KF #26. Being Resilient

Pete Mockaitis
Jon, welcome!

Jon Rosemberg
Hi, Pete, it’s good to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to talk about thriving. You got a whole guide to thriving, so let’s discuss that exactly. But first, could you maybe contrast? You talk about thriving versus survival mode. Could you paint a little bit of a picture of what each feels like in practice?

Jon Rosemberg
For sure. And, Pete, have you ever felt like you’re in survival mode?

Pete Mockaitis
I think the answer is yes.

Jon Rosemberg
Yes. And what does that feel like?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, it’s not pleasant, you know? It’s sort of like I’m just trying to get through the day, and the responsibilities, and the stuff, and the calendar, and the to-do list. It’s a little bit harried, hurried, rushed, stressed, maybe elevated heart rate and more.

Jon Rosemberg
That’s a beautiful definition of survival mode. And what I especially loved about your definition was that initial exhale, the “Ahh!” So, yes, that is survival mode. And survival mode, evolutionarily speaking, is a highly adaptive mode to be in.

A few thousand years ago, if you were in the savannah and you heard, you know, like a rustle in the bushes, going into survival mode was really helpful because it allows us to focus all of our energy on what we need to do to survive. And it can be really, really helpful.

However, today, most of the challenges and threats that we face are not physical, they are psychological. So, survival mode sometimes gets triggered in moments that may not necessarily be the most helpful.

Pete Mockaitis
Understood. And that picture is nice. I just recently saw a Kurzgesagt video, they have these amazing animations, all about stress and it painted that very picture in terms of, you know, a beast in the wilderness and what that’s like. And so, I’ve heard that kind of a storyline, if you will, before about, “Oh, in the ancient times, this is very helpful, and now it’s almost counterproductive for us.”

But I’m wondering, you know, we feel what we feel. Jon, to what extent do we even have control over that? I mean, stuff happens. Emotions, reactions naturally flow from those things. So, to what extent can we have mastery versus we are a victim of these circumstances?

Jon Rosemberg
I love that question because it goes exactly to the heart of the book. The capacity to make intentional choices, which I call in the book agency, that realization that even in the most-dire of circumstances, we still have a choice, is the foundation for going from survival mode to thriving.

What is thriving? Most people think that thriving equals success. So, I’m going to say this very clearly. Thriving is not success. How do we measure success? We measure it with money, power, and reputation. These are three things that if you see somebody who’s got a lot of them, you say this is a successful person, right?

Thriving, on the other hand, it’s about agency, so the capacity to make intentional choices. It’s about belonging, i.e., being able to connect, to have meaningful social connections with other people. And it’s about meaning. It’s about seeing something in life that gives you a sense that your life matters, and that the people around you matter, and the way you navigate this world matters. So, it’s slightly different.

Now, I want to be very clear. I’m not arguing against success, because I think success is very helpful and very useful. And, by the way, I want success just as much as the next guy. What I’m suggesting here is that, maybe there’s a bit more of a balance that we can have between what success is and what thriving is. And that, in that balance, in that nuance, there may be a lot of well-being for all of us.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, that sounds pleasant. Could you perhaps share some studies, research, or case studies associated with folks who made the leap from frequently being in a survival mode to doing the thrive thing regularly?

Jon Rosemberg
So, last year, there was a study published at Oxford that studied, I think it was 1,200 companies. And what they wanted to understand was the correlation between the well-being of employees, i.e., thriving, and stock market performance, the value of the company. And what they discovered is that the top 100 companies that had the highest levels of well-being outperformed the S&P 500 by 11% on average.

That’s a really compelling business case for anybody to say, “My business is going to outperform the S&P because, partly, it’s one of the variables,” and I’m implying causality now. This is just a correlational study, but I think it’s still a very compelling data point.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly, I could see you might argue it both ways, “Well, yeah, well, it’s easy for them because they have so much ample cash flow and appreciation, etc. They can afford to invest in their employees.” But I suppose it is also the case that there are large flourishing companies that are big in revenue and profit, and yet are low on thriving, and could see all the more goodness with more thriving. Can you paint a chain for how more thriving means more profit?

Jon Rosemberg
Exactly. Well, what we know is that when we’re thriving, we can lean into our agency. So, this capacity to make intentional choices. And thriving usually means that we’re in this space where we’re calm and we can think more clearly. And that drives innovation. And we know that innovation is a great way to create value.

It also drives better social connection and stronger social connection. And it’s interesting because, Pete, if there was a medicine out there that increased your survival rate by 50%, decreased your risk of cardiovascular disease by 29%, decreased your risk of stroke by 32%, decreased depression and increased your well-being, if there was a drug that did all of those things for you, would you take it?

Pete Mockaitis
Sounds good, sure. It could have side effects, but looking good, yeah.

Jon Rosemberg
No side effects. The drug is social connection. So, when we are thriving, we are more capable of connecting with other folks. And that social connection is what creates great organizations. You know, what I learned, I spent over two and a half decades in the business world, climbing the corporate ladder as fast as I could.

And one of the things that I learned too late in my career, I might say, is that there are two types of value that you create at work. One of them is productive value. So, this is how good you are at your job. Can you create an Excel spreadsheet that beats everybody else? Or, today, can you work with AI better than everybody else? Can you create a project plan? Can you deliver a project on time and on budget? All of these things are productive value.

The other value that sometimes gets really overlooked, especially for folks that are getting into leadership positions, is relational value, is the ability to create those relationships and those connections that allow big groups of people to work together and do really amazing things together.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, that sounds super. Can you share, when it comes to social connection, what’s the state of play with regard to humans, professionals, workers, and social connection?

Jon Rosemberg
Well, Surgeon General for the US, Vivek Murthy, published a report a couple of years ago where he spoke about, or he described the loneliness epidemic. We know that there’s people more lonely today than ever before.

And if you think about this, Pete, today, somebody who’s 18, 20 years old can get a job, and they can rent their apartment. And if they don’t want to, they don’t have to see anybody else for the rest of their lives, right? You could order food in, you could get everything that you need delivered to your doorstep, you get a paycheck working remotely.

So, technology has given us a lot of advantages, but it has also created certain gaps in places where we, otherwise, had to interact with people. So, there is a loneliness epidemic out there. And one of the ideas that I present in the book is this notion that when we’re thriving, it’s easier to connect with others. And when we connect with others, that has a ripple effect.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so the social connection contributes to thriving, and the thriving contributes to social connection.

Jon Rosemberg
You got it. Yes.

Pete Mockaitis
Kind of like a circular, I guess, virtuous cycle up, or a doom cycle down.

Jon Rosemberg
I love that you just use that, Pete, because that’s exactly how I describe it in the book, as a spiral. There’s a spiral from survival mode to thriving. And sometimes we’re up and sometimes we’re down. And I think one point that you made at the beginning of our conversation, which is that, sometimes, external circumstances are outside our control. And that happens often, right?

We get laid off or we get fired from a job or, you know, a disease, we get sick. Like, there are many things that happen. What I’m trying to suggest here is that even in the worst of circumstances, and by the way, one of my teachers, I would call him, is Viktor Frankl, who wrote a great book called Man’s Search for Meaning, and Viktor Frankl was in concentration camps in Nazi Germany.

And it was him who argued in that book that even within all that suffering, he discovered a place where he could choose his attitude. And what he noticed was that the people who survived that horrible situation were those who could find meaning in their suffering and were those who could see a different perspective of what they were experiencing. Not the strongest ones, not the ones who had the most muscle, the ones who were taller or bigger, the ones who had more money. It was the people who found meaning.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, and fun fact, I believe Man’s Search for Meaning is, when I ask about favorite things, comes up the most often as favorite book, favorite quote. So, it’s a powerful book and a beautiful one. And so, in practice, let’s say stuff happens and we’re freaking out, what do we do in the moment?

Jon Rosemberg
So, I went deep into the research and tried to understand, “How do we create more agency? If agency is the capacity to make intentional choices, supported by the belief that those choices matter and have an impact on the world, how do we increase that?”

And as I reviewed the research and I reviewed all the fantastic work that has been done by scientists over the past two and a half decades, because this is a relatively new topic, this topic of thriving, in science, I mean, philosophers have been talking about it for thousands of years. So, there were three things that came up that seemed really, really important. And I summarized them in an acronym, AIR.

And AIR stands for A for awareness, I for inquiry, and R for reframing. And when we are faced with a difficult situation or a difficult emotion or a negative thought, using AIR as a practice, can be a really powerful way to develop the skill that is agency and go a little bit more from survival mode into thriving.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, awareness, inquiry, reframing. Could you share with us, what that can look like in practice?

Jon Rosemberg
Of course. So, my youngest son, who’s nine, went to summer camp earlier this year. But three days before going to summer camp, he broke his arm and he had a cast all the way up to his shoulder. So, while his friends were jumping in the lake, he was playing with a Rubik’s Cube. And I’m going to try and use this Rubik’s Cube to explain a little bit how AIR works.

So, when we’re going through a difficult moment, it feels like the Rubik’s Cube is right next to our face, right next to our eye, and we can only see one of the little squares, right? You’ve probably heard people say, “I feel like I’m seeing red, right?” Like, we’re actually just seeing one color, one square of the Rubik’s Cube.

What awareness does is it allows us to create some distance from the situation. It allows us to actually notice that, “Hmm, okay, what’s happening here is not just red. Red is actually just one square amongst nine other squares. And if I actually start kind of looking at the Rubik’s Cube, I can see that it has six sides and each side has nine squares. So now I have a lot more information.” That’s what awareness does for us.

Then we go into inquiry. And inquiry is actually getting to understand what the situation looks like. And that’s asking a lot of non-judgmental, curious questions about the situation. And that means, basically, it’s like playing around with the Rubik’s Cube, just figuring out the different formulas and the different combinations that you can see in a Rubik’s Cube.

And reframing is when you find a combination that works for you. And that might be solving the Rubik’s Cube or it might be something different, but it’s a combination that works for you in the moment. So that’s a short, brief description of how AIR works.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, so understood, with the Rubik’s Cube analogy, you can visualize that and notice that you could be way zoomed in and that’s not so helpful. Could you walk us through that as applied to a situation?

Jon Rosemberg
So, after two and a half decades in the corporate world, I decided to go into a startup, and we did great. We raised a Series B of $150 million. The company was growing at double digits every month. We were, as the kids would say, crushing it. And as we raised this money, I flew to LA to buy some new facilities because we were expanding the business to LA.

And when I flew back, I got hit with COVID and I was on a call with the technical team about some sort of technical stuff, and the call got really heated up and I was deep, deep into survival mode.

Pete Mockaitis
Heated up, tell me more, Jon. Were they pointing the finger at you?

Jon Rosemberg
They were pointing the finger, or at least that’s how I interpreted it in the moment. That was the interpretation. I was so close to the situation, I was seeing red. So, what I did is I shut off my laptop and turned off my phone. And in that moment, I was able to gain some awareness. I got some distance from the situation and I said, “Goodness gracious, am I angry right now?” I noticed the heat rising in my body, my chest got tight, my breathing got shallow, my shoulders got really tense.

So, I heard my kids playing in the basement, and I went downstairs to the basement and they were sitting on the floor playing with Legos. So, I sat on the floor with them and I started playing with them for about an hour. And as I was doing that, I started, well, number one, I was present with them. I was able to actually sit with them and share with them, which is something that I hadn’t done for months.

So, that experience, to me, it allowed me to find a little bit of thriving in that deep, deep state of survival mode. After that, I went and sat on my chair and I started reflecting in one of my favorite chairs, and I started reflecting on the situation. And the reframing for me was, in that moment, it was, I had two kids because I wanted to be a dad, and I’m not actually being a dad. I’m present, like they see me at breakfast, they see me at dinner, but I’m not physically present, but I’m not present with them. And that was really, really challenging.

So, Adriana walked in, my wife, and she said, “So, are you okay?” And I said, “I’m done, I think I’m done.” And within two weeks, I decided to unwind myself from that job and to walk away. So, my reframe in that moment was seeing the other option that I hadn’t seen before. Because for the longest time as I was working, I said, “If I quit this job, I’ll be living under a bridge in two weeks.” And that felt very real to me.

In that moment, I realized, “Well, what’s the point of all of this that I’m doing if I cannot be present for the people that I love and that I want to be with?”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, the awareness of, “Hey, I’m getting really angry. It might be wise to go do something else.” And then you’re inquiring, asking those questions and then reframing the prior belief that you had, and sort of seeing new things come from it. Understood.

What’s interesting with regard to the inquiry, can you share a few more of those specific questions? Like, “What’s the point of this?” What are some more questions you were inquiring there?

Jon Rosemberg
Yeah, so, “What are my options right now? What’s important to me? What are my values? What is it that I want to do with my life? What does this look like for me if I continue down this path for the next two years, three years, five years? How is this impacting my health? How is this impacting my relationships? How is this impacting my sleep?”

So, all of these questions, asked in a non-judgmental way, and what I mean by that is that we have to actually be curious about it. Because if I’m asking a question and I already have the answer, it’s not really a question, is it? So, we want to challenge ourselves to do this.

Now in that moment, it was a process that I did internally as a result of burnout and a very difficult experience. But in day-to-day life, we can do this in partnership with other people, with our friends, with a coach, with whatever it is that people that are around us, some people do journaling. This exploration can be a really powerful way to get to know ourselves better and then to make decisions that are more agentic.

Pete Mockaitis
And I like what you had to say about the genuine curiosity because I think it’s quite possible in that state, some of your questions can sound like, “What’s their problem? Why do I always have to deal with this bull crap? Why is this happening to me?” etc. Like, any number of questions that are not guided by a wholesome curiosity, but rather just stoke the rage beast.

Jon Rosemberg
You got it. And often, we tend to focus on things that are outside our locus of control. Instead of focusing on what we can change on what’s under our capacity to influence, we focus on what everybody else is doing. And, unfortunately, it’s really hard to change other people. Trust me, I’ve tried for many years and it’s very difficult to change other people. But we do have the prerogative to change ourselves and to grow in the way that feels most authentic to us.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, could you give us another example of awareness, inquiry, and reframing in action that don’t result in a full exit, but rather being able to better deal with a current situation?

Jon Rosemberg
Yeah, what I love most about that question, Pete, is that you are hitting the nail on the head on the spectrum of agency, right? So, very low agency would be, “I have no choice here.” And if there is a moment in your life where you say, “I have no choice here,” number one, you are likely in survival mode. And, number two, there’s an open door there to practice AIR, to practice awareness, inquiry, and reframing.

Then if we go a little bit higher on the spectrum of agency, you could say, “Well, I can stay or I can leave, right? So, I only have two choices here. I either have to walk away or I can stay in my job.” If you had really high agency, once we’ve really developed agency, then you start seeing, instead of black and white, you start seeing a rainbow of options and opportunities in front of you.

So, you could say, “Well, I could stay and modify my job, change my hours, go to part-time, change my boss, move to a different division, whatever that looks like. Or, I could leave and go to another job or rest or, you know, paint for, I don’t know, whatever it is.”

And I understand that for a lot of people, there’s actually not a choice available to them, right? Because if you have to pay the rent and you are living paycheck to paycheck, this doesn’t necessarily happen. And this is why the developing agency in the moment is so important.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes. Whenever I hear the phrase, “I have to,” or, “I can’t,” I get skeptical. And so, you know, and maybe I am on the autistic spectrum and I take things super literally at times. But I think, “Is that really true?” And I’m thinking about the book, Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg.

Jon Rosemberg
Marshall Rosenberg. Yes.

Pete Mockaitis
And he really brings up some points, like even if you think you’re stuck, it’s kind of wild what you can do. And he gives an example of, he thought, “Well, I have to keep…” He said, “I don’t like paying taxes because they’re supporting…” at the time, I think, the Vietnam War. And he was against the war. And he said, “Well, I guess I have to pay taxes because, you know, I mean, that’s the law and I’m a citizen.”

And he said, “Well, you know what? I suppose if I didn’t have income, I wouldn’t have to pay taxes.” And so, he made some dramatic changes. And then he also challenges teachers who say, “Well, I have to do all this frequent testing of the students because it’s required by the district, and that’s just a part of my job.” And he’s like, “Well, you also have the option of changing your job.”

So, it’s a more accurate framing of the situation is, “I need to do this testing for my students frequently if I want to retain my job and my income here. So that is my choice. Do I choose to play the game and maintain my job and my income here? Or do I choose something else? Well, I guess I am going to keep my job here.” But even working through that process contributes to more of the thriving feelings.

Jon Rosemberg
Absolutely. And I love so much that you brought up Marshall Rosenberg, because I think this is exactly what he’s arguing for in these examples, is this idea of reframing, changing the framing of the situation. And we get to do that. And one of the important concepts here is that we tend to buy into these absolute truths, right, that something has to be true.

And one of the interesting things in science that I don’t think has become as widely popular as it should be, is that science thrives on dissent. It thrives on challenging. If you’re a scientist that agrees with all of his, hers, their peers, you are highly unlikely to succeed. The whole point is that we want this type of creative dissent.

So, when somebody presents you with a premise, is there an opportunity to do a lot of inquiry and challenge that premise and figure out if it’s really true? So, one good example that has worked really well is a lot of people say, “Well, but two plus two is four.” Well, but two plus two is not always four, right? There’s an axiom that tells us that the first number is zero, and then you add one and it’s one and then two and then three and then four. That’s the axiom that we, a lot of us do math with or arithmetic.

But if you’re looking at a clock, right, after 23:00, so if you say 23 plus two, it’s not 25, it’s one, right? So, it’s a different axiom that we’re using. So, what I’m trying to present here is that we get to challenge the things that we believe to be true. And this is a uniquely human capacity and it’s incredibly powerful.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. And then, you get me thinking in terms of, well, if our objective is to get to four, there’s many ways that we might achieve the getting to four. And perhaps addition is not even the operation that we’re after in a given situation.

Jon Rosemberg
You got it. So, we can come at things from different angles once we have awareness. Once we move that Rubik’s Cube a little bit away from our face, we can actually start exploring all of the angles. And it’s a practice, right? It sounds easy when I say awareness, inquiry, and reframing, right? It sounds so simple. But many of us spend years, if not decades, trying to bring more awareness to our lives.

So, mindfulness is something that can work to bring more awareness, and a mindfulness practice, being able to be present in the moment. Those are some of the things that we can do in order to hone our skill of awareness. And then inquiry, learning to ask good questions, that’s a difficult skill. That requires a lot of practice, right? And then reframing is actually seeing different angles. And all of those things require, they’re like a muscle, right? And if we go to the gym to get buff, we can practice this to gain more agency.

Pete Mockaitis
And one place you advocate practicing this is by examining our beliefs and seeing if there’s some limiting beliefs. Can you expand on this?

Jon Rosemberg
Yeah, so beliefs are like lenses that we have over our eyes, and they kind of filter the world for us, right? There’s lots of evidence to suggest that beliefs are so powerful that they can even change the way in which we react to pain.

For example, the placebo effect, and this has been documented many, many times that when you’re in pain, you can take a placebo, and they tell you that it’s pain medication and your pain actually decreases. So, our beliefs are very, very powerful filters with which we navigate the world.

One of the things in the work that I do coaching clients is trying to name the belief, right? So, in my case, I said, “I believe that if I walk away from this job, I’m going to be living under a bridge in less than two weeks and I’m not going to be able to pay my mortgage, etc.” I had to challenge that belief and say, “Well, is that actually true? Or, is there a different way to look at this belief?”

And I said, “Well, I have friends, I have a family, I have a social support network, I know people will help me out if I can’t have income, I have some money in the bank, or I can move to a smaller place.” So, there are all of these things. The moment you take that belief and you challenge the belief, then you can step into a world of options. Then you step into that rainbow of options as opposed to seeing the world in just white, just black, or black and white only.

Pete Mockaitis
I like that a lot. Can you give us an example of some other limiting beliefs that you’ve seen folks successfully challenge and have great results on the other side?

Jon Rosemberg
I think the toughest belief to challenge, and I struggle with this every day, and I think it’s one of the big reasons why I wrote the book, and it’s a true line in the book, is the belief that, “I am not good enough.” The flip side of that is the belief that I have to prove myself.

Because we live in this system where productivity defines value, productivity equals value, I’ve asked dozens of clients the question, “What would your value be if suddenly you could not produce anymore?” And people are stumped. It’s really hard to respond to that question, “What happens if I can’t produce?” “Well, I could still talk my way through something, or whatever it is,” but you cannot produce.

So, challenging the belief that our worth is tied to our productivity is very liberating work, and it’s very challenging work, because this is a deeply ingrained belief.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so walk us through the process of that challenging and what might come out the other side.

Jon Rosemberg
I think it’s sitting with it. The first thing that we do is creating awareness, naming it, “Is this a belief that you’re buying into? Do you buy into the belief that if you don’t produce, you’re not good enough?” Pause for a second and just notice, “Is this something that sounds true to you? If it does, then get really curious about it.”

So, “Where does this belief come from? Whose voice do I hear in my head when I say that I believe this? What has this belief, how has it served me in my life? What has it done for me?” In my case, that belief allowed me to climb the corporate ladder ruthlessly for decades, right? So, it served me really well in many, many ways.

And, eventually, I came to the reframing of saying, “There’s fundamental value in just existing in just being a human. We are a wonder of nature.” Think about it. You know, earth has been around for what? Four billion years? And we’re here, you and I, Pete, having this conversation. That in itself, it’s a miracle. We’re sitting in this, you know, one galaxy out of, I think, there’s like two trillion of them in the universe, and this universe continues to expand. So, it’s really magical the fact that we exist.

So, is that fundamental value? And what challenging that belief did for me was allow me to give myself the space, for example, to end up thinking about the ideas that, eventually, I decided that I wanted to put into a book. So, I started to question. It’s existentialism. You start questioning why we’re here and what does that mean?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, it is a powerful belief to look at directly, and we covered this on episode 500 with Victor Cheng, talking about Building Unshakable Confidence, and having the belief that I am valuable or worthwhile simply because I exist. And you could see that in wisdom traditions, or religion, Christianity being made in the image and likeness of God, or the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

It’s interesting because it’s an idea that I purport to believe, and I like to believe it on my best days, and yet I do feel some discomfort. If I imagine a universe in which I am, say, in a vegetative state at a hospital, I am existing, but I am not doing or “adding value,” I sometimes think, “Well, yes, I value just because I’m existent, I am a human being.”

And other times it doesn’t feel that way, that the belief doesn’t feel true. So, yeah, no pressure, Jon, but how do we deal with that one?

Jon Rosemberg
I don’t know. I don’t know. This is a profound existential question that you’re asking, Pete. And I think the exercise of just questioning it is a pathway to thriving. Just being able, for a moment, to hold that notion that you have fundamental value just by existing, and just believing that 0.00001% in your life, I think that in itself, it’s a gift.

Listen, Pete, I struggle with it every day. You know, I’ve been doing this work, I went back to school and learned psychology so I could challenge that belief. I’ve read lots of papers and lots of books trying to challenge this belief, and I don’t have a clear answer. I don’t think there’s a recipe.

I actually, as a matter of fact, what I would suggest, and this is one of the things that I did in the book, and it was hard for me to find a publisher because a lot of the publishers kept telling me, “Jon, you have to be more prescriptive. People want to know exactly what they need to do.”

And I kept saying, “Well, I’m writing about agency. If I’m telling people that the whole point is that you learn what’s right for you and that you have to develop or you can develop, you don’t have to do anything, but you can develop this muscle that gives you access to thriving in your life, how am I going to sit there and tell you exactly how you do it?” I don’t have a recipe for it. I think we each have to find our own way through.

Pete Mockaitis
And it’s funny, where my brain is going is thinking that I have value just by existing even in that, you know, comatose state, because by providing an opportunity for others to be of service and reflect upon their gifts, their blessings, their capabilities that is of value and beneficial. And yet, I could see I’m already drifting into territories, like, “Well, then that’s not intrinsic.” It’s like, “It’s what I’m doing for other people by doing nothing.”

Jon Rosemberg
Exactly. Yeah, it’s a tough idea to grasp, especially because the system where we are living is built on this belief of productivity equals value, right? So, it’s really hard to think outside of that unless, you know, maybe we go to meditate in some mountain for 20 years, maybe we can access that. That’s not my choice.

Agentically speaking, that’s not something that I want to do, and I do want to be able to sit there sometimes with the discomfort of feeling like I’m not good enough or that I have to prove myself. And as I’m sitting with that discomfort, having a small window where I can challenge it, and I can say, “Well, maybe I do have fundamental value. Maybe I do have intrinsic value just for existing.” And that in itself can be quite comforting. At least it has been for me. And also, anxiety-inducing.

Pete Mockaitis
One perspective I like to bring to this is, as I think about my children when I watch them sleep, they’re beautiful, adorable, I love them, and they are doing nothing there, but I am not disappointed with them. I don’t want or demand or need them to be doing anything. Them just existing in that space, I find valuable and beautiful and excellent and full of love, with them doing nothing at all. They are just existing.

Jon Rosemberg
What a beautiful and powerful reflection, Pete. And I think that the emotion and the moment in which we experience that type of connection that you’re describing that you have with your kids, that’s thriving.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, cool, yeah. So, more of that would be great.

Jon Rosemberg
Oh, goodness. It’s not easy, right? It requires effort because we are designed for survival. Our bodies and our brains are designed for survival, right? There’s this evolutionary mismatch that has occurred where technology has taken us to this point where we have, listen, by all measures, we are living in the golden age of humanity.

And I know we see different things on social media. We see different things in the news. But if you look at access to water, access to food, access to education, access to healthcare. Longevity, Pete, 100 years ago, you and I would be buried six feet underground, because the life expectancy, well, I’m not sure how old you are, but life expectancy was 32. Today, it’s more than double that, right?

So, we are in this golden age of humanity. And for some reason, anxiety and depression seem to be one of those persistent things that we don’t understand what is happening. And one of the explanations that seems to make a lot of sense is that our brains and our bodies have not evolved to keep up with the world that we’re living in today.

So, what I’m suggesting is that agency may be one of the antidotes to this experience that we’re having as humans living in this age.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well, that’s big stuff, and you can sit with it for a while. And I think the word value is key there. And so, in terms of economic value, I say it may be true, you know, that if we’re not doing anything, we are not producing, you know, money, dollars, economic value, but in a deeper sense, our human value remains.

Jon Rosemberg
Exactly. And, you know, why do we see so many people who have supposedly made it, billionaires, trillionaires now, we’re going to start having trillionaires soon, why do we see so many people who have access, economically speaking, to all of the resources? I mean, the wealth distribution gap has never been larger in humanity either. So, why do we see people who have all of this and still struggle to thrive?

And we see it in the way they communicate. We see it in the way in which they relate to the world. This is a challenging thing to experience. And so, that’s why I want to make sure that we separate the ideas of success and thriving. And I’m sure there’s a Venn diagram where the two overlap, and that’s a happy middle. And that’s what I’m arguing for. For trying to find more moments of thriving, even if it’s at the cost of letting go some of the success, which is the hardest thing to do.

Pete Mockaitis
I like that Venn diagram approach because it also gets you thinking it’s entirely possible to thrive without being successful.

Jon Rosemberg
Yes. Yes. A resounding yes.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool. Well, Jon, we’ve gone into all kinds of profound places. Can you tell me, before I hear about your favorite things, a few of your top tips, your do’s and don’ts for getting more thriving going?

Jon Rosemberg
I would say the first thing is find time for reflection or for a practice that works for you, whatever that is. I tried to meditate for two years. I have a meditation pillow right here in my office, and I sat in that pillow. For two years, I sat on that pillow trying to meditate, and I hated it. My goodness, could I not do it. I just couldn’t do it.

I decided, one day somebody suggested a walking meditation. So, I put on my headphones and I went for a walk and I was like, “Oh, I can do this. This suddenly changed my life.” So, today, I go for even two hour-long walking meditations that I can do with or without headphones, guided or unguided. I had to find the activity that was the right fit for me.

So, a do is, find activities, test many different things, call them little experiments, or however you want to name them, test many different things until you find the one that works for you because there are lot of prescriptions out there that will work for many people. Listen, even cognitive behavior therapy, which is the gold standard for therapy in that world, only benefits about 40%, in the best case, 80% of people. So, it doesn’t mean that it’s for everybody. So, find whatever works for you. That would be the do.

The don’t is just waiting for something magical to happen. We have to use our agency, our capacity as humans to make change happen. It has to come from inside, right? Nobody can make change happen for you. It’s something that we all have to own and take it upon ourselves. And it’s hard and it’s painful. But in my experience, a lot of times the discomfort of staying the same, it’s much worse than the discomfort of changing.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, now could you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Jon Rosemberg
One of my favorite quotes is from William James, one of the fathers of psychology, and I actually have it here on my wall, and it’s, “My experience is what I agree to attend to.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, you can work on that for a while.

Jon Rosemberg
Yes, attention is a powerful resource and it’s non-renewable for humans. Once we’ve given it, it’s gone. And we have so many things fighting for our attention today. If we can be more agentic as to where we place our attention, that can be a life-changing practice.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah, that’s powerful. What I agree to attend to is, like, we need not attend to necessarily anything just because, “It’s all over Twitter,” “The headlines are saying this,” “My feed, all my recommended YouTube videos.” It’s like, “Yeah, and we always have that choice.” I can choose to attend to that. I can agree or I can disagree to attend to a matter, and we’ve always got the power.

Jon Rosemberg
So, let’s look at the numbers on this just very quickly. Every second, the sensory input that we get, it’s between 10 and 100 million bits of information. Every second. Only about 10 to 50 filter into our conscious awareness. And of those 10 to 50 that filter into our conscious awareness, usually there is a five to one negativity ratio. I mean, that’s the negativity bias that we look for.

You post something on Instagram and you get 20 likes and 300 comments saying, “You’re amazing.” But there’s one comment that’s negative and we will focus on the negative comment, right? That’s the negativity bias at play.

Imagine if we can actually learn how to better manage what we agree to attend to. It’s life-changing because you have 100 million choices, and you only get to do 10 to 50. So that’s a really powerful practice.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite book?

Jon Rosemberg
It’s a book about therapy, actually. Her name is Marsha Linehan, and she created something called dialectical behavior therapy, and she wrote her autobiography. And one of the powerful ideas in that book that really resonated with me is the idea of dialectics, that two things that seem opposing can be true at the same time. And I think that’s a really powerful way to look at the world and to understand complexity.

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

Jon Rosemberg
You can go to my LinkedIn. I’m very active on LinkedIn, Jon Rosemberg. You can go to my website, JonRosemberg.com, and, yeah, that’s the best way to reach me.

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

Jon Rosemberg
Yes, take the time to hone in the skill of agency. However, it works for you, just take the time to understand it and to play around with it. It can be life-changing.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Jon, thank you.

Jon Rosemberg
Thank you, Pete. I appreciate it.

Pete Mockaitis
Shirzad, welcome!

Shirzad Chamine
Pleasure to be here. I’ve been looking forward to this.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to be talking about your body of work with regard to positive intelligence. Can you tell us what do you mean by that? And what’s a particularly fascinating discovery you’ve made about us humans as you’ve delved into this research?

Shirzad Chamine
Yeah, what we mean by that is that your mind is very often sabotaging you. So, you spend a lot of your time in self-sabotage mode without realizing it. So positive intelligence is about how much your mind is serving you as opposed to sabotaging you. The higher your positive intelligence, the more you’re spending your time in the positive part of the brain, which serves you, as opposed to the negative part of the brain where you’re sabotaging yourself.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Now that’s an interesting distinction right off the get-go. Positive means serving you, negative means sabotaging, as opposed to positive means pleasant and enjoyable. Is that fair to say, we could be served by something that’s painful and unpleasant?

Shirzad Chamine
Yeah, definitely, serving you goes beyond just pleasant. Stanford kids I’ve lectured on positive intelligence, they call this work Jedi mind training. So, the reason they call it that is because they basically say what this work is about is the battle inside your mind between your inner Darth Vader versus inner Jedi. And so, we have both of those voices in our head. The question is, “How strong is one or the other?”

And we can talk about all the emotional experiences you would have if you’re in your inner Jedi mode, which are all positive experiences. Now the emotions can be empathy, curiosity, joy of creativity, being connected to meaning and purpose, being in calm, clear-headed, laser-focused, fearless action. All of those are modes of the sage where your mind is serving you.

As opposed to when you’re in inner Darth Vader, which we call the saboteur, part of your brain when you’re sabotaging yourself, you’re going to be experiencing negative emotions like stress, anxiety, frustration, anger, shame, guilt, disappointment, self-doubt, and all of those things. Your mind is not serving you.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, I mean, it sounds delightful to have some Jedi mind powers and to be less of a Darth Vader inside. Could you maybe share with us a story of someone who made a transformation and sort of what’s at stake and what could be possible for us if we get some great control over our mind and our inner saboteurs?

Shirzad Chamine
Well, I can tell you my own personal story, one of the most transformational days of my life. I actually started the software company that was venture-backed and I had attracted some of the luminaries of Silicon Valley to be my investors, board members.

Our first client was Hewlett-Packard. Everything was positive. Everything was awesome. I was a visionary leader starting a company. And then two years into this, the product was late, the customer was unhappy, a lot of our plans were not working, and so I was under a lot of stress.

And one day during lunch, I went out there and got my lunch, came back to our offices, went upstairs and where our offices was, and my heart sank because what I saw was the chairman of my board was sitting in the boardroom along with my president and my top VPs.

Basically, this was a palace coup. My president and top VCs had gone to the board and said, “We cannot work for Shirzad anymore. Under stress, he has become such a controlling, micromanaging, judging leader. We can’t stand working for him anymore. It’s either him or us. And he’s killing his own vision.”

So that was the most transformational day of my life, professional day of my life, and also the most painful because I had to figure out, “So, what’s happening here? Who am I? Am I that positive visionary leader that attracted all these people and investors to me to start the company? Or am I this negative micromanaging, controlling, judging leader that nobody wants to work for?”

And it just turns out, and it started my whole body of research here, and it turns out that I’m both of those. I have the Darth Vader inside, I have the inner Jedi inside, and the question is, “What conditions bring out my inner Jedi? What conditions bring out my Darth Vader? And how do I, instead of just letting it happen, how do I take command of that and make sure that my inner Jedi is running the show rather than the Darth Vader?”

Pete Mockaitis
Wow, that is high stakes, and thank you for sharing that. And I think you’ve already said it in terms of a lot of us, that is our experience in terms of the Darth Vader show up in a high-stress situation, either we’re just hungry and sleep-deprived, just very kind of biological, or the environment is full of stresses, expectations, pressure, too much stuff, and failures, disappointments, things just rock in our world. And so, in the midst of that, yes, indeed, what is to be done?

Shirzad Chamine
Yeah, so what we discovered, I mean, we have done a ton of research. My book is very research-based because I have more of a science, engineering background. And we did factor analysis with about 500,000 people from across 100 different countries. And we asked the question, “At the root of it all, what sabotages or what optimizes our well-being or performance?”

And from that research, we discovered there are 10 ways we self-sabotage. It seems like there are a hundred ways or a thousand ways we self-sabotage and screw ourselves up, but actually there are only 10 ways. And these are the Darth Vader’s. We call them the saboteurs, the ones that sabotage you. And they have names like the judge, the controller, the stickler, the victim, the avoider, the restless, the pleaser, and so on.

And most people have a few. Most people don’t have to worry about all 10, but so we do a saboteur assessment that, in five minutes, shows you how you self-sabotage. And these saboteurs go on hyper mode under stress. And so, stress brings, really fuels the saboteurs. So, if you have a controller, you become more controlling under stress.

If you have the avoider, you become more avoiding under stress and so on. And as you do that, these saboteurs actually generate more stress. So, they get us into a vicious cycle of deepening saboteur activation. And they have us generate some results, but we pay a huge price in negativity and loss of mental and emotional energy.

And, on the other hand, on the positive side, the Jedi side, we show you that you actually, your inner Jedi lives in an entirely different region of your brain. And we can help you energize that part of your brain, so instead of feeling stressed, you’re feeling empathy and curiosity and caring and love and creativity and all those wonderful things, you’d perform better and you feel better at the same time.

We can help you actually energize that part of your brain, build up your inner Jedi and quiet the saboteur region of the brain. It’s literally about brain rewiring.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Well, so you’ve got 10 flavors of saboteur, and I did take that, your fun little assessment and it was quick. Avoider was my top. But I guess I’m curious to know is, we talk about brain regions, first of all, let’s just hear what are the names of the brain regions associated with sabotage and with the good part?

Shirzad Chamine
Yeah, there are lot of different components that go into the region of the brain that I call the saboteur brain. In my book, there’s an entire chapter on it. There’s a neuroscience, 20-page neuroscience white paper on our website on it. So, there’s not a quick answer to it. But what I can say is that the saboteur mind is generally a little bit more left-brained, where also your thinking mind lives, as opposed to the inner Jedi, the sage mind, which we call the sage, that’s a little bit more right brain.

And so, we have ways, we have 10-second techniques where we quiet the saboteur region and where a lot of your fear, stress originates, and energize the sage brain region. And we can practice some of those together.

Pete Mockaitis
Interesting. So left brain, right brain. Sabotage is more right brain. And so, is that right? Is that correct?

Shirzad Chamine
The saboteurs are a little more left-brain, so they coexist with the part of the brain that the rational mind lives, which is one of the interesting reasons why, when you’re feeling stressed, you can’t think your way out of stress. The harder you think, the more you kind of dig a hole for yourself. So, the way out of a lot of this is not by thinking harder, but actually quieting the hard-thinking mind because your wisdom lives in a different part of your brain.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, rational left brain. More, I guess, creative stuff, right brain. So, I guess maybe if I were to conjure up some images here, the saboteur is more like hard-charging executive, and the Jedi is more like artist, dancer, creator.

Shirzad Chamine
No, actually, so the saboteurs are quite different in their character. So, the controller is hard-charging, but the avoiders almost the exact opposite of the hard-charging controller. The pleaser is very different. So, there are 10 ways of self-sabotage. They have very, very different flavors to them.

And on the positive side, what our factor analysis research showed is that there are five Jedi superpowers, five-stage superpowers at the root of it all. The five core superpowers are: empathize, which is the ability to really feel empathy, love, and compassion for yourself and others; explore, which is about being in beginner’s mind, to truly explore what’s really going on with things, deep curiosity, beginner’s mind curiosity.

Innovate, which is the ability to really tap into that obvious out-of-box innovative thinking. Navigate, which is being connected to a deeper sense of meaning and purpose, having an inner compass of what truly brings meaning and purpose to your life. And activate, which is calm, clear-headed, fearless action. And as you can see, these are very different flavors of the sage.

And what we show you is that, depending on the challenge in front of you, you may need empathy or you may need curiosity, or the explore power, or you may need activate – calm, clear-headed, laser-focused action. If the house is on fire, you don’t want to empathize with anybody. You just want to run and take action.

Pete Mockaitis
“That sounds really hard. Your house is burning down right now. That’s a tough spot.” Okay. Well, so you say 10 seconds, that’s pretty cool. So, you’re saying that there are 10-second techniques we can use to tap into each of these five sage modes.

Shirzad Chamine
Yes, we can try one right now. Let’s practice this together. Hopefully, everybody in our audience is going to do that. So please take two fingertips and gently rub two fingertips against each other with so much attention that you can feel the fingertip ridges on both fingers. So gently rub two fingertips against each other with such attention that you can feel the fingertip ridges on both fingers.

Now, this was about a 10-second, what we call a PQ rep. And each of these reps, if you had your head under a functional MRI machine, you would have noticed that what we just did ever so slightly quieted the saboteur region of your brain where all your stress and negativity lives and all your saboteurs live, and ever so slightly energized the inner Jedi, the sage part of your brain, but all of these, where you have deeper access to all of these five sage powers that I just told you about.

And so, one 10-second thing doesn’t change your life, but what if you did a lot of it? And what Harvard-affiliated neuroscientists have shown is that, with our body of practice that we show people, within eight weeks of practice, you will have rewired your brain so much that, in MRI imaging, you can see decreased gray matter in the saboteur region of your brain, increased gray matter in the sage region of the brain.

So, you literally are rewiring your brain so you have stronger Jedi and weaker inner Darth Vader’s, weaker saboteurs.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that sounds delightful. And you’re reminding me of some of the studies on mindfulness meditation, I think, share similar-ish kinds of things in terms of there’s a rewiring of the brain and different regions look different. But I think a lot of people would have a much harder time doing the quiet breath meditation than they would feeling the ridges on their fingertips. So, I like having another tool in the tool belt here.

Shirzad Chamine
It’s exactly right. We even had a CFO of a company, a pretty well-known company, he actually taught, he’s a lifelong meditator, he used to teach meditation every weekend in his city and as a hobby.

And as he went through our training, he ended up saying it was life-changing and one of the reasons was, he said, “I’d learned to energize the positive part of my brain when I was meditating with closed eyes and mantra and music in my meditation room, all that stuff. But when I came to work, work was work. Work was stressful. I couldn’t close my eyes. I couldn’t do any of that stuff. So, I just didn’t know how to shift my brain activation where it counted the most, which is in the middle of meeting the challenges of my work.”

And what we have taught people is these 10-second exercises, and I just showed you one, there are many others. I can’t tell you how many CEOs, and I’ve been a CEO coach for many years, how many CEOs are sitting in boardrooms around the world and under the table, they’re gently rubbing their two fingertips against each other to make sure they keep cool and do well on a board meeting so they are very effective.

A vast majority of people who start meditation and mindfulness, a vast majority of them quit. They just don’t know how to sustain it. Nobody who has ever learned these 10-second techniques has told us they can’t do it. They continue doing it because it’s so easy.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, Shirzad, your fingerprints on the world, your legacy, that’s lovely. Well, lay some more of these on us, these 10-second techniques. I mean, I’m loving it. It’s quick, it’s effective. I can even feel it in myself in terms of, you know, we’re chatting, but there’s a little piece of my brain, which is like, “Oh, shucks, this is getting to the end of the day and there’s still a lot of stuff I got to get done.” You know, just a little bit of that, a little bit of that, you know, stress energy hanging out.

And just doing the fingertip stuff, there’s less of that. It’s like, “Oh, well, I will think about those matters later when I’m done speaking with Shirzad.” So that’s awesome. Let’s hear some more.

Shirzad Chamine
Okay. So, you have 10 beautiful toes, and try to find as many of your toes as you can. You may need to wiggle your toes a little to try to find as many of your toes as you can. So become really aware of your toes. Wiggle them if you need to. Try to find and feel as many of them as you can. You may not find and feel all of them, but as many of them as you can would be fine.

Pete Mockaitis
You know, it’s so weird is that some toes really are much easier to find or have awareness of than others.

Shirzad Chamine
I know exactly, right? Some of them hide well.

Pete Mockaitis
Like the big toes are easy-peasy, but those middle guys have some trickiness.

Shirzad Chamine
Exactly. Some hide well. But one thing you can do, so you have been listening to our voices right now, so our listeners have been listening to our voices, and now if you become aware of any ambient sounds in the room. So, you’ve been in whatever environment you’ve been in, but listening to our voices.

Now become really aware of all the other sounds that you can hear. So become aware of all the other sounds that you can hear while you’re also, of course, listening to us. And you’ll notice there are some sounds you have not been hearing, even though they have been all around you.

And now this becomes intentional attention. And, once again, it’s energizing the positive region of your brain and quieting the saboteur region of your brain.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, I like that a lot in terms of you’ve given me three exercises, and intentional attention does, indeed, seem to be the thematic link across all three of them, and I guess it’s making sense. As opposed to our inner mental thought spiral of, “Oh, my gosh, what am I going to do about the situation? And this person could be really upset with me for these reasons.”

Shirzad Chamine
Exactly right.

Pete Mockaitis
So, we turn the volume down on all of that and turn the volume up on finger ridges or toes or whatnot.

Shirzad Chamine
Exactly right. And what you’re doing in all three of them, the reason we don’t use meditation mindfulness language is because who knows what meditation mindfulness is. So, the way we talk about this is for 10 seconds, you just took command of your mind. This is what we are building. This is what we are practicing.

Your mind is a dangerous and crazy place and it’s producing between 10,000 to 60,000 thoughts a day. Depending on which researcher you follow. That’s a lot of craziness because, I mean, think about how many of those thoughts are actually useful. A lot of them are a waste of energy and some of them are quite harmful.

So, the main thing we are doing here is saying, “Your mind is a crazy dangerous place, lots of stuff is happening there that are automatic and not really serving you. And it’s a very critical thing for you to learn how to command your own mind.”

So, when you command your mind to notice your fingertip ridges for 10 seconds, instead of thinking about yesterday and tomorrow, all the stuff that right now is not helping you, you’re becoming a commander of your mind and a commander of your life. And it is a literal muscle. It starts with the prefrontal cortex in the brain and then some other regions of the brain.

You’re actually energizing a part of brain and quieting others. You’re becoming commander of your mind and rewiring your brain to learn to be more and more in command in the future.

Pete Mockaitis
I love it. Let’s hear some more 10-second exercises.

Shirzad Chamine
This one you can do with people, and so I use this all the time in interaction with people. Remember, these techniques we want to do in the middle of our life rather than when we are in a quiet meditation room.

So, you and I are talking right now, we are seeing each other on video, and so you and I can do this now. As you are looking at me, you have been looking at me, but now pay attention to something you haven’t really noticed in my face, so some real detail you haven’t noticed. Look at me, really look at me, and bring as much of your attention to looking. And in that you’re going to discover details you hadn’t noticed until now.

And as you do that, you are again energizing the positive region of your brain and getting more connected to me, getting more present and connected with me, which means we can have a better interaction. Now notice you can do this in the middle of having a tough conversation with someone. And you can quiet your angry mind or stressed mind by actually really, really looking at some detail in their face. What did you notice, by the way, Pete, that you hadn’t noticed until you started saying this?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I bet you’ve been through this many times, so you won’t be offended by anything I say. Well, I was noticing your beard has some darker portions and some lighter portions.

Shirzad Chamine
Aha. Okay, good.

Pete Mockaitis
You know, whether, what is it, the “Just For Men” or the “Touch of Gray” commercials. The dark says youth and energy, and the light says wisdom and experience. So, you got that going for you.

Shirzad Chamine
Yeah, not offended at all. I love it. Awesome. So, you observed something that was…and now as you’re doing it, you were able to still hear me, be connected with me, but you were even more connected because more of your attention was present and connected with me. So, anybody can do this at any time.

And for those who are not in front of somebody to look at, what I would say is, right now, just look at something in front of you, whatever is in front of you, and see details in it that you hadn’t noticed until now. So, whether it’s your phone you’re looking at, your computer screen you’re looking at, the wall you’re looking at, whatever, just really look at some detail you hadn’t noticed until now. And notice what it feels like to be truly looking at things rather than kind of looking at things.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, what’s sort of fun about that is the word epiphany seems too strong, but there’s an emotional sense of surprise and novelty of discovery that somehow feels potent.

Shirzad Chamine
Yeah. Pete, I love how much of a lifelong learner you are. I love that you delight in this. So, let’s go further. Take a look at the palm of your hand right now. And so, everybody in the audience, please take a look at the palm of your hand, and look at it as if it’s the first time you’re looking at the palm of your hand.

And begin to notice all of the lines in the palm of your hand, small lines and longer lines, all the ways they cross-connect and cross sections. Notice that the palm of your hand is not of one color, but many, many shades. Just look at all the shades of the lighting and coloration of the palm of your hand. Notice it’s clearly not flat, but it has all sorts of hills and valleys.

And, very slowly, begin to close down the palm of your hand and see how many muscles get involved as you slowly close down the palm of your hand. This is an absolutely exquisite, exquisite, unbelievable, marvelous thing, creation that you’re carrying with you, the palm of your own hand, with endless beauty and fascination, and we just started really looking at it.

And imagine if there is this much more to discover and be fascinated by in the palm of your own hand, what else is there available to you if you really pay attention as you go through your day every day with yourself, with others, with events and life itself?

Pete Mockaitis
You know, what’s really interesting, Shirzad, as I do this is, it is amazing, the nuances of the hand. And then it’s so funny, is that my brain can almost, by autopilot, go into, “It is amazing. That’s probably why the Tesla people have such a hard time making that Tesla robot, that Tesla Optimus robot. I wonder how they’re doing with that? And I mean, some people say they’re just going to take over the world with these Tesla.”

And so, it’s like, I’m just, it’s a totally different vibe, imagining what’s going to happen with the Tesla Optimus robots as compared to looking at your hand. And to the point about 10,000 plus thoughts a day, I think many of those thoughts are just kind of superfluous and they’re a little bit agitated, you know, like, I’m not worried about the robots taking us over, but it’s like ping pong, pinball bouncing all over-y, and that creates a little bit of a – anxiety is a strong word – but less of a calm, settled, centered, present vibe.

Shirzad Chamine
There actually is a bit of anxiety to it because there is no solidity to it, because it’s all over the place, because it is so random and so all over the place. And we kind of, this is the opposite of feeling centered, opposite of grounded, of that stability that comes with a real presence in the thing that you want.

And I noticed, by the way, you had shared with me right before we started, you said one of your saboteurs was the hyperrational. And the hyperrational, and we just experienced your hyperrational, which is the rational mind is a really, really wonderful tool that you have. You have been partially successful because you have a good rational mind, the rational mind is very helpful.

And yet, in the moment where you’re looking at the palm of your hand in search of the beauty and discovery of this magnificent thing in the palm of your hand, the rational mind of, “I wonder what Tesla is doing with this?” is not really helping. It is the wrong time to use the rational mind. It’s just distracting.

And of course, the bigger challenge with the hyperrational is when it comes to relationships and when it comes to conflict, people with a hyperrational too often think, “Okay, we are having a disagreement here. Okay, I understand, here are the three ways we can fix the problem.”

And the hyperrational goes into rational solution creation for issues of conflict with another human being, paying not as much attention to what truly matters in conflict, which is how the other person is feeling, and really having them feel heard and acknowledged and cared for.

And in that, the hyperrational is trying to solve the problem, and the other person feels that they’re not being cared for, heard, and that there is an intellectual arrogance that’s coming across saying, “I have the answers. Let me tell you.” And it’s all unintended, right? We think, “A rational mind is a good thing. Let’s use it,” but it’s not the right tool at all times, and especially not in relationships and conflicts.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, and that is one of the themes inside each of your saboteur profiles is an overused strength.

Shirzad Chamine
Exactly. So the overused strength in the hyperrational is the rational mind being overused and abused. That’s what makes it a saboteur. Another saboteur you shared with me was your pleaser saboteur, which I share with you. I have that, too.

Now the strength that I can guarantee you, if I hear somebody like you has the pleaser saboteur, I can just tell you what I believe is one of your greatest natural strengths. I believe you were born with the predisposition to be very sensitive and kind and giving and empathic. Those are wonderful, wonderful qualities. And those are some of my natural qualities, too.

When taken too far, and overused and abused, they become the pleaser saboteur. When we give and give and give and have a hard time saying no, having a hard time asking, having a hard time setting boundaries, and have a need to be liked as we are giving and to please others, which, of course, again, it costs us and it costs the relationship. So, the overuse of that empathy strength becomes the pleaser. And we can talk about every saboteur in that context.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m curious, with these 10-second exercises and your eight-week program, you mentioned rep, and so I immediately think about strength training, and there’s all kinds of studies about sets and reps and sessions and for maximizing growth or strength or endurance. And so, I’m curious, what’s sort of the volume, if you will, of reps that really makes an impact in reshaping our brains?

Shirzad Chamine
Yeah, what we have learned is that we need about six weeks of practice. In the book, I write about, you know, we have all heard about 21 days in a row of doing a new thing, begins to build enough neural pathways so that the new thing becomes a little bit more automatic, the old thing begins to take a backseat.

But that’s theoretically correct, but in practice what we find is that most people who start getting into a new practice, they have good days and bad days. So, they usually don’t go 21 days in a row doing the new thing and not doing the old thing. It’s a mix, back and forth. And so, what we find is we need you for six weeks of practice.

And during those six weeks, we need you to do about 10 to 15 minutes a day of these exercises of intercepting your saboteur, energizing your sage brain, and choosing more of a sage response. And then the positive ways of your brain have some fighting chance against the negative side because you’re laying neural pathways, building up muscles.

And this brings up the topic of, you know, we call our work mental fitness. And the reason we call it mental fitness is that we really want people to wake up to the fact that a lie you have probably told yourself all your life is that transformation, significant personal transformation, is mostly about insight, “If I do that, read that next book, do that next workshop, listen to that next podcast, and get the aha, I’m done. I’m transformed. I’m much better.”

But the thing is we all have experienced life-changing books, life-changing workshops, life-changing talks, where we say, “Oh, my God, this was life-changing.” Two months later, we are back to the same old behavior. Why? Because our old habits, which are the saboteur habits, they are automatic habits because they have been repeated enough so that they live in the brain in the form of neural pathways that automatically generates those reactions.

You can’t fight the muscle, and those are neural pathways. I call them the muscles and the mental muscles. So, your saboteurs have mental muscles. You don’t fight the muscles of your saboteurs with insight of your sage. You need to fight the muscle of your saboteur with new muscle of your sage. So, you need to build the muscles of your inner sage, inner Jedi.

And what we find is about a minimum of six weeks, about 10 to 15 minutes of practice for you to begin to feel the automaticity of the sage way of doing things against the saboteurs.

Pete Mockaitis
And are these 10 to 15 contiguous minutes or 10 to 15 interspersed throughout the day?

Shirzad Chamine
No, they can be interspersed. We created, when we found out most people can’t do it on their own because there are different things to do, and most people just can’t quite put it all together. So, we have created an app that a lot of organizations like Hewlett-Packard, Siemens, and others are giving to their employees.

The app guides the daily practice. So, we spend a whole week on doing these 10-second exercises, a whole week on focusing, a couple of weeks on focusing on our top saboteurs, and a few weeks of exercising our sage powers, each of the five sage powers, so that it all builds up into the new pathways. So that program ends up lasting six weeks.

Pete Mockaitis
Excellent. Well, tell me, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Shirzad Chamine
Well, I would love everybody to know that there’s a free saboteur assessment, in five minutes, you can get your saboteur assessment results, see how you self-sabotage, and that’s on PositiveIntelligence.com/assessment. And then if you want to go further, there’s a six-week app-guided program that also is on our website, PositiveIntelligence.com.

And the main thing that I’d love for people to just take out of this is that there’s bad news and good news in the work that we do with you as you get into this, and whether you read the book, or do the saboteur assessment, or do our app-guided program.

The bad news is that, as you get into this, you’ll discover that your saboteurs are far more destructive and damaging to you, to your well-being, and to your performance than you had any clue. That was one of my discoveries, devastating impact. That’s what was happening in the day that I, in the palace coup in my boardroom, my saboteurs were basically destroying my career and they almost destroyed my marriage.

Now the good news is much better than, much stronger than the bad news. The good news is, once you tap into your sage powers, your inner Jedi, you realize you are far more magnificent than you had any clue you are. You really are far more magnificent than you had any clue you are. Your saboteurs have talked you into believing a lot lesser of yourself than you truly are.

So, part of our work is to help you remember who you truly are and who you truly are is far more magnificent than you can remember.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Thank you. Well, now could you share a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Shirzad Chamine
“All that is not given is lost.”

Pete Mockaitis
Lovely. And a favorite book?

Shirzad Chamine
I think The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle was one that oriented me towards these ways of thinking early on in my practice.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And is there a sound bite or a nugget you share that seems to get repeated a lot and retweeted, and folks are quoting back to you often?

Shirzad Chamine
“Take your hand off the hot stove.” And what we mean by that is that the pain is helpful for you for a second, a split second, because if you put your hand on the hot stove and you don’t feel pain, you’ll keep your hand there and it’ll burn to the bone. So, therefore, pain is very good for you.

Similarly, negative emotions are really, really, really helpful for you. Anger, shame, guilt, disappointment, stress, frustration, all these are very helpful to you as an alert signal that says, “Hey buddy, pay attention.” But if you continue feeling those feelings after that alert is delivered, you’re keeping your hand on the hot stove and wondering why life is so hard.

So, take your hand off the hot stove, feel those negative emotions, learn from the alert signal they’re delivering, then begin to do these 10-second exercises. Shift your brain activation so you shift to the positive part of the brain to figure out how to deal with the thing that’s causing you stress, upset, frustration, guilt, shame, whatever. Take your hand off the hot stove.

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

Shirzad Chamine
PositiveIntelligence.com and then PositiveIntelligence.com/assessment for the saboteur assessment. And then you can also, in PositiveIntelligence.com, see our app-guided program where you can actually build and rewire your brain.

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

Shirzad Chamine
You spend every day in some habits that you just assume that they are important for you. They are hygiene habits. You brush your teeth. You brush your teeth, hopefully. Take a shower occasionally. Do physical exercise. There are a lot of things we do, we spend time and effort on. And it is astonishing that we do not spend any concentrated daily practice on mental fitness. We do physical fitness, physical hygiene, but we don’t do mental fitness.

And it’s the big missing, it’s the big thing that we are bringing in. So, I’d love for you to just ask yourself, “How willing are you to actually invest in daily practices that build your mental fitness?” Because from our research, what we are showing is that your mental fitness is foundational to you optimizing, both your well-being and performance and healthy relationships.

Are you willing to invest 10-15 minutes a day? Not just for a day, or for a week, for 6 weeks, but for six years for the rest of your life because that’s what it takes to significantly elevate yourself to a whole new level of mastery and activating your actual potential. That’s what I do every day. It’s in my calendar. I am going to do mental fitness as much as I’m also going to do physical fitness or even these other habits.

So, my challenge to the audience is really look at yourself and say, how much do you want significant shift and transformation? If so, are you willing to build and maintain the mental muscles it takes? Are you willing to commit to mental fitness?

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Shirzad, thank you.

Shirzad Chamine
All right, Pete. This has been a pleasure. Wonderful questions. I really enjoyed this.