Speaker 1: Ninety percent of people are waiting for that feeling of
Speaker 1: confidence before they take that step. That feeling of confidence
Speaker 1: it does not come before we take the action. It
Speaker 1: comes after we take the action.
Speaker 2: Hey, everyone, welcome back to On Purpose Sam your host
Speaker 2: Jay Shetty, and today I'm joined by Shade Zarai, Award
Speaker 2: winning leadership expert and author of her first book, Big Trust.
Speaker 2: If you haven't got your copy yet, make sure you
Speaker 2: go and grab it. We're going to put the link
Speaker 2: in the caption. If you've ever felt held back by
Speaker 2: self doubt or fear of failure, this conversation will show
Speaker 2: you how to trust yourself again and start moving forward
Speaker 2: with real confidence. I've followed Shade on Instagram and TikTok
Speaker 2: for years now. I'm a huge fan, and today I
Speaker 2: finally have her on the seat on On Purpose. Please
Speaker 2: welcome to the show, Shadai Shaday. It's so great to
Speaker 2: have you here.
Speaker 1: It's so wonderful to be here.
Speaker 2: Jays, congratulations on that. Thank you. I love the topic.
Speaker 2: I'm so glad that you zeroed in on it. I
Speaker 2: actually believe that that self doubt is, without a doubt,
Speaker 2: one of the biggest issues in the world today. At
Speaker 2: an individual personal level. And the reason why so many
Speaker 2: people don't go after their dreams, don't go after the
Speaker 2: career they want, don't go after the person they want
Speaker 2: to be with, don't go after a promotion, don't go
Speaker 2: after a connection a friendship, because we are scared of
Speaker 2: how we'll be perceived. And the reason why I'm so
Speaker 2: happy we're talking about this subject and that you've dedicated
Speaker 2: your book to it is because I often think about
Speaker 2: what my life would look like if I had listened
Speaker 2: to myself doubt. And I think people think that people
Speaker 2: who've had some success in their career don't feel self doubt.
Speaker 2: And I would say I felt self doubt before I started,
Speaker 2: I felt selfed out during it, and because I still
Speaker 2: think about the beginning, I still feel self out today,
Speaker 2: but I know what to do with it, and your
Speaker 2: book gives us a brilliant method. So I want to
Speaker 2: start off by asking you, if someone was to listen
Speaker 2: to our podcast today, what would they overcome and what
Speaker 2: skills would they build?
Speaker 1: So this is essentially going to be a master class
Speaker 1: on self doubt, but not only what it is actually
Speaker 1: determining for yourself. What are the drivers of your self
Speaker 1: doubt because we think self doubt is just one big
Speaker 1: blob of worry and anxiety and insecurity. But when we
Speaker 1: look at decades worth of literature my own research over
Speaker 1: the past five years, we've distilled it down to four
Speaker 1: main drivers. And so if you're able to determine, okay,
Speaker 1: where am I on these drivers, which one is really
Speaker 1: propelling myself doubt, that allows you to then determine what
Speaker 1: you need to do to move through it. As you said,
Speaker 1: self doubt doesn't necessarily disappear with achievement. It doesn't disappear
Speaker 1: as you advanced in your career. It just scales with responsibility.
Speaker 1: But the real measure of someone's success and happiness is
Speaker 1: if they can hear the voice of self doubt and
Speaker 1: still move forward anyway. And so what I want to
Speaker 1: help everyone listening with today is to determine which of
Speaker 1: the drivers of their self doubt is taking the driver's seat,
Speaker 1: and then exactly what they need to do to move
Speaker 1: through it so they can get the connection they want,
Speaker 1: the success they want, the performance that they want, and
Speaker 1: create the life that they want.
Speaker 2: I love it. Let's talk about the four drivers, because
Speaker 2: I'm fascinated now as well too. Let's do it to
Speaker 2: discover I've been dealing with it.
Speaker 1: We can actually diagnose your doubt profile it. So the
Speaker 1: first thing we need to do is rewind a little bit.
Speaker 1: How did we come across these four drivers. So we've
Speaker 1: been working with leaders and teams across organizations for the
Speaker 1: last five to ten years, that's tens of thousands of people,
Speaker 1: and we found that again, no matter where someone was
Speaker 1: at on their journey, they were hearing this voice of
Speaker 1: doubt and it would sound different and it would look different.
Speaker 1: But then we wanted to know, okay, specifically what is
Speaker 1: driving this and we need to bring it back to
Speaker 1: something called yourself image. Let me tell you about a
Speaker 1: study that was conducted in the seventies and it opens
Speaker 1: your mind as to the power of the self image
Speaker 1: that we have about ourselves and how that keeps repeating
Speaker 1: throughout our lives. So in the nineteen seventies, a psychology
Speaker 1: professor by the name of Robert Kleck from Dartmouth can
Speaker 1: Hedu did this fascinating experiment where he brought people together,
Speaker 1: he split them into groups, and with one group he
Speaker 1: drew a scar on their face from their right ear
Speaker 1: to the side of their mouth. Big, ugly scar, and
Speaker 1: he let them see themselves in a hand mirror. Then
Speaker 1: he sends the groups out to have conversation with strangers. Right,
Speaker 1: so you have one group that has this scar, another
Speaker 1: group has no scar. After the conversations, they come back
Speaker 1: and they report on how they felt the conversation went.
Speaker 1: The group with the scar overwhelmingly reported that they felt judged,
Speaker 1: it was tense. The other person was distant because of
Speaker 1: the scar. But here is where it gets really interesting.
Speaker 1: If we rewind just a little bit, Right before the
Speaker 1: researchers sent them out into these conversations, he applied moisturizing
Speaker 1: cream to the scar, so they just see themselves in
Speaker 1: the mirror. He then applies his cream, but he doesn't
Speaker 1: tell them that he's removing the scar.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: So now they have no scar on their face, but
Speaker 1: they believe that they do. They go into these conversations
Speaker 1: believing expecting they will be treated badly, poorly judged, and
Speaker 1: that's what they experience.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 1: It's wild when you think about the implications for us
Speaker 1: in our lives. Okay, it may not be a physical scar,
Speaker 1: but we all have beliefs or expectations about ourselves based
Speaker 1: on how we see ourselves our self image, and then
Speaker 1: we're going to notice things that reinforce it. Because of
Speaker 1: how the brain is wired confirmation bias, selective attention. Your
Speaker 1: brain is wired to magnify what you focus on. So
Speaker 1: if you're going into your life, into your conversations, into
Speaker 1: your meetings, into your work, believing that you're not worthy,
Speaker 1: that you're not capable, that you don't deserve it, you're
Speaker 1: going to notice things that reinforce that, and it's only
Speaker 1: going to make you feel worse. So we know that
Speaker 1: about self image. So the first question to ask ourselves
Speaker 1: is what are these invisible scars that we are carrying
Speaker 1: throughout our lives? How can we become more aware of them?
Speaker 1: So then my next question is great, So that's the
Speaker 1: power of self image, and self image drives our self doubt.
Speaker 1: But how do you measure self image? If I were
Speaker 1: to ask you, Jay, what do you think your self images?
Speaker 1: You might share something and then I'd ask someone else
Speaker 1: what do you think your self images? And they might
Speaker 1: share something else. We need to determine if something is measurable,
Speaker 1: so we can determine what it is. And when we
Speaker 1: look at over fifty years worth of research, this is
Speaker 1: when we find that, yes, there's a lot of information
Speaker 1: out there, but it really comes down to just four
Speaker 1: dimensions of how we see ourselves. And when these four
Speaker 1: things come together, that shapes our self image, it shapes
Speaker 1: how we interact with the world. Not only that these
Speaker 1: four things that actually have their base in our personality,
Speaker 1: they have been shown through meta analyses of over one
Speaker 1: hundred studies to predict our success, our job performance, our
Speaker 1: career satisfaction, how happy we are in our life, and
Speaker 1: our relationships. And it all comes down to these four things.
Speaker 1: And I could not believe it when I came across it.
Speaker 1: So let me tell you what these four things are.
Speaker 1: Because essentially these four things drive our self image, which
Speaker 1: then drives our self doubt when they're weak. So the
Speaker 1: very very first one, the first driver of your self doubt,
Speaker 1: which shapes your self image, is what we call acceptance
Speaker 1: self acceptance. It relates to this personality trait of self esteem.
Speaker 1: So how you see yourself in terms of your value
Speaker 1: and your worth. Now, if you don't accept yourself it
Speaker 1: shows up in four painfully familiar habits. The first one
Speaker 1: is what we call the pressure to prove you feel
Speaker 1: like you constantly have to prove yourself through your work,
Speaker 1: through your performance. You have to prove that you are
Speaker 1: of value to other people, so you seek their validation
Speaker 1: and their praise, and when you don't get it, it
Speaker 1: becomes this automatic switch and you need to win it back.
Speaker 1: That's the first The second one is what we call
Speaker 1: the shrinking syndrome. So this is where someone might be
Speaker 1: afraid of success because they don't accept who they are,
Speaker 1: and therefore they're afraid of what will happen if something
Speaker 1: amazing happens to them, because deep down they don't feel
Speaker 1: like they deserve it, so then they try and sabotage
Speaker 1: before they get there. The third is what we call
Speaker 1: the Schaudenfreuder cycle and the shaden Freuda cycle. You may
Speaker 1: have heard of it. It's a German term. It's that
Speaker 1: moment when you see someone else fail and you suddenly
Speaker 1: feel really good about yourself. You feel a little bit
Speaker 1: better about yourself, you enjoy other people's failures. This is
Speaker 1: a sign that you do not accept yourself. Wow, your
Speaker 1: self seem is suffering. And then the fourth pattern that
Speaker 1: we see here is of course that endless need for approval.
Speaker 1: We need other people to like us to validate us,
Speaker 1: we might become codependent in our relationships. We say yes
Speaker 1: when we really want to say no. We wear masks
Speaker 1: and contort ourselves to better suit the people around us,
Speaker 1: but in doing so, we lose ourselves. So that is
Speaker 1: the first and in my view, the most foundational acceptance.
Speaker 2: And as I'm learning about it from you, it feels
Speaker 2: like that starts so early and you're just carrying it
Speaker 2: for all these years, and then you become aware of
Speaker 2: it when you're starting to apply for a job, or
Speaker 2: you're wanting to put yourself forward for a promotion, or
Speaker 2: you're trying to find the relationship with your dreams, and
Speaker 2: all of a sudden, now you're like, well, why do
Speaker 2: I feel this way? And I can imagine a lot
Speaker 2: of our listeners right now are sitting here going, shauday,
Speaker 2: I do all of those four things. That's me. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's me. And so if someone's listening right now and
Speaker 2: just saying shadah jay, that's me. I do all four
Speaker 2: of those things. I have no idea do I have
Speaker 2: to stop doing those things? Do I have to? So
Speaker 2: I self acceptance, That is the issue that I'm having.
Speaker 2: I don't accept myself according to your four measures, where
Speaker 2: do I even begin to go? What questions should I
Speaker 2: be asking? From that point?
Speaker 1: So I love how you mentioned that we developed this
Speaker 1: early in life. Let's start there and then we'll go
Speaker 1: to how we can start to break the attachment that
Speaker 1: we have to this. So generally, this sense of acceptance
Speaker 1: that we have develops in the first three to four years.
Speaker 1: Initially it's based on the response we get from our
Speaker 1: parents a primary caregivers, and then it also develops based
Speaker 1: on whether we feel that we get the emotional support
Speaker 1: and the nurturing that we need. If you feel like
Speaker 1: you constantly have to earn your parents' attention or do
Speaker 1: something exciting to get them to pay attention to you,
Speaker 1: then we develop this belief that I must perform to
Speaker 1: be worthy. It can also happen later in life when
Speaker 1: a parent says to you or compares your report card
Speaker 1: your grades to a sibling, or makes you feel like
Speaker 1: you're only of value when you're winning an award or
Speaker 1: coming first in the swimming competition that you're in the race.
Speaker 1: So we develop these really early on, and you know,
Speaker 1: we do need to acknowledge so much of who we
Speaker 1: are as a result of those early experiences. That doesn't
Speaker 1: mean we are a prisoner to that, and it doesn't
Speaker 1: mean that we should be blaming that environment and our
Speaker 1: parents and our you know, the caregivers that we had.
Speaker 1: We need to acknowledge that they were doing the best
Speaker 1: that they could with what they knew at the time.
Speaker 1: We have this beautiful ability of taking ownership of our lives,
Speaker 1: which actually comes down to the third pillar, which we'll
Speaker 1: get to, which allows us to, as you said, become
Speaker 1: aware of these patterns so often, Jay, and if you're listening,
Speaker 1: you may find that you have not been aware of
Speaker 1: these things. And it's only when you listen to sessions
Speaker 1: like this, conversations like this, when you read a book
Speaker 1: where you suddenly start to almost self diagnose and realize, oh,
Speaker 1: this is me. See that as a really positive thing,
Speaker 1: because you're identifying that you are part of this experience
Speaker 1: as opposed to just this is who I am. So
Speaker 1: that's a really positive thing. So what do we do
Speaker 1: if we identify Okay, I'm really struggling with acceptance. The
Speaker 1: very first thing is to acknowledge that you are not
Speaker 1: your thoughts and you are not your beliefs. Beliefs are
Speaker 1: simply just a repeated pattern of thought that has happened
Speaker 1: so many times in our brain that it becomes a default.
Speaker 1: It's just a really really fast process neural pathway. And
Speaker 1: in the same way that a belief is formed early
Speaker 1: in our lives, we can overwrite that belief. Yes it
Speaker 1: takes time, Yes it takes a repetition, Yes it takes practice,
Speaker 1: but we have the ability to do that through conscious choice.
Speaker 1: And so the moment you start noticing that you're feeling insecure,
Speaker 1: those thoughts come into your mind. I can't do this,
Speaker 1: I don't deserve this. I'm not enough. That's the key
Speaker 1: phrase for someone who lacks acceptance. I'm not enough. So
Speaker 1: I must prove that I'm enough. I must earn that
Speaker 1: feeling from other people. I must chase it through achievement.
Speaker 1: The moment you notice that, consciously re engage the prefrontal
Speaker 1: part of your brain. This is how you re engage
Speaker 1: attention and say to yourself, hold on, I don't need
Speaker 1: to believe that thought. I don't need to believe that belief.
Speaker 1: Remind yourself that I have value, I am of value.
Speaker 1: And one of the simplest hacks that you can use
Speaker 1: in those moments is to stop thinking about yourself. I
Speaker 1: know that sounds really odd to say, but when we
Speaker 1: are suffering with a lack of self acceptance, it's always
Speaker 1: I me, my, How do they see me? How am
Speaker 1: I coming across? What am I doing right now? If
Speaker 1: you can to go, okay, how can I be here
Speaker 1: for them? How can I be of value? How can
Speaker 1: I be of service? How can I make this person
Speaker 1: feel seen? That's called self forgetting, And research shows that
Speaker 1: this process of self forgetting by becoming more service oriented,
Speaker 1: helps to quiet in that incessant voice of the ego.
Speaker 1: And it's remarkable how when you tap into that suddenly
Speaker 1: you realize, Okay, I don't have to be so in
Speaker 1: my head. I want to share just a couple of
Speaker 1: really simple techniques for anyone who really does struggle with acceptance.
Speaker 1: The first one is, if you struggle with acceptance, you
Speaker 1: are going to attach your sense of identity to your
Speaker 1: job and to your achievements and to your performance. So
Speaker 1: if things are going well professionally, if you're achieving things,
Speaker 1: if you're doing amazing things, you feel fantastic. And then
Speaker 1: something happens and it all crumbles and you fail. You
Speaker 1: take it personally, you internalize that failure. So the first
Speaker 1: and foremost thing you need to do is acknowledge you
Speaker 1: are not your job. There is so much to you
Speaker 1: that exists outside of that in environment, which I know
Speaker 1: is really hard to do if you work, especially in
Speaker 1: a corporate organization where your entire status is determined by
Speaker 1: your job title and how well you're delivering and your
Speaker 1: promotion track record. Right, So we tend to internalize these things,
Speaker 1: but you need to consciously remind yourself through that prefrontal activation,
Speaker 1: I am not my job. I am so much more
Speaker 1: than this. And there's a really interesting little technique we
Speaker 1: like to share. Not even a technique, it's actually a suggestion. So, Jay,
Speaker 1: there was a study that was conducted with Nobel Prize
Speaker 1: winning scientists and they looked at five hundred of them,
Speaker 1: and they found that they were three times more likely
Speaker 1: than regular scientists to have a creative hobby. Not only that,
Speaker 1: they were twenty two times more likely than regular scientists
Speaker 1: to have a hobby in the performing arts, singing, music, drama.
Speaker 1: They many of them attribute that hobby to helping them
Speaker 1: bounce back whens didn't go to plan, and also to
Speaker 1: allowing them to make connections that other people would have
Speaker 1: been able to. And so what can we take from that?
Speaker 1: It's great, right, cool study. What can we take from that? Well,
Speaker 1: having something outside of work that we can pour ourselves into,
Speaker 1: especially something creative, because we know about the impact that
Speaker 1: has in the brain that allows us to remind ourselves. Hey,
Speaker 1: even if I didn't do well today at work, even
Speaker 1: if I didn't achieve this thing that I wanted to,
Speaker 1: I get to go and take on that character in
Speaker 1: that play. I get to go and pick up my guitar.
Speaker 1: I get to go and paint that beautiful painting. And fascinatingly, hobbies,
Speaker 1: especially creative hobbies, have been found to increase your self esteem,
Speaker 1: which increases your sense of self acceptance. So it's a
Speaker 1: very odd one, but I would encourage you if you
Speaker 1: struggle here, go and pick up a hobby and embrace
Speaker 1: the messiness of being a beginner.
Speaker 2: I love how practical, tactical and simple this is. And
Speaker 2: simple in a good way in that I think anyone
Speaker 2: who's listening right now, they've got their plan of action
Speaker 2: for acceptance. You've got the questions to ask yourself or
Speaker 2: to make sure you know. I don't need to believe
Speaker 2: that I don't need to agree with those beliefs. I
Speaker 2: don't need to agree with those thoughts. You've got the
Speaker 2: idea of what's your hobby, and so I love that
Speaker 2: you said that. I started thinking about my own and
Speaker 2: I've got a vefew. I've got pickleball, a play it
Speaker 2: on a football or soccer when I'm back in London,
Speaker 2: I enjoy. I mean, they're not creative in artistic sense,
Speaker 2: but they're they're physical because my work's so creative. So
Speaker 2: in one sense, just these physical competitive things that allow
Speaker 2: me to be with friends connection. I love game nights, brilliant,
Speaker 2: A big fan of game nights, and so it seems
Speaker 2: like anything that's collaborative and competitive makes me feel good
Speaker 2: because my work's so creative already. So I think I
Speaker 2: don't crave creativity, but I do crave that desire to
Speaker 2: play and be free. Something you said that resonated with
Speaker 2: me was this idea of if you performed for your parents,
Speaker 2: if you had to perform to get your parents' attention,
Speaker 2: you ended up thinking that performance equals success equals winning
Speaker 2: equals love equals worth. A lot of people are really
Speaker 2: successful today have just lived that pattern now. So in
Speaker 2: one sense. It's also a pattern that makes people quite
Speaker 2: successful in the public eye. So the biggest performers in
Speaker 2: the world, some of them would say themselves that they
Speaker 2: were the performer in their home or their family, and
Speaker 2: they didn't realize it until they became the number one
Speaker 2: person in the world at something that that wasn't who
Speaker 2: they wanted to be. It's who they became because of it.
Speaker 2: So it can make you successful, but maybe not happy.
Speaker 2: What do you think about that?
Speaker 1: Oh, yes, I love that you've mentioned this. So there's
Speaker 1: two elements we need to touch on here. So this
Speaker 1: lack of acceptance that develops early on, where we feel
Speaker 1: like we must perform to be of value or to
Speaker 1: earn the attention of others. That leads us to perfectionistic
Speaker 1: tendencies as adults, where we set these very very very
Speaker 1: high standards for ourselves, beat ourselves up when we inevitably
Speaker 1: don't reach them, and then just set the next high standard.
Speaker 1: And so for a lot of people, well, this does
Speaker 1: propel them forward, this does propel them to amazing heights.
Speaker 1: But as you said, they might reach that number one
Speaker 1: pinnacle and then they stop and think, this is not
Speaker 1: what I wanted. This is not the life that I
Speaker 1: wanted to lead. And so what we need to think
Speaker 1: about with success is two elements. Okay, there is the
Speaker 1: material success, the status, the external success, but then there
Speaker 1: is that internal feeling that really should be coming with it,
Speaker 1: the sense of satisfaction, the sense of fulfillment. And so
Speaker 1: anyone who is driven by a lack of acceptance, what
Speaker 1: we see in a lot of really high performers is
Speaker 1: that if they're driven by this, yes they have amazing
Speaker 1: work ethic, Yes they're incredibly diligent, but they never feel satisfied.
Speaker 1: And that level of emptiness that they feel also drives
Speaker 1: them to try and seek that satisfaction from the next hit,
Speaker 1: the next achievements called the arrival fallacy. When I get there,
Speaker 1: I will feel like I've made it. And then they
Speaker 1: get there and they think, why doesn't this feel any different?
Speaker 1: And then they set the next goal and they're perpetually
Speaker 1: seeking this state of enoughness, and then they sacrifice things
Speaker 1: on the way to get there because they're so fixated
Speaker 1: on believing when I get there everything will fall into place.
Speaker 1: That they've sacrificed relationships, they've sacrificed time with their children,
Speaker 1: they've sacrificed family, they've sacrificed well being generally, and so yes,
Speaker 1: it may be a driver the fundamental question that we
Speaker 1: get asked about perfectionism because we have a lot of
Speaker 1: people who say, well, I set high standards and I
Speaker 1: think it's a good thing. Isn't that a good thing?
Speaker 1: The fundamental difference is what happens when you don't achieve
Speaker 1: the standards. That determines whether it's perfectionism or it's just
Speaker 1: striving for excellence. If you beat yourself up and tell yourself,
Speaker 1: I'm a failure, I'm not enough, I'm terrible. You judge yourself.
Speaker 1: That is a sign of perfectionism. That is called maladaptive.
Speaker 1: That is a reflection of you not feeling like you're enough,
Speaker 1: so you punish yourself. Whereas if you fall short, yeah,
Speaker 1: you can feel disappointed for a while. That's fine, that's natural,
Speaker 1: that's human. But then if you ask yourself, Okay, how
Speaker 1: do I get better? How do I learn and how
Speaker 1: do I apply what I've learned to implement it the
Speaker 1: next time I do it to get further ahead. That's
Speaker 1: called striving for excellence, And it all comes down to
Speaker 1: your approach. I also spoke to someone very recently, a
Speaker 1: highly highly successful business woman, very prolific on social media
Speaker 1: as well, and she said to me, she's driven by
Speaker 1: that sense of She described it as it's a sense
Speaker 1: of not enoughness, but not to do with me. It's
Speaker 1: that I have so much impact I want to create
Speaker 1: that I don't feel like what I'm doing is enough.
Speaker 1: And so for her, she's driven by purpose and service.
Speaker 1: And so I said, okay, so what happens if you
Speaker 1: get to the end of the day and you don't
Speaker 1: feel like it was enough? From that perspective, and she said,
Speaker 1: I just get more fired up for the next day.
Speaker 1: And I said, does it make you reflect on you?
Speaker 1: Do you become judgmental on you? And she said no.
Speaker 1: I said, there you go. So you can be driven
Speaker 1: by this incredible desire to serve others and to be
Speaker 1: of value. And that's a fantastic way to still get
Speaker 1: that desire to perform and to succeed. But for the
Speaker 1: right reasons.
Speaker 2: I love that nuance because I think for so many
Speaker 2: people it's very much like ambition bad, satisfaction good. And
Speaker 2: that's such a simplistic way of looking at it. Because
Speaker 2: you're so right, and I love that question of how
Speaker 2: does it feel when you don't hit that goal. Do
Speaker 2: you actually get more energy and more excited and more
Speaker 2: focused and more diligent, or do you become more harsh
Speaker 2: and more critical and more comparative. And as you were
Speaker 2: saying that, you repeated this sentence a couple of times
Speaker 2: when you were talking, you said, you are not your job.
Speaker 2: And I was thinking, your work is not your worth,
Speaker 2: and then I was thinking about just how hard wired
Speaker 2: it is. So I was looking into this, and it
Speaker 2: was about the time of the Industrial Revolution that work
Speaker 2: became so much more attached to worth. Everyone knew what
Speaker 2: role they played on the conveyor belt, there was the
Speaker 2: division of labor. You now had everyone having titles and roles,
Speaker 2: and the question became what do you do? And everything
Speaker 2: became about title. Now, if you take it back a
Speaker 2: bit further, you've actually got everyone's last names being represented
Speaker 2: of their job. So you have Baker, Blacksmith, whatever else
Speaker 2: it may be, and that became your name, and that
Speaker 2: was just your shop front. And so this hard wiring
Speaker 2: that we all have of our work being our worth
Speaker 2: has been hardwired for a few decades now and probably longer,
Speaker 2: but it's so hard to lose it because that's what
Speaker 2: you're measured on since you were a kid, the grades
Speaker 2: against your friends, then the college you went to and
Speaker 2: its reputation, the degree you received, and then the first
Speaker 2: job you got. And it's almost like, as you get
Speaker 2: out of school, your job becomes the only measurable thing,
Speaker 2: like the amount you earn in your job title, because
Speaker 2: people aren't comparing like, oh, I've got seven kids, you've
Speaker 2: got three, Like that isn't really a point of contention,
Speaker 2: thank goodness, Yeah, yeah, thank goodness for sure, but that
Speaker 2: isn't really the metric, or you're not like, oh I've
Speaker 2: got you might compare like, oh I've been in religion
Speaker 2: for ten years, You've only been in one for two,
Speaker 2: But the job feels like oh this so much money
Speaker 2: I make in this in my status. How do you
Speaker 2: operate in a world which is created for that competition
Speaker 2: and that comparison and not feel that short and for
Speaker 2: it of like, oh I feel happy when someone else
Speaker 2: is not making How do you manage both of those emotions?
Speaker 1: So we do live in a world that is absolutely
Speaker 1: amplifying our self doubts and is almost designed to get
Speaker 1: us to compare ourselves to others. As you said, in university,
Speaker 1: you're often ranked against your classmates, and we don't really
Speaker 1: have objective markers other than salary and how many cars
Speaker 1: you have, and where you live and job title. And
Speaker 1: the fact is, in the world that we live in
Speaker 1: as well, your job does attract a certain perceived status,
Speaker 1: you know, lawyers, doctors. Suddenly people go, oh, they pay attention.
Speaker 1: But this is just fueling this comparison that we have
Speaker 1: and this sense of not enoughness. So how do we
Speaker 1: prevent ourselves. We need to knowledge we live in this world.
Speaker 1: We're consumed by this world. It's very easy to internalize
Speaker 1: these things. And that is why these four pillars are
Speaker 1: so fundamentally important. Because we're just talking about the first one,
Speaker 1: but as I go through the rest, you'll see how
Speaker 1: you can also use the other three to counterbalance. So
Speaker 1: a lot of people struggle with acceptance and they think, Okay,
Speaker 1: I need to get my acceptance really strong before I'll
Speaker 1: be able to move forward and succeed and be happy.
Speaker 1: Not necessarily it's a lifelong journey. You can actually lean
Speaker 1: on other attributes, so we call them the four a's,
Speaker 1: the four attributes of self trust, which reflect our self image.
Speaker 1: You can lean on your other attributes to help you
Speaker 1: take action anyway, focus on what you need to focus
Speaker 1: on and prevent yourself getting stuck in that comparison cycle.
Speaker 1: Something that we do share though with people is if
Speaker 1: you feel like you're constantly comparing to other people and
Speaker 1: you're feeling like you're worse off, You're feeling like you're
Speaker 1: not as good as they are. Something that's really valuable
Speaker 1: is to move from comparison to what we call emulation.
Speaker 1: Comparison is pitting two things against each other and looking
Speaker 1: for differences. Emulation is cool. Look at what that person
Speaker 1: is doing, how did they do it? And how can
Speaker 1: I emulate that? So I can do it too. So
Speaker 1: you take learnings from their journey, apply it to your own,
Speaker 1: and suddenly, rather than feeling, oh gosh, I'm so far behind,
Speaker 1: you suddenly realize, hey, if they can do it, I
Speaker 1: can do it. What's that first step I'm going to take? Yes,
Speaker 1: So that's one step you can take. It's to really
Speaker 1: focus on, Okay, how do I stay in my lane?
Speaker 2: Yes? Yes, I love that.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I've often said you can turn your envy into study
Speaker 2: and it's beautiful.
Speaker 1: That beautiful like.
Speaker 2: How can you take this feeling of like, oh, why
Speaker 2: did they have it? And why am I so behind?
Speaker 2: And they're show ahead and go okay, well what did
Speaker 2: they get right? And I think often when you start
Speaker 2: doing that, you realize, oh, wait a minute, they actually
Speaker 2: got a lot wrong too, And when you actually start
Speaker 2: looking and paying attention to someone, you go, oh, they
Speaker 2: actually had three businesses that failed before that. Oh, I
Speaker 2: just know about the one that took off. Oh, they
Speaker 2: went through a divorce through that. They haven't had a
Speaker 2: perfect life. They've had a lot of difficulty. Oh I
Speaker 2: didn't realize that. You know, they lost a child. Like
Speaker 2: when you actually study someone, you actually get this textured, colored,
Speaker 2: multifaceted view of someone versus the oh they're on the
Speaker 2: front cover of Forbes, or they're on the front cover
Speaker 2: of Time magazine or whatever else it may be, and
Speaker 2: then you don't get that texture. So I love that
Speaker 2: idea of turning it into emulation. And I assume with
Speaker 2: what you're saying, that's also just a habit that every
Speaker 2: time you see something and you feel envious and you
Speaker 2: feel that feeling of being left behind, you just go okay, well, no,
Speaker 2: let me learn from it. Let me study that right.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, all of these things that we're talking about are
Speaker 1: actually just habits. And in fact, I would argue that
Speaker 1: a belief is simply an habitual way of thinking. Yes,
Speaker 1: so when we understand that their habits, it also empowers
Speaker 1: us to realize, hey, we can create better habits over
Speaker 1: the old ones. And what happens in those moments when
Speaker 1: you start to notice that self doubt, that inner criticism
Speaker 1: that I don't feel good enough to happening, is you're
Speaker 1: often tending to and this links to the third pillar,
Speaker 1: which we'll get to, you tend to start focusing on
Speaker 1: things outside of your control. This is why all of
Speaker 1: these four they really do. They rise and fall with
Speaker 1: each other. You start focusing on things outside of your control.
Speaker 1: When you do that, what we notice when we look
Speaker 1: at brain scans is that there's less activity in your
Speaker 1: ventromedial prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for rationality and solution
Speaker 1: finding and logical thinking, which means that your thinking is
Speaker 1: largely driven by the emotion centers, which is why it
Speaker 1: feels so self consuming. When we're in that state, all
Speaker 1: the emotions come with it and all the negative thoughts
Speaker 1: come with it. I'm so far behind. I'm never going
Speaker 1: to be as good as them. I'm a screw up.
Speaker 1: Whatever it is. So consciously catching yourself out is an
Speaker 1: incredibly powerful first step. And then the next step is
Speaker 1: to direct your attention. Direct your attention to what you
Speaker 1: can focus on, moving to that idea of study or
Speaker 1: emulation that in itself is re engaging those frontal regions
Speaker 1: of the brain, which is going to help quiet in
Speaker 1: the emotion centers and allow you to take the best
Speaker 1: next step for you.
Speaker 2: What's that? I love it. Before we go into the
Speaker 2: other three, which I really want to do, I want
Speaker 2: to ask you. I'm taking this tangent because i can
Speaker 2: feel people thinking about it, and I'm like, okay, I
Speaker 2: want to ask it, like, fake it till you make it?
Speaker 2: Is it actually good advice?
Speaker 1: Fake it till you make it is something that we
Speaker 1: hear constantly. I don't necessarily like the idea of faking
Speaker 1: anything because I think that links to in authenticity and
Speaker 1: it might give people permission to do things that are
Speaker 1: completely insincere. I like to use what Amy Cuddy describes
Speaker 1: as be it until you become it, which is, you know,
Speaker 1: it's a matter of semantics, but I think it resonates
Speaker 1: so much more with people who are all about sincerity
Speaker 1: and authenticity and integrity. You do not have to fake
Speaker 1: being someone else. You need to be that person, have
Speaker 1: the energy that you want to be exuding, see yourself
Speaker 1: achieving what you want to see, who you want to
Speaker 1: be right, and then show up every day as if
Speaker 1: you've already achieved. It is this remarkable thing that happens
Speaker 1: which has not been able to be measured just yet.
Speaker 1: When someone puts out to the universe, I want to
Speaker 1: achieve this, I believe I'm this, and then they start
Speaker 1: acting in a way that is aligned with that. Things
Speaker 1: are attracted to them, opportunities come their way importantly too,
Speaker 1: though they also take the steps to put them on
Speaker 1: that path. Just on this point, I want to mention
Speaker 1: something really fascinating that comes out of the research, Something
Speaker 1: that we see a lot of people talk about online especially,
Speaker 1: is manifestation. Manifest who you want to be, be it
Speaker 1: till you become it, have the vision bought on your wall,
Speaker 1: and I definitely think there is some power in that. Again,
Speaker 1: it has not been able to be measured as far
Speaker 1: as I'm aware, but there is another element where if
Speaker 1: you're visualizing yourself becoming something and believing you can achieve
Speaker 1: that what you're doing is changing yourself image. You're updating
Speaker 1: that blueprint. You know, we spoke about it earlier. The
Speaker 1: idea of these scars. You're allowing yourself in your mind
Speaker 1: to create this new concept of who you are. Because
Speaker 1: if you cannot see yourself as being there, as deserving that,
Speaker 1: you will inevitably sabotage yourself as you get there. Yes,
Speaker 1: you will notice everything getting in your way, and that'll
Speaker 1: be proof that, see, I can't do this. So that's
Speaker 1: the idea of upgrading yourself image. So that's really really powerful.
Speaker 1: But then a lot of people get stuck where they
Speaker 1: just have this view of where they want to go,
Speaker 1: they're so clear on it, they're excited about it, and
Speaker 1: then suddenly they just they flounder. And it's because of
Speaker 1: two things happening. There was a study that was published
Speaker 1: that found that when we have these beautiful positive they
Speaker 1: call them positive fantasies, these visualizations where we want to
Speaker 1: be and we feel them and we embody them, it
Speaker 1: can actually sap your energy. Why because when we then
Speaker 1: face a roadblock or a setback, that we are completely
Speaker 1: unprepared for it, challenges that view that hey, I can
Speaker 1: get there, and suddenly we start to think, oh no,
Speaker 1: we start to anchor back on our current self image
Speaker 1: and think too hard, I'm never going to get there,
Speaker 1: I don't deserve it, I'm not capable enough, and then
Speaker 1: we retreat. So there's an important step and second step. Right,
Speaker 1: So you need to visualize yourself getting there. But then
Speaker 1: you also and this is contrary to what a lot
Speaker 1: of people suggest, what the research suggests, what we encourage
Speaker 1: all of our students to do is be very clear
Speaker 1: on what are all the things that are going to
Speaker 1: get in the way of you getting there? Be really
Speaker 1: clear on that. A lot of people say, no, don't
Speaker 1: anticipate that, because you'll will it into existence. No, we say,
Speaker 1: be very pragmatic. What are the things that could get
Speaker 1: in the way. One of them is, well, my own
Speaker 1: belief about myself. The other one is the people I'm around.
Speaker 1: Maybe they will prevent me from getting there. It could
Speaker 1: be boredom, it could be this obstacle, that obstacle, that
Speaker 1: set back, that failure. Write them down. But then there
Speaker 1: is an important second step. If you only write them down,
Speaker 1: you're going to enter an entire world of catastrophizing and worrying.
Speaker 1: So the next step then is to ask yourself, what
Speaker 1: will I do if and when this happens. You create
Speaker 1: your contingency plan, your recovery plan, so that if it happens,
Speaker 1: you have your steps, You've prepared, You've essentially been there before,
Speaker 1: so you don't need to worry about spiraling into overthinking
Speaker 1: and worry and catastrophizing. You say, nope, I've been here,
Speaker 1: I've got my plan. It's called an implementation intension. And
Speaker 1: if you come up with these if then you are
Speaker 1: going to be more likely to achieve that goal, more
Speaker 1: likely to persist when the roadblock, when the failure comes,
Speaker 1: and more likely to move towards where you want to go.
Speaker 2: Want to make a real difference this giving season this
Speaker 2: December on Purpose is part of Pods Fight Poverty podcast,
Speaker 2: teaming up to lift three villages in Rwanda out of
Speaker 2: extreme poverty. We're doing it through give Directly, which sends
Speaker 2: cash straight to families so they can choose what they
Speaker 2: need most. Donate at GiveDirectly dot org, forward slash on Purpose.
Speaker 2: First time gifts are matched your impact. Our goal is
Speaker 2: one million dollars by year's end, enough to lift seven
Speaker 2: hundred families out of poverty. Join us at GiveDirectly dot
Speaker 2: org forward slash on purpose. It's so fascinating, isn't it
Speaker 2: that the human mind either imagines everything going wrong, yeah,
Speaker 2: or imagines everything going right. But then you're presenting this
Speaker 2: like medical ground of be pragmatic, be aware. If this,
Speaker 2: then that and that's the reality of life, Like that's
Speaker 2: where you're going to live. Like if you just sit
Speaker 2: there in dreamland and think of everything being perfect, we
Speaker 2: know that's never going to happen. And also we have
Speaker 2: this tendency to just think in nightmares where well, everything's
Speaker 2: going wrong, nothing's ever going to work out, I'm not
Speaker 2: worth anything. And these we almost gravitate to these extremes
Speaker 2: because they feel safer in a way weird way. Why
Speaker 2: do we do that? Why do we gravitate to these extremes.
Speaker 1: The brain craves certainty. The brain fundamentally crave certainty. And
Speaker 1: the reason why when we look at fundamentally why the
Speaker 1: brain does what it does, it's primary function. A lot
Speaker 1: of people say its primary function is to protect us.
Speaker 1: There's a little bit more to it. The primary function
Speaker 1: of the brain really is to make sure that the
Speaker 1: rest of the body is doing what it needs to
Speaker 1: do while using the least amount of metabolic energy. Right,
Speaker 1: so it needs us to function while using as little
Speaker 1: energy as possible. And so part of that is obviously
Speaker 1: protecting you because then if you're in a situation where
Speaker 1: you're having to deal with something terrible happening, the brain
Speaker 1: has to put in a lot more effort. So it
Speaker 1: will often magnify everything that could go wrong, because if
Speaker 1: it does that, it gives you a sense of certainty, no,
Speaker 1: this is going to happen. You're going to fail, you're
Speaker 1: going to fall short, they're going to laugh at you,
Speaker 1: they're going to reject you, and at least you know.
Speaker 1: At least you know so that you don't do the thing,
Speaker 1: because if you do the thing and that happens, your
Speaker 1: brain's going to have to put in a lot more
Speaker 1: work to get through that. So if it can prevent
Speaker 1: you from taking that step. And we actually refer to
Speaker 1: this as what's called the misguided protector in our mind,
Speaker 1: it's that voice, it's an inner deceiver, and it's trying
Speaker 1: to protect us, but it's misguided. But fundamentally, it will
Speaker 1: highlight everything that could go wrong, so that we don't
Speaker 1: take action because then it succeeds, then we're safe, but
Speaker 1: we're stuck. And then the other extreme, of course, is
Speaker 1: only visualizing where we want to be because again it's certainty. No,
Speaker 1: I'm guaranteed for that to happen. And then we know
Speaker 1: what happens when you hit a roadblock. Suddenly everything crumbles
Speaker 1: and then you go into the other side. Oh no,
Speaker 1: all these things are going to go wrong. So when
Speaker 1: we recognize that this is just our brain doing what
Speaker 1: it needs to do, there's something else which is really
Speaker 1: interesting here. There is a connection between intelligence and anxiety.
Speaker 1: People who tend to be higher on intelligent IQ ratings
Speaker 1: of IQ, they tend to be more aware of complexity,
Speaker 1: more aware of all the risks that could go wrong,
Speaker 1: which then leads them to overthink about those risks and
Speaker 1: then overthink about what could happen if those risks actually occurred,
Speaker 1: which increases anxiety, which reduces confidence and then reinforces that
Speaker 1: initial state of awareness of the complexity. And so if
Speaker 1: you're listening to this and you feel like you're constantly
Speaker 1: overthinking and you're constantly aware of risks, it could be
Speaker 1: that you have a slightly higher than average IQ. But
Speaker 1: it's also important to know that we can break that cycle.
Speaker 1: We call it the spiral interrupt technique. When this is happening,
Speaker 1: the part of the brain that's activated is the emotion center,
Speaker 1: the threat detection center. It's trying to identify everything that
Speaker 1: could go wrong to keep you safe. So what you
Speaker 1: can do is control your attention. Bring your attention back
Speaker 1: to what can I control right now by literally saying
Speaker 1: to yourself, this is my brain doing what it does.
Speaker 1: I am safe to act anyway. So again, simply by
Speaker 1: doing that, by consciously controlling your thoughts, you are re
Speaker 1: engaging those prefrontal regions, which reduces activity in the amygdala,
Speaker 1: in the fear centers, and allows you to have that
Speaker 1: of rationality. So then decide what's next.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I can think of a really good personal example
Speaker 2: of that. I remember. So, I was very fortunate to
Speaker 2: go to public speaking school from age eleven to eighteen
Speaker 2: and had training and found it comfortable being on stage
Speaker 2: and everything else. But then as soon as my scales
Speaker 2: started to change and I started to work in different
Speaker 2: audiences and different arenas, in different spaces, I could notice
Speaker 2: that my heart rate would go up. I could notice
Speaker 2: that my hands would start to shake. I could notice
Speaker 2: that I felt sweaty palms. I could notice that I
Speaker 2: felt nervous and anxious. And I used to start to think, well,
Speaker 2: I have the skills, and I'd like, what am I
Speaker 2: doing wrong here? Like you know, and I'd overthink that,
Speaker 2: and then I'd overthinking, go, oh my god, everyone's going
Speaker 2: to see my handshaking, and then am I going to
Speaker 2: hold the card? Or like should I put it down?
Speaker 2: Or like what if my slides? And then you're overthinking it,
Speaker 2: and it was it's what you just said. And I
Speaker 2: had a different set of words for it that I
Speaker 2: would say internally, and it was just, no, this is
Speaker 2: what happens when I care. Yeah, And what I started
Speaker 2: to realize was, oh, when I care, my body's going
Speaker 2: to do this. And I can go and give an
Speaker 2: amazing talk anyway, but I care. That's all it's showing me.
Speaker 2: And I don't need to stop this or I don't
Speaker 2: need to get over this, or I don't need this
Speaker 2: to disappear in order for me to go out there
Speaker 2: and do what I do. And you're so right that
Speaker 2: simple moment of and it goes back to acceptance that
Speaker 2: this is just biologically what happens when I care. Yeah,
Speaker 2: get a bit nervous and yea, my heart beats faster
Speaker 2: and all the things that and it's like, Okay, if
Speaker 2: I can reframe that, so much can happen.
Speaker 1: I love that you mentioned that one as well, this
Speaker 1: idea of caring, because when we acknowledge that our brain
Speaker 1: is just doing what it's wired to do, and then
Speaker 1: we can essentially interpret what we're feeling in a way
Speaker 1: that's going to serve us. And so we can either
Speaker 1: interpret that heart rate, as you said, as you get
Speaker 1: into the overthinking of the overthinking and then you're stressed
Speaker 1: about the stress. It's called a meta emotion where it's
Speaker 1: like an emotion about an emotion and it just spirals
Speaker 1: out of control. Or you can say, no, no, this
Speaker 1: is my brain is just doing its job. I'm prepared,
Speaker 1: I'm ready, I'm going to be of service here. I care.
Speaker 1: I care about delivering a good outcome. And it's powerful
Speaker 1: when you recognize that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what's the second A Okay, so.
Speaker 1: That's the first day, that's acceptance, the second eight.
Speaker 2: There's so much more in the book. I just read
Speaker 2: so much more there's so much more in the book.
Speaker 2: I am just moving us through as rediscussed about, how
Speaker 2: do you want to.
Speaker 1: Hear one other thing for people who struggle with acceptance,
Speaker 1: just because it comes up so frequently, especially for people
Speaker 1: early in their careers. And this was me fifteen years ago,
Speaker 1: working in corporate in a male dominated environment. I started
Speaker 1: my career as a lawyer, commercial law. I was in
Speaker 1: that industry for four years. Then I moved into banking
Speaker 1: and finance for six years. Oh gosh. The whole time,
Speaker 1: I felt like an impostor. I felt like I didn't belong.
Speaker 1: I felt like a hiring mistake. But I get I
Speaker 1: got very good at faking it. So okay, now I'm
Speaker 1: going to share a little bit of my story. So
Speaker 1: when I was very young, the age of three or four,
Speaker 1: I had a beautiful, supportive Persian family and we'd always
Speaker 1: get together at my grandparents' house and have kebbab that
Speaker 1: my grandpa would make, and then after dinner, so I
Speaker 1: was I liked performing as a kid after dinner there
Speaker 1: would be this chance shah thereby I had bed asset,
Speaker 1: which means shah de has to dance for us, and
Speaker 1: it was great when I was a kid. I'd get
Speaker 1: up and I'd do my little thing, and they'd watch
Speaker 1: and they'd cheer, and it was fantastic. But then as
Speaker 1: I got older, I started to enjoy it less and less.
Speaker 1: But I didn't know how to say no, and so
Speaker 1: at the age of nine or ten or twelve, I
Speaker 1: still felt like I had to perform to make people happy.
Speaker 1: This was entirely in my head. If I had communicated
Speaker 1: to them or said a boundary, I said, look, I
Speaker 1: don't feel like it, they would have been fine. My
Speaker 1: family loved me. I didn't know, and I internalized from
Speaker 1: a young age that I am only as good as
Speaker 1: the performance I'm giving, which means making other people happy.
Speaker 1: And I have carried that with me through my entire career.
Speaker 1: In fact, one of the drivers of me doing a PhD,
Speaker 1: which was one of the hardest things I've ever done,
Speaker 1: was because of this feeling of not being enough and
Speaker 1: needing to still prove myself, which is the wrong reason
Speaker 1: to do anything. And I will tell you this much
Speaker 1: it's done, and I still don't feel I still haven't
Speaker 1: developed that acceptance. So it's an ongoing process for me,
Speaker 1: and I'm very aware of it and I'm working on
Speaker 1: the habits to develop it. But when I entered the workforce,
Speaker 1: so I did law because I did really great in
Speaker 1: high school and I had a lot of pressure to
Speaker 1: use those grades. So it was like law, medicine engineering.
Speaker 1: I wasn't going to do meta engineering, so I did law.
Speaker 1: I did it with psychology because I was passionate about people.
Speaker 1: But law was so difficult for me that I had
Speaker 1: to focus so much on it and I had to
Speaker 1: overcompensate because I didn't feel like I belonged. I tried
Speaker 1: to drop it after the first class, but any case,
Speaker 1: I kept with it never felt like I belonged. I
Speaker 1: was able to do really well. I got fantastic grades
Speaker 1: at the end, got a job in a top tier
Speaker 1: commercial law firm, but that feeling of this is not me,
Speaker 1: this is not for me, stuck with me, and I
Speaker 1: was trying to fake it till I made it. So
Speaker 1: I was becoming someone different. I was speaking differently, I
Speaker 1: was showing up differently, trying to sound smart and credible,
Speaker 1: using big, fancy words to fit in. What I now
Speaker 1: know is that that can backfire. Studies have been found
Speaker 1: that when you use unnecessarily complex language where you're trying
Speaker 1: to be perceived as more credible and competent. It does
Speaker 1: the opposite, and it undermines your credibility and your competence. Simplicity,
Speaker 1: it's all about simplicity. But I didn't know that, so
Speaker 1: I carried that through banking. I was so full of anxiety.
Speaker 1: I literally hide behind my cubicle so people couldn't give
Speaker 1: me work because if they didn't know I was there,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't basically be given it. Then I moved into
Speaker 1: banking and finance, convinced that if I moved into a
Speaker 1: different industry, I could start fresh, reinvent myself, leave the
Speaker 1: doubt behind. Do you think that happened. No, absolutely not.
Speaker 1: Doubt doesn't work like that. I took it with me
Speaker 1: because of my self image, because I was carrying that
Speaker 1: self image around the scars I had. And again I
Speaker 1: came from a wonderfully supportive family, and still I had scars.
Speaker 1: And one of the things as I was doing research
Speaker 1: for this book is there's a lot of talk about
Speaker 1: attachment theory and those early experiences. What some people experience
Speaker 1: is a secure attachment style when they're young. They have
Speaker 1: a supportive environment, full of love and validation and yet
Speaker 1: still as adults, they feel like they're not enough, and
Speaker 1: could be one of two reasons. It could be that
Speaker 1: you feel so indebted to your family that you feel
Speaker 1: like you need to keep performing for them to make
Speaker 1: them proud. The second reason is that you might also
Speaker 1: have had a sibling who was challenging just by nature
Speaker 1: of their personality, and you saw that and you didn't
Speaker 1: want to be that, and so you became the opposite.
Speaker 1: You became the good kid to be that for your parents,
Speaker 1: and you just take that with you. So that was me,
Speaker 1: and then I started feeling guilty about why am I
Speaker 1: feeling this self doubt? I have no reason to, and
Speaker 1: so it became this whole big thing. Anyway, seven years
Speaker 1: in banking and finance, I eventually found my way. I
Speaker 1: tapped into roles that I loved, learned to lean on
Speaker 1: my strengths, and I stopped trying to be like everybody
Speaker 1: else and realized, hey, I'm here because I have some
Speaker 1: value to offer. How do I tap into that value?
Speaker 1: And then so that was kind of my journey, and
Speaker 1: that I completely forgot the question that you asked me.
Speaker 1: But that's a little bit about my how I got there, Oh,
Speaker 1: what I wanted to share is something that I used
Speaker 1: to do, which people listening might do if they struggle
Speaker 1: with acceptance. Because we want other people to be happy
Speaker 1: with us, we say yes compulsively, reflexively before we even
Speaker 1: know what we're saying yes to, So we end up
Speaker 1: taking on more work, we end up doing more than
Speaker 1: most people, We end up exhausted because we don't know
Speaker 1: how to say no. Say no is a superpower, but
Speaker 1: it all comes down to how you say it. So
Speaker 1: something that we encourage is what's called intentional delay. All
Speaker 1: it means studies have found that if you just delay
Speaker 1: by a number of milliseconds, you make a better decision
Speaker 1: under pressure. So what that means is if someone asks
Speaker 1: you to do something, instead of immediately yes sure and
Speaker 1: then having to spend your entire weekend at work, you
Speaker 1: would say, I would love to help let me get
Speaker 1: back to you by the end of the day to
Speaker 1: make sure I am able to or let me check
Speaker 1: my calendar and I'll get back to you within an hour.
Speaker 1: So you're doing two things. You're creating a delay and
Speaker 1: then committing to get back to them. That process allows
Speaker 1: you some space to then ask yourself Okay, is this
Speaker 1: something that I genuinely want to do or I feel
Speaker 1: compelled to do because I don't feel like I'm enough.
Speaker 1: You run it through that little criteria, and then if
Speaker 1: it's compulsion because you don't feel like you're enough, you
Speaker 1: give them a polite decline, and if it is something
Speaker 1: you want to do, you go ahead and you do it.
Speaker 1: That is a powerful way to remind yourself that what
Speaker 1: you need matters to and you can politely decline without
Speaker 1: affecting a relationship.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the hardest part. I think we all have,
Speaker 2: because I know you write about in the book that
Speaker 2: we respond to social rejection like physical pain. Yes, we
Speaker 2: think that if someone and social rejection works two ways, right,
Speaker 2: Like one social rejection is you're not invited to a party.
Speaker 2: But the other type of social rejection is you saying
Speaker 2: no and then thinking the other person thinks you're mean
Speaker 2: or bad or rejects you in the sense of, oh,
Speaker 2: you're not good at your job. And I think we
Speaker 2: often don't talk about that second version of social rejection,
Speaker 2: which you get from standing up, setting boundaries whatever it
Speaker 2: may be, where you go. I don't think I can
Speaker 2: do that, and then someone goes, oh, I knew you
Speaker 2: didn't care, right, like a friend or whatever it may be.
Speaker 2: And that's a feeling of social rejection, which feels like
Speaker 2: a punch in the gut. It does feels like someone
Speaker 2: just stabbed you because you're like, no, I don't care.
Speaker 2: I love you, I'm there for you, and you're like no, no, no.
Speaker 2: So so many of these things are so hardwired, Like
Speaker 2: you just said, your example is, I was listening to
Speaker 2: you speak, and I was thinking about your beautiful family
Speaker 2: who loves you, and and I get that. It's so
Speaker 2: in our head where it's like, oh, I have to dance.
Speaker 2: I've always danced, I've always made everyone laugh, I've always
Speaker 2: told jokes. I've always got good grades. I'm the good kid.
Speaker 2: I'm the hyper Labels the labels, right, and those labels,
Speaker 2: most of us put them on ourselves. Sometimes they did
Speaker 2: come through teachers and parents. Of course, there's plenty of
Speaker 2: versions of that. Ripping off a label is not easy.
Speaker 1: It's painful.
Speaker 2: It's painful, right, so that ripping off a name tag
Speaker 2: is wherever, but ripping off a label is so much
Speaker 2: more painful. How do you encourage people to go through
Speaker 2: that process of ripping off a label. I'm the dancer,
Speaker 2: I'm the entertainer, I'm the performer. When it shows up
Speaker 2: in all areas of their life. They're now doing it
Speaker 2: for their partner, they're now doing it at their job,
Speaker 2: they're now doing it to their siblings. And it's like, well,
Speaker 2: if I start tearing this off, people are also going
Speaker 2: to be like, Oh, you don't want to entertain me anymore. Oh,
Speaker 2: you don't want to make.
Speaker 1: Me laugh anymore, you don't care about me any.
Speaker 2: Don't care about me anymore. And that's what they're really saying.
Speaker 2: So the cost of ripping off a label is so
Speaker 2: high for people, How do you begin that journey?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 2: What do you do?
Speaker 1: So to peel off a label? You need to have
Speaker 1: a deeper yes? What does that mean? We often say
Speaker 1: yes to other people because we're trying to maintain who
Speaker 1: we are and that perception, and again, that risk of
Speaker 1: social rejection is so painful that we want to avoid it.
Speaker 1: What's really helpful is to okay, you know that there's
Speaker 1: a yes that you can be given them. What is
Speaker 1: your deeper yes? What is you declining this thing going
Speaker 1: to allow you to say yes too? Which is actually
Speaker 1: more important for you in the long run. So it
Speaker 1: might be saying no to working late tonight is me
Speaker 1: saying yes to spending more time with my kids before
Speaker 1: dinner time, me saying yes to investing in my physical health.
Speaker 1: So there's this idea of know what your deeper yes is,
Speaker 1: so that you're not just saying no to someone, you're
Speaker 1: actually honoring something within you. But the second element these
Speaker 1: labels that we wear. The brain loves labels because the
Speaker 1: brain lacks efficiency because it wants to operate with the
Speaker 1: least amount of metabolic energy. So it'll label things hot, cold, good, bad, true, false.
Speaker 1: And we also slap these labels in ourselves. I like
Speaker 1: to encourage people once you're aware of your labels. Now,
Speaker 1: how do you know what a label is? It's anything
Speaker 1: you put off after the words I am, I am intense,
Speaker 1: I am boring, I am unworthy, I am such a procrastinator.
Speaker 1: These are labels. The more moment we have I am
Speaker 1: before something, we are internalizing that we're making it mean
Speaker 1: something about us and we are identifying with it. And
Speaker 1: this is really dangerous refusing with that label. So we
Speaker 1: had a client that we worked with right around the
Speaker 1: time of the pandemic. She just started a new job.
Speaker 1: She was a senior leader and she when I initially
Speaker 1: met her, I said, tell me about yourself. So she shared,
Speaker 1: she loves pickleball like you Jay. She was a mother.
Speaker 1: She had just started this new job, and she said,
Speaker 1: and I can be intense. But when she said I
Speaker 1: can be intense, her entire face wrinkled in disgust. So
Speaker 1: I knew there was something there, and I said, what
Speaker 1: makes you use that label? So quick side note, this
Speaker 1: is just a little other tip. I avoid using the
Speaker 1: word why in any conversations, in any client meetings, the
Speaker 1: word why can be like an interrogation. People get defensive.
Speaker 1: Why j why that you suddenly get on edge. But
Speaker 1: if you say what, what was the reason? It's so valuable.
Speaker 1: And this is effective for teamwork, This is effective for feedback,
Speaker 1: even speaking to your partner. So this little side note,
Speaker 1: But in any case, I asked her, I said, what
Speaker 1: does that label mean to you? Where does it come from?
Speaker 1: And she said, well, when I was leaving my previous role.
Speaker 1: As I was leaving, my boss said, oh, you're intense,
Speaker 1: but we'll miss you. And that label stuck. And this
Speaker 1: was a label that she'd stuck on as an adult,
Speaker 1: but when we dug deeper, we found out. So she
Speaker 1: was one of I think seven kids in an Egyptian family.
Speaker 1: When she was a kid, she was the youngest and
Speaker 1: she had to fight for attention, so she was loud,
Speaker 1: she would scream, she was what they would call too
Speaker 1: much all the time, and so as a kid, she
Speaker 1: internalized this belief of I am too much. And so
Speaker 1: when this label got attached to her intense, it brought
Speaker 1: back all those memories. And so if someone has a
Speaker 1: label like this, what's really important to do is to
Speaker 1: acknowledge that you don't have to necessarily rip it off.
Speaker 1: You can replace it. So with her, I said, okay,
Speaker 1: so describe your intensity to me. And she described what
Speaker 1: it meant. And I said, okay, well, I that as passion.
Speaker 1: What if you said I'm passionate? And she had this
Speaker 1: moment of recognition in her face. She said, Oh, my goodness,
Speaker 1: you are so right. I'm passionate about what I do.
Speaker 1: I'm passionate about life. That is why I care so much.
Speaker 1: It's pure passionate, it's not intensity. And that moment of
Speaker 1: recognition fundamentally changed the meaning she'd applied to the quality
Speaker 1: that she had, and then she started showing up with
Speaker 1: that passion and owning that passion, and that was her
Speaker 1: reclaiming a label. But if you have a label like
Speaker 1: I'm boring or I'm such a procrastinator, you need to
Speaker 1: shift it into something that is growth oriented or actually positive.
Speaker 1: So we hear I'm boring a lot from the people
Speaker 1: that we work with, and we supplore it. Yeah, when
Speaker 1: we get down to it, a lot of them will
Speaker 1: claim that they get funny enough. I have a scar.
Speaker 1: I feel like my story is boring. I don't like
Speaker 1: talking about myself too much because I genuinely don't think
Speaker 1: I have an interesting life or interesting story. So I
Speaker 1: have this I'm boring narrative. I don't know where it
Speaker 1: came from. Actually I probably do. I'm not going to
Speaker 1: share that, but God, so I when I was in
Speaker 1: high school, my parents went through a divorce. It was amicable.
Speaker 1: I'm blessed with a truly remarkable family. It was an
Speaker 1: amicable divorce. But naturally, anyone who experiences that, you start
Speaker 1: to question could I have done anything differently? Should I
Speaker 1: have been more supportive? Should I have done this or
Speaker 1: been a better kid? And so I internalized that, and
Speaker 1: one way that that came out is not wanting to
Speaker 1: talk about it with anybody, because it's almost like if
Speaker 1: I spoke about it, it would make it worse. So
Speaker 1: I just bottled it all up. And so from around fifteen,
Speaker 1: I stopped sharing about myself. In fact, even when I
Speaker 1: entered the workforce, I had a group of work friends
Speaker 1: and one of them broke up with me. A female friend.
Speaker 1: She broke up with our friendship because she said, I
Speaker 1: feel like I don't know anything about you, and you
Speaker 1: know so much about me. What she was referring to
Speaker 1: in that situation was I don't like to share a
Speaker 1: lot of the negative things going on in my life.
Speaker 1: A lot of especially women, and like to connect by
Speaker 1: sharing negative things. All you think that's bad, look at
Speaker 1: what I'm going through, and that's how they bond, which
Speaker 1: in itself is not necessarily healthy. But because I wasn't
Speaker 1: sharing much about myself at all or any of that,
Speaker 1: I wasn't able to connect with people. And so that
Speaker 1: is something that I have taken with me through my
Speaker 1: entire life, and I'm still kind of trying to shake it.
Speaker 1: But this idea of replacing a label would be Okay,
Speaker 1: so a boring label could be you'd replace it with
Speaker 1: I am thoughtful and I like to give other people
Speaker 1: time to share what they're going through. Right, So it's
Speaker 1: not I'm boring, it's just no, I'm more thoughtful. I
Speaker 1: prefer careful deliberation, and I like things to be stable
Speaker 1: and grounded, and I like making other people feel seen.
Speaker 1: That's one way that you take a behavioral characteristic that
Speaker 1: you have and flip it into something that is not
Speaker 1: a negative, which then allows you to feel like you
Speaker 1: can build on it. What about I'm such a procrastinator.
Speaker 1: We get a lot of these, so we share a
Speaker 1: lot of content on social media, we get a lot
Speaker 1: of people commenting and sharing, and this idea of I'm
Speaker 1: really you know, I procrastinate all the time, I can't
Speaker 1: get started. You shift from I'm a procrastinator to I'm
Speaker 1: learning to be better with my time and take action
Speaker 1: over overthinking. So you take a label and you shift
Speaker 1: it into what you want, and that's one way that
Speaker 1: you're changing that self image. You're changing it to be
Speaker 1: what you're aspiring to work towards. And once you can
Speaker 1: see that, you're more likely to actually move towards it.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, I mean thank you for sharing that back.
Speaker 2: Of course, thank you for being so open, because yeah,
Speaker 2: it's always harder to share those types of things and
Speaker 2: the things you're struggling with. And I can relate to
Speaker 2: what you're saying as well, Like I find myself being
Speaker 2: someone who loves deep, thoughtful conversation, so I gravitate towards
Speaker 2: one to one even in a big group of people.
Speaker 2: And initially many years ago, and especially when I moved
Speaker 2: to LA and you know, got invite to all sorts
Speaker 2: of events and everything, in the beginning, I would just
Speaker 2: feel like, oh, I didn't There was a part that
Speaker 2: felt I didn't belong at these events because I was
Speaker 2: surrounded by people that I grew up watching on TV
Speaker 2: and film. And then there was another side of me,
Speaker 2: more interestingly, which was, oh, I don't know how to
Speaker 2: do small talk and small talk's not my thing and
Speaker 2: I don't know how to navigate that. And that even
Speaker 2: happened when I went into the corporate world, because after
Speaker 2: I left the monastery where we didn't do a lot
Speaker 2: of small talk, it was very difficult for me to
Speaker 2: go into corporate networking scenarios because to me, the conversation
Speaker 2: just didn't go anywhere, and at that time, I would
Speaker 2: start to think, maybe I'm boring, Maybe I have nothing
Speaker 2: to say. Oh I'm not that funny because I can't
Speaker 2: just quip and whatever. And I'm good at building rapport
Speaker 2: one on one, but just in a group, I just
Speaker 2: didn't feel confident about it. And I started to reframe
Speaker 2: it as I'm just going to look for the one
Speaker 2: person that I can have the deepest, most beautiful conversation with.
Speaker 2: And what's amazing is wherever I go, I have to
Speaker 2: go to so many events for work or whatever is
Speaker 2: and I just found the one person that I had
Speaker 2: the most meaningful connection with. And what I found is
Speaker 2: that just turned into loads of great friendships. And so
Speaker 2: now I never feel alone anywhere because I know someone deeply.
Speaker 2: They're knowing a lot of people in a shallow way
Speaker 2: where I can still feel alone and disconnecting. What was
Speaker 2: helpful for me was there are certain settings where I
Speaker 2: will be boring, but there are certain settings where I'm
Speaker 2: the least boring person in the world, and I'm just
Speaker 2: looking for those And that acceptance allowed me to play
Speaker 2: to my strengths and who I want to be and
Speaker 2: what kind of conversations I want to have, And it's like,
Speaker 2: I want to get to know someone deeply. I want
Speaker 2: to share intimate things. I want to hear things back.
Speaker 2: I want to hear about worldviews, like I'm fascinated by that.
Speaker 2: What I don't want to hear about is where's the
Speaker 2: best restaurant for dinner? I'm just not interested, Like that's
Speaker 2: not And so in that conversation, I am boring, And
Speaker 2: that's okay because I don't want to be interesting there.
Speaker 2: And so I love what you're saying because there's so
Speaker 2: much freedom when you address the truth of it and
Speaker 2: you find the part of it that is, like you said,
Speaker 2: growth oriented, not just positive. We're not positively spinning it
Speaker 2: because that just feels fake. But it's where's the growth
Speaker 2: side of this? That's what it was for me. The
Speaker 2: growth side was go and find someone who wants the
Speaker 2: same thing as you, because then you'll have a great time.
Speaker 1: How did you so when you were starting, let's let's
Speaker 1: live to you if you don't mind, so let's do it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is your version of I'm boring side. I
Speaker 2: listened to other people.
Speaker 1: Oh yes, so when you were starting in this space
Speaker 1: and you found yourself in those situations. What kind of
Speaker 1: self talk helped you stay grounded and not become self critical?
Speaker 2: The first thing I realized, And a lot of my
Speaker 2: approach has been inspired through my monk teachers. So a
Speaker 2: lot of what I would hear in my self talk
Speaker 2: was what I'd learned. And so whenever I would go
Speaker 2: to events in the beginning, people say did you talk
Speaker 2: to this person? And did you network with this person?
Speaker 2: Did you talk to this person? I was like no,
Speaker 2: because I don't think that is the right thing to do.
Speaker 2: Like I don't I don't think me going up to
Speaker 2: someone that I don't know and doesn't know me and
Speaker 2: starting up a conversation is authentic to me and who
Speaker 2: I want to be. If it happens authentically, that's amazing,
Speaker 2: but that's not authentic to me. My my authentic version
Speaker 2: is to help people feel safe and comfortable, smile, be
Speaker 2: courteous and kind, but to not be invasive, especially in
Speaker 2: places where everyone's kind of stressed and anxious. And and
Speaker 2: so my approach has always been to talk to someone
Speaker 2: if they talk to me, to smile at someone, and
Speaker 2: if there's a you feel a sense of like I
Speaker 2: we're both looking for someone to connect to find it
Speaker 2: and recognize that ultimately everyone's feeling anxious here. So there's
Speaker 2: no one who's feeling confident and you're feeling anxious. Everyone's
Speaker 2: feeling anxious because no one knows anyone and no one
Speaker 2: knows who to talk to. So I think for me,
Speaker 2: my self talk was trust hence beautiful title big, trust
Speaker 2: your book. Trust that you don't have to meet everyone.
Speaker 2: This isn't your only opportunity to do sell yours. This
Speaker 2: idea of like like you know, sell yourself, hand out
Speaker 2: your business card, every like I'm like, having a meaningful
Speaker 2: connection with someone is probably more valuable than handing your
Speaker 2: business card and shaking hands with everyone in the room
Speaker 2: just so you can say you shook hands with so
Speaker 2: and so and X, Y and Z. It's like to me,
Speaker 2: it was it was reminding myself that value was deep,
Speaker 2: it was meaningful, it was purposeful, it was intentional, it
Speaker 2: was it was mutual. The imposter syndrome part, there was
Speaker 2: definitely a lot of negative self talk at the stuff
Speaker 2: like you don't belong here, it shouldn't be in this room,
Speaker 2: like oh my god, you know, and I'd freeze a
Speaker 2: lot and just I'm not even going to say a
Speaker 2: low to that. I'm not even gonna smile because you're
Speaker 2: so stressed out. Yeah, and I think the self talk
Speaker 2: that got away that helped me get through that, I
Speaker 2: realized it wasn't self talk. It was just showing up
Speaker 2: and sitting in that discomfort. It wasn't so there was
Speaker 2: no self talk, and I know that's going to lead
Speaker 2: to it that it was just continuing to show up
Speaker 2: feeling that discomfort, feeling that uncertainty, and recognizing that it
Speaker 2: didn't stop me from connecting, smiling, meeting being myself. And
Speaker 2: the biggest question I'd always asked myself. Actually, Trevannoah said
Speaker 2: this to me when he came on the show. He
Speaker 2: was like, Jay, you always fel comfortable at all the
Speaker 2: things you're at, and I wouldn't sense that you don't.
Speaker 2: And I said, well, that's because I only go to
Speaker 2: things I feel I have a purpose at. And that
Speaker 2: solved everything to me, where I was like, if I
Speaker 2: know why I'm going somewhere, I can show up as
Speaker 2: my best self. If I don't know why I'm going there,
Speaker 2: and I kind of think someone thinks I should go there,
Speaker 2: or someone on my team said it would be a
Speaker 2: good idea. Now I hate being there because I'm lost,
Speaker 2: Whereas if I know what my purpose is and why
Speaker 2: I'm standing there, great like I could be alone there,
Speaker 2: I could be everyone's best friend there, I could be
Speaker 2: anything anyway. Sorry, long answer, no brilliant answer, the nuance
Speaker 2: and complexity and not give you a you know, a throwaway.
Speaker 1: It was wonderful. Thank you so much, and I'm sure
Speaker 1: everyone listening appreciates so much hearing your own journey and
Speaker 1: your perspective as we go through this. There's a few
Speaker 1: things that came to mind as you were speaking. One
Speaker 1: of the things you said is that mistake that we
Speaker 1: make when we think we're the only one feeling a
Speaker 1: certain way. Everyone else must be confident I'm the only one.
Speaker 1: It's called pluralistic ignorance.
Speaker 2: Interesting, I didn't know that way.
Speaker 1: Everyone actually feels that way. I mean, look, we say everyone,
Speaker 1: probably ninety five percent of people will feel that. But
Speaker 1: as you said, your ability to just show up in
Speaker 1: the discomfort and acknowledge that, hey it's uncomfortable, but I'm here,
Speaker 1: I'm safe, it's fine. That makes it easier. The next
Speaker 1: time you do it, you develop what's called a tolerance
Speaker 1: for discomfort, and that leads to amazing things. And then
Speaker 1: the other thing you highlighted is that what helped you
Speaker 1: is this idea of having a purpose and this idea
Speaker 1: of not making it about you. It was this concept
Speaker 1: of self forgetting that I'd mentioned as one of the
Speaker 1: we call it the gift of self acceptance is the
Speaker 1: ability to forget yourself and make it about other people.
Speaker 1: So you said, if I have something meaningful to share
Speaker 1: which is not about you, that's about adding something to
Speaker 1: them that allows those voices to quiet in because it's
Speaker 1: not just you doing it because you want to or
Speaker 1: you think you need to, or you think you should.
Speaker 1: It's for their sake. So that's beautiful. And then I
Speaker 1: love how you brought in imposter syndrome, which brings us
Speaker 1: beautifully to the second pillar, which is agency. So just
Speaker 1: my way of recap, we've just covered acceptance for everyone listening,
Speaker 1: and acceptance is essentially, when your self esteem is shaky,
Speaker 1: you seek validation. You feel like you need to prove
Speaker 1: your worth. Your sense of identity is attached to what
Speaker 1: you're producing or performing or achieving. The next way that
Speaker 1: self doubt can show up is not to do with
Speaker 1: the I'm not enough or I'm not worthy, and entirely
Speaker 1: to do with the can I actually do this thing?
Speaker 1: Do I have the skills and the ability to do it?
Speaker 1: And what we see here is a lot of people
Speaker 1: will fall into imposter syndrome.
Speaker 2: Shay, can you actually define what imposter syndrome is?
Speaker 1: Imposter syndrome actually doesn't exist in the literature and the
Speaker 1: research as the term imposter syndrome. It's called imposter phenomenon. Now,
Speaker 1: just notice the difference between a syndrome and a phenomenon.
Speaker 1: One of them is a behavioral phenomen phenomenon that was
Speaker 1: observed among a group of people. The other one pathologizes
Speaker 1: it and makes it seem like there's something wrong with us.
Speaker 1: So imposter syndrome was initially discovered in the nineteen seventies
Speaker 1: where they were specifically looking at women. So this was
Speaker 1: high achieving women, women who had just entered the workforce,
Speaker 1: women who had PhDs and a strong track record behind them,
Speaker 1: and they felt like they didn't belong, They felt like
Speaker 1: they were frauds, They felt that they were undeserving of
Speaker 1: their success, They felt that everyone else thought that they
Speaker 1: were smarter or more capable than they really were. So
Speaker 1: there's two elements for the impost phenomenon we'll move away
Speaker 1: from syndrome imposter phenomenon. The first element is that you
Speaker 1: feel like a fraud that other people believe you to
Speaker 1: be something you're not. And the second element is that
Speaker 1: you have to have some kind of track record behind
Speaker 1: you that allows you to feel like I don't deserve this.
Speaker 1: If you feel like an impostor and you've just started
Speaker 1: a new job, it's probably not impostor right, It's just
Speaker 1: I'm in a new environment. I need to give myself
Speaker 1: grace to learn. When we sell I diagnosed and say,
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, I'm such an imposter, this is imposter
Speaker 1: syndrome that can lead us to withdraw even further. We
Speaker 1: use it as an excuse. So remind yourself, no, the
Speaker 1: imposter syndrome or imposter phenomenon is only when I have
Speaker 1: achieved something. I've just won this award, I've got this
Speaker 1: amazing job, and I can demonstrate that I've got all
Speaker 1: these achievements behind me, but I still don't feel I
Speaker 1: deserve it. Yes, that is the definition of imposter phenomenon,
Speaker 1: and it is so common, not just among women, but
Speaker 1: also among men. Some studies have found that up to
Speaker 1: eighty two percent of people at some point have felt
Speaker 1: like a fraud. So if you've ever felt this way, firstly,
Speaker 1: rest assured you're in very good company. The next thing
Speaker 1: to be aware of with imposter syndrome or phenomenon is
Speaker 1: if you feel like a fraud, Rather than hearing that
Speaker 1: voice saying you don't belong, don't speak to that person,
Speaker 1: don't speak up, flip it immediately to Wow, what an
Speaker 1: amazing opportunity I have to learn and grow? Who can
Speaker 1: I learn from? What do I need to develop here?
Speaker 1: And it's this idea of shifting from almost comparison into
Speaker 1: emulation or envy into study. Make it something action oriented
Speaker 1: that's really powerful, and speak to someone about it. So,
Speaker 1: you know, Jason Siegal from How I Met Your Mother,
Speaker 1: he was describing on a podcast how he was when
Speaker 1: he transitioned from actor into director on Dispatches for Elsewhere.
Speaker 1: From Elsewhere, he was so full of imposter syndrome and anxiety,
Speaker 1: and he said he didn't know what to do. He
Speaker 1: was overthinking and it was becoming this big thing. So
Speaker 1: finally he calls all the crew together and in front
Speaker 1: of everyone. He says, Hey, everyone, this is my first
Speaker 1: time doing this. Don't really know what I'm doing. If
Speaker 1: I do anything that bugs you, let me know. I'm
Speaker 1: sure we're going to have an amazing time. He called
Speaker 1: it out. He acknowledged he didn't try to be perfect,
Speaker 1: as we try to do when we feel like the impost.
Speaker 1: We try to overcompensate so people don't find us out.
Speaker 1: But he just acknowledged it. And he said it was
Speaker 1: incredibly freeing. When you call out the fear, it shrinks it.
Speaker 1: And so if you're ever feeling this way, speak to
Speaker 1: someone about it. You'll probably find they've been there too.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And I love what you said about this idea
Speaker 2: of because a lot of people ask me, they're like, Jay,
Speaker 2: do you ever still feel self doubt or like an impost?
Speaker 2: And I said, I always feel it when I'm doing
Speaker 2: something new. Yeah, and that has made me realize that
Speaker 2: it's got nothing to do with me. No, it's because
Speaker 2: I'm trying to get out of my comfort zone. Yes,
Speaker 2: So I love it now. So I love the idea
Speaker 2: of feeling that way because it's proof to me that
Speaker 2: I'm pushing myself outside of my comfort zone. I'm trying
Speaker 2: something new or expanding something where building a new business,
Speaker 2: for starting a new venture, we're creating a new service,
Speaker 2: purpose program, whatever it may be. It's like I've just
Speaker 2: never done it before. And yeah, if I keep doing
Speaker 2: everything I've always done, I don't get nervous anymore. But
Speaker 2: that's boring to me. Yes, and that's not exciting. And
Speaker 2: so now that feeling of being uncomfortable and being nervous
Speaker 2: and being wondering whether I fit in and everything is
Speaker 2: great because it's a sign to me that I'm moving forward.
Speaker 1: Yes, it's growth with it integrity, as we say, because
Speaker 1: if you had blind delusion, you wouldn't feel the doubt.
Speaker 2: Yes, right exactly.
Speaker 1: So you've got the integrity, the intellectual humility to know, Okay,
Speaker 1: I haven't done this before. Here are the gaps. But
Speaker 1: you're embracing the discomfort that comes with growth. You only
Speaker 1: experience that kind of imposter feeling when you're stretched. You
Speaker 1: would never feel that if you know how to do everything,
Speaker 1: and if you're fully comfortable.
Speaker 2: And if you're a narcissist like you're actually, yes, well.
Speaker 1: Do you need to acknowledge It's like five to eight
Speaker 1: percent of the population that we're not talking about.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, but no, but that delusion point is true
Speaker 2: that if anyone ever says, oh, I never feel any
Speaker 2: self doubt, there's a sense of delusional confidence or a
Speaker 2: lack of self aware, a lack of self awareness, which
Speaker 2: isn't healthy because you're convinced, and it almost is an
Speaker 2: insecurity projection because you're convincing yourself. No, no, of course
Speaker 2: I don't feel anything. It's like, well, no, everyone's human
Speaker 2: would feel. You'd feel something, no matter even if it
Speaker 2: was really small, like if I feel this is a
Speaker 2: terrible example, but because I don't cook, I can't cook
Speaker 2: to same my life. It's like if if my wife
Speaker 2: asked me to cook dinner, I would be freaking out
Speaker 2: because I want to have a clue of what to do.
Speaker 2: And it's the small it's a very small thing, like
Speaker 2: people know how to do it. It's simple. It seems
Speaker 2: like an easy risk. Yeah, now risk, yeah to some degree, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: But that's the point that it's it's not even about
Speaker 2: the grandiosity of the task. It's about what's new to
Speaker 2: you and what you find difficult. And so no one
Speaker 2: can even say, oh, but that's small or that's big, big,
Speaker 2: and smaller, not the indicators of whether you feel uncomfortable.
Speaker 2: And so for someone something uncomfortable might be doing something
Speaker 2: really small, and for someone else, you might be doing
Speaker 2: something really big.
Speaker 1: And exactly exactly. And a big part of that comes
Speaker 1: down to your level of agency. Where do you fall
Speaker 1: on that scale. So agency relates to what's called self efficacy.
Speaker 1: That's a personality trade, which is the belief that you
Speaker 1: can do what you need to do to achieve what
Speaker 1: you want to achieve. I want to take you somewhere,
Speaker 1: which relates to this, and it actually relates to the
Speaker 1: overarching theme of the book Jay. If I were to
Speaker 1: ask you, I mean, we've kind of primed it now,
Speaker 1: but if I were to ask you off the top
Speaker 1: of your head, what do you think the opposite of
Speaker 1: self doubt is?
Speaker 2: Is it not self trust?
Speaker 1: Yeah? So AT primed you, so it's absolutely self trust.
Speaker 1: So we find though that ninety percent of people, if
Speaker 1: we haven't had this conversation, I should have asked you
Speaker 1: that at the very beginning, when we ask this question,
Speaker 1: ninety percent of people will say that it is or
Speaker 1: ninety five percent will say it is confidence. Confidence, And
Speaker 1: so many people so much of the population are waiting
Speaker 1: for that feeling of confidence before they take that step.
Speaker 1: They say, I'll know when I'm ready. You know, that
Speaker 1: feeling of confidence that we wait for. Actually, when we
Speaker 1: look at the literature, it does not come before we
Speaker 1: take the action. It comes after we take the action.
Speaker 1: Because the brain needs to see yourself doing the thing.
Speaker 1: It gets a proof point, it gets an evidence point,
Speaker 1: Hey I can do this. That then builds a degree
Speaker 1: of skill and competence. Hey I did it and I
Speaker 1: was okay, and I got better, which then boosts your
Speaker 1: self efficacy, and then that creates momentum and motivation. And
Speaker 1: that is the feeling that we've a asociated with confidence.
Speaker 2: So what do we need before the.
Speaker 1: What do we need before Well, when we actually look
Speaker 1: at the word confidence, So I think this is where
Speaker 1: the mix up happened. When we look at the origins
Speaker 1: of the word confidence. It comes from the words in
Speaker 1: Latin con and fidere, meaning with trust. And so really,
Speaker 1: what we need before we take action is not that
Speaker 1: feeling that we're waiting for. It's self trust, trusting that
Speaker 1: you can handle whatever comes your way, whether you succeed,
Speaker 1: whether you fail, whether you bounce back, whether you bounce
Speaker 1: whatever it is, you will be okay. And in order
Speaker 1: to do that, we call that the state of big trust,
Speaker 1: which is recognizing these four attributes, reminding yourself that you
Speaker 1: can strengthen them, working on strengthening them, and also knowing
Speaker 1: which one can you lean on when you might be
Speaker 1: weaker in the others. So that's and why this ties
Speaker 1: into agency is agency is such a big part of
Speaker 1: this because if you do not believe that you can
Speaker 1: do the thing, if you don't believe that you have
Speaker 1: the skills or the ability to learn or capacity to adapt,
Speaker 1: you will not take that step. And so you will
Speaker 1: perpetually wait to feel ready, and then you're waiting and
Speaker 1: you will often occupy yourself or distract yourself with preparation
Speaker 1: and planning and all the things that we do that
Speaker 1: we think we're being productive by doing, but they're just
Speaker 1: distracting us. It's procrastinating essentially. Yeah, we just need to
Speaker 1: take the action. So agency is recognizing, hey, I can
Speaker 1: do this. I have been here before, as in I've
Speaker 1: been in unfamiliar situations and I was fine. How can
Speaker 1: I draw on that I have handled challenges before? How
Speaker 1: can I bring those attributes there's this fantastic story that
Speaker 1: comes from Polisher, legendary graphic designer. So in the nineteen
Speaker 1: it was nineteen ninety eight when Citybank was merging with
Speaker 1: Travelers Insurance, creating City Bank. They or City Group, they
Speaker 1: brought Polisher in to create the logo design. And so
Speaker 1: she's sitting at this meeting and they're all talking about
Speaker 1: what they want for this logo. She grabs a napkin
Speaker 1: and she starts scribbling on this nap for a few seconds.
Speaker 1: Finally she slides the napkin over and she says, here's
Speaker 1: your logo. The table was stunned. They said, how is
Speaker 1: it possible that you created a logo in a matter
Speaker 1: of seconds. And she sat back and she said, it's
Speaker 1: done in a second. And thirty four years, it's done
Speaker 1: in a second, and every experience and everything that's in
Speaker 1: my head, this is what happens when we lack agency.
Speaker 1: I mean, Paul is showing us what it looks like
Speaker 1: to have a strong degree of agency. When we lack agency,
Speaker 1: often what happens is we start to undervalue the skills
Speaker 1: and the strength that we've developed, because now they become
Speaker 1: easy for us. They're no longer an effort for us,
Speaker 1: and so we forget the value that they can add.
Speaker 1: We've come to e quate and I think this is
Speaker 1: a byproduct of the society that we live in. We've
Speaker 1: come to equate effort with value. I must put in
Speaker 1: effort in order to be delivering something of value, and
Speaker 1: if it comes too easily, then it's not a value.
Speaker 1: But that's because your expertise becomes second nature to you,
Speaker 1: and then it becomes invisible to you. Not only that,
Speaker 1: it can become invisible to other people if you do
Speaker 1: something reasonably easily like this situation. How can you design
Speaker 1: this logo that they ended up paying one point five
Speaker 1: million dollars for? How can you do that in a
Speaker 1: few seconds. You have to spend months creating this design
Speaker 1: in order for us to pay you that money. No,
Speaker 1: we need to remind ourselves that we have an incredible
Speaker 1: track record of not only hard skills and tangible achievements,
Speaker 1: but what we call essence qualities, the growth, mindset, the curiosity,
Speaker 1: the persistence, the diligence, and these are things that you
Speaker 1: develop not only at work, but importantly in life. We
Speaker 1: forget when we're at work, and this used to happen
Speaker 1: to me all the time, and it happens to so
Speaker 1: many of the people in our programs. They start a
Speaker 1: new job and they yes, they may not be able
Speaker 1: to do the things that they need to do in
Speaker 1: the job, and then they get so down on themselves
Speaker 1: forgetting that they have all these other skills and attributes
Speaker 1: that they can be applying to help them learn what
Speaker 1: they need to learn. They can bring their growth mindset,
Speaker 1: the curiosity, their desire to learn new things, their ability
Speaker 1: to grasp things really quickly. They can bring all of
Speaker 1: that with them, and as soon as you remind them
Speaker 1: of that, they suddenly feel so much more at ease,
Speaker 1: and it opens up their mind to learning quicker. So
Speaker 1: if anyone listening is in a position where you don't
Speaker 1: feel like you have everything that you need, everything on
Speaker 1: the job description, and you're magnifying your gaps, which is
Speaker 1: what the brain does, pause and write down. Firstly, write
Speaker 1: down everything that you are needing to do. Write everything
Speaker 1: on the job description for the role, whatever it might be.
Speaker 1: In the middle column, what are all of the qualities
Speaker 1: that you have developed over the course of your life.
Speaker 1: And then in your third column, you're mapping your middle
Speaker 1: column to your first column. Right, So I'm going to
Speaker 1: bring my growth mindset for this one, this one and
Speaker 1: this one. I'm going to bring my diligence for here
Speaker 1: and here. I'm going to bring my ability to be
Speaker 1: really tenacious to this, that and that. And then suddenly
Speaker 1: you've mapped out what you need to apply and how,
Speaker 1: and it's incredibly empowering and it boosts your self efficacy
Speaker 1: and your sen of agency.
Speaker 2: You've reminded me because you just gave us the Latin
Speaker 2: of confidence. I remember looking at the English Dictionary definition
Speaker 2: of confidence, and one of them was the acknowledgment and
Speaker 2: appreciation of one's own abilities and skills.
Speaker 1: Beautiful like, that's actually the Beau definition.
Speaker 2: So confidence isn't a feeling.
Speaker 1: It's not a feeling.
Speaker 2: It's not a feeling. It's not an attitude, it's not
Speaker 2: a mindset. It's the acknowledgment and appreciation of what you've
Speaker 2: just said, of one's own skills and abilities and qualities.
Speaker 2: As you're saying, it's a bit more than that. When
Speaker 2: I looked, I think it might even say qualities. Actually
Speaker 2: I could be wrong. I actually think it might actually
Speaker 2: say that. And now when I think about it, I'm
Speaker 2: like of course, it's almost like when you're halfway up
Speaker 2: a mountain, you have to look back down and say,
Speaker 2: I've walked up halfway.
Speaker 1: As opposed to just looking at how much is left
Speaker 1: to go Oly.
Speaker 2: If you just look at the top and you go,
Speaker 2: oh god, that flag is so high, Oh my gosh,
Speaker 2: there's so many you know, there's such a steep climb.
Speaker 2: But if you look back and go, how did I
Speaker 2: get halfway up it? That didn't take that long, Okay,
Speaker 2: I've done half Okay, god noo. And it's just so
Speaker 2: fascinating to me that we haven't been trained to do that,
Speaker 2: to actually acknowledge. And I'd say that to everyone when
Speaker 2: I'm speaking on stage sometimes and I'm working with someone
Speaker 2: in the audience who's having a really tough time with this.
Speaker 2: Something I like to remind everyone is each and every
Speaker 2: one of you have been through something really difficult. Each
Speaker 2: and every person has been through a extreme pain, whether
Speaker 2: it was the loss of a loved one, the divorce
Speaker 2: of family members, a break up, the loss of a dream.
Speaker 2: Everyone there is no human on the planet who hasn't
Speaker 2: been through something that for them was exceptionally difficult. And
Speaker 2: you're still here and you survived, and maybe you've even
Speaker 2: fallen in love again and have an amazing job and
Speaker 2: have found kindness and grace within yourself. And if you
Speaker 2: don't look at that as a monument and as a
Speaker 2: marker of how far you've come, nothing will ever fill
Speaker 2: that you have to There's nothing that will ever, ever,
Speaker 2: ever ever fill that void, because if you can't notice
Speaker 2: all the hard things you've done, you will continue to
Speaker 2: ignore all the hard things you're about to do and
Speaker 2: not even feel you're capable of them. And I love
Speaker 2: that you're giving people a practical methodology in the book
Speaker 2: and today in how to actually do that, And I
Speaker 2: agree with you, before you apply for that job, do this. Yeah,
Speaker 2: Like this is more important than putting your resume together
Speaker 2: and all of that, because before that job interview, do this.
Speaker 1: I love how you've just touched on this idea of
Speaker 1: the challenges we've been through, which leads us into the
Speaker 1: third pillar. But before we get there, I want to
Speaker 1: come back to agency for a moment. So when people
Speaker 1: are applying for jobs, what's really valuable to know is
Speaker 1: that you don't have to have one hundred percent of
Speaker 1: what's on the job description, but you have to be
Speaker 1: able to demonstrate if you make it to an interview
Speaker 1: that even though you don't have everything that's there, you
Speaker 1: have other transferable skills and attributes and qualities that you
Speaker 1: will apply to learn what you need to learn. So
Speaker 1: let me share an example with you. When I worked
Speaker 1: in banking, I applied for a very, very senior role
Speaker 1: that was probably three levels above where I was, and
Speaker 1: I was completely underqualified for it. I already had another
Speaker 1: job that had been offered to me, so I wasn't
Speaker 1: this was kind of a side piece. I wasn't side piece, No,
Speaker 1: it was it was an opportunity that you know, I
Speaker 1: would have taken if I had it, But it meant
Speaker 1: I didn't have as much pressure, so I got to
Speaker 1: try something. So I went in there for the first
Speaker 1: round interview and it went really well, and I went
Speaker 1: back for the second round interview, which was the final one,
Speaker 1: and when I came to sit down with the head
Speaker 1: of this entire area, I sat down and he said
Speaker 1: to me, look, Shade, I need to tell you that
Speaker 1: we we're not entirely sure. And as he was finishing,
Speaker 1: I jumped in and I said, it's very clear that
Speaker 1: I don't have all the roles or all the track
Speaker 1: record of having done this before. Yes, I don't have
Speaker 1: experience in all of these things, but let me tell
Speaker 1: you what I do bring. I have been in roles
Speaker 1: in the past where I haven't known how to do anything,
Speaker 1: and I very quickly got up to speed. I asked
Speaker 1: what I needed to ask, I learned, I excelled, and
Speaker 1: I was able to deliver In this example. I did this.
Speaker 1: In that example, I did this. I see this as
Speaker 1: being no different. Yes, I haven't been here, but I
Speaker 1: will bring that. And in fact, I consider the fact
Speaker 1: that I don't have experience a bonus because I'm not
Speaker 1: going to do things the way everyone else does. I'm
Speaker 1: going to ask the curious questions where everyone else just
Speaker 1: takes it as a given. And do you know what
Speaker 1: he said to me? He said, I had planned for
Speaker 1: you to come in here today and me to tell
Speaker 1: you that it's not going to work out, but you've
Speaker 1: completely changed my mind. I now have confidence in you.
Speaker 1: We'd like to offer you the role. So then I
Speaker 1: asked for some time to think about it, and I
Speaker 1: realized that actually the other one was better suited to me.
Speaker 1: But it was a lesson in how you shouldn't take
Speaker 1: yourself out of the game before the game begins.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, go.
Speaker 1: In there with confidence acknowledge if you don't know how
Speaker 1: to do The worst thing is to say no, I've
Speaker 1: done it before and then get caught out. Don't lie,
Speaker 1: but have the confidence, the conviction in the fact that hey,
Speaker 1: you have a lot of things you've done before. You
Speaker 1: can bring all of that right now, and in fact,
Speaker 1: maybe it gives you an edge. And then you want
Speaker 1: to tell them how you would spend your first ninety days.
Speaker 1: So give them your ninety day roadmap, so you would
Speaker 1: go in there and say, okay, So my first thirty
Speaker 1: days is going to be spent getting a lay of
Speaker 1: the land, to understand how people do things, to understand
Speaker 1: the culture, and to really have more of an observational role.
Speaker 1: The second thirty days is going to be me determining
Speaker 1: what are the gaps that I need to fill the quickest.
Speaker 1: I will be taking learning programs, I'll be doing training internally,
Speaker 1: maybe shadowing some people. Now, when we get to our
Speaker 1: final thirty days in that ninety day period, that's when
Speaker 1: I'm implementing. That's when I'm developing a strategy for what
Speaker 1: my next twelve months is going to look like that's
Speaker 1: how I'm going to ensure when I start this role,
Speaker 1: I'll be able to hit the ground running. And you
Speaker 1: just say it with so much clarity and conviction that
Speaker 1: they will be blown away.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, it's yeah, And especially if you follow through,
Speaker 2: it's brilliant because women, when they see a resume, underestimate
Speaker 2: what they can do. Men overestimate what they can do.
Speaker 2: And I feel that a lot of those women won't
Speaker 2: apply for a job because they can do seven out
Speaker 2: of the ten times, whereas the research shows a man
Speaker 2: will apply even if he can do only four or
Speaker 2: five out of the ten things. As a woman in
Speaker 2: the example that you've just given as well for your
Speaker 2: own life, like, what can women do to not bow
Speaker 2: out before the race?
Speaker 1: Is to not bow out before the race, essentially, don't
Speaker 1: take yourself out back yourself. And something that's really valuable
Speaker 1: here is what we also know when we've looked at
Speaker 1: neuroscience studies is that women tend to evaluate rejection harder
Speaker 1: than men, in the sense that we deem it to
Speaker 1: be much worse than for example, a man may, so
Speaker 1: we have a tendency to really blow it out of proportion,
Speaker 1: and that's why we often don't want to try something
Speaker 1: if we don't think we're going to succeed. We're keeping
Speaker 1: ourselves safe again at the function of the brain. So
Speaker 1: if you can say to yourself, I'm not taking myself
Speaker 1: out of this race, I'll let them take me out
Speaker 1: if they don't think I'm suited, but I'm going to
Speaker 1: put my best foot forward. I'm also going to remind
Speaker 1: myself that even if it doesn't work out, that is
Speaker 1: not a verdict on me. I'm not going to make
Speaker 1: that mean something about me. I'm just going to learn
Speaker 1: and do better next time. When you can frame it
Speaker 1: that way and also start to get more comfortable with rejection.
Speaker 1: So there's this idea of rejection therapy. Now, the principle
Speaker 1: behind it is that if you fear something, you're going
Speaker 1: to avoid something. If you fear a spider, j you're
Speaker 1: not going to go near spiders. But if you want
Speaker 1: to get over that phobia, what we do is the
Speaker 1: process of systematic desensitization, where first I'd show you a
Speaker 1: picture on my phone of a spider, then next I'd
Speaker 1: show you a video, Then next I'd have a spy
Speaker 1: in a cage on the other side of the room.
Speaker 1: Then it would come closer, then it would be right
Speaker 1: in front of you. Then it wouldn't be in the cage.
Speaker 1: Then it would be on your hand, and you're systematically
Speaker 1: I mean, this wouldn't all happen in a day, This
Speaker 1: would be over a number of sessions. But you're essentially
Speaker 1: telling your brain, hey, I can feel that fear, but
Speaker 1: I'm safe. And what happens is you desensitize yourself to
Speaker 1: that fear, and so by the time you've got the
Speaker 1: spider on your hand, you're not having that massive emotional
Speaker 1: reaction anymore. Same principle applies when it comes to things
Speaker 1: like rejection. If you can put yourself in low stakes
Speaker 1: rejections where you might apply for a bunch of roles,
Speaker 1: knowing that you'll get rejected, great, do it. And then
Speaker 1: when you get rejected, you ask yourself, Okay, am I
Speaker 1: making this mean something about myself? No, fantastic, it doesn't
Speaker 1: mean anything about me. I'm going to try again next time.
Speaker 1: The more you do this, the more you learn that
Speaker 1: it's okay. You are still you, You still have value,
Speaker 1: you can still accept yourself, you still have agency, and
Speaker 1: you can apply what you need to apply to achieve
Speaker 1: what you need to achieve. So that's one process to
Speaker 1: think about. So any women who were listening, or even
Speaker 1: men who hold back, stop holding back, take the step.
Speaker 1: What's the worst that could happen?
Speaker 2: Did you see any other differences between men and women
Speaker 2: in your research?
Speaker 1: So I saw really clear differences when I used to
Speaker 1: coach men and women. And this is actually even before
Speaker 1: I was officially coaching. We don't even coach anymore. We
Speaker 1: don't do one to one, we do group sessions. Now
Speaker 1: will work with companies. But when I coached, and I
Speaker 1: was actually coaching, when I was still working in banking,
Speaker 1: so I would have people reach out to me colleagues,
Speaker 1: co workers, peers, leaders and asked me to coach them.
Speaker 1: I had no idea what I was doing. I didn't
Speaker 1: know what it meant to be a coach. I had
Speaker 1: no credentials, nothing, But I loved to help, so I
Speaker 1: started helping as much as I could. And what I
Speaker 1: discovered is that the women who would reach out to
Speaker 1: me would do so because they had self doubt. They
Speaker 1: were holding themselves back. They wanted to ask for a raise,
Speaker 1: and they didn't have the courage to do so the
Speaker 1: men who reached out to me for coaching wanted to excel,
Speaker 1: they wanted to perform better, they wanted to be more productive,
Speaker 1: they wanted to start a side business. And it was
Speaker 1: really really clear that what they were seeking helpful was very,
Speaker 1: very different. It's not that these men didn't have self doubt,
Speaker 1: but they see in that environment. It was a small
Speaker 1: sample and anecdotal entirely, but it seemed like they just
Speaker 1: wanted to get ahead and know how they could move faster,
Speaker 1: whereas these women felt like they were stuck and they
Speaker 1: needed to get unstuck. So I found that really fascinating.
Speaker 1: I think part of it is that men typically don't
Speaker 1: like to share the doubt that they're experiencing. They see
Speaker 1: it as a weakness, whereas women we are just much
Speaker 1: more in tune with that, we acknowledge it, we share
Speaker 1: it with communicative and then also potentially there's this element
Speaker 1: around sharing at work. So this is moving slightly in
Speaker 1: a different space, but still really valuable for anyone listening.
Speaker 1: A lot of women are branded as being emotional when
Speaker 1: they're insecure, when they have, you know, they feel a
Speaker 1: strong emotion in a meeting or something like this, Interestingly,
Speaker 1: a lot of men have very strong emotional reactions to things,
Speaker 1: but it's more anger or frustrated or stress. They don't
Speaker 1: get labeled as emotional. So what some research has found is,
Speaker 1: if you feel like you're being labeled as emotional because
Speaker 1: maybe you've got a lot of self doubt and the
Speaker 1: insecurities coming out in that moment, say out loud and
Speaker 1: to yourself, I'm just really passionate about this. I'm acting
Speaker 1: this way because I'm so committed to seeing this through,
Speaker 1: or I'm so committed to doing a good job. By
Speaker 1: shifting from emotional to passion or commitment, it fundamentally changes
Speaker 1: how people see you and how you see yourself. And
Speaker 1: so that's just a little tweak, a little hack that
Speaker 1: comes from the science around helping to Again, it's almost
Speaker 1: like this labeling, you're not emotional, you are just passionate,
Speaker 1: you really care deeply about this thing. And then again
Speaker 1: it allows you because you're shifting your attention to then
Speaker 1: focus on, Okay, what am I doing next? So, Jay,
Speaker 1: now I think we should go into the third pillar.
Speaker 1: Are you ready to dive through?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 1: So the third pillar is what we call actually, before
Speaker 1: I tell you the third pillar, I'm gonna share Bruno's
Speaker 1: story with you. So Bruno was an entrepreneur who reached
Speaker 1: out for help. He was running a business, it was
Speaker 1: doing really well, and yet he was one of these
Speaker 1: people who would always find a problem in every solution.
Speaker 1: He would always focus on what was wrong and it
Speaker 1: was always everyone else's fault. So the very first time
Speaker 1: that we met, he walked in, he was rushing, he
Speaker 1: was complaining about the weather and the traffic and the
Speaker 1: fact that it was so hot in the room. And
Speaker 1: he spoke for about five minutes, ranting. We hadn't even
Speaker 1: shook hands or sat down. He was stuck in this
Speaker 1: litany of grievances. Finally we sat down, we started speaking,
Speaker 1: and what I discovered is that Bruno has a number
Speaker 1: of common patterns. He was an endless complainer, chronic complaining
Speaker 1: about everything. Not only that, he was very resentful to
Speaker 1: other people. He felt like everyone else had an easier
Speaker 1: life than he did. Other people's business success was easier,
Speaker 1: that he felt like he was constantly having to work harder.
Speaker 1: The third pattern was blame. Is constantly blaming other people
Speaker 1: for issues that he was responsible for. He was never
Speaker 1: willing to take ownership. And the fourth pattern is he
Speaker 1: would keep reliving past hurts, so past times that he
Speaker 1: had been hurt by somebody, someone had double crossed him,
Speaker 1: someone had treated him poorly. He kept sharing that story. Now, initially,
Speaker 1: when you're having a conversation with someone you listen to
Speaker 1: these stories. Of course you have empathy. By the tenth
Speaker 1: time they're telling you this story, within a few months,
Speaker 1: you realize they're stuck in a cycle that is keeping
Speaker 1: them stuck when it comes to complaining. And I'll share
Speaker 1: what the attribute is in a moment. But when it
Speaker 1: comes to complaining, we don't realize. This is a sign
Speaker 1: of a lack of self trust because we lack the
Speaker 1: trust that we have the ability to do something about
Speaker 1: the situation. So what do we do? Focus on what
Speaker 1: we cannot control and magnify it and complain about it,
Speaker 1: because it's easier to complain than to take ownership and
Speaker 1: do something. When we keep reliving past hurts, things that
Speaker 1: have happened to us in the past, we're telling what's
Speaker 1: called a contamination story. Jay, you mentioned earlier how every
Speaker 1: single person has lived through hardship, every single person, and
Speaker 1: depending on the story that they tell themselves about that hardship.
Speaker 1: It determines how they feel about that hardship, whether they
Speaker 1: internalize that hardship and make it mean something about them,
Speaker 1: and then whether they feel empowered in their lives or
Speaker 1: the victims. And I'll come back to that story in
Speaker 1: a moment, or the example of the hardships, because I
Speaker 1: do have a really great case study for that. But
Speaker 1: coming back to Bruno, what we discovered is that he
Speaker 1: had a very low level of what we call autonomy.
Speaker 1: He felt like he didn't have the freedom to make choices.
Speaker 1: He felt like he didn't have the ability to influence
Speaker 1: his outcomes, and that's why he fixated on everything outside
Speaker 1: of his control. This relates to what's called a locus
Speaker 1: of control. So Jay, you have a locus. I have
Speaker 1: a locus. Everyone listening will have a locus of control,
Speaker 1: which comes from the Latin word location, which means where
Speaker 1: do you place the control in your life? Do you
Speaker 1: believe that you can control things? And I'm not talking
Speaker 1: about control everything, because we know a lot of life
Speaker 1: is uncontrollable, but do you believe that you have some
Speaker 1: degree of influence or that life is happening to you
Speaker 1: because of external forces or other people, or society or
Speaker 1: the government. If you have an external focus, external locus,
Speaker 1: you will focus on things outside of your control. What
Speaker 1: other people think, what other people do, what other people say,
Speaker 1: what the government is doing, what the media is doing,
Speaker 1: what your neighbor is doing, what your brother is doing,
Speaker 1: the future of the past, things that you cannot control.
Speaker 1: And then how do you feel when you're focusing on
Speaker 1: those things? You feel powerless? Why? Because you are powerless.
Speaker 1: When you have an internal locus, you acknowledge that you
Speaker 1: can influence the outcome, you can shape your path. Again,
Speaker 1: not everything is controllable, but you focus on what you
Speaker 1: do have control over your thoughts, your feelings, your interpretations,
Speaker 1: your actions. That is it. And when you focus on
Speaker 1: those things, guess what, you remarkably feel more powerful because
Speaker 1: you're focusing on things you can do. We also know
Speaker 1: when people get stuck. So where Bruno was when he
Speaker 1: was in that external locus, we see a lot of
Speaker 1: activity in the emotion centers of the brain, very little
Speaker 1: activity in the prefrontal regions, which is what we need
Speaker 1: for rationality and solutions and logical thinking. So, if you
Speaker 1: ever find yourself feeling like you're complaining, feeling like a victim,
Speaker 1: and I'm not talking about real victims. I'm talking about
Speaker 1: those who victimize themselves. If anyone listening ever feels that,
Speaker 1: and the reality is it can happen, especially when unfair
Speaker 1: things happen in your life. You need to tell yourself, okay,
Speaker 1: instead of why me, what now?
Speaker 2: What?
Speaker 1: Now? It's happened. I can't do anything about it. I'm
Speaker 1: not going to dwell on it. What am I going
Speaker 1: to do about it? And we have this great little
Speaker 1: exercise we love to share with people. It's called the
Speaker 1: I could and that I will list So when people
Speaker 1: get to this state, if we encourage them to think
Speaker 1: about what you will do next, often what happens is
Speaker 1: that they start to think about all the things that
Speaker 1: they should have done or that they should do. And
Speaker 1: the language of should is very disempowering. It does one
Speaker 1: or two things that either makes us feel like we're
Speaker 1: falling short or that we're being compelled against our will.
Speaker 1: And we don't like being told what to do. It's
Speaker 1: called reactants. And when we hear a should, often it's
Speaker 1: like a part of us is telling us what to do,
Speaker 1: and we don't like it. We resist it, so we
Speaker 1: avoid the words should. So when we move to coulds,
Speaker 1: research has found that when you use the word could
Speaker 1: instead of should, it opens up divergent thinking.
Speaker 2: It's remarkable, it's a remark, it's a word.
Speaker 1: Sometimes when I look at some of this research, I think,
Speaker 1: how is something this simple so incredibly powerful? And it's
Speaker 1: because words create worlds inside us and outside of us.
Speaker 1: So you shift to could. Grab a piece of paper
Speaker 1: and you split it into two two columns. On the left,
Speaker 1: you right your I could list. What are all the
Speaker 1: things that you you could do in the current circumstances,
Speaker 1: whether you've just been laid off from your job, whether
Speaker 1: your business failed, whether your relationship has broken down. What
Speaker 1: are all the things you could do right now that
Speaker 1: allows you to feel a sense of okay, there are opportunities,
Speaker 1: there are possibilities. Here. You're also directing your attention, which
Speaker 1: reduces that emotion activation re engages your prefrontal regions. Next step,
Speaker 1: what will you do? Circle three things from your could
Speaker 1: do list and write them in your will do list,
Speaker 1: and you write I will bang bang bang, and then
Speaker 1: you take action. You're hijacking that ruminatative part of your
Speaker 1: brain and gearing yourself towards action, reminding yourself that no
Speaker 1: matter how bad things are, you always have a choice,
Speaker 1: and you're choosing to take a step forward. So we
Speaker 1: shared all of this with Bruno and we had to
Speaker 1: go through this long process. But for Bruno, there was
Speaker 1: something else that was really affecting him, and it was
Speaker 1: this contamination story he was telling. He kept telling people
Speaker 1: and himself, my life is so difficult. It's always been
Speaker 1: so difficult. It's always going to be so difficult, and
Speaker 1: it took a lot of time to shake that. We
Speaker 1: worked him through a process which I'll share in just
Speaker 1: a moment, but I want to share a story that
Speaker 1: we shared with Bruno and he loved it, and so
Speaker 1: I think all the listeners will appreciate this. So this
Speaker 1: is in the When was It Okay? So there's a
Speaker 1: nineteen year old boy. He's a drummer and he loves drumming.
Speaker 1: This is a true story, by the way, I'm not
Speaker 1: making this up. He absolutely loves drumming and he's playing
Speaker 1: with his band for two years. They are working together,
Speaker 1: they're refining, they're so excited and they feel like they're
Speaker 1: just on the brink of something really phenomenal happening. It's
Speaker 1: at that moment that his manager calls him into the
Speaker 1: office and he sits down. He's not really sure why
Speaker 1: he's there, and they say to him, look, Peter, we're
Speaker 1: letting you go. We're replacing you with a different drummer.
Speaker 1: And he wasn't even really given an explanation. Just like that,
Speaker 1: his dreams of working with this band and taking them
Speaker 1: to stardom had just crumbled, and he didn't even understand why.
Speaker 1: And they said, we're replacing with a drummer by the
Speaker 1: name of Ringo. This band was the Beatles, right before
Speaker 1: their global megastardom. They replace their drummer. Now, Peter Best
Speaker 1: goes through a depression. He starts spiraling, he becomes resentful,
Speaker 1: he becomes suicidal. He's loading bread in the back of
Speaker 1: a delivery van while he's seeing the band that he
Speaker 1: worked with for two years on a global tour becoming icons.
Speaker 1: But today he tells a different story. He says, everything
Speaker 1: I've been through, happy and sad, good and bad, have
Speaker 1: made me who I am today. I wouldn't change any
Speaker 1: of it. He acknowledges that life would have been very different,
Speaker 1: but he chooses to tell a story that is centered
Speaker 1: around ownership. And he chooses to focus on what he has,
Speaker 1: his beautiful wife, his wonderful kids, his grandchildren, and he
Speaker 1: even says, he goes, if you dwell on all the
Speaker 1: bad things in your life, and if you have a
Speaker 1: regret or resentment, you will become a twisted and bitter
Speaker 1: old get which is a very English thing to say,
Speaker 1: but it's so true. And he embodies this idea of
Speaker 1: the stories that we tell. So what he was referring
Speaker 1: to here is what we call, or what psychologists and
Speaker 1: researchers call, a redemptive story. Dan McAdams has researched this
Speaker 1: for forty years and he's found there are essentially two
Speaker 1: stories that we tell. A redemptive story is one where
Speaker 1: bad things happened and we redeemed ourselves, We learned something,
Speaker 1: we grew stronger, we accepted it. A contamination story is
Speaker 1: where that story has become contaminated in your self identity,
Speaker 1: your self image. You carry those scars with you everywhere,
Speaker 1: and then you keep seeing it replayed because remember how
Speaker 1: you're showing up. The scars that you're carrying shape your expectation,
Speaker 1: which then influences what you see through expectation.
Speaker 2: Bias huge that's huge.
Speaker 1: So that's another and a lot of people say, well,
Speaker 1: how is this self doubt? And I love that this
Speaker 1: is considered part of your self image because if you
Speaker 1: do not believe or trust that you have the ability
Speaker 1: to shape your outcomes or redefine your story, you're going
Speaker 1: to struggle. And that's why this third pillar is autonomy.
Speaker 2: There's something you said today that really struck me. I
Speaker 2: was saying that everyone's been through hard things, and the
Speaker 2: way you flip that really powerfully, and it was subtle,
Speaker 2: was that but it's how you feel about how you
Speaker 2: got through those hard things that define how they impact you.
Speaker 2: And that is so true and powerful. Like that really
Speaker 2: really hit me and resonated with me. I don't think
Speaker 2: I've heard it being said like that before, because, like
Speaker 2: you said, you talked about your parents' divorce, and even
Speaker 2: if it was even though it was amicable and you
Speaker 2: had a loving family, your take was what else could
Speaker 2: I have done? So even though you've been through a
Speaker 2: hard thing, you see it as your fault in some way,
Speaker 2: or you see it as something you could have done better,
Speaker 2: and therefore thinking about that hard thing and getting through
Speaker 2: it doesn't make you feel stronger it makes you feel
Speaker 2: weak and insignificant and whatever else you would use to
Speaker 2: describe yourself, because your memory of it and your story
Speaker 2: of it is I failed. Yes, your story of it isn't.
Speaker 2: I'm still alive and it's still survived, and I'm still good.
Speaker 2: And that is magnificent as a as a case study,
Speaker 2: because that's why people's difficult times don't inspire them, because
Speaker 2: their difficult times remind them that they're a failure. Yes,
Speaker 2: because that's the story that they built around. Yes.
Speaker 1: And we also know that when you're remembering a memory,
Speaker 1: you're not actually remembering the first thing, the first time
Speaker 1: that it happened. Yeah, you're remembering the last memory you
Speaker 1: had of it. Yes, And this is why actually memory
Speaker 1: is so fallible. They've done some studies where they've looked
Speaker 1: at suggestion and they've had people witness a crime and
Speaker 1: then they get asked to report on the crime. And
Speaker 1: let's say there was a yellow car that was speeding
Speaker 1: by the person asking questions would say how fast do
Speaker 1: you think the red car was going? And because they're
Speaker 1: not thinking about the color of the car, they'll report
Speaker 1: a speed and then the next time they ask them,
Speaker 1: that person will say yeah, it was a red car.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And so we need to be so mindful every time
Speaker 1: we relive something. And this is why overthinking, resentment, complaining
Speaker 1: is so dangerous. We're re wiring this into our system
Speaker 1: and also just remembering the last time we remembered it.
Speaker 1: But you know what's beautiful about that. It means that
Speaker 1: you can actually change the meaning you're applying to these events,
Speaker 1: and then when you start remembering the new meaning, you
Speaker 1: start to fundamentally change the memory. You mentioned something that
Speaker 1: I love sharing about, which is the bad experiences happened
Speaker 1: to us, the unfairness, the colossal pressure that we face,
Speaker 1: the whatever it is, the heartbreak, the early death, the
Speaker 1: challenges at work, business failure. A lot of these things
Speaker 1: may lead to PTSD. If something is traumatic enough, it
Speaker 1: will lead to PTSD. And a lot of people in
Speaker 1: their minds think traumatic experience PTSD. But did you know
Speaker 1: that there's quite a large number of people who never
Speaker 1: experience PTSD. They experience post traumatic growth. I do not
Speaker 1: talk about this enough.
Speaker 2: I've never heard of it.
Speaker 1: I've never heard of it either until I came across
Speaker 1: the research. There was a really large number of people
Speaker 1: who don't go through the traumatic negative experience, They experience
Speaker 1: growth from that traumatic experience, and then when they've had
Speaker 1: a look at what is causing the growth, there's one
Speaker 1: quality that they have curiosity. They don't just accept the
Speaker 1: situation for what it was and then internalize it for
Speaker 1: what it was. They ask questions about the situation. Could
Speaker 1: I have changed this? What could I have done differently?
Speaker 1: How did I feel when that was happening? What if
Speaker 1: I were to approach it this way? They go through
Speaker 1: almost a process of self inquiry, almost like coaching themselves
Speaker 1: to try and determine, Okay, what actually happened and what
Speaker 1: was my function? And can I change my interpretation? And
Speaker 1: they use it to get better rather than become bitter.
Speaker 1: And that is a powerful reminder to us that we
Speaker 1: can reclaim that autonomy. So how do we do it?
Speaker 1: How do we change these stories? It's a process called
Speaker 1: narrative reidentification. It comes from narrative therapy. It's been around
Speaker 1: for decades and it's been proven to be highly highly effective.
Speaker 1: It just takes time. Essentially, what you want to do
Speaker 1: is determine what is the story you're telling yourself. So
Speaker 1: in Bruno's case, his story was that my life is
Speaker 1: more difficult than everyone else's. And when we got deeper,
Speaker 1: it's because when he was growing up, he had an
Speaker 1: older sister who was the golden child, did everything right,
Speaker 1: achieved amazing things. He was constantly compared to her, and
Speaker 1: he wasn't given freedom to make decisions because his parents
Speaker 1: had assumed that he's going to mess up. They told
Speaker 1: him this is what you do. This is because you're
Speaker 1: never going to be like her, so we will create
Speaker 1: your path for you. So he never had a sense
Speaker 1: of autonomy, which led him to constantly focus on things
Speaker 1: outside of his control because he had nothing that he
Speaker 1: felt he could control. So we had to work through
Speaker 1: that process and this was really confronting for him because
Speaker 1: he naturally would resist, but we worked through it and
Speaker 1: he was open to it. Then the next step is, okay, Bruno,
Speaker 1: is that story serving you? Genuinely? Is it serving you?
Speaker 1: And it took him a while to acknowledge that no,
Speaker 1: it wasn't. He doesn't want to feel that way. So
Speaker 1: then the next step is, okay, how would you rewrite
Speaker 1: this story in a way that served you? What would
Speaker 1: you tell someone else? Let's go through that process, so
Speaker 1: you essentially rewrite your story focusing on what you learned,
Speaker 1: how you grew, and how you became stronger using that curiosity.
Speaker 1: And this took a little while for him to get
Speaker 1: comfortable with that and work through it. But then every
Speaker 1: time I would ask him, tell me your story again,
Speaker 1: tell me again, focus on what you learned. And it
Speaker 1: was remarkable seeing how he changed every part of him,
Speaker 1: changed the way he would turn up, the way he
Speaker 1: initially would spend five minutes complaining at the beginning of
Speaker 1: a session to suddenly be smiling, sitting down, ready to
Speaker 1: get going. And this is because when you re edit
Speaker 1: your narrative. Now we're not saying you change the facts.
Speaker 1: You cannot change the facts. What has happened has happened.
Speaker 1: But studies have found that the real power comes not
Speaker 1: in changing the history, but in changing the meaning that
Speaker 1: you have applied to that, what it means for you,
Speaker 1: how you've interpreted it. And you can edit your story
Speaker 1: at any point in time, which is the most beautiful thing.
Speaker 1: And this is a process that I actually take through
Speaker 1: people through in the book and Bruno stories in there
Speaker 1: to work through it because a big part of it
Speaker 1: is okay, great, we know this, but how do you
Speaker 1: do it? And that's essentially why I wanted to write
Speaker 1: this book, to help people have this guide to step
Speaker 1: by step work through these processes to strengthen these attributes.
Speaker 1: And when you can do that for autonomy, you suddenly
Speaker 1: feel more personally powerful.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because we just make it out like everything's our.
Speaker 1: Fault completely or everything's out to get us.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, and there's enough evidence to prove that. Yes,
Speaker 2: if you're looking for it. Yes, we know that there's
Speaker 2: things we can control and there's things we can't control.
Speaker 2: But when you were saying you're calling it the external locus,
Speaker 2: when your mind space is locked in the external locus,
Speaker 2: you feel powerless because you are. Yeah, and that I
Speaker 2: love that connection because if we believe we're powerless, it's
Speaker 2: because we're finding all the evidence that we're powerless. So
Speaker 2: if I considered the weather today and your mood and
Speaker 2: my success online today as a dictation of how good
Speaker 2: I am, then I'm going to feel powerless because I
Speaker 2: actually am powerless by the three metrics that I've chosen
Speaker 2: to do it by. So it's not even that your
Speaker 2: story's inaccurate. Your story is just wrongly focused completely.
Speaker 1: Your attention is on the wrong thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so just that simple shift back to say, okay,
Speaker 2: let me actually only measure myself by things I can control.
Speaker 2: And I don't know why we all believe that we
Speaker 2: can control someone else's mood, our boss is mood, the weather,
Speaker 2: the timeline, the schedule. Like, I just don't know why
Speaker 2: we feel so strongly that we can control the things
Speaker 2: we can't and that we can't control the things we can.
Speaker 1: Because it's easier to do that. It's much harder to
Speaker 1: focus on what we can control, because then we feel
Speaker 1: empowered and we have to do something about it. Remember
Speaker 1: the brain, the brain likes certainty, and it wants to
Speaker 1: use the least amount of effort possible. And if it
Speaker 1: gets you to focus on everything outside of your control,
Speaker 1: you're not using your prefrontal regions, which require a lot
Speaker 1: of metabolic energy, and so great it's easier for the brain.
Speaker 1: We go down these habit paths of overthinking and catastrophizing,
Speaker 1: and then we don't have to do anything about it.
Speaker 1: We don't have to take the step into discomfort, we
Speaker 1: don't have to risk the rejection or the criticism by
Speaker 1: trying the thing. There's this beautiful analogy of a cow
Speaker 1: and a bison, which I came across and I loved
Speaker 1: and I had to put it in the book, and
Speaker 1: I want to share it because it's very short, but
Speaker 1: it's so poignant to what we're talking about. So cows
Speaker 1: and bison are very similar in terms of their animal history,
Speaker 1: very very similar to their cousins in the animal world,
Speaker 1: but they have a very very different approach to how
Speaker 1: they weather storms and challenges that they might experience, like
Speaker 1: a physical storm. So cows have been observed to huddle together,
Speaker 1: usually under a tree, but also they generally walk away
Speaker 1: from the storm, so they'll walk with the wind and
Speaker 1: then what happens is they end up receiving the brunt
Speaker 1: of the storm when the storm eventually catches up to them. Bison,
Speaker 1: on the other hand, have been observed to walk towards
Speaker 1: the storm. They walk into the wind, which counterintuitorly means
Speaker 1: they generally pass the brunt of the storm they get
Speaker 1: through it much quicker. So what is the insight that
Speaker 1: we learned from this, Well, there are two mindsets. There
Speaker 1: is the bison mindset, where you see the bad thing,
Speaker 1: you acknowledge the bad thing, approach the bad thing knowing
Speaker 1: that there's light on the other side, or the cow mindset.
Speaker 1: You avoid the bad thing. You run away from the
Speaker 1: bad thing. You don't want to own up to the
Speaker 1: bad thing or take ownership over it. You run away,
Speaker 1: and then it'll just get worse and worse and worse.
Speaker 1: Some people don't like the you know, thinking of themselves
Speaker 1: as a cow, so you can think of something else,
Speaker 1: some other animal, a labord or whatever it is. But
Speaker 1: we need to be asking how do we embody more
Speaker 1: of that bison mindset? How do we just acknowledge you know,
Speaker 1: life is hard, life is really hard, and you get
Speaker 1: to choose how you're going to show up to that
Speaker 1: hard Are you going to try and avoid it? Because
Speaker 1: what we also know part of this pillar is recognizing
Speaker 1: that the more you expose yourself to hard things. So
Speaker 1: this goes back to your story Jay about how you
Speaker 1: just embrace the discomfort and now you love it. The
Speaker 1: more you can expose yourself to discomfort. So when we're
Speaker 1: experiencing discomfort, it's the brain's way of telling us, Hey,
Speaker 1: this is uncertain. I don't like it. Go back and
Speaker 1: play it safe because then I don't have to use
Speaker 1: as much energy. Right, But if you can acknowledge that
Speaker 1: that discomfort is often what triggers neurotrophins in the brain,
Speaker 1: which are these proteins that help us learn things and
Speaker 1: develop new pathways in the brain. And it's through discomfort
Speaker 1: that we get that way. And that's why learning something
Speaker 1: new is uncomfortable, because it's triggering parts in the brain.
Speaker 1: But the more you do that, the easier it gets,
Speaker 1: and then that initial discomfort is so much less the
Speaker 1: next time, and then less the next time. You almost
Speaker 1: reinterpret what you feel. Hey, I feel this way because
Speaker 1: I care. I feel this way because it's excitement, not fear,
Speaker 1: and that idea of being the bison, stepping into the discomfort,
Speaker 1: putting yourself out there. A lot of people talk about luck. Oh,
Speaker 1: I'm going to share one more story with you. It
Speaker 1: from Christopher Nolan. It's such a good one.
Speaker 2: I love you know. Nolan's my favorite, brilliant Okay, so.
Speaker 1: You're gonna you're gonna resonate with this. You're gonna resonate.
Speaker 1: So Christopher Nolan for anyone not so familiar, he's the
Speaker 1: incredible director of Oppenheimer and Inception and what.
Speaker 3: Else is it doing Dark Knight trilogy exactly. Yeah, phenomena.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Memento is brilliant, and a lot of people, oh Interstellar,
Speaker 1: that's right. A lot of people will say he is
Speaker 1: phenomenally lucky with the weather when he shoots.
Speaker 2: Interesting.
Speaker 1: Okay, noomenally lucky because incredible, incredible scenes with just the
Speaker 1: weather being exactly what it needed to be. Like, there
Speaker 1: was this one scene in Inception not inception in Oppenheimer
Speaker 1: where they were doing the detonation of the first nuclear
Speaker 1: bomb and they had this incredible, dark, ominous storm that
Speaker 1: was rolling in and they were able to film and
Speaker 1: get this incredible scene that created cinematic magic. There was
Speaker 1: so much drama. Now, Nolan in interviews he rejects the
Speaker 1: idea that he's lucky. He says, I am not lucky.
Speaker 1: I am incredibly unlucky. But we have made a pact
Speaker 1: and a commitment that when we go out there, we
Speaker 1: shoot no matter what the weather conditions are in and
Speaker 1: that allows us to capitalize when the right weather is there.
Speaker 1: So what is the lesson that we take from this?
Speaker 1: Nolan's team has created an environment where they embrace the
Speaker 1: discomfort of not knowing what weather they're going to have.
Speaker 1: Some days it rains, some days it's sunny, some days
Speaker 1: it's great, some days it's not. They film regardless, So
Speaker 1: they're exposing themselves to that discomfort so that when the
Speaker 1: opportunity arises like that amazing storm, they know how to
Speaker 1: handle it. They've been in similar situations. They are prepped,
Speaker 1: they are primed. And we call this earned luck. So
Speaker 1: it's not just oh my goodness, we got lucky, No,
Speaker 1: we earned that luck. We created what's his name is.
Speaker 1: There's a tech entrepreneur who calls it a luck surface area.
Speaker 1: You can increase your luck surface area and the chances
Speaker 1: that you will receive good luck by exposure to discomfort, visibility,
Speaker 1: putting yourself out there, putting your hand up in the meeting,
Speaker 1: applying for the job that you think you're not going
Speaker 1: to get. You don't know unless you try, and that's
Speaker 1: the sign of your autonomy. And so strengthening that attribute
Speaker 1: is so important for that state of big trust, so
Speaker 1: you can start to achieve the things you want to achieve,
Speaker 1: get the opportunities that you really seek.
Speaker 2: It's amazing talked about accept and we've talked about agency autonomy. Yes,
Speaker 2: I love that you taught You taught me something about
Speaker 2: Nolan that I didn't know because I'm a big Nolan geek.
Speaker 2: So I love that. What's the fourth one?
Speaker 1: The fourth one is what we call adaptability, and it
Speaker 1: specifically relates in the context of doubt and big trust.
Speaker 1: It relates to your ability to adapt to your emotions.
Speaker 1: We cannot necessarily control emotions. We can guide them, we
Speaker 1: can harness them, but they will often come in response
Speaker 1: to a stimulus. Yeah, so how do you adapt to it?
Speaker 2: So for that, what I want to do is I
Speaker 2: want to give you a series of scenarios okay, where
Speaker 2: I think you are having emotions, Okay, to help you
Speaker 2: answer it. Sound good? Yeah, okay, great, all right, because
Speaker 2: I think this is what I was saving these for
Speaker 2: because I feel they'll their moments in time that all
Speaker 2: of us experience where there is an emotional reaction and
Speaker 2: we need to know how to adapt.
Speaker 1: Yes, brilliant.
Speaker 2: So you're about to speak up in a meeting and
Speaker 2: your brain floods with what if I mess up?
Speaker 1: So we call this the three second spiral stop. So
Speaker 1: when this happens, you want to acknowledge. So first we
Speaker 1: take a breath, take a moment, take a breath three seconds,
Speaker 1: breathe in second step, is to acknowledge that your brain
Speaker 1: is just doing what it's meant to do. It's just
Speaker 1: wired to magnify everything that could go wrong. But it's okay.
Speaker 1: There's no physical danger here, so you need to remind
Speaker 1: yourself nothing terrible is going to happen. The fourth are
Speaker 1: way up to the third step. I think we're up
Speaker 1: to the third step. The third step is to keep
Speaker 1: your whatever you're going to say, keep it as short
Speaker 1: as possible. And the reason why I say this is
Speaker 1: because your brain is magnifying what could go wrong, because
Speaker 1: you probably haven't done this many times. It doesn't really
Speaker 1: have the proof points that you can do this and
Speaker 1: do it well. And if you try and go out
Speaker 1: there and the first thing you want to say is
Speaker 1: a five minute monologue about you're going to fluster and
Speaker 1: lose it, and then you're going to have a negative
Speaker 1: evidence point. So keep it really short. You might validate
Speaker 1: what someone else has said. That's a great idea, Jay,
Speaker 1: or I'd like to build on what Simon said, Or Maria,
Speaker 1: can you repeat that one more time. I want to
Speaker 1: make sure my notes have it correctly. Really low stakes, easy,
Speaker 1: you're just allowing that energy to come out once you've
Speaker 1: done that and you've got the proof point. The next
Speaker 1: step is, Okay, now I'm going to really share what
Speaker 1: I wanted to share. Ask that longer question, share my perspective.
Speaker 1: I know I can do it because I just did
Speaker 1: it before. I'm also going to breathe again. I'm going
Speaker 1: to remind myself there's no physical threat, and then I'm
Speaker 1: going to speak. You want to make sure that you're
Speaker 1: not speaking fast, because when our emotions are in overdrive,
Speaker 1: we get nervous. We speed up our pace, which then
Speaker 1: can make people zone out or it undermines our credibility.
Speaker 1: So speak slowly, have a pause, importantly, make eye contact.
Speaker 1: That's what allows people to stay engaged. And that's how
Speaker 1: you can harness your emotion in that moment.
Speaker 2: Got it. Great adaptability? I love that, all right? This one.
Speaker 2: If you're in a meeting and a coworker takes credit
Speaker 2: for your work, what do you do?
Speaker 1: So you're in a meeting and that coworker takes credit.
Speaker 1: There are two scenarios. Either it's happened before or this
Speaker 1: is the first time. Let's start with If it's the
Speaker 1: first time, you might feel that negative emotion bubble, that unfairness,
Speaker 1: that inequality, that this is not right. What I encourage
Speaker 1: you to do firstly, determine whether you speaking up now
Speaker 1: is what you want to do. Sometimes it's not even
Speaker 1: worth it. Let it go. But if this is something
Speaker 1: that you really need to get recognition for, you put
Speaker 1: in a lot of work, you really feel like this
Speaker 1: is important, call it out immediately. So Jay, let's say
Speaker 1: you're taking credit for my work. I would jump in.
Speaker 1: Even if I have to cut Jay off a little bit,
Speaker 1: that's fine. I'd say. What Jay's trying to explain is
Speaker 1: that he worked on the initial proposal. I then jumped
Speaker 1: in and I worked with clients and we got the
Speaker 1: whole project going and it was a fantastic team effort
Speaker 1: and we're really proud of what we've created. You immediately
Speaker 1: jump in there, add you in. You don't say that's
Speaker 1: not right, Jay, I was involved. You guide the conversation,
Speaker 1: bring it back to the team, and then make it
Speaker 1: about the impact or the effort at the end. And
Speaker 1: that way, it's a polite way to just remind the person, Hey,
Speaker 1: you're on notice, I was involved in this too. Now,
Speaker 1: if it keeps happening, you want to have a conversation
Speaker 1: with that person, which is hard because again, if you
Speaker 1: lack acceptance, you're also going to feel very insecure. What
Speaker 1: are they going to say? What if they're going to
Speaker 1: hate me? What if it's going to damage their relationship?
Speaker 1: Have a conversation with them in a private environment, and
Speaker 1: you would say, hey, j I've noticed. So you make
Speaker 1: it about an observation, I've noticed that in the last
Speaker 1: three meetings when you have so it's when you when
Speaker 1: you have taken credit for the work that we've been
Speaker 1: involved in. When you I feel, I feel like my
Speaker 1: contributions are not valued or appreciated, and I would like
Speaker 1: and I would like us to be a part of
Speaker 1: a team that recognizes each other. Okay, So when you
Speaker 1: I feel and I would like, And then what you
Speaker 1: want to do at the end is how do you
Speaker 1: feel about that or what's going on for you when
Speaker 1: you take credit for this work? Are you aware of it?
Speaker 1: Allow them to speak, and then again you're politely highlighting
Speaker 1: to them, Hey, I'm aware that you're taking my credit.
Speaker 1: It's kind of not okay, it's happened before. How are
Speaker 1: we going to address this if it keeps happening. You
Speaker 1: would have a private conversation and say, look, if this
Speaker 1: does keep happening, I will mention it. Every meeting that
Speaker 1: comes up where you do take the credit, I will
Speaker 1: jump in and say, hey, this was me too. How
Speaker 1: do we make this work for the sake of our relationship,
Speaker 1: for the sake of our collaboration. So you want to
Speaker 1: focus on assertiveness. Tone is going to be important. You
Speaker 1: don't want them to become combative, but also giving them
Speaker 1: an opportunity to defend themselves if they weren't aware of it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, giving them the benefit of the doubt, which
Speaker 1: helps you feel like you're not going in there combative,
Speaker 1: You're going in there with a collaborative view.
Speaker 2: Yeah. That's good. And hopefully if you're dealing with a
Speaker 2: slightly mature individual, they'll be able to receive it well,
Speaker 2: because I think that's half the battle. That you're working
Speaker 2: with someone who just you know, to that if someone
Speaker 2: just got fired or lost their job, what would you
Speaker 2: encourage them to do?
Speaker 1: I could, I will list So if you just lose
Speaker 1: your job or you just got fired, and you're generally
Speaker 1: what will happen is you will feel very low autonomy
Speaker 1: because these things are completely out of your control. You
Speaker 1: might also feel a lack of agency. Oh no, I
Speaker 1: got fired. Does that mean my skills are not valuable?
Speaker 1: You might then experience a lack of acceptance. Oh no,
Speaker 1: I'm a failure. I'm never going to be good enough.
Speaker 1: And then the adaptability is going to be going crazy
Speaker 1: because your emotions are firing. So what will help you
Speaker 1: as the first step is the autonomy piece?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 2: Okay?
Speaker 1: What are all the things that I could do right now?
Speaker 3: Well?
Speaker 1: I could reach out to someone, I could ask the
Speaker 1: interviewer for feedback. I could update my LinkedIn I could
Speaker 1: you know what? I could take a day off and
Speaker 1: just process this and then I will What will you do?
Speaker 1: You might be like, you know what, I'm going to
Speaker 1: take a day off to process this because this was
Speaker 1: a lot, or I'm going to take a week off,
Speaker 1: I'm going to take a month off.
Speaker 2: Whatever.
Speaker 1: But remind yourself you can take an action and then
Speaker 1: take the action and then make your plan. But fundamentally,
Speaker 1: if we bring it back to big Trust, you have
Speaker 1: to remind yourself you are not your work. It was
Speaker 1: a business decision. It is not a reflection of your value.
Speaker 1: Maybe let's say that you were an underperformer and it
Speaker 1: was a reflection of your performance, you still say to yourself,
Speaker 1: this is data that I'm going to process and get
Speaker 1: better next time. Next one agency, I can improve my skills.
Speaker 1: I can go work for an organization that values the
Speaker 1: skills that I already have. I can learn what I
Speaker 1: need to autonomy what am I going to focus on
Speaker 1: right now to keep moving forward? And then that adaptability,
Speaker 1: what else do I need to do to make sure
Speaker 1: that my emotions are in check? And a lot of
Speaker 1: it is reframing. So instead of saying I am anxious,
Speaker 1: because remember this idea of labeling anything that comes after
Speaker 1: I am, we internalize it feels like it's fixed. Instead
Speaker 1: of I am anxious, I'm noticing a thought that I'm
Speaker 1: feeling anxious because this thing happened. Identify the stimulus. Instead
Speaker 1: of I am a failure, I'm noticing a thought that's
Speaker 1: telling me I'm a failure because I just lost my job.
Speaker 1: You're creating what's called cognitive diffusion, separating yourself from the thought,
Speaker 1: reminding you you don't have to believe everything you think,
Speaker 1: which also reminds you you don't have to believe everything
Speaker 1: that your mind tells you to, and that can be
Speaker 1: really powerful I.
Speaker 2: Love how your four a's just fully encapsulate the entire
Speaker 2: process and give us something to turn to. It all
Speaker 2: times is to quickly diagnose which one we're struggling with
Speaker 2: before the domino effect happens and it all start toppling
Speaker 2: each other own shut it today has been I have
Speaker 2: learned so much from me. I feel like you've blown
Speaker 2: my mind with research, fascinated me with stories, so many
Speaker 2: great practical tips, and it's all inside this new book,
Speaker 2: Big Trust, Rewire self doubt, Find your confidence and fuel
Speaker 2: success by shutters A right pre order your copy. You
Speaker 2: will have it for the new year so that you
Speaker 2: can start your new year with less self doubt, find
Speaker 2: your confidence, start trusting yourself. Please pre order this book
Speaker 2: right now. As an author who knows how hard it
Speaker 2: is to write books, authors put in so much time,
Speaker 2: so much effort to put together. As you can tell,
Speaker 2: Shat is one of the most researched, most well read,
Speaker 2: and you know, comprehensive thinkers that we have like that.
Speaker 2: It's such a brilliant tapestry of a step by step
Speaker 2: process of what people can actually apply in their lives.
Speaker 2: And so it'd mean the world to me if you
Speaker 2: go and support her book, Go and pre order it.
Speaker 2: Pre Orders help authors a lot too, So I just
Speaker 2: want to put it out there that if you've been
Speaker 2: if you found value in today's conversation, which you'd be
Speaker 2: crazy to think you haven't, then please go and pre
Speaker 2: order the book Shadow. We end every episode with a
Speaker 2: final five. These questions have to be answered in one
Speaker 2: word or one sentence maximum, So Shadows, all right, these
Speaker 2: are your final five. Question Number one, what is the
Speaker 2: best advice you've ever heard or received?
Speaker 1: My mum always encouraged me, if you want it, ask
Speaker 1: for it.
Speaker 2: Great advice.
Speaker 1: So why I asked my husband to marry me?
Speaker 2: Did you I did?
Speaker 1: That's more than a sentence. So my incredible husband, Faisal
Speaker 1: is also co author. So a lot of the ideas
Speaker 1: I wrote it, but a lot of the ideas are
Speaker 1: our ideas. When I met him, I had a deep knowing.
Speaker 1: It wasn't even an emotional thing. It was a deep
Speaker 1: knowing that, Okay, this is the person I want to
Speaker 1: spend my life with. And then we got to a
Speaker 1: point where I said to him, it was very quick,
Speaker 1: it was It all happened in a year. We met,
Speaker 1: we were married within about nine months. I said to him,
Speaker 1: I can see us having an amazing life together. It
Speaker 1: was basically like, look, this might be forward, but I
Speaker 1: can see us having an amazing life together. That was
Speaker 1: essentially me proposing, and then he said how do we
Speaker 1: make that happen? And that was him accepting.
Speaker 2: That was it.
Speaker 1: So there was no will you marry me? Getting on
Speaker 1: my knee. It was just a conversation making sure we're
Speaker 1: both on the same page. And then it happened so quickly,
Speaker 1: and then from that moment to when we were married
Speaker 1: was like three months.
Speaker 3: That.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so if you want to ask, because in fact,
Speaker 1: Steve Jobs shares this story of how when he was young,
Speaker 1: he was about twelve years old and his neighbor was
Speaker 1: the head of Hewlett Packard and one day he just asked,
Speaker 1: He said, can I come in and learn some things?
Speaker 1: Can I just come into the office? And he said
Speaker 1: it was that ability that he had to just ask,
Speaker 1: because ninety nine points seven percent of people will not ask.
Speaker 1: They will wait for someone to tap themselves on the
Speaker 1: shoulder to give them the opportunity. They will wait to
Speaker 1: get the promotion or get given the raise. It doesn't
Speaker 1: work like that. We don't live in that world, especially
Speaker 1: in the context of work, where studies have found that,
Speaker 1: especially in big organizations, managers don't remember at least sixty
Speaker 1: percent of what their teams do. They either don't know
Speaker 1: or don't remember, which means if your manager is not
Speaker 1: aware of what you're delivering, you need to ask for
Speaker 1: what you want and demonstrate it by way of tangible value. Right,
Speaker 1: here's what I'm delivering, here's what I'm asking, So we
Speaker 1: have to ask. So that was wonderful advice from my mom.
Speaker 2: I love that question. Number two, what's the worst advice
Speaker 2: you ever heard? Who received?
Speaker 1: The worst advice that I got was when I worked
Speaker 1: in banking. I had someone say to me. It was
Speaker 1: a manager at the time. He said, I think you
Speaker 1: should just go into roles where you help people. Now,
Speaker 1: the reason why I found that bad advice at the
Speaker 1: time is he was saying it because he was trying
Speaker 1: to undermine me. I was in a highly strategic role.
Speaker 1: He was basically encouraging me not to pursue that, to
Speaker 1: just go and help people. Now, if someone says that
Speaker 1: to you in a bank, it's not a good thing.
Speaker 1: The reason why that was bad advice is that sometimes
Speaker 1: we get advice. This is such a long response, sorry,
Speaker 1: but sometimes we get advice from people that they come
Speaker 1: out as if they're caring about you and they have
Speaker 1: your best interests at heart, But really it's discouragement framed
Speaker 1: as advice, as was this one. Now, little does he know,
Speaker 1: my entire career now is helping people. So I took
Speaker 1: that advice and I ran with it, and I'm so
Speaker 1: grateful for it. In that environment, that was terrible advice
Speaker 1: to give somebody. So I think it's so important when
Speaker 1: it comes to advice, acknowledge that people are only going
Speaker 1: to tell you things based on their frame of reference,
Speaker 1: so what they would do if they were you, or
Speaker 1: they might be trying to discourage you. So you can
Speaker 1: take it if you want to, You can leave it
Speaker 1: if you want to. I want to share just one
Speaker 1: other thing. It's not a question. I think we've finished
Speaker 1: the five questions right because I've gone over. I have
Speaker 1: one other thing that I want to share here, which
Speaker 1: is not related to these two, but I have to
Speaker 1: say it because it's so powerful and simple. What we
Speaker 1: found is when people go on the journey of growth,
Speaker 1: any journey of growth, like people who have gone through
Speaker 1: the Big trust framework and seen those transformative impacts in
Speaker 1: their lives. They get comments from those around them, like,
Speaker 1: what is the most common comment someone would say if
Speaker 1: someone's been on this journey of growth? There's two words,
Speaker 1: any ideas.
Speaker 2: If they've been on your journey of.
Speaker 1: Any journey of growth, not only are it can be
Speaker 1: on any journey of personal development growth.
Speaker 2: And what would they say to describe that journey?
Speaker 1: Well, what other people say to them is usually you've changed.
Speaker 1: And when they say you've changed, it's generally not coming
Speaker 1: from a positive, supportive plas. Yes, it's coming from a
Speaker 1: place of I don't like how you're outshining me right now,
Speaker 1: you're no longer in this mold that I have for you,
Speaker 1: and it's making me uncomfortable. Never allow someone else's discomfort
Speaker 1: to prevent you from going on your journey. Those who
Speaker 1: are meant to be with you on the journey will
Speaker 1: join you on the journey. And this is really hard
Speaker 1: when it's family or loved ones or close friends. The
Speaker 1: best response in that moment, rather than allowing it to
Speaker 1: undermine your sense of self trust and doubt your choices,
Speaker 1: is two words aunt. Really three words, thanks for noticing,
Speaker 1: Thanks for noticing growth has been a priority for me.
Speaker 1: That's awesome that it's working. You flip something that would
Speaker 1: otherwise be a negative into an absolute positive, which does
Speaker 1: two things. It makes you feel really good about it,
Speaker 1: but also from their perspective, it suddenly flips them to think, oh,
Speaker 1: maybe I can do that too. Growth has been a
Speaker 1: priority for her, Maybe I can make growth my priority.
Speaker 1: And it opens them up. It almost gives them permission
Speaker 1: to do the same. So when someone says you've changed,
Speaker 1: respond with thanks for noticing.
Speaker 2: I love. That's powerful, isn't it. It's such a great
Speaker 2: response because it's also showing that you see as a
Speaker 2: positive rather than most of us. I think also, when
Speaker 2: when you're in your growth journey, your initial reaction is also,
Speaker 2: what do you mean, why is there a bad thing? No,
Speaker 2: I'm the same person because you're still trying to you're
Speaker 2: still trying to grapple with it, and you're still trying
Speaker 2: to fit and grow at the same time. Whereas when
Speaker 2: you are, when you're fully grown, you won't care and
Speaker 2: you'll be like, oh, okay, cool, like thank you, you know,
Speaker 2: thanks for noticing, and so yeah, no, I love that response.
Speaker 2: It's brilliant and and you're spot on that. I think.
Speaker 2: Also half the time, there's a there's a brilliant piece
Speaker 2: of wisdom called Handlan's Razor m and it says Handlon says,
Speaker 2: don't attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by
Speaker 2: ignorance or stupidity. Beautiful And it's one of my favorite
Speaker 2: freeing I'm writing about in my book right now. It's
Speaker 2: one of my most freeing things I've come across, because
Speaker 2: our mind has this thing to turn everything everyone says
Speaker 2: to us into malice. And that person literally said it
Speaker 2: as a passing comment. They kind of thought of it
Speaker 2: for two minutes. They said something, but it wasn't that deep.
Speaker 2: They're not obsessing over it. But we take care as like,
Speaker 2: oh my god, they think I've changed, and they don't.
Speaker 2: They hate who have become.
Speaker 1: Especially if we struggle with big trust on any of
Speaker 1: these elements totally.
Speaker 2: And the truth is, it's not malice. It's just someone's ignorance.
Speaker 2: But it is someone's lack of time, it's someone's lack
Speaker 2: of capacity, it's someone's basiness, and it's you know. And
Speaker 2: it's funny because it's almost like when we say you've
Speaker 2: changed to someone, we think we have good intentions and
Speaker 2: when someone says it to us, you know, so it
Speaker 2: comes with that. So I love that, thanks for noticing,
Speaker 2: because it doesn't come from a place of revenge. It
Speaker 2: doesn't come a place from improving yourself. It doesn't come
Speaker 2: because otherwise we're like I've changed. Oh no, no, I'm
Speaker 2: still it's same. I'll prove it to you, like let's
Speaker 2: let's go back out to the party or whatever. And
Speaker 2: it's like, no, I don't want to do that anymore.
Speaker 2: And so I love thanks for noticing because it isn't revenge.
Speaker 2: It isn't proving yourself, It isn't validation, it isn't tell
Speaker 2: me how, it's not looking for praise and approval. It's brilliant.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know. I love how you mentioned Handland's razor.
Speaker 1: Have you heard of Wisiati. Dan Karniment so.
Speaker 2: Great.
Speaker 1: So he's brilliant. His work is so phenomenal and something
Speaker 1: that fundamentally changed my life, and I think if you
Speaker 1: can also grasp this idea, it will fundamentally change your life.
Speaker 1: It's very similar to hands Handlands Razor, but just a
Speaker 1: little bit broader. Wisiati is an abbreviation for or an
Speaker 1: acronym for what you see is all there is. And
Speaker 1: what he was describing in his book Thinking Fast and
Speaker 1: Slow is that when we have an interaction with someone,
Speaker 1: we will draw conclusions about that person and that situation
Speaker 1: from that two second interaction because what we see is
Speaker 1: all there is in that environment. But actually there is
Speaker 1: so much more that led to that situation. Maybe that
Speaker 1: person was having a really bad day. Maybe that person's
Speaker 1: relationship just broke down and you're meeting them right at
Speaker 1: that point. Maybe they're in pain, and yet we have
Speaker 1: this one second, two second, one minute interaction. Our brain
Speaker 1: goes into what you see as all there is, and
Speaker 1: you forget that there's so much else, and this leads
Speaker 1: to what's called fundamental attribution error. Okay, so Jay, when
Speaker 1: you're driving on the street and someone cuts you off,
Speaker 1: do you usually have certain feelings towards that person who
Speaker 1: cut you off? Of course, right, and you make certain
Speaker 1: assumptions about their personality Oh my gosh, careless, ignorant, blah blah.
Speaker 1: That's called fundamental attribution error because if you accidentally cut
Speaker 1: someone off.
Speaker 2: Totally, Oh, I wasn't even paying friends, struggling like I'm
Speaker 2: trying to help.
Speaker 1: So that idea of someone cutting you off. What you
Speaker 1: see is all there is, that must be your reflection
Speaker 1: of their attributes and character and personality. But what Kardoman
Speaker 1: encourages us to do, which is similar to Hanlin's razor,
Speaker 1: is get a broader picture what else could have been
Speaker 1: going on for this person? And I love it when
Speaker 1: you're driving because I tend to get I don't get
Speaker 1: road rage, not at all, but I do find sometimes
Speaker 1: if there's a lot of traffic and I'm in a rush,
Speaker 1: I tend to get into the what you see is
Speaker 1: all there is, So if someone's rushing or speeding, I
Speaker 1: will go through and think, Okay, what are the three
Speaker 1: things that could be happening for this person. Maybe they're
Speaker 1: busting to use the toilet, or their wife has just
Speaker 1: gone into labor, or they've just heard that their kid's
Speaker 1: been You don't know right. And it's beautiful because it
Speaker 1: just reminds you that you're not the center of the universe.
Speaker 1: It feels like you are, but you're not. And when
Speaker 1: you realize that you're not, it gives you this sense
Speaker 1: of I find it very empowering to know that we're
Speaker 1: actually part of something much bigger than just us and
Speaker 1: I me.
Speaker 2: My absolutely, I love it. Okay, have it. Question number three,
Speaker 2: what is a line of self talk that you used
Speaker 2: most often for yourself?
Speaker 1: Care less, care more?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 2: Okay, explain? Okay.
Speaker 1: So we post content and we have since twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: basically during the pandemic we started and I still find
Speaker 1: so we do it ourselves. We don't have a team
Speaker 1: that does our posting. It's something we're happy to do
Speaker 1: because we like the process of being connected. Every time
Speaker 1: I'm about to post something, I have a voice in
Speaker 1: my head. What are people going to think? Are they
Speaker 1: going to like this? They're going to think you're silly,
Speaker 1: You're not articulate enough, You're not credible enough. I literally
Speaker 1: have to say to myself, careless, care less about what
Speaker 1: people think. And so I used to just do the
Speaker 1: careless and that was helpful. But then Faisil, my husband
Speaker 1: and business partner, he said, Okay, it's great that you've
Speaker 1: got the careless, but what are you caring more about?
Speaker 2: Ah? So good.
Speaker 1: Don't just focus on what you you know, the kind
Speaker 1: of negative. Oh I'm going to care less? What are
Speaker 1: you focusing more on? So now I say, okay, careless
Speaker 1: about what people think. Care more about being of service,
Speaker 1: being of value, being of impact, leaving a positive legacy.
Speaker 1: That's brilliant and it's beautiful, and it's something you can
Speaker 1: use in the moment when you're about to step onto stage,
Speaker 1: when you're about to approach a stranger in a bar,
Speaker 1: when you're about to have that conversation about your pay raise,
Speaker 1: care less about the outcome, care more about making this
Speaker 1: person feel seen or demonstrating my value. It's beautiful and
Speaker 1: so simple.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I love that. I also love it because it's
Speaker 2: the careless part makes sense. And also one thing I
Speaker 2: realized over time was also caring more about the people
Speaker 2: who left qualitative positive feedback. Oh yeah, and learning to
Speaker 2: actually care more because it's so easy to skip past
Speaker 2: beautiful comments where everyone's like, you are so articulate, Shahday,
Speaker 2: you are so credible, Shade, you are so non re
Speaker 2: ignore it and you kind of just go, yeah, whatever, whatever, whatever,
Speaker 2: And that care more careless works well there too. I'm
Speaker 2: not saying only to care about things when people say
Speaker 2: nice things about you. I think it's important to be
Speaker 2: able to listen to criticism and negativity and feedback, and
Speaker 2: of course but I think the idea of we don't.
Speaker 2: We don't receive praise with nearly as much depth as
Speaker 2: we receive criticism now, and that is a huge issue
Speaker 2: for us as humans, where we don't know how to
Speaker 2: receive a compliment, We don't know how to receive a
Speaker 2: pattern the back. But if someone says I'm a negative
Speaker 2: to us, we know how to receive that. We will
Speaker 2: hold on to that for the rest of our lives
Speaker 2: and carry around wherever you know. Why, yeah, God, because.
Speaker 1: Of the scars that we carry. So when someone is
Speaker 1: giving you praise, it's because your self image doesn't feel
Speaker 1: it deserves it, and so it doesn't internalize it. But
Speaker 1: when someone criticizes you, criticism only hurts if you deeply,
Speaker 1: deep down, believe that about yourself. And it all comes
Speaker 1: down to where you are on these poor pillars. So
Speaker 1: if you receive criticism and you take it personally, it's
Speaker 1: often because you have a low level of acceptance and
Speaker 1: deep down you don't feel that you're worthy. You're trying
Speaker 1: to appear a certain way or prove something, and so
Speaker 1: what that person says hurts so much because it is
Speaker 1: cutting it that deep wound that you have and so
Speaker 1: again it's this idea of yes, as you say, how
Speaker 1: do we acknowledge more of the positive things that come
Speaker 1: through and use that to reshape our identity, reshape our
Speaker 1: self image.
Speaker 2: Yeah? Absolutely, I love that that scar research you shared
Speaker 2: at the beginning.
Speaker 1: Isn't it fascinating?
Speaker 2: It's so good question of before? How do you define
Speaker 2: your current purpose?
Speaker 1: Someone once asked me what is the one word I
Speaker 1: want people to say about me at my funeral? And
Speaker 1: without thinking I said that she cared. And then I
Speaker 1: thought about it a bit more, and I probably would
Speaker 1: have had all these other things, But I think the
Speaker 1: fact that that came through so clearly for me when
Speaker 1: I didn't think about it. My purpose is to live
Speaker 1: a life where I'm caring about other people, and that
Speaker 1: looks like me being present for them, me serving them
Speaker 1: through the work that we do, helping them through our programs,
Speaker 1: through this book. It's fundamentally because I care about people
Speaker 1: overcoming what is holding them back, and I care about
Speaker 1: them living fulfilling and successful and meaningful lives, and so
Speaker 1: everything I do is aligned by that. What about you, Jay,
Speaker 1: what's that? How would you define your purpose in just
Speaker 1: a few words?
Speaker 2: The way I've chosen to describe it right now is
Speaker 2: that to make the world happier, healthier, and more healed beautiful.
Speaker 2: And the word that I've really lean to in all
Speaker 2: of those is healing. I value healing more than happiness
Speaker 2: and health I do value equally as healing. But I
Speaker 2: think even in our health, we're always healing, and so
Speaker 2: I think the challenge is, my take is everyone's hurt
Speaker 2: in some way physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and everyone's healing.
Speaker 2: And so if we can help create a more healed world,
Speaker 2: a healing world actually even more than healed, because healed
Speaker 2: means it's done, and so a healing world is a
Speaker 2: good world. And so if we can, if I can help,
Speaker 2: if I can be useful in and of service to
Speaker 2: helping people heal in whichever area they're struggling in through
Speaker 2: people like yourselves and the wonderful experts and people come
Speaker 2: and share their stories on the show, then that, to
Speaker 2: me is the world that I want to live in,
Speaker 2: is a world is healing always because we're always going
Speaker 2: to feel pain and always going to get hurt, so
Speaker 2: then there has to be an equal focus on healing.
Speaker 1: It's beautiful and I love it that it almost going
Speaker 1: back to the idea of the scar. It's like also
Speaker 1: healing the scars that we have.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's healing, and it's that's what you're gonna have
Speaker 2: to do, because yeah, you're healing yourself image according to
Speaker 2: you know what you were saying earlier.
Speaker 1: Yeah, beautiful.
Speaker 2: Fifth and final question were.
Speaker 1: I kind of don't want you to ask it because
Speaker 1: I don't want this to end.
Speaker 2: For another three hours. This is the fifth and final question.
Speaker 2: If you could create one law, and we asked this
Speaker 2: every guest who's ever been on the show, if you
Speaker 2: could create one law that everyone in the world had
Speaker 2: to follow, what would it be?
Speaker 1: It would be to leave each person better than you
Speaker 1: found them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a good law.
Speaker 3: Yeah, each place, each person, each each animal, each meeting,
Speaker 3: each em each Yeah, it would be so much better.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I love that. That's beautiful. We've never had down
Speaker 2: the show. Shutz, thank you so much. Today. The book
Speaker 2: is called Big Trust, rewire self doubt, Find your confidence
Speaker 2: and Fuel success. Pre audio copy right now. Follow Shade
Speaker 2: on Instagram, TikTok, across all of social media. If you
Speaker 2: don't already, you're gonna absolutely love her content. She's as
Speaker 2: articulate online and offline. I can't wait for you to
Speaker 2: read this book. I can't wait for you to practice
Speaker 2: these principles. It truly is a masterclass. And shut in.
Speaker 2: I'm so grateful to you, so thankful that we've got
Speaker 2: to spend this time together.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 2: I hope this is the first of many times you'll
Speaker 2: come on the show.
Speaker 1: I hope so, I hope, so thank you. It's been
Speaker 1: such a treat.
Speaker 2: Thank you. If you love this episode, you love my
Speaker 2: conversation with doctor Joe Dispenser on why stressing overthinking negatively
Speaker 2: impacts your brain and heart and how to change your
Speaker 2: habits that are on autopilot. Listen to it right now.
Speaker 4: How many times do we have to forget until we
Speaker 4: stop forgetting and start remembering. That's the moment of change.
Speaker 4: Who cares how many times you fell off the bicycle?
Speaker 4: If you ride the bicycle, Now you ride the bike.