Your Superpowers Start With Something Missing | Roger Kastner on the Reinvent Yourself Framework

FULL TRANSCRIPT - Your Superpowers Start With Something Missing | Roger Kastner on the Reinvent Yourself Framework

[Roger]

Three years. Eighty-plus conversations. And I often get asked the same three questions.

Hi, I'm Roger Kastner, and this is What Do You Know To Be True? a personal development and leadership podcast for people discovering, building, or already living into their purpose and possibilities.

The three questions: 

• What do my guests have in common? 
• How do you find your superpower? 
• And how do you reinvent yourself and your work to be more aligned with your purpose?

Not too long ago, a guest and I got into this wonderful conversation where we discussed the answers to all three. 

And as we're about to celebrate the third anniversary of What Do You Know To Be True?, this felt like a great time to do a 3-for-3 show and share those answers with you.

I'm glad you're here, and let's dive into that first question: what do the What Do You Know To Be True? guests have in common when it comes to using their superpowers.

What do the guests on What Do You Know To Be True? have in common?

[Joel]
 I'm curious if you see common themes to people as they talk about their superpowers.

[Roger]

Yes. In every conversation, empathy, curiosity, and connection comes through as people talk about their superpowers. I will occasionally joke about superheroes get to wear capes, not because they're doing that thing for themselves.

They are, but it's in service of other people that it becomes a superpower and they become heroes. It requires that connection. The curiosity is there because the superpower, I believe, is always unfolding, that they are learning more about their superpower and their relationship through their superpower with the world.

[Joel]

My whole body lit up when you talked about that you're noticing that empathy and connection and the sense of serving others is core to a lot of people's superpowers. I think that's remarkable.

This is why I think superpowers are so important in our times because there's a pandemic of loneliness and a hyper individuality. And particularly in the West, we've privileged the individual and individuality. It can lead to this sense of I'm just me in this isolated world.I stop where my skin stops. I think this is that view that I articulated a little while ago where we're being invited into a sense of relatedness and service and empathy and connection. And that's a collective superpower that humanity has. And so, you know, just amazing to hear you speak into that.

It's not just about recognizing our innate value, solo, it's a relational thing. You know, we, we evolved in relationship, and we evolve in our superpower in relationship. And it's about that being mirrored back to us.

[Roger]

There’s some synchronicity around this. We are innately valuable, we are innately connected, and we just need to be able to see that. And it takes work, it takes the internal focus, but to your point, it takes the external focus as well of seeing one another, of seeing the miracle of life in and of itself, of these connections. And that's where I think going back to empathy, curiosity, and connection really plays in, and why it shows up in superpowers, because how could it not?

[Roger]

That's Joel Monk. He's a leadership coach and founder of Coaches Rising. When he was on the show, he wanted to know what I was actually learning from all these conversations, and that's what led him to ask the second question: how do you find your superpower?

How do you find your superpower?

[Joel]
 My theory, and this is my question to you, my theory is that a lot of people's superpowers, if you go deep enough into it, there's a very unique way it's expressed through that individual person. In some ways, it's serving the emergence of life because life itself is evolving through us as individuals. There's this kind of way that life itself comes through us as individuals and expresses itself as these unique superpowers.

[Roger]
 The name of the podcast is a little tongue-in-cheek, this idea of what do you know to be true, where truth is always evolving. The impermanence of life and hopefully things are moving in a progressive way. One of the patterns that has emerged in these conversations is the superpower actually started off typically as an unmet need from early in development.

There was something there that was missing. It could have been something that was either from a bad experience, a trauma, or it was just something that wasn't present. Then individuals find a talent or a thing that they do that tends to that unmet need, which then they want to do more and more of that thing because it's part of their healing.

It's cliche, but the 10,000 hours, the more you do that thing and you get better at it, the more it's healing, it becomes a superpower the moment you do it in service of other people. I would say about nine out of 10 times, that's the arc. Every once in a while, I talk to someone like yourself where it wasn't, at least what I'm hearing is there wasn't something missing.

There was something that was, whether it's from your mom and your mom attending to the emergent, and you saw that role modeled and it's like, yes, this is for me. I'm going to do more of it. Then it shows up throughout life.

I've talked to a couple of people who've had that experience that something was so true to their core that they just want to amplify it through their experiences in life. I would say most times that superpower actually starts from that moment of unmet need.

How do you reinvent yourself to align with your purpose?

[Roger]

The third question, How do you reinvent yourself and your work to be more aligned with your purpose? is the most difficult one to answer, because the actual answer is as unique as each individual. 

However, here’s what’s interesting, the same themes keep showing up in conversations after conversation. 

So as I continue this experiment, I’m curious to see if this is pattern recognition, confirmation bias, or is this a repeatable framework that people can use. 

After you hear my answer, I’d love to hear what you think.

[Roger]

These conversations are an experiment, it is a trying to understand what is, you know, what is the relationship with a superpower? And why, why is a superpower even something that exists for us?

And I think it does go back to this concept of trying to, you know, achieve our potential, trying to live into our possibilities. And as I've gone, you know, I've, you know, I've been having these conversations for two years, and in my own curiosity, thinking about, okay, what are the building blocks to living into our potential, or living into our possible selves? And the first set of conversations, it was really clear purpose, you know, relationship between superpower and purpose, purpose gives our superpower a North Star.

When I was talking to someone about purpose, they were talking about the role of joy, and joy being a fuel for us living into our superpower. So yeah, joy is a building block, not only an output, or an outcome of being in our superpower, but also motivating, like we know we're going to get joy. It's that dopamine, the anticipation of getting the joy that gets us to do the superpower.

Next, I think hope plays a big role. And I'm using the Charles Snyder definition of hope, of the belief in our goals, in our path, in our agency. We need to have that sense of, okay, we can make change happen, we can deploy our superpower.

Then adaptability comes in around resilience, and growth mindset, and learning agility. And, you know, we could go down the path of the self-improvement paradigm, or just the ability to learn something new to show up differently in a place that demands us to show up differently. After that, I think well-being kicks in with the sense of, you know, mental, emotional, physical, social, and spiritual fitness.

Not health, but fitness. These are all things we have to continue to work at to maintain a certain level of health or fitness. After that, I think it's courage, because we could have our North Star.

We could know where we get our fuel. We could believe in our ability to affect change. We can, you know, be adaptable and resilient.

We could be healthy. Sometimes we just need to kick our ass out of bed and get in the arena. And that's where courage, I think, shows up for so many of these superpowers.

What's the critique of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs?

And lastly, this last piece, and I think I only came to it maybe about six months ago when I heard a critique of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, that the Hierarchy of Needs, the critique was, it's focused only on self, only on what I can do. And we know we don't do anything by ourselves. It's always in community.

It's always on a team. It's either, it's both the team that help, or the teams that help us get to where we are today, and the teams that we're on today, that we get to flourish, that we get to demonstrate these superpowers. And it'll be the teams and communities we're in tomorrow that help us also continue to grow.

And I'm really fascinated by this idea of not only what teams can do for us, but I think really the way, the path, is what can we do for teams? How do we show up as a good team mate? How do we show up as a good member of a community?

I think that not only helps other people live into their superpowers, but I think that's where our superpower begins to flourish. So I love the words that you use, the collective superpower, because ultimately that's something, that's emergent for me. And it's also always been there, because a superpower by itself, you know, without relationship, it's not really a superpower, it's just a power.

[Roger}

So there you go, the 3 questions for 3 years. I am so grateful to be part of this experiment with some truly amazing people living into their authentic and possible selves.
 
 Thank you to Joel Monk for asking me these questions, thank you to the 80 plus guests who’ve helped make these last 3 years be extraordinary. And thank you for being in these conversations with us.  
 
What Do You Know To Be True? is a Three Blue Pens production. I’m your host, Roger Kastner. 

We are recording on the ancestral lands of the Duwamish and Suquamish people. 

If you want to learn what I’ve learned about Joy, check out this episode.

And if you want to check out the full conversation I had with Joel Monk, here you go. 

OK, be well, my friends, and always, love you, mean it!

Questions This Episode Answers 

• What do the guests on What Do You Know To Be True? have in common? Across more than 80 conversations, empathy, curiosity, and connection are the throughline. Guests describe their superpower as something that only became a superpower once it moved from personal skill to service of other people. 

• How do you find your superpower? In most cases, a superpower starts as an unmet need from earlier in life. A person finds something that addresses that need, keeps doing it because it's healing, and it becomes a superpower once they start using it to help others. 

• How do you reinvent yourself to align with your purpose? Roger Kastner's framework points to seven building blocks: purpose, joy, hope, adaptability, well-being, courage, and community; with community as the piece most self-improvement models leave out. 

• What's the critique of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs? Roger argues it's too focused on the self. Real growth and reinvention happen in relationship, with a team or a community, not alone.