Speaker 1: Welcome to the Psychology Podcast, where we give you insights
Speaker 1: into the mind brained behavior and creativity. I'm doctor Scott
Speaker 1: Barry Kaufman, and in each episode I have a conversation
Speaker 1: with a guest who will stimulate your mind and give
Speaker 1: you a greater understanding of yourself, others, and the world
Speaker 1: to live in. Hopefully we'll also provide a glimpse into
Speaker 1: human possibility. Thanks for listening and enjoy the podcast. So
Speaker 1: today we have Todd Herman on the podcast. Herman is
Speaker 1: a performance advisor to Olympians, pros, and business leaders, and
Speaker 1: he creates proven systems to help teams and achievers win
Speaker 1: with less stress. Herman's latest book is The Alter Ego Effect,
Speaker 1: The Power of Secret Identities to Transform your Life. I'm
Speaker 1: so excited to talk with you today, Scott. Well, I
Speaker 1: mean it's a pleasure. You've had a lot of my
Speaker 1: friends on here and well, I just appreciate the podcast
Speaker 1: the topics that you talk about, so I'm happy to
Speaker 1: bring this topic to your crowd too. Thanks. Thanks. So
Speaker 1: people can't see, but I'm wearing my Captain America shirt.
Speaker 1: Take us to that shirl in the show notes, which
Speaker 1: that's actually my pajamas that I've just sleep in every
Speaker 1: night of my life. But I would say that maybe
Speaker 1: that would be my alter ego. I don't know, maybe
Speaker 1: I'll change after we chat today, but I'd love to
Speaker 1: hear about you know, like I think you said, took
Speaker 1: like fifteen years to write this book. Is that right? Yeah?
Speaker 1: It was? It was I started patients. Yeah, well, I
Speaker 1: didn't start writing it fifteen years ago. I've been working
Speaker 1: with this concept and this idea with you know, my
Speaker 1: pro Olympic athletes and then you know public figures and
Speaker 1: you know, entrepreneurs for the last sixteen years. So I've
Speaker 1: been I've been bugged and poked and prodded for a
Speaker 1: very long time to get this out. And you know,
Speaker 1: I use the excuse of my dyslexia for not writing it.
Speaker 1: You know, for me, I come from in my peak
Speaker 1: performance and sports science basins. We a lot of the
Speaker 1: work that we do has to be more evidence based.
Speaker 1: I think there's you know, I think one of my
Speaker 1: great frustrations about the self out personal helpment world is
Speaker 1: that there's so much information that has been passed on
Speaker 1: for decades that is not proven to work. And you know,
Speaker 1: I'm paid to help people perform, and so I only
Speaker 1: you know, continue to have clients if they're getting better results.
Speaker 1: And this idea is just it taps into one of
Speaker 1: the few things that makes human beings unique on this planet,
Speaker 1: which is our creative imagination, and it gets lost and
Speaker 1: people forget to continue to develop it. And so an
Speaker 1: alter ego really taps into that and helps people kind
Speaker 1: of unlock that capability that's nested inside of them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: for sure, So I would like to zoom in that dyslection,
Speaker 1: I think for a second, because I grew up with
Speaker 1: the oriane disability as well and auditory disability, and talking
Speaker 1: to a lot of people who grow up with disabilities,
Speaker 1: it's almost like we create alter egos as children to
Speaker 1: help us cope with being treated as though we're less
Speaker 1: then in some way or yea, I personally created huge
Speaker 1: alter egos when I was a kid. Wow, I had
Speaker 1: this Like I would pretend I was just like Olympian
Speaker 1: water a polo champion, and when I would go swimming
Speaker 1: at my grandma's poll, I would enact the whole game
Speaker 1: in my head, you know, which always had me winning. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there was never a version of the game where I
Speaker 1: lost that's a wonderful alter ego. Then if it's winning
Speaker 1: all the time, that's awesome. Yeah. Do you think there's
Speaker 1: something too when you're treated like as the to talent,
Speaker 1: Like there's something deep here, There's something deep I'm trying
Speaker 1: to put my finger on, Like you know, when a
Speaker 1: someone is reduced to a monolithic label like learning disabled. Yeah,
Speaker 1: isn't there a natural human tendency to want to rebel
Speaker 1: against such a single labeling? Well, I think that's why.
Speaker 1: I also when someone says, hey, what do you do?
Speaker 1: Or when you talk to anyone who has a has
Speaker 1: a website, they got to put up the about me
Speaker 1: page is the hardest thing for anyone to write, right,
Speaker 1: because it's like I got to reduce myself down into
Speaker 1: just a few paragraphs or something. But to your point,
Speaker 1: I will say that eighty two percent of all of
Speaker 1: my professional clients I have referred off to therapists to
Speaker 1: work with them on traumatic things that happened to them
Speaker 1: in the past. And it's a recurring theme amongst people
Speaker 1: who do perform at a high level. The danger with it,
Speaker 1: and that I found was that some of them would
Speaker 1: identify that as being their edge and they felt like
Speaker 1: if they lost that edge, that they were going to
Speaker 1: somehow lose their competitive advantage. Maybe. And again I'm not
Speaker 1: a qualified therapist, that's not what I do. I would
Speaker 1: not trained in that. And I think maybe the world
Speaker 1: would be probably a better place if more people stayed
Speaker 1: inside their lanes. You know, I do you know one
Speaker 1: thing and I'm excellent at it, and that's you know,
Speaker 1: performance coaching and crawling around inside the six inches between
Speaker 1: the years and giving people proven tools and strategies to
Speaker 1: help move past resistance or get their capabilities out there.
Speaker 1: But that idea of creating worlds, it's such a natural,
Speaker 1: innate human quality. The great thing I talk about inside
Speaker 1: the book that I and invent alter egos. They're a
Speaker 1: part of the human psyche. And the great thing is
Speaker 1: is I feel like this book is a great remembering
Speaker 1: for people that you did this as a kid. We
Speaker 1: all played with superheroes in our heads, or we pretended
Speaker 1: to be our favorite sports star, or we were a
Speaker 1: nurse when we were playing make believe, or a princess
Speaker 1: or a cowboy or an astronaut whatever. But there's this
Speaker 1: time where we start to develop and people say, oh, well,
Speaker 1: you need to know actor age or grow up, and
Speaker 1: then we internalize that as Okay, well, the things I
Speaker 1: was doing as a kid are childish, and so I
Speaker 1: need to move on to doing adult things, which is
Speaker 1: being more serious. And yet using an alter ego has
Speaker 1: nothing to do with being childish. It's definitely childlike, and
Speaker 1: I think there's a huge difference between childish and childlike.
Speaker 1: And I think if for me, especially as well, having
Speaker 1: that playful attitude internally helped me navigate many of the
Speaker 1: challenges that I face throughout life. And so that dyslexia
Speaker 1: that I had helped me face down a world and
Speaker 1: an industrial educational system that wasn't built to help me succeed,
Speaker 1: and so I used my again creative imagination to help
Speaker 1: navigate that. And then you take a look at people
Speaker 1: with quote unquote learning disabilities, whether it's add or dyslexia,
Speaker 1: what have you. You You take a look at the career
Speaker 1: paths of many of those people. They have a higher
Speaker 1: propensity towards going into things like entrepreneurship. And it's because
Speaker 1: we've built a superpower at a young age of creative
Speaker 1: problem solving, which is really what entrepreneurship is, or any
Speaker 1: sort of creative expression, and I'm excited to kind of,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe lead this charge of bringing this idea
Speaker 1: back out to people and show how it's actually the
Speaker 1: most authentic version of you that you could actually have.
Speaker 1: This isn't about being fake, and this isn't about trying
Speaker 1: to trick people and deceive people. Anytime you're trying to
Speaker 1: do things with your actions and behaviors that are about
Speaker 1: deceiving someone else, that's definitely inauthentic. This is about you
Speaker 1: understanding at your core that there's this creative of possibility
Speaker 1: that you have and to tap into it so that
Speaker 1: you can be more intentional about who and what you
Speaker 1: want to go and show up with out on that
Speaker 1: field of play, whatever it might be for you. Nice. Well,
Speaker 1: I like that. I would like to unpack that more
Speaker 1: as we, yeah, literally unpack the layers of the South. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So right now you are Todd, Yes, right, You're not
Speaker 1: wearing your glasses. You're not Richard. So this gets into
Speaker 1: some like multip personality shit, like when does Richard come out?
Speaker 1: I just you know, I saw a preview for him
Speaker 1: night Shamalan's new movie, you know, coming out. What's the
Speaker 1: difference between multipersonalities disorder and this what you're proposing, Well,
Speaker 1: I mean in the psychology world has actually gone under
Speaker 1: a massive upheople the last few years, where there's been
Speaker 1: some fundamental theories that have been basically that we're founded
Speaker 1: upon experiments that can't be replicated on. Now, one of
Speaker 1: the fundamental principles of psychology for the longest time was
Speaker 1: that the people were had the best mental health saw
Speaker 1: themselves as a single self, and so single self theory
Speaker 1: was a very very prominent part of psychology. And yet
Speaker 1: that entire world has shifted and now it's one of
Speaker 1: the fastest growing areas of psychology is multiple self theory.
Speaker 1: And multiple self theory is actually understanding that, no, we
Speaker 1: have multiple selves that go out into these different fields
Speaker 1: that we or roles that we play in life, and
Speaker 1: context matters. And that's what I've been doing for the
Speaker 1: longest time is helping people understand that contextually that field
Speaker 1: that you're trying to compete on, whether it's the tennis
Speaker 1: court or the football field, or it could be in
Speaker 1: the boardroom in your business, or even when I go
Speaker 1: home to my three little kids, that's a field of play,
Speaker 1: Like that's a stage, and that's a place that I'm
Speaker 1: going to try and bring my best too, so that
Speaker 1: I get great results with my kids as a parent.
Speaker 1: So everyone understands that who you are in business, like
Speaker 1: how you up and then who you are with your friends,
Speaker 1: there's a different element of your personality that's showing up there, right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know you're not the same or even when you
Speaker 1: go home to your parents like me. I mean, we
Speaker 1: were coming home from Disneyland when I was ten years
Speaker 1: old and on the airplane ride back to Canada where
Speaker 1: I grew up, I left my brand new Disneyland thirtieth
Speaker 1: anniversary wallet on the airplane and first time I lost something.
Speaker 1: And yet to this day, I'm forgetful. My mom just
Speaker 1: branded me as being forgetting. And I don't have a
Speaker 1: forgetful mind, but that's how my mom trutes. That's how
Speaker 1: moms are. My mom says, like, you don't have any
Speaker 1: common sense. It's like, how do you know that's not true.
Speaker 1: That's a narrative you created about me. It's like partially true,
Speaker 1: but not all of me. Yeah yeah, And so context matters,
Speaker 1: And so what I'm saying when I'm working with people,
Speaker 1: are there elements of your value system that are creeping
Speaker 1: in to the way that you're behaving on that field
Speaker 1: that are actually hurting your performance. I'll give you a
Speaker 1: case in point from the book. I talk about one
Speaker 1: of my tennis players, you know, professional tennis players, Rachel,
Speaker 1: who was one of these athletes that just naturally well,
Speaker 1: worked very hard at it, and was better than you know,
Speaker 1: most everyone else. Rachel, that's right. I remember the story
Speaker 1: of Rachel. Yeah, yeah, And so she would get out
Speaker 1: onto the court and she would immediately get up on
Speaker 1: people very quickly, and then she would do the proverbial
Speaker 1: take the foot off the gas and allow the other
Speaker 1: athlete to kind of gain some momentum. And the most
Speaker 1: dangerous thing in sport, really in business as well, is momentum.
Speaker 1: The moment you give someone that's an average player momentum
Speaker 1: that begets confidence, which then gives someone certainty. And now
Speaker 1: as soon as you become certain that you can actually
Speaker 1: beat someone that's just a deep resonant belief, Now all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, there's an equalization between Rachel, who is
Speaker 1: had a far higher capability than this other person, and
Speaker 1: she was kind of had the moniker of someone who
Speaker 1: should be winning championships. But wasn't winning championships anyways. I
Speaker 1: started working with her, and I was trying to kind
Speaker 1: of crack the nut on her a little bit about
Speaker 1: why this is happening, and it turned out that fairness
Speaker 1: is one of her fundamental values in life. She's very
Speaker 1: much like, you know, just fairness for everyone and sort
Speaker 1: of justice and all that. And the experience after I
Speaker 1: kind of came to that conclusion with her when we
Speaker 1: were out for lunch one day, because she was getting
Speaker 1: angry with me that I wouldn't let her pay the
Speaker 1: bill after I'd already paid the previous two lunches or something,
Speaker 1: and I was like, oh, my goodness, fairness, that's what's
Speaker 1: getting in her way. And so she would start to
Speaker 1: feel bad that that other person was getting beat so
Speaker 1: badly at her core, and it was happening at a
Speaker 1: very unconscious level, just like most things do, and she
Speaker 1: would take the foot off the gas and let that
Speaker 1: person in and so on that field of play, fairness
Speaker 1: does not matter, you know. And in fact, in sports,
Speaker 1: you not giving one hundred percent and you not defeating
Speaker 1: the other person as you can robs that other person
Speaker 1: of a possibility to really change their mindset because if
Speaker 1: Rachel actually beat people the way that she could, she
Speaker 1: might actually cause that person to go away and go, wow,
Speaker 1: there's a big gap between me and the best I
Speaker 1: need to get onto that court more and practice more.
Speaker 1: And so anyways, that new contextual self that Rachel brought
Speaker 1: to the tennis court now values stayed on the sidelines,
Speaker 1: and we used, you know, the idea of an alter
Speaker 1: ego to come out so that Rachel could act and
Speaker 1: behave through that vehicle to help bring her best self forward.
Speaker 1: I love that, and so that's the heroic self. I
Speaker 1: guess that's what you're equating with the best self. Let's
Speaker 1: talk about the difference between what you for the heroic self,
Speaker 1: the trap self, and the core self. There started to
Speaker 1: become so many selves that I started to not be
Speaker 1: able to make sense of who I like? What am
Speaker 1: I right now? You know? I don't I'm all confused. Okay,
Speaker 1: So you know in the book, I have this model
Speaker 1: where I talk about just the different layers of you know,
Speaker 1: how a human being's identity gets created. And what we
Speaker 1: need to understand is that there is this core self
Speaker 1: that all of us have, which is just almost pure potentiality.
Speaker 1: It's pure possibility. It's like that infant that comes out
Speaker 1: has not been shaped by society by any stretch of imagination,
Speaker 1: yet creative potential, creative potential, and it's sitting inside of us.
Speaker 1: When you recognize that it's there, it has not been lost.
Speaker 1: If someone believes that it's gone, it's a very dangerous
Speaker 1: place for people because now hope is gone. And so
Speaker 1: the fact that everyone is even someone is even listening
Speaker 1: to this, that means that at your core, you do
Speaker 1: honor the fact that that is there. And again, the
Speaker 1: way that we internalize it in our minds is when
Speaker 1: we put our head down on the pillow at night,
Speaker 1: and we might beat ourselves up because we didn't take
Speaker 1: the actions today that we wanted to. Or you know,
Speaker 1: I wish I would have said this in that moment
Speaker 1: instead of this, or I wish I would raise my hand,
Speaker 1: or I wish I would have spoke up, or wish
Speaker 1: sort of you know, asked that person who is perfect
Speaker 1: for my business, you know, to say let's get together,
Speaker 1: let's meet, or let's do something together. But for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: resistance gets in the way. And that's what I talk
Speaker 1: about in the book, where that's your trapped self where
Speaker 1: you are being influenced by the worries of how you're
Speaker 1: going to be perceived to others, the judgments of others,
Speaker 1: the criticism. It could be imposter syndrome that sits there.
Speaker 1: There's deep trauma that can definitely affect people and that
Speaker 1: narrative that we create around who and what we are,
Speaker 1: which is not true. It's not truly who you are
Speaker 1: because who you are is sitting inside of this core self,
Speaker 1: but on top of this core self. I talk about
Speaker 1: how a trapped self ends up showing up when you
Speaker 1: don't feel like you're getting the results like you know
Speaker 1: that you can, and you're living in what I call
Speaker 1: an ordinary world, right, it feels ordinary to you because
Speaker 1: it's not filled with the color that you know that
Speaker 1: you can bring to it, and you know the forces
Speaker 1: of you know. I just kind of use this sort
Speaker 1: of metaphorical story in the book of like you know,
Speaker 1: Joe of Campbell's Hero's Journey, and I talk about just
Speaker 1: the distinction that's really healthy that we understand that just
Speaker 1: like Carl Jung talked about with the Shadow Self, I
Speaker 1: just simply call it the enemy. The enemy pulls us
Speaker 1: into the ordinary world and it uses the things of
Speaker 1: you know, the judgment of others and the worry about
Speaker 1: how we're going to be perceived, or it uses you know,
Speaker 1: imposter syndrome and scares us and brings us away from
Speaker 1: you know, breaching that comfort zone. But conversely, there is
Speaker 1: the extraordinary world for us. The extraordinary world has no
Speaker 1: less challenges, no less situations that could challenge us obstacles.
Speaker 1: But the reason it's extraordinary is that we start operating
Speaker 1: from an inside out approach where we're acting very intentionally
Speaker 1: with who and what we want to bring to that
Speaker 1: field of play that we're going out to perform on.
Speaker 1: For me, it could be me being that dad and
Speaker 1: I want to be very intentional about you know, who
Speaker 1: is showing up for my kids, and that's it's that
Speaker 1: and what happens. The reason I call it the heroic
Speaker 1: self is because at the end of the day, you
Speaker 1: feel like you really showed up like and it's that
Speaker 1: internal kind of feedback loop of you know, you feel
Speaker 1: like you wore the s on the chest today or
Speaker 1: in your case, the Captain America shield kind of thing,
Speaker 1: whereas the trapped self typically will operate from an outside
Speaker 1: in right we're worried and we're always engaged in our
Speaker 1: mind of thinking about what other people are thinking of us,
Speaker 1: and anytime you operate from that point of view, it
Speaker 1: traps you because there is no operating from how you
Speaker 1: want to show up and what you know that you
Speaker 1: can do. It's from you operating on what you think
Speaker 1: others want you to do, and that's what traps people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and again I just keep winking this back to being
Speaker 1: labeled with the learning disability, like it's got to be
Speaker 1: part of why you're so interested in this topic, even subconsciously. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like you probably felt trapped. Yeah I did, but I
Speaker 1: didn't ge labeled until I didn't get to diagnosed with
Speaker 1: dyslexia until I was twenty one, really after a car accident.
Speaker 1: So I went through all my schooling, you know, and
Speaker 1: I was the typical class clown. But what I unpacked
Speaker 1: people why I when I when I actually got diagnosed,
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, my goodness, now I know why
Speaker 1: I did the things that I was doing in class,
Speaker 1: because what happened was, you know, you're sitting in class
Speaker 1: and they give you like a quick little fifteen minute
Speaker 1: reading assignment, right, yes, you know, and I would struggle
Speaker 1: my way through it, and people. There's like twenty nine
Speaker 1: types of dyslexia that are out there, and my type
Speaker 1: is the type that you know in a chunk of texts,
Speaker 1: like say, in a paragraph, by the time I get
Speaker 1: down to the end of the text, I've jumbled up
Speaker 1: the kind of meaning of the sentences and now there's
Speaker 1: just a confusion that's happening in my head. So I
Speaker 1: need to reread the paragraph over and over and over
Speaker 1: and over and over again before I kind of get
Speaker 1: sense of it. So someone else just reads the paragraph.
Speaker 1: I got to reread it like twenty seven times to understand.
Speaker 1: So given the reading assignment, I'm there's no there's no
Speaker 1: chance I'm getting through that thing. And so what I
Speaker 1: would do is, about two minutes left, I would start
Speaker 1: tapping people's shoulders around me, saying, hey, what did you
Speaker 1: think you know? We are there any takeaways from you,
Speaker 1: so that I could actually use their takeaways if I
Speaker 1: got called upon to answer the teacher's question. But also
Speaker 1: what would happen and I learned this is because I'm
Speaker 1: distracting the people around me. My teacher, would you know,
Speaker 1: give me, you know, call me out, or give me
Speaker 1: hack or whatever, and because they just talked to me.
Speaker 1: The chances of them coming back to me to ask
Speaker 1: me a question were slim, So I ended up winning.
Speaker 1: I didn't get tasked with answering the Hey, Todd, what
Speaker 1: did you think about you know, Tom Joad in the
Speaker 1: Grapes of Wrath and what he just experienced in chapter
Speaker 1: you know five? And it was after I got diagnosed
Speaker 1: with dislexa, I was like, oh, wow, that's why I
Speaker 1: really acted out the class clown thing a lot. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it makes so much sense. I was pretty much the
Speaker 1: class clown as well. Yeah, but to your point, the
Speaker 1: moment we get the moment we get labeled, we feel
Speaker 1: like we get trapped. That's why, like I said, and
Speaker 1: about me page or a resume is so difficult, because
Speaker 1: what you're doing is you're putting yourself in a box
Speaker 1: and you feel like you're trapping yourself. However, when you
Speaker 1: start operating from this mindset of this is a context
Speaker 1: on this field of play for business or for my resume,
Speaker 1: this is the self that I am explaining to people
Speaker 1: as to who I am. Of course, I'm not going
Speaker 1: to give you know everyone the information of like the
Speaker 1: five sports that I play, you know, in my spare
Speaker 1: time and you know, what I do with my children
Speaker 1: on Tuesdays and Wednesdays or whatever the case might be.
Speaker 1: Just this idea of really compartmentalizing the self that's showing
Speaker 1: up is really healthy, which you know you had asked
Speaker 1: the question around, you know, is this Todd showing up
Speaker 1: or Richard? And what you were kind of referring to was,
Speaker 1: you know, to give people some background. When I first
Speaker 1: started in business, I was twenty one, and I was
Speaker 1: so insecure about how the fact that I looked like
Speaker 1: I was twelve, and you know, and I had I
Speaker 1: had used an alter ego when I played football and
Speaker 1: I was you know, I went on and had college scholarships.
Speaker 1: I was a nationally ranked badminton player as well. And
Speaker 1: when I went on the football field, I mean I
Speaker 1: was in high school. Is six feet and I was
Speaker 1: one hundred and fifty six pounds. I mean, there was
Speaker 1: not a chance that I was this. I wasn't this
Speaker 1: physically gifted human. I could. I could feel really insecure
Speaker 1: about the fact that I was so light, but I
Speaker 1: wasn't going to take that insecurity out there. So I
Speaker 1: built up and I had already played with these ideas
Speaker 1: for so long. I went out there as Dronimo on
Speaker 1: that because I'm a massive Native American buff. I love
Speaker 1: the Native American culture cultural appropriation. Well, when do you
Speaker 1: get criticized for that? Yeah, well may very well be. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I went. So I went out there as Gronimo,
Speaker 1: and I was also carrying this tribe in my mind
Speaker 1: of Walter Payton, the Hall of Fame football player, and
Speaker 1: Ronnie Lot, this whole thing, and I was acting through
Speaker 1: them and their power, and there was I had no
Speaker 1: Dramimo's mindset, had no worries and concerns about how big
Speaker 1: or small he was. I showed up in it and
Speaker 1: allowed me to pull all of my capabilities out there.
Speaker 1: Actually allowed me to find the zone in flow state
Speaker 1: as well, because I was acting through my creative imagination,
Speaker 1: which is a gateway to the zone. And so when
Speaker 1: I got into business, I was like, wait a second,
Speaker 1: I used this whole Gernimo idea in football. Why didn't
Speaker 1: I bring Gernimo into the business. And then I was like,
Speaker 1: well that doesn't kind of work. Was very aggressive and
Speaker 1: all that kind of stuff, and so context matters. But
Speaker 1: I had I was like, well, how do I want
Speaker 1: to be showing up because right now I'm you know,
Speaker 1: I lack confidence, I'm insecure about how young I look,
Speaker 1: and you know the fact I don't have college degrees
Speaker 1: behind me on this topic or something. And I was indecisive.
Speaker 1: So I was like, Gronamo doesn't work. But when I
Speaker 1: think of like all the people that thought they're growing
Speaker 1: up all had glasses, So why don't I go into
Speaker 1: a pair of glasses? And that can be what activates
Speaker 1: this altered because when I played football, as soon as
Speaker 1: I put on that helmet and clicked that chin strap, boom,
Speaker 1: that's when Gronimo showed up. And so I wanted that
Speaker 1: potum and that are a fact to help activate. So
Speaker 1: that's what I did. I lived in I mean I
Speaker 1: live here in New York City now and have for
Speaker 1: a long time, but back then I lived in in Alburgh, Canada,
Speaker 1: and I went to West Edmonton Mall, which was the
Speaker 1: largest mall in the world at the time, and went
Speaker 1: to Lens Crafters and bought myself non prescription glasses to
Speaker 1: do my reverse Superman. I called it Superman put on
Speaker 1: glasses to become Clark Kent. I put them on to
Speaker 1: become my Superman. Version of myself in business, and those
Speaker 1: glasses they meant that what I was activating in that
Speaker 1: moment were the traits of confidence, decisiveness, and being articulate.
Speaker 1: And that's what helped me bridge the gap that I
Speaker 1: had internally between Todd being insecure but what I wanted
Speaker 1: to go and do. And so that had nothing to
Speaker 1: do with whether I was being inauthentic, because that was
Speaker 1: actually me bringing my best, my best version or like
Speaker 1: I say in the book, that heroic version of myself
Speaker 1: so I could serve clients. Yeah, and so right now
Speaker 1: you had said, I don't know if I'm talking Todd
Speaker 1: because I don't have my glasses on. But what happened
Speaker 1: is exactly what I share in the book. This great
Speaker 1: quote from the kind of Golden Age actor Carrie Grant.
Speaker 1: He had this great quote where he said, I pretended
Speaker 1: to be somebody I wanted to be, and I finally
Speaker 1: became that person or he became me, or we met
Speaker 1: at some point. And it's such a useful visual to
Speaker 1: think that who you are today and how you're defining
Speaker 1: yourself with your narrative is almost like you think of
Speaker 1: like a ven diagram of two circles it's this, This
Speaker 1: is how you're defining yourself now. But then you have
Speaker 1: this vision of like how you truly do want to
Speaker 1: be showing up, and it's a separate circle. There, there's
Speaker 1: some friction and gap between the two. But then over time,
Speaker 1: with you acting through this idea of an alter ego,
Speaker 1: you actually bring the two closer together and they meet
Speaker 1: at some point. So I don't need those glasses anymore.
Speaker 1: I simply just wear them now dress. I mean, back
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety nine when I got those glasses, it
Speaker 1: was not cool to go and buy a pair of
Speaker 1: glasses for dress. This is a new phenomenon. Now I
Speaker 1: do because I like wearing them. But you know, I
Speaker 1: became that person, and the only thing I would change
Speaker 1: in carry Grant's quote is the word pretended, because this
Speaker 1: has nothing to do with pretending. This is about I
Speaker 1: would say change it to I activated, somebody I wanted
Speaker 1: to be and I finally became a person. Activate is
Speaker 1: the word that I care about. Yeah, that's really good,
Speaker 1: And you're answering a lot of questions that I was
Speaker 1: going to ask. So now this say it's good. It's
Speaker 1: it's just automatically in the flow of things, because I
Speaker 1: was going to say, isn't the goal to have healthy
Speaker 1: integration of these various signs so we don't feel like
Speaker 1: a fragment itself. Yeah, well, I mean you one hund percent, right,
Speaker 1: But most people feel fragmented. I mean, how people feel
Speaker 1: fragmented is when the results that you're getting in life
Speaker 1: do not connect with what you know you have on
Speaker 1: the inside, right, Like I mean, I mean, my great frustration.
Speaker 1: What's I don't know how the quote exactly goes on.
Speaker 1: I'm going to butcher it is that the ignorant are
Speaker 1: cocksure and the skilled lack of confidence something like that, Right, Like,
Speaker 1: there's I don't know how many smart people, academics, people
Speaker 1: who've actually done the work feel so insecure about getting
Speaker 1: themselves out there. And yet the people who shouldn't actually
Speaker 1: have an audience and shouldn't be out there having eyeballs
Speaker 1: paid attention to them are the ones who have all
Speaker 1: the confidence and lead people off of a cliff a
Speaker 1: lot of times. I mean, and again, that is the
Speaker 1: story of a lot of the self help world. Again,
Speaker 1: like Scott, I wrote this book twenty two years into
Speaker 1: my career. A lot of people write a book six
Speaker 1: months in and they go, well, I'm going to write
Speaker 1: a book because that's the way that you position yourself
Speaker 1: as an expert. And I have six over sixteen thousand
Speaker 1: hours working with people one on one. You know, that
Speaker 1: is a phenomenal amount of time to truly see what
Speaker 1: high performing, elite people are truly using to perform and
Speaker 1: what people who are struggling are doing. And that golden
Speaker 1: thread that started to show up for me in the
Speaker 1: beginning was that, man, my most consistent the clients that
Speaker 1: are consistently performing to their capability, they keep on referencing
Speaker 1: this idea of a character. When I step out, I
Speaker 1: go at it as a different version of myself. You know.
Speaker 1: They wouldn't use the word alter ego specifically, but they
Speaker 1: would say persona and they would say these things, and
Speaker 1: I'm like, that's amazing because I did the same thing
Speaker 1: when I played football, and that's kind of what I
Speaker 1: did when I started or that's what I did when
Speaker 1: I started my business. And then I started unpacking it.
Speaker 1: I'd go back through my notes and started calling back
Speaker 1: up old clients and go, remember when you had said
Speaker 1: this thing about this character, can you tell me about that?
Speaker 1: And I started kind of unraveling things and putting things
Speaker 1: into a process. And that's all I did with the
Speaker 1: book was again, I didn't invent alter egos. They're part
Speaker 1: of the human consciousness. Everyone's used them at some point
Speaker 1: in time in their life, so I don't own it.
Speaker 1: But what I just did was I just codified the
Speaker 1: process for how to build one out responsibly healthy, so
Speaker 1: that it really does bring out the truly heroic part
Speaker 1: of who you are. And again, Cisaro said it. Cisoro
Speaker 1: was the first person to coin the phrase in forty
Speaker 1: four PC and I love the way that he said
Speaker 1: it from the very beginning. And if people just have
Speaker 1: this one takeaway, this is it. The root of the
Speaker 1: word actually means the other eye or trusted friends. And
Speaker 1: I think that in most people's minds, if they brought
Speaker 1: another ally in between the six inches of their ears,
Speaker 1: and it's that trusted friend that helps them get the
Speaker 1: best of themselves out there instead of always just having
Speaker 1: this circular merry go round conversation with themselves, which can
Speaker 1: all oftentimes spiral people down into a darker place. That
Speaker 1: alone is a very healthy way to think of it.
Speaker 1: The alter ego is a trusted friend to help you
Speaker 1: navigate the natural difficulties that we have when we're trying
Speaker 1: to be ambitious and do things and really bring this
Speaker 1: fantastic creative possibility that we all have inside of us
Speaker 1: out onto the field. It's great. It's like your self,
Speaker 1: compassionate self. Yeah yeah, I like that. Well, what's get
Speaker 1: into some nitty gritty practical things, because you know, like
Speaker 1: how do you become you? So let's start with the
Speaker 1: wow mindset. Let's get into the wow mindset right now. Sure,
Speaker 1: So you know I had done this study this in
Speaker 1: the sports world back in early two thousands around why
Speaker 1: are some athletes who were at the top of their
Speaker 1: class just a couple of years later not playing their sport?
Speaker 1: And we did this study in province of Ontario of
Speaker 1: the two hundred top hockey players. I mean, hockey is
Speaker 1: obviously a religion in Canada, and so these are the
Speaker 1: two hundred top hockey players at the age of thirteen
Speaker 1: fourteen going into this next phase, which is the phase
Speaker 1: right before they get drafted into the national Hockey League.
Speaker 1: And I wanted to see how many people three years
Speaker 1: later were still playing the sport. So we tracked all
Speaker 1: the data and then we saw that out of the
Speaker 1: two hundred top athletes, there was only twenty four people
Speaker 1: who were still playing the sport. Now these are the
Speaker 1: top of the top. That's a huge drop off in numbers. Okay,
Speaker 1: so then why was it? Well around eighty percent of
Speaker 1: the reason why was because of coaching and parental pressures
Speaker 1: and stresses was the number one caused by a long shot.
Speaker 1: Injury was another, and another one as just they were
Speaker 1: playing multiple sports and they decided to pursue another path.
Speaker 1: But we wanted to look even deeper into it because
Speaker 1: a lot of the stuff that the reasons why they
Speaker 1: were saying that they had quit was circumstantial and it
Speaker 1: wasn't based on skill. So when we looked into it further,
Speaker 1: we found this kind of our mindset is what I
Speaker 1: call it, and the wow mindset. Friend Carol Dweck, who
Speaker 1: wrote the fantastic book Growth Mindset, calls it fixed mindset
Speaker 1: and growth mindset right. And so we just happened to
Speaker 1: be doing separate studies. She was in the academics, I
Speaker 1: was in sports, and we kind of, you know, ended
Speaker 1: up coming to the same place. But an our mindset
Speaker 1: person is someone who they are very much motivated by
Speaker 1: pain by you know, the lion is chasing you right now,
Speaker 1: and so you're going to sprint away from it. The
Speaker 1: moment you get some distance, you stop because the only
Speaker 1: motivation that you had was to get away from that danger.
Speaker 1: Whereas a WOW mindset individual is motivated very much more intrinsically,
Speaker 1: and they're mot motivated by growth, possibility, adventure, by curiosity,
Speaker 1: all fantastic qualities that we all have intrinsically, or exploration
Speaker 1: as another one. And the subtle difference between the WOW
Speaker 1: and the OW type individual is you could have two
Speaker 1: people that are climbing the same mountain, let's say, and
Speaker 1: they both make the same amount of progress after a week,
Speaker 1: and after that week is done, what an our mindset
Speaker 1: individual will do is the very first action they will
Speaker 1: take is they will pick their head up and they
Speaker 1: will look to the top of the mountain. And what
Speaker 1: that does is that drops people into what I call
Speaker 1: the chasm of despair because you've just put in a
Speaker 1: bunch of effort and then you look and you see
Speaker 1: how much further you have to go, which is important
Speaker 1: because you've now just created the frame in your mind
Speaker 1: of a gap and you go, oh, man, I've put
Speaker 1: in all this effort, and look how much further I
Speaker 1: have to go? And so it creates this bit of
Speaker 1: a self defeating self talk, whereas in the other hand,
Speaker 1: this wow mind set individual has got to the exact
Speaker 1: same point standing next to the other person even and
Speaker 1: the very first action behaviorally that they do is instead
Speaker 1: of picking up their head and their eyes gazing to
Speaker 1: the top of the mountain, they first quickly look over
Speaker 1: the shoulder to see how far they've gone. And that
Speaker 1: frame of mind, they immediately see their growth. Oh, look
Speaker 1: how far I've come. Oh Jesus, see the big rock
Speaker 1: that was I thought that was like, you know, a
Speaker 1: day ago. Look at that's actually three days ago. Look
Speaker 1: how far away that is. Whatever it might be in
Speaker 1: their head, but they're seeing that's the chasm of confidence
Speaker 1: that now they they've crossed that and they and they
Speaker 1: now they'll still look to the top of mountain, but
Speaker 1: they've again they've just filtered their mind through look how
Speaker 1: far I've come. And then they look to the top
Speaker 1: and they go, oh, perfect, you know I've made my way.
Speaker 1: It's the subtlest of distinctions between people. And so in
Speaker 1: all of the work that I do with clients, the
Speaker 1: way that we set up the relationship, the way that
Speaker 1: I set up my like online programs, is there is
Speaker 1: a constant recording of winds and achievements, so that people
Speaker 1: start cataloging these miles zones more. And when you do that,
Speaker 1: you start to wire your mind more naturally to that
Speaker 1: of someone who is growing, expanding, exploring, And you're no
Speaker 1: longer always going to be motivated by the pain of something.
Speaker 1: You're going to be motivated by the growth towards something,
Speaker 1: which is really important. Yeah, Abraham Maslow distinguishing deprivation needs
Speaker 1: and being needs our growth needs. Yeah, our growth motivation
Speaker 1: versus deprivation motivation. And again now to create a caveat
Speaker 1: with this. So that's that's all nice and wonderful, but
Speaker 1: here's what we all know. The most powerful form of
Speaker 1: motivation is actually pain to get someone going and started. Actually,
Speaker 1: pain is the number one That's that's why most people
Speaker 1: go and buy products. It's that, you know, the doctor
Speaker 1: just said, okay, well, you know you've been consuming nothing
Speaker 1: but Big Max and sodas for the last ten years
Speaker 1: and if you don't stop, you've got your heart disease
Speaker 1: is going to kill you. Well, now that's pain motivator,
Speaker 1: You're like, well, hell long, I'm going to get started.
Speaker 1: What's important is so pain is a great way to
Speaker 1: get started, but you want to quickly move your mindset
Speaker 1: towards what are you gaining within about two weeks to
Speaker 1: seventeen days. If you don't make that transition early, your
Speaker 1: motivation is lost because you started to you know, work
Speaker 1: out or do whatever the case is, you're not seeing
Speaker 1: the results right away. We need to flip someone's mindset
Speaker 1: towards what are you going to be gaining looking towards
Speaker 1: that future, seeing your growth constantly, because if you're only
Speaker 1: looking at you know, how close the lion is to
Speaker 1: you and chasing you, then of course motivation is lost. Dude,
Speaker 1: that's awesome. That's awesome. How much were you motivated by
Speaker 1: the desire to prove something big time? You know? My
Speaker 1: backstory is rooted in a lot of trauma. I know,
Speaker 1: and I you know, and I'm actually at this place
Speaker 1: now where I'm completely fine talking about it, which is
Speaker 1: actually a recent experience. But I was sexually assaulted when
Speaker 1: I was twelve at a church camp by two men
Speaker 1: over the course of a couple of days, and the
Speaker 1: kind of more sinister part of that, which it's already sinister,
Speaker 1: but they videotaped that experience and now it's a very
Speaker 1: and this is again this is you know, thirty years ago,
Speaker 1: but that video is a very popular video in the
Speaker 1: kind of pedophile community and in kind of the dark web,
Speaker 1: and I get, yeah, I get consistently messaged in my
Speaker 1: email with gifts of that and you know, people trying
Speaker 1: to torment you or whatever. And yeah. But for the
Speaker 1: first time, so I lived with that, didn't share it
Speaker 1: with anybody until about seventeen months ago, September of twenty seventeen,
Speaker 1: September fourth, specifically, I shared it for the first time
Speaker 1: with a close friend of mine here in New York
Speaker 1: because I had just been, you know, running the red
Speaker 1: line of life, and I had just for the previous
Speaker 1: nine months had been going through a really, really hard
Speaker 1: challenging This is just some tough stuff in my business.
Speaker 1: I was going through a major lawsuit with my former
Speaker 1: business partner that I was suing, and we had a
Speaker 1: new boy that showed up. We've got three little kids
Speaker 1: and that and the childbirth was a very tough one
Speaker 1: on my wife and Charlie, and so that was kind
Speaker 1: of tough to see, and it just was just bringing
Speaker 1: a lot of that stuff that I pushed down for
Speaker 1: a long time to the surface and I basically, you know,
Speaker 1: I just couldn't handle it anymore, and I you know,
Speaker 1: I had I ended up writing just on December thirty
Speaker 1: first of twenty eighteen, a long Facebook post about my
Speaker 1: experience of life and you know how I had many
Speaker 1: suicide attempts and you know, this trauma that happened to me.
Speaker 1: And really the message was a lot around, you know,
Speaker 1: don't do what I did, Like, don't hold on to this,
Speaker 1: because I'm actually coming out the other side of facing
Speaker 1: this thing down and you know, being able to drop
Speaker 1: this weight and this trauma and this shame and guilt
Speaker 1: that sort of naturally people have to hold on or
Speaker 1: they not naturally, but they hold on to through that
Speaker 1: experience of trauma. That is theirs to hold on to. Like,
Speaker 1: I mean, there's nothing that I need to shame myself with.
Speaker 1: I didn't do it, but to get rid of that.
Speaker 1: I just as encouraging people to if there is something
Speaker 1: that they can get help with, to get help with it,
Speaker 1: get professional help with it. Because yeah, while I have
Speaker 1: been able to navigate and you know, achieve some things
Speaker 1: in my life. I wonder what else I could have done,
Speaker 1: you know, if I would have been able to, you know,
Speaker 1: do this sooner. But yeah, so you know that is
Speaker 1: a big part of how I've been shaped. But then
Speaker 1: also probably why it's given me one superpower, which is
Speaker 1: an extraordinarily high level of empathy towards other people, and
Speaker 1: why it's also I would say, why I've become and
Speaker 1: why I became a really good coach and confident on
Speaker 1: advisor to people, because you are just so sensitive to
Speaker 1: the fact that you know, human beings are nuanced, they're complicated.
Speaker 1: You know, everything in life isn't just more about just
Speaker 1: do it and work harder, and you know, there's just
Speaker 1: some people need to be handled with a little bit
Speaker 1: more gentleness and to understand that. So it turned me
Speaker 1: into a good coach. But you know, it would have
Speaker 1: been great if I had maybe dealt with it a
Speaker 1: lot sooner. So yeah, it's never too late, you know, yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: don't you Oh no, I don't. I don't. And you
Speaker 1: know it's it's what's amazing, is uh, you know, after
Speaker 1: I you know, it's it's actually just been one month
Speaker 1: since I wrote that, and I wrote that I was
Speaker 1: sitting down, and I say it in the post even
Speaker 1: I was sitting down to I talk about this concept
Speaker 1: of scripting with specifically my sports clients, you know, pro
Speaker 1: clients where visualization is always in using our imagination is
Speaker 1: obviously very powerful. What people don't get about visualization is
Speaker 1: it's it's actually quite difficult for people to learn as
Speaker 1: a skill. People just accept that, oh, you're just visualized. Well,
Speaker 1: it's not that simple. Visualization is a challenging thing because
Speaker 1: most people's context of visualization is they've just sort of
Speaker 1: left let their their monkey brain, you know, run the
Speaker 1: circles in their heads, and now you're deliberately creating the
Speaker 1: movie in your mind. And that's a challenge for people.
Speaker 1: And so scripting, which is sitting down and actually writing
Speaker 1: out that story of what you want things to look,
Speaker 1: is actually way more powerful because it slows down the
Speaker 1: cognitive process and when you're writing something down, it actually
Speaker 1: activates your mind in a different way and allows you
Speaker 1: to paint more color with it. So anyways, that's what
Speaker 1: I was doing. I was sitting down to script out
Speaker 1: my twenty nineteen and how I wanted to look, and
Speaker 1: you know, of course I got the book coming out
Speaker 1: and this is going to be a new experience, and
Speaker 1: instead that post is what came out of me. And
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm fine with you. You can put it
Speaker 1: in the show notes too, if people wanted to go
Speaker 1: and read just my personal experience, because I've got nothing
Speaker 1: to hide with it. But now a month later, it's
Speaker 1: amazing how much more grace I feel like I can
Speaker 1: walk through life with. It's just dumping all of that
Speaker 1: baggage at the end of twenty eighteen, And I said
Speaker 1: in the post, I just didn't want to carry this
Speaker 1: into twenty nineteen. And I'm highly motivated by you know,
Speaker 1: if there's something that I can be world class at,
Speaker 1: I'd much rather, if of anything, be the most world
Speaker 1: class dad to my three little kids than anything else.
Speaker 1: So I was motivated to not give them secondhand trauma.
Speaker 1: It's sort of the idea that we have this, we
Speaker 1: have this trauma, and then we end up acting it
Speaker 1: out and kind of onto other people. And you know,
Speaker 1: just like secondhand smoke isn't deserved, secondhand trauma isn't deserved
Speaker 1: as well. So I just felt it was my responsibility
Speaker 1: to do that for my kids. Yeah, thank you for
Speaker 1: being so vulnerable and sharing that. And think of all
Speaker 1: the benefit to the world that came from healthily integrating that,
Speaker 1: finally integrating that into the rest of who you are.
Speaker 1: I mean, it kind of gave you even more superpowered,
Speaker 1: isn't it. Yeah? Absolutely, And I mean I've always been
Speaker 1: very mindful of the fact that sometimes the perception of
Speaker 1: me and I don't create this because I don't. I
Speaker 1: never pretend that I'm perfect. In fact, I like kind
Speaker 1: of thinking myself as being massively imperfect. But I always
Speaker 1: take really, I don't pretend because I know I am. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's gold. That's my favorite part of this entire interview.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I don't need to pretend. Yeah, so I
Speaker 1: just know that I take a lot of imperfect action.
Speaker 1: And you know, I think the majority of our answers
Speaker 1: are found on the field of play of life, not
Speaker 1: sitting on the sidelines trying to think about them or
Speaker 1: outthink them. So, but but I'm mindful of this idea
Speaker 1: that you know, perception of me is that I'm polished
Speaker 1: and I'm put together, and it's you know whatever. I
Speaker 1: wear a blazer with a pocket square, and that's just
Speaker 1: how I like to dress or I've got glasses on,
Speaker 1: and I don't do that. I never did that as
Speaker 1: a way to try to impress people. But to your
Speaker 1: point about that vulnerability, it has definitely. One guy had
Speaker 1: a post He's like, you know, I've always respected you,
Speaker 1: and I've always liked the work that you do. Now
Speaker 1: I absolutely love you because of the person that you've
Speaker 1: had to become and just sharing that. And you know,
Speaker 1: and since that post too, you know, I've had seven
Speaker 1: conversations with people who reached out to me that were
Speaker 1: suicidal and I'm talking like really high achievers. In fact,
Speaker 1: I know two of them are actually in our circle
Speaker 1: together that reached out and just for help. And you
Speaker 1: know that was a great win for sure. So well, yes,
Speaker 1: thanks again. And you know these common forces you talk about,
Speaker 1: they call them the hidden forces of the enemy. I
Speaker 1: imagine there are things you've been grappling with personally as
Speaker 1: being human as well, you know, like imposter syndrome, tribal narratives. Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's discuss some of them. You know, I think a
Speaker 1: lot of the listeners will resonate with that. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: three really hidden I talk about. There's common forces. They're
Speaker 1: the ones that we always talk about, right, The common
Speaker 1: ones are doubt and worry and the judgment of others
Speaker 1: and criticism and fitting in and and things like that.
Speaker 1: That those are the common forces that the tricky little
Speaker 1: enemy likes to use to pull us into the ordinary
Speaker 1: world and away and off our track that we want
Speaker 1: to kind of march down. But then there's more sinister,
Speaker 1: hidden forces that operate a lot more below the surface.
Speaker 1: Imposter syndrome is actually now being talked about a lot more.
Speaker 1: It's it's almost common, it's almost become a common force.
Speaker 1: Exactly right. We know that imposter syndrome is just is
Speaker 1: that idea that you don't actually give yourself any credit
Speaker 1: for the achievements that you have. You downplay what you've
Speaker 1: achieved to things like luck, you know, right place, right time.
Speaker 1: Of course I was supposed to do that because I
Speaker 1: was X, Y Z, whatever the case might be. But
Speaker 1: the other two that are hidden and sinister. The other
Speaker 1: one I talked about is tribal narratives. And tribal narratives
Speaker 1: are things like, well, my family has never been an entrepreneur,
Speaker 1: so why would I be an entrepreneur? Or you know,
Speaker 1: people that are Jewish don't do that, and so I'm
Speaker 1: not going to go and pursue that, or it's you
Speaker 1: know racial, then you know, well a black person can't
Speaker 1: do that, or you know, an Indian person doesn't go
Speaker 1: and do this, and they operate at such an unconscious
Speaker 1: level with people that they don't even know that they're
Speaker 1: acting through them, right, And so that's why I created
Speaker 1: that model that sits inside of that in chapter number
Speaker 1: three to kind of give context to people, because I think,
Speaker 1: you know, for people like you and me that are
Speaker 1: out there helping people, context really matters the moment someone goes, oh,
Speaker 1: now I get it. I see how that's built. Now
Speaker 1: you can actually start to self diagnose and you can
Speaker 1: start to work with it yourself, because it gives context,
Speaker 1: gives form and substance to something. And bringing up the
Speaker 1: fact that tribal narratives really are very common ways that
Speaker 1: stop people, but they're often hidden below the surface of
Speaker 1: other things like I just don't believe in myself. Well no, no, no,
Speaker 1: let's not throw yourself under the bus here. Let's really
Speaker 1: take a look at this and see if it's something else.
Speaker 1: And then that third you know, hidden force that I
Speaker 1: talk about is of course, personal trauma. That narrative that
Speaker 1: gets created, that shame, shame and guilt rule many many
Speaker 1: people when they have dealt with really tough trauma. And again,
Speaker 1: all human beings have had trauma. We've all experienced trauma
Speaker 1: at some point. You know, there is because trauma can
Speaker 1: come in the form of a car accident, even witnessing something.
Speaker 1: There's it gets processed as as trauma. But then there's
Speaker 1: degrees and depths of trauma too, Like obviously, you know,
Speaker 1: the one that I had to navigate through is a
Speaker 1: pretty deep one, especially when it hasn't been you know,
Speaker 1: diagnosed and pulled apart for thirty years. And you know, however,
Speaker 1: just because I would be working with someone and I
Speaker 1: would poke, and you know, and I'm crawling around between
Speaker 1: the six inches, you end up poking something that's pretty
Speaker 1: sensitive to people. And I'm like, okay, perfect, that is
Speaker 1: not my skill set, but I'm going to get them
Speaker 1: to somebody who can help them navigate that if they're
Speaker 1: willing to do that. That doesn't mean that just because
Speaker 1: you have that trauma that you need to stop pursuing
Speaker 1: things and getting yourself out there. And that's where that
Speaker 1: using an alter ego. You know what, if you want
Speaker 1: to suspend the disbelief right now that you you can
Speaker 1: do this. But if you want to tap into your
Speaker 1: inner Captain America and allow him to pull those qualities
Speaker 1: that you do have inside of you out onto that
Speaker 1: field to play, it creates that great suspension of disbelief
Speaker 1: and you're simply just tapping into the creative imagination, which
Speaker 1: is such a powerful force to beat resistance. You know,
Speaker 1: so many people when you think about force, there's resistance
Speaker 1: is a strong force, and it's typically propped up by
Speaker 1: unconscious stuff, those tribal narratives, that trauma possibly for someone
Speaker 1: that imposter syndrome, or the more common forces, and resistance
Speaker 1: sits there. And what the personal development or self help
Speaker 1: world for the longest time is said, We're going to
Speaker 1: meet that resistance, that force with the force of willpower.
Speaker 1: Just do it. And that's the equivalent because willpower is
Speaker 1: very much a conscious thought. Resistance sits in the unconscious,
Speaker 1: and that's the equivalent of the mouse staring down the elephant. Right,
Speaker 1: best of luck with that. Now, have some people used
Speaker 1: willpower to overpower some resistance, absolutely, but it is extraordinarily rare.
Speaker 1: So if that is how most people are operating. What
Speaker 1: is a force and a power that's stronger than resistance.
Speaker 1: Our creative imagination the truly the thing that we are
Speaker 1: innately gifted with as human beings. And I talk about
Speaker 1: how the creative imagination is like the back door to performance.
Speaker 1: Resistance doesn't even see it coming. And one of the
Speaker 1: tools we use is just an alter ego to help
Speaker 1: make that back door open up, to suspend our own
Speaker 1: disbelief and act to and through someone and something else
Speaker 1: to get ourselves out there like we know that we can.
Speaker 1: And I'll give you an example for myself specifically so
Speaker 1: that people have another idea of how this has been applied.
Speaker 1: And again I've got like tons of stories in the
Speaker 1: books of people throughout history that have used it. But
Speaker 1: for myself, you know, I am a challenger personality when
Speaker 1: it comes to how I work. I'm dealing with pro athletes,
Speaker 1: Olympic athletes, you know, public figures, people with you know,
Speaker 1: very strong type of personalities. But I'm a challenge. They've
Speaker 1: got nothing but yes people around them, typically people who
Speaker 1: are trying to kowtow to them. I don't do that,
Speaker 1: And you know, so if I'm spending eight hours in
Speaker 1: my working day with that personality. When I go home,
Speaker 1: it's very easy for me to just continue that momentum going.
Speaker 1: The last thing my kids need is confident, decisive, articulate
Speaker 1: Todd showing up. Who's a challenger? Right? They want fun, playful,
Speaker 1: get on the floor and play with them. Todd. And
Speaker 1: my middle daughter, Sophie one day, she's got a fantastic
Speaker 1: emotional bandwidth. She can have fantastic eyes, and she can
Speaker 1: have these tantrums that can last a very long time.
Speaker 1: And she would get into this tantrum and then so
Speaker 1: that's a force, right, and then I would bring that
Speaker 1: kind of adult parent force to the situation, and I'm
Speaker 1: going to lord over that and get her to you
Speaker 1: know stop. Well, that never works. And you know, one
Speaker 1: day I caught myself doing that and I was like, wait, Todd, again,
Speaker 1: this isn't working. So how what's going to be a
Speaker 1: better mode for you? And to deal with this? I
Speaker 1: call it in the book the moment of impact. That's
Speaker 1: a moment of impact for me as a parent to
Speaker 1: you know, calm her down. And immediately I went to well,
Speaker 1: I would want to much rather bring a gentle self
Speaker 1: to this situation, and mister Rogers came in my head immediately.
Speaker 1: And so that's who inspires me as a dad to
Speaker 1: act through is mister Rogers. So the very next day,
Speaker 1: the same tantrum, the same type of thing that's going on,
Speaker 1: I did exactly what mister Rogers would do, got down
Speaker 1: on one knee, reached out, grabbed her, pulled her in
Speaker 1: for a hug. She melted in eight seconds what would
Speaker 1: have typically been a twelve minute long tantrum, and me,
Speaker 1: being just as agitated, evaporated right away. And then just
Speaker 1: like any kid, she was off playing doing you know,
Speaker 1: forgetting about whatever it was that she was upset about.
Speaker 1: And it was such a great feedback loop to close
Speaker 1: to me. I'm like, yeah, this is so powerful. It
Speaker 1: just all I did was, for that second tap into
Speaker 1: that creative imagination, act to and through mister Rogers. And
Speaker 1: now it's now I really think about that's gentle self
Speaker 1: that needs to show up for my kids. Also. Okay,
Speaker 1: so how can we empower our listeners to be that
Speaker 1: self they want to be? Give them two missions. One
Speaker 1: involves a coffee shop, right. Well, the first thing is
Speaker 1: a first mission is let's always rebuild out this alter
Speaker 1: ego in context to a specific field of play. Right, So,
Speaker 1: Todd's self that I bring to my home with my
Speaker 1: kids is different than, of course, that self that I
Speaker 1: bring to operate at my best and work. So what
Speaker 1: field of play is most frustrating you right now? Would
Speaker 1: you like to most use this idea? For that's the
Speaker 1: first step, always context, And then the second one is okay, well,
Speaker 1: what are the qualities that you most want to be
Speaker 1: showing up on that field? Who might already embody them?
Speaker 1: Is it Captain America? Is it Wonder Woman? Is it
Speaker 1: like Kobe Bryant bringing the Black Mamba onto the basketball court?
Speaker 1: Or is it any one of a number of different
Speaker 1: forms of inspiration could come from fiction, could come from TV,
Speaker 1: could come from you know, your own family. I'm deeply
Speaker 1: connected to my nana. I just loved her spirit, and
Speaker 1: so there's parts of her qualities that you know I
Speaker 1: used early on. So what are those qualites you want
Speaker 1: to bring and show up and then go out and
Speaker 1: activate it. I talk about in the book that we
Speaker 1: use a totemin artifact. You know, I used glasses as
Speaker 1: a way of representing it actually taps into a natural
Speaker 1: psychological phenomena we all have called in clothed cognition, where
Speaker 1: we as human beings, we attach meaning to clothing and
Speaker 1: when you put it on, you actually start to adopt
Speaker 1: the traits of that. So the Kellogg School of Management
Speaker 1: did this. They did this study on in clothed cognition
Speaker 1: where they brought a bunch of students into a room,
Speaker 1: got them to do it this. Have you ever seen
Speaker 1: that kind of puzzle where it's got the word of
Speaker 1: a color and then you have to say, but the
Speaker 1: word is actually colored in a different color, So it's
Speaker 1: the word green, but it's in yellow. Yeah. The Stroop test.
Speaker 1: Is that what it's called? Yeah, Okay, So it's actually
Speaker 1: because the first thing that you're very doing, the first
Speaker 1: thing your brain reads, is actually the color, not the
Speaker 1: actual word itself. So they gave them this test and
Speaker 1: I think it was like twenty five boxes of words,
Speaker 1: and you know, tracked their attention and their accuracy and
Speaker 1: the amount of mistakes that they made and how quickly
Speaker 1: they did it. So the students came in, they did
Speaker 1: it individually, and then they leave. Then they brought in
Speaker 1: another group of students. This time when they came in,
Speaker 1: they handed them a white coat, and they told them
Speaker 1: to put it on and that it was a painter's coat,
Speaker 1: and then they got them to do it, so then
Speaker 1: you know, track the information and they leave. Then they
Speaker 1: brought in another group of people, and this time they
Speaker 1: handed them the same white coat but told them it
Speaker 1: was a lab coat or a doctor's coat, and then
Speaker 1: they got them to do the test. Now, the results
Speaker 1: between the plain clothes people the first group, and the
Speaker 1: painter coat people no difference whatsoever. Why because the in
Speaker 1: clothed meaning of wearing a painter's coat is that you're
Speaker 1: probably tapping into a more creative self in that moment.
Speaker 1: Creativity isn't what was going to help you master that test. However,
Speaker 1: the third group, the lab coat wearing doctor coat wearing people,
Speaker 1: they did it in less than half the time than
Speaker 1: the other two groups, and they made half the amount
Speaker 1: of mistakes as the other group. Why because having on
Speaker 1: a lab coat, people started to in clothe themselves into
Speaker 1: the traits of someone who's more focused, methodical, careful, and
Speaker 1: detailed four qualities that are going to help you do
Speaker 1: that particular kind of test. And so all we're doing
Speaker 1: and what I'm trying to work with people on and
Speaker 1: what's inside the book is we're simply tapping into the
Speaker 1: things that are already there as human beings. And I'm,
Speaker 1: you know, with using a totem or artifact and putting
Speaker 1: on the glasses. Oh shit, you have the glasses. Do it?
Speaker 1: Do do it? Wait? Wait, holda, I'm gonna take a
Speaker 1: picture of both of us in our superpower cool And
Speaker 1: so all I'm doing, all I did early on was
Speaker 1: I ascribed the meaning to these glasses and they confident, decisive,
Speaker 1: articulate Todd And I was stepping in through my inner
Speaker 1: Joseph Campbell, who's a hero of mine, Abraham Lincoln, And
Speaker 1: that's what I was showing up. And so my point
Speaker 1: is is whatever your superpowers and those qualities are, is
Speaker 1: there a tot them that you can put on, that
Speaker 1: you can wear. I've got clients who you know, have
Speaker 1: a pebble in their pocket from their family farm in
Speaker 1: Iowa because they're tapping into the values and the character
Speaker 1: set of that group of people that they're bringing to
Speaker 1: the table and honoring their family name, and so what
Speaker 1: could it be for you? And then we're going to
Speaker 1: go out and have a mission. So it's like whatever
Speaker 1: that self is that you're now creating. Go to the
Speaker 1: local coffee shop and whether it's a Starbucks or anywhere else,
Speaker 1: and order a coffee as that version of you, so
Speaker 1: I can walk in with my glasses on and just
Speaker 1: I'm in a confident and decisive way order and move
Speaker 1: off to the side. Right. And the thing is is,
Speaker 1: this isn't you being fake. This is but you playing
Speaker 1: more with what you've already got inside of you, just
Speaker 1: to see what results might change for you. This isn't
Speaker 1: about me tricking anybody. It's not about me being deceitful.
Speaker 1: And again, we as human beings, we're always unfolding that
Speaker 1: we're always spiraling up as a generation of people. We're
Speaker 1: always hopefully getting better and better and better. Right, you know,
Speaker 1: that's what I struggle with with people saying, well, this
Speaker 1: new generation is we want the new generation to be
Speaker 1: better than ours, because if we didn't, if they don't,
Speaker 1: then we've screwed up somehow. Right, we'res human beings. We're
Speaker 1: always spiraling up. So same thing with ourselves. We're always
Speaker 1: unfolding and finding out new parts of ourselves. And this
Speaker 1: is just actively playing with an idea that already exists.
Speaker 1: In ourselves to see what we can and cannot do.
Speaker 1: Oh that's so good. I'm going to end with this
Speaker 1: and even and also a good quote from your book.
Speaker 1: At the end of your life, you won't remember the
Speaker 1: thoughts or intentions you had. You remember the actions you took.
Speaker 1: You'll judge yourself by how you showed up, by what
Speaker 1: you did, what you said, how you acted, and whether
Speaker 1: you perform the way you knew you could in any
Speaker 1: of the stages of life. Thank you, Todd Richard, You
Speaker 1: know all these things are you? And thank you for
Speaker 1: inspiring so many people. You're champ. Thank you and for
Speaker 1: being my podcast today. Thanks thanks for listening to the
Speaker 1: Psychology Podcast. I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you'd
Speaker 1: like to react in some way to something you heard,
Speaker 1: I encourage you to join in the discussion at the
Speaker 1: Psychology podcast dot com. That's the Psychology Podcast dot com. Also,
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