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Mar 13
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1040: Building an Unstoppable Mindset with Alden Mills

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Former Navy SEAL Alden Mills shares his battle-tested strategies for building mental toughness.

You’ll Learn

  1. How to push past fear
  2. How to master the mindset loop
  3. How to direct your emotions

About Alden

Alden Mills is on a mission to help 100 million people Be Unstoppable. He is a three-time bestselling author, the Inc. 500 CEO of Perfect Fitness, and the founder of multiple businesses. Throughout his time as a businessman founding and leading multiple companies, he has been awarded over 40 patents. A former Navy SEAL, he is a three-time platoon commander and ranked #1 platoon commander each time. Alden teaches people, teams, and organizations to Be Unstoppable. Entrepreneur magazine recently ranked him the #1 top virtual speaker.

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Alden Mills Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Alden, welcome back.

Alden Mills
Pete, it is so great to be back. Thank you for having me.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I’m excited to dig into your wisdom. So much good stuff. So much unstoppability. This time we’re coming in to chat about Unstoppable Mindset. So important. And I’d love to kick us off, because I know you’re good for it, could you set the scene for us with a dramatic, exciting, high-stakes tale of when you had an unstoppable mindset at work doing something awesome?

Alden Mills
Oh, so there I was, I’d raised a million and a half dollars, only to learn $1,475,000 worth of ways not to launch a product, I was broke, and I finally decided to pivot away after four years of toil on the first product, and the unstoppable mindset arose when the team of five of us couldn’t raise any more money, decide we’re going to launch this product with $25,000, $500,000 of debt to a manufacturer, only 90 days of runway for benefits. And we decide we’re going to break this down one obstacle at a time.

And with 90 days, most people are like, “It’s not even going to happen. It’s not even close. You can’t even cut steel to make a mold. And let alone, where are you going to get a couple hundred thousand dollars to build the product so you could even make some money when you put it on a container?” Well, one obstacle led to another, led to another, led to another, but we were able to overcome each of those.

And 87 days later, we launched a product called the Perfect Push Up. And a lot of people are familiar with the Perfect Push Up. I know about 20 million people in the United States alone were. And that was the third product in this series of failures that I had beforehand, and that product was always one conversation away from never happening. That product, through almost three years later, we do almost 100 million in sales, puts us on the fastest-growing consumer product company, number four overall on the Inc. 500.

And I would say that was a monumental, unstoppable mindset by all five of us that decided to go after bringing that product to market.

Pete Mockaitis
I knew you would deliver, sir. Thank you. That’s juicy. So, wow, let’s zoom into that moment there in which you got this idea, but it seems like the odds are slim. Not enough time, not enough money, not enough people, resources to have a reasonable shot at this. And yet, away you go. What is going on inside your brain, inside that unstoppable mindset right there? It’s probably not, “Oh forget it, it’s no use. This is never going to happen.” What does that internal conversation sound like?

Alden Mills
That internal conversation was going between two basic fears: the fear of staying put and the fear of moving forward. In this particular case, the fear of staying put was very specifically called out by these five investors that I went to raise money from, and they’re like, “You have one option and one option only. Let me show you this chart. It’s called a cashflow statement. You don’t have any. There’s only one option for you. You have to go bankrupt. Your wife is pregnant with child number three. You’re not making any money. You have to go get a job.”

It wasn’t even a question of, “Oh, there was a slim chance.” It was like, “It’s over.” And when you ask a question, “Okay, so what’s going through your mind?” it became very clear that if we go behind door number B, called bankruptcy, we know exactly what’s going to happen. We’re going to flush the last four years of hard work.

But if you look at the A door, the alternative, and the alternative was, “Hey, what do we still have available to us?” Well one, we had a good relationship with our manufacturer. He knew what we were dealing with, and he liked the new product and he was willing to take more equity because that’s what we had left in the business. And he was able to float us the first couple of containers, and he was able to cut the mold, the steel, much faster than 90 days. He got it done in 26 days.

And when people started to realize, like, “Hey, this is it. We’re going bankrupt,” or “We can give you a little equity, and if you want to come along for this wild ride with us,” a lot of people chose to do the wild ride and chose door number A. So, when we talk about the two basic fears, I really think of it like this. Until the fear of staying put is greater than the fear of moving forward, you’re going to stay put.

I did not want to star in the bankruptcy movie, and I was willing to go way down the line of venturing on the unknown to see what would happen and what we were capable of. And one conversation would lead to another. One day led to two, led to four, led to a week, led to six weeks. And that’s how we tackled that. And, literally, the same analogy of climbing a mountain. One step at a time.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I like that question a lot, “What do we still have available?” because it’s very grounding and very real. Because it feels like the opposite question is, “How are we screwed? Let me count the ways,” it’s like a poem, and the brain just rattles it off. It’s very untethered. It’s precarious. It’s floating. It’s drifting. But, “What do we still have available?” that’s very concrete and that’s grounded.

And you sort of look at it, write it down, assess it, and note like a great relationship with the manufacturer doesn’t just mean he thinks we’re cool, we think he’s cool, he gets our stuff kind of fast, and we’ve got good credit terms. It means, “No, he might actually become an equity player and provide some levels of flexibility and goodness that is absolutely atypical of a typical manufacturing customer.”

Alden Mills
You know, I think it’s very important to take inventory, and you learn that early on in SEAL team about taking inventory of, “Okay, what do we have available to us? What are the weapons?” I’m using that quotation wise, “And what are our assets? What are our skills? What are our strengths?” For every negative, there is a positive. It just comes in a different wrapper, and you have to look at it from a different perspective.

And I really find where you decide to put your focus is where your direction gets determined. Focus determines direction.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, share with us a little bit of the how-to then. Any key insights, discoveries you made as you were kind of reflecting on these experiences and synthesizing the goods into the Unstoppable Mindset?

Alden Mills
The first thing I really want everyone to understand is that there are very few controllables that we have at our disposal. We can’t control the weather. We can’t control our kids, that’s for sure. We can’t control our colleagues. We can’t control the business environment. But we can control our thoughts, where we put our focus, and what we decide to believe in.

And if you think about those three mental controllables– now we have some others. We can control our emotions. We can control our physical capabilities, if we’re blessed enough to be able to use our arms and legs and our minds. And then we can control our faith. What we decide that we really want to put our faith into from a spiritual perspective. Okay?

And what I really want to hone the conversation on is the first one, the mindset, the mental controllables of thoughts, focus, and beliefs, and make sure everybody understands how they build upon each other. They work in what I call a loop, a mindset loop. Thoughts direct your focus. Focus drives to an action. And beliefs power a thought based off of an action that you or I just took or about to take.

And when you start to appreciate, and let’s start with thoughts. Every single one of us has a conversation, and it was the conversation that you just asked me in the very beginning off of that story, “Hey, what was going through your head?” Remember the conversation you just asked me? And that conversation, I call out in my latest book, there are two main voices, the whiner and the winner.

The whiner is your negativity bias. My whiner, when things are getting hard or I’m struggling and I’m tired and I’m starting to have a pity party for myself, sounds like a 10-year-old, “You know how hard this is going to be? Why do you think you can do it? Who do you know who’s done this before? Everyone else thinks you should go this way. No!”

And the whiner in your conversation, it wants to look in the rearview mirror. It knows what it knows from the past. It wants to bring the past into your present. Now that’s a danger because if you’re using something that’s restrictive or limiting from your past into your present, what do you think that does for your future?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, it limits it.

Alden Mills
Yeah. Right? It lowers your ceiling. Because that whiner is living out of the comfort zone, the comfort zone of familiarity, which it breeds mediocrity. Now, once you get this thought, and then you got the winner, the winner whispers. The winner will say things, especially when you’re doing something new to you, and that’s what I really want to focus on.

When you’re doing something new to you, where you don’t know the outcome, you’re taking a risk, but you’re like, “You know, what if, what if I could do this thing, accomplish this goal?” The winner, when you do that in the beginning, it whispers to you because you don’t quite have the confidence yet, and it might say things like, “Hey, try again. Get up. Go another way. You can do it.”

And you have, all of us, we all have that conversation to deal with. And I call that conversation our first leadership decision. And it’s the first leadership decision of deciding whether I can or I can’t. And you have to know the deck is stacked against you. It’s stacked in the form of “I can’t,” that’s negativity bias. Neuroscientists will say, on average, we have about a 3-to-1 ratio of negative to positive. And we have that because it’s a survivability mechanism to keep ourselves safe.

Here’s the good news. Most of us don’t have to worry about staying safe anymore. It’s not just about surviving; it’s about thriving. So how do you override the negativity of your negativity bias that came from a couple million-year-old survivability mindset inside your brain?

Pete Mockaitis
Now, when you say 3 to 1, that means just in the course of my internal mental chatter, I’m likely, on average, to have three times more negative thoughts like, “This is dumb. I hate this. I’m tired. I want to quit,” than I am positive thoughts of, “Booyah! Let’s rock and roll.” Is that what you mean?

Alden Mills
Yes, and I can go a step further. There’s a study that I talk about in the Unstoppable Mindset book about a UCLA neuroscientist who goes through and figures out one negative thought needs three positive thoughts to offset the impact of the negative. And if you want to be in the plus column, you’re going to need somewhere around five positive thoughts.

So that’s how incredibly important it is when you’re starting to have that conversation, and the whiner is coming at you, to really flood your brain with, “Okay, we’re going to figure out ways we can do this. Let’s take our inventory. Let’s take a look at what we have available to us. Let’s remember that there’s always a positive to a negative.”

One of the tools that I use and talk about in the book is playing the opposite game. What I mean by the opposite game is when a negative confronts you, an obstacle that seems insurmountable to you, play the opposite game and give yourself, force yourself, force your team to come up with two reasons why this obstacle is a positive for us, “What are we going to learn from it?”

And when you do that, you’re going to get people to shift their focus. You’re going to force them to shift their focus. Sometimes, if you hear a lot of negative banter and you’re sitting around in a meeting room, like, “Oh, this can’t be done for this reason and this reason and this reason,” you’re like, “Okay, great. We’re done with the ‘can’t be done’ meeting. Everyone, get up. I want you to walk around the office space or walk around the building, and come back here in five minutes.”

“And once you’ve done that,” that’s a state change, by the way, moving, getting oxygen to your mind, “I want you to be thinking about the can-do reasons why we can do this and what that obstacle is going to do positively for us,” and watch what happens. It will take a while because you got to get people to look at it from a different angle, but you can find at least two positives. It wouldn’t surprise me if some came back with three or four.

So that’s on thoughts.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. So, I’d love it if you could give us a couple examples. Like, this thing seems bad and I got two positives on it.

Alden Mills
Okay. Gee, really negative that we’re going near to bankruptcy, like, this is the only stop we have. Give me two things why my investors said, “Hey, your only option is bankruptcy.” You sit around the table, and like, “Well, it’s going to get us really focused.” You know, one of the big problems was when I raised a million and a half dollars, I didn’t have a massive sense of urgency to hit our timelines.

When you have just $25,000 left in some credit cards, you have a real sense of urgency and it brings everything into clarity very quickly. So, we got clarity from the fact that there was bankruptcy. Number two, when you go to a supplier, and say, “Hey, your only other option is bankruptcy,” they don’t want you to go bankrupt. They start to lean into you, if they like you and you’ve been honest with them, and they started to work with us and give us new ideas that we hadn’t gotten in the past.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. Understood. All right. And so, what I’m hearing is with the two positive reasons, it’s actually actively positive as opposed to, “Well, it could be worse. Well, I guess it’s nice that we have bankruptcy protections in this nation and I don’t have to be thrown into debtors’ prison.” I mean, I guess, yeah, it could be worse, but that’s not what you’re saying. It’s like, what we’re saying is, “No, this is actively positive.”

Alden Mills

Yeah. And I want to be clear to everybody about positive. Sometimes when I’m up on stage, I will ask people, “Hey, raise your hands if you’ve done 23andMe, or some variant of genetic testing?” A bunch of hands typically go up. And then I’ll ask somebody out of the audience, “Hey, you that just raised your hand, tell me, did you screen positive for the positive gene? Did you get the positive gene?” And they’re like, “Uh, I don’t remember.”

And I go, “Well, let me tell you, it’s right above the leadership gene and just below the success gene.” And then they kind of get it, and they’re like, “Oh, uh, no, I don’t get that.” And I’m like, “Obviously you didn’t, because there’s no such thing!” And when I talk about the positive, let me be specific here, I’m talking about can-do positivity. I’m not talking about just saying, “Hey, let’s be a cheerleader for cheerleaders’ sake.” I’m asking you to look at this from the perspective of “What can we do?”

Pete Mockaitis
And, indeed, how does this circumstance enable us to can-do it better than if it were absent? Bankruptcy yields focus, and that’s handy.

Alden Mills
Correct.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, yeah, let’s hear about the focus.

Alden Mills
So here it is, we’ve had this conversation, and we’ve generated some thoughts. We’ve generated a bunch of negative thoughts because that’s what the whiner is really good at. And then we’ve got some positive thoughts and can-do thoughts, like, “Hey, okay, so now we got a tight timeline. Time to get to work. We’re going to cut out all the slough of what we need to do, and just focus on how we’re going to bring this product to market.”

A thought is neither helpful nor hurtful until energy gets attached to it. Neuroscientists today will say we generate somewhere upwards of 10,000 thoughts a day, and I don’t know how they’re counting that, but a minimum right. It’s a large number of thoughts a day. Thoughts come in three main categories: past, present, and future. But how do we add energy to a thought? We do it through focus.

Well, how does focus work? The way focus, this is the way I communicate how focus works, is that it acts like a funnel. It funnels energy to a thought that drives us to an action. The action could be, “We’re going to sit on our hands and feet. Sit on our hands and do nothing.” Or, it could be, “All right. We’re going to call up that manufacturer and see if that manufacturer will work with us and help us with this new product.”

The important thing is thoughts are constantly going over our focus funnel, which we all have. And until we put the thought into our focus funnel and apply energy to it, thoughts are neither helpful nor hurtful. Now, here’s how I want people to think of it, and I offer five different solutions. And I love acronyms, and I created an acronym called FOCUS. And I’ll give you the F of FOCUS as one of five different ways to hone your focus when dealing with a thought.

I’d like you to think, on top of your focus funnel, that you have an adaptive screen. You can open and close that screen. You’re in charge of what thought you want to give energy to it. Now, let’s just do a little thought classwork. If we focus on a negative thought in the past, what do you think that leads to?

Pete Mockaitis
Emotionally? Maybe bitterness, resentment, regret.

Alden Mills
Yeah, those are all components of depression. They lead to depression. If we focus on a negative thought in the future, what does that lead to?

Pete Mockaitis
Like, worry, anxiety.

Alden Mills
Anxiety, okay? That’s the power of our leading ourselves. Everything we’re talking about here, Pete, is leadership, and it is leadership of what I call the first level. The last time I was on here, we talked about second-level leadership. That was team leading, right? The level before team leading is how you lead yourself. In these first initial leadership decisions, okay, picking the thought, then we’re deciding, “Okay, where are we going to put our energy? Where are we going to put that focus?” That’s leadership decision number two.

So, when we get this adaptive screen that’s on top, and we put a thought in there, how do we sort out all these thoughts that are going into our funnel? Because we only really want one, and we want the one that’s going to be most helpful to getting us to our goal. So, I have this very simple question that I ask people, and I’ve even made-up little wristlets so people can remind themselves of it, “Is this helpful or hurtful towards the direction of the goal I’m going?”

Case in point. Is it helpful or hurtful to focus on going bankrupt? Or is it helpful or hurtful to focus on, “How can I figure out a way to cut steel in less than 90 days so we have a shot at launching the product?”

Alden Mills
Now, you may say, “Well, Alden, that’s remarkably simple.” And you know what? It ain’t complicated. It’s just hard, as a good old Navy SEAL instructor have us want it done. And that’s what we’re after here, is I want people to walk away from our conversation today with a couple of very simple tools that they can ask themselves or their team members, “Hey, every time you come in here and talk about everything we can’t do, do you think that’s helpful or hurtful to trying to accomplish the company goal that we’re all being measured against?”

It’s like throwing cold water on somebody. And then when people start to go, “You know what, I guess it’s hurtful.” I’m like, “Yeah. And if you’re saying that inside your mind, and now you’re saying it out to infect everybody else, remember the old adage, ‘One bad apple spoils the bunch’?”

Pete Mockaitis
Right, yeah.

Alden Mills
That’s negativity bias. It’s the same thing we’re talking about here.

Pete Mockaitis
So, let’s zoom in. So, we’re living life, you know, we’re having idle moments of me in the shower or driving, and then a thought comes into the mind, like, “Oh, I might go bankrupt and we might have to downsize, sell the house, and get a tiny apartment somewhere.” So, I guess that’s a future negative, anxiety-producing.

And so, I can ask myself the question, “Is that helpful or hurtful? Oh, it’s hurtful. It’s making me anxious instead of, like, focused and zeroed in.” And then what? Do I just kind of try to have my list of go-to helpful thoughts to return to? Or how do you recommend we manage that in these moments?

Alden Mills
Great question. First of all, we’re human. What does that mean?

Pete Mockaitis
We have feelings.

Alden Mills
It means we’re imperfect. It means we can’t do it all. It means that our focus funnel, that Alden just talked about, it’s porous. It can sprout holes on the side. And it can sprout holes from external forces of different people saying, “You can’t do that. It’s never been done before. No, that won’t work.” And, all of a sudden, energy gets pulled off the side of your focus funnel, so you’ve lost your laser focus.

Or you have internal focus funnel hole-makers, that are saying, “What are you doing? You can’t do this.” They’re based off of fear, things of doubt, or questioning beliefs. And when you get to those points, the key is being aware enough to be like, “Hey, hey, hey, that’s a negative hypothetical. If I’m thinking about something in the future, if I can’t do this, then I’m going to have to move to a smaller apartment, and I’ve just gotten married, and my wife’s going to hate me, and I’ve burned through all of this, and, oh, my God, I’m going to look like a loser, and I’ll never get a job. Whoa, I should stop right now. What am I doing?” Right?

That is projecting a negative hypothetical into the future. Pete, helpful or hurtful, negative hypothetical?

Pete Mockaitis
Hurtful.

Alden Mills
Yeah, right? But you, the listener, has listened to Alden and Pete talk about this and say, “Hey, that’s something in the future. I can’t control that yet.” The only thing you can control is what you decide you want to create for your own future. And at that point, you get to go back and say, “Hey, flush the funnel. New idea. Alden, what is helpful that I can do today to take action to accomplish this goal? What one thing can I do?”

And when you start having that conversation hourly, sometimes by the second, example, going through Hell Week in SEAL training, where they give you a total of three and a half hours of sleep over five and a half days, you get to a point where all you’re saying is, “Can I take another step? Yeah, I can take another step. I’ll take another breath. I’ll do one more step.”

Climbing Denali at 50 in 15 days and I didn’t get to see the summit until 45 minutes before we made the final turn. Do you think it’s helpful or hurtful to say, “Where’s the summit? I can’t see it.”

Pete Mockaitis
“Are we there yet?”

Alden Mills
“Are we there yet?” Right? No. No, it’s not. But you got to be like, “Hey, forget about that. I’ve got to stay in the moment and not focus on the mountain.” And that’s a phrase that I use a lot. And then talk about staying in the moment versus the mountain. Use the mountain of work in front of you as a way to measure the yardstick of your progress because you’re still making progress.

Even if you’re like Thomas Edison and you fail 10,000 times in inventing the light bulb, you learn 10,000 different ways not to light the light bulb, right? Stay in the moment and ask yourself, “What’s helpful or hurtful to get me a step closer to my goal?”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s good. Thank you.

Alden Mills
You’re welcome.

Pete Mockaitis
And then we got belief.

Alden Mills
We got beliefs. So here it is. We’ve now taken an action. An action we think, hopefully, is helpful in the direction of the new goal, the new thing. We have dared to try to do something new to us. When I’m doing all of this conversation with you, those are the people I’m speaking to that have been willing to set a goal that’s audacious, that sometimes they have no idea how they’re going to accomplish it, but they know if they accomplish this goal, this could be transformative for them, or at least a step in the direction of something transformative for them.

So, we take the action. And, lo and behold, we fall flat on our face. We create this product, we cut steel, we spend all this money, and the damn product doesn’t work, or people don’t like it, or it doesn’t do what we thought it would do. I’m using that as the example. We have a decision to make. We look at that action, and we say, “Oh, my God, I’m a total failure. This is never going to work,” and we accept that as fact, and then our thoughts get in alignment with our focus, and we create a self-fulfilling prophecy of failure. Step one.

Or step two, we look at it, and go, “Yeah, it didn’t quite work the way I thought it was going to work, but, hey, we learned how to cut steel, and we got a product that we didn’t have before, and now I can go around and get feedback from people to tell me what they don’t like about it because it’s so much easier to have the hard good in their hands versus just talking about it on a PowerPoint, right?”

And then we start thinking to ourselves, “Wait a second, I got a couple other ideas,” and we develop a different belief. What is a belief, Pete?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, a belief is an assertion that you hold to be true.

Alden Mills
Amen. Bingo. Hundred points for Pete today.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you.

Alden Mills
That’s all it is. It’s something we have determined that is true. We’ve determined it. Now maybe we’ve picked it up from other people because beliefs come from all different portions of our life. Beliefs can come from the environment we grew up in, from our parents, from our brothers, our sisters, our coaches, our teachers, on books we read, the TV shows we listen to, or watch, the podcasts, whatever. They come all over the place.

And here’s the wonderful thing about beliefs. We can decide which ones are true or not, and we get to change them. Leadership action number three – we get to decide. I decide what I can or cannot do. Nobody else. You might allow other people to do that, but at the end of the day, it’s your leadership that decides “What I want to believe in.”

Alden, born with smaller than average sized lungs, asthmatic since the age of 12. I remember my mother said, “No, you can’t go to the Naval Academy. They don’t like asthmatics. You’ll definitely never go to SEAL team. Forget about it. You’ll never be a Division I athlete. You won’t be able to try out for the Olympic team. Are you kidding? You have smaller than average sized lungs.”

You know a couple of things they didn’t even know back then? If you really work aerobically, you can increase the volume of your lungs. They know that now. They didn’t know it then. Huh?

Pete Mockaitis

Cool.

Alden Mills
Interesting, right? So, what’s that got to do with thoughts and focus? Beliefs come in two, this is how I think of them. They come in two major genres: limiting or empowering. Is the belief I’m deciding to be true helpful or hurtful toward my goal? Imagine starting off in a company going, “Well, I’m raising all this money, but I really don’t think it’s going to work.” Would that be helpful or hurtful?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, it’s hurtful for your motivation and belief in doing all the things you’re trying to do.

Alden Mills
But why would you do that? But you know what? Half my SEAL class, who took, on average, two years to show up and get to the starting line, when push came to shove and they had already passed a PT test, physical fitness test, four times, they got one more time to do exactly the same test. This is the lead story in the book, right in the beginning, 122 of us, 64 passed the test. You know why?

Pete Mockaitis
Tell me.

Alden Mills
Because they had a belief that they really couldn’t be there. They really couldn’t do it.

Pete Mockaitis
So, they passed it four times previously, and the fifth time…

Alden Mills
But the fifth time, when it mattered to class up and actually start training, because all of the other stuff was just pre-phase training, they don’t class.

Pete Mockaitis
That is surprising.

Alden Mills
Belief, it’s an operating system. It’s our basic operating code. And here’s the rub wrong with the belief? A belief acts like a seed, and the more we empower it, fertilize it with our thoughts and focus, it drives us to take an action. That action is called a behavior. We decide like, “Hey, you know, I think I could run a little bit faster,” or, “I think maybe my manufacturer will give me a little money, or maybe they’ll accept. I’ve got to try, I’ve got to ask, I’m going to take a behavior and I’m going to try something different.”

And then over time, that behavior can turn into a habit. Now habit is an interesting challenge. It’s what keeps me in the coaching business, because a lot of people, the habit becomes so automatic that they don’t even know about it anymore. The automatic could be, well, the first thing that comes up is that, “No, this can’t be done.” They listen to their whiner. They’re talking like the whiner, and they’re the one that’s holding back the whole team.

And then they call in somebody like me, to say, “Hey, Mr. or Mrs. Executive, if you don’t fix that, you’re not helpful on our team anymore.” And that is where you’ve got to go to work on your belief. So how do you do that? Well, you do it the way we initially started when you asked me that big question, and you say, “Hey, we have to ask ourselves these two basic fears, the fear of staying put, or the fear of moving forward.”

And you run an outcome account in your head. What’s an outcome account? Basically, “Hey, what happens if I allow this belief that I think I should accept as true? Am I accepting the fact that it will hold me back from achieving this? Am I comfortable with the fact that I don’t achieve this?” If you’re comfortable with the fact that you’re not going to achieve it, you’re going to stay put.

But if you’re not comfortable with that outcome, and you say, “You know what, the risk of going out there and trying, and maybe, you know, some people laugh at me for failing, or maybe this, that, or the other thing, I got to believe that we can try.” Then that’s going to empower you to look at your beliefs in a different way.

Now the other thing you can do, and I call this confess and assess, is you find somebody, a swim buddy, a close friend, someone that’s not going to judge you, and you call up your buddy, Pete, and you say, “Hey, Pete, I’m struggling here. I can’t seem to see the light of day here, but something’s holding me back. This is what I’m dealing with.”

Pete asks a couple of basic questions, like, “Well, tell me more. Why are you thinking like that? Are you okay if you take that action or don’t take that action? How does that make you feel?” “Oh, no, that would be miserable. I’d hate that.” That’s the confess. When you get your judgment, that inner narrative that’s driving the belief out on the table, and then you use you and your buddy to assess it, that can help you on the path of what I call the “I Can Belief” loop.

Pete Mockaitis

Yeah, that’s cool. And I’m thinking, we had a hypnotist, Dr. Marc Schoen, a clinical psychologist, who also practice hypnotherapy, given his credentials. And I asked him about what are some of the suggestions or beliefs that are kind of core and super powerful, useful, all the time in many, many contexts, and just to carry with you everywhere.

And I’d like to ask you the same thing. Are there a couple go-to super beliefs that are just so handy in so many circumstances that you cling to?

Alden Mills
Yes. So, I would classify those beliefs as mantras. And that is absolutely one of the things that I encourage, and I talk about it in the book on how to build mantras that help you with your focus of, “Is this helpful or hurtful?” And one of the mantras is, “I decide what I can or can’t do.”

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Alden Mills
“I’m unstoppable. I can do this.” And you speak in the present tense of what it is you’re trying to do. I love to help people achieve things they didn’t think they could do. That’s kind of my term about being unstoppable. And, by the way, to be unstoppable means you first have to have been stopped. And let’s say, in your case, Pete, you want to be a best-selling author. I would say to you, “Okay, Pete, the very first thing, I want you to create a new mantra for yourself, ‘I am a bestselling author. I write books people want to read. I write books that help people unlock their potential.’”

“Pete, throughout the day, anytime you’re sitting down, and you’re thinking about writing, I want you to start talking to yourself in that present tense, and give yourself that mantra because that’s the goal we’re after. I want the mantra to be in alignment with the goal you’re after in the present tense.’” So that’s one of the techniques.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, I also want to get your quick thought on, you said we can control emotions, and I think some might say, “Can you? Is that possible? What about depression? Isn’t that a thing where we cannot?” What’s your hot take on controlling emotions? And any quick tips on how to do it?

Alden Mills
Emotions. What is an emotion?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, you know, it’s funny. I was reading Ethan Kross’s book, and apparently, it’s somewhat complicated. But I’m going to simplify it, and just say it is a feeling and thought existing within us.

Alden Mills
There’s something called a feeling-thought loop, right? Thought gives energy to it, generates a feeling. Emotion derives from it. The definition that I enjoy most about emotion actually comes out of a book from Conscious Leadership that is called E-motion. It’s energy in motion. Now, if you have an E-motion, and something that has been driven from a thought and a feeling, you first need to know the root cause.

If I sit here and spend a lot of time stewing on, “Somebody ripped me off,” I’m making that decision to go down and create that emotion. Can you control every single emotion? No, we’re imperfect, right? But can you control emotions? A hundred percent, you can. It’s in your control, but how do you do that?

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, I guess the pathway then sounds like is, if there’s an emotion I would like to experience, “I would like to feel inspired and motivated,” I’m going to choose a thought that’s in the inspirational motivational zone and resonant for me, maybe an experience, a memory, a goal, and I’m going to put focus and energy upon that thought. And, in so doing, I will often, but not always, conjure emotion.

Alden Mills
Yeah, and make it even simpler, “Hey, you know what? I’m feeling kind of blah right now. I’d like to feel a little bit better. What’s a simple way to do that? Oh, I love American Authors’ ‘Best Day of My Life’ song. I’m going to listen to that.” Boom! What just happened there? I just changed my emotion. I did a state change, “You know what? I don’t feel that great. I feel low on energy and I feel kind of blah. I’m going to go for a run. I’m going to get on the rowing machine. Get a workout.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, sure. Get a glass of water. I mean, I guess when you raise the question, you naturally say, “Oh, there’s several options that I can immediately take right now.”

Alden Mills
A hundred percent. And, by the way, that’s you leading you, right? So, in the case of when you get ambushed, and I talk about this in the chapter I used, one of the hardest Navy SEAL training evolutions is practicing an ambush. They’re violent, they’re terrifying, they’re unexpected, and you got to think clearly when you get ambushed, but we ambush ourselves all the time.

We let our thoughts run wild. We’re not paying attention because we’re doing something else or looking at our phone, and, all of a sudden, something pisses us off. Before we know it, an emotion comes out and we’re all fired up. So, you got to learn to move that emotion. Now, what is a big challenge when we get an ambushed emotion? Well, that fires the amygdala, the amygdala, the little almond-sized piece of our brain that has to deal with fight, flight, or freeze.

And the problem with when the amygdala gets fired is it changes the blood flow from the prefrontal cortex, the front of our brain, where executive function and compassion and collaboration live, and put us in a state where cortisol and adrenaline are firing through our veins. Cortisol, so we can just go to the sugars. Adrenaline, so we can get up to speed or whether we’re going to fight or flight. And then we’re not solving anything creatively, and then more emotion can stack on there.

The quickest way to move that, and you have to work on this, is through a box breath is one example. Breathing through the nostril, holding, exhaling, holding. Moving, doing a state change, getting yourself to calm back down from that emotional ambush.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. That’s good.

Pete Mockaitis
Well said. Well, tell us, anything else you want to mention before we hear about a few of your favorite things?

Alden Mills
I really want people to understand they are their own best leader. Every single one of us is a leader. We have to lead ourselves to get up in the morning. We have to lead ourselves to listen to this podcast. We have to lead ourselves to decide what we can or can’t do. And you have to lead yourself to decide, “What’s the helpful or hurtful thought? Where am I going to put my focus? And what am I going to decide to believe in?” If you learn to lead yourself through those, watch how many people will learn to lead to follow you.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Thank you. Now, could you give us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Alden Mills
Of course. Seneca, “Success is a matter of belief.”

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite book?

Alden Mills
I’m really geeking out on this book right now, “A Calendar of Wisdom” by Leo Tolstoy. Daily little wisdom to get your mind in the right place, your thoughts, your focus, and your beliefs to start the day.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite habit?

Alden Mills
Telling my kids I love them.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a key nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with audiences, something they quote back to you often?

Alden Mills
“Is this helpful or hurtful?”

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Alden Mills
Alden-Mills.com.

Pete Mockaitis
And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Alden Mills
Yes. I want you waking up every day asking yourself, “What’s one thing I can do that’s going to push me out of my comfort zone, that’s going to drive me to do something courageous, audacious, something that, over time, will change my life?”

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Alden, this is so powerful. Thank you.

Alden Mills
Pete, great questions. I always love being with you. Keep inspiring, brother.

Mar 10
0

1039: How to Stop Wasting Time on Email with Randall Dean

By | Podcasts | No Comments

Randall Dean shares practical tips for taming an overwhelming inbox.

You’ll Learn

  1. The best time-saving investment you can make
  2. How to keep unread emails from flooding your inbox
  3. The inbox shortcuts that’ll save you hours

About Randy

Randy Dean, The E-mail Sanity Expert®, author of Amazon bestseller Taming the E-mail Beast, is an expert on time & e-mail management and the related use of technology. For 25+ years his humorous and engaging programs have given attendees key strategies on better managing their time, e-mail, apps & technology.

Resources Mentioned

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Randall Dean Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Randy, welcome!

Randall Dean
It’s great to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
I’m so excited. We’re talking email. You are the Email Sanity Expert, registered trademark. So, I’d love to start by hearing a little bit in working with so many people and their email, is there anything that’s particularly surprising to you that you’ve learned about us professionals and doing email?

Randall Dean
Well, you know what’s interesting, I’ve been leading programs on this topic for 20 years now, started my company all the way back in 2004, and what I’ve learned over all this time is that not only are people spending, I think, the average that I saw in a published study was a little bit more than two hours per day, but at a lot of the conference events, conventions, places that I speak, I’m getting people answering anywhere from three to six hours a day just on their inbox.

The interesting contrarian fact and statistic that I’ve discovered, I ask people at these programs, I go, “How many of you have had prior training?” And if it’s an audience that I haven’t spoken with before, it’s less than 5%. Less than 5%, not just here in the United States, Canada, Mexico. I’ve spoken in Europe several times on this. And in all of those places almost no one has had strategic or technical training on how to be more efficient with their email on a tool that’s taking 25% to 50% or more of their workday. It’s crazy.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s what’s funny is I think we have a sense, or I have a sense, and I think I’m getting the vibe from other professionals, that we’re spending “too much time” on meetings and emails. Well, first, I just want to check that assertion for validity, because I guess it’s conceivably possible that even if you are spending six hours on email a day, if most of these messages are thoughtful works of written craftsmanship in which you are casting a vision and offering clear guidance, and wisdom, and leadership, and insight, and clarification, and coordination that that might be okay.

Like, you’re doing work. You’re doing knowledge work at a high level. You’re spending six hours on email but those six hours are well-spent in these communications. Tell, Randy, how often is that the case? Or, is, in fact, our assertion correct, that that’s too darn much?

Randall Dean
I would actually say for the vast majority of people, they’re not doing what you just described.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Randall Dean
They’re dealing with 200 emails a day, and they’re trying, in a mass flurry, to get through them as fast as they possibly can, and they’re not writing terribly high-quality and high-level communications. They’re just trying to get through the flood of information that’s coming in at them. It’s funny because I actually talk about email etiquette sometimes and I’m actually of the point, like, make the subject line sort of say what is in the email.

If there’s tasks inside the email, make sure people, right up front, know who’s got what tasks. And if you can’t get down to bullet points, it’s almost the exact opposite of what you just said in terms of crafting really nicely crafted communications. And I actually even mentioned that, if you are going to write something that’s sort of wordy and requires extra time and effort to go through it, you should probably turn that into an actual document, like a Word doc or a PDF so that you attach it to the email, so people slow down and read it more carefully.

Because one of the problems that they have is if it’s sort of a long email in terms of message length and density, a lot of people are just scanning over the top of them and not getting into them because they’ve got too many coming in.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, Randy, you’re bringing back a fun memory of my first kind of grown-up internship was at Eaton Corporation in Pittsburgh, and I was part of this program, and the one coordinating the program, her name was Amber. And it was funny, her email signature had “Thank you for your attention to this communication,” like in all of her emails.

And it was so funny, I don’t know if this is what she was going for, but it caused me, an insecure 19-, 20- year-old intern to say, “Oh, shucks, I didn’t actually spend much attention on your communication. I better read it again.”

Randall Dean
Yeah, and the thing is, I always tell people, “If somebody’s getting 150-200 emails a day, and you’re barraging them with a 14-paragraph soliloquy, and they miss something, is that really their fault for missing something? Maybe it’s your fault for not getting to the point, you know? So, yeah. Now that doesn’t mean you throw out all rules for appropriate grammar and etiquette.

But I also am a believer that email is best used when communications are simple, obvious, and straightforward. And the minute they start getting complex or confusing, it might be time to pick up the phone or go find the person.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, or, I guess, we’ll talk alternatives and tools. I personally love the Loom video, if we’re remote and asynchronous, in terms of, “Hey, these are my thoughts on this matter and some detail. So, you can see my face, hear my voice, see the document, or whatever we’re talking about at the same time.” So, okay, understood.

It sounds like it’s quite rare that email time is time brilliantly spent, and we may, even if we do need to craft a beautiful something, it might be better off in a document. And so, the Tim Cook’s up early in the morning, emailing the day’s leadership wisdom for each of his key team members, it sounds like that’s not what most of emailing is.

Randall Dean
That’s really funny because, I mean, if you’re at Tim Cook’s level and his senior leadership team’s level, then maybe what you described at the start of this conversation might work. Most of the people that are coming into my audiences are administrative professionals, mid-level to low-senior level managers and directors, and they’re just dealing with a barrage of messages, and they’re trying to figure out what they need to get done within these messages, who they need to follow up with from these messages, and how to then turn that into a work day.

And so, a big part of what I’m doing is like, “Okay, here’s how you go through this stuff to figure out what’s important, what’s urgent and what’s not.” So, I think that that’s been a big part of the struggle.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, I hear you. So, that’s kind of the email vibe we’re talking about here is tons of incoming things, kind of unprocessed, unsorted, that need to be gotten through. And I’m thinking we had Cal Newport, we talked about A World Without Email on the show, and he used the phrase, just haunting, “In some corporate environments, we are human network routers.”

Randall Dean
That’s a good way to put it. I like that a lot.

Pete Mockaitis
In terms of, “Okay, here’s a message that’s coming to me. Okay, I can do this thing. I can forward it. No, it doesn’t belong to me, it belongs over here, forward there.” So, for many of us, it’s about processing large volumes, and having help is awesome. Shout out to my producers. I just forward all my pitches to them and they know what to do. It’s like, “Read all of these thoughtfully and tell me which ones are fantastic finalists.” And so, I don’t read 90% of the pitches in my email, and that’s awesome that they do that for me. I greatly appreciate them.

Randall Dean
And that’s a perfect delegation right there, that not enough people, I think, are doing. And so, I always tell people, “If you’re more of a senior level in your management chain and you feel like you’re spending way too much time, especially on low-level emails, that’s a mismatch because you’re getting paid to do higher-level work than low-level emails.”

So, you got to find a way to sort of fix that a little bit. And it’s probably going to require a reallocation of some of the messaging so that you’ve got somebody else helping you with screening a bit. I think that’s a really good way to put it.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, I am tempted to jump into tips and tactics, but, first, maybe, can you orient us to, you mentioned, okay, almost none of us get training in this. Can you give us a glimmer of hope or inspiration? What’s on the other side of this? Let’s say we do get some training from this insightful conversation with Randy or more, what’s possible? In terms of when we’ve got our email game optimized, what’s the before-after transformation look like?

Randall Dean
I think email is what you could call a necessary nuisance. It’s something you have to deal with and we’re not going to get rid of it. I don’t see anywhere on the horizon where email is going to completely go away. But when you think about what it is, the vast majority of what’s coming in are what I basically say are a whole bunch of hungry squirrels with the occasional big angry dog, right?

And so, basically, you’re trying to figure out, “Which one of these is the big angry dog that’s barking? And how do I reduce the distraction of all these hungry little squirrels?” And so, when you say “What’s on the other side?” I think having a logical triage mentality with processing your emails that requires some new habits.

But if you get into the habits, and you do it well, you will look at your emails less times per email, you might look at your inbox less times per day in total, you will be able to better identify what’s really important or urgent, and you’ll end up without such a big cluttered mess so that it’s not a distraction in and of itself.

You know, I would bet almost every program I’m into, maybe 15-20% of the audience has more than a thousand emails in their inbox that haven’t even been filed or deleted. And I mean that’s common. So, if you’re in that boat, you’ve got a lot of company. But I can also tell you, I know that when you’ve got just got pages and pages and pages of email streaming in your inbox, some marked unread, some flagged, some starred, most of them not, and you don’t know what is most important, that’s stress. I mean, I just think that’s the definition of stress, and it doesn’t have to be that way.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, yeah. As you described that scene, I could actually feel my heart rate ticking up a bit. So, okay, less stress, fewer times, fewer total minutes there. Could you ballpark it for us? I mean, I’m sure it varies a lot based on roles and responsibilities and email volume. But in terms of untrained to email Jedi Master, what kind of email time savings might we realize?

Randall Dean
Well, it’s interesting. I had one of my university clients at one time, they had to sort of justify the expense of bringing me in to do the program. They did an ROI justification. And what they did was really cool. They actually asked people about a week or two after the program how much time they thought they were saving from the tips they learned in the program, and how confident they were, they were saving that much time.

And, now, the average person was basically saying they were saving more than two hours a week with a good number of them as much as four to six hours per week. Now, I know that may not sound like a lot, but if you could get a half day to three quarters of a day of additional productivity time every week, I think you’d be pretty happy with that.

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely. And my mind just leaps to running the spreadsheet. So, two hours a week times 50 work weeks a year, 100 hours. What’s that annual rate for those employees? And now that time spent more valuably. So, Randall, unless your workshops cost a quarter million dollars, I’m pretty sure they got their money’s worth.

Randall Dean
Yeah, I mean, I think it’s easy, low-hanging fruit return on investment. I believe that we figured out that if you extrapolate those findings across all users in the room, that the first year ROI in and of itself was over 2,000%.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. That’s what I like to hear.

Randall Dean
Because, like I said, it would be a different math if half the people or more already had this training, but if it’s literally 5% or less, it’s almost impossible not to see a significant productivity improvement.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, we’re fired up, Randy. Lay it on us, what do we do to realize these gains?

Randall Dean
Well, when I teach my programs, I’m mostly speaking to professionals using tools like Microsoft Outlook or Gmail, and one of the first things you have to do is just understand how software works. Most people don’t know what the software can actually do. And one of my first tips to anybody is, if you’re using a piece of software frequently, daily, multiple hours per day, there may be no better use of your time if you want to be more efficient to spend a little bit of time at least every week learning another new tip.

Because, by learning that extra tip or two over time, you’re just going to get so much more efficient and so much more time back just by understanding how the software works.

And the one example, really interesting thing, because most people are self-taught, I’m going to play a scenario out for you that happens super frequently for a lot of people. They get an email, they open it, they read it far enough to go, “I don’t have time for this right now,” and then they mark it unread or they flag it or they star it. Okay, now right there, let me share with you the statistic that I believe comes from that behavior right there.

The average professional email user tends to look at each and every email they receive, on average, three to seven times before they finally take a smart action with that item. And I think a big part of the reason that’s happening is because they read it, they go, “I don’t have time,” they mark it unread, they flag it, they star it. It stays in the inbox. This is where your inbox mess is coming from too. And then what happens is you’ve just guaranteed you’ve got to go back and look at it again later.

And so, you’re not doing anything. I mean, you’re really not doing anything with that input, but you are giving it time that is basically worthless time that you’re throwing away. And so, one of the things that I share with the people is a little triage method, sort of based a little bit on the work of David Allen, who wrote the book Getting Things Done. I took training from him all the way back in the early ‘90s. And one of the things that I learned from him is, if something is quick, you do it right now.

Pete Mockaitis
Two-minute rule.

Randall Dean
Yeah. If it’s quick, you do it right now, and don’t you dare keep it for later. I love this. Somebody said, “Let’s go to Ohio. OHIO, only handle it once,” right? So, that should be your philosophy when you run into something quick. And I always challenge people in my programs, “If you’re looking at an email, you figure out what you need to do, and it’s only going to take you a couple minutes, and you don’t have time to do that? Why are you looking at your email? Shouldn’t you just keep working on what’s on fire? Why are you looking at your messages if you don’t have time to handle a quick little thing?” So, keep your focus.

But then, when I talked about what’s inside the software, both Outlook, classic Outlook, new Outlook, as well as Gmail have internal capabilities to take an email and quickly convert it into a related task or calendar item.

And so, I say take a few more seconds to get to the point where you know what you need to do next and then turn that item into a task or calendar item. And then once you’ve done that, if you haven’t got it done, but you got it on your task list or calendar, get it out of your inbox. Because, I mean, you’re done for now. It’s time to either file it for later reference or delete it if you don’t need it. And if you don’t have a good place to put it, make one and put it there. Not really rocket science.

I, sometimes, am surprised I get away with this as a living because, really, it’s sort of advanced common sense, but people just don’t think it all the way through, and they’re very inconsistent with how they’re triaging these messages.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah, what’s interesting is, I think the reason you are getting away with it is because there’s some psychological things at play here.

Randall Dean

Absolutely.

Pete Mockaitis

Because whenever you go to the email, it’s like, “Ooh, here’s new interesting things. Oh, and some of it’s really important and urgent. I better handle it right away.” So, we’re almost never in the mind space like, “Okay, fire up Outlook, fire up Gmail. Hey, you know what? I wonder what all this software is capable of?” Like, we’re not in that headspace to do that.

And those functions, I guess, we’re not as accustomed to them, as well as thinking about the GTD, Getting Things Done, David Allen kind of philosophies of the inbox is merely a temporary repository by which it means, “Hey, you haven’t looked at me yet. Process me out of here in one way or another.” As opposed to, “Let me be the long-term storage facility for messaging.”

Randall Dean

Far too many people are using their inbox for three things. One is to receive and process new items. Two, is their de facto, but very dirty and highly disorganized task list. And, three, is their Uber storage for all things that haven’t left that inbox. And my strong belief, especially with my background understanding some of the GTD-type philosophies is the only one of those three that’s valid is processing new items. That’s what your inbox should be for is processing new items.

If you can deal with it quickly, you get it done. If you can’t deal with it quickly, it then becomes part of your task list or calendar because there, in your task list and calendar, once you understand those tools, you’ll be able to say, “What is the best use of my time right now? Where should I be putting my focus?” And you can’t really do that easily in a big messy cluttered inbox with 200 things marked unread and flagged. It’s just not going to work well.

And then, of course, once you’ve either got it done, got it on your task list, got it on your calendar, get it out of there. You don’t need it in there anymore.

Pete Mockaitis

Yeah. So, help us out, if we’re worried, like, “Okay, I read a message and I realize, hmm, this is going to take some more thought and attention, and it is not to be dealt with now. I’m not leaving it in my inbox. So, what am I doing with it? And how do I make sure I don’t forget about it and lose it if it’s not in my inbox?”

Randall Dean

Now, simultaneously, when I teach the tip about putting it especially into your task list, I also show in both programs how you can turn on reminders. And then, so what will happen is that task will pop back up on your screen at a time when it’s better for you to see it. Not the email, the task, although the email text is typically inside the task that’s been created.

And so, that way you can say, “Okay, I’ve identified what needs to be done. It’s going to come back and find me when I need to see it. I don’t need to leave it where I have it right now. I can put this thing away if I need to keep it for later, or get rid of it if I don’t need it.” And, I think, by utilizing the reminders that are available in both task and calendar, you can relieve some of that stress.

Of course, now I’m going to say this, I regularly get my inbox down to close to zero every day, which makes a lot of sense because I’m teaching people how to work their inbox. But because of that, what I’m trying to teach people is, once you get that inbox down to close to zero, that’s when you shift your focus to your task list and your calendar by habit.”

“If there’s nothing on my calendar right now, no meetings or blocked time for anything, then I work my task list until it’s time to go back and check my email again, or go to my next meeting.” And so, you just sort of get into this habit of where you’re surfing across those three tools throughout the day, balancing your needs to get your critical focused work done with your needs to periodically get back to people.

And I think if you can get yourself into that habit, that flow, you can both reduce the distraction of your email, reduce the time spent on your email, and potentially increase the time you’re spending on your more important stuff, which is the goal of all this anyway.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. Well, let’s say we’ve scheduled a time, we’re going to spend 30 minutes or so processing this email, and just rocking through it. How do you recommend we execute this step by step? You mentioned triage.

Randall Dean

Yeah. Well, like I said, I think if you’re going to open an email, you look at it once. If you look at it, what do I need to do with it? If it’s quick, deal with it now. OHIO, only handle it once. If it’s not quick, it goes on to your task list or calendar, and then you either file it for later reference or you delete it. And if you don’t have a good place to file it, make one and put it there.

And I will say this, nobody’s perfect at this. I’m not perfect at this. But the closer I get to following that triage mentality when it comes to processing new inputs, especially at the start of the day, but maybe a few more times throughout the day, the more efficient I feel myself getting at dealing with this, once again, necessary nuisance, and keeping the squirrels under control.

So, that’s sort of the goal is, “I want to keep these squirrels from taking over. I want to be in control of this input stream.” And the way to be in control of that is by having a good consistent strategy, habit, routine on how you deal with them and try to stick as close to it as you possibly can.

How much time would you save over a year if you went from looking at the typical email three to seven times, down to once maybe twice max? How much time would that give you in a year?

Pete Mockaitis

Well, it sounds like perhaps 100 plus hours.

Randall Dean

I would think so.

Pete Mockaitis

Well, so you mentioned, learn the software. And I remember there was a day, and I was. I was just goofing around in Gmail, and I think in the settings, I saw enable shortcut keys.

Randall Dean

Yeah, yeah, I show that in my Gmail sessions. I actually go in the settings and I click on the link that says keyboard shortcuts. And, I mean, like that’s a classic example. It’s right there in your settings. You click on it, it opens up. It says shortcuts for computer, for Android, for iPad, right? And I’m like, “My gosh.” And then it’s got like 14 categories of ways you can use the shortcuts; each one is its own drop menu with a whole list of potential shortcuts.

And I tell people, I go in there and I show it, and I say, “Now look at this. This is a classic example. Print that. Print it onto a sheet of paper, set it right next to your computer, highlight two, three, four of these things that you want to get really good at, and then practice them for the next week or so. And then once you feel like you got those ones down, cross those out, highlight two, three, four more.

Once you get those done, then go back to the next drop panel and print that one and do the same thing. And if you just did that, picked up two, three of these keyboard shortcuts a week over the next year, you’d be like a maestro. I mean, you would be fantastic and so much more efficient at just doing the normal little stuff on your computer because now you don’t have to move your mouse to do it.

Pete Mockaitis

Absolutely. When I made the discovery, I was astonished at so many levels. One, I thought, “How is it that these have been here the whole time and I was not aware?” Two, “Why were these not just automatically turned on as the default setting?” because I guess it was not at the time. Maybe it still is not. And, three, “How come none of my friends, who know I love productivity, ever felt the need to share this with me,” probably because they assumed I already knew it, and it would be insulting to bring it up to me.

Randall Dean

I’m going to give you a different assumption.

Pete Mockaitis

All right.

Randall Dean

They don’t know about them either, because nobody has the time to go take a look. That’s why I said, especially if you’re using Gmail, just in the last week, I saw two things that have changed. They’re constantly working on things behind the scenes. One of them was really minor. They moved it from the little three dots at the top of the screen to the little three dots over to the side of the screen.

And so, I was doing a live program, and I go where it’s always been, and I’m like, “Uh-oh, it’s not there anymore.” And then, just out of nature, I went over to the one, “Oh, there it is. They moved it.” And they’re doing that kind of stuff constantly. And so, I think when you’re using a tool like Gmail, as well as maybe the new and Web Outlook because those are sort of Cloud-based, real-time being updated type tools, you want to go in and look into your toolkit quite frequently because there’s new stuff showing up all the time.

Pete Mockaitis

Yeah, that’s telling. And you’re right, and doesn’t take a lot of shortcut knowledge. The ones I use all the time is J for next message and E for archive message.  And you can do a lot of damage if you just say, that’s how I like to triage, I go, “What are the emails I can archive without even really reading? Like, I can just know these can disappear in under three seconds.”

And I go J-E, J-E, J-J-E, E, J-J-J. And it’s just like, boom, flying through it. And it does feel like you’re a maestro. It’s cool. Can you share with us, what are some other software discoveries that are eye-opening and game-changing for people?

Randall Dean

Well, I think one of the biggest ones that most people don’t realize, both Outlook and Gmail, you can actually utilize the Signatures tool as an automated response template manager. So, basically, like let’s say there are certain messages you’re sending all the time, and the same question keeps coming up over and over again. You go into your Sent folder to find the last time you sent it so you can forward it again until the next time you need to send it again.

And every time you’re doing that, you’re spending, I don’t know, a minute, two, three looking for this thing in your sent folder. You could just copy and paste the text of that message. Go into your Signatures tool in both Outlook and Gmail, create a new signature, give it a name, paste that text into the copy field with your signature at the bottom and hit OK. And now from this point forward, that message reply is push button.

So, as soon as somebody sends you the message, you just copy their email address, you go up to your signature, you pop that into the message, put their name in the Send field, personalize the “Hi, Joe” and then, boom, in like five seconds, you’re sending that message. Not two minutes. Five seconds. And so, that’s like a great example of a way that once you learn the way the software works and what it can do. I always tell people get the word signatures out of your head, replace it with automated email sender, and use that three to five times a day, that you just got half an hour right there.

Pete Mockaitis

Lovely. Well, boy, there is so much we could cover. So, Randy, I’ll just leave it to you to curate. Could you give us maybe the top three transformational tips or practices in terms of this takes very few minutes but it will yield you very many hours?

Randall Dean

One of the things, and this is a little bit of a technical tip, so I’ll describe it, but it always gets the oohs and aahs when I’m doing my program. Did you know that you can just highlight a piece of text in Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Google Docs? You can highlight it, release the click, then pick it up and move it to a different place.

And here’s the thing, it’s like almost like a shortcut to copy and paste, cut and paste. And the thing is that it works on all of these tools – Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Microsoft Teams, Google Docs, Google Slides, even on a lot of web forms it works. And if you can get really good at this, it’s like this quick little thing that you can do to allow you to take a piece of information that’s in the wrong place in your document or file, and quickly move it to the right place in your document or file.

And little tips like that, I think, can, you know, I will say, you know, when I show that to people and they’re all going like, “I didn’t know that I could do that.” I go, “Ah, I just gave you three days this year. There’s your three days.”

Pete Mockaitis

Yeah, I guess we’re saving the Command X and the Command V steps in doing that. Okay.

Randall Dean

And, I mean, it’s literally going to save you a second or two every time, but that second or two, multiplied by 40,000 times a year, it’s going to add up. The other one that I love is that a lot of people don’t realize this. When you’re creating folders, that you can use a special character, like an exclamation point, or even a number, and that will allow your folders to supersede alphabetization. So, what you can do is identify the folders you use the most or that are most important, and move them to the top of your folders list.

And that’s another one that is just like a no-brainer, super time saver, because now, instead of having to go all the way through the alphabet, you’re truncating that, and you can get to the folders you use most frequently right there at the top of your list. And that works not just in your email. It works in both Outlook and Gmail, but it also works in tools like OneDrive and Google Drive with your folders for your documents and files. You can actually move up your most used folders to the top and save a ton of time there, too.

Pete Mockaitis

Nifty. Okay. What else have you got?

Randall Dean

The other one that I really love is to get into the settings, you might need to go into rules in Outlook. You can also do this in New Outlook. You might have to go into Settings, Mail, Notifications. So, they’ve sort of moved it just a little bit. And in Gmail, you might have to go in and set up a filter to do this to make it all work.

But the basic tip is this, identify who your most important senders are. You know how I talked about the big angry dog? You want to identify, “Who sends me emails that are my big angry dogs?” Because what you can do in these tools is you can then go in and tell Outlook and Gmail, “These are my most important people. So, when they send me a message, I would like a pop-up or I would like a unique sound.”

And that means that you don’t necessarily have to get distracted by every squirrel, but when it’s one of those most important people, you certainly can. You can be, “Okay, boom! You know what? I’ll make a different sound, ‘Dun-da-dun-dun’ instead of ‘Doo-doo-doo-doon,’” you’ve been here for years and years, you’ll hear the “Duh-duh-duh-duh-duh.” “Oh, I got to stop for a second, I got to see what this one is.”

And so, that way you don’t feel like you have to look at everything coming in right now because you know that the really important things are going to probably jump up and get you, which means that actually, you might feel a little bit more comfortable keeping your focus on things, knowing that it’s going to tell you when the big angry dogs bark.

And I’ll even add one little micro thing about this. That same capability of setting up those rules can also allow you to set rules to auto-delete things that you don’t want to see at all. So, not only can it help you know when your most important people are trying to get a hold of you. It can also get rid of a bunch of the junk and spam automatically so it’s not even taking two seconds of your time.

Pete Mockaitis

Cool.

Randall Dean

So, it’s both sides. It helps on both sides of this. One last thing I’ll say is Outlook, specifically, will even allow you to set a priority level. So, like, I want to know when I get an email from my boss that is marked important. See, and it will only make the special sound when it’s from my boss marked important.

In that way if you’ve got an enlightened boss, who’s also taken my program, they’re going to learn that they should only mark emails important when they want faster action. Everything else can just be processed in normal strategy. And I always make the joke, “If every email you send is marked urgent or important, none of your emails are truly urgent or important.”

Pete Mockaitis

Understood. Well, tell me, Randy, any final things you want to mention before we hear about some of your favorite things?

Randall Dean

Once you get this efficiency regained, then you can actually take advantage of some of the other tools in in the suite – calendar, contacts, tasks, notes, maybe tools like OneNote or Google Keep, Teams, Drive, Planner – to get significantly more prioritized and strategic with that extra time you’ve now created.

And if you can get to where, you know, you get that email under control, it’s not taking quite as much of your day, you’re getting some of these efficiencies in time, then maybe you can actually step your game up to be a little bit more prioritized, more strategic, more effective, because now you’ve got this new necessary nuisance under control a bit.

Pete Mockaitis

Well, thank you. Well, now could you share a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Randall Dean

Well, it’s funny. I put it in my book. The quote is from Gandhi. It’s, “Be the change you wish to see in the world.” But I then put right under it, “Be the change you wish to see in your inbox.” 

Pete Mockaitis

All right. And a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Randall Dean

It’s more than 20 years old now, it was by the group called Basics. And they actually did a study where they got permission to go into a whole bunch of different organizations, have their researchers stand around just waiting and watching for people getting unexpectedly interrupted, and they tracked what happened.

And they found an interesting thing, that people that get unexpectedly interrupted in the workplace, after that interruption has been handled, they answered the question, they had the conversation, they get off the phone call. The interruption is now over. If they’re not ready for that interruption when it first occurred, they will then spend an additional four to 15 minutes each and every time before they get back to what they were working on, because they lost their place and they forgot what they were doing.

And so, the little micro tip that I share is, if somebody interrupts you, you can just go, “One second, please,” grab a sticky note and write down exactly what it is you need to do next on whatever you’re working on, put that right on your computer screen. And the goal of that is so that you’re basically leaving yourself bookmarks throughout the day, “Oh, yeah, that’s what I was doing.”

So, the interruptions can still happen, and I even say, I think it will help your communication quality because if you don’t do that, what are you very often doing the whole time you’re talking to that person?

Pete Mockaitis

To remember you’re still doing the thing, yeah.

Randall Dean

Trying to remember where you’re at, which means what are you not doing, listening? And that is where mistakes and errors of omission creep in, too. So, I think that’s just a classic little study that can then morph into it. And I always conflate that, you know, four to fifteen minutes per, and then I will ask my audience, I’ll go, “What do you think, 10 to 25 a day, 10 to 25 unexpected phone calls, stop-bys, interruptions, text messages?” And people give me the head nod.

I go, “If I’m right on this, that means you’re losing 45 minutes to as much as two hours a day just because you’re getting distracted that many times per day. And if you can get it down to where you have a strategy for that, that could create another hour or two, daily.”

Pete Mockaitis

Yeah. And a favorite book?

Randall Dean

It’s called Clutter’s Last Stand by Don Aslett.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. And a favorite habit?

Randall Dean

Don’t start your day in your inbox. Start your day in your calendar for a few minutes. Not just looking at today, but looking forward to see if there’s anything coming you need to get ready for. Are there any blocks of time that you could block for more strategic use on your key projects or activities? And then build a short, focused task list for today that matches your key projects and responsibilities, but also your available time.

If you’re doing that right, that should only take you three to five minutes at the start of the day. But you want to do that before you even dare open your inbox. Because if you open your inbox first, it’s basically like going over the door of the office, opening the door, and saying, “Come on in, squirrels! Take over,” right?

So, I want you to get into your time, your projects, and your tasks for a few minutes before opening your email so that you put that email into perspective. And then if the email fully takes over, it probably should. It probably is the most important thing. But if you’re not looking at your calendar and your projects and tasks first, how do you know? You’re just guessing.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Randall Dean

I would just say go out and check out my website, RandallDean.com, pretty easy. That’s Randall, R-A-N-D-A-L-L. And if you go out to RandallDean.com, I’m also on LinkedIn. I would say search “Randy Dean” to find me. And I have a popular and growing YouTube channel too, and I think you could just type in Randy Dean, email, and it’ll probably, something of mine’s going to pop up right near the top of the list, so, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Randall Dean

Rome wasn’t built in a day. Pick two, three, four pieces of low-hanging fruit, do those first, baby steps. You don’t have to become an expert overnight, but find those really good nuggets wherever you find them and try to integrate those right away, and then build your system from there.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. Randy, this is fun. Thank you.

Randall Dean

Yeah, I had a good time.

Mar 06
0

1038: Getting What You Need from Your Boss through Managing Up with Melody Wilding

By | Podcasts | No Comments

Melody Wilding breaks down the crucial conversations to have with your boss to improve your work life.

You’ll Learn

  1. How to differentiate yourself with one conversation
  2. How to build your pushback power
  3. The easiest way to improve your visibility

About Melody

Melody Wilding is a professor of human behavior at Hunter College and author of Managing Up. She was recently named one of Insider’s “most innovative career coaches.” Her background as a therapist and emotions researcher informs her unique approach, weaving evidence-based neuroscience and psychology with professional development. Her previous book is Trust Yourself.

Resources Mentioned

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Melody Wilding Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Melody, welcome back.

Melody Wilding
Thanks for having me again. So great to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, it is great to be chatting with you from the fine state of New Jersey, which we discussed is lovely.

Melody Wilding
That’s right. Beautiful state, very misunderstood, but we love our Jersey.

Pete Mockaitis
Lovely. Well, let’s talk about managing up. We haven’t discussed this issue in quite some time and I think it is so vitally important. Can you share with us maybe an extra surprising or counterintuitive discovery you’ve made as you researched this managing up stuff?

Melody Wilding
Well, I think, just like New Jersey, managing up is very misunderstood, and even when I began writing the book, I was resistant to the idea of calling it managing up and even zeroing in on that concept. I wanted to talk more about influence and persuasion, how do you build respect and recognition. And my publisher had to keep nudging me that, “Yeah, what you’re talking about is the skill set of managing up.”

And I think my resistance came, and what I’ve heard from many other people, is from these misconceptions we have. These old images of managing up from the ‘80s, the ‘90s, the person being the suck-up and running around with their boss’s coffee order. And who wants to do that? No one wants to compromise who they are or feel like they’re ingratiating themselves to the people around them. So, it’s no wonder why we resist this concept.

But what I know now, having done this work and researched this subject is that managing up is not something you do for your boss’s benefit at all. It’s really something you do for yourself to make your own work life, your own career, much easier, less stressful and on your own terms.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, I dig that a lot. And while we’re talking about misconceptions, let’s clear them up, I recall, I think I was reading a piece by, Paul Graham, the Y Combinator guy, made a statement along the lines of “Professional managers are amongst the finest liars there are.” And folks are like, “Whoa, that’s some strong language. What do you mean?”

He’s like, “Ah, perhaps I should say, they are adept at managing up,” which sort of imply, well, more than imply, that managing up involves telling the folks above you a little bit of what they want to hear, and massaging their perceptions and expectations, and it really made it sound quite like it’s the art of deception in the professional, acceptable way that we can courteously do so in proper modern times,” Melody. So, have you picked up on those perceptions and how do you address that?

Melody Wilding
I think, again, that’s the older school way of thinking about it. And what I would argue is it’s less about massaging and contorting yourself to someone else’s perceptions and more about tweaking, or in the book I call it flexing, your approach so that your message is actually getting through to the people who need to hear it the most.

That may mean you do need to tweak how you present something, or the type of language you use so that it’s more resonant with the other person, but I don’t think, wholesale, it means that you have to change who you are or what you’re trying to say, because this book is really all about, “How do you have the tough conversations with your manager? How do you push back on extra work or give them tough feedback up the chain of command?”

That’s what managing up really is. It’s having those difficult conversations, sometimes having the courage to say what needs to be said, but doing so in a tactful diplomatic manner that actually earns you trust instead of just turning into a professional people-pleaser.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, could you share with us a nice story that inspires or brings this together in terms of what’s really at stake if we master this skillset?

Melody Wilding
Yes, I think the book actually starts with one of my personal stories which was a time I failed to manage up, and I think it’s a lesson in multiple ways. So, before I went full-time into my current business, I was working at a health care company, and I loved that job. I loved my boss. What I didn’t realize at the time that I saw in hindsight was that I had been hired to work on really a pet project of my managers that was kind of outside of the rest of the company’s scope, and my manager had been given a bit of budget and, unbeknownst to me, some timeline to see if this was viable or not.

And so, that was my first fail, was really not getting on the same page with my manager about “What was the context that this project came up in? What are the expectations? Who else needs to be bought in and on board with this?” And long story short, let’s flash forward, I ended up being laid off. My role was eliminated, and it felt like a shock to me, and it shouldn’t have.

And that is what’s at stake. That’s a very extreme example of what happens when you don’t manage up well, but I was really sideswiped because I hadn’t aligned with my manager. I didn’t have other advocates in the organization who were willing to fight for me and keep me because managing up has to go beyond your boss.

Do not make your manager your single point of failure. You might not get along with them very well despite all of your efforts. Who is leading you may change on a moment’s notice, so you need to make sure you have those other allies as well. And all of that was a very cautionary tale, but I think that’s what’s at stake, whether, again, in my case, it was extreme. I lost my role.

But every day, people feel like they’re overlooked for promotions and opportunities, it may go to someone else who seems less experienced, or we get into these minor frustrations that we end up taking personally, “You know, why does my boss cut me off? They never even allow me to hear my idea out,” or, “Why are they micromanaging me and on top of me about everything?” And so much of this can be solved by learning some key skills.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. Well, tell us, you lay out 10 key conversations for managing up well, which I love. And so, we’ve got alignment, styles, ownership, boundaries, feedback, networking, visibility, advancement, money, and quitting. So, I really dig this because I just love a framework and a set of distinctions and a delineation of categories that just helps make sense of the whole universe of managing up conversations. It feels like, “Yeah, that’s a pretty fine job of summing them up.”

So, I suppose I’m curious, do you have a gauge for what percent of folks ever actually proactively say, “Hey, I’d like to have a conversation about some of the fundamental ways we work and communicate with each other, and what would be best for both of us”? In a way, that almost seems like among the most foundational things one might do in the world of managing up. Is that fair? And how often is that happening?

Melody Wilding
It’s definitely fair. It’s very true, that it is so fundamental that, I think, we sometimes assume it. We assume that this has happened and we overlook it because of that. So, to your point, I would say maybe 10% of people are having those types of explicit conversations about how they work together with their manager, and that is a huge, huge opportunity.

Because if you are in that small minority of people who are doing this, you’re not only going to stand out as someone who is thoughtful, conscientious, you’re driven, you’re taking initiative, but you’re going to have intel and build rapport and trust much more quickly than anyone else.

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely. I agree, and I’ve experienced it on both sides of the table. Because it’s rare, it feels very special, like, “Oh, wow, this person, I like them. They’re on top of things.” And I think it’s hard for that to go poorly. Maybe if you ask at just like the worst possible time, like, “Hey, that’s like the definition of a non-urgent situation and we’re in the midst of something on fire right now.” So, maybe that that’s one way it could go poorly. But tell us your take on that in terms of to what extent do managers welcome these discussions because I think there’s a bit of reluctance on the part of some folks to initiate?

Melody Wilding
There definitely is, yeah. And when I have this conversation with people, in the book, we’re talking about really the styles conversation, and that’s when we talk about how, “How do we work together? How do we communicate? What are your preferences? What are mine?” And going back to what I said a moment ago, when you understand the context of who your boss is, and also what your defaults are, you stop taking things so personally because you understand, “Oh, this is their style. This is their way of approaching and processing information.”

“And so, if they send a period instead of an exclamation point, I don’t need to make that mean that I’m getting fired, or they hate me, or they’re against me and they favorite somebody else.” We can be much more diplomatic and make those tweaks to how we communicate.

Melody Wilding
And in my experience, people are reluctant, yes, to bring this up, but when they do, their manager is overjoyed. And, of course, you need to bring this up in a tactful way. So, what I suggest is that you present it to your boss and say something along the lines where you show why this is in their benefit, to say, “I’m really committed to us being able to reach our goals together this year.”

Or, “I want to make sure that you can get the best performance out of me possible, that our work flows more smoothly, whatever it is. And to get there, what I would love to do is understand a bit more about how you work and how I can communicate with you better to get you the information you need. Does that sound good?”

And you can start by asking certain questions of your manager, whether it’s, “If I have to get certain updates to you, what format is best? Do you want those in Teams, in email? Should I present a slide deck? Do you prefer bullet points or should I do narratives?”

Understanding some of those preferences, when you are asking your manager questions, gives you opportunities to then say, “Great. Thank you so much for sharing that. From my standpoint, here’s what would be helpful. If you have feedback for me, take me aside after a meeting, or if you notice that I’m not being as concise as I could be in a presentation, shoot me a quick message on Teams so I can adjust on the fly.”

All of us have different preferences around that, but it turns it into more of a two-way street where, yes, you’re understanding what your manager wants, but you’re also finding opportunities to assert, or at least put on the table, “Here’s what I would like. Is that something that we can find a middle ground on together?”

Pete Mockaitis
That sounds great, yes. And as you say it, and I’m imagining the scene, that seems pleasant and welcome to hear such things. And I want to dive deep on a couple of these. I don’t think we could do all 10 in our time together, but one with regard to boundaries. I remember when I was reading through this, I recall a conversation I had with my friend, Kelsey. We were catching up at a wedding. It had been a long time.

And she was telling me all of, like, the cool things she was doing with, like, go to an Ironman Triathlon, and this and that. I was like, “Wait a minute. I’m sorry. Don’t you work in consulting?” And she’s like, “Yeah.” I was like, “How on earth are you finding the time to have all of these adventures and do all of these things when I recall my days of consulting were so brutal with regard to the hours of the travel and the unexpectedness of things?”

And she was like, “Oh, well, you know, I just kind of talked to my boss and said, ‘Well, hey, here’s what’s going on, here’s the nights I’m not available, and here’s the thing…” She just sort of laid it out in terms of what’s up, in terms of, “I’m going to over-deliver on these key metrics and expectations, and these are the nights I will not be available to be doing things.”

And I was like, “And they went for that?” My mouth dropped, I was like, “You can do that? That’s possible? Even in client services? Wow.” And so, I was struck at just what a managing-up boundary conversation can do for transforming a life into being sustainable and enjoyable in what can be demanding fields.

So, lay it on us, Melody, if we want to establish boundaries but we’re a little scared and we think that we might misstep, or seem like we’re not a team player, or we’re lazy, or we’re not really committed, or any of these other negative associations we fear, how do we play the boundary-setting conversation game?

Melody Wilding
Well, that’s the tension with it, right? We need to protect our well-being, but we also don’t want to look like a slacker, so we have to find that balance there. And the thing with the boundaries-conversation is that “no” may be a complete sentence in many areas of life, but at work it doesn’t go over so well if you just say, “No, I’m not going to do that,” or “I don’t want to do that,” right? It’s going to hurt your reputation for you to say that so you need to be more thoughtful about how you approach it.

And what I think is so telling about what your friend did is it sounds like she was assessing, what I call in the book, your pushback power. And your pushback power is the invisible leverage you do or don’t have to push back, to say no. And we all fall somewhere on the spectrum, higher to lower. Your pushback power is higher if you have more positional authority.

If you’re more seasoned, tenured in your career, you have more credibility behind you, you are a high performer, or you offer a very specialized skillset that people may be more willing to make accommodations for because it could be hard to replace you. And even things like the strength of your relationship with your boss, how you build trust and rapport, your boss’s values, the state of the organization.

If the team is in free fall, in crisis, it’s going to be harder to say, “I can’t pitch in this weekend,” or, “I can’t take on more of this project for a colleague who just left,” versus if you’re in a time of stability, it might be a little more receptive to that. So, taking into account that pushback power allows you to gauge “How directly or assertively can I say no? And how frequently can I say no?”

And it sounds like your friend did that with her manager. Because she was higher in pushback power, she was able to say, “I have these commitments, and so can we find a solution to work my workload around these commitments that I have?”

Now, for those of us that may be medium to lower in pushback power, there’s a number of different things you can do. One of my favorite approaches that I talk about is called the trade-off approach, and this is great because it allows you to set up binary options. So, you may say, “Okay, thank you for sharing that, you know, Y has come down as an important priority from the leadership team. A few weeks ago, we had talked about that you wanted me to focus on X.”

“And so, if X is truly still a priority, how would you like me to reprioritize to make room for Y? Or what would you like me to slow down on? What would you like us to delegate or temporarily deprioritize in order to make that possible?” And the beauty of this is that you are setting the parameters. You are setting the decision options, subtly saying, “Both of these cannot happen at the same time. Which one would you like to choose?”

But ultimately, you’re approaching it more as a problem-solving conversation instead of just dumping a problem back in your boss’s lap to say, “I don’t know. I can’t do it, so figure out someone else to get it done.” You’re approaching it more as a collaboration, which that person will appreciate, and the ultimate authority is back in their hands.

Pete Mockaitis
And I think that’s really handy because I think without the conversation, we can just assume, “Oh, I have to continue doing all the things we’ve ever discussed, as well as this new thing, and that’s just that,” and that is a dangerous, untenable place to live. So that’s handy with regard to the conversation. I’m curious, when it comes to increasing our pushback power over time, let’s discuss.

So, one of the levers is just the strength and quality of our relationship. Another is how special and wonderful and high-performing we are. Any others and what are the quickest, easiest ways to boost these so that we are growing in pushback power over time?

Melody Wilding
Well, let’s talk about the performance piece and building rapport and trust with your manager. There’s a conversation that comes before boundaries, and that’s called the ownership conversation. And that’s important here because the ownership conversation is all about looking for where can you take initiative of projects or problems you want to solve and run with, but by doing that really add value or solve an issue that’s a pain point for your manager, your team, the organization.

And when you do that, you build, you add to the pushback power you have because you’ve enhanced your value, you’ve shown you’re a problem solver, and that’s really valuable. So, the ownership conversation is all about “How do I not only spot those opportunities, but capitalize on them in a way that’s not going to step on the toes of other people around us?” Because that would backfire, of course.

And a lot of it comes down to choosing the right problem to start. And so, I talk about how there’s five worthwhile areas to look at. And a few of those may be bottlenecks. So, are there inefficiencies or broken processes, for example, that are slowing everyone down, including you, that if solved would make everybody’s lives much less stressful and easier?

Neglected needs is also a great place to look. What are the topics or agenda items that keep going to the bottom of the pile or keep rolling over month to month, quarter to quarter, that no one seems to have the time to get around to, but says, “Wouldn’t it be great? Wouldn’t it be great if we could do that? Or we really need to get to that”? Could you be the one to carry that torch forward?

And another one that I think can be easier to spot is feedback patterns. What are you hearing again and again from fellow team members, clients, your vendors, that if you took action on to make better, would add value to everyone else?

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. All right. Well, could you give us a story of this ownership in action? Because I think you’re really keying in on something in terms of differentiating and growing a career, because it’s quite possible to go years at a time in reactive mode of doing whatever somebody asks for, or seems to be perilously on fire.

It’s hard to be distinctive in such a place, as opposed to, with ownership, it’s like, “Oh, you know, that’s a fantastic result. Yeah, that was, really, I’m the person behind that.” That’s hugely awesome. So, could you give us a story about ownership in action?

Melody Wilding
Sure, I have two that come to mind, if that’s okay. So, the first one is, I had a client about a year ago, who, his organization was acquiring a new one and he worked on the legal side of this. And so, because of that, when they acquired this new organization, all of his colleagues were running in the direction of all of the new opportunities that were created by this acquisition and trying to capitalize on that, chasing shiny objects, everyone was trying to meet with the three key leaders.

And what he saw was that that change actually created this vacuum where he could step in, and that no one was tackling, there was a neglected need, in other words, with due diligence matters of closing everything that had to do with that transaction, you know, wrapping up all of the contracts, dotting the I’s and crossing the T’s to make sure the merger was complete.

And so, he said, “You know what? I’m actually going to zig while everybody else is zagging.” And he carved out that niche for himself as being the person who was buttoning up the deal, so to speak, which gave him a lot of exposure to not only he became a close confidant to his manager, but also his skip level, his boss’s boss, and some other key C-suite leaders in the organization who really cared about this going correctly, and who knew, “We have to get these compliance matters correct.”

And for him, that allowed him to build those relationships. He was seen as more of a partner to those people. And flash forward about a year later, he was actually promoted to partner because of that work that played a huge instrumental role. So, that’s one example that comes to mind of looking for opportunities that other people may be missing.

And then the other quick story I’ll share has to do with another client who, after the pandemic, was really interested in getting mental health days going for the organization, making sure that the team had time for development and rest, and weren’t just go, go, go, go, go all the time. And why this was ownership is because she had to create buy-in for this idea. This wasn’t something that others had thought of. This was something she was innovating from the ground up and had to push through.

And so, a couple things that she did really excellently was she came with proposals in hand, and so when she would have meetings with some of the key stakeholders and decision makers, she would come with a one-pager with talking points that they could use, just ready-made. She made their job easy, took the cognitive load off of them, and she proposed small steps.

So, in the book, I talk about this as the foot-in-the-door technique in psychology, where you propose, whether it’s a pilot project or a test or rolling something out to just a small sample. The people around you want to mitigate risk and potential exposure or failure. So, if you could say, “Let’s start with a mental health day and then we can actually roll that out to have these once a quarter and have more events around this.”

She just started with, “Let’s have this one day,” and that was easier for people to get on board with. And, eventually, she was successful in making it something bigger but I thought that was a great example of planting seeds, taking it step by step, and getting small agreements that lead to bigger ones.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s a really cool thing to take ownership of because, well, one, that’s just great for everybody, and two, boy, I sure would like that person in my organization, it’s like, “Oh, this is the person who got us all the mental health days. I want to do them favors whenever possible.”

Melody Wilding
Yes, great point. And that speaks to this idea of looking for triple wins. Is something going to be a win for you in terms of you’ll enjoy the work, it will add to your own credibility? Is it a win for your manager? Will it make them look good or advance their priorities? And, third, is it a win for the team or your organization as a whole?

Like you said, your colleagues are certainly going to love you, but, you know, at the end of the day, for everyone’s productivity, sustainability in their roles and long term the results of the organization, it was huge from that respect, too.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, tell us, within these 10 key conversations, could we pick perhaps one or two that seem to be super transformative and yet pretty easy to do? Any of your favorite tips here?

Melody Wilding
Let’s talk about visibility, if that’s good with you. Yeah, I think this is one that people know they need to do, but don’t quite know how to approach because it feels daunting. It feels daunting to feel like, “Ugh, I spend so much time working. Now you’re telling me I have to advertise that work as well and I have to bring more attention to it?”

And in some ways, yes, because we can expect our work to speak for itself. It’s not going to do that. We need to be the advocate for it. But there are some pretty simple, easy ways to build visibility into just the day-to-day of how you work instead of making it extra effort, and I think that’s the win-win. One way you can do this is by restructuring your one-on-ones.

So, I highly recommend that you start all of your one-on-ones with your manager with wins. And you can call it wins, you can call it progress or milestones or achievements, whatever language feels best to you, but the point of that is to not just dive into status updates of, “Oh, here’s where this project is. Here’s where this is. This is what’s coming up.”

But to more so utilize that time to show your manager, “Yes, here’s what we’ve done, but here’s what it means. Here’s the outcome, the results. Here’s also visibility into how I thought about solving a problem, the considerations that I made, or the people I talked to.” And all of that shows them, yes, you are actually getting things done. It gives them more insight into you operating at a more strategic, perhaps even higher level. And it also gives them information that they need to run up their own chain of command.

And so, it’s not really self-promotion to just puff yourself up. We really need to think about it more as, “I’m giving my boss the data they need to advocate for me, to advocate for the rest of the team, to have resources, opportunities, decision-making power at higher levels.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I think that’s excellent. And often, when we take ourselves out of the equation, there’s less self-consciousness, and it’s like, “Oh, this is this is handy. Like, if I were leading this organization, I would probably want to know about the skills, this asset, this resource, this person has in the mix to be deployed when useful and necessary. Otherwise, everyone just misses out.” And how about advancement?

Melody Wilding
Advancement, yes. And thank you for that great segue because visibility and advancement go hand in hand, right? And you can start to see how these conversations build on each other, intersect, because once people know more about what you’re achieving and know more about you, well, then you’re in a position to do bigger things.

And why I say that term “do bigger things” is because advancement doesn’t always have to be a promotion. It can be that you want to grow your scope, or the budget that you oversee, you want to go from two to four people on your team, or you want to work on a stretch project, or something that’s completely different from your current skillset.

For example, right now I have a lot of clients who are asking for stretch projects in AI, because that’s really important to them to learn and they know it will be a value-add to the organization. So, think more broadly about what advancement could mean, but also think about starting much earlier than you think you might need to.

Because I see way too many people get caught in the performance review paradox where they keep their head down, they think they’re sending signals to their manager about what they want and where they want to go, only for their performance review to arrive and no promotion, no salary increases, no being named to that committee. It seems to pass them by.

And that’s often because we either haven’t been explicit enough about what we want or we’ve waited too long to bring that conversation up, and your manager has already had to allocate headcount or resources or make those decisions. They were made months ago. So, this may mean starting three to six months in advance to plant those seeds.

Let’s say you did hit a big milestone. You may say, “This was such a valuable experience. I really loved getting to interact with these clients or that stakeholder or use this skill. I would love to do more of that. Do you think there’s an opportunity in the coming months?”

And so, you start to get that out there. You may even have more of a formal conversation with your manager to say, “In the next year, I would love to double the size of my team,” or, “I would love to move from manager to director level. What would you need to see to be comfortable with that change?”

And that allows you to surface objections because your manager may say, “Well, you’re not ready for that,” or, “We need to have these other people on this committee bought into this, so I need to rope other people in.” And it allows you to contract so that you can understand, “All right, by June, you need to see this. By December, you need to see that.”

And you can work against that and have follow-ups to say, “All right, I did what we discussed. Are we still on track here? Has anything else come up? Would anything else prevent us from making that decision at that point?” And so, it has advancement top of mind for you and your manager, and it prevents some of moving that goalpost that can happen.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, beautiful. Well, Melody, tell me, any other final tips, tricks, do’s, don’ts before we hear about some of your favorite things?

Melody Wilding
Let’s talk about, briefly, the money conversation because if you have advanced and you’re taking on more, you probably want the salary that comes along with that. Money can also be very loaded and very sensitive, something many of us are not taught how to discuss in our personal lives, let alone in the workplace.

And one of the big mistakes or missteps I see people make here is that they focus way too much on what they’ve done already and not enough on what they can do in the future if they were given more money to do it, and that’s very important. You need to think about, “What’s the potential ROI if the organization gives me five, ten, fifty thousand more dollars, what else would I be able to do? Does it serve bigger clients, manage a bigger team?”

You need to paint that future so that your manager, again, see a theme here, can make a case to their own leadership about, “Why should we give this person more money?” It’s not enough that you want it or you feel you deserve it. That may be true and there needs to be a business case there. So that, combined with, instead of just saying, “I deserve this. I work really hard,” approach it from the standpoint of fairness.

We humans, we are wired for reciprocity. We want to make sure that people feel like they are being treated fairly or correctly. And so, if you can use language around that to say, “I want to make sure that my compensation matches the level that I’m performing at or is commensurate with the amount of value I’m bringing to the organization.” If you can use that sort of language, it makes it feel less like this request that you’re demanding, and again more like a trade.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. Well, thank you. Well, now, could you share with us a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Melody Wilding
In the book, I actually cite some of this research around micro-yeses. And so, if you can get a micro-yes, let’s say you have to give someone feedback, and instead of just diving into, “So, in that last meeting, I felt like you talked over me,” ask for permission first. Get a micro-yes, “Will now be a good time to talk?” “Yes, sure.” “Okay, I’d love to chat about that client meeting. Is that good with you?” “Yes, sure.” Get those micro yeses along the way so someone is a bit more bought in and not as surprised by what’s coming next.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite book?

Melody Wilding
Difficult Conversations by Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen. Fantastic book, as well as their other book, Thanks for the Feedback. Both amazing books that really break down the nuances, the anatomy of how to have these difficult conversations.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite tool?

Melody Wilding
I am a huge Oura user, so I have my Oura ring on here.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah. Mine is on my charger.

Melody Wilding
Yes, I probably have to charge mine today, too. But I’ve had it for years, and I just, especially since they have added the heart rate monitoring throughout the day, it is so helpful for me to see what spikes my stress when I go into restorative time. It’s just helped me manage my own schedule and my own energy much better.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite habit?

Melody Wilding
I am a go-to-the-gym-first-thing-in-the-morning person.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And is there a key nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks, you hear them quote it back to you often?

Melody Wilding
“You teach people how to treat you.”

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Melody Wilding
ManagingUp.com is where you can find all the information about the book. You can connect with me as well there, too.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Melody Wilding
Start today with having the alignment conversation, and that is a really simple entry point to begin managing up, to ask your boss, “What would success look like for you in the next three months? What does great performance look like in this role? Or, what metrics does your boss discuss with you?” Start there, and I think that’s going to establish a basis of trust and give you a lot of insight that will be really valuable.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Melody, beautiful. Thank you.

Melody Wilding
Thank you.

Mar 03
0

1037: A Better Approach to Chasing Goals: Tiny Experiments with Anne-Laure Le Cunff

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Anne-Laure Le Cunff explains the problem with how we approach goals—and why experimenting is key to fulfillment.

You’ll Learn

  1. The two approaches to setting goals
  2. The fallacy that leads to regret
  3. How to handle frustrations and disappointments

About Anne-Laure 

Anne-Laure Le Cunff is a former Googler who decided to go back to university to pursue a PhD in neuroscience. As the founder of Ness Labs and the author of its widely read newsletter, she is the foremost expert on mindful productivity and systematic curiosity. She writes about evidence-based ways for people to navigate uncertainty and make the most of their minds. She lives in London, where she continues to research and teach people how to apply scientific insights to real-world challenges.

Resources Mentioned

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Anne-Laure Le Cunff Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Anne-Laure, welcome.

Anne-Laure Le Cunff
Thanks for having me.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to dig into your wisdom associated with Tiny Experiments. You do a lot of research and put together these tools in a practical, applicable way, which is kind of what we’re into. Can you tell us any super surprising and fascinating discoveries you made as you were doing the research and putting this stuff together?

Anne-Laure Le Cunff
To me, the most surprising thing was how many of the decisions we make at work or in life, in general, are actually following automated scripts that we kind of copy-paste from other people, and a lot of them are useful. You don’t want to overthink every single decision, and sometimes someone has done the thing you want to do in a way that makes sense for you to just copy, right? But a lot of these copy-pasting that are happening are happening subconsciously. So, that was interesting to me to just notice the number of decisions we make that are not truly our own decisions.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, they just come from whatever is around us, huh?

Anne-Laure Le Cunff
Exactly. We’re social creatures and we learn from observing others, which, again, is not necessarily a bad thing, but it is actually worth it taking sometimes a second, especially for big decisions, asking yourself, “Where is this choice coming from? And am I making this choice based on what I actually want to do and explore and achieve with this particular project or area of my life? Or, am I just automatically copy-pasting what someone else has been doing?”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, good to know. And can you tell us, in terms of the folks you’ve worked with doing these tiny experiments, any really cool or especially inspiring stories that leap to mind of folks who did the stuff and saw cool results?

Anne-Laure Le Cunff
Yes, a lot of people I worked with start experimenting in their jobs, and, for me, the most amazing thing is when they manage to get other people around them, their colleagues, to experiment with them. And so, I’ve seen people now who literally run tiny experiments together as a team, and every month they have a one-hour meeting where they catch up and they say, “Okay, what is the thing you’ve been trying this month? What did you learn? What can we learn as a team?”

And because of that, it’s also created this psychological safety, where it’s completely okay to start something new and say, “I’m just running an experiment. I don’t know where this is going. I’ll report back in one month and we’ll see what happens.”

Pete Mockaitis
Cool. Okay. So, then the subtitle of the book, Tiny Experiments: How to Live Freely in a Goal-Obsessed World. So, could you paint that contrast or distinction for us, the experiments versus goal obsession? And what’s kind of like the vibe or the feel of these two different worlds?

Anne-Laure Le Cunff
Yes, I think visualizing it is helpful to understand the difference between kind of the status quo in terms of how we approach our ambitions and the alternative that I describe in the book. So, the mental model we tend to use when you talk about success at work and in life in general is the mental model of a ladder, in the sense that you have a series of steps you’re supposed to go through in a specific order, and when you’re done with a specific level, you can go on to the next level.

It’s a little bit like this very linear video game where you just collect all of the points and the artifacts and then you’re allowed to go on to the next level. And this kind of assumes that you already know where you want to go, that you have this very specific outcome, this very binary definition of success, whether you get there, yes, success, or you don’t get there and that’s failure.

The alternative to this linear model is a more circular model, a loop, cycles of experimentation. And so, that’s why I contrast the linear goal-setting approach to the experimental goal-setting approach. And in that case, instead of focusing on this very specific outcome that you want to achieve, you think like a scientist. You start from more of a hypothesis, a research question, and you ask yourself, “What might happen if I tried this thing, this particular action, this particular way of approaching a challenge?” You collect data, and based on that data you make decisions.

And what’s great is that in a world that keeps on changing, that’s fairly uncertain, you’re not clinging to that illusion that you know what the world is going to look like in three, four, or five years. You can just trust yourself that if you keep on iterating, collecting data, and experimenting, you’re going to grow, you’re going to learn, and you’re going to evolve with the world.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, could you give us an example of a specific domain in which we may often tend to approach in a goal ladder way? And then what that looks like in practice in the alternative tiny experiment way?

Anne-Laure Le Cunff
I’ll take social media. I think this is something we’re all using, and whether you’re using it at a personal level or at work, maybe. This is something we’re all familiar with. So, the linear approach to growing an audience on social media would be, “I’m going to get to 10,000 followers by the end of the year.” That’s the linear approach. You have a specific end goal and you’re going to work really hard to get there.

The experimental approach is to say, “I’m going to post twice a day until the end of the year, and then I’m going to see where we’re at, at the end of the year. I’m going to look at where we’re at, what worked and what didn’t, and based on that, for my next cycle of experimentation, I’m going to tweak, I’m going to iterate and improve my process.”

And, again, you might not necessarily hit those 10,000 followers by the end of the year, but that’s the same as with the linear goal, actually. So, that hasn’t changed, but it’s your approach, your mindset that has completely changed. One of them is a lot more experimental and not focused on the outcome, but more focused on the process.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, understood. And so then, could you share with us a cool story of this in action, in terms of someone really did see some amazingness unfold when they did it this way?

Anne-Laure Le Cunff
I think one of my favorite examples is someone in the Ness Labs community that decided to, they wanted to grow their professional network, and that’s something that can feel quite fuzzy, right? How do you grow your professional network? And a lot of people might end up attending. We’ve all been at those work events or conferences where we’re not quite sure what we’re doing here.

And so, what he did is that he designed an experiment where he said that, “For the next three months, every Monday, I’m going to reach out to someone on LinkedIn, someone whose work I admire, someone I heard on a podcast, or maybe I read their newsletter, or I saw something interesting they were working on, and I’ll just say, ‘Hello, and can we grab a virtual coffee?’ and that’s it.’”

And so, the great thing again is that you’re not trying to get to a specific outcome. The only kind of like measure of success is, “Are you doing the thing or not?” And so, every Monday, he sent that cold message on LinkedIn and he had a little tracker for it, tracking yes or no, and he ended up connecting with a lot of people. Some of them became collaborators, working on projects. And so, that was a project, a tiny experiment that happened in the past six months.

And so, long term, I don’t necessarily know what’s going to happen with that particular experiment, but I can already imagine that this is going to lead to a lot of interesting work. And it will also create a bit of a safety net for this person where, even if things end up not really working out with their current job, they’ll have now a stronger, better professional network they can reach out to you in case they want to actually start and do something else.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. And I like that as I’m imagining just sort of the mental, emotional, I don’t know, groove, vibe feeling of approaching the tiny experiment mindset. It’s a lot more pleasant in terms of, if it were a linear metric, gold, obsessed kind of a situation, like, “Ugh, I’m not getting enough meetings on the calendar. Aargh, what’s wrong?” you know?

As opposed to, if it’s a tiny experiment, it makes it more like a game, it’s just, “Oh, this is kind of fun. Oh, let’s see what happened. Oh, it’s time to check in on my LinkedIn account. Did it have any cool responses?” And then just that whole energy is more pleasant. And along the way, I imagine, in my own experience, that results in more creative, flexible, smart ideas along the way, as opposed to when you’re just like mad and frustrated it’s not working the way it’s supposed to.

Anne-Laure Le Cunff
Yes, absolutely. Because when you’re experimenting in this way, also whenever you see that, I don’t know, maybe it’s been two weeks in a row, and you didn’t get a lot of replies, what a scientist does when they’re faced with unexpected results, they don’t say, “Shame, I’m such a bad scientist. I’m terrible. I’m a failure,” right? They just look at the results and they ask themselves, “Huh, that’s interesting. What’s going on here? And what might we want to try or explore or experiment with?”

And so, just using again that experiment of reaching out to people, whether on LinkedIn or other social media platforms, you could say, “You know what, this week, actually I’m going to tweak the language a little bit, or maybe I’ll add a little like photo of something that I think is fun or interesting, and I’ll be a little bit more creative with the way I design these outreach messages.” Because again, as you said, you’re not just really trying to get to that specific outcome. You’re just experimenting.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, you’ve mentioned that we have some harmful beliefs about success. Can you unpack some of those? Like, what are some of the most harmful, why are they harmful, what should we have instead, and how do we just reinstall our belief systems?

Anne-Laure Le Cunff
I think, to me, the most harmful one is thinking that we know where we’re going and what we will want in a few years. And also associated with this, with linear goals also, is the idea that if we get to a specific place, if we achieve a particular milestone, whether it’s a promotion or anything like that, then we’ll be happy. It’s this “if, then” feeling of, “If I achieve this, then I’ll be happy.”

This is called the arrival fallacy, and a lot of people experience this, where you do get to that place of success where, defined in a traditional sense, and you realize that, “I’m still the same person. My problems are still here, and I’m not necessarily much happier because I’ve achieved this goal.” What a lot of people end up doing when they find themselves in this situation is that, instead of questioning the approach to goals and success, they just figure that, “Oh, it probably wasn’t the right goal,” or, “I’m just going to find another one. I’m going to try and climb to the next rung of the ladder.”

And that’s very harmful because you find yourself on this kind of like treadmill, trying to find what is the next success you’re going to chase in order to finally be happy. And again, and there are studies asking older people about their regrets. A lot of them actually regret having a lot of this, you know, really focusing on this linear path of success in their career instead of exploring it a little bit more.

And so, connected to the first one that I mentioned, this idea that you think you know what you want, whenever you take a step in a direction and you start having more experience, acquiring more skills, connecting with new people, you become a different person. And so, your goals and the direction you want to go in and your ambitions are going to evolve, and that’s a feature, that’s not a bug. So, I think embracing this is actually a lot less harmful than trying to resist it and trying to stick to a fixed plan.

Pete Mockaitis
The arrival fallacy. I don’t think I’ve heard the phrase but I know of the concept and I think it’s so powerful and dangerous in terms of, “If I just,” fill in the blank, you know, “…get the promotion,” “…get married,” “…have a child,” “…earn X dollars, then I’ll be happy. Everything will be fine, and all my problems are solved,” and it’s not true.

It’s funny how we have our doubts. I think it was John Green, who wrote The Fault in Our Stars and some other novels, was on The Hilarious World of Depression podcast, and I thought it was so perfect. He said that he was talking to a wealthy person, and he said, “Boy, if I just owned a whole plane instead of this fractional lease situation.” It’s like, “Oh, man, you’re still in it. You haven’t figured it out yet. That’s not how it works.”

And so, tell us, if folks have their doubts, like, “Okay, easy for you to say. Easy for you to say, Anne-Laure, but I don’t know,” anything that you can share to disabuse folks of their arrival fallacy?

Anne-Laure Le Cunff
Yeah, I still experience it, so I want to clarify that it is really not about completely getting rid of it because it is such a deeply ingrained psychological mechanism that you’re always going to fit. And what’s interesting is that the more you are dissatisfied with your current situation, the more likely you are to cling to that arrival fallacy that if only you had this one thing, everything would be better.

So, what I really recommend is not that you’re trying to get rid of it, but just catching yourself when that happens, noticing that you’re doing that, that you’re really hoping, and that you’re going to be happy only if you achieve that one thing, and then trying to bring yourself back to a more, this is what I call having a more experimental mindset rather than this linear mindset, where we feel like, “If only I can climb and I can get to that next level, I’ll be happy.”

Bringing yourself back to that experimental mindset, reminding yourself that this is just a giant playground for you to try new things. You have no idea what’s going to happen. You actually have no idea what’s going to make you happy. A lot of people discover sources of happiness in their life, not because they had a perfect vision of what that would look like, but because they put themselves in lots of different situations, talked to a lot of people, discovered new perspectives, got outside of their comfort zone and tried these new things, and then they experienced that happiness.

And it’s almost like a surprise, you know, it’s like, “Oh, wow, I love this. I don’t know, I love water skiing,” or, “I love hosting workshops,” or, “I love mentoring,” or, “I love all of these different things.” And there’s no way for you to know if you don’t try different things.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, it’s fascinating how what we think we will enjoy or not enjoy is often wildly wrong.

Anne-Laure Le Cunff
Yes.

Pete Mockaitis
I remember one of my all-time favorite consulting projects was working to help out call centers for an insurance company, and I was like, “Wow, that sounds boring. Call centers and insurance. Eugh!” And yet, it was the coolest thing because it’s sort of like, “Oh, wait. The work we’re doing is improving the call center employees’ experience, which is improving the attrition and retention rates, which is improving customer satisfaction, which is improving profitability.”

And it was just like, “Everybody is winning here, and it feels really good. I like this kind of people transformational type stuff more so than what seemed more fun, interesting, and sexy on the front end.”

Anne-Laure Le Cunff
Yes, exactly. And so, I think this is really why, whenever you’re faced with something like this, same as you. If I saw this on paper, I would think that this is the most boring job. And I think that’s why it’s important to really approach those opportunities and saying, like, “I’m not necessarily going to…” If there is a little bit of curiosity, and this is really the compass that I use, right?

If there’s at least a little bit of curiosity, it might be worth saying, “Okay, let me just give it a try. Let me treat that as a time-bound experiment and let’s see what happens.” And again, you kind of start from a hypothesis. And, in that case, your hypothesis might be, “This is going to be so boring. I’m going to hate it.” But this is a hypothesis, “I don’t have certainty. It’s a hypothesis. So, now let’s test the hypothesis.”

And it might be that you were correct, that was really boring, and good. Now you know. Now you have confirmed your hypothesis after running the experiment. Or you might be wrong, and that’s the beautiful thing about having this experimental mindset, is that a scientist, when they’re wrong, they’re actually really happy about it because they learned something new, they feel like, “Oh, I stand corrected. I had this hypothesis, but the data is showing something else, and that’s amazing. I just discovered something new.”

In the case of those personal experiments, that means you discovered something new about yourself, about your work, about the world, and that’s actually pretty cool.

Pete Mockaitis
That reminds me, I think it was an Adam Grant’s book, Think Again, he was talking about interviewing, might have been Daniel Kahneman, or some illustrious, you know, thinker, researcher, who said that he loves it when he’s wrong, which is kind of surprising because most of us think, “Oh, no, I feel embarrassed. You know, oh, I was wrong. I feel dumb and stupid. I should have known better.” And he said, “I love it when I’m wrong. That’s the way I know that I’ve really learned something.” And I think that’s a beautiful reframe right there.

And so, speaking of reframes and good feels, good vibes, you’ve got a section about holistic self-regulation, which sounds handy. So, let’s say we’re in, Anne-Laure, we’re like, “Okay. All right, we’re going to do some experiments. We’re going to see what happens,” and we’re in the midst of them, and yet things aren’t going the way we would like, or prefer, or we’re experiencing some frustrations, disappointments, messes, disasters, whatever, how do we engage in holistic self-regulation?

Anne-Laure Le Cunff
I like to describe it as a little dance. So, the issue a lot of people are kind of like facing, and especially if they’re doers, high-agency people who just want to fix the problem, is that they might just bypass looking at the actual emotion and the response, and just try to find a solution and fix the problem and the source of the disruption.

And what I really recommend doing is just not doing that, not rushing, taking a moment to go through the first step of that little dance, which is to engage with the emotion, to understand the subjective experience. And I recommend a tool that psychologists call “affective labeling.” It’s just a fancy word to really say “naming your emotions.” It just means naming your emotions.

There’s a lot of research showing that, by just taking the time to name your emotion, you’re going to be able to process it much better. So, what’s the emotion? So, as you said, things are not going as planned, right? Is it worry about whatever other consequences there are going to be because this thing is not working? Is it maybe fear of being judged by your peers or your manager, who might be looking and feeling like, “Oh, wow, she didn’t do that very well, or she made a mistake”?

Is it anxiety because you know that you’re supposed to present the result or something like that tomorrow and obviously the data is not what you thought it would be? So, what is the emotion? Affective labeling, naming the emotion, and that’s already going to help you process it. Only once you’ve done this, you can go on to the second step of the little dance, which is dealing with the actual consequences.

And so, basically, you dealt with the emotion at this emotional level, and now you can go at a more like mental cognitive level where you’re dealing with the actual problem. And, again, there’s research showing that you’re going to be able to do that much more effectively if you process the emotions before. So, those are the two steps. The first one is really processing the subjective experience and then dealing with the objective consequences.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, I hear that those are very different processes and thoughts that you’re having, and I could see how you may…well, you tell me, what kind of trouble do we get ourselves into if we kind of do both at the same time or skip to the second part and don’t do any labeling?

Anne-Laure Le Cunff
So, the problem if you just jumped into solving the problem is that you’re not going to realize how your current emotional state is probably going to impact your judgment, and so you’re probably going to make decisions that are driven by those emotions, whether that’s the fear, the anxiety, the worry, and you might, for example, cancel tomorrow’s presentation because you feel like it’s not ready because that’s driven by the fear of being judged or the anxiety or whatever. Or you might make any kind of like rushed choice that you think is rational but is actually driven by the emotion. So, that’s the big risk.

And then the other one is just that, you know, your podcast is called How to Be Awesome at Your Job. If you stay stuck in just processing the emotions, and you don’t deal with the consequences, you’re probably not going to do a great job. So, at some point, you do need to move on to dealing with the actual consequences.

But, in general, the challenge I’ve seen for most people is not the dealing with the objective consequences, it’s that they skip the emotional processing, they don’t do the affective labeling, and they try to solve the problem straight away when they’re still in that state of fear or anxiety or just that stress state.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, it’s funny, you said “affective labeling” and at first, I heard you say “effective labeling” like, “Oh, I do a really good job of labeling it.” So, I’m curious, there are different typologies, I guess, in terms of how many emotions we humans experience, and I guess there’s the “Inside Out” movie, or others, that might say we have seven emotions. But lay it on us, how do we know if our affective labeling is effective labeling? Is it just like, “I’m feeling angry. That’s that”?

Or, I’m thinking about Marshall Rosenberg’s Nonviolent Communication. They’ll say things like, “Oh, I’m feeling angry because my need for respect, I don’t feel, is being met here,” which I found pretty handy. It’s like, “Okay, if there’s like an emotion and then perhaps a perception of a cause or need being unmet,” is pretty handy. When do you consider the affective label feeling done? Is it when I am chilled out a little bit about it, I’m not as worked up? Or it’s when I’ve said one word, “Angry”? Or, when am I ready to move on?

Anne-Laure Le Cunff
Yeah, so this is really the emotional regulation part where it’s really about paying attention to how you feel in the moment, and sometimes actually just saying, “Oh, I’m so angry. I don’t know.” Maybe a contractor didn’t deliver something on time or whatever, “I’m just, I’m so angry or I’m disappointed.” Like, already, like, just in those few minutes of conversation, I think we’ve mentioned six or seven different ones. So, actually, angry is good if that’s what it describes, right? But if, after saying this, you still feel like, “Oh, there’s something else,” you can still go and dig a little deeper, and, “Okay, I’m angry but why? What is the underlying emotion underneath this? Okay, oh, it’s that.” And you will, by doing this, like those different layers of affective labeling, you will progressively feel calmer, and being able to re-engage at a cognitive level because you have dealt with the emotions. So, that’s one part.

The other part is that, sometimes while dealing with the actual objective consequences, you might have emotions that pop up again depending on what you discover, what you’re trying to solve. Let’s say that you’re trying to solve a problem and you discover that the only reason why this entire thing is happening is because one of your colleagues forgot to do something you told them to do. And so, again, like you might have an emotion that comes up. You go back to the first step of the little dance, process that, and then deal with the consequence.

So, there’s a term in psychology also called metacognition, which is the ability to observe your own thoughts, your inner landscape, and this is something that you can practice. And at the beginning, it might feel a little bit like, “Oh, what am I doing? I am angry,” those words. But after a while, when you’ve done it for a while, it will become very natural to go through those steps of the dance and going back and forth between the two.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And when you mentioned the underlying stuff, in a way, this is dangerous for me because I am very curious and could examine something for long, long stretches. But let’s say, “Okay, I’m angry about the contractor not doing the thing right,” okay. And you say, what would be the step associated with getting out the underlying stuff?

Anne-Laure Le Cunff
So, again, it’s only in that specific context, it’s only doing as much affective labeling as is needed for you to be able to then move on and deal with the objective consequences in the moment. If, and that can happen, you realize that there’s something actually quite juicy or interesting in terms of your own cognitive or emotional patterns while you’re doing this, or maybe after a while you notice that every time a certain type of challenge arises at work, you have the same type of emotional reaction, it might be worth digging deeper, but this should happen in a different kind of modality.

So, for some people, it’s journaling, for some people it’s talking therapy, you know, whatever it is, where you have more space to explore this. Affective labeling is more of an in-the-moment tool to do just enough emotional processing that you’re able to think clearly again, that you can then deal with whatever problem you’re facing right now.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, I hear you. So, with the contractor situation, we might say, “Okay, I’m angry because he did the thing wrong, and this seems like a pattern, and that folks think they could just take advantage of me because I’m so nice,” or whatever. And so then, the goal is not to dig into, you know, “Why am I broken?” or, “What’s wrong with people in the world today?”

But rather say, “Oh, maybe there’s a pattern there associated with perhaps I need to be more assertive or establish boundaries or expectations more candidly, assertively, proactively in my interactions with folks. But we could just sort of note that and park that for my journaling time or therapy time or whenever I’m having a nice long walk, and that would be interesting to dig into.” As opposed to, “Stop everything. Emergency inspection must happen now before I, you know, ask for a partial refund or whatever it is I need to do.”

Anne-Laure Le Cunff
Yes, exactly. And this is what’s really nice, is that in that way, you can actually just note these things and make sure that they don’t remain unexamined, and so you still will do that work outside of the current situation, like professional situation you’re in, but you’re also helping yourself make better decisions in the moment. So, it’s helpful as a tool to self-regulate in the moment, and as a tool also to notice patterns that you might want to explore deeper at a later moment.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, tell me, Anne-Laure, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we hear about some of your favorite things?

Anne-Laure Le Cunff
Honestly, your questions were amazing, so I’m good.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, shucks. Thank you. How about a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Anne-Laure Le Cunff
It’s been attributed to Viktor Frankl, but it’s actually much older than this, and it’s, “In between stimulus and response, there is a space. And in that space lies our freedom.”

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Anne-Laure, I got to say, you’ve piqued my interest here because, fun fact, that is the most cited favorite quote amongst How to Be Awesome at Your Job guests, but you brought an extra wrinkle to it, it’s like, “Oh, it has history pre-Victor Frankl.” Do you know the tale? Can you tell us?

Anne-Laure Le Cunff
Well, I went in that rabbit hole, but there, basically, we don’t know who said that first, but there are lots of different versions of it. They’re very, very close in much older books, and Victor Frankl is the one who made this version famous, and the one I quoted is his version. But it’s very, very old actually. And so, that’s interesting, is that this idea that we have this little space of freedom is quite old. I have an entire footnote about this in my book.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, cool. And a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Anne-Laure Le Cunff
There’s a recent study that shows that the systems that are activated in the brain are the same for impulsivity and curiosity. And I find it fascinating because that has a lot of implications for how we navigate the world and distraction and creativity and all of that. So, that’s one of my favorite studies at the moment.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I can relate to that. It’s like, “I need to know everything about this now.”

Anne-Laure Le Cunff
Yes.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s really dangerous for me. I have to keep lists and guardrails and rules for myself. And a favorite book?

Anne-Laure Le Cunff
That would be How We Learn by Stanislas Dehaene, who is also a French neuroscientist, and it’s a very short book, but it teaches you how your brain learns anything in childhood and adulthood, and it’s very helpful to understand how we navigate the world.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite tool, something you use to be awesome at your job?

Anne-Laure Le Cunff
I use a note-taking tool called Roam Research, and it’s a bit of a weird, non-linear thinking type of tool where you can connect all of your ideas in little bullet points. And most people who look at my notes think that it’s a complete mess, but it’s helped me write a book and complete a PhD. So, I’m so grateful for this tool.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite habit?

Anne-Laure Le Cunff
Going for daily walks.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a key nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks?

Anne-Laure Le Cunff
Become the scientist of your own life.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Anne-Laure Le Cunff
Go to NessLabs.com to subscribe to my newsletter, and look up Tiny Experiments anywhere books are sold, or go support your local bookshop by ordering it there.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Anne-Laure Le Cunff
I want to ask them, “What will be your first tiny experiment?”

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Anne-Laure, thank you. This is fun.

Anne-Laure Le Cunff
Thanks for having me.

Feb 27
0

1036: Becoming a Happy High Achiever with Dr. Mary Anderson

By | Podcasts | One Comment

Dr. Mary Anderson shares key habits to fuel your career and well-being.

You’ll Learn

  1. Why high achievers often don’t enjoy their achievements 
  2. How to break free from the cycle of negative self-talk 
  3. The SELF care framework for high achievers 

About Mary 

Dr. Mary Anderson is a licensed psychologist, author, and sought-after speaker with over a decade of experience helping patients become happier, healthier, and sustainably high-achieving. Dr. Anderson earned her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology, with a specialty in Health Psychology, from the University of Florida and completed her internship and post-doctoral fellowship at the VA Boston Healthcare System, with appointments at Harvard Medical School and Boston University School of Medicine.

Her book, The Happy High Achiever: 8 Essentials to Overcome Anxiety, Manage Stress, and Energize Yourself for Success––Without Losing Your Edge, was published by Hachette Book Group in September 2024. 

Resources Mentioned

Thank You, Sponsors!

Mary Anderson Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Mary, welcome!

Mary Anderson
Thank you so much, Pete. I’m so excited to be here. I’m excited to have a great conversation. And hello to all the listeners out there.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I am excited, too. We are talking about The Happy High Achiever. That sounds like something I’d like to be, and many of our listeners would like to be. You’ve worked with many folks in the zone of high achievers who are happy and not so happy. Could you give us, perhaps, one of your most surprising and fascinating discoveries you’ve made while working with this population and researching the book?

Mary Anderson
That’s a great question. Well, I think, really, what prompted me to write the book was the surprising thing that I came upon after working. I was working in the financial district in Boston. This was actually many years ago, I had the idea for the book, and I would have these amazing high-achieving patients coming in. So, successful business professionals, doctors, lawyers, grad students, just amazingly brilliant, talented.

And then they would sit on my therapy couch across from me, and really candidly, courageously describe struggling with self-doubt, worry, perfectionism, anxiety, and burnout. And that’s what really was so surprising to me was how much they were really struggling with even just feeling like an imposter sitting in meetings, even if they had the credentials, or even if they had experience or the talent.

And so, that really helped me realize, “Wow, there’s these amazing high-achieving people out there who are not enjoying their excellence.” And that’s what really prompted me to write the book, and it was really that surprising kind of discovery all those years ago that now inspired The Happy High Achiever to now be in the world.

It really motivated me to do the work to help put a book in the world, to share science-based actionable strategies and skills, to help these ambitious people who are amazing but struggling. And I wanted to give them specifically tailored strategies that they could use in their jam-packed schedules because they are busy people. So, that’s really what my aim was for the book.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s quite a turn of a phrase, not enjoying their excellence, not only because it’s alliterative, which I love.

Mary Anderson
Me as well.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, it’s kind of haunting and rings true. Like, we would imagine from the outside looking in, “You’re on top of the world! That’s got to feel amazing!” And yet, when you look in, and it’s like, “Well, you might think it would feel amazing.” but it sure doesn’t.” So, can you, this is probably maybe a whole other podcast conversation, but what’s that all about, Dr. Mary Anderson? Like, what’s getting in the way?

Mary Anderson
Awesome question. So, for this, I would say the approach I use is cognitive behavioral therapy, so CBT. It’s a science-backed approach for the treatment of anxiety and depression. And what it teaches us is that thoughts, feelings, and behaviors all directly impact each other. And the goal of CBT is to help people feel better, so we target their thoughts and their behaviors to help them feel better.

And so, why are people feeling so anxious, so overwhelmed, so worried? We can point to those two-pronged reasons of cognition and behavior, right? So, their thoughts or self-talk, so how they’re thinking about themselves, the world, and other people; and their behaviors, so their actions and their choices that they’re making in interacting in the world. So, that’s, really, what I target.

So, what this is all about is that often their thoughts are relentlessly self-critical, so they’re very hard on themselves, but not in a helpful way that you would think like, “Oh, I’m just, you know, keeping my edge there.” Actually, there’s a tipping point where if it’s negatively skewed where they’re really being self-critical, they’re being really hard on themselves in a really unhelpful way, their negative self-talk, that relentless negative self-talk, and then also relentless pace.

So, in terms of their behaviors, they have a relentless pace. So, they’re not implementing regular self-care that is necessary to provide the energy for sustained happiness and high achievement. So, it’s issues with their thoughts, their self-talk, and their behaviors that are creating this really unfortunate situation of they are high achieving, but in terms of how they feel, they don’t feel good. They feel anxious, worried, overwhelmed.

So, that’s at the very root of what’s going on, and that’s why I help target improving and optimizing patients’ thoughts, their self-talk, and their behaviors, and that’s what helps them feel better and actually perform at their best.

Pete Mockaitis
Now, when you say the pace, do you just mean doing a lot of things and not resting? Or what are kind of like the problematic behaviors there?

Mary Anderson
Great question. So, the relentless pace I talk about is often to help people understand that ambition itself is not a bad thing. Ambition is great. I think that’s a great quality to have. It’s that when people aren’t taking time to rest, and I have this acronym I use SELF, so self-care, right? We just need to make sure that as we are going into the world as these ambitious people, aspiring to be our best, that we are implementing the necessary self-care so that we can be our best, so that we have the energy necessary to be high-performing in the short term and to be our most excellent self in the long term.

Because, high achievers, we’re busy, right? We have jam-packed schedules. So, I often start talking about self-care with my patients, and they’ll be like, “Dr. A, I don’t have time for self-care,” because they’re thinking, which a lot of people do.

It’s kind of this myth out there that self-care means needing to take two-hour long bubble baths or go on week-long meditation retreats or buy yourself expensive treats, and that’s really not what’s necessary and it’s not what I’m talking about. When I talk about self-care, it just means taking good care of yourself on a regular basis so that you can feel and be your best.

So, I have that acronym of SELF, so it’s nice and memorable, and again, the four science-based self-care fundamentals that people can prioritize to get their best bang for their buck. These people are busy. If I’m asking them, “Okay, you’re already overwhelmed, your overextended schedule, I’m now going to ask you to add in lengthy, complicated self-care behaviors.” Is that going to work? No, right? It’s just not, it’s not possible.

So, I want to keep self-care doable so that we keep doing it, right? So, I teach them the four self-care fundamentals and help them really problem-solve how to implement that within their lives, and that’s what’s going to fuel them so that they can feel their best and perform at their best. And I’m happy to go through that self-care if you want to.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, now we can’t resist an acronym, Mary. SELF, lay it on us.

Mary Anderson
Okay, SELF. So, S is for sleep, and I can’t stress enough just how essential sleep is. So, as adults, we want to aim for seven to nine hours of sleep a night, and we can just kind of know instinctually, right? It’s hard to feel and be our best if we’re exhausted all the time. But, also, research shows that there’s absolutely a negative impact to chronic lack of sleep. So, we know that it can negatively impact things like memory, attention, concentration, decision-making skills.

But, conversely, good night’s sleep, so, again, really getting that seven to nine hours of sleep a night can help promote things and have a positive impact on things like problem-solving skills, productivity, decision-making, so many amazing benefits. So, if you want to be a high achiever, you got to get that seven to nine hours of sleep a night. It’s one of the very first things I assess when my patients come in to see me, “How much sleep are you getting?” And if they’re chronically getting less than seven, they’re having a hard time.

Pete Mockaitis
And, Mary, maybe I’m getting too detailed here, but I’m a big lover of sleep. Are we thinking seven to nine hours of actually asleep as per your Oura ring or Fitbit or Garmin Watch wearable? Or seven to nine hours in the bed with your eyeballs closed?

Mary Anderson
Well, ideally, it actually means seven to nine hours of sleep, and I help people who do struggle with sleep. So, if they’re in bed trying to sleep and getting frustrated, we would actually say, you know, especially if it’s been, you know, people sometimes stay in bed 15-20 minutes, and they start getting frustrated that, “Oh, I’m not falling asleep, and now I have this big work meeting tomorrow.”

We actually encourage, “Get up. Get out of bed. Go do something really quieting. Just like make sure you’re staying in a dark room.” So, the issue is we don’t ever want to associate the bed with frustration, so it’s called stimulus control. So, you want to make sure the bed is just for sleep and sex only, and so if people are frustrated, “Get up and move out of bed.”

So, ideally, for what we call sleep efficiency, the ideal situation is when you are in bed, you go to bed. It might take a few minutes to go to sleep, but when your eyeballs are closed in bed, you’re sleeping. And then, once your eyeballs open, you get out of the bed. You’re not just staying there because, again, we want to really optimize that association cognitively, where the bed is actually where you’re going to be sleeping.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Understood.

Mary Anderson
So, that’s kind of the technical explanation of it. But, yeah, seven to nine hours. It’s really helpful for people. So, that’s the S of SELF. It’s sleep. Seven to nine hours. E is for exercise, and I think we all know the importance of exercise for physical health, but also for mood and stress management. Exercise, any type of physical activity, and I encourage, keep it doable. Do something you like. So, walking is great.

I think sometimes people vastly underestimate the benefits of walking, but exercise is one of the most efficient, effective ways of decreasing cortisol, our stress hormone. So, if we can aim to get at least 30 minutes of some type of physical movement in our day, it’s so incredible for managing our stress and that means preventing burnout.

Burnout is really chronic stress that occurs over time that’s not being managed. So, the best prevention of burnout is to ensure that you’re managing your stress along the way. And, again, one of the best ways to do that is to get physical activity in. L is look forward, and this one is the one that surprises people sometimes because they haven’t heard of this one.

L is look forward to pleasant activities. So, our goal, our mission, if we choose to accept it, which I hope we do, is to aim for at least one pleasant activity a week, okay? And that’s because so many high achievers, they’re just work, home, work, home, work, home, and things can start to feel really stressful if we don’t have anything to look forward to.

So, just the anticipation of some something positive is powerful. So, keep it doable. Again, I encourage people, plan a meetup with a friend on a Saturday, book a massage, have concert tickets for Sunday, or even something even smaller, like, make sure you queue up your favorite Netflix episode, or plan to get your favorite takeout on Friday.

And then what you do is you just remind yourself during the week. Maybe Tuesday is going to be a long, stressful day. You know, you have meetings all day, back-to-back. You have deadlines coming up and you’re like, “You know what, on Saturday, I’m going to make sure that I,” whatever it is that you want to do.

Just plan something that you know you’re going to look forward to and that is not about productivity.

Because so many of us, high achievers, we love to be efficient and productive, but we need to give our brains a break and have something to look forward to that’s not just about productivity. It’s just about something pleasant, because, again, that provides a powerful mood boost throughout the week and then when you’re enjoying the activity.

So, SEL, and then F is fuel.

And here the aim is to fuel our mind and body with good nutrition and hydration. So, making sure we’re drinking enough water. Our cognitive performance really declines if we’re dehydrated at all, research has shown that. Also, we know nutrition is important, right? So, fruits, veggies, lean protein, of course, important for physical health, but I think sometimes people don’t recognize for cognitive performance, it’s so important.

And so, I’ll ask people like, “Have you ever tried to concentrate when you’re hungry or thirsty?” And people are like, “Oh, yeah, it’s really hard.” But just making the time during the day where I have so many of my patients, right now most of my patients are probably ladies, like in their 30s, high achieving, and they’re like early to mid-career, and so they are working hard and they’re like, “Dr. A, I don’t even have time for lunch.”

And I said, “We have to fuel your brain. You know, our brain runs on glucose. We need to have some kind of fuel.” So, I have them, you know, ideally, it’s real food, but if not, get a protein bar or even a protein shake. That one’s good, and like that’s another pro tip where if they’re like, “Well, I can’t eat at the meeting,” but they’re in back-to-back meetings, have a protein shake in a mug. No one’s going to know it’s a protein shake, but you’re getting nutrition and you’re getting that nourishment that you need to fuel yourself.

And also, for F, for fuel, I talk about fueling your mind with some quiet. How often do we unplug? As high achievers, we’re constantly kind of just inundated with information and barraged with problems to solve. So, fuel also means fuel your mind with quiet. So, that means spending some time in nature, doing some meditation. I use the Calm app. I listen to the Daily Jay with Jay Shetty every morning. Or journaling or just doing deep breathing. Just taking three deep breaths is shown to calm your nervous system so that you can feel better and you’re going to perform better when your nervous system is calmer.

So, SELF, sleep, exercise, look forward, and fuel. Those are the four science-based self-care fundamentals that if you prioritize those as a high achiever, that is going to absolutely help you function at your best, function optimally, so you can be a happy high achiever that you deserve to be.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And over on the self-talk side of things, I’m curious if you could share a couple things you’ve heard in the self-talk realm that are particularly memorable and haunting, as well as typical and highly illustrative of what we mean by problematic self-talk that’s happening all the time?

Mary Anderson
Absolutely. Okay. So, for this, I actually have a term that I’ve coined. It’s called the Troublesome Trifecta. So, the Troublesome Trifecta are the three most unhelpful types of thoughts. We call them cognitive distortions in psychology. So, the three most unhelpful cognitive distortions that so often plague high achievers, and they’re obstacles to enjoying their excellence.

And, really what they do, Pete, is they needlessly ratchet up the stress and anxiety in a challenging situation, or even an everyday situation. It needlessly ratchets up the stress and anxiety, makes it harder to feel and be our best.

So, there’s three that I’ve found are really challenging for high achievers, and it’s specific to high achievers with anxiety. I’ve found from well over a decade of helping clients, these are the three cognitive distortions that are going to be most problematic. First, all-or-nothing thinking. This is so central to high achievers. So, all-or-nothing thinking is thinking in extremes or absolutes. So, it’s, “I must be perfect or I’m a failure.” How I’ve heard it in something that was really haunting, when you said that, I was like, “Yep, I got you on this one.” I’m like, “I got one.” This idea from patients where they’ll say things like, “Dr. A, everyone needs to be totally blown away by my project.” That is so much pressure.

It’s so much pressure to think everyone needs to be totally blown away by my project. That puts so much pressure. I call all-or-nothing thinking pressure cooker thinking because it puts needless pressure. And then what happens, I notice with a lot of high achievers, they start really tying their self-worth to their achievements, appearance, or performance.

They think that they need to prove that they’re worthy or valuable as people, and it makes them terrified, Pete, like they’re terrified of making mistakes or ever looking less than the best. And that, really, perfectionism that’s rooted in the all-or-nothing thinking, it limits them. Perfectionism limits people because they’re terrified to make mistakes. They want to look flawless. So, what that means really concretely, they won’t go out and try new things because they’re not going to immediately, you know, look adept at them.

Also, there’s what I call perfectionism-fueled procrastination, which is they start making the presentation or project or to-do item so monstrous, such a Leviathan, you know, this behemoth in their mind that it needs to be perfect, that they get overwhelmed. Again, it’s that thought feeling, behaviors, they start thinking, “This needs to be perfect,” so they feel really overwhelmed, and then behaviorally, what happens is they procrastinate. They don’t even start because they’re so afraid that it won’t be exactly right or good enough.

And, again, they’re really tying their worth to the outcome, to their achievements. So, the solution for this one is it’s not just like acquiescing to like mediocrity and stagnation, because patients are like, “Great, you just want me to become lazy.” And I say, “No.” The solution, thankfully, is excellence, and this is the first of the eight essentials in my book, The Happy High Achiever. Strive for excellence, not perfection.

And what that means is it allows for both high achievement and our humanity. We’re going to strive for our best while also realizing we’re human. We will make mistakes. Of course, we can do the work so we’re not making careless mistakes, but we’re human. We’re going to have, you know, flaws and fumbles and we’re going to fail.

And to know, really know that we can learn from that, so we don’t have to be terrified, and most importantly, to know that any mistake you make never, in any way, detracts from your worth as a human being, that we have inherent, unconditional worth as humans. And if people really embrace that, if they accept that as truth, that’s when they’re going to feel and be their best because they’re not so afraid anymore.

So, that’s all-or-nothing thinking. That is huge. It is like rampant in the high achievers with anxiety population that I help. So, all-or-nothing thinking, I really try to raise patients’ awareness about that cognitive distortion so that they can catch it and conquer it.

Pete Mockaitis
Could you give us a couple more examples of what that self-talk sounds like in terms of verbiage for all-or-nothing thinking? Because what I loved about that was, something like all-or-nothing thinking in terms of very broadly, like, “Oh, I either need to be perfect or I’m worthless,” right? So, okay. But then you put that note that’s in the context of a presentation, “This presentation needs to blow away everybody. It just needs to.” And so, I thought that was handy. So, we have all-or-nothing thinking applied in a specific context, and it’s still plenty troublesome. So, can we hear a couple more articulations of all-or-nothing thinking?

Mary Anderson
Absolutely. It can be things like, “I’ll never get this done,” “I’m always behind,” like anything where they’re really like just nitpicking themselves in this really extreme way. The other thing is even just they’ll say things like, “Well, now it’s ruined.” Like it’s this extreme kind of thinking, and it just makes you feel awful. So, if you’re like, “Now the product is ruined,” they feel awful and, behaviorally, it keeps them stuck. So, cognitive distortions make us feel worse and keep us stuck behaviorally.

And the other one is sometimes I’ll hear people say like, “I can’t do it, Dr. A. I can’t do it.” That’s very all or nothing. The truth, usually, it’s not that they can’t do it. So, they’ll be like, “Dr. A, I have this big presentation, or my boss wants me to speak at the meeting, and I’m going to have to speak for like 20 minutes in front of everyone. I can’t do it. I hate public speaking. I can’t do it. I’m going to stumble over my words.”

And their big kind of distortion that keeps them stuck is, “I can’t do it. I can’t do it.” But when we do what I call poking holes, so we ask questions to really question the veracity, the accuracy of their thought, which a cognitive distortion is based on faulty beliefs, assumptions, misconceptions. So, when we start to poke holes by asking questions, the truth usually is it’s not that they can’t do it, it’s that they don’t want to do it. They don’t like public speaking, but they can do it.

We can help them prepare and practice and then do their best. So, they can do it. Like, the can’t, it’s more so they don’t want to do it, but that we can find ways to help them be able to do what they need to do, and that’s called creating, I call it new and improved self-talk. It’s creating a balanced, helpful thought that moves people forward.

So, the all or nothing, can’t, never, totally ruined, anytime you hear that, absolutely, “And it was absolutely horrible.” Well, most things in life are not black and white, it’s gray. And so, that’s kind of the more practical application. It’s not just, “I have to be perfect or I’m a failure.” So, I think that’s a great distinction that you’ll find much more nuanced when you’re bringing that all or nothing to the workplace, and being able to, again, raise your awareness.

Because once we have awareness, then we can take action and start really, again, what I call poking holes and choosing to focus on a more helpful thought that moves us forward, not just keeps us stuck like that cognitive distortion well.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I like that so much, and as we’re talking, I think I caught myself doing all-or-nothing thinking and poking holes just this morning driving to the office, I was like, “Oh, I’ve got a lot of meetings on my calendar today but I didn’t sleep very well. I don’t know if I’m going to make it.” And it was like, “What exactly do you mean by make it?”

Mary Anderson
Awesome job, yes.

Pete Mockaitis
“You know, Am I going to, like, enter a coma? Am I going to off myself?” It’s like, “No, no.” And it’s like, “And I guess what I mean is, I don’t know if I’ll be able to show up to all of my appointments in an effective capacity,” or, “No, I guess what I really mean is, I don’t know, I won’t be able to be perfect in all of my appointments.” And it was just sort of that conversation, like, “Well, you won’t be. I mean, you might say something dumb. You might ask Dr. Mary Anderson the exact same question two times in a row, which is like, ‘Uh, dude, I just answered that.’ And then we’ll edit it out, and so no one will know,” and that’ll be that.

“I am capable of showing up, not falling asleep, and making some kind of valuable conversational contribution in each of the day’s meetings. So, if that’s making it, then I am going to make it. I’ll just feel kind of tired and grumpy sometimes and that’s okay.”

Mary Anderson
Oh, Pete, I love it. Yes. So, you poked holes and you helped move yourself forward. And you hit on a point that I talk a lot about with people and it’s so, so brilliant. So much wisdom what you just said is that you will make it through the day. It’s just this day, you know, if you didn’t sleep as well, or if you have lots of meetings, that this day is different in a way. And so, that’s the difference. You just highlighted like, no pun intended, you highlighted perfectly the difference between perfectionism and striving for excellence.

So, perfectionism is the unrealistic expectation that we will almost be like automatons and every single day our best will be exactly the same. Is that possible? No. So, again, excellence and striving for excellence means we acknowledge our humanity. So, we still strive to be our best, right? We’re striving to be our best while also acknowledging as humans, as human beings, our best will differ by the day. So, if you have a good night’s sleep versus, if I have people who are dealing with jet lag.

So, if I have consultants and they’re flying all over the world, I’m like, “We have to take into account, if you just did a 15-hour flight, we can’t expect you to necessarily be at cognitive processing speed the same as if you’re at home and you’re getting solid eight-hour sleep every night.” So, our best will differ by the day. Or if they’re dealing with like the flu or romantic breakups, there’s things that happen because we’re human.

And so, so when we allow for those natural inherent variation of day-to-day, things start to feel easier. And just like you did, you helped yourself in your self-talk, say like, “Okay, I can do this.” You know, basically that’s what I heard, it’s like, “Okay, it’s not going to be perfect, but I can do this. I can make it through the day.” And so, it’s going to help you feel better, and actually that is going to help you perform even better. It’s just talking to yourself in that way, like, you would a friend.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. So, we got the all-or-nothing thinking. What else?

Mary Anderson
Okay, so number two of the Troublesome Trifecta is jumping to conclusions, and this kind of comes in two flavors. The first one is negative fortune telling, and this is when we predict something negative will happen even though it hasn’t happened. And this one sounds like, “It’s not going to go well, Dr. A,” or like, “Oh, my presentation is going to be awful,” or, “The project’s going to flop.” So, they’re predicting negative, but it hasn’t happened yet. And so, what’s that going to do in terms of how they feel? It makes them feel overwhelmed, nervous, anxious, and then, behaviorally, it does not help them prepare and be their best.

The other type of jumping to conclusions is mind reading. I think we’ve all done this, when we assume we know what people are thinking about us. So, people will be like, “Oh, Dr. A, they think I’m stupid.” Or I’ll hear things, this is very common, like, “Oh, my gosh, I misspoke in a meeting and now everyone thinks I’m incompetent.” Or even things like, “Oh, if I ask a question…”

So, real high achievers who are trying to be perfect will almost say things like, “Well, if I ask a question, people will think I’m incompetent.” No, you’re asking for clarification on a question because you care so much. You want to know more about whatever the project is that they’re describing or whatever finding or outcome they’re describing. So, people assume that people think that they’re incompetent, which is a major fear of high achievers, to be deemed incompetent or foolish is a huge fear.

Also, it can just be things like where they assume an interpretation. So, say you’re at your desk, right? And again, so I’m having a lot of clients who are like early 30s, they’re sitting at their desk, their boss will walk past them. Now maybe the boss usually says, “Hi” in the morning. Well, this morning, the boss didn’t say hello. So, they’re going straight into their negative self-talk or unhelpful self-talk, that cognitive distortion, like, “Well, my boss must be mad at me.”

And so, imagine if you’re assuming your boss is mad at you, how are you going to feel? Not good, right? And they get really stressed. And then, behaviorally, what that can just concretely look like is maybe in the afternoon meeting, they don’t speak up, they’re like, “Well, I don’t know why he’s mad at me. I don’t want to give him any more reason to be.” So, you see how that all goes.

But what if instead, and this is the solution to the mind reading, stay curious. There could absolutely be alternate explanations. Maybe the boss is rushing to her office to hop on a Zoom meeting. Maybe she’s not feeling well. Maybe she’s just thinking about something. She’s kind of lost in thought and just didn’t say hi that morning.

And so, if you can stay curious and say, “Huh, you know, I don’t know why,” and just say the facts, right? Predict neutral, I call it. Predict neutral. “I don’t know why she didn’t say hi. You know, I’ll go talk to her later today and see what’s going on.” And if they say that to themselves, if they can stay curious and just stick with the facts, we call it evidence-based thinking, if they can stick with the facts, they’re going to feel at least better, not as stressed, and then it won’t negatively impact their performance, their behaviors.

Okay, so that’s negative fortune-telling and mind reading. Super helpful to just stay curious. It’s never helpful to negative fortune-tell and just predict something negative is going to happen, or to predict that people are thinking badly of you if there’s no evidence to support that. So, that is jumping to conclusions.

And then the last of the Troublesome Trifecta are “should” statements. Oh, “should statements,” these are so ubiquitous. These are the ubiquitous for high achievers, this idea of like, “Dr. A, I should be able to handle all of this. I shouldn’t be so stressed. What’s wrong with me? I should be doing more. I should be like them.”

So, this idea comes up too with the “shoulds” often because it’s so judgmental of ourselves, and it can be towards others or situations as well. But high achievers I work with often are very self-critical, and I call it the comparison trap. They fall into this comparison trap where they’re comparing themselves to others, you know, colleagues, friends, and they’re like, “Well, look at what that person’s achieved.” Often, honestly, social media can really fuel that comparison trap. So, it’s really unhelpful with the social.

Social media can be used for good, for sure. But if people are looking at it and feeling less than, it can really promote feelings of like inadequacy, because they’ll say, “Dr. A, my friend just got a promotion,” or, “Look at the award that they’re doing.” They’re like, “Wow, they just gave a presentation at that conference. Like, you know, I’ve been on a panel before, but I’ve never been like a keynote speaker before. Look at what they’re doing.”

And so, even if – it’s really interesting, Pete – even if, because these are, you know, brilliant people, they can articulate, like intellectually, they can say, “I know, social media is a curated highlight reel of just the best moments of people’s lives.” But still, it’s still impacting them in terms of how they’re feeling about themselves, and behaviorally, it doesn’t help them perform at their best. They end up usually feeling really stuck.

And so, a question I’ll ask here is, because they’ll say like, even things like body image, so like, “I should look like her. Like, look at how put together she looks at that conference. She doesn’t even look nervous.” And so, if they’re struggling with anxiety, oftentimes they’ll look at other people, and be like, “They don’t look anxious.” Well, who knows actually what’s going on inside of them?

But they’ll say like, “I shouldn’t look anxious. I shouldn’t be so stressed. What’s wrong with me?” And I’ll say to them, “Would you ever say that to your friend? Would you ever tell a friend, ‘You really shouldn’t look so stressed. You really shouldn’t feel anxious, and you should be more like that person?’ Would you ever say that to a friend?” And they’re like, “Well, no.” I’m like, “Well, why?” “Because it’s mean.” But people will say really like cruel self-talk to themselves.

So, that’s a quick pro tip. Just a litmus test for people. If you notice you’re feeling stressed or if you’re feeling badly about yourself, ask yourself, “What am I telling myself?” And then ask yourself, “Would I say that to a friend?” If the self-talk that you are saying to yourself you wouldn’t say to a friend, it’s not helpful. So, in that moment think about “What would you tell a friend in that moment?”

And that’s just a really simple concrete strategy but I can’t tell you how powerful that can be in helping shift someone’s mindset to something more balanced and encouraging, and that’s when we’re going to feel and be our best.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that’s good. And “should” is tricky because there’s an implied standard. I had a friend say, “I should be able to keep the floor clean, but I was having trouble, so I just got a vacuum robot.” And I thought, I almost want to dig into that but he was excited to tell me about the vacuum robot, so we didn’t get into it. But it’s like, “Hmm, where is the standard coming from?” you know, just as a curiosity.

But I do the same thing to myself, and I’m thinking it’s like sometimes the standards have some level of validity, and sometimes they’re just nonsense, like, “Says who and why, huh?” Like, “Okay, we can just reject that standard entirely.” But other times, I’m thinking, like, “I have danced on both sides of a body mass index of 25 to be “overweight,” and then not, which is funny, because it’s, like, almost exactly 200 pounds is overweight for me at my height.

But it’s funny, so I’ll think, “Oh, I should not be overweight. I should eat less, weigh less, whatever.” And so, what’s interesting is like the body mass index of 25, I mean, it is population level, like we can debate that, but it has some level of validity like, “Yeah, generally, you know, when body mass indexes are like above this, there’s kind of more health problems tend to occur population-wide.” So, it’s like it has some level of validity as opposed to something I should just like cast off, it’s like, “Well, forget the body mass index. Like, you do you, Pete. Love that body!”

But I think your point about talking to yourself like a friend is really helpful. It’s like you wouldn’t say, “Yeah, you shouldn’t be overweight.” It’s like, “No, hey, I think it’s good that you are considering your health and keeping an eye on things and following some best practices. So, yeah. I guess the weigh-in today might be an indicator that it would be wise to put a little more attention on this kind of thing.” And that is more how I might talk to a friend, as opposed to, “You shouldn’t be overweight.” And so, that’s handy in and of itself.

Mary Anderson
Awesome job, Pete. Like, awesome, awesome example, and this is one that I help a lot of people with. They’ll be like, “Dr. A, I should be able to fit in my workouts even though I have a jam-packed schedule, but I should exercise.” And to your point, there really are things that are helpful for people to do, but when we “should” ourselves, it’s like we’re shaming ourselves almost.

If someone’s trying to shame themselves to go to the gym, is that going to work long-term? No. They found it just really won’t, and it’ll make people feel horrible about themselves. So, what I talk about, I talk about this in The Happy High Achiever, is when you notice you’re “should-ing” yourself, really know that that’s going to actually keep you stuck. It’s not going to be helpful. So just saying like, “I shouldn’t weigh a certain amount,” doesn’t actually promote proactive problem-solving, it’s not going to help promote healthy goal-setting and move you forward.

So, what I help people do is I decision-tree it out, so I ask them, “This thing you’re ‘should-ing’ about to yourself, is it something you want to do? Is it something you think would be helpful to do? Or are you saying you must do it maybe because of external pressure?” So, with the gym, you know, “I should be able to fit in these workouts. I should exercise.”

And I’ll say, and especially if they’re like, “Well, I should go to the gym,” and I’ll say, “Do you want to go to the gym?” And they’re usually really candid. I appreciate the candor, they’re like, “I do not want to go to the gym, Dr. A.” I’m like, “Okay.” So, just saying, “I should go to the gym,” isn’t going to be effective because they don’t want to, and then they’re shaming themselves about it. That’s not actually going to effectively lead to enhanced performance and behavior or meeting the actual ultimate goal we want for ourselves.

So, what we need to do is say, “Okay.” Then again, curiosity of “Why are you saying this to yourself?” So, I’ll say, “Okay, if you don’t want to, do you think it would be helpful to?” And they’re like, “Yeah, I do. I think it would be helpful to exercise.” “Okay, right? So, now we’re getting to the reality of the situation. Well, why do you think it would be helpful?”

And they’re like, “Well, it really does help me physically feel better. I do notice it helps me manage my stress. Mood-wise, I do notice like my mood is better. Not maybe before I go to the gym, but after. I do feel good I went. I’ve never regretted going to the gym.” “Okay.” And then I’ll say, “Is there a must in there?” And they’re like, “No, there’s not.” The must category is more like societal kind of influence about certain things.

Usually, people, it’s something that they think would be helpful, right? So, like your friend, it would be helpful if he could keep his floor clean, but there’s probably circumstances or reasons why he can’t. So, he was super smart and got himself a robot. That’s awesome, right? And if we can figure out how to move ourselves forward without the shame, that’s going to help us feel better.

And we know if people are happier, they’ve shown in abundant research, if people are happier, it fuels success. So, when we’re happier, when we have a positive mindset, that’s actually going to enhance our productivity, our performance, our efficiency, our creativity, our resilience. So, it really benefits us to be happier first, because you deserve to be, because you’re a human and you deserve to be happy, but also as people in the workplace who are striving to be high achievers, really know that if you can speak to yourself in a way that helps you cultivate a positive mindset, that helps in a positive, like a happiness feeling, that is actually going to play out, that it’s going to enhance your performance.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good to know. Well, now could you share a favorite quote?

Mary Anderson
“The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another,” and it’s by William James.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you.

Mary Anderson
Yeah, I love it. William James, considered the father of American psychology. And I love that it highlights, as humans, we’re going to have thousands of thoughts a day. And it’s an important point that I really try to underline for people. Our goal is not to try to never have a cognitive distortion. That would be an impossible goal. We are humans, we’re going to have helpful thoughts, unhelpful thoughts on a continuum of helpfulness, right? So, we can’t expect ourselves to never have an unhelpful thought.

But what we can do is equip ourselves with these strategies to raise our awareness of when we’re thinking a less helpful thought, so those cognitive distortions again, Troublesome Trifecta, we’re all-or-nothing thinking, jumping to conclusions, and “should” statements. Really raise your awareness so you can take action.

We want to catch and conquer those cognitive distortions, and we can choose to focus our attention on a more helpful thought. And when we choose to focus our attention on more helpful thought, we’re going to feel better and it’s going to help us move forward behaviorally. So that’s one of my very favorite quotes.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, thank you. And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Mary Anderson
I challenge people, try to talk to yourself like you would a friend. If you’re in a hard moment, if it’s stressful, if you’re dealing with a challenging co-worker or boss, or you’re stressed out before a big meeting, really ask yourself, “What would I tell a friend in this moment?”

The more that we can speak to ourselves, so focusing our thoughts on a thought that something that we would tell a friend, it sounds simple, but again, the more you can be like a good friend to yourself, you are going to feel and be your best. So, that would be the call to action, really know that by speaking kindly to yourself, which sometimes high achievers balk at like, “Self-compassion, Dr. A., it’s not going to make me weak,” but I’m like, “Honestly, the more kind and compassionate you can be towards yourself, like you would a close dear friend, that is actually is what will help you excel. You will feel happier and you will be high achieving not only in the short term, but sustainably in the long term.”

And that’s the goal. We want to be happy high achievers, enjoying our excellence and putting our best out into the world. You can do it. I believe in everyone out there. You possess the power to be a happy high achiever. Start now. It’s worth it.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you.