Jon Acuff on the broken soundtracks that keep people small

What this conversation is about

Jon Acuff is a New York Times bestselling author and speaker. On this episode of Personalization Outbreak, recorded while he was talking about his book Soundtracks: The Surprising Solution to Overthinking, he and Glenn Llopis dig into why people overthink, and what it costs them and the organizations they work for.

Acuff's idea is simple: the thoughts you repeat become your personal playlist. If you were once told you're not a good leader, that is the soundtrack you'll hear the next time a leadership opportunity comes along. Glenn connects it to his own work on standardization and personalization, and the two explore how workplaces can turn down the soundtracks that keep people small.

The edit

Some soundtracks start inside our own heads: who are you to do that? Others are handed to us by the places we work. When a workplace feels rigid and impossible to change, Acuff says, people settle into apathy:

"When people feel powerless to change an environment because of it's standardized, they start to go, well, it's just the way it's going to be." — Jon Acuff · 00:07:17

"You don't want your best ideas left in the parking lot. As a leader, you don't want people to leave the best parts of themselves before they come into your building. And so unless there's an environment where they can do that and share ideas, then you're essentially employing fractional people" — Jon Acuff · 00:07:17

Glenn saw in this the reason so many transformation efforts stall:

"We play off of a broken, outdated soundtrack that we think is still important, but it lost its relevancy years ago." — Glenn Llopis · 00:20:07

How people reclaim their thinking

Acuff offers a 30-second exercise. Write down a goal or a dream, then listen to your first reaction. If what you hear isn't encouraging, ask three questions about it: Is it true? Is it helpful? Is it kind?

"One of the greatest mistakes you can make is assuming all your thoughts are true." — Jon Acuff · 00:19:00

We believe those thoughts, he explains, because they arrive in the voice we know best: our own. A thought that fails all three questions is one you can retire. And change doesn't have to be dramatic. Acuff suggests starting small, like reclaiming 15 minutes to focus on one thing, or leaving your phone in another room at night. Glenn's takeaway was that we all need to take more time to reclaim what our broken soundtracks, and the soundtracks of the people around us, have cost.

What leaders and organizations can take from it

Acuff gives leaders three questions to ask their teams. What's a story we heard from the people we serve this week? What are the actual soundtracks we're listening to as a team? And what's the aspirational: where do we want to be a year from now? If the first answers are only compliments, he warns, the team doesn't yet feel safe telling the truth, and the leader will need to ask more than once.

Real change also depends on motivation, not obligation:

"People don't change because it's noble. They don't change because they should, they don't change because they're disciplined or willpower or grit. They change because the reward of changing is bigger than the reward of the same." — Jon Acuff · 00:11:52

• Show the reward of difference. Explain change in the values of the people you want to bring along, not in your own.
• Build a process to question old thinking. Acuff suggests a regular session to ask what the team is still believing that stopped being true years ago.
• Make it safe to tell the truth. Real questions, asked more than once, get real answers.

Most of all, don't wait for improvement to happen on its own:

"Nothing gets better accidentally." — Jon Acuff · 00:21:29

How this conversation connects to Glenn's methodology

Glenn's body of work comes down to one idea: without agency and without knowing the rooms where you belong, you can't have the conviction to reinvent yourself on purpose, or the strong identity that guides how you live and lead. Acuff shows how the edit happens inside our own heads, and how the rooms we work in can make it worse or better.

• Agency (the Individual). Questioning your own soundtracks: is it true, is it helpful, is it kind?
• The rooms (the Environment). Standardized workplaces produce fractional people; psychological safety and deliberate processes bring whole people back.
• Conviction and reinvention on purpose. Retiring broken soundtracks and starting small, because nothing gets better accidentally.
• Identity that guides how they live and lead. Choosing the soundtracks that fit who you want to be, rather than the ones others handed you.

See the body of work behind the method →