Speaking and Communicating Podcast

This podcast focuses on improving your communication skills both professionally and personally

>> Speaker A: It's Christmas morning and so many gifts are being exchanged. The one gift that I'd like for you to think about today is the gift that you give to yourself. Think about giving yourself the gift of living life on your own terms. This conversation, I hope it will inspire you to do that. Welcome back to the speaking and communicating podcast. I am your host, Roberta Andlea. If you are looking to improve your communication skills, both professionally and personally, this is the podcast you should be tuning into. Communication and soft skills, ah, are crucial for your career growth and leadership development. And by the end of this episode, please log on to Apple and Spotify. Leave us a rating and a review and what you'd like for us to discuss on this show.

Deanna gave up a very senior tech position to go the comedy route

Now, let's get communicating. Now let's get communicating with Deanna, Moffat, who is here to talk to us about how improv helped her with her communication skills. Deanna gave up a very senior tech position to go the comedy route. I wonder how her parents felt about that. But she'll tell us. And before I go any further, please help me welcome her to the show. Hi, Deanna.

>> Speaker B: hi, Roberta. I love that that was your thought that came up. Wonder what your parents thought? Because my dad said, I think you're crazy, but I'm going to support you in this. He had the same job his whole life. He worked for an airline and had that same job for 35 years. So he thought me quitting my lucrative career was.

>> Speaker A: I'm not even talking about being in the same job. But, I mean, everything is tech. That's where all the lucrative careers are, like you say. But to go from that to improv and comedy, I was like, did you really do that?

>> Speaker B: I really did. Because you know how you have hobies. After work, I started taking an improv class, and I loved it immediately. And over the years, I started performing with this company. Roberta, I know we're on, but I just have to say, I'm dog sitting this dog who's about to go crazy.

>> Speaker A: Totally fine. He's not disturbing. I can hear you.

>> Speaker B: So I started doing improv on the side and loved it so much that I joined another woman. We did a two person show and started touring around to comedy improv festivals. And I just started thinking what would happen if I really just did something I loved. Now I'll be real with you. There's no money in improv.

>> Speaker A: That's why I asked what your parents thought.

>> Speaker B: Yeah, so that's what my dad thought. I was crazy, but I had enough belief in myself that I could figure it out. And this was way back in the late 90s, lucrative six figure salary job to, I think I made $16,000 my first year, but I had equity from a home I sold. And honestly, I don't think I'd ever been happier in my life or in my career. That first year that I did that and all those trappings of things that I had, I think I needed them because I wasn't really thrilled with my job. So I needed all the comforts of my home. And I realized, oh, I can live in an apartment. I can live without all the things I thought I needed. Because what I really needed was a sense of joy and satisfaction in what I was doing on a day to day basis. And everything else just kind of fell way to the side.

>> Speaker A: This was the 90s when you had that realization.

>> Speaker B: Yeah. Has it been that long? Yeah. I was in Chicago for eleven years and now I've been in LA. So early 2000s, early 2000s, early 2000s.

>> Speaker A: Because this is more mainstream now that, oh, find something you love, you'll figure out the bills, money part, but you'll be a lot happier.

>> Speaker B: Yeah. No one was doing it. That's why my dad was, I think you're crazy. And there might have been a little bit of that, but I also kept thinking to myself, I don't want to do this the rest of my life. I was really successful at my job and I dare I say, I was really good at it, but it was sucking my soul dry a little bit. And, I just always believed on a conscious level, I've got this one life. Why not make it great? Why not explore? Why not expand and do something that feels a little scary? I wasn't married at the time. I didn't have kids, so there wasn't anything that was tying me down. I was fortunate in that way. People could look at it and say, she was unfortunate that she didn't have a relationship, she didn't have kids.

>> Speaker A: No. But you could make decisions a little easier because.

>> Speaker B: Very. I could make decisions way easier than someone who had made different choices.

Deanna says her job was sucking her soul away

>> Speaker A: Can I ask something? Because usually we hear those stories now, as I said, but when you say it was sucking your soul, how does that feel in your body? How does it feel to wake up thinking you're going to the same job? Because maybe if any listeners are thinking, wait a minute, how is it supposed to feel for me to know that I'm feeling what Deanna felt at that?

>> Speaker B: You know, to be honest with you, it can feel almost normal because we're conditioned into working. I was just talking to one of my clients, and I think sometimes we can get into jobs or we can get into careers, and we forget truly how amazing we are, or we forget how many skills and things we can do outside of this one role that we might have been in for five or six years. And the idea of changing that feels next to impossible, because who would want me? This is all I can do. I remember telling myself that story, and so in my body, it felt like I was walking a little bit in cement, in that everything just felt a little bit heavier and slower. And that's not to say I didn't have good times. in my job, I really had great relationships, and I had lots of people I could laugh with and get through projects together with. But I knew it wasn't fulfilling in a way that I wanted to be fulfilled. It was a great company. The person who originally hired or trained me on my job, I still remember her. I was kind of a wide eyed person, and I met her, and she sat down, and this is a time when smoking was a little more popular. And she pulled out a pack of cigarettes from her brazier, and she set them on the counter, and she goes, well, I'm Margaret, and I've been here for 35 years. And I was like, oh, no, not my life. Not my life.

>> Speaker A: Yes.

What improv taught me was how to stay present to what's right

And when, like you said, used to do improv after hours and realized that you loved it, were there opportunities in improv that you see today? Because today you literally can make a, living out of it. I even have had a guest before who he started improv, and then he goes to companies for their corporate trainings. They invite him, so now it's a full on career. Was that the situation back in the 90s when you started?

>> Speaker B: Yeah, so I would do that with the theater that I was working with. They'd get hired, and so we would be facilitators that would go do that. We'd either go perform and do shows, or we would use training. And then when I moved to Chicago, there was just way more opportunity. There's some fairly large improv theaters there, like Second City, where all the names like Tina Fey and Amy Poehler and Steve Carell and Stephen Colbert, they all kind of went through that institution, and we would go in and train, companies, and I've certainly led my own training. I actually think improv is such a great skill to have. We don't realize we are constantly improvising all the time. You and I are improvising right now. We don't have a script for this conversation. Neither one of us.

>> Speaker A: We didn't have upfront questions. No.

>> Speaker B: There would be magic in the moment. Right. So, what improv really taught me was how do I stay present to what's right in front of me? How do I listen really well? How do I say yes and to ideas instead of constantly shooting them down or trying to make them my idea? I think, especially for leaders, it is a skill that is really beneficial to your development, to just how do you be in the moment? We're being pulled in so many different directions. And how do you really stay present with a person who's right across the table from you or across Zoom from you and not have a thousand other things want to pull your attention away?

>> Speaker A: That is something that I think all of us are still a work in progress in. Well, most of us, especially leaders. I read a book the other day where he says, it's like your leader giving you this ten minute consultation to say, how are things going? Is there a way I can help? He says, I was over the phone and I could hear him typing on his computer, which means he's not listening to me.

>> Speaker B: Right.

>> Speaker A: But he said, just let me know what I can do to help. You know, because they do that script off, which I'm sure they mean well, but they say, give ten minutes for each of my team members. Let me know what I can do. And he's busy focusing on something else. And also this yes and skill. What I like about it is, you know how sometimes the voices on our heads, if you think of doing something and then the fear kicks in, or the. I don't think the numbers are adding up. Maybe I shouldn't try that. If we can apply that yes. And what do you think could happen if we think of something?

>> Speaker B: I mean, I think our whole world opens up. Right. I think especially we will often come up with a line of yes, but. Right, instead of yes and yes, but. And we'll make all the excuses. when I work with leaders or I work with companies, and we talk about how often people are saying yes, but to people thinking that it's a nicer way of saying no, when in reality it's just actually a much more confusing way to say no. You're hooking people with your yes and then you're shooting them down. And I always say yes, but is what, I'm really saying is, yeah, I hear you, but my idea is better as opposed to no, we can't do that, or that's not possible. For us right now, or no, that's not on the table, but you can actually help build people. Even I would often give the example of when I was a project manager and people would come to me with an idea that they've been percolating on, and I either knew it needed some more formulation, or we'd actually tried it six months before. It didn't really work out. You can use yes, Anne to help. Right. So. Oh, that's a great idea. And we actually tried that six months ago, and it didn't work out the way that I think you're thinking it's going to work out. I think if you want to approach this, why don't you go back to those two or three stakeholders and have a better conversation around what went wrong and what they really need. Right. It takes a little bit longer, but instead of saying, yeah, but we tried that three weeks ago or three months ago or three years ago, I'll just.

>> Speaker A: Throw it out completely and go start something new.

>> Speaker B: Right. But if you want to be curious with people saying yes, and in your personal life, you come home from work and your partner really wants to go out to the dinner or the movies, and you are exhausted instantly. You're like, I don't want to do that. Well, that person just bid for your attention. They put together an idea. What's the likelihood that they're going to put another idea? The more often we hear no, the less likely we're going to put our ideas out there. A different response might be, oh, honey, yes, I'd love to do that. And right now I'm really tired. I wonder if you'd be open to do that tomorrow.

>> Speaker A: That sounds much better.

>> Speaker B: Right?

>> Speaker A: That sounds way better.

>> Speaker B: It's not even saying no. It's a way of building on the idea that you just gave me and saying, okay, well, let's see, I can't do it right now, and I still want to do it. What can we do to negotiate for tomorrow or next week?

>> Speaker A: so the but completely shoots down the idea. The end says, there's a little piece we can work with and build on it.

>> Speaker B: Beautiful.

>> Speaker A: okay.

Roberta Kaplan writes about how personal stories can influence decisions in life

And then you wrote the book, the rewrite.

>> Speaker B: Yes.

>> Speaker A: So you rewrote your story of moving from a lucrative tech job to complete shift of improv comedy. What was the idea behind the book?

>> Speaker B: So I'm a coach as well, and to go back to Chicago, my time in Chicago, when I was performing improv, I actually started and hosted two really popular storytelling shows. And I started training people how to write their stories for performance. And these are all usually personal stories. And I found it really interesting how people would tell their story or the stories they would even choose to tell. And then when I became a coach, I recognized that every person came to me with a story. With a story about who they were, what they thought was possible, what they could or couldn't do. And, honestly just rarely ever questioned that story. They just thought it was their truth. And so I recognize that we all do that. We all create a story about ourselves. We put it in our book. We put that book on the shelf, and we never go back to fact check or edit that story. We just continue to tell it and retell it over and over again. And we believe it's true. Instead of realizing we made it up, we made up the story.

>> Speaker A: Not only that, we call it facts, but see, it's the reality. What do you want me to see? Look at it. This is the story. Use your eyes or whatever it is.

>> Speaker B: We call it for this. Yes.

>> Speaker A: And so this story that we tell ourselves, does it then influence how we continue to make decisions going forward?

>> Speaker B: Oh yeah, Roberta. For know and honestly, we often don't even know what the story is. Our deepest, core, wounding stories. We might not even know what it is, but we can look at the results of our life and figure out, oh, we're telling ourselves some kind of story, right? So a person who pleases all the time or overpleases might have a story, a core wounded story of I'm not enough or I'm unworthy of love. I used to have a story and I still grapple with it, to be honest with you, of I'm a burden. And so when you're walking around thinking I'm a burden, how do you think you're going to show up in life?

>> Speaker A: You know how you shy away from places where you feel like you're an inconvenience? Yeah. In those social settings where you feel like, oh, no, I'm sorry. It's almost like you're always trying to move out of your way for people to show up so they are allowed space to show up, but you don't feel like you are, right.

>> Speaker B: I'm not going to ask for help. Why would I ask for help? That's going to burden someone else to do that. I'm just going to assume that people aren't going to be able to show up for me. There's a lot of ways that these little kind of silent but deeply ingrained stories that we have, we act out all the time we act them out every day. And if we were to take a really good look at our life and the results we're getting, we could probably backtrack and figure out, we've got a deep core story that isn't serving us anymore. At one point, it helped us, it protected us, it served us in some way. But now, where we are in our life and what we want to create that story is just simply getting in the way.

>> Speaker A: You said there are actually three of them, right? The stories?

>> Speaker B: Yeah.

>> Speaker A: Yes. Would you like to tell us about those?

>> Speaker B: Thanks, Roberta.

You talk about our past core, wounded stories, right. And then you talk about present day stories

Yeah. I talk about our past core, wounded stories, right. This is the historical fiction that we have, and these are the stories that are often created when we're young or they're given to us by people who have their own stories and are trying to get rid of their pain and suffering and putting on someone else. Right. Like a parent who says, you're no good or you're never going to make it out to be anything, or the experiences that you have as a child that you can only process through a child's mind. Those stories get held in our body, right? And so that's how we act out. And we start keep getting back into relationships that we don't want to be in with the kind of people we don't want to be in relationship with. But here we find ourselves again. We find ourselves in the same kind of career. The limiting beliefs are the seed of this story. That's our past stories. And then I talk about our present day stories. And those stories are the ones that hook us emotionally. Right. They can be the stories that someone else is being an idiot on the road, and they're making us angry or they're making us late. They're the stories of someone who cut a line in the grocery store. And now that. Now I'm getting a rush of emotion again. The stories that something happens and we become very sad or depressed in the moment, thinking it's never going to change. Right. So these stories in our present, they can hook us into an emotional state, and we believe them to be true.

>> Speaker A: Are they fed by some of the past wounds?

>> Speaker B: Yeah, I think our core wound can be, kind of the centerpiece of all this, right. But these stories that hook us emotionally, if we can become aware of how we're feeding the emotions, we can kind of put that on a restriction, put it on intermittent fasting. We don't need to feed it as regularly as we do. Right. And then I talk about our future stories and those stories that pull us into a really compelling, exciting future, creating intentions or visions for what we want in our life. And some people really have no creation for that. They may not have ever experienced or given the idea that they can create a vision for their life. And some people, have a habit or have been trained to create almost catastrophic future visions. So they don't want to go in there. Like, it's never going to work out for me. That can't possibly be my experience. Right. I'm too old for something like that to happen. So the vision gets stunted. We aren't able to create more kind of possibilities for our future in the vision. And I really believe that when we have a strong, compelling future vision for our lives, it almost pulls us forward into that state.

>> Speaker A: Did you see my eyes open when you said catastrophic vision?

>> Speaker B: I did what came up for you?

>> Speaker A: Here's the funny thing. Before you explained those and gave examples, I thought it was something huge, like a tsunami type of whatever you picture. And yet you talk about things that usually are on our minds.

>> Speaker B: Yeah.

>> Speaker A: It's not some big disaster that you think is going to happen. It's the story you tell yourself, I'm too old for this. I'm never going to have this opportunity. I'm South African in America. This is not going to happen. You know what?

>> Speaker A: That is how you described catastrophic, because I was waiting for you to give an example of something big. But look at how even the things we are not even paying attention to and questioning about our future. Wow.

>> Speaker B: Yeah. As you said, that I got an image of, it's like, that is the pullback from the tsunami, right? That I'm too old. It's never going to happen for me. When a tsunami hits, the ocean actually retracts before the big wave happens. And I think, the repetitiveness of that allows us, I mean, if that's what we really believe about ourselves, we're too old or it's not possible, that's unfortunately going to be our truth. But you can look around and see so many examples of people who are breaking that assumption, who are saying they're never too old, that it's absolutely possible. And what makes them so much different than any one of us?

>> Speaker A: They told themselves a different story.

>> Speaker B: That's right. All they did was tell themselves a different story. I mean, granted, yes, there are a wide berth of experiences that people can have. And this isn't to say that people don't have catastrophic and terrible things happen to them. They absolutely do. And I also believe that the work we do with our thoughts and our bodies and where our thoughts get stuck in our bodies can really create a life that we would never wish for anyone.

>> Speaker A: just like you told yourself the story when you went to improv, I'm imagining you didn't say to yourself, oh, I think I'm going to struggle financially because improv doesn't have career opportunities. How could I live this secure, lucrative career? Because that's what some of us would say and think, no, I'm not going this improv route. I can do it after hours as a hobby for the rest of my life.

>> Speaker B: That's so true. I didn't even thought about that, Roberta. But that was never my thought.

Roberta Kaplan says she always envisioned herself soaring off Mount Hood

That was just never in my mind. I just kept thinking, I'm going to figure it out. And I had this vision in my head. And I remember sitting at my desk, because I'm on the twelveth floor of my building. And, it was in a place called Portland, Oregon. And I could look out every morning at Mount Hood as the sunrise would come up behind us. And I would just vision myself standing on the very tip of Mount Hood and this beautiful mountain and just soaring off. That was my idea of what it meant to leave that job. Now, I had no idea where I was going to land in this vision, but I always imagined that I would land on my feet somewhere. And it was in that expansion of it or that kind of vision that was also in my body. Like every morning I would think it. I just feel this lightness. They would come in. I was like, okay, it's possible. Now, I'll tell you. I did not come from a family of big dreamers. I did not come from, an origin story of people who were going off and doing the unexpected. The people in my life, my family, did very much the expected, and maybe even less than expected in some aspects of their life. And so for me, it was just an idea of asking myself the question, what would happen if I tried?

>> Speaker A: What would happen if I tried? And you don't need to have all the answers before trying.

>> Speaker B: You can't possibly have the answers. You can't.

>> Speaker A: Sometimes some of us want that safety cushion, or at least tell me what it's going to look like so I can jump. Make the jump.

>> Speaker B: Right. There's that whole idea around when we're going after something that doesn't have a prescribed path. Sometimes there is a prescribed path. You want to become a doctor? Well, there's pretty much. You can look at all the footsteps of the people behind or in front of you. To follow their footsteps. But for some of us, like creating a podcast or having these conversations or creating the life that you want, Roberta, you have this vision, I'm sure, but you don't have, step one, step two, step three. And you don't realize this, that every next step is revealed when you take the first one, right? And then you take the next one, it's revealed. The next step is then revealed, and then the next one. We want it all laid out in front of us. That's not how it works. You're just willingness to say yes and to the very next step.

>> Speaker A: Yes. And trust the process. Do you know Dr. Joe Dispenza?

>> Speaker B: Yeah, I love Dr. Joe.

>> Speaker A: Yeah, me too. When you were talking about how the vision of the future pulls you forward, he loves to also talk about that as well, that let the vision of the future excite you, pull you forward. Don't focus on. I don't have the baby steps on how to get there. But just knowing that when you stood on that mountain, you're going to land somewhere, that's the key.

>> Speaker B: and being willing to have just the smallest set of belief that something else was possible, it didn't mean that I had to have the whole garden in flourishing mode and all my tomatoes and potatoes and green beans ready and ripe. In fact, that wasn't the case at all. I just had to be ready to plant the seeds and then every day, go and water them a little bit and go out and pull a weed every once in a while. But just tending to, it on a daily basis, not thinking that the tomatoes are going to grow overnight, just nourishing it every day with what is it that I wanted to create? What is it that I wanted to experience? And having that in my mind, not all the blockers and not all the fears, honestly, they may have been there, but they were never my focus.

>> Speaker A: Right.

Let's question the stories that we tell ourselves before we can start rewriting them

So what's the one last tip you have for us? First, let's question the stories that we tell ourselves before we can even start rewriting them.

>> Speaker B: You took the words out of my mouth. That's exactly what I would say. I love it.

>> Speaker A: Thank you. Deanna. Question.

>> Speaker B: I mean, we have to be curious about ourselves, right? I think we're wondrous beings on this planet, but of, like, each of us really are these unique wonder things. And we have to be willing to kind of question who we are, our head and our heart and our body and all of that. And then I think we have to be willing to give ourselves some self compassion to say, oh, this might be an old, outdated story, and it, might not even be mine. I might have been living it for a while, but there's no shame in that. There's no shame in that. It just gets to be what I think is our greatest exploration, and that is the unfolding of ourselves to come back to who we really are. And that in itself is just a fantastic journey.

>> Speaker A: Self compassion. And when we have compassion for ourselves, that's how we are able to even have it for others as well.

>> Speaker B: Yes, business world needs some more of.

>> Speaker A: That, that's for sure. Yes. Let's question those stories. And in rewriting them, does that mean letting the future, the bright future, pull us forward?

>> Speaker B: I think it's what you said earlier. It's like, first of all, questioning, first of all, becoming aware of ourselves and the results that we're getting in our life, the relationships that we have, the career that we have, the experiences that we're having. Is this what we'd like to have? Or is there something else? And then if there is something else, just starting to become curious and question, like, what would that look like? What does the something else look like? What might be one step I can take toward know? These old stories that we have, have been with us, some of us, from birth. I was telling myself some stories for a very long time, or burden. And so it takes a while, I will say. I will probably quite honestly wrestle or grapple with that I'm a burden story for a long time. I'm trying on a new story of I'm.

>> Speaker A: And I don't know if you feel free enough to share this with us. Do you know the root cause of that one particular story of you feeling like you're a burden?

>> Speaker B: Yeah. I worked with someone, a, coach, to really help me walk through that. And I don't even think I would have been able to voice that until a few years ago when we went back and did some inner child work. And I'm adopted. So there is that first abandonment, that you can look at it as an adult and recognize that, but even as an infant, you've been in the womb of this human, this person. And then when you come out, they're not there. Well, where the heck are they? And then I went into a child protective serviceness. I didn't know, but I was with them for six weeks. And when my adopted mother got me, she said that I was not in great shape, that my eyes were matted shut, my tear decks had been clogged, and I don't know that I was just tended to very well, and I'm sure it's busy situation. I don't know what's going on. And then in the adoptive home that I came into, it was very chaotic. My dad struggled a lot with alcoholism. I had an abusive brother toward me, and my mom was just trying to hang on. And I think what I didn't want to experience was a second abandonment. So I did everything I could to be a perfect child. I didn't want to be a burden on anyone. I didn't want to create any more chaos. I really went and said, this is who I need to be in this situation. But I carried that well into adulthood, right? I became very perceptive of other people's needs. I could read people really well. I would overplease. I would do everything I can to make sure everyone else was okay without tending to my own needs. So that's how that I'm a burden story could play out into an adult world.

>> Speaker A: I can see why you would feel that in order to keep this and not lose it, this new family I found, let me be perfect, as you said, let me not be a burden, because if you're a perfect child, you're not a not. They don't have to constantly watch over you to make sure you behave or you're going to hurt yourself. And, yes, I can understand why that, yes, this has been so powerful.

Deanna, thank you so much for sharing your story and your book

Deanna, thank you so much for sharing not only your story, but your very powerful book, the rewrite. First of all, please give us last words of wisdom and your website and where we can find the book.

>> Speaker B: Last words of wisdom. I would say, whether you know it or not, you'll know when you're talking to your true internal voice, when it speaks with love. Every other voice that speaks to you is from the outside in the world, and it's a story given to you.

>> Speaker A: Love, is the criteria.

>> Speaker B: M and you can find me at my website@deannamoffett.com. There's a lot of double letters in that. So. Deanna and then M-O-F-F-I-T. T.com.

>> Speaker A: Deannamoffet.com. Thank you so much for being here today. And where can we find the rewrite?

>> Speaker B: And find it on Amazon? It's the rewrite. Change your life one story at a time. That tagline, come find it on Amazon and your listeners can go to my website and there's a link to have a free session. If they want to have a free 30 minutes session, I'm happy to have a chat with anyone.

>> Speaker A: Absolutely. I'm going to put all of that on the show notes. Yes, especially when you mentioned the inner child work which a lot of us believe in because that's where usually most of the communication starts. Yes, that is so key. So yes, I will put all of those.

>> Speaker B: Yes.

>> Speaker A: Thank m you very much Deanna for being here today. This has been very powerful. I appreciate you taking your time to be on the show.

>> Speaker B: Thank you, my friend. It was a joy to be in your presence.

>> Speaker A: My absolute pleasure. Thank you for joining the speaking and communicating podcast once again. The speaking and communicating podcast is part of the b podcast network where there are many other podcasts that support you in being a better leader and becoming the change you want to see. To learn more about the B podcast network, go to bpodcastnetwork.com. Don't forget to subscribe, leave us a rating and a review on Apple and Spotify and stay tuned for more episodes to come.