“Be brave and talk about the truth of your situation”: Meet Member Brian Nuckols
In this series, we are spotlighting our community members. In the Adaptive Space, we make room to receive the insights our community members have to offer. This series is where we will discover each other’s gifts! We will be spotlighting one story per week. Please engage with our star of the week by participating in the conversation below.
This week’s spotlight is on one of our newest members, Brian Nuckols! While he is new to the Adaptive Space, Brian has been working to change the lives of others through his work with those struggling with substance use disorders and recovery. He hopes to get more involved in the space and learn more about Theory U, as well as what other members of the community are up to!
Name: Brian Nuckols
Lives: Pittsburgh, PA
Affiliation: SMART Recovery
Superpower: Peer-to-peer connection
How did you come about your career path?
I was working on a boat in the U.S. Virgin Islands, and was really loving it. But there were just a few things pointing towards trying something new, mainly with my health. I had a near accident, so I really reflected on whether this is the path I wanted to be on. I thought, “What are some things I really, really enjoy doing?” And I remembered this one moment from when I had played soccer in college. I had been pedantically teaching this one specific move, kicking a ball through two defenders. One of the young men on the team was working on his athleticism and building up his self-confidence, and it ended up taking him awhile to learn that move. But then one day, in the game, he did it perfectly! He scored, then just looked at me and raised his hands in triumph. That just struck me. I could see his spirit uplifted and his confidence growing. So as I was reflecting on my career, I wanted to have more of that in my life. That led me to looking into psychology and substance use disorder and recovery.
Who first inspired or believed in you?
My mother was definitely my first inspiration. Whenever I had an idea that was a little “out there”, she always affirmed it in a gentle way and allowed me to experiment and shift when things didn’t go as expected. Even now, it’s easy for me to tell people I work with, “Wait a second, I’m scared that’s not going to work and it might hurt you.” That can be very overbearing. But my mother was gifted with that. She gave me courage to say what I feel, to let the chips fall, and have discussions based on that.
How do you define success for yourself?
I define success for myself by my authenticity. If I can have a conversation with people in my community about what’s truly going on — if I can fully express what’s happened and what the next steps are — I’m able to feel confident in myself and my abilities. I feel more successful. Also, if I’m able to describe an event as fully and concretely as possible, I feel more successful. So my measure of success has an honesty and integrity piece to it, and a descriptive piece to it. If I’m able to have both of those things in my conversations, I feel good.
Give us your schedule on a typical day.
A few years ago I asked myself, “When you’re at your highest level of well-being, what are you doing?” And something that came up for me was waking up early. I love to wake up early and not have a routine. I have this block of time from about 5:30 a.m. to about 7:30 a.m. where I can pretty much do whatever I want. I do give myself some guidelines — I either exercise, meditate, read, go for a walk, do some art, something like that. One struggle I have is staying focused, so I let myself be unfocused in those two hours so that I can work on my more sustained projects the rest of the day. One really strong boundary I set for myself is that I have to turn off the computer at 7:30 p.m. and I try to be in bed by 9:30. During that two hour block, which I love, I’ll watch YouTube or Netflix, but after much gnashing of teeth I learned that I do need sleep. I feel better when I get at least six to eight hours. What that means is that I get support from my partner: she’ll say, “Okay, it’s 7:30, is your computer off?” She’s really good about that, and letting me know that it’s okay to turn the computer off and get into relaxing.
What has been the most important skill you’ve developed along your path?
It would have to be active listening. I took an improv class and the instructor said something that stuck with me. I don’t know if this is actually legitimate research or just an anecdote, but he said the average person starts formulating thoughts about 30% of the way into the other person’s delivery — so if you’re talking, I’m thinking of how to respond well before you even finish your thought. In improv, that’s not good. You want to let the other person get out their funniest lines, even if it’s scary to wait because there’s a crowd watching you. But when you’re talking with someone one-on-one, keeping that statement in mind has profoundly changed my life. It’s good to reaffirm the sometimes awkward nature of human conversation and its challenges. It’s okay to have awkward pauses while you think about what to say. The act of listening has led to some really interesting emotional healing.
What’s been your greatest challenge?
This also has to do with authenticity. No one appreciates lying, which is a lesson I integrated pretty early on. But there’s a more subtle, sort of statistical way of lying, which is lying by omission. I typically decide to highlight things about a situation that look good while not talking about more challenging aspects, out of fear of confrontation or fear of the reality of the situation. First of all, I think it’s important to be brave and talk about the truth of your situation. Secondly, it can be rude. People need clarification. When I used to do marketing, I would choose to highlight statistics on how many likes and shares we were getting on social media without mentioning the fact that, say, we haven’t gotten any sales from social media in three weeks. And the fact that we aren’t getting any sales means that we could lose our jobs. It means this isn’t sustainable. I could have said, “Hey, do you think we could come up with some experiments or plans to get more sales?” But instead of doing that, I was highlighting a strategy that was ineffective, even if it wasn’t a lie. Being able to deal with that fear of confrontation and being able to regulate myself after a confrontation have been growing edges in my career, for sure.
What’s been the greatest reward you’ve gotten from pursuing your path?
There are two, I think. The first is going back to the guy with his hands up after scoring a goal. When I see someone I’ve worked with — someone who’s had a long-term opioid use disorder — have this massive personality change and flourish in their full potential…that is a huge gift. The other huge benefit is being able to affirm and believe in this idea of peer-to-peer work being deeply emotionally and physically healing. It has taught me a lot about my own mental health and my own physical health, which has been a great gift. Understanding how to model loving, healthy behaviors in life’s most difficult circumstances has been a huge, huge reward for me.
Give us a story that tells us what kind of person you are.
Maybe this is a bit vulnerable, but I’m a Quaker, so spirituality is important to me. It was a gift for me to find a community that shared that value as well as some other social values of mine. Spiritually, there’s a sort of seriousness to it — almost like graveness, but not quite. The Quakers are about silence, so it’s very reverent in a lot of ways. It’s inspiring to meet people who have been on that path for many years, people who are in their 80s and 90s now, and it really shines through in their personality. But I started going and meeting them, and the second time I was there someone said to me, “Hey, look, I wanted to say hi because you are really memorable.” So I said thank you and moved on. But that acknowledgement drove me to keep attending and it was completely unconscious for me. I thought I was going to be a more spiritually advanced person, or because I care about social justice values. But really, I just wanted this person to talk to me and compliment me. When I came to the realization that this was what was driving me, I felt a lot of shame and embarrassment and didn’t want to go back. Then in my group, which I’m the facilitator of, I disclosed that experience. There was a moment of listening. Then some people started sharing funny anecdotes, similar anecdotes, which was a really healing moment for me. I realized that this is actually kind of funny, it isn’t purely bad, and that other people deal with this.
What do you hope to learn from this community of peers?
The thing that fires me up about the Adaptive Space and the ecosystem it creates is just this idea of shifting and movability. In the space, people can be more open to questions and discovery as opposed to explanation and reduction. I love having peers that I can give to and receive from and bring my questions to about complexity research. I like learning how other people would approach the problems and ideas that I have, and having dialogues that fuel each other. That’s something I’m really hoping to receive from the community.
What habits have you developed or broken out of fear? How do you overcome them?
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