort of the episodic kind of relationships that behavioral health has.
Speaker 2:You know, david, one of the things that stands out when people see you, one of the things that stands out when I saw you before I got to know you, was your signature glasses, and I think that the story behind the glasses is really cool. And would you mind talking a little bit about the idea and your glasses and why you wear the glasses that you do?
Speaker 3:Well, one I can't see. Well, yes, and progressively as I get older that vision continues to get worse. I didn't have glasses for a while and then when I eventually got a pair, I kind of got a pair that was consistent with my psychology and that was one of not standing out. But what I started to find was getting through my own issues of self-confidence and esteem and having mentors who would tell me you know, you've got to find ways to get people to remember you. One of my mentors was really good at remembering people's names and you know, he'd not see somebody for years and the person would show up and he'd remember their wife's name or something, and so that always kind of stuck with me. So, yeah, I started figuring out well, what could I do? That's relatively inexpensive, that's not a flashy watch that I can't afford. Glasses were pretty easy, and so for a long time I wore red-framed glasses. Nobody wore red-framed, so that people just You're Sally.
Speaker 2:Jackie Raphael.
Speaker 3:Yeah, they're like, you're the guy with the glasses and so, yeah, I think all of us should find a way to do that. You know, for a lot of people, and maybe for you, depending upon the circumstance, it could be a tattoo. It's unfortunate, but when you show up in a place, those that can see, obviously they see something on you and that's where they start making judgments and connections. Yeah, so now I just find a pair of chunky glasses that sort of, you know, give my face something for people to remember, because there's nothing else here for people to remember.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that's awesome. I think that's great. It does stand out, but it stands out and makes you memorable in a positive kind of way and it also just gets the conversation started. And one of the things that I really liked about the story of your glasses you had mentioned about feeling awkward socially and how it's difficult to go up and start a conversation with people, and by having the glasses it's kind of a conversation starter, almost as like a Clark Kent, and it puts on a persona to a degree, at least in the beginning, where it opens the doors. I found with my tattoos it was like that too it opens up doors and made things a little bit less awkward to have those initial conversations, as long as they're not asking if it hurt.
Speaker 3:There's a television show or television. We don't really do television anymore, but we're dating ourselves Exactly. On Hulu I don't know if you're watching the bear, no, so I love the Bear. It's a show about a restaurant in Chicago, yeah, and in the second season there is a great couple of episodes where one of the characters is really struggling with his purpose.
Speaker 3:He sees, like his cousin starting this restaurant and the other people getting involved and they all have like a place, and he doesn't have this place and he's never had a place. At least that's the way he feels. His cousin, who's a world-class chef who was in Copenhagen and now back in Chicago with family and creating his thing, understands that each of the people that are going to work in this new restaurant they're building needs to get some serious experience, and so he sends his cousin to the best restaurant in the world for a week. It takes him all of the seven days to figure out why this restaurant does everything they do around hospitality and perfection of the plating, of the smudges on the forks and the glassware.
Speaker 3:And it takes him a week and finally, towards the end, he shows up to the restaurant that's being constructed with his cousin and he's wearing a suit, okay, and he says to people is because he was kind of a Chicago tough guy so he wasn't wearing suits. But he says it very clearly. He goes I feel better when I'm in this suit, I feel more confident, I feel like I can do something and it's like I mean we need those tricks for ourselves. So if it's a suit and you do this, you do this really well. You show up in the three piece and the pinstripe and the button down. You know straight up and I love it.
Speaker 2:Spenders.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's fantastic and I'm willing to bet, when you do that, your level of confidence and assertiveness and feeling like you own it is all there, david.
Speaker 2:That's really interesting and I love that you broke it down the way you did, because so often we just do things because they make us feel good but we also don't think about the those implications of the benefit that comes with that and the self-esteem that comes with it. And I think that's really important also when you're working in a treatment center and the way you show up and the way you present yourself and the way you relate to your clients. You know I talk with people all the time about authenticity and being your authentic self, and this really lends to that. You know, take pride in whatever it is that you have, and these things all develop around doing your own thing the way you want to.
Speaker 3:Yeah, can I tell a quick story?
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 3:So one of my first days working in this peer coaching organization back in South Dakota now the organization had been going on for a while. I was around when it was founded and then I got sidetracked by all you know, going to law school and then I go to work for the organization and one of the things that I had to do was just kind of sit back and just watch things for a couple of weeks because my job was to sort of restructure the operations. And I show up into the center one day and sitting off in the corner when the computer is a guy wearing a white t-shirt and jeans and I knew instantly that he had just I mean literally just that day that morning come out of prison, because there's a prison in Sioux Falls. People come out, they've got to do two things they got to meet their parole officer and they got to get a job right In addition to finding a place to live and all that stuff. But he was still wearing his prison outfit and he's kind of sitting there by himself and I say hello to him and he's chatting back and forth.
Speaker 3:It seemed like a super put together kind of guy and I said, hey, you just came out. He goes yeah, I said what are you doing? He said I'm trying to apply for jobs. I'm like you are or you're trying. And he goes I am.
Speaker 3:I said, great, do you have any other clothes? And he goes no. And he says that's my problem. I don't want to hit submit on any of these because I don't think I can actually go to a job interview looking like this. And I said, great, wait here. And there's a couple of places around town where you can find clothes right. And so a few of us just got together and we're like let's bring this dude some clothes so he can go to job interviews and just look decent. Because the thing is, whatever you put on your resume, I'm sorry but if you go to an interview, it's going to be how you show up, 100%. You know, I coached mock trial and trial advocacy and we'd have people that were wearing suits with arms too long and pants not right. And that's a judging contest. As much as you want the words to mean something coming out of your mouth, if you don't look together, it will be a distraction from the thing you're trying to do.
Speaker 2:We have conversations on this channel all the time about judgment. One of the things that happens so often is that we try to stop that judgment or to try to stop ourselves from judging, as opposed to recognizing that we are judging and then just trying to be introspective about why am I judging, why do I have this bias that I have? Because, really, you're never going to get that voice to stop, so understanding where the voice is coming from, and it is some sort of a tribalism thing where other person's bad and you're good, or they're trying to take something as opposed to just who is this person, what is their intention and what type of person is this? And we look at these anecdotal experiences with either individuals or with groups of people and create these judgments as well.
Speaker 3:I think for a lot of people who are in transition jobs, school to work that kind of stuff, or maybe they come from a particular part of town and now they've got to try to fit in elsewhere, and we see this all the time in addiction and behavioral health. It's like no, I'm showing up as who I am. Yeah, that's great. Except the rest of the world doesn't operate that way.
Speaker 2:It's also when people say I'm showing up as who I am, they're showing up with a persona or in some sort of a role that they're expected to. For a long time I played in a punk rock bands and I played in a lot of bands. We made a lot of noise, made bad decisions, all of the whole nine right. When you're in your I'm at a concert and I'm a punk kind of mentality, you behave different. You behave in a role, you behave like you think you're supposed to behave. And I notice when my tattoos are out and I was at a show and I was in that situation, I was living that role. I thought I was just being me, but I was being a role and trying to fit in. It really is not authentic. And when people look at those things and they say, well, sometimes we try to be individual and unique in order to fit in with a group as opposed to really being our authentic selves, and that's hard because we don't many of us don't appreciate our authentic selves like we should.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think you're right about all of that, and the only thing I would add to that is I oftentimes am engaging with people who are trying to get from a place where their lives were completely disrupted and now they're trying to get back into the flow of things and they still kind of have this rebel counterculture thing that they're living with, but they need to get a job. It's like I'm sorry, man, you've got to put that on hold for a moment. You just got to go work and if you go show up to a bank wanting a job as a teller again I'm dating myself who goes to banks anymore you can't show up in jeans with holes in the knees. You can't do it. You've got to understand the environment that you're going into. Now you can be authentic in how you present who you are in terms of behind that facade. But walk down the street Almost every building has a facade and it's not like it's inauthentic, covering up maybe some warts or some things that you just yeah, not everybody needs to see.
Speaker 3:I saw Ryan Holiday this morning. I was just kind of doing my daily stoic and then I go onto YouTube and I check a few things from him and one of the clips that popped up was his reminder from the stoics that you don't need to have to your point about judgment. You don't need to have an opinion about everything. That's true and and that works both ways, right, like I don't need to have an opinion about you, I don't need to have opinion about the news. I don't need to have it. But I could also choose to Not having an opinion about a certain thing that I'm entering and Just go in, because the objective isn't me have an opinion, the objective is me getting the job. Yeah right.
Speaker 2:Well, the other thing to consider, too, is Understanding really what's at the core. So I bring up punk, right, I bring up punk music and and the punk mentality, right. But really what is a punk mentality? It's rebellion against the norm, rebellion against things that are Unequitable or, um, you know, standing up for what's right. I mean, that's really what Punk rock music is about, right, and and that whole kind of scene in genre it it got skewed with so many other things the tattoos, the uniforms, all that stuff that everybody was wearing. The point is is it's a rebellion against the status quo.
Speaker 2:What I do right now Running a software company that makes it easier for people to treat people in behavioral health or treat people who are having very serious health conditions is as punk as it can get, whether I'm wearing a suit or a jacket or Sweater or whatever it is. So it's really about understanding, like, what do I really want to be and what do I really want to do is is is it about An act or what I'm wearing, or is it about what I'm actually doing and what I'm actually bringing to the world, because we all, I hope, want to bring good to the world.
Speaker 3:Yeah, many years ago I was fortunate to have gotten a Fellowship from a private foundation in minnesota and it allowed me to spend two years to just kind of travel around and learn about data and Data science, and one of the places that it took me was to ted med, and so I went to ted med conference two years in a row. I meet this person. Her name is liz liz salmi and Just one of the most remarkable human beings I've ever met. Kind of like you, punk rock used to run in a in a punk rock band. She's tatted up, she is aggressive but super compassionate.
Speaker 3:You know. She is out there looking the way she looks. Half the time her head is shaved, covering up scars, maybe with half of it not shaved, and she's standing on stages talking about why, from a patient perspective, why doctors and health systems and therapists and counselors need to open their notes to patients so that patients can feel informed. And she's the one, in her Sort of counterculture rebellion thrust, can stand in a room of doctors and say stop being protective Of what you write about me as a patient, because my life depends on what you put in that chart and I want to see it. And if I can't see it. I can't make an informed choice about what's next.
Speaker 2:I can't tell you how many times I've sat in a therapist's office and with a therapist getting my own therapy done. Forget about anything else, and I'm going. They just picked up the pen. They just picked up the pen. Now they're writing what did I say, what are they thinking about me, what am I going to be diagnosed with, or this, and that I could definitely see that creating A bit more confidence and a lot more calm In that situation. The doctor explains these things to you and also sometimes, if you don't see them taking notes for a while, you're thinking that maybe you're just way off course, that's myself and my own experiences. Anyway, I definitely wonder what's going on with the notes. I think that could be really valuable for any therapists. Listening, you know, may be helpful to share some of that stuff when I think I'm dangerous.
Speaker 3:Well, it could be dangerous, and I think you and and that's the position that a lot of things are you and and that's the position that a lot of therapists take it's like look, I need these notes for my own clinical Orientation and they're not for the patient, they're for me To treat the patient. And there's this wall. Right, and of course, some of that's right, but At the end of the day, you know, if you can't talk patient-centered care and not involve the patient in the totality of the information flow, Thanks for tuning in to hatching creativity.
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