What is a Good Life? #183
When Fear Becomes My Partner with Ralf Wetzel
Hello and welcome to What is a Good Life? A project exploring the big questions around how we live and what actually matters. Over the last 5 years, I have interviewed over 300 people around this question.
This week, I’m reflecting on a conversation with Ralf Wetzel - a leadership scholar who has taught at leading European business schools, and a clown and mask performer whose solo show Absolutely Reliable! has played the Edinburgh Fringe. We explore what it means to have a good relationship with fear, tracing Ralf's path from a childhood under surveillance in communist East Germany to the unexpected places he found relief - among them, a plastic clown nose.
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Take care, Mark
1. My Weekly Reflection
Ralf was standing in front of a class of senior-level bankers - twenty-five of them, seven years into his role at the school. Half of them just got up and left. He had no idea what to do next.
He stopped the class, closed the door, took a clown nose out of his bag, put it on, and inhaled with his eyes closed. A couple of seconds fully alone. Then some clarity came.
He invited the class back in and asked what they thought was happening. They said what he was offering didn’t feel useful to them - the connection between them was broken.
So he asked: “Do you have experience of your own relationships with clients breaking down?”
Silence.
Then one man with grey hair, early fifties, said, “Yeah, those were the most horrible moments in my professional career.” They spent the rest of the session exploring that breakdown, and what it meant for their own work.
In a nutshell, this defines much of my perspective on life.
Imagine how excruciating it would have been to listen to Ralf in that class after the break if he had just ploughed ahead and told them why what they were doing was actually the right way, why it was applicable, and what they might not be getting.
Can you recall times where you have done your own version of that? Whether at work, with a loved one, or while a new relationship is forming.
A great superpower with regard to human connection is being able to acknowledge what is occurring right now. The significance of sharing a distant life story, even if personal, pales in comparison to the impact of being able to say, ‘This is what I think, feel, and see in this moment,’ and asking the other person: ‘What do you see?’
If there is barely a hint of defensiveness in what you notice and share, you would be amazed at what conversations unfold from there.
Even if what you have shared involves accountability for how you have messed up, it is highly unlikely the other person won’t be able to relate on some level. A couple of episodes back, Kadam Adam Starr referenced the significance of knowing yourself in knowing others. When you know your own experience of life so intimately, you know the same basic experience of so many others too.
When we realise this, it picks apart one of the great myths of our time: that in order to really connect with another human, you must develop yourself in several areas first.
Think about that - the thing humans have done naturally for millennia now apparently requires self-improvement first. I see it very differently. It is more about dropping the distortion and resisting the urge to make up stories to save face.
It is a strange trade we are making, hiding ourselves and then sacrificing the possibility of a real connection right now.
Get back to the point of where we are right now. Who you are in this very moment. It is always available to us. How could we possibly hope to connect with someone if not from there?
Everything else is just smokescreens and performance, and a watered-down version of what connection can be.
2. This Week’s Questions
Was there a time where acknowledging everything as it was led to a greater connection between you and another?
Can you recall a moment where not acknowledging things as they were led to a connection deteriorating further?
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3. Weekly Clip From The Podcast
4. Full Episode - When Fear Becomes My Partner with Ralf Wetzel - What is a Good Life? #183
Listen to or watch the full conversation with Ralf Wetzel below.
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About Me
I am a writer, facilitator, and podcast host, based in Berlin, via Dublin, Ireland. I started this project in 2021, for which I’ve now interviewed over 300 people. I’m not looking to prescribe universal answers, more that the guests’ lines of inquiry, musings, experiences, and curiosities spark your own inquiry into what the question means to you. I am also trying to share more genuine expressions of the human experience and more meaningful conversations.