EP 22: Dr. Matt Kodsi on “A Story Tale: ABCs of the Stories We Tell Ourselves”

Julie Harris Oliver: Welcome to Deep Work Out Loud, the thinking that fuels our life, our work, and our leadership. I'm Julie Harris Oliver. This is a podcast where I sit with another professional coach, and we do some work around a single concept, piece of inspiration, a topic we've seen, something that's coming up in coaching a lot, something we're thinking about.

And if we're really lucky while we're talking about it, we might demonstrate what coaching might look and feel like. But we'll see how this goes. It's all an experiment. And with any luck, you'll leave with something that you can apply and use in your work or your life or both. Today, I have my first encore guest.

I'm here with my friend Dr. Matt Kodsi. Hi, Matt.

Matt Kodsi: Hi Julie

Julie Harris Oliver: So since you've been on the podcast before, I am not going to torture you with reading your bio in front of you again.. And I'm gonna refer people to your first episode, which is number five, which has your full bio, your journey into coaching, all the things.

Although I am going to add now that you are coaching with Medi Leadership, and you are the director for membership for the [00:01:00] Tennessee chapter of the ICF. But today, I think we are going to talk about your journey into writing a book. So the book is called A Story Tale: ABCs of the Stories We Tell Ourselves.

Do you have it there? Can you give us a, give us a look at it?

Matt Kodsi: I

Julie Harris Oliver: This is for our video watchers. There it is.

Matt Kodsi: learns visually, there you go. We'll imprint that image

Julie Harris Oliver: Okay, so Matt, why did you write a book?

Matt Kodsi: You know, Julie, I've always loved writing. First of all, let me say thank you so much, by the way, for having me on the podcast. It was so much fun the first time, and it is, it is an honor and a privilege to be back again. I appreciate it.

Julie Harris Oliver: Oh, welcome

Matt Kodsi: Thanks. So I've always enjoyed writing. Actually, I thought about this the other day, knowing the podcast was coming up.

I probably started writing stories when I was in elementary school. And, and then when I got into into my professional role at the hospital, we did reflections at every meeting. So I would write the reflections. I sort of didn't like pulling things out of books, so I decided to [00:02:00] our own. and then I've always wanted to write a book. I just think I shied away from the fear of writing something that I'd have to put 200 or 300 pages on paper that seemed daunting

Julie Harris Oliver: So the writing was always there, and it's funny how you said you always wanted to write stories because this first book is about writing stories.

Matt Kodsi: Yes,

Julie Harris Oliver: It's very meta.

Matt Kodsi: is.

Julie Harris Oliver: So why don't you, why don't you kind of tell us what the book is about?

Matt Kodsi: So the book is written, and I'll tell you, I was inspired, and this is sort of why I felt comfortable venturing into the writing a book arena, was I read books like Five Dysfunctions of a Team The Power of TED that were written as parables, stories themselves, and, and short.

They didn't have to be long, which made me feel more comfortable. And, and I thought, well, so much that, as you know, we learned at Hudson and we've learned on our coaching journeys, and maybe I could write a book about something related to that that would be in a story format. And to your point, [00:03:00] what better story to write than a story about stories? So what the book is about, it's about the stories we tell ourselves. I think we all, goodness knows, we all do it. We, we have gaps in what we know. are things we don't know, whether it's about others, about a situation, and our brain doesn't like gaps. Our brain wants to fill them. So what it does is it fills them and it creates a complete story. At least we think it's complete. And the challenge there is because of evolution and the fact that we have evolved to avoid danger, sort of programmed to almost always look for danger or to be careful about danger. So therefore, when we put these stories together, we are more likely to put in a negative of threat aspect into the story than we are to put a positive aspect into the story. I'll give you examples. Working in the hospital as a physician, I cannot tell you [00:04:00] the number of times, and I know I did it and other physicians did it, that when we're not sure why an administrative decision was made, we tend to put a negative twist to it. We create our own story and assume that the leader or leaders who made the decision did it for some, you know, I don't want to say evil purpose, but for some not so positive purpose. Uh

Julie Harris Oliver: They are so dumb. This is for profit. Like, fill the blank

Matt Kodsi: I will assume that it is not only in healthcare that that happens

Julie Harris Oliver: I think it happens everywhere. In fact, I remember the first time I really heard this concept of the story I'm telling myself, I think I was listening to Brené Brown somewhere, but it was like 10 years ago, and she was talking about this day where she had gone swimming in a lake with her husband or something.

I am not gonna remember this story correctly, so don't come at me, people. But she was furious with her husband 'cause something had happened, and, like, he had taken a kid somewhere or [00:05:00] something. Anyway, she was furious, and she said, "Okay, the story I'm telling myself is..." And then the story was like, "You're doing this because you hate me, and we're in a fight," and, you know, all terrible things.

And the reality was like, "Oh, I took the kid to get a snow cone." So I, I don't know what the story was, but it was not, "I hate you, and I don't wanna spend time with you." And I heard that, and I was like, "Oh, yeah. Yeah, I do that all the time." Yeah.

Matt Kodsi: I think one that hit me hard, I read this The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. Stephen Covey has a story there he got on a subway, and he said he gets on the subway, he's sitting, it's relatively peaceful, and then a man comes on with two children. And the man just collapses into his seat, sits there while his children are running rampant throughout the subway car, making noise, throwing things. and he's sitting there thinking, "Can this man not control his children? What is wrong with him?" And all sorts of stories fill his head. at, at one point, he finally turns to the gentleman and says, "Excuse me, sir, [00:06:00] can you control your children?" And the man comes out of what looks like a daze, and he, he looks at Covey and he says, "Oh, I'm, I'm so sorry. We just left the hospital and found out that my wife passed away, I'm not sure how to handle that information, and, and I guess they're not either." And it's like, talk about a punch to the gut. It is not often that our stories are that impactful and, and we see just how polar opposite they are to reality. that's one extreme example of something that, to your point, happens every day

Julie Harris Oliver: Yeah, that'll stop you short.

Matt Kodsi: Yeah

Julie Harris Oliver: I know my, my husband often has to say to me this, this thing that when you're making up a story about something and it's, it's much more likely... If the choice is incompetence or some Machiavellian evil plot, the answer is probably incompetence. Like, you probably don't have to make that entire evil plot to make sense of the thing that just happened

Matt Kodsi: And we don't know what happened to people that [00:07:00] day or that week or that month. We don't know what they're dealing with outside of work or outside of whatever our relationship with them is

Julie Harris Oliver: Or even if it was bad. You

know, we put a lot of judgment around it

Matt Kodsi: Right. And I think another aspect that's interesting, and, and we've done this here, we focused on the stories we tell ourselves about others, but we tell ourselves a lot of stories about ourselves

Julie Harris Oliver: Hmm, say more

Matt Kodsi: When we talk about things like imposter syndrome, the whole concept of, "Wow, do I really deserve this job?

Do I really deserve this position? Do I really deserve wherever I am or whatever I'm doing?" We create all sorts of stories. You would think we know ourselves better than we know anyone else, still create these stories

Julie Harris Oliver: I think even sometimes saying I have an, I have imposter syndrome is the story. ' Cause maybe you're just feeling insecure about something right now, in this moment. It doesn't, it doesn't have to be a syndrome, and maybe you're just learning something new

Matt Kodsi: Very true. And a lot of times we don't dig deeply to sort of discover [00:08:00] our own motivations. make assumptions there too, and we judge ourselves

Julie Harris Oliver: So I know you've thought a lot about this ' cause you put it all together. Do you wanna talk about how you thought about putting this in a book in a way to make it helpful for people?

Matt Kodsi: So coming back to the concept of writing it as a story, I wanted to make it something that was easy to digest. a quick read. The book's seventy-two pages, I think, something around there. Something that someone can read in... depending. I'm a slow reader, so your average person might be able to read it in an hour.

I might take a little longer. But it's also available on Audible, so it's-- I know that precisely. It's an hour and four minutes because I had to look at the recording when I submitted it.

Julie Harris Oliver: Oh, and we can double time that if you wanna just eat it as a snack

Matt Kodsi: It could be thirty minutes if you listen to it really fast. I'll be very impressed. But the concept was to make it something digestible and a story that was relatable. And I've been pleased, actually, the feedback that I've been getting from people is that it's very easy to read and very relatable.

Julie Harris Oliver: [00:09:00] I second that

Matt Kodsi: Thank you, Julie So what the story is, and I, I will tell you I did, I hadn't thought about this in a while, but I struggled. How do you come up with a plot about the stories we tell ourselves, and how do you make that... Who, who's the guide in the story? Who's teaching the lesson? Who's learning the lesson? What role do they have? Why are they creating their stories? I ran through about three different possibilities that I actually don't even remember at this point before I landed on something that...

It's funny, people have asked me if it's personal, and I guess in a sense it is when our kids were in college, and our daughter just graduated, our son graduated two years ago,

Julie Harris Oliver: Congratulations

Matt Kodsi: Thank you. We used to have Zoom calls every week. Every Sunday, we would have a family Zoom call, and we'd catch up, and it was nice 'cause they were in different schools in different states. And so it sort of planted this seed that grew in my mind of, what if this was a parent on a Zoom call with a child in [00:10:00] college? And of course, because it's about stories, what if the child is a journalism major? And so that's where I landed. And what you've got is you've got a gentleman who is an executive at a company who's looking to get a promotion, and his wife is an architect, she's also in a high position in her company, he... She's busy one night and can't get on the phone or on the Zoom with their daughter, and so he says, "Let me, let me call her. She said she's got this great new class. It's, it's something she's loving. Let me just catch up with her and see what's going on." And it turns out that the class she's taking is about writing fictional stories, and the way the conversation starts between them is she says... She tells her dad how much she loves the class, and she says, "Well, you know, our professor tells us that the stories we write on paper aren't that different than what we do every day, the stories we write in our head to fill the gaps." And of course, you can imagine her [00:11:00] father responds with a standard response, which is, "Oh, I don't do that." And throughout the course of the story, he learns very much that he does do that, she presents him with a framework that their teacher gives them, and that's the ABCs of storytelling, and it's the elements that their professor goes through that contribute to how the stories get built and what the end product is of the stories. and of course, you and I have talked about this. I, I, I can chat a little bit. I, I think if I give sort of the format away, it's, it's, it's a concise book, so we can talk in generalities, but I think I'll save the exact specifics for those who either pick up the book or listen to it on Audible

Julie Harris Oliver: Otherwise we'd be doing this for an hour and three minutes.

Matt Kodsi: It was fun though, and I'll, I'll tell you, Julie, I, I spoke to someone who I know recently published a book, and after we talked a little bit about it, he said, "Well, Matt, let me ask you this. What did you learn writing the book?" And I said, "Oh. Oh, I learned a lot." [00:12:00] I think because in the process of trying to make it not evolved and complex in some huge structure, to really understand it myself. And I sat down and I did a lot of thinking about what really goes into the stories. What's something that makes sense if we think about where the stories come from, and then where the stories take us? So I think writing this book, and we'll talk, I guess, at the end, there's a few more to come. I learn so much with each book

Julie Harris Oliver: Okay. Each book you haven't actually said that yet. I know you're writing a series, so why don't you talk about that?

Matt Kodsi: Yeah. So, so far there's five books planned, and this, of course, is the first of the five. I'm, I'm toying with a sixth. We'll see. I, I can't promise the sixth. I don't know. I'm still thinking about it.

Julie Harris Oliver: This is what you say at the beginning of every one. I'm toying with a second. Now I'm toying with a fourth. So I feel confident you're writing a sixth book

Matt Kodsi: Well, I mean, the thing is, it's funny because I, I, I looked at three and had ideas, and I said, "Okay, three's, three's [00:13:00] it. Three's enough. There's, there's not gonna be more than three." And then I'll have a conversation with someone, and they'll say, "Well, what about and such?" I think, "Oh, well, that would make a really cool story," and that's book four, and then the same thing happened with book five. and they're all about topics related to coaching, self-development. can tell you, I mean, I'll, I'll tell you what the topics are for the five that are sort of in my head so far. So the second one is about presence, presence, as you know, for those who heard the first podcast with, with you and I, it was all about the lessons I learned about presence, and that one I hold near and dear to my heart.

And so that one's gonna be coming out actually at the end of June, so it will also be available on Audible, Kindle, Amazon paperback. So that's gonna come out in a little over a month. And then the third one is about life strategies, and, and I'll tell you that one that one just coming up with a storyline was challenging, but I think I've got one that works, so we'll see how it comes across.

Julie Harris Oliver: Life [00:14:00] strategies? What do you mean by that?

Matt Kodsi: So we talk about in coaching, we have ways of approaching situations. So we create strategies of dealing with challenges and dealing with life in general that we form often throughout very early years. And those strategies are created because they either keep us safe, they protect us, they help us manage things, we tend to hold onto them. And what happens as we grow older, we learn new things, we have new experiences, are put in new settings, we will often still resort to those original strategies of handling things. And those strategies that may have served us five, 10, 20 years ago, they may not serve us anymore. And in fact, not only may that-- they not serve us, actually be keeping us from getting to where we're trying to go. So the book is gonna talk about thing, sort of a framework. They're all gonna be ABCs. And [00:15:00] I'll, I'll tell you, it gets increasingly difficult to come up with things that start with A, B, and C and actually make sense.

Julie Harris Oliver: Maybe you go D, E, and F for the next one

Matt Kodsi: that conversation with someone. But it's, it's... As a series, I think it'll stick with the AB...

When I run out of ABCs, that's when I'll stop writing the books.

Julie Harris Oliver: Okay

Matt Kodsi: But it, it presents a framework about thinking about how we build our strategies and how to think about whether those strategies still work for us. And then the fourth one is about, and I, I have to think 'cause I've got them running in my head. The fourth one is about organizational culture. And, and as tempted

Julie Harris Oliver: What about it?

Matt Kodsi: of give that one away, 'cause I, I had a lot of fun with thinking about that one, I'm gonna hold off. That one's gonna be like nine months down the road. then the fifth one is about identity

Julie Harris Oliver: Okay, all the hot topics

Matt Kodsi: So yeah, yeah. And they'll all be around the same length, I'm thinking. They'll probably all be around 70 pages-ish

Julie Harris Oliver: I'm curious, since you wrote this book about storytelling, if it has [00:16:00] changed how you tell yourself stories. Have you been able to catch yourself

Matt Kodsi: Oh,

Julie Harris Oliver: and interrupt it?

Matt Kodsi: Ab- absolutely. Now, well, interrupting it is more challenging. I'm getting there. absolutely. When I made the point earlier about what I learned from coming up with the stories and thinking about the concepts, it becomes ingrained. know, it's, it's sort of like, and, and I'll give a little hint in a sense, what happens to the main character in the story is he starts to see things that he didn't see before. And as you know, and we talk about in coaching, we make the unseen seen. And once you see it, you can't unsee it again. So once I sit down and I write the story and I come up with the concepts and put them together, changes the way I see things. And, and it's incredibly helpful

Julie Harris Oliver: Do you have any examples of something where you were, you were ramping up a story in your brain and you were able to stop yourself and be, "Hold on, I don't know if that's true"?

Matt Kodsi: Had one the other day, but now I can't remember what it was. You know, it's interesting. I [00:17:00] think one thing that we do very often is we do that with our children. You know, it's something they might not get done and all of a sudden you're thinking, "Oh my gosh, you know, did they not care about that? What were they doing?

Were they on their phone? Were they doing this? Were they doing that?" And, and actually I will say something came up the other day related to that. I won't specify which child since we're on a podcast and, and something didn't get done. before I even went to the story, it, it just hit me. I thought, "Oh, don't write a story about that. create something until you know the details."

Julie Harris Oliver: Oh, good job

Matt Kodsi: so there you go

Julie Harris Oliver: I could b-- You saying that reminded me of whenever I'm together with my children, we all know in advance I'm gonna be mad about the dishes. Especially in my, um, house in LA, we didn't have a dishwasher, so it was always dishes by hand, and I through years of history, I knew I was going to be pissed off about dishes for the whole month we were together, right?

And, you know, and my story over the [00:18:00] years was always like, "They don't see me as a person. They think I'm here to serve them." Like they, you know, all the, all the things, and the reality is they also don't like doing dishes. Like, that's the whole story. But I get so ramped up in my brain about it, make up all kinds of stuff and all the things that it means.

And so now I'm really trying to preemptively whenever I go into that situation, be in gratitude that I get to be with my children and be super aware of let me not go down the stupid dishes rabbit hole. It's so dumb

Matt Kodsi: And that's one of the points, so I guess I will make another point that's in the story, w- we think about or, or it's helpful I think to think about not only the creation of the story, why we create the stories, the fact that we have this negative bias, but where do the stories take us? What's the impact of the stories? Does it get us our desired outcome? You don't wanna be pissed off at your

Julie Harris Oliver: I

Matt Kodsi: of [00:19:00] this story. how do you rewrite that? How do you see that? See, to your point, where that's gonna take you and say, "Oh, I don't wanna be there." Well, if I don't wanna be there, then how do I not get there? How do I write a different story? Why was I writing that original story? I think that's a really key element to storytelling. It's not just the story itself, but the impact it has on our relationship with others our relationship with ourselves.

Julie Harris Oliver: Oh yeah, I go straight to rage washing dishes at them, which is not the position any of us wanna be. They can feel it a room away. So yeah, I'd like, I'd like to stop doing that

Matt Kodsi: Absolutely. Well, one thought that came to mind is, and people have asked me, "Well, who's the target audience for this book?" And I've done a lot of thinking about that because I sort of thought, well, we all tell ourselves stories. I, I'm not sure there's a specific target audience. I, I will tell you first wrote it, I thought, okay, this is something that coaches know. Coaches know about stories. They know we write the [00:20:00] stories. They have great concepts about where they come from, where they lead people to. So how would this book be useful to coaches? And I thought, you know, I think the place where this might be helpful is if a coach has a client, the client's telling themselves stories, and it's going to be part of the work they do together, then this might be something where they could say, "You know, got a quick read for you. It'll take you an hour, or you can listen to it on Audible. Take a read, take a listen, and we'll come back and let's talk about it." And the framework it offers is not so much a concept of, oh, this is the framework for stories. It's more the way I look at it as an invitation to the reader to say, "Oh. Oh, I can actually see that there are stories in my head maybe some of where they're coming from." It's, it's a start. It's a first step. Because as we know, all of this is a journey. It never really ends. We constantly work on these things. So the book itself is that first step to sort of open a door they now can see [00:21:00] behind, it opens up the opportunity for deeper conversation. So I think that's where it may well be very useful for the coaching population. I think for the non-coaching population, people who are looking to work on self-awareness and other aspects and just enjoy reading books about self-discovery, it may be helpful. had conversations about people who are early in education or in certain stages of education.

For example, I'm, I'm actually really excited, come to think of it, I, I didn't bring it up. I forgot to mention I just heard that the book is going to be added to the curriculum of the Masters in Health Administration program at the University of Georgia, which

Julie Harris Oliver: Wonderful. Yeah. Congratulations.

Matt Kodsi: Oh, no,

Julie Harris Oliver: That's exciting

Matt Kodsi: it, it was very exciting, and I really appreciate that that's being done.

I think catching people who are gonna be future administrators, future whatevers, where they may be in a leadership position, I, I feel like this book may plant a seed for them so that they see things a little differently

Julie Harris Oliver: Yeah, that's [00:22:00] great. And I will say the, what I thought was the secret sauce of this book is you make it so accessible and break it down so clearly. Like, you read it and you're like, "Oh, yeah, of course." But I think it's because you laid it out so clearly and simply that it really, it really helps you get into it and, and really access all that information.

So thank you.

Matt Kodsi: that.

Julie Harris Oliver: Yeah

Matt Kodsi: Julie. That, that was definitely the goal, so I appreciate that it came across that way

Julie Harris Oliver: Yeah, mission accomplished. Okay, where can people get it?

Matt Kodsi: So it is on Amazon. I did self-publishing, which if anyone is interested in self-publishing, by the way, it's not as scary as you think it might be, and neither is making an Audible. It was quite simple. I had some help. It was not that bad. So it's self-published on Amazon, and so you can find it there.

It's on, in paperback, it's on Kindle, and of course, as I said, it's on Audible, narrated by yours truly. As we talked last time about my theatrical background, it was of fun

Julie Harris Oliver: That,

Matt Kodsi: [00:23:00] Audible

Julie Harris Oliver: yeah, great. And we'll link to it in the show notes

Matt Kodsi: Thank you No, I just, like I said, Julie, I really appreciate the time. I appreciate the opportunity to talk about the book and the books to come. And I, I would love-- I tell people part of the joy of writing this has been the connections I've made, the feedback I've gotten from others, coaches and non-coaches alike, 'cause I, I, I learn from the feedback that I get from people who've read the book.

So like it's been really a great journey

Julie Harris Oliver: All right. The book is A Story Tale: ABCs of the Story We Tell Ourselves. All right. Thank you, Matt

Matt Kodsi: Thank you, Julie

Julie Harris Oliver: This has been Deep Work Out Loud. I'm Julie Harris Oliver. I'd like to thank Dr. Matt Kodsi for joining the podcast. If any of this resonates with you, please subscribe, leave a review at all the podcast places, and please share this episode with a friend. If you'd like to work with me, you can find me at julieharrisoliver.com.

And let me leave you with this invitation. What is a story you have told yourself? Where did that story [00:24:00] come from? How do you know that it's true? Start thinking about it. Try this on. Report back. Thanks for listening. See you next time