# Dr Emily - We're Longing for Belonging

An episode of [The Imperfects](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1476501557), 3 Aug 2025, 1 h 17 min.

Audio: https://enrichment.soundstack.com/4vjqq8/episode.flightcast.com/q1ns447vux7j00jgebslt236.mp3

Do you ever wonder whether you belong? 💌 subscribe to our newsletter, my imperfect email, here - http://bit.ly/4lMOdTj According to Dr Emily Musgrove, our resident psychologist, belonging is an evolutionary need, literally built into our DNA. And in our current loneliness epidemic, the feeling of belonging uncertainty can impact our sense of safety, identity and even physical health. This week, Dr Em goes into the intolerable state of uncertainty, and the self-fulfilling prophecy we may induce when trying to protect ourselves. Unfortunately, for all of us introverts, creating connection involves risk. Thorough in her research as always, Dr Em explains the benefits to seeking perspective and crafting situations to help others feel like they belong. AND with a guest star appearance from Producer Bridge, we unpack what it looks and feels like to get it wrong, and how you can work to get it right. Dr Em, this is our favourite time of the month. To watch this full episode on YouTube, follow this link - https://youtu.be/r1qTUZwBLDw 🫖Other Imperfects episodes mentioned in this episode • Rana Hussain - Belonging For Connection - http://bit.ly/4odhGY8 • Fern Brady - Autistic in a Non-Autistic World - http://bit.ly/4l8Y4lt • Grace Tame - “Sexy-time, Scissoring, Autism” - http://bit.ly/4mbPvaq • Glenn Robbins - Listening to the Voice in Your Head - https://bit.ly/40HM8zK • Billy Slater - Leading from the (Full) Back - https://bit.ly/45qvmrr 📖Things to read • A question of belonging: race, social fit, and achievement by Geoffrey Cohen and Gregory Walton - https://bit.ly/4mbPMds • A Brief Social-Belonging Intervention Improves Academic and Health Outcomes of Minority Students by Geoffrey Cohen and Gregory Walton - https://bit.ly/3UCcS0Y • Breaking the cycle of mistrust: wise interventions to provide critical feedback across the racial divide by Geoffrey Cohen, David Yeager & others - https://bit.ly/4odZKgc • Pygmalion in the Classroom by Robert Rosenthal & Lenore Jacobson - http://bit.ly/4fa2Tte • BELONGING: The Feeling That We “Belong” May Depend in Part on “Affirmations” by Mary Rowe - http://bit.ly/4l8fPBo • Unstuck by Dr Emily Musgrove - http://bit.ly/3J8tieV 🩷To host your own Vulnerabilitea House, purchase the Vulnerabilitea House Cards here - https://bit.ly/3Cx4tGP 🩵To purchase our journal (or your novel) My Imperfect Life, click here - https://bit.ly/3Cx4tGP 🩵To join our patreon community, A Little More Imperfects, follow this link - patreon.com/theimperfects 🩷 AND you can subscribe to A Little More Imperfects through Apple Podcasts too, here apple.co/theimperfects The Imperfects is not a licensed mental health service and is not a substitute for professional mental health advice, treatment or assessment. The advice given in this episode is general in nature, but if you’re struggling, please see a healthcare professional, or call lifeline on 13 11 14.

## Transcript

[0:00] The need to belong is as fundamental as our need for food and water.
[0:04] This sense that I matter, that I'm seen and that I'm not alone.
[0:10] And we all have this yearning here.
[0:13] And so it's on both us to be willing to take a risk, to step out of our comfort zone, and it's also on us to create a comfort zone for other people as well.
[0:25] Quick, is anyone here a doctor?
[0:27] Yes, her name is Dr. Emily, and she's a psychologist.
[0:33] Please welcome to The Imperfects, our very own...
[0:37] Psychologist!
[0:39] It's the best time of the month.
[0:41] And with all due respect to other guests...
[0:47] in the studio with us.
[0:50] How lucky are we?
[0:51] We're extremely lucky.
[0:53] Yeah.
[0:54] How lucky are you listening?
[0:57] They've just said extremely lucky.
[0:59] What the people listening can't say is that both of you have non-official merchandise, non-official Imperfects merchandise.
[1:09] Two different mugs.
[1:10] Oh, two different ones.
[1:10] Two different mugs that have our faces on them.
[1:12] Yeah.
[1:13] Sometimes people send in mugs that they make and they're so incredible.
[1:17] My one is the three of us, sorry, the three of us sitting like in a mug.
[1:23] So obviously fake.
[1:25] We're in a teapot because it's a vulnerability house mug.
[1:32] Mine says Ryan.
[1:35] Yeah.
[1:36] But on the other side, it does have pictures of us, which I think is actually from Dylan Friends.
[1:40] It is.
[1:40] Podcast artwork.
[1:41] So apologies to Dylan Friends for stealing me.
[1:43] On behalf of the person who stole the artwork and put it on a mug.
[1:46] But.
[1:47] Yeah.
[1:48] Good.
[1:48] Great.
[1:49] Yeah.
[1:50] Em, do you have anything to talk about?
[1:53] We've got plenty of stuff and we just need filler.
[1:55] Okay.
[1:55] I've got a few things I could say.
[1:59] So Dr Em, for those who don't know, is our resident psychologist.
[2:02] She drops in every month, brings in a clip from an old episode of ours and will expand on it in a clinical psychology way.
[2:12] So Dr Emily, what episode are we looking back on?
[2:16] Well, I would like to go back to Rana Hussain's episode on belonging and connection.
[2:22] Wonderful woman, Rana.
[2:23] So Rana Hussain is of course the founder of Good Human and she works with a lot of late sporting clubs on diversity and inclusivity.
[2:31] Yeah.
[2:32] I watched her work at the MCG on Boxing Day.
[2:35] How good was she?
[2:36] Yeah, she's like the boundary rider.
[2:39] She goes, With James Sherry.
[2:40] Yep.
[2:41] She's like the voice of the G. And she's, I sent her a message because I was up in the stands, I was watching her work and I've never seen a person look more at home.
[2:50] She was just, you know, happy past.
[2:52] Yeah, Blanc, she was doing such a great job.
[2:54] Oh, that's, I mean, that is,
[2:56] Like that is so interesting too, given what we're talking about today, like this sense that you can see when someone feels like they belong.
[3:01] Yeah.
[3:01] Oh, yeah.
[3:02] And her episode was so wonderful and I really wanted to even kind of expand and kind of go a little bit further down another pathway that's related to belonging.
[3:11] But maybe before we get there, I can play a little bit of her clip.
[3:14] Yeah.
[3:15] All right.
[3:16] In belonging work, we sort of talk about micro cues of belonging.
[3:20] So like there's so much around this stuff that you can do that's very kind of academic or strategic and, you know, there's process and policy and all of that work.
[3:30] There's also then just how do we turn up into an environment and how do we carry ourselves and create belonging for ourselves and other people.
[3:38] And a beautiful example of that.
[3:42] from my life is also footy related.
[3:45] I'm so sorry to anyone listening who doesn't like sport.
[3:47] That's another story about Russell Robinson.
[3:51] This was pre, you know, before I was doing anything in sport, before I was ever in the media or anything.
[3:57] I had just been at the Western Bulldogs Premiership win in 2016.
[4:02] And I was standing after the game at Flinders Street Station very late at night, waiting for the last train, I think, and there was me and one other guy there a few metres away.
[4:15] And then this kind of raucous group of young men came to the platform.
[4:19] You know, they're drunk, they're loud.
[4:21] You know what a woman feels like in that moment.
[4:24] I'm wearing my hijab, so I'm also thinking, okay, anything could go down here.
[4:30] I've had experiences of having my hijab pulled after the footy on train platforms.
[4:38] So I'm suddenly thinking, okay, how do I get safe right now?
[4:42] And I look around and I'm trying to meet people's eyes.
[4:46] And then the guy standing a few metres down the way looks at me and smiles, looks me in the eye and smiles.
[4:54] And I just go, okay.
[4:56] And he gives me just this kind of nod like I've got you.
[4:59] And I go, okay, this is good.
[5:02] And then I realise who it is.
[5:06] Really, really bad news for Dave Thornton that you cut off the clip there.
[5:11] He doesn't get the correct.
[5:13] His cue score was going up and up and up.
[5:16] Yeah, Dave Thornton was the guy.
[5:17] Yeah.
[5:17] Comedian.
[5:19] Yeah.
[5:19] Such an amazing moment, that.
[5:21] It is.
[5:22] And I think it, I mean, obviously she talks about this in her episode, that we all have a need to belong.
[5:28] It's a fundamental human striving.
[5:30] And what sits with that is the importance or the sense that we...
[5:35] all yearn to be seen for a start.
[5:39] And so when he smiles at her, there's this sense that I see you.
[5:43] And with that, this sense that you matter, that you being here matters.
[5:48] There's a whole lot of, like, as you can imagine, an incredible amount of research around belonging.
[5:54] And most of the research comes from this particular theory called the need to belong theory, which was proposed by Baumeister and Leary in 1995.
[6:03] And I know about this because actually I did my PhD on this like 15 years ago, which was really interesting.
[6:10] And it really struck me then, gosh, like this is...
[6:13] This is obviously so, so important and I think what we often miss, although I think that this is slowly emerging, is that the need to belong is a need and so that's distinct from a want.
[6:26] So a want is something that we might like to have, but we know, and even if we look at Maslow's hierarchy of needs, that the need to belong is as fundamental as our need for food and water.
[6:36] And without it, we simply don't survive.
[6:40] So from an evolutionary point of view, you know, we know that if you're expelled from the tribe, then the likelihood is that you will die.
[6:48] If we don't have group belonging, we can't get access to food.
[6:51] We can't get access to shelter.
[6:53] So belonging is inbuilt in our DNA really, or the need to belong is.
[6:57] Yeah.
[6:58] And deprivation of that need constitutes, um, you know, like great despair and a, and a risk to our lives really.
[7:06] And what we see that looks like in modern day is this kind of epidemic of loneliness.
[7:11] Hmm.
[7:12] And I'm sure you'd be aware that there are huge significant risk factors associated with chronic loneliness, particularly its vulnerability towards increased mortality rates.
[7:25] Now, I certainly don't want to be saying that loneliness will mean that you die early, but it is certainly one risk factor to increase that experience.
[7:34] And so it's like a health issue belonging.
[7:39] and that's why I feel like it's really fundamental that we have an understanding of how we experience our own belonging and how we can create and cultivate belonging for other people.
[7:47] I mean, it makes so much sense, and of course, I think most of us probably know that if we sit down and think about it properly, it's like, oh, okay, but I reckon only up until recently, and even sometimes now, I would consider belonging as more of a want than a need.
[8:04] Like it's sort of...
[8:07] I think because I can even sort of convince myself sometimes that I just like my own time, which I do, and that's fine, obviously.
[8:14] I'm assuming.
[8:15] Yep.
[8:17] Just double check with the actual expert.
[8:20] But, yeah, but sometimes I do, I completely underestimate how much I need the feeling of belonging somewhere.
[8:30] Absolutely.
[8:31] I found myself thinking about stages of life where I felt like I belong in certain areas
[8:36] groups.
[8:39] I have felt stages where I felt like I didn't belong anywhere and you very quickly try and find somewhere.
[8:45] And then that makes me think of young men who feel the, the, it's probably a bigger discussion to put somewhere else, but young men who feel like
[8:58] they're being yelled at a lot for doing the wrong thing and turn to Tate and turn to, because it's like it's an easy belong, like I can belong there.
[9:04] Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[9:04] Okay, great.
[9:05] Yes, yeah.
[9:05] There's somewhere I can belong.
[9:06] It's like just the easiest.
[9:08] Like junk food.
[9:08] Yeah, that's the easiest option for them.
[9:10] Yeah, but also and it's safety and it's identity and the research is very reflective of that currently, that when we're alienated and disenfranchised,
[9:19] if we feel ostracised, if we feel shamed and blamed, that yes, we will seek out a place where we feel a sense that you're welcome here.
[9:27] It makes a lot of sense.
[9:28] And we might even get to that in terms of the implications of that shortly.
[9:34] There's also a...
[9:37] There's also a story I think that feels, that always feels very powerful to me as demonstrating this kind of experience of belonging and that it doesn't have to be, like the lack of belonging doesn't have to be really overt.
[9:49] It can actually be very, very subtle, but it's very corrosive.
[9:52] And Mary Rowe, who is an organisational behaviourist at MIT, she shares a story of her time as a university ombudsman in 1973 and,
[10:04] What is an organisational behaviourist?
[10:07] Yeah.
[10:08] Well, actually, that's a good question.
[10:13] Well, I guess it's a similar approach to being an organisational psychologist.
[10:17] So we're looking at the behaviour within organisations.
[10:19] I hope that's the right definition.
[10:21] Yeah.
[10:21] Yeah.
[10:22] Yeah.
[10:23] Yeah.
[10:23] I hope so too.
[10:25] This is our reputation on the line here.
[10:29] We can look it up.
[10:30] Yeah.
[10:31] So she was sharing this story that in 1973, she had an African American employee come to her and say, I want to quit.
[10:42] I don't want to be here anymore.
[10:45] Mary said, I'm really confused.
[10:47] You're working in a very highly esteemed lab.
[10:49] You know, I've got very good feedback about your work.
[10:52] You know, what's going on here?
[10:54] And she said, it's just very cold.
[10:58] I feel like I don't belong.
[11:02] And Mary said, well, like, I really want to understand, you know, what's happening, what this is about.
[11:07] I'm just going to invite you to go away for the next month and keep a log of all the interactions that you have with your colleagues in your workplace.
[11:17] And so the employee agreed and she went away.
[11:19] And when she came back a month later, she arrived with the diary and gave it to Mary and Mary opened it.
[11:29] And when she opened it, there was nothing in there, nothing in there.
[11:35] And this was the whole point that for an entire month, no one had spoken to her.
[11:42] No one had asked her how her holiday was.
[11:45] No one had given her positive feedback on the great work that she was doing.
[11:50] No one had even bothered to ask how she was.
[11:53] And so belonging is conferred not just in, it's not conferred just in allowing people to be there, but actually a curiosity and an invitation to know and accept who you are.
[12:07] So for that employee, she wanted to leave.
[12:11] Of course she wanted to leave.
[12:14] And I think that this is, you know, one of the fundamental outcomes of a lack of belonging in so many different contexts, like in the working context, in friendships, in schools, academic settings, is that when we feel uncertain about our belonging, we will want to leave.
[12:33] From an organisational point of view, from an occupational point of view, we know that a low belongingness will mean a higher turnover of staff.
[12:42] And we also know that it compromises performance.
[12:46] So I want to come to understanding this particular dynamic that sits here alongside our instinctual need to belong, and that's a concept called belonging uncertainty.
[12:57] So belonging uncertainty is a psychological term which was coined by Geoffrey Cohen and Gregory Walton and it's a term to define or to describe the doubt and the fear that we don't belong in a certain place.
[13:18] So it's representing our sense of doubt that we shouldn't be here and that maybe we should never be here.
[13:27] So in essence, it's representing the intolerable state of uncertainty and that we feel so uncertain about whether we belong in this group.
[13:38] Now, often, if you know you don't belong, that is actually more comfortable for us to sit with than being uncertain about whether we belong.
[13:48] Oh, I see what you mean.
[13:49] Yeah.
[13:49] Got it.
[13:50] Equally, if you know you belong, you have like, great, that's wonderful.
[13:54] But sitting in this state, like hovering here,
[13:57] a desire to belong coupled with an uncertainty about whether I do belong is highly aversive.
[14:04] Yeah.
[14:05] And we can see this in so many different contexts.
[14:09] So, for example, an obvious one is at the workplace.
[14:13] It might be at, like, you know, if you're a parent, like school pickups.
[14:19] It might be walking into a cafe and feeling like there's something I don't fit here.
[14:24] It might be going into a clothing store.
[14:26] This sense that I am feeling really unsure about whether I should be here.
[14:32] And often, am I right in saying that comes with like you feel judged?
[14:37] Yes.
[14:37] Yes, exactly.
[14:38] Like the clothing store, definitely.
[14:41] Or any place where I feel like I walk into and I realise I'm either not necessarily twice the age, but I'm either like older than everyone else in here.
[14:51] or I am not wearing the right clothes.
[14:56] I mean, this is like a very surface level example, but sometimes you go into those clothing shops and they'll look at you once and then look down and I'm like, oh God.
[15:06] And then it becomes like a pretty woman situation where it's like, I'm going to buy the most expensive thing in here.
[15:12] show you who belongs I'm going to give you heaps of money well I was going to use that as an example of the fact that a lot of people will want to leave in that situation but every now and again if I'm feeling really sassy
[15:26] You're a pretty woman.
[15:27] I'm a pretty woman.
[15:28] Yeah.
[15:30] What this makes me think of is the pretty gross thing of the push-pull that I hear about with dating.
[15:36] It's almost like weaponising belonging uncertainty in that you sort of pull someone in, so indicate that you're interested in them in dating, but then push them away, waiting for them to get a little bit desperate, then pull them back in again.
[15:52] And it feels like it's weaponising it because it's kind of playing on our primal need to belong.
[15:57] Yeah, absolutely.
[15:57] So at some point the person that you're pushing away is most likely going to reach in, giving you the signal that, okay, you can pull them back in now, push them away.
[16:07] It's awful.
[16:09] It's like weaponising a human need.
[16:11] Yeah, exactly.
[16:12] And I think it really highlights just how aversive the doubting and the not knowing is.
[16:17] Yeah, how uncomfortable that is.
[16:19] It's very painful.
[16:20] It would be better in most circumstances to know or to not know.
[16:24] Yeah, yeah.
[16:25] And also on the, I love the framing you had before over it being a health need, so to speak, in that I don't know if this is going to be accurate, but like...
[16:37] like food and water.
[16:39] You know how like the 40-hour famine when people like choose to not eat, that comes from a position of being able to have food.
[16:46] It's not really a form of starving because you come from a position of power where you can always have access to food.
[16:53] Mm-hmm.
[16:53] And I kind of feel like when you have belonging and don't realise the choice to be alone is not really about belonging because it's coming from a place of belonging that you've taken for granted your whole life.
[17:07] Yes.
[17:07] Like the 40-hour famine.
[17:09] Does that make sense as an analogy?
[17:10] You're already resourced.
[17:12] Yeah, exactly.
[17:13] In that area.
[17:13] Which gives you the, and again, like if you looked at Maslow's hierarchy of needs, once that need is met, then we can go out and do like almost reach for the other things.
[17:23] Yeah.
[17:23] And I can explore with what it feels like to be alone for a little bit and maybe even enjoy that.
[17:28] But if I don't have a foundation of belonging, then loneliness is even more painful and it's a different thing.
[17:34] Yeah.
[17:35] And belonging also brings with it a belief, a belief that my connections are secure.
[17:41] Yeah.
[17:42] And reliable.
[17:44] That I can go away.
[17:44] That I can come back and they'll still be there.
[17:46] And from an attachment point of view, obviously, this is the same thing.
[17:49] This notion that I can go off and explore the world with the knowledge that this secure base will always be here.
[17:54] Yeah.
[17:54] It's, you know, really the same thing.
[17:56] Yeah, yeah.
[17:58] I do want to begin actually by really mentioning up front that the experience of belonging uncertainty is most prominent in two contexts.
[18:07] The first is when you're new to a situation.
[18:10] So that's really important.
[18:11] And this is so for most of us, we will experience belonging uncertainty when we start in a new position, in a new context.
[18:18] Right.
[18:19] That's the first part.
[18:20] The second part, and this is absolutely critical, that minority groups will experience this significantly more so.
[18:26] And I'm guessing daily.
[18:27] It's like...
[18:28] Absolutely, on a daily basis.
[18:30] So this is going to be relevant for anyone who experiences being a minority.
[18:34] So whether this is gender, sexual identity, racial minority, ethnic minority, religious minority, disability, neurodivergence, any experience where you are coming from a place of being not in the majority.
[18:52] You're saying all those different groups.
[18:54] It makes me realise that often when we want to belong, it doesn't necessarily mean we want to, we care about belonging to that group.
[19:06] It's just like, I know that I get the weird feeling of like, I don't know why I care so much about not belonging here.
[19:13] I don't want to be here.
[19:14] And I don't care if these people like me or welcome me in, but I still feel I hate this feeling of not like I want them to accept me, even though I don't respect them or care about them.
[19:24] And that's really interesting, too, because it opens it opens us up to really like a choice there for a start.
[19:30] But second of all, I think it just really highlights this.
[19:34] Almost like this evolutionary instinct in here to work, to be included, and not only to be included but to be accepted.
[19:45] So it's almost like we have to honour the fact that like biologically we are wanting to be part of this, even though when you zoom out, you're like, actually, like, this is not where I actually want to be.
[19:56] So I think we can acknowledge that this is this natural urge here.
[19:59] And then we have the power of choosing.
[20:02] Do I want to expend my energy here in trying to cultivate a sense of belonging with these people?
[20:08] You think if you've spent more of your life not feeling like you belong, then it becomes more difficult to rationally say, do I actually want to belong here?
[20:19] Because you're desperate for it.
[20:21] Yes, yes.
[20:22] And I, yeah, I do agree.
[20:24] And I also think, and, you know, this is certainly reflected in my practice and it is in the research also, and that is that, you know, it becomes like a self-fulfilling prophecy.
[20:34] So an early learning history of rejection, for example, and ostracism, exclusion,
[20:40] is absolutely setting up this almost like template, internal template to be predicting and anticipating further rejection in adulthood.
[20:51] And what tends to happen, like if we look at the state of uncertainty for a start, uncertainty for a lot of us is a stress response.
[21:04] So in a stress response, we are getting really a fundamental changing of our neurobiology to focus on and to attend to a threat.
[21:17] And when we're attending to a threat, it's like our vision changes.
[21:22] So we're only paying attention to signs that we will be rejected and we actually therefore will see rejection much more readily in behaviour that may actually not be rejecting at all.
[21:35] So we're on the lookout.
[21:37] In this state of stress, of uncertainty, I am scanning to check whether your folded arms are indicating that you don't like me or that your flippant response there is another indication that I shouldn't be here or all of these like micro behaviours.
[21:52] are being picked up by someone who's feeling uncertain.
[21:56] Often we label people as like, oh, they're so sensitive, like very sensitive people.
[22:02] And I just wonder whether or not that is a result or maybe one of the results of someone not feeling like they belong from such a young age.
[22:11] But I'm sure there's just so many people who grow up in a family where they don't feel like they belong in the family, whether they feel ostracised for whatever reason or just have a general sense of like, these are not my people.
[22:24] that would be really hard to come back from, I imagine.
[22:28] It is.
[22:29] And it takes a lot of, I think, deep psychological work to be able to... Because I don't want to go too down the pathway of like a therapeutic process here, but it's like we carry our little child with us that was so... whose needs weren't being unmet for belonging, for example.
[22:48] So there's a deprivation of a need to belong there for a child.
[22:52] and that that child most likely was finding ways to cope with this deprivation.
[22:59] And that may have been, like, for example, becoming very vigilant to interpersonal cues, for example.
[23:04] So that person is highly attuned to other people's emotions, highly attuned to environmental contexts, and that from a neurobiological point of view, we actually know that particularly in the case of early childhood trauma and experiences of rejection and threat specifically,
[23:26] and exposure to danger is that the amygdala is enlarged.
[23:30] And that amygdala is the part, well, it's much more complex than this, and for the neuroscientists out here, I apologise in advance, but that we know that this is enlarged, which means that it's going to be as adults on the lookout more so, absolutely, from just a biological point of view, on the lookout for cues that I will be enlarged.
[23:48] harmed or rejected here.
[23:50] And so we carry these little parts of us in every context that we enter.
[23:56] And the great challenge that we have as adults is how we can recognise when I'm feeling scared and I'm feeling unsure and uncertain.
[24:05] And how is it that I bring kind of like this healthy adult relationship
[24:09] that can ground and regulate and soothe the part of me that's very worried.
[24:14] Because what will happen if we are maybe not attuned to our internal experience and to what the mind is telling us is that we will move into a big self-fulfilling prophecy.
[24:28] And so that our attention to those cues will mean that our behaviour changes and
[24:35] and we become more defensive and more cynical, we will also be less likely to take a risk.
[24:42] So in a job context, for example, if you're feeling uncertain about your belonging, you're less likely to put your hand up for a new task or a new challenge.
[24:50] You're less likely to speak up.
[24:53] You're less likely to express your opinions because it feels way too dangerous.
[24:58] Mm-hmm.
[24:59] Or even just make connection with people.
[25:00] Yeah.
[25:01] Like say, I'm going to get a coffee, do you want one?
[25:03] Absolutely.
[25:04] Something like that might feel too much.
[25:05] Yes.
[25:06] Yeah.
[25:06] And so from that place of trying to protect ourselves, we actually unintentionally cause us to feel further distanced from other people.
[25:15] Mm-hmm.
[25:16] How is that making sense so far?
[25:18] So much sense.
[25:19] It also highlights that there are two parts to the experience of belonging uncertainty and that is what we do as an individual experiencing that and obviously that's the kind of work I would do as a therapist.
[25:32] But then there's also what can the context do to help us feel a greater sense of belonging?
[25:38] And Geoffrey Cohen and his colleagues came up with the term situation crafting.
[25:44] And this is, I think, very relevant for both academic settings and work settings.
[25:49] And that is that how do we make the situation better for the people there?
[25:56] And the kind of fundamental point that sits in there is that no one situation is experienced the same way
[26:06] And we need to get the perspectives on everyone's experience, even though it's the same one, even though it's the same context.
[26:14] And I'll give you a really, really simple example.
[26:17] I've just started weight training because I'm a woman in my 40s and everyone tells me I need to be doing weight training.
[26:23] And I have avoided going, I've avoided the gym because I really don't like the weight section because I don't feel like I belong there.
[26:33] This is such a great example.
[26:34] Yeah.
[26:34] This is such a good example.
[26:36] And I have actively avoided that.
[26:40] And but then I was just driving impetus that I have to be doing weight training right now.
[26:45] Anyway, so I've started.
[26:47] And the first day that I did it, I didn't bring my headphones and which was probably a mistake.
[26:54] And I was in this area and all I could hear and all I could see were men grunting.
[27:06] this is terrible.
[27:08] I was like, I don't belong here.
[27:12] And I remember messaging my husband, I was like, I'm really not so sure about the man grunting next to me.
[27:20] This is really not a very appealing, I'd much prefer to be running out near the beach.
[27:25] Like, because that's what I would...
[27:26] Skip and jump.
[27:27] Exactly.
[27:28] Yeah.
[27:28] That's like, that is where I would feel a sense of like joyfulness.
[27:31] And that's also where I feel more sense of belonging, even like passing other runners, for example.
[27:37] So for me, going into the gym as a female...
[27:41] who doesn't lift and entering this context here was 100% different from the other man that is in there lifting the weights.
[27:50] And I mean, I don't know that person's experience, but my guess would be that for him with the weights that he was lifting, he felt extreme comfort in that particular environment.
[27:59] So we have the same context, exactly the same context, but entirely different experiences.
[28:06] Yes, same situation.
[28:07] Exactly, yep.
[28:09] And so every situation that we enter...
[28:12] is going to be informed by our, like whether we're a minority for a start, it's also going to be informed by our early learning history.
[28:20] Now, if I had been going to the gym in the weight section for the last 10 years, this is not a problem.
[28:25] So the key kind of point in there is that we can never assume that people feel comfortable and we can never assume that my experience in this environment means that other people will also have the same experience and feel safe as well.
[28:42] It's very difficult.
[28:43] I think it's like one of the hardest things for me and I assume therefore for a lot of people, even though I want to be the kind of person that can do this, I think it's so hard to get out of your own way sometimes and see that other people see the world differently to you.
[29:00] It's really as you are kind of the centre of the universe to yourself.
[29:03] Yes.
[29:04] And it's kind of, it's slightly shameful to say it, but I think it's just the truth.
[29:09] It's like so hard to...
[29:12] step out of your skin for a moment and realise that everyone is experiencing this situation differently?
[29:18] Yes.
[29:18] Definitely.
[29:19] Yeah, and you're so spot on there because Geoffrey Cohen actually says that we're actually as humans really bad at perspective taking, actually really bad at it.
[29:31] And so what he says is that we need to kind of put that to the side and focus on perspective getting, right?
[29:38] And perspective getting is asking.
[29:41] So that we have to ask what someone's experience is, or we bring a curiosity to like, you know, you're new in a workplace as the employer or as someone that's in like in charge of welcoming.
[29:54] like onboarding new people is getting feedback all the time about how are you going here?
[30:01] What's your experience like?
[30:02] How can this be better?
[30:04] How can we assist you here?
[30:05] Does that make sense?
[30:07] Yeah.
[30:08] It feels...
[30:11] It kind of feels like traditionally I felt like that is a kind of nervous question to ask.
[30:19] But then the more, the older I get and the more, I don't know, responsibility, I guess, and just like life experience, you realise you just sort of have to ask those questions.
[30:30] And then when you do, it's actually a good, it's not that bad.
[30:33] But I don't know why it feels nervous.
[30:34] Do you mean for you to ask someone how they're going?
[30:36] Yeah.
[30:37] And not so much how they're going in a casual way, but like, is everything, can we be doing anything better for you in this situation?
[30:44] Or like, is there anything you need?
[30:46] Like in a work situation, in a social situation, it feels like a nervous place to go for some reason.
[30:54] Yeah.
[30:54] Can you say a bit more to that?
[30:56] I'm trying to work out why.
[30:59] I think it's because it opens you up to the possibility that you're doing something wrong and getting something wrong.
[31:07] And so it opens you up to a possibility of guilt or the feeling of, oh, shit, I missed something here.
[31:14] Like a shame almost.
[31:15] A shame that like, oh, I didn't, my behaviour...
[31:18] I mean, at worst, something I was personally doing was making you feel uncomfortable or in a much softer, gentler way.
[31:27] Something that a system we've got in place at work or something didn't realize that didn't work for you or wasn't making you feel welcome or whatever it is, whether it's personal or systems based.
[31:39] It just, it opens you up to the idea that you got something wrong, which I think is confronting.
[31:44] Yeah, I think that that's really spot on and like a great catch there really.
[31:48] That it requires stepping into some sort of vulnerability for ourselves by asking and being curious about someone else.
[31:57] Because it also means that we have to let go of our own, well, our own assumptions and also to let go of our fears that I've done something wrong here.
[32:04] Yeah.
[32:06] So, yeah, that is a kind of courageous question in a lot of ways is to get the perspectives because it means that you could be open to criticism.
[32:14] It actually, it makes me think of something that before we were recording, we were talking and talking to Bridge.
[32:21] I don't know, Bridge, would you feel comfortable talking?
[32:24] Because we had a discussion, Bridge was talking about a time she got it wrong and what that felt like.
[32:29] I don't know if you want to talk about it on the show or not, but.
[32:36] We've got a surprise guest.
[32:37] Yeah.
[32:38] Bridget North East, producer of The Imperfects.
[32:41] Grab a stool, Bridget.
[32:45] What Josh and I were talking about, and what you've been talking about, Em, really resonates.
[32:50] I used to manage a big team for a big podcast company, and I had about 10 producers under me, and I was pretty new to leadership, so it was all pretty new.
[33:02] Is this when you were doing Rogan?
[33:07] Not that time.
[33:10] And we released an episode with a woman who had previously said some pretty awful things about immigration and Muslim people specifically.
[33:21] And I didn't know.
[33:23] And we got a lot of backlash very quickly for having her on air.
[33:27] Now, she wasn't saying any of this stuff on our show.
[33:29] She was talking about, I think it was beauty and makeup and things like that.
[33:34] But the response online was really, really overwhelming.
[33:37] And it was very, it took all our attention outward.
[33:40] We were kind of worried about how this would look and we felt terrible that we'd accidentally done this.
[33:47] But what I didn't look at enough was my team.
[33:50] I had several people of colour in my team.
[33:53] and they were all reading every single comment and they were feeling really awful throughout this time.
[34:00] But instead I was so focused on trying to fix the problem, I was kind of pulled into a meeting with the senior kind of leadership and we immediately kind of came up with like actions of like how we could solve this.
[34:12] So, you know, we'll take the episode down.
[34:15] We might, we will write a statement and we'll apologise.
[34:17] And then going forward, we will make sure we have quotas of how many people of colour we need to have in all our episodes going forward.
[34:24] And in that meeting, I felt good.
[34:25] I was like, okay, great.
[34:26] We're doing something.
[34:26] This is, we're making progress.
[34:28] We're moving forward.
[34:29] And so then I went and told my team what, what we decided.
[34:34] And my team were kind of silent and a bit off about it.
[34:37] And I was like, oh, this is strange.
[34:39] I thought they'd see the decisive action as a good thing.
[34:41] You know, we weren't being silent.
[34:43] We weren't doing nothing about it.
[34:45] And then I asked sort of how they felt and they said to me, especially the people of colour in the team, said, why didn't you just ask us how we were feeling?
[34:56] Why didn't you come when we're reading all this awful stuff about our communities online and it's all getting kicked up on our platforms, why didn't you come and say, how are you going?
[35:09] And then what can we do?
[35:12] What should we do as a team next?
[35:14] What would you guys like to see the action instead of just turning their experience into a quota that we were going to fill in the shows?
[35:20] And like, they weren't necessarily unhappy with the ideas that we'd come up with, but they were pretty disappointed that we didn't include them in the process.
[35:27] Yeah.
[35:27] And that has stuck with me so strongly.
[35:31] And I think I feel very lucky that.
[35:33] within that team, they felt comfortable enough with me to tell me how they felt and we could have a really productive conversation about it.
[35:40] And at first I felt devastated that I'd gotten it so wrong.
[35:46] But it has made me such a better leader and a manager because I have that experience in every other experience I go into in every other team I've led.
[35:54] So, yeah, it was awful.
[35:55] But getting it wrong actually has led to a lot of great change for me.
[36:00] That's amazing.
[36:03] Thank you so much for sharing that, Bridget.
[36:04] Yeah.
[36:05] And just like, and I can also hear, and I think that this is an experience that other people have too, is that when this is something that's deeply important to you, like getting it right is deeply important and then you get it wrong, it feels like you feel very shameful.
[36:18] Mm-hmm.
[36:19] And like the sense that I'm like, I'm deeply sorry and I feel ashamed.
[36:25] Um, and it can be hard not to get knocked around by then.
[36:27] Um, and so like, it does take a lot of fortitude and a lot of zooming out to notice the learning in there and to be able to use that not as, not from a place of defensiveness, but from a place of like, okay, I got it wrong.
[36:42] How can I work to get it right again?
[36:43] It's like, it's pretty powerful.
[36:44] Yeah.
[36:45] Yeah.
[36:46] I hope this isn't a question that I don't want you to feel bad in asking this question, but it was one of the reasons it also felt so bad is that in the moment of them saying, why didn't you include us?
[36:59] you realised that it was a behaviour that reaffirmed their feeling of not belonging?
[37:04] Yeah.
[37:07] I felt like I'd made it worse.
[37:09] My good intention of trying to fix the problem had actually made them feel worse.
[37:15] They felt awful from what was being written online and then they felt like they didn't belong in the team.
[37:22] And that is something I never want to make anyone feel.
[37:25] Yeah, yeah.
[37:27] It's that theme of being unseen, like the feeling of being unseen.
[37:31] Yeah.
[37:31] Yeah.
[37:32] I mean, just the fact that we all know who you are, Bridge, and it just makes me so relieved and safe and comfortable knowing that the fact that you've...
[37:46] You know, you were happy to tell the story of one thing, but you went through that and it was an impactful moment for you.
[37:54] It just makes me so happy that you're on this team because it's like we, you know, we obviously with this stuff we do and the people we talk about and the topics we talk about, touch on, it often requires like huge sensitivity and,
[38:13] and empathy and understanding and patience.
[38:16] And you have all those things and we're very, very lucky to have you.
[38:22] Thanks, guys.
[38:23] Can I also ask, so there was the, you guys kind of got it wrong, but you did ask the question like how are you feeling or the question was something's not right here and then you had that discussion and,
[38:37] Do you think the people who felt ostracised felt more included and like they belonged after that discussion?
[38:43] And do you think it led to further institutional, organisational changes and behavioural changes from you that meant that moving forward they felt more like they belong more?
[38:53] I guess it's hard to know.
[38:55] Yeah, I can't really speak to how they felt.
[38:58] I felt like the conversation we had was really productive and really special, but it came too late.
[39:05] So I should have had it beforehand.
[39:08] And I think that would have made them feel much more included and like they belonged and that we weren't making decisions on behalf of them.
[39:16] Absolutely.
[39:17] And I think they must have felt like maybe that we'd made all these decisions just
[39:23] So outwardly it looked good for the company rather than who it actually affected, which as soon as they started to talk to me about why and as soon as I was able to ask why, then I fully realised the error and how they must...
[39:42] felt I could I felt like I could feel um I could feel where I went wrong um so I don't know about organizationally for that organization but I know for me it's something that I've definitely carried with me and it and it impacts my decisions moving forward yeah I guess I just want to
[40:00] Emphasise that getting it wrong, although awful for that moment, can mean that you get it right more often or looking to get it right more often than not moving forward.
[40:11] And wrong is not just a, like, there's hope in getting something wrong.
[40:16] Yeah.
[40:16] Yeah.
[40:17] And I do want to mention that that doesn't always happen, though, as in, you know, when we're called out, for example, or we recognise we've made an error, that sometimes it can move us into defensiveness and an unwillingness to take a look at our own experiences.
[40:36] And I think this great challenge here, which is what you did so beautifully and do all the time, Bridge,
[40:41] is that there's a willingness to check in.
[40:44] And so when you get like negative feedback, it automatically is going to feel deeply wounding.
[40:51] And this challenge is what do you do with that?
[40:52] Do you defend against it or are you willing to stay with it and be curious?
[40:57] And that's that's really kind of such a modelling of that, I think, Bridget.
[41:00] Yeah, I think it's also a lot of credit to that team.
[41:04] They were really special women who
[41:08] were able to talk to me about it in a really empathetic way that meant that there was no defensiveness.
[41:15] So that made the conversation helpful.
[41:18] That's beautiful.
[41:19] But you didn't expect to be telling that story today, Bridget?
[41:22] Nope.
[41:25] I'll go back to producing the show.
[41:27] Yeah, you do belong here, but you also belong over there.
[41:32] I'm certain of that.
[41:34] I don't know where Hugh belongs right now.
[41:37] You're very relaxed with that.
[41:38] Thank you, Bridge.
[41:39] Thank you, Bridge.
[41:40] It was beautiful.
[41:41] Bridge, we're taking behind the curtain.
[41:43] It makes me think of something that's coming to mind is people, people with different disabilities and who need different services or in particular access to say when we're doing a podcast and someone is in a wheelchair or something.
[42:01] I remember we've had sort of discussions behind the scenes of like, should we, is this going to be, is the door wide enough for their wheelchair?
[42:10] Is this going to be okay?
[42:12] Do we do this?
[42:13] And it always ends up boiling down to why don't we just ask them?
[42:17] Yeah.
[42:17] Yes.
[42:18] And then when you ask the person, it's like it's the best, it's a good conversation.
[42:23] Yeah.
[42:24] It feels so obvious once you've asked the question.
[42:27] I'm like, of course, if you ask the question in a respectful way, then it's always a good outcome.
[42:32] Yeah, and also like it reminds me of the episode that you did with Fern Brady and I think you asked her.
[42:37] Yeah.
[42:38] How would you like the lights maybe?
[42:40] Yeah.
[42:41] There was a question there.
[42:42] You did, didn't you?
[42:43] Yeah.
[42:43] Did you on a phone call beforehand because she's autistic?
[42:46] Yeah.
[42:47] Uh-huh.
[42:47] Yeah.
[42:47] And the very presence of that question for someone that has felt uncertain or questions belonging, like it is such a welcoming question to receive.
[43:02] It's demonstrating that I see you and I want you to feel comfortable.
[43:06] I want you to feel safe.
[43:08] And it's very simple.
[43:10] Yeah, that experience really inspired us, I think, to do that a lot more.
[43:15] And even with, like we had Grace Tame, also autistic.
[43:18] Because I remember Fern Brady saying, I don't like people hugging me or touching me when they first meet me.
[43:23] It's just a strange, the sensations with me for the next hour afterwards.
[43:28] And so I remember asking Grace, so I'd never met her in person before when I first met you, what's the best way to, um, and she sort of laughed and said, we can, whatever you want is totally fine.
[43:39] But then the next time I saw her, she said, it means so much to be asked that, that question.
[43:45] So it's like, I'm not saying how good we are for asking, but, but the point is when you, when you
[43:51] when you take a risk and ask someone a question like that, and you will find you'll get a very positive response and inspires you to do it more and more.
[43:57] So I think it's just encouragement for everyone.
[44:00] If you're sitting on the fence a bit, or do I ask or just ask, and then you'll have a bit of a ripple effect in your own life and therefore the people around you.
[44:07] I think there also is a fear of it in those cases and in any case, although I think there's two parts of the fear, one that I've missed.
[44:16] There's the fear of being us or me having missed something or doing something wrong.
[44:23] There's also the fear of the question feeling patronising.
[44:26] Yeah, yeah, I get that.
[44:27] Yeah, which I think in reality if you think about that and just don't do it in a patronising way, do it in an honest human to human real way, then it's not going to come across as patronising.
[44:40] But there is a fear there I think as well.
[44:43] When we look at, again, like this is showing up predominantly in an organisational context, but I'm sure you can also recall, like, you know, if you went to uni or to school, anywhere there's like kind of group settings here, that we're entering into these situations feeling uncertain.
[44:59] And transition periods are particularly important for this, as I mentioned before.
[45:02] So starting somewhere new, for example.
[45:04] And the responsibility of like an organisation or an institution is to really from the get-go, like in this onboarding, we're kind of onboarding belonging from the start.
[45:15] And so, you know, again, from an employee's point of view or a systemic structural point of view,
[45:20] is that what can we change to make this more conducive to belonging?
[45:24] And so, yes, perspective getting is one of those.
[45:28] We also know that things like mentoring is really, really important.
[45:33] And it's mentoring in both directions.
[45:35] I'm going to explain what I mean.
[45:36] So having someone that has been, for example, let's just say they've been in the job for a year.
[45:41] So they're still quite new, but they're still senior than the new person starting.
[45:46] Having that person share that they struggled at the start has been demonstrated as such a brief but incredibly powerful piece of information for someone that's new.
[45:59] That I struggled at the start too.
[46:01] So here we have this common humanity, a universal experience that it was hard at the start, but I got through it.
[46:08] So hearing that someone else that is above you struggled and now I'm here feeling better.
[46:14] It's immense.
[46:15] Yeah.
[46:16] Okay.
[46:16] Yeah.
[46:17] It immediately reminds me of when we had Glenn Robbins on and he explained how he felt before when he was being, trying to be convinced to do the panel, to be on the panel.
[46:28] Mm-hmm.
[46:29] And like I always feel an immense sense of like belonging uncertainty whenever I'm asked to go on one of those panel shows or any show, any show that isn't ours, I have a huge sense of belonging uncertainty.
[46:42] Unless I'm like really close with the host or I know the person on the show, I have so much, it's like self-doubt, but it's belonging uncertainty now that you describe it.
[46:51] But when Glenn described that he felt that,
[46:54] And I see he isn't necessarily my mentor, but I certainly see him as someone I look up to and respect and someone who's been there before me.
[47:02] Like that made a huge difference to how I feel going into those situations.
[47:08] Yeah.
[47:08] And there's some incredible research again by Jeffrey Cohen and his colleagues.
[47:12] particularly around interventions for college students in America and looking at African-American students who historically have experienced greater belonging uncertainty and that they've undertaken various tasks like, I'm going to get this wrong, so I'll put a link to the particular research in here, but it was things like first-year college students were invited to help researchers unpack and understand
[47:41] more senior students' struggles.
[47:44] So they were given like a written journal entry from a senior student and they were asked to help us understand what this person was experiencing.
[47:51] And the senior students had basically reported that we really struggled at the start too.
[47:56] But what we learned over time was that if I could stay, if I persisted, that it got easier.
[48:02] And so we have these first year students reading about the struggle of a senior student and the learning was that, yes, again, human universal experience here, you are not alone.
[48:12] You are not alone in this experience.
[48:14] and it gets better.
[48:16] And they found that for those students that undertook that exercise or that intervention is that their belonging increased like exponentially and that that carried over into academic performance and that carried over there and like amazingly it carried over into the
[48:34] job performance and job attainment after college.
[48:37] So these really simple interventions here saying that this is a fundamental experience that we all have and you'll get through it.
[48:44] Like, wow, that's pretty amazing.
[48:48] The other incredibly important aspect of cultivating greater belonging, particularly we're in a position where we can do that for other people, is the importance of feedback, right?
[49:02] whether this is in schools and education or whether this is in workplaces, there's been some amazing research around the importance of feedback and how it's given.
[49:13] Even from as early as the 1960s, there was a very famous experiment that was run by Rosenthal and Jacobson.
[49:22] And there are a few design flaws to this, I will acknowledge, but it was done in the 60s.
[49:26] But its main message is incredible.
[49:28] And that is that they took a group of, I think it was first graders and got them to undertake an intelligence test or IQ test.
[49:36] And then they randomly picked six to eight students from this bunch of kids and told the teachers that these kids.
[49:49] were earmarked as intellectual bloomers, that these kids are going to go far.
[49:55] Not based on their results, just randomly.
[49:56] Not based on any results, completely randomly.
[49:59] And so then they gave this feedback to the teachers.
[50:01] And then at the end of the year, they did the IQ testing again.
[50:07] And taking into account the natural development and IQ development that is going to happen across that year, what they found was that those six to eight students performed above and beyond the control group.
[50:19] And what they conferred from that was that the teachers who received this information then looked to these students with a high expectation and they were more, giving them more attention, they were more encouraging and they believed that these students were going to go far.
[50:38] Whoa.
[50:38] And that actually translated into greater academic achievement.
[50:43] And is that because the student all of a sudden felt like they were more special or they were getting more attention?
[50:52] Well, it's faith, right?
[50:53] So I have a faith in your ability.
[50:56] And as a kid or as an adult, feeling as though someone has a faith in my ability, absolutely instrumental to our ability.
[51:07] to our feeling of belonging and also our performance.
[51:10] So to follow up from that, again, this is from the work of Cohen and also some of his other colleagues as well.
[51:18] And they did this, like this is quite recent, this really great experiment with seventh graders and what they wanted to look at was essentially how people respond to critical feedback and how kids respond in the face of receiving
[51:34] critical feedback.
[51:35] So they did, they all did it, the whole class did an essay and then they randomly assigned 50% of the students to receive just the critical feedback and 50% of the students to receive the critical feedback plus an additional note from the teacher.
[51:54] And the teacher, the note from the teacher said, I'm giving you these comments because I have high standards and I know that you can meet them.
[52:04] two parts, I have high standards and, and this is the essential part, and I know you can meet them.
[52:10] Okay.
[52:11] Then they looked at how much people revised their essays after they got this feedback.
[52:16] So this question is like when people get constructive criticism, what do they do?
[52:22] Now for the control group, 17% of people revised their essay.
[52:27] Okay.
[52:29] So they didn't get the note.
[52:30] For the people that got the note, 70% of those kids revised their essay.
[52:38] And that the effects of this carried over into their academic performance and into college entry.
[52:45] It was just faith.
[52:46] It was like, I have faith in you.
[52:47] Yes.
[52:47] Yeah.
[52:48] And that confers belonging.
[52:50] Yeah.
[52:51] That I belong at school, in this class.
[52:52] Yeah, that you belong here.
[52:53] And I'm, I not.
[52:54] And so it's two things.
[52:56] I, I have these high standards and I believe that you can meet them.
[53:02] And also what comes with that is I will support you to get there.
[53:06] It's enormous.
[53:07] Yeah.
[53:09] Oh, yeah.
[53:10] And so if we look at this from, again, from an organisational point of view,
[53:15] How are we giving feedback?
[53:17] How are we giving feedback when something's not working or when we want something to change?
[53:21] And again, what we know, and David Yeager does some great work, he calls it wise feedback, and that is this combination of high standards and high support.
[53:29] So it's not about being complacent or ignoring poor performance, but actually, you know, I've got these standards and...
[53:39] I know that they're tricky, but I also know that you have it in you to do this.
[53:45] And like when you hear that as a person, you're like, yeah, okay.
[53:49] I reckon I do.
[53:51] And therefore, when we look at performance, like organisational performance, we know that those people are going to perform better.
[53:58] Yeah, I think how lucky I am to have been, or both of us, I assume your experience was the same as mine, to be... You should ask him.
[54:06] Yeah, yeah, we should, yeah.
[54:08] That's good.
[54:10] I'd love to watch some brothers' couples counselling.
[54:13] Look at you when you say this job.
[54:14] Yeah.
[54:17] That our parents, because I know that they've got high standards in, I'm talking about like work and going through school.
[54:29] And it was sort of, I don't know if it was ever stated, but it was certainly just evident that they had high standards.
[54:35] But I remember writing really young.
[54:38] I can't remember.
[54:39] It was primary school and we had to do a creative writing piece.
[54:41] I wrote a piece about my grandma and the teacher highlighted it as like really good and showed my mum.
[54:49] And then mum was really impressed and showed my grandma.
[54:51] And it was this like thing that was like everyone was very proud.
[54:54] My grandma was very emotional reading it.
[54:57] And then in future, when I would go to write something and it wasn't very good, mum would always say to me, I know you can do a lot better than this.
[55:07] This isn't that good.
[55:09] You've got a lot better in you.
[55:10] When you're emotionally connected to something, you can do really good work.
[55:13] But you need to be emotionally invested in it.
[55:16] And it was this combination of you can do better than this.
[55:19] I know you can and you should do better.
[55:25] And the belief, and I just think how lucky I am to have had that in a mum.
[55:30] I had a different form of it.
[55:32] It wasn't so much.
[55:34] I think they recognised also quite as intellectual as Josh or when Josh Cameron was more intellectual than I was and it was more whatever you want to do, we believe you'll do it really well when you, it wasn't like so much the schoolwork stuff.
[55:44] but we have faith that you can do, yeah, and will do things to a really high level.
[55:49] Yes.
[55:50] Yeah.
[55:51] And we'll help you get there.
[55:52] Yeah.
[55:53] In innocence.
[55:54] Yeah.
[55:54] Because if we look at, there are so many different examples of this, but if we look at the absence of the support and only the high standards, that is a place of extreme stress and threat and often that we will perform less well.
[56:11] So...
[56:13] In a workplace, for example, when there's a constant expression of very high standards and no support, like this is a place for burnout.
[56:21] It's also a place for higher staff turnover.
[56:22] And equally, if we have, we'll support you, but our standards are not, you know, like progress doesn't happen there.
[56:30] So it has to be this combination there.
[56:34] There is one other aspect to kind of belonging uncertainty that's very related, and I feel like I really want to mention it.
[56:40] It's called stereotype threat.
[56:42] Have you come across that?
[56:44] No.
[56:45] So it's this fear that we will perpetuate the stereotype about our minority group.
[56:55] It becomes so self-perpetuating and it's a real spiral, I think, that can bring a lot of grief and sadness, actually.
[57:04] And that would be something like think about the stereotype of the group that you belong to, for example, particularly if you're a minority group, and think about the efforts that you might make to ensure that that stereotype isn't reinforced publicly.
[57:18] Right.
[57:19] This is an extremely trivial example.
[57:21] It's so trivial and I don't want to undermine like the actual big examples of this, but I think it maybe demonstrates it.
[57:29] A stereotype for me as a woman, particularly when I was a lot blonder, was like the dumb blonde.
[57:37] Right.
[57:38] And I remember being at like a gathering with a group of people who were predominantly men and they were very smart.
[57:46] And we were playing, this sounds so nerdy, and we're playing Scrabble.
[57:50] And I'm like, God, I better make sure I don't.
[57:54] Like I've got to really bring my intellect here.
[57:56] I'm like one of the only women here.
[57:58] I was already feeling like a minority.
[58:01] And I was very focused on the fact that I do not want to, and this is clearly some of my own stuff here, I do not want to come across as a dumb blonde.
[58:09] That was like my fear that this is a stereotype that I'm going to perpetuate.
[58:13] Tempting not to open with your first word using all seven letters handbag.
[58:20] Because it's right there, like, oh, God, 50 plus points.
[58:23] But it's handbag.
[58:30] Yeah.
[58:31] So because I'm so focused on this as a fear and a threat, it's like what happens is that it actually starts to compromise our cognitive skills.
[58:42] And as a result of that, this is what I understand, I put down, I was like, yes, I've got a word, and I put down...
[58:50] C-A-R-M. And as I put it down, I was like, oh my God.
[58:58] Oh, no.
[58:59] I was trying to spell calm.
[59:01] Yeah.
[59:03] And I said C-A-R-M. And I am absolutely mortified.
[59:08] And here in this moment... Cram, I meant cram.
[59:11] I meant cram.
[59:11] Sorry, cram.
[59:12] Here in this moment, I have perpetuated the stereotype that I feared I would.
[59:18] Yeah.
[59:19] And so now I feel, I absolutely don't feel like a sense of belonging.
[59:24] I feel very small.
[59:26] I feel very ashamed.
[59:28] And my performance has been significantly impaired.
[59:30] My willingness to play the game is really diminished after this.
[59:32] Because your confidence is lowered.
[59:35] Yep, everyone's laughing.
[59:36] I'm laughing at myself, feeling very small, feeling very ashamed.
[59:39] This is when I was in my early 20s and I can still remember it very vividly.
[59:44] But it is one, like just one example of how the fear that we perpetuate, the negative stereotype, and I will be really clear about that,
[59:53] that the fear that I will perpetuate a negative stereotype actually, again, becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy because in a state of threat, our cognitive skills are undermined and we cannot attend to a situation in the way that we would if we were feeling calm and not concerned about it.
[1:00:10] Yeah.
[1:00:11] It's extremely common, for example, for people of color,
[1:00:15] in academic settings, that they're not only carrying the weight of their individual expectations, but also carrying the weight of the fear that I'll perpetuate a negative stereotype if I don't perform well here.
[1:00:28] And so if you think about that on a daily basis, like walking around, not only looking for cues of threat, but also looking to ensure that I don't perpetuate this negative stereotype, it's it leads to.
[1:00:42] like it leads to burnout, it leads to significant overwhelm, it leads to feelings of despair.
[1:00:48] And so I think that's even something just for us all to be aware of, whether we're in the minority or not, is being able to step back and to notice like is this actually reflective of this person or is this actually more around the kind of stress that they're under and how can we make this environment
[1:01:07] more welcoming and safer so that it's from that place that you're going to get the best performance from people.
[1:01:16] We just perform better when we feel like we belong.
[1:01:20] Yeah.
[1:01:22] An example that's coming to mind for me is when I'm at school, because I'm Jewish, and one of the stereotypes of Jewish people is that Jewish people are tight with their money.
[1:01:35] Like that's a stereotype and obviously very derogatory and,
[1:01:40] horrible.
[1:01:41] And I remember a friend of mine said that, you know, in regards to like someone who was being tight with money, they called them Jewish, you know, even though they weren't Jewish.
[1:01:52] And, and I remember just thinking, Oh my God, I, I don't, I don't ever want to be seen to be tight with money now because I don't want to, I don't want them to come at me or to be, I don't want to be able to everyone to be able to like point at me and say like, see,
[1:02:08] And so I feel like even now I try and pay sometimes and I feel like there's like an underlying motivation.
[1:02:18] The reason for doing that is because of that sort of stereotype, that belief.
[1:02:24] I had golf the other day.
[1:02:25] One of the more generous shouts I've ever encountered when we were up in New South Wales and you paid for everyone to play golf and for... Well, yeah, but yes.
[1:02:35] And that...
[1:02:37] Yeah, let's talk more about that.
[1:02:39] That was lovely.
[1:02:42] But I do, there is like a sense and I used to really get worried about it and I don't necessarily worry about it actively now, but I think that is an underlying reason to why I sometimes want to be able to pay.
[1:02:54] So it kind of like undoes any beliefs people might be having about me because I'm Jewish.
[1:02:59] Because there is a fear that you'll perpetuate the stereotype.
[1:03:02] Yeah.
[1:03:02] Yeah.
[1:03:03] And so that fear then drives you to do something differently.
[1:03:06] And interestingly also, like in other circumstances, it might be that there's an overcompensation and that overcompensation actually also can be harmful for us too.
[1:03:15] Like...
[1:03:17] Again, like using your example, hypothetically, if you're working so hard to protect exposure to the stereotype, you might end up paying all the time and then you might find that you're experiencing more financial difficulty, like in the extreme, if that makes sense, all in an effort to kind of protect this self that's feeling very vulnerable.
[1:03:33] Yeah.
[1:03:35] So that's something I think just to be really aware of.
[1:03:38] And again, it's around checking in with our own assumptions about other people's experiences and bringing, if we can, like a curiosity and really asking them, you know, how is this for you?
[1:03:50] And the role of mentoring, again, is so, so key in that.
[1:03:55] It's also really very powerful to be a mentor from a place of feeling uncertain whether you belong.
[1:04:02] So the research suggests that if you put your hand up to be a mentor, that will increase your belongingness.
[1:04:09] So it goes both ways.
[1:04:10] Not only does being a mentee help your belonging, but being a mentor makes you feel like you belong in a workplace, for example.
[1:04:18] So you start to be like really embedded in this kind of in this work system here.
[1:04:22] And now I feel valued and I feel like I'm important and I matter.
[1:04:25] And also the someone sees me, my mentee sees me.
[1:04:28] Yeah.
[1:04:29] So, you know, if there's opportunity, if you're feeling like a lack of belonging at work in particular,
[1:04:34] Or at school, put your hand up for the PNC.
[1:04:38] Or at your sporting club, put your hand up for an extra role.
[1:04:41] Volunteer work, put your hand up for that.
[1:04:44] It requires taking a risk, right?
[1:04:46] That does not feel comfortable.
[1:04:48] But we know that the payoff is great.
[1:04:51] So that the more that you're involved, the better the outcome is.
[1:04:55] In uni, I did, I studied advertising at uni and throughout the whole, it was like a three year course and the whole course I felt like I was like mediocre average, you know, just didn't necessarily think I was anything special.
[1:05:08] But then the way you get into that course, at least back then, is you would submit like a folio and then if the folio was good enough, you then come in for like an interview with lecturers.
[1:05:20] But it's a lecturer, but also a third year student.
[1:05:23] And I was asked to be one of the third year students to be in the interviews interviewing the incoming people.
[1:05:28] And I was shocked that I would be chosen to do that.
[1:05:33] But the fact that they chose me and asked me completely reshaped how I felt about my place within that course.
[1:05:41] So that did improve my confidence or at least my sense of belonging in that place.
[1:05:46] That's a great example.
[1:05:47] Absolutely.
[1:05:48] Yeah, that's great.
[1:05:52] When we think about the kind of the role of you as an individual feeling like you don't belong, I think one of the things also to really kind of perhaps mention here is again this like attunement to the story that you're telling yourself.
[1:06:07] And so, you know, if we have this capacity to be able to name, like, for example, I'm noticing I'm fearful of rejection or I'm noticing I don't think I belong here.
[1:06:16] So even just kind of naming, giving it like articulation is a really helpful way of then looking at, okay, well, what am I going to do now about that?
[1:06:25] Now, there may be some circumstances, like we kind of mentioned before, that actually maybe this is not a group I want to belong to.
[1:06:32] So like with this greater awareness, like, is this my story dictating my behaviour or is this a check in with my values?
[1:06:39] So it requires decluttering.
[1:06:41] What is my learning history?
[1:06:43] What is my fear from what are my values?
[1:06:47] Where do I want to be?
[1:06:48] Do I want to be putting my energy into this group?
[1:06:51] Because the energy to put into a group that you don't actually want to belong to is really hard.
[1:06:59] So it requires this slowing down and to notice, am I just wanting to belong because it would make me feel better?
[1:07:06] Or am I wanting to belong because this is a group of people that I'm really curious about that are inspiring my values or kind of heading me in a direction that would feel meaningful to me?
[1:07:18] And then if you decide that this is a group that I do really want to belong to, then like even just for a day, see if you can as an experiment –
[1:07:29] pay attention to all the cues of belonging that you get.
[1:07:33] So it's like being on the hunt for the good stuff rather than this tendency that we all have for this negativity bias.
[1:07:40] So seeing if you can very intentionally, today I'm going in and I'm going in almost like as this detective to find the places of belonging.
[1:07:49] And so that's going to mean attending to people smiling.
[1:07:51] It's going to mean whether someone opens the door for you.
[1:07:54] It's going to mean...
[1:07:56] waving it's like again micro behaviors of positive pro-social experiences because with a negativity bias we are always going to be primed to notice experiences of exclusion and rejection we want to see if we can bring some kind of really intentional attention to connection that is within your control that's within your power amazing
[1:08:20] When I was in year eight, I wanted to be friends with a group of people who I'm now friends with.
[1:08:25] So it's a happy ending.
[1:08:28] And I remember they used to stand around on the basketball court chatting and I'd sort of join in, stand in the circle and not say anything.
[1:08:36] And then I'd sort of just stay in there for about 10 minutes, not say anything because I was too nervous to say anything and then leave.
[1:08:43] And I got really depressed and sad about it because I thought they don't want me there.
[1:08:48] They don't even know I'm there.
[1:08:50] If I leave, no one says goodbye.
[1:08:52] And I remember telling mum and dad and dad saying, how do you know they don't notice you go?
[1:08:56] I'm like, well, no one says goodbye.
[1:08:57] And he's like, well, do you say goodbye to them?
[1:08:59] Yeah.
[1:09:00] And I'm like, no, I don't.
[1:09:01] And he's like, well, just try saying I'm off or see ya.
[1:09:04] Yeah.
[1:09:05] And I remember doing it and people responding.
[1:09:08] And that was at that point, I don't know, I'm getting emotional about it now.
[1:09:11] Yeah.
[1:09:11] That was enough for me to know, oh, they did actually notice I was there the whole time.
[1:09:14] Yeah.
[1:09:16] Um, and I've always, that's always stuck with me.
[1:09:18] Yeah.
[1:09:18] Yeah.
[1:09:20] That's amazing.
[1:09:20] But it's so, it's so interesting too, because in the absence of that kind of curiosity or that question, it might've meant that you withdrew yourself from that group altogether or that you became more despairing.
[1:09:33] Um, it takes a risk to be open.
[1:09:37] Like to really be open.
[1:09:38] Saying goodbye at that point felt so huge.
[1:09:41] To open my mouth and say, I've got to go, see ya.
[1:09:44] Felt like the biggest thing in the world.
[1:09:47] I'm genuinely feeling so proud of little Josh.
[1:09:50] This real sense of pride.
[1:09:51] Come on, you're Josh.
[1:09:55] But, yeah, it was the start of me feeling belonging to a group of people that I've been friends with for, what am I, 25 years now.
[1:10:03] Yeah, wow.
[1:10:03] Yeah.
[1:10:05] And that kind of key experience in there is that I matter.
[1:10:11] And this is something that I do a lot of work with my clients is seeing if you can notice.
[1:10:16] Like, for example, if you don't go to an event, sometimes a thought might be, oh, no one will notice if I'm not there or they'll be fine if I don't go.
[1:10:23] Yeah.
[1:10:23] I'm like, how do you know that?
[1:10:26] What's the evidence for that?
[1:10:28] And let's bring attention to what is it like when you do go?
[1:10:33] The thing that we all crave, if we kind of come back to the very beginning, is this sense that I matter, that I'm seen and that I'm not alone.
[1:10:43] This is this core fundamental need here.
[1:10:47] We see it all the time, like the simplest examples.
[1:10:51] You'll see this all the time if you have kids, little kids in particular.
[1:10:54] Just remember like my daughter had her special...
[1:10:59] book week parade thing.
[1:11:01] This is last year, I think.
[1:11:03] And she was maybe four, I think.
[1:11:05] And I was standing outside the classroom and I could see her lining up to come out and she couldn't see me, but I could see her.
[1:11:14] And as she's walking out, I can see her searching, like, and all kids do this.
[1:11:19] I'm searching for my caregiver or my person, right?
[1:11:29] almost anticipation, excitement, anticipation of seeing me, but also I could kind of see like an uncertainty.
[1:11:36] And then she sees me and she's like...
[1:11:39] madly waving and I was like, oh, like this moment here is like, I see you and because I see you, you matter.
[1:11:49] It's just this micro moment here.
[1:11:52] And it's like now that she's seen me, she can go off on her merry way and do her book thing because she's being seen.
[1:11:59] And we all have this yearning here.
[1:12:01] And so it's on both us to be willing to take a risk, to step out of our comfort zone, to step out of our comfort zone,
[1:12:08] And it's also on us to create a comfort zone for other people as well.
[1:12:13] I could go on about this.
[1:12:14] It's a topic that's really close to my heart.
[1:12:17] It's an incredible topic.
[1:12:18] And definitely when you said that we'd be doing belonging uncertainty, it didn't resonate with me when you said that.
[1:12:25] But now knowing what you mean, it obviously really, really resonates.
[1:12:29] I've been reticent to give an example of my life because I feel like as a white middle-aged man who plays sport, belonging has not been for heart as me.
[1:12:39] It probably is for a lot of people.
[1:12:41] But I do have an example that I want to give because it shows how someone else's actions can make a big difference and how easy, how quickly it can change for you.
[1:12:49] So I have spoken about here before, but have been part of the Queensland State of Origin campaign for a few years now.
[1:13:00] And as a Victorian and as I was introduced, the coach Billy Sider said, we've never had anyone who's not Queenslander in this group.
[1:13:07] So get out.
[1:13:10] Sounds like Billy.
[1:13:13] And I don't understand the rules of this sport.
[1:13:16] I've watched less than 10 games of my life and all of a sudden I'm in the inner sanctum of one of the most famous rugby league teams ever.
[1:13:22] Yeah.
[1:13:23] And the whole group's, you know, sort of in their mid-20s and rugby league boys and myself, probably not, we don't have a lot in common.
[1:13:35] Lovely, lovely group of guys.
[1:13:36] One of the nicest group of guys I've ever met, but we didn't have a lot in common.
[1:13:39] And you're on camp with them, so you live with them for 10 days.
[1:13:42] And I've just met them all for the first time.
[1:13:45] And I absolutely had that belonging uncertainty, no question.
[1:13:47] Yeah.
[1:13:49] And after the third night, I found myself exhausted.
[1:13:52] I didn't do a lot, but I was always exhausted.
[1:13:54] I think it's that it was that uncertainty.
[1:13:57] And the third on the third night we watched footage.
[1:14:00] It was like a coaching session where the coaches just watched it was like an hour of footage and they dissected each play.
[1:14:05] And I've never felt so out of thought.
[1:14:07] I didn't know what was happening, but everyone knew exactly what all this lingo and slang and I didn't know what was happening.
[1:14:13] And we went back to our rooms after that.
[1:14:14] And a guy called Dale Ed Sherry Evans, who was a captain,
[1:14:18] I came up to and I was feeling so like, I do not belong here.
[1:14:21] This is just ridiculous.
[1:14:22] I'm here.
[1:14:23] And he came up to me and he put his arm around me and he said, um, and he said, how are you going?
[1:14:29] How are you finding it all so far?
[1:14:30] And he said, I just thought this when you talked about it before, he said, I remember my first time in this camp.
[1:14:35] And this is like their captain and one of their greatest ever players.
[1:14:38] And he said, I remember my first time in camp.
[1:14:40] It's pretty overwhelming.
[1:14:41] There's so much to take in.
[1:14:43] It's so foreign.
[1:14:44] So I can only imagine what it feels like for you.
[1:14:46] And he said, but just so you know, I am so happy.
[1:14:49] His arm around me said, I'm so happy you're here.
[1:14:51] Like it is so awesome we were here.
[1:14:53] And then he followed it through with actions in the rest of the camp.
[1:14:55] He would send me screen.
[1:14:57] If someone messaged him something about one of my talks or the journal entries they were doing or anything I was doing with the program, he would send it to me straight away.
[1:15:05] as reinforcement that and it was and that was that was it it was that I went from being exhausted all the time so I don't have a belong here to I was able to find it funny that I the next time anyone didn't know what was going on I didn't feel out of place I found I found it funny but I didn't know what was going on and very comfortable in that and that's just because he put his arm around me and said I'm so happy you're here and then followed through some actions which I thought was a lovely that's brilliant yeah absolutely brilliant
[1:15:31] Well, you did the same thing when we went to a game, a state of origin game.
[1:15:36] I'd never been.
[1:15:37] I know less about rugby than you even.
[1:15:40] Or league, I should say.
[1:15:41] Is that what you'd probably call it?
[1:15:42] Yeah, is rugby by itself not league?
[1:15:45] You'd want to say league, I think, yeah.
[1:15:47] Yeah.
[1:15:47] You definitely want to say league, mate.
[1:15:50] Yeah.
[1:15:51] And we were lucky enough to go.
[1:15:53] You invited me to come with you to a state of origin game in Melbourne and we were outside the rooms downstairs at a very inner sanctum
[1:16:01] Yeah.
[1:16:02] And I was so, same as you, you felt like I didn't belong, but you were doing the same thing to me that day of saying, I remember the first time I came down here, it was so intimidating with all these guys.
[1:16:12] They're massive.
[1:16:13] Like giving me little cues of how you felt the first time.
[1:16:16] So you passed on that.
[1:16:17] Yeah.
[1:16:18] I cherry Evansed you.
[1:16:19] Yeah.
[1:16:20] And, you know, we can do it also.
[1:16:22] I mean, I often do it with my kids.
[1:16:23] Like I will often share with them.
[1:16:25] Yeah, I used to find that really hard too, because it's really just humanising this experience.
[1:16:32] And also fundamentally, again, it tells you that you're going to be okay, that you're going to get through this.
[1:16:37] And it's so powerful.
[1:16:39] Yes.
[1:16:41] Wow.
[1:16:41] Thank you.
[1:16:42] That was a beauty.
[1:16:43] It's my pleasure.
[1:16:44] So, so great.
[1:16:46] So good to see you.
[1:16:47] Great to be here.
[1:16:51] Enjoyed this week's episode but want a little more?
[1:16:54] Then you might want to know that we have a brand new show called A Little More Imperfects over on Patreon.
[1:17:00] For a little bit of money, you'll get access to bonus episodes with the three of us every fortnight, early access to live events, plus other things that we haven't thought of yet, but when we do think of them, you'll get them.
[1:17:13] Visit patreon.com forward slash the imperfects.

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