Day 191: Robert Galinsky
“One of my main tenets or beliefs is to step into your fear. To be sensible, yet whatever you’re afraid of, face it, move toward it, step into it. That is where the breakthroughs happen, that’s where the discovery happens, that’s where the person who has the breakthrough will benefit. And those around that person will also become stronger and more powerful for it.”
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Toni Reece: Thank you very much, Robert, for agreeing to do an interview today, and before we begin, can you please introduce yourself?
Robert Galinsky: My name is Robert Galinsky, and I’m very happy to be on the phone with you today.
Toni: Me too. Me too. Robert, can you tell us a little bit about what you do?
Robert: Sure. I’m an executive coach. I facilitate team building and team bonding seminars. I also coach actors, and I direct and produce live events and theater in New York City.
Toni: Okay. Thank you for that, and when you think of that word inspiration, who do you think you inspire, and how does that happen?
Robert: I’ve come to know that I inspire a lot of people without even knowing it. People always surprise me and come up to me and say “Hey, what you just did,” or “something you told me last week,” or “part of a session that we were going through was really inspirational to me, and it made me go home and think about things differently,” or “it make me approach somebody at work differently.”
So a lot of times it’s usually by accident or as a byproduct of something. It’s not the obvious thing that I think it might be as a result of doing something with somebody. I’d like to try to … I’d like to think that I motivate people to make changes in their lives, to look at people differently, more kindly, more gently, and to take more chances. That’s what I really like people to think about, taking chances.
Toni: And you also said you want to inspire people to look at other people more kindly and gently. Give us a little bit of reason for that.
Robert: For me it’s very personal. I think it comes back to my upbringing. I had two great parents who were very caring and loving and put a lot of good values in me, and at a certain point in my adolescence I had a very rough patch with my father and realized that the world is not what it appears to be.
We lived on a very beautiful cul-de-sac by the forest and had a wonderful, warm home, but for a period of time in that home, I had a lot of trouble and a lot of fear and distrust. So it got me at a very young age, and I think it was fortunate. It was a horrible couple of years’ experience, but it was what has shaped me to see that what we see on the outside is not always what’s going on on the inside. That was a good lesson to get early on, and I was very fortunate that I got it.
So what might look like a nice, calm, placid environment may be hellacious inside, and what might look like a disheveled, disorganized, or chaotic environment actually might have something very powerful going on inside of it. Looks are deceiving, and for me, I try not to judge anybody or any organization by the way they appear, but to see what they’re doing, what their actual actions are, their work is, what their history is.
Toni: So you really need to get in there and find the evidence for yourself rather than taking it at face value.
Robert: Exactly; and that’s the way it is with our country and with the world today. I just got out of a summit, met a person named Simon Cohen who works with global tolerance, his organization. And I spent a week with him, but I know I’m going to have a lifelong friendship with him. You know, he talks about public relations, and he changed the term to “personal relations” because he described very clearly that public relations is kind of about putting that lipstick on that pig and – in his words — sequins and fancy earrings, and personal relations is not.
Personal relations is about being real, talking to each other, and getting to the root of the truth, and not dressing something up so that it looks good for public relations, but being clear and honest for personal relations.
Toni: How do you think that mentality and what you do with this to help inspire others will help them to explore their potential?
Robert: Because what it will do is give them a sense of trust that they don’t have to go along with the flow. They don’t have to try to impress anybody but themselves. They don’t have to meet any other standard or criteria that’s out there that has been set by some arbitrary form, whether it’s, again, a media or even a leader or a person in a position of power; that they will see that what they really need to do is trust their inner voice and put out the messages the way they want to, they think they’ll be most effective, and as clearly as possible.
I think that that helps people reach their potential to trust who they are, trust when they’ve made a mistake. They can correct it, or they can turn it into another kind of an opportunity. Those are things that get me excited about it.
Toni: It’s interesting, it reminds me of what someone has said recently to me, that people tend to send their representatives rather than sending themselves.
Robert: Yeah, exactly. It’s going out on that first date and the best behavior is on. People know … I think people are getting smart enough to know that you don’t have to send the representative anymore. And if you do send the representative, then make that representative as clear and as powerful as you need to be.
One of my main tenets or beliefs is to step into your fear. To be sensible, yet whatever you’re afraid of, face it, move toward it, step into it. That is where the breakthroughs happen, that’s where the discovery happens, that’s where the person who has the breakthrough will benefit. And those around that person will also become stronger and more powerful for it.
And it can be … I see it as the smallest details. I sometimes think of myself as a microactivist, because it’s the smallest personal moments that you have with people, the opening of a door for somebody … the opening of a door for somebody in public is not just being polite sometimes; it sends a stronger message. We represent so many different things that, you know, I think that that’s a way of opening up more territory for people to communicate with each other. And I think being … like for me, I know I’m afraid of a lot of things, … things that happen and whether it be making a phone call to certain people or accepting a phone call – that’s two simple examples.
The more I practice answering that phone when I’ve got a little trepidation and seeing it through, the more I practice the simple breakthroughs of my fear and stepping into that fear, raising my hand to ask a question when I’m at a seminar even though I know it may sound stupid or I might feel stupid for asking. Those little tiny steps to break through fear help me when I have bigger challenges and I have to address a group of a thousand people that all know a lot, and I’m supposed to be telling them something new. Those moments are very terrifying, and they become easier. I also, like I said, discover so much when I step into my fear.
Toni: So what inspires you?
Robert: What inspires me is watching people create new things, especially young people. Actually, young and very old people … very old people who are continuing to do what they’ve done for years and years in the face of the odds, in the face of the public sentiment not liking necessarily what they might be doing, whether it’s art or organizing groups.
So what really inspires me is when people make something new, when people make something that’s contrary to what the general public is doing, whether that be forming a new consciousness with lyrics for songs, or creating an organization that does something very simple like deliver soccer balls to underprivileged children, somebody sharing their lunch with some stranger who they see is hungry and they’re willing to share. Those are the kinds of things that move me.
Toni: Absolutely. Have you always come to the table with a sense of purpose? This is something that’s running as a theme, we’re finding, through the Get Inspired! Project interviews, that either people know what their sense of purpose is, or they need a way to find what it is. So to you, have you always known that this was the type of work you wanted to do?
Robert: No. I’m 45 years old right now, and I’ve known for a long time that this is the type of work I like doing, but I didn’t know for a long time. I was a prankster, I was a joker. I was somebody who would get in trouble a lot in school. And looking back, I realize that was just my misplaced energy, me trying to figure out how to impact people and picking the wrong times to do that or the wrong ways to do that.
My mom got into an accident when I was 11 years old, and I used to go to school early because she was in the hospital for a couple weeks, so I went to school early, as my dad took me to school and kind of got special permission to hang out a little bit. And I discovered the pre-K class for developmentally disabled children, and ended up hanging out there in the mornings, and I realized … I guess that was the moment where I knew this was something that I was interested in – people who are “on the margins.” People who are laughed at, looked away from. People who are ignored. Those are the people that I’m interested in. They’re the disenfranchised. They have so many amazing stories to tell and so much to offer.
By hanging out at a young age of 11 with these little kids and seeing them struggle with what they were struggling with, but being incredibly happy with what they discovered and the little breakthroughs that they made and being a part of that, that excited me, and I realized then that that’s something that always stayed with me. However, you know, as an adolescent I, you know, fooled around a little bit and got in trouble here and there. Never anything too bad, never, you know, never was a bad boy, but just not focused. And then once I got into college and I discovered theatre and realized that there was a whole world of creativity and team building and cooperation, that’s when I got very serious about it.
Toni: When you find yourself with a day that you might wake up and go, you know, “I could use a little inspiration today,” what do you find yourself consistently reaching for?
Robert: I consistently reach for the music of Fela. Fela – his show is on Broadway right now, which is totally exciting. His music to me brings me up. Jazz in general will, but his because his lyrics are empowering. They’re all about his story, about changing the world that he lived in, and the music is fun and funky and danceable. So there are times when I can just get into it for the music and let my soul bounce around the room with the music, and then there’s times when I zero in on the political and social commentary of the language. But that’s the first and most obvious thing right now in my life. That particular musical artist, and music in general.
Toni: Absolutely. So what do you do to explore your own potential so that you can keep growing? You mentioned so many different things that you do and areas that you work in, so I would imagine that exploring your own potential has to really reach out into a couple of different areas for you.
Robert: Yeah. What I’m doing now is I’m realizing that I need my public voice to be heard constantly, so I have a radio show now. And what I’ve been doing with people for years has been working on confidence, how to tell your story, what makes somebody compelling, and that always comes back to being authentic.
A funny thing has happened in the past two years; reality television has now sort of become a filter for me to put my message out there. So I created the New York Reality TV School, and I’m taking a lot of the desperate people who are dying to be heard. You know, they think they want to be famous, but a lot of it they want to tell their story, and reality TV has allowed for us to be able to do that. One thing that excites me about reality TV, it allows for us to do that without telling the story of a drug addict or somebody being murdered with a gun or a police officer solving this with a gun.
If you look at all the scripted television … we watch all this scripted television about murder and kidnappings and drugs, and we go turn the news on and the media gives us all the houses that are burning down and the babies that had to be thrown from the windows, and yet people still think that reality television is the breakdown of our society. But when I watch reality TV, I don’t ever have to worry about watching somebody pull a gun. I don’t ever have to worry about somebody crying over a fictitious kidnapping or a child porn case.
I will watch … of course, there are those moments where we’re watching somebody bitterly discuss how, you know, somebody used their soap without asking them on a reality show, and it turns into some kind of wild yet petty argument. But to me, I’d rather watch something real where people are compelled to discourse with each other than watch something that’s completely fictitious, has been done over and over and over and over again — the detectives searching for the lost child, or the detective looking for the crazy man, or the newsperson telling me how bad the economy is.
And, so, because of that, I’m also able to help the people that want to be on those shows see a clearer way of getting what they’re trying to communicate out there. Many people that come to me don’t know … they leave going “Wow, I just thought I wanted to be famous and on TV, but now I know I have something to say.” So they have something to stand for when they leave, and I think that’s really exciting.
Toni: Is there a particular message that you’re trying to get through with the reality TV, or is it anybody’s message?
Robert: It’s whatever your message is. That’s what I want to do … I just want to sharpen and hone and shape; and if it means even finding and discovering what your message is, that’s it. My agenda is not about the content so much as it is about you being able to articulate and be clear about what the content is you’re presenting.
Toni: How does that … as far as exploring your own potential in what you’re doing as far as growing this reality TV side, how does it correlate to what you do for others and their own potential as far as stepping into their fear – helping people step through their fear in order to get to their own purpose or what they’re working towards? Is there a correlation between what you need and what you do?
Robert: I think there is a correlation, and that is, you know, the world … there’s so many forces in this world, and a lot of them work to keep people down. And a lot of these forces do keep people, you know, afraid they can’t afford a rent or their car payment, or they’ve got to keep up with somebody else. And I think what I do really fulfills me, because I see people walk away … like I said earlier in the conversation, not everything is what it looks like. You know, again, I lived in the tree-lined street but there was horror in my home for a period of time for me, personally, and that to me is analogous to the rest of the world.
It may look great to be on a TV show, on a reality show, and living in that mansion for a month and being challenged by the producers and directors, but when you leave there, what are you leaving the world? Are you leaving them with some image of yourself that will carry on and offer somebody some light and some hope, or are you just going to repeat the same kind of … the garbage cycle that is being produced through these television shows? So for me, it’s fulfilling to watch people break down these stereotypes and also shatter these realities that we think exist and create new ones.
Toni: That’s fantastic. Thank you very, very much for not only what you do to inspire others, but being vulnerable enough and honest enough to share your own story so that people do need to realize that it isn’t always as it seems, and to really look for the evidence before you judge. And I think that was an incredibly huge message in here, and also what you’re trying to do with reality TV. We cannot thank you enough for being part of the Project, today, Robert.
Robert: Thank you very much. Thank you so much for allowing me to have the opportunity to speak, and I don’t often tell my personal story. As a matter of fact, I hardly ever do, so it came out organically, and I really appreciate you and the platform for me to be able to do that.
Toni: Absolutely. You’ve helped a lot of people by doing so, so we thank you.
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For more information about Robert Galinsky: www.galinskyplace.com/base.htm
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