Introduction
Shari Foos learnt to read body language before she learnt almost anything else. As a child in an abusive home, she could tell from the sweat on her father's upper lip when he was about to blow, and sometimes, if she was funny, she could change his energy.
That survival skill became a life: improv on the streets of LA, writing for television and radio, and eventually a career as a marriage and family therapist and creator of the award-winning non-profit The Narrative Method. In this conversation with Sope Agbelusi, she offers some of the most practical tools you will hear for quieting the inner critic, sharing your story safely, and leading with real vulnerability.
Humour as survival, then as perspective
Shari got into improvisation because, as a child, the answer to everything was no. If she could not have things, being funny would be her instrument, and nobody could take it away. In her 30s she was doing guerrilla improv on the street, standing in front of a newsstand shouting "free advice" and riffing with strangers.
Her deeper point is about what humour does under pressure. When you are dealing with your most profound and difficult feelings, humour gives you perspective, relief and release. You look at how messed up the situation is, pull back, and see it in a benign context. You have not solved a single problem yet, but you are better, because you are out of the loop. And when you get out of a loop of thinking about something one way, you find answers.
The question that breaks the loop
Her simplest tool for reframing: after the freak-out, after you have decided the whole thing was a waste of time, ask yourself, is that the only thing that's true here? The failed pitch also taught you to build the package, created a relationship, left you ready for the next buyer, and you acted with integrity. None of that stops being true because the buyer said no.
Treat yourself like the child whose hand you are holding
If a child hurt themselves, you would not shout "I told you so, that was stupid." Yet that is exactly how we speak to ourselves. Shari's counsel: you are your own little baby, and the most developed part of you should not bully the wounded parts. Those defences did not appear for nothing; they simply did not know what else to do when things were hard and scary.
Her practice: every time you notice the harsh inner voice, stop. Take a beat. Notice it with curiosity, not blame: I wonder why that came up right now. Oh, because I am taking a risk. Then tell the defence: I am the adult here, I have got it, thank you. Put your dominant hand on your heart, feel it beating, and let the fearful part relax. And if the voice says "you'll never be anything", try her ironic challenge: say it in the mirror a hundred times until you laugh at how absurd it is. Hidden fears have perceived power; opened up, they are just thoughts.
Words are the smallest part of communication
If you told someone a hundred times and they still did not get it, Shari says, you did not tell them a hundred times. The reason they are not responding is the thing you need to talk about, with curiosity, not blame. Words carry a small fraction of communication; tone, body language and facial expressions carry the rest. And the fear of asking for clarification, of looking stupid or being found out as stupid, quietly ends our learning. Shari admits she has stood in fascinating conversations and swallowed her questions for exactly that reason.
The Narrative Method and the power of stories
The Narrative Method, part of the human connection movement, runs programmes, groups and free weekly sessions that connect people through sharing the stories of their lives. The premise: we are hardwired for stories. Every culture has depended on them to pass down everything from information to values to danger.
When we share stories and feel heard, we experience our mutual humanity and break through the limitations of our beliefs about each other. Forget changing each other's minds, she says, that is not happening and it does not need to. But when we discover similarities amidst extreme differences, we have something to build on. We are not that different; we just have very different influences and allegiances.
Sharing safely
Two rules for vulnerability. First, make a deal with yourself: you never have to reveal anything that makes you feel unsafe, and it is better to honour that than give away what you do not want to give. Saying that out loud in a group makes people open up, because it makes it okay to be who you are. Second, know that whatever someone does with your words, even out of context, those words are not you. You are in charge of yourself.
And unfinished business deserves care: the material you have not worked out yet feels the most vulnerable and should not be forced into public. It is honest to say, I am still conflicted about that, I am still working it out.
Writing it out
For anyone, and Shari notes men especially, who thinks a lot but does not talk, her strongest tool is daily writing, by hand, unedited, for your eyes only. You can tear it up afterwards. Much of it will be scribble, then a couple of words land and it is bingo. It clears the desktop of your mind, and the clarity it produces often gives you the confidence to talk to someone. Feelings are real, but they do not represent your totality; do not let them convince you they can hurt you.
The cult of culture
Shari names the constant onslaught of advertising, noise and lies that teaches all of us we are not good enough, the cult of culture. We buy products to be less defective, and though we all know it is ridiculous, it is constant and insidious, played out in who gets to succeed. The work is separating ourselves from the things that have happened to us and been said about us that do not ring true, because the more we do, the more access we have to our passion, purpose and drive.
Leadership that grows leaders
Her definition of leadership is a fitting close: a good leader stays connected to their own vulnerability, because showing it makes it okay for others to come to you and be real, to say we made a mistake here. Followers do not build. People who trust their own instincts within clear parameters do. A good leader wants to grow more leaders, and more ideas than they could have had alone.
