In this episode of the Egg Whisperer Show, I’m talking to Alex Budak, a faculty member at Berkeley, and author of ‘Becoming a Changemaker.’ We discuss how anyone can lead positive change, regardless of their background, by adopting a growth mindset and practicing micro leadership. Alex shares valuable lessons on resilience, the importance of advocating for oneself, and how fertility patients can apply these concepts to their journeys.
Some of the key points of our conversation include defining change makers, embracing a journey mindset, fostering hope, and advocating for oneself. Alex also emphasizes the significance of remaining a lifelong learner and being adaptable in the face of challenges.
If there is anything I know about fertility patients it’s that you all know a lot about being on a journey that often involves embracing change. You become more resilient, and you follow a “growth” mindset. You cling to hope and you let it lead the way forward. It’s no surprise that I would have a social entrepreneur and changemaker on the show.
You have a lot in common with what Alex teaches and writes about:
“Developing a changemaker mindset often requires holding two seemingly contradictory traits simultaneously: Having a strong personal vision yet being open to collaborating with others. Employing drive and determination to push through barrier after barrier yet knowing when to step back and recharge.”
Today we’re talking about how to become a Changemaker on your fertility journey. Here are three traits he believes a changemaker has:
1. There’s always another way
2. Existing at the edges
3. Learned Hopefulness / Learned Optimism
Resources for this episode:
Alex Budak’s book: Becoming a Changemaker
Full Transcript:
Dr. Aimee: The title of today’s show is How to Become a Changemaker with author Alex Budak. Welcome, Alex.
Alex Budak: Thanks, Aimee. So happy to be with you.
Dr. Aimee: I want to share with our listeners a little bit more about you.
Alex is a social entrepreneur, faculty member at Berkeley Haas, and the author of Becoming a Changemaker: An Actionable Inclusive Guide to Leading Positive Change at Any Level. He teaches, speaks, and writes to help people make a positive change in their lives, careers, and communities. At UC Berkeley, Alex created and teaches the transformative course Becoming a Changemaker and is a lecturer and faculty director for Berkeley executive education programs. As a social entrepreneur, he co-founded SomeSmartGood.com, ran Sweden’s most prominent social innovation incubator Reach for Change, and helped Change.org sale globally. He’s a graduate of UCLA and Georgetown University.
I’m so honored to have you on today’s show. The world has never been more ready for you, Alex. Thank you again.
Alex: It’s my pleasure. You’re an amazing changemaker yourself, Aimee, so it’s fun to be with you and to talk about all of these things.
Dr. Aimee: Exciting stuff. I want to start off with having you define what is a changemaker. Can you define that for us?
Alex: Sure. Such an important question to frame the conversation. I define it in a radically inclusive way. I think we have so many titles where you’re either an artist or you’re not, you’re an engineer or you’re not, you’re an entrepreneur or you’re not, so I want a definition which speaks to all of us no matter who we are or where we are.
Simply put, a changemaker leads positive change from wherever they are.
Dr. Aimee: So many fertility patients go through their journey, and they call it a fertility journey, and they’re just so passionate about educating others and becoming a changemaker, they’re just not really sure how to do it. They use the term fertility journey, and it’s so perfect that you talk about the changemaker’s journey. What is that journey?
Alex: I think there’s a lot of parallels there as well. When I work with students, executives, anyone who wants to become a changemaker, they sometimes set off with a clear idea of what it is they want to change, but one of the things we quickly learn is even with the best-laid plans, you don’t know exactly how things are going to work out. Maybe it will take three months, maybe it will take five years, maybe it’s something you’ll commit to for the rest of your life.
I think about it not just as a thing to achieve, sort of a checkmark to get done, but rather committing to a process, committing to a journey. That’s how I think about changemaking.
Dr. Aimee: That’s wonderful. There’s also a mindset that goes along with it. In your book, you talk about fixed and growth mindset. What is the difference between the two?
Alex: Super important way to start our conversation of being a changemaker. This is work done by Carol Dweck at Stanford University, an amazing book called Mindset. She differentiates between two types of mindsets that we have, fixed versus growth.
A fixed mindset believes that our traits, our abilities are essentially fixed in place, there’s only so much intelligence we have, only so much charisma that we have, and whatever we have is just how it’s meant to be. A growth mindset, meanwhile, believes that those things can be cultivated, can be learned. It doesn’t mean it comes easily, but it means that we can always be challenging ourselves and improving.
Now, crucially, she says it’s not binary. It’s not like you always have a growth mindset and you always have a fixed mindset. It may be that you show up with more of a growth mindset at work, more of a fixed mindset on your fertility journey at the beginning. So, there’s a lot of nuance to it. I think it’s important to call out fixed versus growth so that we can at least talk about it and think about how we can get more toward that growth end.
Dr. Aimee: In many ways, especially with advancements happening in the fertility field, it’s important as a fertility expert to have what you call a changemaker mindset. Can you share the traits of that mindset? I feel like all of these apply to someone on a fertility journey. There’s always another way, existing at the edges, there’s learned hopefulness and learned optimism. Can you talk to us more about those traits?
Alex: Happy to walk through all three of them. I think a place I might like to start here is with the words of poet Amanda Gorman. She wrote the poem The Hill We Climb, which she delivered at the Inauguration of Biden and Harris. The final three lines encapsulate the approach of having a changemaker mindset. The final three lines are, “For there is always light if we’re brave enough to see it, if we’re brave enough to be it.”
I think that’s a really nice way to think about a changemaker mindset, this idea that tomorrow can always be better than today, that there’s always a brighter path ahead. But it’s not enough to just believe that, you’ve also got to be able to see it. Not everyone can always see it. Can you have that vision? Can you imagine things not just as they are but as they could be? Then crucially, if we’re brave enough to be it, that courage to actually take some action, you can’t just sit on it, you can’t just have the vision by itself, but it requires you doing something about it, so stepping out and saying, “Yes, the future can be better, and I can do something about it here.” So, I love the words of Gorman as a way to perhaps anchor our conversation.
From there, you mentioned the three things that I call out as part of the changemaker mindset. The first is the idea that there’s always another way. There is some fascinating research that was done by Cornerstone HR, they were looking at what makes people working in call centers more likely to be successful in their jobs and more likely to stick around. They found a surprising thing.
They were looking at all kinds of variables, like the number of degrees they had, years of education, and age, but something was actually physically significant, it was what browser they used on their computer. That sounds really fun because whether you use Firefox or Chrome, it’s all pretty much the same, just a portal to the internet. But here’s what they found. People that used either Firefox or Chrome were more likely to stay at their job longer and more likely to thrive in the job.
Why is that? Is it because a browser gives you superpowers? Of course not. It’s because they went against the default. Instead of just accepting Safari because that’s what comes with an Apple computer, they said, “No, I think there’s another browser that I could use. Let me take that action, let me go download it myself, install it, and then I’ll use it.” That’s a pretty good proxy for being a changemaker, having that mindset to not just accept things the way that they are, but to say, “I think there’s a better way.”
The second one is existing at the edges. Especially those of us that are in more traditional fields, people tend to like to put us into silos and say your job is to be a consultant, your job is to be a doctor, and you stay within those edges. But I believe that any fundamental change we’re going to lead requires existing at those edges where the field of one bleeds into the other.
If you think about any of the substantive changes that our world needs, whether that’s climate, racial justice, water access, no one single discipline, no one single approach, no one single profession has a lock on that. We need to work at the edges, work through and with others, and see things from different perspectives.
The third and final one, which I think is also crucial for fertility and fertility journeys, this idea I call learned hopefulness. I want to clarify this is not the same as toxic positivity. There’s this idea of toxic positivity where like everything is cool, don’t even worry about it. Learned hopefulness is this idea that Rebecca Sloan, an author, says that hope isn’t something that we just cling onto like a lottery ticket, it’s an axe we use to break down doors, it’s this belief that things will be better. We use our hope, we put our hope into action. Not toxic positivity, not just pretending things are okay, but never losing faith in the hope, never stopping belief. You have to use it like an axe, you have to use it as a tool, not just clutch it.
Dr. Aimee: I define hope for my patients as having only practical expectations and positive at the same time. But you’re so right, it’s so different from toxic positivity. I also say hope never killed anybody. It’s not going to harm you at all, as long as you’re practical about what the expectations are.
Alex: That’s exactly right. It reminds me of some of the work that’s done by Martin Seligman at University of Pennsylvania. He is the father of positive applied psychology and he came up with what he calls the three Ps of learned optimism.
When we have a setback, which is inevitable if you’re going to lead any type of change, if you’re going to try to do things, question the status quo in any way, you’re going to have setbacks. He says when you have a setback, ask yourself the three Ps. Is the setback personal? Is it permanent? Is it pervasive? Then to remind ourselves that even when we have a setback, it’s probably not completely our fault. There are other external factors at play. We shouldn’t blame ourselves and beat ourselves up for it.
Pervasive, just because we have one setback in one aspect of our life doesn’t mean that everything else is pervasive. Permanent, one setback is just a setback on a journey of many ups and many downs. So, I think the three Ps from Seligman can be a helpful framework for us as changemakers and people on a fertility journey as well.
Dr. Aimee: We’re definitely going to include a copy of your book in the transcripts of this interview, but all of the quotes and poems and other authors and research that you’re mentioning today, I’m going to make sure that we include it for others to go back and read if they want to learn more. What you’re saying is just incredible, and I feel like all of the stuff that you’re sharing with us will really resonate with fertility patients in so many ways.
There’s also a quote in the section about humility as a strength that reads, “Developing a changemaker mindset often requires holding two seemingly contradictory traits simultaneously. Having a strong personal vision yet being open to collaborating with others. Employing drive and determination to push through barrier after barrier yet knowing when to step back and recharge.” Will you tell us more about that?
Alex: That’s one of the things that changemakers have to get comfortable with, these sorts of polarities. We often think that we have to be one or the other, that we have to be super confident and forget humility, or we have to be super humble and forget confidence.
Rather than thinking about a little bit of each, a little bit confident and a little bit humble, I try to help people become changemakers that are both, both confident and humble. Confident enough to stand up and say, “I have an idea. Come along with me, let’s do this,” but also humble enough to do so in a way that we model fallibility, that we are honest about some of our own setbacks, our own blind spots, and make it inclusive for others to come along with us.
Another one of those kind of crucial tensions as a changemaker is the idea of balancing both the long term, recognizing that change can often take a long time, that it’s not just a sprint, it’s often a marathon, but at the same time having that sense of urgency of let me not just sit around forever and ever, I have to do something about this. Can you hold both of those to say I’m going to do something, I’m going to start taking action, and I also recognize that this may take a while as well?
Dr. Aimee: That saying of Rome wasn’t built in a day, something like that. I don’t know what the quote is, but my mom is always reminding me of that. One of the things that I want to change is how we approach donor conception in this country and in the world, what has been a 15-year journey for me to try to make those changes, and it takes a lot of patience. It’s also a lot about timing and when other people around you are finally ready to hear what you want to bring to the experience for others.
Alex: So important, yes. Timing plays a big role. I think our own conception of it, also. I like the words of Matthew Kelly, he’s the author of the book The Long View. He says we tend to overestimate what we can do in a day, underestimate what we can do in a month, overestimate what we can do in a year, and underestimate what we can do in a decade. Having those expectations, depending on how long we’re committing to something, can often be helpful for us to not burn out in the short term, but also stay strong for the long haul.
Dr. Aimee: Absolutely. My idea was 15 years ago, and slowly launching, doing all of the work, it takes hours and years, and dedication. Hopefully, I’ll be that changemaker for donor conception.
Alex: I think you absolutely will. It’s so important for us as we look back, we tend to sort of glorify the story. When you’re successful in this, people will look back and go, “Dr. Aimee did that. That seemed pretty easy for her.” Of course, that’s not the truth. We tend to overlook all of the struggles, all of the ups and the downs.
I think it’s important for us as changemakers to own that and to talk about that as well, to say that it’s a slog. Oftentimes, in changes we get to this magical tipping point where it’s obvious, “Of course that’s the way that it should be,” but it’s not obvious how you get to that tipping point, and it takes a lot of grit and a lot of hard work to get to that point.
Dr. Aimee: Right. You also explain about being a student always. I know that fertility patients feel more empowered and prepared when they’re informed. I like to say the more you know, the better it will go. How can someone get into the “student always” mindset?
Alex: I think it first starts with a bit of humility. We can always learn more. We can always grow and change. There’s a saying in the teaching world that I love, which is one person teaches and two people learn. I’m constantly learning so much from my students as well. It’s not just about me being at the front and saying all of these things. I’m constantly learning from my students, from executives that I teach.
You have to have the right mindset. If you go in there thinking you already know everything, then how could you ever know anything from there. If you go into it thinking, “I could learn a little bit from everyone that I meet, from everything that I read, and piece it all together,” that’s a cornerstone of being a student always, which I think is a healthy mindset for us on fertility journeys, as well as just in leading any type of change.
Dr. Aimee: That’s so true. There’s one thing that I will never say, that’s I’ve seen it all. I’ve been sitting at this very desk since 2008, and I can still tell you that I still haven’t seen it all and had every single possible experience with a fertility patient. Right when I think that I’m at that point, I’m humbled and reminded that I still have not.
Why is it important to be and remain flexible?
Alex: I think you started hinting at this. We’re living in a world which is rapidly changing before our eyes. Whether you think in technological terms or cultural terms, the world is changing before our eyes, faster and faster. Even if you figure things out exactly how they work right now, this year, this month, it doesn’t mean that’s going to be the path forward in a month, three months, a year from now. With situations changing, with technology rapidly changing, with people changing, we have to remain adaptable as well. Otherwise, we run the risk that we keep doing the same thing, but it’s no longer quite as effective because the world has changed around us.
Dr. Aimee: Absolutely. There’s also so much to learn from not having an outcome you want and desire. You refer to it so nicely as failing forward. I don’t like the word failure at all in the context of fertility, but I do like to talk about what people can learn from an IVF cycle that didn’t work or from a miscarriage.
You talk about two key things students learn when you have them fail at something on purpose. What do they share with you about having experienced failure?
Alex: This is one of the most fun parts of my teaching. We spend an entire lecture talking about failure, what we can learn from failure and trying to get them to think about failing forward. But it’s one thing to intellectualize it and another thing to go do it. So, toward the end of lecture, I flash up a slide which simply has two words, “Go fail.” My students look around nervously like, “Is he for real? Is this really happening?” Yes, this is happening.
Here’s the assignment; you have 10 minutes, you have to leave the classroom, and you have to purposely get rejected, you have to ask for something and get someone to say no to you. You can’t come back until someone has given you that no. Students are so nervous as they leave the classroom. I tell them I’ll be at the front of the classroom if you need a little support or a little coaching, I’ll be here, but I’m serious, go get rejected.
For this group of people, so many are high achievers, they’re usually doing things exactly by the rules, and they’re not used to putting themselves out in a way where you would ever want to get rejected on purpose. They go out all nervous and they come back, and the energy is just unreal. So much so that I once had a professor knock on the door and say, “Hey, keep it down,” because students were so lit up from the energy of having failed and been rejected.
Here’s what we found. Two things happen.
About one-third of students go out, they ask for something, they’re sure they’ll get rejected, and they actually get a yes, the person actually says yes to their crazy request. A woman who walked into the school gym, got on the PA and said, “Hey. It’s not my birthday, but will you sing me Happy Birthday,” and she got 60 people in the gym to sing her Happy Birthday. A student went to the café and asked for an orange juice for free, they said yes. Then she looked around thinking, “I’m supposed to fail,” asked for another one and she got a second one. Finally, when she asked for the third then they said no. So, about one-third of students learn that we often set ourselves up for failure because we’re sure we’ll get rejected, we’re sure things won’t work out, but maybe they actually will, maybe it’s worth taking that risk.
For the other two-thirds who get the rejection, they realize that failure isn’t fatal, that no one laughed at them, that they can recover, in many cases they come back stronger, they come back inspired, they feel like they have a little more confidence in themselves, they’re proud of themselves for asking for something that they wanted. That then serves them well in everything that they do.
Dr. Aimee: I think for fertility patients the struggle of going through inseminations, having it not work, I like that concept of failing forward because forward means that there is something out there that’s different than what you’re experiencing now, and that would be success and a positive pregnancy test. I feel like when I do my post-treatment consults when something didn’t work, I’ll set them up as my failing forward consults instead.
Alex: I love it. There’s data that backs this up, too. There are Italian researchers that looked at entrepreneurs in an incubator program, and they did one simple intervention. With half of them, they simply taught them the scientific method. The other half continued on as normal. Scientific method, which you know all too well, hypothesis testing of saying I have an idea, let me put it out there and see what happens, and then what can we learn from it.
They found that the entrepreneurs who learned the scientific method were more likely to pivot, more likely to change direction and strategy. Again, this is in a very entrepreneurial sense, but they also generated more revenue. I think there’s an important lesson for all of us here. When things don’t go our way, we tend to take it personally and go, “I didn’t do that right.” If we instead think as scientists and think of it as an experiment, as a test, “Did this work? Did this not work?” and then we go into the next iteration and say now we’re not just starting at point zero, we’re informed by what happened before, based off of that we can then try something slightly different.
To me, that’s failing forward. Sure, it was a setback. Sure, it wasn’t what we wanted. But we’ve learned a lot from it. It’s validated learning that we can carry forward into the next steps.
Dr. Aimee: That’s so true. I tell my patients you can’t take the failures personally. You have to think of it as work and we’re learning from the experiences so that we can get closer and closer to our success story.
I feel like we should have parallels. I’ll be talking to the fertility patients and on the side, because I think that as my patients read your book they’ll feel inspired and the lessons that they’ll learn, they can certainly apply to the experience of being a patient going through one of the hardest challenges of their lives. Then they also get inspired to, like I said before, teach others, maybe start another business in terms of inspiring other fertility patients or become a coach.
The second large topic you address is leadership. Many patients find themselves in a place of needing to advocate for themselves and sometimes step in to become an active participant in their own care. How does someone step into that role? Especially as women, sometimes it’s hard for us to have a voice or find that voice. We all have a voice, but to actually find the voice and to stick up for ourselves, even if it feels uncomfortable. How does someone do that?
Alex: That’s exactly right. Of course, there’s gender and racial bias, among other biases we have to navigate against. One thing that can be helpful is always anchoring ourselves in a sense of purpose.
There’s fascinating research that was done on radiologists. Radiologists are terrific people, terrific doctors. Dr. Yehonatan Turner found that the radiologists he was working with tended to come back with all too many errors and not very long responses, so he tried an experiment. His experiment was in addition to sending along the x-ray of a broken rib or a broken leg, he would also send along a picture of the person, so the 7-year-old kid or the 45-year-old woman. What he found was that when the radiologist saw the person as well, the responses tended to be more accurate and the diagnosis longer.
The lesson here, I think, is reconnecting with our sense of purpose. In this case, we’re not just standing up to be advocates just because we want to be advocates, but we have a greater purpose, a greater reason behind us. That can be an anchor that inspires us because it can feel really uncomfortable to stand up, especially if we’re not used to it, especially if we’re going up against biases, if we have a greater reason that is pulling us. I think any fertility patient will have a really strong reason here. That can be a good reminder for why they’re doing it, not just for themselves, not just for their own voice, but for something bigger than themselves.
Dr. Aimee: That’s beautiful. I don’t have a problem remembering who my patients are. I’m going to brag just a little bit right now. I’m very lucky that I have a very high emotional IQ. I hear people’s stories, I remember them, I sometimes internalize them, maybe a little bit too much, but that’s okay. I take what I do very seriously. But I hear stories where patients go to their doctor, and the doctor has no idea who they are, and doesn’t remember anything.
I had a patient once come to me, it was her new patient appointment, and she actually told me her why. She said, “Dr. Aimee, I know you have so many patients, but I just want to share something with you so you can remember who I am.” She talked about her mother, showed me a photo of her mother. I said to her, “You don’t need to do that with me. I love hearing the story about your mother and the relationship you had, and why you’re here and what family means to you.”
What I took from that is what if other patients learn from that and they might be able to do something like that with their current clinic. Not that doctors need reminders, but sometimes we do because we’re only human and there are so many patients out there than fertility doctors.
You also share a new concept called micro leadership. Can you explain that?
Alex: Yes. I think we tend to put leaders up on a pedestal. We look at these singular, heroic moments like Steve Jobs pulling the phone out of his pocket for the first time, and we think, “Those are leaders, that’s what it takes to be a leader. That’s not me, I’m not extroverted, I’m not charismatic, I don’t like speaking in front of a crowd. I can’t be a leader.”
My belief is that leaders might be scarce, so maybe there’s only one CEO or only one executive director, but leadership is abundant. We can all practice leadership. So, I’m trying to change the way we think about leadership from something that’s about a title to instead acts.
If we think about leadership, we can break leadership down into its smallest meaningful unit, which I call the leadership moment. There are these leadership moments that appear before us dozens, if not hundreds, of times per day. Little moments where we can step up and take action, where we can serve others, make things better for someone else, choose action. How different the world looks when instead of letting those leadership moments sail by that we decide to give ourselves permission to step up and take action.
Maybe it’s as simple as in a meeting that one of your colleagues hasn’t really spoken and you say, “We haven’t heard from you. Did you want to share your perspective here?” Maybe it’s having the courage to say no when everyone else is saying yes, or saying yes when everyone else is saying no. Maybe it’s staying late to help a new colleague set up. There’s all kinds of things that you could do, but the key here is that it’s not about one heroic leadership moment. Instead, it’s about seizing all the moments that are around us all the time. That’s micro leadership.
Dr. Aimee: You brought up action, and I want to talk a little bit about that. How staying in action and in fertility treatment can be really hard, especially because patients sometimes feel like no one is paying attention to them, they’re not being given a diagnosis. You’ve studied a lot about how changemakers can take those first action steps. How might that apply to one’s fertility journey?
Alex: Exactly right. There’s a few things that we can learn here. The first is that we tend to think we have to get things exactly right before we take action, we have to know exactly the path, we have to know exactly the process before we’re going to go.
There’s a concept put forward by Jim Collins and Morten Hansen, which is called fire bullets, then cannonballs. Before you go with that big cannonball, that’s sort of the one shot you’ve got, you hit it or that’s it, instead you fire bullets, small little tests to see if you’re on the right path. A little test here, a little test there, and start figuring things out. Am I getting closer? Is this where I want to be? Then once you’ve done a few of those smaller tests, then at that point you can go big and really put confidence behind a bigger bet.
At the same time, I think we also need to think about resilience. You and I are both here in the San Francisco Bay area, but I think that Silicon Valley kind of does a disservice to how we think about resilience often. We often tend to think of resilience as simply enduring as much pain as possible. Just go through this thing, go through this next thing, keep going.
Instead, I like to think about resilience as staying strong for the long haul, knowing that things are a journey and that there will be setbacks along the way. We don’t have to get things perfect in the first attempt that we have. What’s key is making sure that we take care of ourselves. It could be thought of as self-care. Making sure that we’re staying strong, that we’re taking care of ourselves. It’s not just about putting everything into the launch of that first step of action, but that we’re staying strong so we can continue taking action again and again.
Dr. Aimee: How does one plan for resilience? It sounds great, but obviously you have to actively be a part of that plan for resilience. What do you recommend?
Alex: I think it’s many times upfront recognizing that things probably won’t go exactly as you planned. Mike Tyson says that everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth. We never know exactly what the plan will be until we get started, but making sure that we know that if things don’t go the way we expect – and they won’t – then what we’re going to do about it.
In the software development world, there’s a saying that every tech project, and those of you that have a website built for you know, that it tends to take twice as long as you expect and cost twice as much. If you try to build that website and you have zero days of buffer and zero dollars or margin, when it inevitably costs more and takes longer, you’re going to be in big trouble. If you go into it knowing it’s probably going to end up costing more, it’s probably going to take a little bit longer, but you’ve budgeted that in, then you’re much better able to deal with those shocks.
So, finding ways you can build in some of that resilience ahead of time.
Dr. Aimee: So true. For a fertility patient, not that I’m a negative person, but I like to talk through the worst case scenarios upfront because one of the first questions a patient will ask me is, “How soon will I get pregnant?” For me to say next month, that’s really unfair because some people next month might actually mean next year.
I think what you’re talking about is so important for fertility patients so that they have the right set of expectations upfront because then, like you said with the website development, they’re going to feel misled, they’re going to feel even more hurt, and it’s going to be harder for them to pick themselves back up because they’re going to feel like a truck just hit them.
Alex: Expectation setting upfront can also help.
I know three cofounders of a company, and before they got started, they spent time going through every conceivable thing that could go wrong for the company. What happens if one of them embezzles funds and the other two have to kick the one out of the company? What happens if they go bankrupt? All of these really terrible things that you don’t want to imagine, but they figured it’s never going to be easier to do it than right now. Before we really have a company, before we have everything started, let’s spend the time right now to plan for some of that resilience, to think through some situations and scenarios, decide how we want to handle it when it comes up. That way if and when it does, we’re ready to go with it.
Dr. Aimee: I love this quote of yours. Is this your quote? “The world has never been more ready for you.”
Alex: Yes.
Dr. Aimee: I love that quote. I feel like when I saw it, I’m going to start crying because I’m emotional all the time, as you can imagine with what I do for work, but I feel like every patient needs a shirt that says that. Literally, the world has never been more ready for you, because having a baby in today’s world is one of the most courageous acts that anyone can do. I feel like just wearing that will make my patients feel more confident. Don’t you think?
Alex: I love that idea. Yes.
Dr. Aimee: You have to trademark that. I’m sure you have, but if not, set up some merch on your Instagram so people can buy that shirt.
I want to hear from you as far as thoughts on what it looks like to be a changemaker as a fertility patient and how they can embrace that role.
Alex: I think the first is developing that sense of agency. We’ve hinted on that a little bit, this idea of needing to advocate for yourself. I wish that weren’t the case. I wish every doctor were like you, but we do need to advocate for ourselves and have that sense of why, being willing to give ourselves permission to step up.
I think we need to think about being ready to be flexible, to be adaptable. Stephen Zaccaro from George Mason University has done great work on developing the three different types of flexibility. There’s cognitive, strategic, emotional, and then dispositional. I think we need to practice dispositional flexibility. That’s the ability to at the same time remain grounded and understand that we’ve got a journey ahead of us. Things can and likely will be hard, but also we can do something about it and there is that bright light at the same time. Being able to be that type of dispositional flexibility, hold both things at the same time.
Then to remain a student always. We’re all learning as we go. We’ll learn from our successes, learn from our setbacks, but seeing it as a journey. That it’s not just about trying to get things done in one day and one single shot, but that we’re getting ready for a journey, the ups and the downs that will be part of it.
Dr. Aimee: Someone had a bracelet on this morning at her egg retrieval and the word was “soon.” It kind of seems like an insult when it’s like, “Can I get this?” and it’s, “Oh, I’ll get it for you soon.” But I think it’s an important word, that soon something amazing will happen for my patients with each step that they take toward their goals.
Alex: I love that.
Dr. Aimee: Tell us more about where people can find your book and learn more about you.
Alex: Thanks. You can get it anywhere you buy books, including at Amazon, which is probably the fastest way to get it delivered quickly. Also, Bookshop.org if you want to support your local bookstore as well.
Dr. Aimee: Awesome. Thank you, Alex. Is there anything else that you want to share with our listeners before we close today’s show?
Alex: I’ll just say that I always start my class with the words “the world has never been more ready for you,” and I start my book with those same words as well. The world has never been more ready for you to step up and to be a changemaker, to lead positive change from wherever you are. If you’re on your fertility journey right now, the world has never been more ready for you, and I hope that you find the courage and you see that light and take action, because the world needs you.
Dr. Aimee: For anyone who is listening, just like Alex said, the world has never been more ready for you to be a parent than now.
Thank you again, Alex. It is such a delight to have you on. I appreciate all that you’ve done in writing this book and I know it’s going to help my patients more than you’ll ever know. Thank you again.
Alex: It’s my pleasure. Thanks, Aimee.
