Mark Hiddleson is the Owner of Specialized Storage Solutions, Inc., a nationwide logistics company with industry-leading warehouse storage solutions. It provides clients with innovative products, facility layouts, and designs to optimize their logistics operations.
Mark has several decades of service experience in the warehousing and logistics industry, with leadership roles in several professional industry organizations. Using a holistic approach, he also has experience in equipment material handling, operations management, supply chain optimization, professional development, and public speaking. He holds a bachelor’s in economics and a master's degree in holistic health education.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
Mark Hiddleson discusses the concept of the saboteur archetype
The difference between top performers and average performers
Tips for silencing negative self-talk
Mark's book recommendations
The six unique human gifts
What is symbiotic energy exchange?
The benefits of creating feedback loops
In this episode…
Do you struggle to complete multiple tasks in a short period of time? Do you often sabotage your own efforts?
It takes confidence and courage to change your lifestyle and daily routines. Many people underestimate their abilities, skills, and achievements, limiting their success. It is essential to learn how to silence negative self-talk. Top performers are dedicated to self-improvement and go the extra mile to achieve their goals.
In this episode of The Tao of Pizza Podcast, Mark Hiddleson is interviewed by Dr. Jeremy Weisz of Rise25 to discuss the integral effort and saboteur archetype. They examine six unique human gifts, the benefits of creating feedback loops, and tips for silencing negative self-talk and becoming a top performer. Enjoy!
Resources mentioned in this episode:
Specialized Storage Solutions, Inc. contact phone: 707-732-3892
Mark Hiddleson's email: markhiddleson@aol.com
Sponsor for this episode...
This episode is brought to you by Specialized Storage Solutions Inc.
Listen...
I have been in the logistics and storage industry for several decades. I know I don’t look that old, but it's true.
We provide industry-leading warehouse storage solutions nationwide.
So basically, if you have a warehouse that needs Rack, Shelving, Carts, Conveyors, or Mezzanines, we help with....design engineering, installations, inspections, and repairs to help clients optimize their logistics operations.
Sometimes people don’t even realize that we can actually help with permit acquisition services.
We take a holistic look at your entire business supply chain ecosystem to develop the resources for continually improving your operation.
To learn more, visit specialracks.com or give us a call at (707) 732-3892. One of the best ways to learn more about our products and services is to follow us on Instagram. And there’s a link on our website to do that.
I will even give you my personal email address for podcast listeners, so email me at markhiddleson@aol.com if you’re ready to take your warehouse storage and retrieval systems to the next level.
Episode Transcript:
Intro 0:01
Welcome to The Tao of Pizza where we feature top logistics leaders, entrepreneurs and supply chain innovators and share their inspiring stories with a holistic twist.
Mark Hiddleson 0:16
Mark Hiddleson here, host of The Tao of Pizza Podcast where I talk with top industry innovators in the warehousing, logistics, and supply chain business with a holistic twist. Before I introduce today's guest, I want to mention a few episodes. It really checked out I interviewed Sal Fateen a few weeks ago, 50 years of experience as an engineer. Chris Murphy, one of my greatest clients. And then last week, I had a great conversation with Srini Rao, who actually hosted the first podcast ever listened to six years ago. So it was a great way to see the circle turn. Today I have with me, Dr. Jeremy Weisz here from Rise25, who's done thousands of interviews with successful entrepreneurs and CEOs. And we've flipped the script today, and he's going to be interviewing. Jeremy, welcome on.
Jeremy Weisz 1:04
Mark, I'm excited. I'm always excited because we're gonna be talking about the integral effort and what that means that kind of how that falls into the other episodes. And you always kind of bring it back to how can someone take action on this personally and professionally. So we're gonna dig deep on what the integral effort means. And in we're talking about the archetypes, too. Before we get to that this episode is brought to you by specialized storage solutions. And Mark people who may know you may not know you, they know you've been in logistics and storage industry for several decades. And you have and provide industry leading warehouse storage solutions nationwide. So I always tell people listen, if you have a warehouse, you should call mark. I don't care what it's about. If it's about rack, shelving, carts, conveyors, I need to redesign I need installations, I need inspections, I need advice on permitting, it doesn't matter. Just call Mark. If he doesn't know the answer, he knows someone who knows the answer. So you know, you take a holistic approach to business and life in general and on the supply chain, which is kind of fits perfectly with the manufacturing industry. So to learn more, you can go specialracks.com, you can give him a call 707-732-3892. He even said for podcast listeners, here's his email address if you have questions, his personal email markhiddleson@aol.com. So, Mark, maybe I'll orient us on archetypes, we're going to start off with the integral effort.
Mark Hiddleson 2:45
Yeah, it's uh, I'm excited. Thank you for the introduction. Jeremy. It's a think we're on the fifth of a series that we're doing, which is an integral path, what I call integral path, which is your worldview, which would you create what's possible in your life with your worldview, just to make it real simple. Your mission and vision, which is what are you going to do with your life, you know, what's important to you and decide on what's important. And it's integral because you know, your worldview, your mission and vision, it's included with your worldview. So this path is kind of like concentric circles, almost like like the Russian, I think they're called Patricia dolls, where you know, your worldview is the container for your mission and vision. And then we went into the third part of it, which is your speech is because really, to be effective, you you say what you're going to do and do what you say you're going to do. And that's kind of how you make things happen. And then the end of speech is really that actions speak louder than words. So part of your speech is your action. And then that was the fourth part. And so we've been talking about all these through the lens of different archetypes today is the saboteur, and we're going to talk about, oldman economics was the fifth. So this is actually the sixth one. So this is the sixth part of a series, integral economics when we look through the lens of the child archetype. And, you know, the child is able to embrace curiosity and energy to create value for other people. We talked a lot, a little bit about don't turn and dime for money. And then all of these archetypes are a way to give you more more self awareness, more access, because we all share and saboteur is one that kind of all people share different people identify with different archetypes. There's hundreds of them. And every time we do one of these I'm always surprised because I chose the archetypes. I use the scientific process. I've shared this with you before is that and it is kind of a joke, but that's how science work is you create random things and see what will happen if you just do randomly so I drew the archetypes out of the hat. But every time I go to do it on this like wow It's really interesting, you know, today is the integral effort, you know, which is, you know how much effort and you put into things. And one of the things about effort and the saboteur would know, which is one of the archetypes we all share. It reminds me of a New Year's resolutions and I have a I have a funny story of every year I used to be a member of a gym. A few years ago, I started training in my office, it's a long story, but whenever I was at the gym, it was always come back from a vacation like, two weeks from somewhere, because the last week of the year, we always take off, I'm 10 pounds overweight, I've got a game plan of how to take off the vacation pounds and Mike goes park at the gym, and there's like nowhere to park. I'm like, wait a minute, I was here. Before Christmas, man, the place was empty. And they go I'm like, oh has the new year's resolutions, you know, and you just had to kind of be patient that you know, probably by the end of January, definitely by mid February, back to you know, premium parking and parking in the front row. So that that saboteur reminded me of an effort. A lot of people, they put a ton of effort, you know, and they're working out three times a day, five days in a row. So like, you know, I've got 25 workouts this week. And it's really, it's over exertion, it's over effort. I mean, you see this in, like burnout is a huge thing, especially now since everything's connected everything it's really easy to sabotage your effort by trying to do too much into in too little time. So it's uh, you know, I just think the saboteur is a great one to talk about integral effort. And as we get into it, you know, there's,
Jeremy Weisz 6:45
you're also I know, You've done a lot of coaching and what do you see the differences in the average person? And people who are superstars? It could be work, it could be sports? Yeah,
Mark Hiddleson 7:03
So I had a, you know, I've always, I've always thought that, you know, putting a little effort where other people aren't, is, you know, as a young athlete, I was always trying to get a little more reps in the batting cage, a little more reps. And it's actually, you know, the saboteur, as as young as the amateur athlete, I thought it was doing pro I actually injured myself from over, you know, overtraining, and trying to get so much done, you know, thinking, you know, I'm 18 years old, I want to go pro, I need to do all this in and I didn't have great coaches around me to, to give me the right amount of effort. And so that was a little out of whack. And the sabotage came a formula injury, you know, which, which is common, I mean, think same thing goes for the New York New Year's resolutions, when you go in the gym, you haven't trained in six months, or six years. And you go in there, it's easy to get hurt. And I had a mentor one of my bosses that told me that the difference between the average guy and the superstar is like an extra 30 minutes a day. So for me that's like, integral effort is that yeah, hard work is one of my values, and I value hard work. But it's, it's not overdoing it. And it's doing it incrementally, in, in small bits, and you know, an extra 30 minutes a day doesn't sound like much, but if you look at what you can get accomplished in 30 days, you know, 30 minutes, it could be anything it could be cold calling, it could be meditation, it could be look at you know that pie shape of your life. Is it your family that needs attention? Is it your spiritual you know, something you're going to take extra time and invest in developing you? It makes a big difference if you don't doesn't you don't people always, I think this is I don't know if it's a Tony Robbins call but I heard him say it is people always over completely overestimate what they can accomplish in a year, right? You look at and then I do I do a 3331 every year where I look at the three things that happened that were epic, that make lifestyle, the three things that I really made mistakes that I got to learn from, and then the three things that are going to make next year awesome near. And then one thing that I have to surrender, you know, and in those three things, it's always like, you always think you can get more accomplished in year but But the flip side of that is that you totally underestimate what you can accomplish over five or 10 years. And that's something that I've seen, you know, in my life, and I'll share if we get into it I'll share some stories of my life over like a 2030 year span, where it's it's things that it never it never gets easier, but things change in a way where your actions are more in what I like to call like a synergy and flow with nature, but things you're able to make things happen in your 40s and The things that you couldn't do in your 20s and 30s. And just because of those little incremental investments, you know, and there's some monumental, there's some monumental stuff in there too. But we haven't talked about the knight archetype or the hero archetype yet so
Jeremy Weisz 10:15
yeah, I don't know who came up with this originally. I know that. In one of James Clear's book, he talks about just getting 1% better every day, and it makes it whatever it is 30 to 40 times better, in general, and it's that constant improvement, right, that those inter adds up over a long period of time. He's doing a little bit more, a little bit more. Yeah.
Mark Hiddleson 10:45
Yeah, it's funny, I took a class 20 years ago on it was like a meditation basic practice, I actually have it on the on The Tao of Pizza website. If anybody wants to check that out. It's a it's a basic practice. And the idea is 3% improvement. That's, that's three times getting clear. But when, when, when I was taking the class, I'm like, 3%, I'm sitting there. I was like, you know, I'm not looking at anything less than like 8.5% You know, but it's true, but the small you know, and those and then the thing with the saboteur, I mean, I sabotage myself with the baseball thing, and I want to try to be honest, tell tells you on myself. The thing with the saboteur, is that the way, you silence that voice in your head that says you can't do it, I mean, that's the other thing about effort. Or the saboteur I want to on the world using if you look at the worldview, if you're if your saboteur is in your worldview, it's like if you think you can, you can if you think you can't, you can't like whether you think you can and you think you can't you write that you've heard that before, right? And self fulfilling prophecy is such a true thing about human nature is probably why, you know, law of attraction things are so effective or they work is because you know, and then the syllable, the way to overcome the way to silence that voice is little acts of courage, you know, that you overcome the fear of inviting change, you know, into your life, it's most people the there's a saying that most people want to have it all the people that most people don't want to be at. All. Right, so one is like, in, in starting this podcast, I thought, Man, I wanted to do it. But my biggest fear was the change because I have really good control over my schedule. And I didn't, I looked at the time. And I'm like, Man, that investment of time. I know, I know, there's an ROI on this. But there were voices in the back of my head, well, are you going to be good with it? What if it's a mistake? What if you know what people look good, they're gonna make funny and I was like, man, people are making fun of me already. All the time. Anyways, and when I looked at it through all the other values I had, right, like not trading time for money and creating rather than consuming in and adding value to a community I, you know, when I thought about, it's like, yeah, this is gonna be, it's gonna be more work, I'm gonna have to be more flexible, adaptable with my schedule. But the payoff is, I don't know how long it's been, it's been four to six months, it hasn't been that long. We launched everything in about 60 to 90 days. But it's, it's amazing. And I love doing it. I'm energized by it. But I had to be willing to invite that change in for me my time. Is, is it's the most precious thing we have. Right? You're not You're not getting any more of it. And so that was one, you know, kind of silence that voice by taking little actions, right? We did a sketch we did. Okay, if you were going to interview people who was the 30 people you'd want to be and so it was a great process. And then it was just like a small little acts of courage. I asked a few people I trusted 80 think that's a good idea. And that took some courage to write but they were little chunks. And now a guy who didn't listen to podcast six years ago, is hosting a podcast.
Jeremy Weisz 14:21
So it is those little chunks and I think, you know, what, James Clear, was referring to I know they talk about like Kaizen based approach, which is like just constant improvement. And but those things do creep in like you said, the self talk of like, well, what if I'm just wasting my time? I put all this effort into gaining out of it. And so you, you're talking about silencing that those negative self talk that inner self talk essentially.
Mark Hiddleson 14:54
Yeah. And there's a the self taught I was fine was thinking about this in the Different contexts. But same thing early in my master's degree in holistic health education, there was a lot of people sharing their experience. And one of the things I laughed as people would say, you know, they share a story, they say the mistake, they made a mistake, and they'd say, Man, I did this and that, but I'm not going to beat myself up about it. And I knew like I was looking around. I was like, that's one of the things you're supposed to say is I'm not gonna beat myself up and I'm thinking to myself, Man, I'm in my mid late 20s, I was like, I would kick my own. What do you mean, you're not beating yourself up. But it is a process and the inner voice is something you know, I've been in sales for a long time, and you face a lot of rejection. And so you know, it's important that if you're going to be healthy enough to have a sale, have a successful sales career to find ways to increase your capacity for rejection, and enhance your inner voice. So there was a I'm pretty sure you know, this. I know a lot of the quotes I don't know where they came from, but I'm pretty sure it's How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie was be generous in your approbation and lavish in your praise. And I added two of yourself for this archetype and effort is like look at the little wins look at you know that the little negative voice it's actually it's a survival mechanism. And that's the saboteur. I mean, the reason we have it is if we didn't have it, we'd all be doing, you know, crazy stuff that we shouldn't be but that saboteur it is the good little voice that keeps you from the edge. And so that's in all of these one of the reasons it's integral is that we're you know, by the end of this I kind of want to have some suggestions how to integrate the shadow side of the saboteur, and these are some of the ways I mean by taking small, small little acts of courage added up over a long time and then being generous in your approbation and lavish in your praise. Those are like 1920s words that's another reason I like no one says approbation anymore but this is the don't beat yourself up don't beat yourself up story because I remember when I when I heard that I just I couldn't believe that people weren't beating themselves up it was a new I had to invite change because I thought that was that's what successful people do but it's not true you know, it's not it's not true. No, I love how you add
Jeremy Weisz 17:25
love yourself there we could put it is from How to Win Friends and Influence People. I love that and guys, I remember listening to the audio. And that is one of my favorite books of all time for sure. So people should check that out. Are there any other favorite books resources that you like the people who should check out?
Mark Hiddleson 17:44
So I mentioned Srini Rao the in the beginning and I just interviewed him I was really stoked because his book, Unmistakable: Why Only Is Better Than Best is the Wall Street Journal bestseller it was really fascinating. For me, what he did is he took a the concept of surfing the kind of he ripped the idea off from me, right, because I already had this idea that you should write a book about surfing as a metaphor for how to do life. Because surfing is like super art. I mean, you can't even like you've got to be really, really good. We were talking about basketball earlier and playing basketball. But to serve, you have to have a certain level of fitness, be able to swim, be able to survive in the ocean, we get more out of the way like just to get out there. And I'll put a disclaimer like I'm the crappiest surfer anyone's ever seen. But I can do it right I can get on a board I can get out there most of the time and I do it on a on a stand up paddleboard which it's still really it's hard, you have to be able to paddle out. But he created this framework and I loved it because he broke it down into there's the paddle out. There's the the lineup. And then there's the drop, which is when you're dropping the wave and then there's the impact zone. And all of these things are kind of metaphors for life is like you find yourself in impacts on it. Like when you're in the ocean. It's a great metaphor because there's things are just out of your control. You're just in the wave. And there's the ride which is really cool and like the only reason it's worth getting almost killed getting eaten by a shark and you will get all that when you go surfing. Well, my wife I got to limit the stories I tell him I was just gonna kick my ass but once I'm I was going surfing and she read in the newspaper I go I live in Northern California. So Stinson Beach is like an hour away. And it's bleen is is actually a little bit north of things has a really super good waves for beginners, but it's also feeding ground for great whites. And, and Sudan. You know, I read the paper a few months ago and somebody got attacked by sharks and they had and I didn't go I didn't go surfing that day, but I told her I go look man, if I get eaten by a shark is such a small odds Like you have to go out some way. eaten by a shark, it's like, in how else do you want to react to it? And but it is, you know, it is real, but it's humbling, but I love. And when when I interviewed Srini I like to do this, this is another thing I tried to memorize, like, memorize those chapter and like the paddle out because I tried to tell myself well, you know, the paddle out for me was, you know, my college years and going to school and working full time was it was like a paddle out to get to where I wanted to be. To get the job, I wanted to eventually start the company and I wanted the paddle out. And then even day to day, like I think of things that I'm not very good at, like I'm paddling out on the podcast, I'm still new. And it was actually one of the exercises I do is I try to memorize them all. And if I can't think of one, I talked to you about this with the Four Agreements, once I tried to think of what the Four Agreements are. And if I can't think of one, then I know that that one's probably the one I need to pay attention to. And was screening that I went through. And I was doing I just thought of this while I was interviewing them. And I went through. And I was like, yeah, there's a paddle out. There's the lineup, there's the drop the impact zone and the ride. And I was like, Well, what else is there that was at it. And so I grabbed the book and I looked and the last part is stoke. It gives me chills thinking about it because there is a stoke, when you started out with something you were paddled out, you couldn't even get out your board was getting tipped over. People were getting mad at you in the lineup, you get beat up because like surfing, there's a certain the way it goes like this. One of the things I like about blindness is like the whole wave is kind of the same, like a lot of beaches you go to and like the good part of the wave is only a little bit. And the good surfers know where it is. And they go to find but they get pissed because other knuckleheads like me get blown is like no, if you don't instinctively know how to look at the ocean and go, this is a good way that's not a good way you don't belong on the good way. Let's call this the lineup thing. And so it's funny, it's a great but the Stoke is once you are the one who goes and gets the good wave, you catch the you minimize the impacts on there, there is a stoke. And, and it was funny here, they told me I was like, You know what this interview is this the stowed for me like this is and I wasn't even thinking about it. But there is that stoke. And I was going to try to hang some of this framework on that just for this episode, just because I think he's such a cool metaphor. And it goes in with integral effort, right, because it takes a lot of effort to learn to paddle out and it's kind of the suckiest part, because what you spend the most time doing, but then once you spend enough time then you know the Stoke is, is a difference. And then that's one of the unique human gifts that we have. And I was hoping to talk more about that. But this is going to go into those for a second. So when it comes to integral effort, and I have a saying that was one of the names of the chapter. It's a heading in the chapter but it's an I wrote a poem called cultivate the creative force of chill. Okay, and they kind of has this deal with the same thing of spending an extra 30 minutes a day. That's the difference between the super so what are some of the things you can do?
And I really, from from different places in psychology, Stephen Covey, a little bit of Carl Jung, I mean, all the places have borrowed this information but there's basically six unique gifts we have as humans that he said, you know, what makes you different, that's your human or, you know, a dolphin or a dog or anything, they're really close, but there's differences in one of them. There are six and it's self awareness right and dogs might have self awareness dolphins, you know, they might, but it's not in the same way. I mean, the best way I've seen this was written in a really old book but there's a the earliest paintings they found of men were man painted like deer or Buffalo on on a cave. And it's like never once have you seen a buffalo paint a man on a cave. Like that. That's a huge difference. And it's and that's like self awareness and imagination. So those are two really uniquely human gifts. I mean, a human can look at the water and serve them and you could teach a dog to surf. But the dog you never go out there just go Well, dude, we left our dogs here at the dog park and they all just look at what we were doing and decide to go do it. So that's like the the power of choice, you know, and I skipped the other thing we have as humans like a conscience is that we can weigh you know we've got the angel on one shoulder the devil on the other and we wait things out Animals Act, basically instinctively. And so there are there's ways. And choice is the other thing you know, as human, we have a choice. And the more you develop these skills about we have human, the easier everything's gonna be so when I when I say when you cultivate these values, and the the irony is all of the stuff we've been talking about the archetypes, it's a self awareness exercise, the path, your worldview, your vision, like all of these things. And you know, in your, in your vision, you're using your imagination to imagine a better future with your speech, they're making a conscious choice, do I say this? Or do I not say this? And then then you say it, and then you go, Okay, once I said this, I'm gonna do that. Because I have this conscious, it says, I'm a person who does what I say. So all of these skills, this is awesome. Like, we've been doing all this six episodes. So that's where effort is, after all of these because, you know, we really the integral effort is going back and looking at these Am I Am I making the integral effort to be real about my worldview? Are there opportunities or possibilities that I'm missing out on because of a certain way? I think of things it
reminds me a really personal story that I want to share just because it came up, but it's emotional. My dad, I interviewed my dad a few weeks ago, and after the interview, I let the tape run because I got kicked out. We're not recording this, we're not gonna post I just want to ask you some of these questions. And I asked him about his dad because his dad died before I was born. And always, I'd made up a story about what happened. But I was always afraid to ask my dad because I didn't want to bring up that pain. And it happened so long ago. And I just assumed that he died. My dad was young, and they weren't that close. And it turned out they were super close. And my dad goes out and my dad was my hero. He goes the the coach in every little league game, he was at everything. He was at the Boy Scouts and, and a leader and taught me so much. And it was a really emotional story because he died when my dad was in college and, and my dad didn't make it to say goodbye. And I had so much compassion for my dad at that time that I never really even thought about. But one of the things I said, well tell me more. Tell me more about your dad. And this is a counter telling one of my dad grandpa that I never met. But he was you know, if he died in 1968. I mean, it was a different era. But But my dad said he was kind of a he was a racist. And I was surprised about that. And he said, Yeah, he goes, he goes, it was not not really bad. He goes like, it was okay for us to have Mexican friends. He goes on, I had a lot of mix, because we all grew up in the central valley looks like it's a lot, because we wouldn't allow my sisters to date. Men. And I said when your when your cousin was born, he changed his mind. And because my cousin, his father was Hispanic, and, you know, his daughters, and so I just thought, you know, that took a lot of courage. And he changed, you know, so when you look at, when I look at my worldview I look at are there opportunities that I'm missing because I have a certain thing about the way things are the way certain things are going to be. So it was humbling. I hope that's on point. And it wasn't just emotional rant but I mean, I think that kind of change and that kind of honesty and humility of what it is because it's to be human to be racist is to be human to I think that you know, people have for years and so now I was proud to know you know that somebody in my family made that big of a change because I know people I have no people who wouldn't do that and most people I know that if they're racist, and their kid had they would, you know, they wouldn't do the same thing. So I was proud.
Jeremy Weisz 29:24
You know, Mark I appreciate you sharing that and it sounds like how your your grandfather who didn't get to me treated your dad is how you are it sounds he sounds a lot like you as far as coaching being an all the games and, and everything like that. And whenever I hear about the racism thing, I always think of the song, you know, like I always relate to songs you there's this musical called Avenue Q. I don't know if you've seen the musical. And there's a song called everyone's a little bit racist sometimes. So I encourage urge everyone to listen to that song because it's, you know, I think the Avenue Q people is Diaby, for the creators of South Park. So it's not your typical musical. So check that out when we're talking this episode, Avenue Q.
Mark Hiddleson 30:20
in the shownotes I want to I was looking at my I don't get to watch South Park, because I'm not allowed, because I already have a foul mouth. It justifies my humor, which is another thing about my dad was a super dirty sense of humor. But I was watching it. And those are brilliant, because I got a minute while we were on vacation, I just came back from the Bahamas and was hiding in my hotel room watching South Park with my kids. Nashville was brilliant, because it points to thing because it's I mean, it goes back to the worldview of the clown, because they make it funny. They can say really, really important things that people need to hear in a context. It's brilliant. I mean, our show is brilliantly written. I mean, the cuss words are just make it awesome. It's really it's super, it's deep. Right? So humor, and so humor was the was the other one. And then the last one is a kinesthetic sense of all that. And I think when people, I think this is one of the biggest challenges that we have with our worldview, is that we've detached our thought life, from our physical life. And it's one of these, you know, to me, cultivating all these things, the kinesthetic senses, what does it feel like? You know, what does it feel like to invite change? What does it feel like? What does it feel like in your body to do small acts of courage? And how is that integrated? Because it does. I mean, doing these, the podcasts, it's a different, it's a different physical, I don't know if you find this, but like, when I walk out of the door, when I shut the door on the office, and I walk out, when I do a podcast, like, I'm a little lighter. It's really difficult to describe in words, but it's a, it's a feeling. And it's I think, everybody has this impulse. And it's a feeling it's not a thought, and that sort of earthly gives a thought feeling or you really can't to try and separate them out. That's one of the reasons kind of it's called The Tao of Pizza. Like none of these things are separated out, like all of the archetypes are talking to each other again, and your brain is it's only experienced through this body. And I think that's the one that gets ignored. Because the more you can fine tune your body in the saboteur to when when you have a healthy relationship and you've integrated the chateau. That saboteur will come up as a physical feeling, he will have a physical feeling like a hunch. Or you know, if something is that is the right thing to do or not. And, you know, that's what I got it when I coached kids. It gives us one of those things too, once you get it you want to it's like and the Don Juan, want more of that feeling of this. It's all it's like wholeness, or, like it's a lightness, lightness on my feet.
Jeremy Weisz 33:29
I want to talk about the sun symbiotic energy exchange. Before we get to that I just want to kind of sum up for a second because, you know, as we're talking about this, you know that you know what you talked about with the effort applied to these six uniquely human gifts. You mentioned self awareness, imagination, conscious subconscious choice, humor, and the kinesthetic sense of just feeling all that so I'm talking about symbiotic energy exchange.
Mark Hiddleson 34:00
So that's this part of the the, the kinesthetic sense is that and we all have it Jung called it's like the religious impulse or I call it like the spiritual impulse but religious impulse in that it's a a physical feeling. And I have a an acronym for it is it's the kinesthetic curiosity concerning our connection to the cosmos. So it's the K and all these c's, right? So it's a curiosity. And exploring that curiosity is really how we connect everything to everything. And if you look at nature, we're all you know, it's not it's like you say, Everything's connected everything. It's like, oh, whoo, whoo, this it's not it's really not woowoo at all. It's like the way things really are. You know, I mean, we're getting most of our satisfaction and most of what we can accomplish This is in relationships. I mean, that's that's the other big part of why I'm doing this series is that I think being more aware of archetypes in yourself, and being more aware of it in others, is that you can have more compassion, you know, and I would get that could have the choice to hate my grandfather because he was a racist. And he didn't let my ask the Mexican people because I have a lot of Mexican friends, but I don't even I admire him. I hope that I embody like one of the things I was thinking, No, this is selfish, but I'm like, I hope my grandpa would be proud of me. And then the way I've led my life, and that we really are connected to each other, and connected everything in the cosmos, one of the the biggest driver of me doing this, this project to start out with with The Tao of Pizza and writing a book in any that is one of my frustrations is that we have an environmental challenge. And I've known I've known that since I was in the fourth grade. I mean, my first business idea was I wanted to I found out there was pollution in big cities, I was like, You know what, we need to invent a pollution machine that goes on top of the building, it'll eat the pollution, and then it'll burn it to make energy because we also had an energy problem. That was the early 80s. Carter was the president and we needed energy. So I'm like, oh, it's easy. Take the pollution, burn it create energy. There's your business idea. And the real, you know, when I started working on this, and I don't know, if things have changed, I've, I've sensed that there's a little bit of a shift. But I was really frustrated that if our biggest conversation about making a difference in the environment, is global warming. It's super sad that that's a big discussion, because so many other things are so much more obvious than that is like go look at the river. And like there's, there's poop in it. Right? Like, we need to get it out. And not you're not gonna have these big national debates, like shouldn't get the poop out of the river, or, you know, it could be you know, there's plastics in our water, we're poisoning our water, we're poisoning our air. It's like in them, we're gonna sit and argue like the smartest people in the world have dedicated to Well, is it global warming, or isn't? And I was just like, God, is it really that far? Like, who cares one way or the other, and you can look at when you're burning stuff. And the smoke is going into the air, and then it hurts your lungs, right? Here's back to the kinesthetic feeling, drink some of that water, and then say we don't need to clean it, right? It's like, and then we dump it in the Babel that's all connected. So it goes back to the symbiotic exchange. So we're at a point where humans one of the gifts, like animals couldn't figure it out. Right? Like they can't go surfing. They can't figure out there's a problem. And we need to change our behavior. And I was just really frustrated. I was like, what are some of the worldviews that allows this debate to happen where you get 50% of people divided, arguing about something that it doesn't make a difference, or whatever. Like, whether it's worth causing global warming or not, he's still better off like I set a goal 10 years ago that I want to be able to either ride my bike to work or walk to work. And at the time, I was putting like 40 or 50,000 miles on the card it territories going from Stockton and Modesto to Fresno to all these different flying all over. It's like, I want to develop a skill set that I could do more stuff from my office to have people there, train my customers to do their work so that they became better warehouse operators. I didn't have to go out there every time someone needed measure an eight foot beam. And I got started a little
Jeremy Weisz 38:51
Decreasing kind of global footprint.
Mark Hiddleson 38:56
Yeah, and then it's just way more fun to walk to work. I mean, it takes me 20 minutes 20 to 25 depending on, you know how motivated I am. And people will do differently exercise. And it's like, well, you know, it's not really that, but it's the mental space. I mean, when you walk, it's experience, everything told me tell us back to the kinesthetic sense. It just feels awesome. Well, I feel like in the seventh grade again, because, you know, from Samos, like eighth grade, I had seniors in high school that you give me a rock. And it's so it's like, it's back to a childhood in my head. But it's embodying that value. And it gives me time to think where if you were driving, you know, the stuff I think about when I'm walking, I was thinking about when I'm driving crashed the car, you know, and then there's the physical exercise part of it. So it was kind of a but it was a goal and it was a it was audacious when I when I came up with it. But you know, it took a few years. I think it probably took five years, six years. I probably set that goal in 2005 by 2010. I was definitely riding my bike to work every day.
Jeremy Weisz 40:00
Some work. The last thing I want to talk about kind of with the internal effort is feedback loops. You know, I know you talk about this, and you think about this a lot, because feedback loops are so important, with things to actually make sure they keep happening over and over.
Mark Hiddleson 40:21
It is the difference in a living system in a machine is that living system has built in feedback. I mean, we build in feedback loops to machine, right, like there's the thermostat on an engine, if things go up to a certain point, it goes down. So that's a feedback loop. They're really simple. And as humans, we have tons of ways to create feedback loops. The one that for me, we have a say in our companies is closed loop, closed loop. So again, if I ask somebody for something to be done, I'm assuming it's done. If it doesn't get done, I want to know what it is I don't want two weeks later, and I asked somebody to get something done. And then it wasn't done is that we've got built in feedback loops. And it really, it saves so much time. I mean, we had a situation where we requested some documents for engineering on a project in the engineering in our industry, it always takes way longer than it should. And it's just kind of a clumsy process. And a lot of times we're dealing with existing buildings. So we have to get the existing plans, existing specifications. And we spent about a week getting plans for engineer. We sent it and then it took him a week to respond to it was like two weeks had gone by. And we got things turned back in nothing to change. They hadn't put any that in integrated information. And I said, Well, what happened? And two weeks later, they said, well, the information we requested wasn't on the plans that you gave us. What they could have told us that when they first got it, no, they looked at it, it's like it's gonna take me four days to look at this. And then, so to me, just that feedback loop, it could have been cut down to one day, instead of a week. And with us, it's the same thing on our team, if we wait a week to respond to something, and the problems gotten that much worse, if we can just have feedback loops, and everybody knows. And I think there's there's software now, like clickup, like we're using clickup for this project. And so I'm thinking about that in the in automating some things, but part of it is it's the it's the values. And so I call that's when I say ecosystem values, generate synergy and flow is kind of what I had it the heading of this or it's really it's the it's the whole point of this chapter. Because, you know, ecosystems, they generate synergy. I mean, the trees learn to use the squirrels the squirrels like to get the food and trees, birds like live their insects, everybody, you know, and then the leaves are telling the trees and these water if the roots, it's dry, like everybody, and then even in droughts like in California and realize how unique California is with the droughts we have. But those ecosystems evolved. And it's one of the reasons that the agriculture so good here is because stuff dries out and dies and burns and like all this stuff makes the soil like freakin awesome. So it's kind of the same thing in business. Take these opportunities, when somebody asks you to do something, you can't do it. Turn yourself in, because a lot of times the values is people's like, well, he asked me to do it, I wasn't able to do it. So I just I don't I don't want to say anything, because then you're gonna say, Well, why fucking you do it. But it's like, I'm gonna say that anyways. But when was natural, and it just happens all the time, like what you can accomplish and when this whole thing when when everybody's on the same page. That's why it's creating the cultivating the creative force of CIL is that there was this Dallas author and all this the last story because I know I'm getting a little bit long winded, but I bought this, I have a bunch of copies in the value chain, because there's there's tons of different translations. I'm kind of fascinated by how people do translations. And this is a good example of where I changed my mind on something. There was this beautiful copy it was pictures. And then it was a calligraphy of the words of the doubt Ching in a different language. And then it was actual words translated in English. So it was like an image, though, what's her beautiful calligraphy is like beautiful just to look even if you don't know what it say it's like more touching than reading the English version. You know what it says? Ah, and it was a third. She had edited this for two people who are native in Taoism, and they kind of brought it back. So it was it was just like a beautiful translation because they tried to do it right. And they were redoing the translation. And one of the things they changed is they said we're, we took the gender out of it because there were a lot of words that were, you know, he who does this or he? And I was like, Man, I'm like, here's the other like, This is dumb. What? Why are they doing that? Well,
I kept reading. That's another thing sometimes you need to keep reading to get the original text didn't have those, you know, that is just a function of English language that you know you don't say you say he she or you don't, you don't substitute and there's no really way to make it so so they just through all these translations, people would take like an English I think it's called like syntax or grammar. It's our grammar made it he or she and never was the writers it was written like 2500 years ago. It didn't have gender whatsoever. All his replies. So it was like, okay, the humble the world am I bought that. But I read more about that author because I was fascinated by her story. And she said, translating that book for it was the artist who took the pictures and did the calligraphy and then did the translation. She said it transformed her life doing that work transformed her life. And when she said about being chill, she goes, I set goals like just like everybody else. But then once I set it she goes, it's not like if I get on the 310 train to Oregon unworried every single stop, if I'm gonna get there, she's I get on that, like, I know I'm gonna get there. So that's embodies what I mean, by cultivating the creative force of chill, you're, you're executing on the basics, you're doing small, incremental steps of courage to silence your saboteur. And just it's not like things get easier, but things do flow, you're able to accomplish more, create more, and really make a difference, you know, and so I'd like to make a difference in the environment. And, you know, or social justice issues like that. And so, to me, once we know, we've got on the train, we don't need to worry at every single stop. If we're gonna get it.
Jeremy Weisz 47:07
Mark, I want to be the first one to thank you. Thanks for having me. I want to encourage people to check out more episodes to the podcast and check out specialracks.com. So thanks again, Mark.
Mark Hiddleson 47:17
Yeah, thank you, Jeremy. As always awesome, man. Great. Great to see you.
Outro 47:22
Thanks for listening to the Tao of Pizza Podcast. We'll see you again next time. And be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes.