Pete Mockaitis
Betsy, welcome!

Betsy Wills
Thank you, Pete.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to be chatting about your work, digging into innate talents, aptitude, Your Hidden Genius. Marshall Goldsmith was raving about the book deal you had, so it must be good, Betsy, right?

Betsy Wills
It’s very good and very necessary for people. Very unique.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. Well, tell us what is unique? I think people think, “Well, I’ve done a Myers-Briggs. I’ve done a DiSC. I’ve done a StrengthsFinder.” You got another one of these assessments, Betsy. What’s sort of fresh here?

Betsy Wills
Okay, I just love that question more than anything. Actually, the assessment is not new, but what it was, was extremely expensive. The assessment is from Johnson O’Connor, which is a career center that you go to in 12 different cities around the country. It costs about $750 to do it. When you do it, you’re doing these exercises that you cannot game on your aptitudes.

And most people do not understand what aptitudes are, and, basically, they’re hidden from people. You may have an inkling that you have certain abilities that are innate, but this is the scientific way to prove that. So, the book includes the aptitude assessment with a code to take online, and that is what’s unique.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, super. So, now when you say aptitude, this is bringing back memories, SAT. Does that stand for the Standard Aptitude or Scholastic Aptitude Test?

Betsy Wills
Originally, it was called the Scholastic Aptitude Test, and the people that make that test realize it is not an aptitude test. It’s not about your innate abilities. It was actually the Scholastic Achievement Test. And so, the term has kind of stuck and been conflated, if you will. But even the Scholastic Achievement Test rebranded itself to be called just the SAT, if you look into that history.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, inside scoop.

Betsy Wills
Inside scoop. So, we have sort of shifted in and moved in our terminology for these things, but aptitudes you cannot study for. They are innate. So, there’s actually 52 that can be measured and they range from, you know, glare factor. Some certain people are really bothered by glare and other people not so much on a continuum. It’s an actual innate ability. We don’t test that because it only really matters if you’re a truck driver or you’re flying an airplane.

Pete Mockaitis
Or a jet fighter, yeah.

Betsy Wills
Yup, it does matter, and they do test it in the military but it’s not one of the pieces of this particular battery. But what we do assess are things that really matter in the world of work. And these are things that typically school does not recognize, things like your spatial ability. Some people are able to see things in 3D very easily, and other people are more abstract. I know we’re going to talk about that in a minute.

And then there are certain cognitive things, like people’s reasoning skills or memories. But all of these things combined can give us great insight into where we’re going to find satisfaction in our work, as well as our best advocations, which I think are quite important.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, 52 aptitudes that we know about so far from science. Now that’s just incredible.

Betsy Wills
Yeah, and there’s others that are coming, believe me.

Pete Mockaitis
So, where might we go to just find the rundown, the list of these little tidbits from glare factor and more?

Betsy Wills
Another good question. So, the other thing that’s been hidden from people or they didn’t realize is the US government and the Department of Labor and Statistics has been tracking every single job and built, basically, a Rosetta Stone of information with each of the 52 and the amount of each 52 that are ideal for each job. So, think of it as this huge dataset.

But until I know your data on your aptitudes, I can’t really give you great career suggestions, and so that’s the purpose, in many ways, of having your aptitudes assessed because it maps to this enormous database, almost like a Match.com for your jobs. So, just like medicine, which has become extremely personalized using data, now we have the wherewithal, if we can have our aptitudes assessed, to find out where we would best fit in different types of jobs.

Now, let me be clear, there’s not one job for one person. There’s many, many options, but it helps you sort of narrow down what is basically a tyranny of choice and the misguidance of saying to people, “Follow your passion,” or, “Do what you are.” You’ve got to know what you are, and this gives you an enormous amount of data to make better decisions.

Pete Mockaitis
Now, Betsy, we don’t do an NPR-style journalistic narrative situation, but now you got me curious about this secret government conspiracy that has constructed the career Rosetta Stone, and we don’t know about it.

Betsy Wills
Right. Right.

Pete Mockaitis
Is it published somewhere deep in a backwoods site?

Betsy Wills
No, no, anybody can access this, and it’s not nefarious at all. It’s called O*NET, and I talk about it in the book, you can see that, but here’s the rub. When you were in high school, and I was in high school, and since the 1960s, they have been using a survey called the interest survey. You took it, I took it, pretty much every high gave it because it was…

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, I kind of remember that.

Betsy Wills
Yes, and it asked you, Pete, “Like, on a scale of 1 to 5, do you like building cabinets?” Or, “On a scale of 1 to 5, how do you feel about medical terms or something?” Well, at 17, who the heck knows? You know, we’ve been exposed to almost nothing. But they called it career guidance, and that assessment mapped to O*NET.

And when it mapped to O*NET, with very little information that you self-reported, it would give you career suggestions, like be a funeral mortician hairdresser, or a forest ranger, or a doctor, or a lawyer, things like that. But it was using very scant data to do that that you were self-reporting. So, the database has been very refined and it’s very powerful, but the stuff we were putting into it with those high school surveys, that acted like a boomerang because it was just you telling the survey and it you something back, that’s pretty bad.

And now we know that that information was essentially career malpractice. You really need to have much better data. It’s like if you went to the doctor and you told the doctor you have cancer, and the doctor said, “You know what? I agree. Let’s start the chemotherapy.” You’d be like, “What?” You’d say, “Aren’t you going to run some tests or get some information?” I mean, you don’t self-report yourself like that, and this is the same with careers at this point.

So, that’s really what has happened is this is Career Guidance 3.0. Finally, we’re in an era where we can scientifically understand what we’re hardwired to do, where our best opportunities are, and where we’re going to find the most satisfaction by understanding what our aptitudes are. And that’s why this book is so, so important.

Pete Mockaitis

Well, that’s good, and I love that line about the doctor. You tell the doctor what you have, and they say, “Yep, you got it.”

Betsy Wills
“You’re sure right.” Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
So well, so much good stuff. You said they didn’t have a sense of the ideal amounts of aptitudes of different types for different jobs. So, now when you say ideal amount, that triggers me to think, “Hmm, so it’s not just more of everything is better? We’d be worse off having more aptitude in being in certain jobs?”

Betsy Wills
These are the most miserable people. There’s not very many who basically have powerful aptitudes in all of the things you can measure, and nobody does have that. But what you’re looking for and what’s wonderful about understanding what your aptitudes are is you’re looking for a combination of things as unique as your fingerprint.

So, let me give you an example. Idearate, you took it, Pete, and it told you, you were a brainstormer. We gave you a question and you remembered the assessment. I don’t want to ruin it for your listeners, but your result was you were a brainstormer.

Pete Mockaitis
I didn’t know. I was typing things. Was that a lot of things? I have no context.

Betsy Wills
Yes, that was a lot of things.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that was a lot of things. Okay. Go, me.

Betsy Wills
People who score like this, they tend to, you know, it’s like ideas come out like a flood. They almost have trouble turning it off, okay?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s right.

Betsy Wills
At night, I need a glass of wine sometimes to turn this off, okay? So, it’s lots and lots of ideas that are coming to you at one time. The other side of the continuum, people who don’t score as if they come up with a lot of ideas, are called concentrated focusers. So, people who score like you do, make great podcast hosts, salespeople, marketers, journalists, writers, teachers. Pete, you don’t want your surgeon or your pilot to have this, okay?

Pete Mockaitis
“Here’s a fun idea. What if, instead, we cut this other part for funsies?”

Betsy Wills
“Yeah, yeah, like, let’s saw him up this way, you know?” So, the point is that is, oftentimes, the things that are not as strong for us are what unlock our best opportunities. So, think of your aptitude scores as looking almost like a soundboard. You’re going to have certain things that are way up here and certain things way down here. It’s that combination that makes the music sound so great, and that’s really how aptitudes work. So, we’re not looking for A+’s, you know.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, it’s so funny, I was just thinking something about myself I’ve noticed kind of recently is, boy, I love designing processes, but I hate following them. It’s, like, does that make me some kind of a hypocrite? Like, “Listen, employees, you do these things that I’ve spelled out, but I don’t want to do these things,” because it gets boring for me. I want to mix it up.”

And to the notion of having optimal levels, not necessarily just more and more and more, we were talking with a Navy SEAL, Rich Diviney, about what he calls attributes. I’m seeing a little bit of overlap here. And he used, for example, the attribute of empathy, we think, “Oh, that’s a good thing. I want to be empathetic.” But he said, “If your role is being a stand-up comic, you don’t want to have high empathy.”

Betsy Wills
That’ll be highly distracting when you’re trying to make that sarcastic remark.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, you’re going to be offending a segment by necessity in order to be funny. I get maybe it’s possible to be kind to everybody in your jokes, but often those are like fifth-grade pun books, which are not that funny, in my experience with my kiddos. So, I think there’s a lot to be said there. Yes, those aptitudes, it’s intriguing how, if you have a whole lot of a thing, it might not feel like a great fit.

Now, well, you’re making me get all these flashbacks here. I remember I was at a Bain party because I used to do strategy consulting. And so, well, I think there was an event where beverages were flowing liberally, and folks were just sort of speaking their mind. I remember our corporate librarian person said to me, “I don’t know what you’re doing here, Pete.” I was like, “What? That’s not what I want to hear.”

Betsy Wills
“This isn’t a job review, I hope.”

Pete Mockaitis
“I’m trying to advance my career.” And she’s like, “You just have so many creative ideas. The consulting thing, this doesn’t really seem like you.” And I thought, “Hmm, you know, it’s interesting,” because, in a way, I totally vibed with my fellow consultants in, like, the problem-solving, find the insights, communicate it.
But then, boy, once we had to polish that PowerPoint deck for a sixth iteration, I was like, “Aren’t we done? Can’t we just move on?”

Betsy Wills
“No, I’m out.” Well, people, again, that are brainstormers like you, they tend to like to have multiple projects going at one time, and that’s probably what did attract you in Bain Consulting. But I will say, for you and your scores, because I appreciate you taking the assessment and investing in yourself, you scored as a diagnostic problem solver in the inductive reasoning assessment.

Which, if you recall, if anybody out there plays the New York Times Connections game, it’s quite similar the way this is assessed. People who like to draw connections with a lot of ambiguity and not all the information present. And that is how a lot of consultants score because they love problems where not all the information is necessarily in front of them, and they can draw inference well.

So, you scored like that, for example, Pete, and it’s not necessarily that usual to score like you did. In fact, not a high percentage of people score with that diagnostic problem-solving score, and so, congratulations. You should be leaning into that as much as possible.

And some people might tell you, because all of these aptitudes, wherever you score, there’s going to be an Achilles’ heel. And in the book, we talk about the positives and also the challenges for everybody’s course. And in your case, people who score as diagnostic problem solvers, they can tend to procrastinate actually because they work best when there’s urgency. They love when there is kind of a mini crisis or something to solve where they can, you know, the time pressure is on them.

And so, when there’s not enough time pressure, sometimes they create situations where there is time pressure because they like the thrill. I don’t know if that happens to you. I’m not saying you do that because not everybody exhibits the characteristics of some of these Achilles’ heels. I call it aptitudes gone wild, but it is good insight.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, what I really like this notion is you can have a high aptitude on a thing, and that just sounds good, like, “Yeah, I want a bunch of high aptitude. I want to be like limitless, you know, or Jason Bourne. Oh, these guys are so awesome. They can do anything. So capable, speaking all these languages, sniper-ing people far away.”

So, that sounds great, but you’re really highlighting here that you may have a high level of an aptitude, and that does have a shadow side to it. And then, likewise, a low level of an aptitude, things I just sort of felt, ashamed might be a strong word, but in the ballpark of ashamed. So, on the test, there was a “holes being punched into folded paper” situation for spatial reasoning, and I just utterly bombed it.

I could tell, for the first one, which I think was supposed to be easy, I still didn’t understand what I was doing. And I remember I’ve had these experiences.

And I do get lost without GPS, and people say, “Oh, just come back the way you came.” I was like, “That’s not going to be good enough. I’m going to need some more information on how to return from the bathroom to the doctor’s office.” Like, “Oops, which way did I turn on these hallways corridors?”

Betsy Wills
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
I feel, like, embarrassed. Like, I have something wrong with me.

Betsy Wills
Not a bit.

Pete Mockaitis
And you’re saying, “Well, hey, there’s a low aptitude on spatial reasoning.”

Betsy Wills
Spatial reasoning. It’s fine. I mean, that’s actually the one, Pete, that people feel like throwing the computer out the window. And a lot of people, even if they do well at that particular assessment, they don’t realize it in the midst of it. They all kind of come back and go, “That one was so hard.” And I’m like, “Well, you scored as a 3D visualizer.” Or, in your case as an abstract thinker, it wasn’t that easy.

But that fork in the road for people tells us a lot about, for instance, the types of careers we’re going to enjoy. People who score like you do, as an abstract thinker, they tend to be very good at reading emotions of people. They’re very good at so many different things that are more in the idea world, the theory world, the concept world. They like to think in the world of ideas and thoughts and emotions.

Whereas, people who score as 3D thinkers, it’s almost like a scratch that needs to be itched. And when we see that score, we ask them, “You know, what are you doing in your life to use this?” And if you’re a parent, so you know, you can start to see this aptitude emerge very young in children, actually. The kid who’s making the Taj Mahal out of LEGOs at four, and then, you know, me, if I’m trying to do something out of LEGOs, you wouldn’t know what it was even today, you know? It’d be such a mess.

But it’s just fascinating that we can parse these aptitudes and how much they tell us about our satisfaction in our jobs and in our lives.

Pete Mockaitis
And, Betsy, it’s interesting, you’re also illuminating for me, I think, one of the great mysteries of home ownership, which is, “How is it that a contractor or a plumber or an electrician or a carpenter, is just amazing doing things I could not imagine to doing myself?”

Betsy Wills
There you go.

Pete Mockaitis
And yet, I often have a heck of a time getting them to pick up the phone, show up? I was like, “Maybe there’s just too much demand for a limited number of tradespeople, and so we’re all just kind of in this boat.” But I think, Betsy, what you seem to be illuminating, this is my theory, there’s some abstract thinking for you.

Betsy Wills
Yes, that’s right.

Pete Mockaitis
My theory is, “Well, hey, they’re great on an aptitude I’m not good at, and I’ve got an aptitude that they’re not so great at. It’s relatively easy for me to pick up the phone and make an appointment, show up, do the things.

Betsy Wills
Come up with the idea, you know, all those types of things, yes.

Pete Mockaitis
But, actually, showing up and making great cabinets wouldn’t work so well for me.

Betsy Wills
And what a waste of time. And that’s also part of the point here is, you know, whether you’re managing a team or managing yourself, why stay on the struggle bus? There’s no point. We call the book Your Hidden Genius because everyone really does have these hidden abilities that they sometimes have recognized or maybe discounted in their lives because school didn’t reward them for it or they just thought, “Oh, everybody can do that,” and that’s really not the case at all.

Pete Mockaitis
No, that’s a huge takeaway right there. And we talked with some folks who are experts in the StrengthsFinder, and that’s sort of a funny thing about strengths is because they’re easy for us, we just assume, “Oh, this is easy for everybody,” but no, no. It’s because we have these strengths, we have these aptitudes.

And it’s also intriguing, “Why stay on the struggle bus?” I guess this might be hopeful or desolate, Betsy. Is it fixed? Like, there’s just spatial reasoning is not going to be improved by me no matter how what kind of exercises I try to do?

Betsy Wills
Well, that is a great question. No, we can do anything with practice, and that is the other good news about knowing what your aptitudes are. It’s often an indicator of where you may need to spend more time, or, for some people, learning a job is harder than actually doing a job, like acquiring the skill may take them longer and be more of a struggle, but all of us can do anything with practice.

But the point, too, is why would you? We all have things we’ve got to get competent at, but why spend a lot of time trying to perfect it or apologizing for why we’re not the best at it? So, I’ll give you an exercise I gave Marshall as well, and that was, you know, do you have a pen handy?

Pete Mockaitis
I sure do.

Betsy Wills
And if your listeners do, take out a pen and just write your name. Right, Pete?

Pete Mockaitis
I have a feeling I know where this is going.

Betsy Wills
You probably do, but why not? So, now, switch hands.

Pete Mockaitis
Alrighty.

Betsy Wills
Okay. I know you’re going to enjoy this.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah.

Betsy Wills
Okay. So, how does your non-dominant hand signature look?

Pete Mockaitis
You almost said left, which is correct. Well, it’s sloppy, it’s silly, it took longer, it was harder to do.

Betsy Wills
Right. Slow. Okay. Pete, if you lost use of your dominant hand for some terrible accident, I hope that never happens, and you had to use your non-dominant hand for the rest of your life, even by the end of today, you could get better. You would get more relaxed doing it. You could practice and get better. But you’re never going to be a calligrapher, okay, no matter what you do. So, that’s the way aptitudes work. You can become competent, but spend more time on the things that come naturally and easily to you versus constantly being frustrated.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that seems accurate that if something is hard for you to improve on for a long time, the odds are slim you will ever become exceptionally world-class at that thing.

Betsy Wills
Right. Well, think of it as also like you don’t become a musician at 35 years old, all of a sudden, because you work really hard at it. People have natural abilities that allow them to enjoy doing it and to get better and better at it the more they practice. But if your running start is at a different spot, it’s going to take you longer and become more frustrating as you go.

And that, again, doesn’t mean if you’re not a great musician from birth you can’t enjoy music or do well. But we all know, there are certain people who just it comes easily to, and that’s great. And there are things that are easy for you that aren’t easy for me, and that’s okay, too.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. So, with the book Your Hidden Genius, you’ve got the link to the code that lets you do the test and learn these things. And then there’s the O*NET from the government.

Betsy Wills
Matching, yup.

Pete Mockaitis
So, I mean, hey, I think it’s a great move to buy the book, do the assessment. If folks just aren’t going to, how do we take advantage of some of these insights without it?

Betsy Wills
Well, if you read the book, we did design it such that if you didn’t take the assessment, which I don’t know why you wouldn’t, but if you didn’t, we tell stories. And so, we explain these concepts and we talk about, you know, we talked to over 80 different people from ages 75 down to 18, because by the time you go through puberty, your aptitudes are fixed. So, you wouldn’t take an aptitude assessment any earlier than when you’re sort of in high school. But if you take the assessment, you’re going to score the same at 17, 37, 80.

Pete Mockaitis
No kidding?

Betsy Wills
Yes, because, again, we’re not testing what you know. We’re just looking at the baseline. So, it’s kind of fun to take them, but if you get into the book, we’ll go through all the different aptitudes and tell stories and talk about how they come out with different people’s careers and their advocations as well. But you talked about other aptitudes people were discovering. We have a chapter on that which I think is kind of cool. I’ll tell a story if you are interested about smell, which they’re really researching these days.

Certain people can smell things better than other people. This is why certain people enjoy wine or cooking in a different way. And there’s a woman, many people may have read this story, maybe you did, who had a husband with Parkinson’s disease, and he died. And she went to the doctor after and she said, “You know, I could smell it on him,” and he was like, “What do you mean you could smell it on him?” She goes, “I could smell it on him for years.”

And so, they got interested in this, and they gave her 24 T-shirts, and they said, “Tell me which of these people have Alzheimer’s.” I mean, have Parkinson’s, excuse me. And she picked out 12, and they said, “Well, that is remarkable because we have 11 candidates with it, and all 11 were in your pile. That other person not, but that’s remarkable.”

And two months later, the 12th T-shirt wearer was diagnosed. And it’s just phenomenal what they’re able to now study around people being able to smell diseases. And it is actually, I believe, an aptitude. It hasn’t been proven, but it’s things like that that are fascinating to me.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, it is fascinating, and I just can’t let it go. If one smells Parkinson’s on somebody, I am assuming the person with Parkinson’s, biochemically, has a smellable thing going on.

Betsy Wills
A disease.

Pete Mockaitis
And non-Parkinson’s sufferers don’t.

Betsy Wills
That’s the implication.

Pete Mockaitis
But we don’t know what that is yet, like a film on the skin or like a…?

Betsy Wills
I guess. I’m just now yacking away here because I think it’s interesting, but look up the story. But they do a tremendous amount of research on smell. But this is back to what I’m saying. These are science-based, research-based aptitudes that makes this quite different. You can’t self-report that “I’m good at this or good at that,” or have this aptitude. You do have to take these game-like exercises. And as you know, it took 87 minutes to complete, so it’s not a quickie fill-in-the-blank kind of assessment. Did you have fun doing it?

Pete Mockaitis
Most of it.

Betsy Wills
Okay. Well, it wasn’t all fun because it shouldn’t frustrate you, but, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, interesting. All right. So, let’s just summarize some of these implications. We got these aptitudes. They are not skills or knowledge or abilities. They are things that, dare I say, innate within us. We’ll know, and they’ll be unchanged post-puberty for the rest of our lives, and it behooves us to seek out opportunities that line up nicely with our amounts of aptitudes in different styles, like a Rosetta Stone, it maps just right, and we will struggle more if we are pursuing opportunities that are a mismatch to our aptitudes.

Betsy Wills
Yes. And further, you will be bored and frustrated if you are not using your aptitudes, and that’s really the challenge, is letting things sit dormant. Because a lot of people’s sort of boredom and depression and things like that is, oftentimes, because of an undeveloped aptitude. So, remember, when you discover what your aptitudes are, the onus is on you to apply learning and practice to develop them.

Motivation is sold separately, so you’re understanding what your opportunity set is, where your learning rate is going to be that much faster if you apply the aptitude. So, it’s clues for things you’re going to enjoy. It’s positive news. It’s not a dream killer. It’s all about, “Here are so many opportunities I might have left on the table. Here’s how I can pivot if I need to. Here are the skills I can develop that are going to feel great.”

It’s positive news, and that’s really the purpose of the book is to give people great motivation and excitement around what their possibilities are, rather than, what I would say, is continue to be the walking dead because a lot of us are sort of give up weirdly early about our development, and this will energize you.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, to do a bit of a recap, you mentioned that there’s a core four aptitudes: spatial visualization, idea generation, inductive reasoning, and sequential reasoning. Can you share what makes these the core four, first of all?

Betsy Wills
Well, those are just hugely, again, like forks in the road for people, like big ones that if you’re not using them, it’s going to bother you, or if you’re over taxing them, you’re going to feel burnout and exhaustion. So, knowing where you fall on those continuums is really, really helpful. The others are important, and some people have outliers.

Like, one that can be assessed is certain people can identify color really well, hue discrimination. So those are specialized aptitudes, and those can be super important if you have them. But those core four are going to impact most of us in our decision tree, and then the others are sort of like ornaments on that tree. Very helpful to know.

Pete Mockaitis
I like that, that metaphor there. And, it’s funny, well, hue distinction, I’m thinking about physical therapists. I guess this is my poor spatial visualization going on because I’m talking about Katie will say, “Does it look like this shoulder is higher or lower than this?” I was like, “I couldn’t tell you. I am clueless. They look normal to me.”

And, whereas, physical therapists, I’m often very impressed, like, “Oh, do you see how you’re doing this?” I was like, “No, not at all do I see how I’m doing this,” but they do.

Betsy Wills
See, they do, and there’s a perfect use of their spatial visualization, they just see it, you know?

Pete Mockaitis
So, maybe if you could lay it on us in terms of, if you could archetypically share what might be a great role or a terrible role for someone high and low in each of the core four. So, spatial visualization, we said, hey, great physical therapists, maybe great.

Betsy Wills
Oh, yeah, architect. Okay, let’s get into it. Architect, landscape designer, graphic designer, anybody working with a lot of charts, for sure, crafts people, anybody you know in the building trades, potters, you know, people. Let’s talk about avocations. Like, if you have a spatial visualization, you might enjoy things like sailing or even golf where you’re estimating space or there’s a whole list of things in the book that talk about each aptitude and where you fall but that would be one.

People who score in the abstract world, like I said, they tend to like things that are more theoretical in nature, even the law, a lot of typical types of law, like constitutional law would be an example, maybe not patent law, which would need more spatial visualization, if that helps you understand it. And then, by the way, there are people who score in the middle of each on this continuum. So, we break it down into three groups. And you will learn something in the book about that, too, wherever you score on that continuum. So, that’s spatial.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And idea generation.

Betsy Wills
Okay, idea generation: teachers, journalists, public speakers, comedians, actors, improv, salespeople, certain types of consulting, for sure, appeals to that, that’s brainstormer, strong idea rate. One of the Achilles’ heels of being a brainstormer might be that you may have a habit of interrupting people because you just can’t get all those ideas out at once.

Concentrated focusers, which is the other end of this continuum, tend to be excellent at implementing ideas. They tend to be the “Let’s pick an idea and run with it and go with it.” They tend to enjoy things that take a high amount of concentration, if you will. Anesthesiologists, for example, airline pilots, those would be examples. But there’s many, many things that utilize that concentrated focuser score.

Inductive reasoning is the next one we might pick. So, this is the one I talked about where you’re very comfortable drawing a conclusion under time pressure. Basically, if you’re an inductive reasoner, you need to be on a game show because you love the, you know, got to make a decision under time pressure.

But think of an ER doctor where someone comes in with three symptoms and they’ve got to really make that decision quickly, or a Wall Street trader. Sometimes an investigator might be a diagnostic problem solver. Consultants, for sure, like you were. The other opposite end of that continuum is fact-checking, a fact checker. That’s the people who really are not comfortable making decisions under time pressure.

Oftentimes they need to be pushed into the pool. They’re going to look at a hundred colleges before they’re going to make a decision because they’re looking for that one piece of data they may not have. They make great risk managers. They make wonderful HR managers because, when you’re hiring someone, you can’t infer from three different pieces of information and make a decision, or you shouldn’t. You’re going to need to do the background check, and they’re going to be the people who are going to complete all those steps. So, again, value with every score.

And then the last one is sequential reasoning. I don’t know if you remember that one where you were putting boxes in order. Sequential reasoning is interesting. A lot of people who score as sequential reasoners tend to have messy desks because all of their file cabinets are in their head. They don’t need organizational structures as much. They tend to be able to put things in order. They’re like, if they’re going to write a paper, they don’t need an outline. It’s all kind of organized in their head.

The people on the opposite end of this, we call process supporters, and they’re excellent at maintaining systems. Think about librarians. Think about people who, you know, don’t move their cheese. If you’re going to change a system, you’ve got to really explain it to them. But they’re going to make sure that system is followed to a T, and they’re excellent at it. And we need all types on our teams. If I may, I’ll tell a quick story also about that.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, please.

Betsy Wills
There was a guy named Charlie Plumb, who was a war hero and he took off from his aircraft carrier and was ejected from his airplane on a parachute and shot down into enemy territory and spent about two years, I think, in solitary or something, and got out and went and made all these speeches.

And one time, he was giving a talk at a restaurant, and a man came up and tapped him on the shoulders, and he was a sequential reasoner, Charlie Plumb was. And he said, “I was on the aircraft carrier with you.” And he said, “Oh, well, soldier, I’m glad to meet you,” Charlie Plumb did. And he said, “You know, I’m the guy who packed your parachute.” He was a process supporter.

He didn’t come up with a new way to pack the parachute. He did it the same way every time, and this is just like teams. We need all different types of people with all different aptitude scores to make us successful. So, in the end, this is all about empathy, and it’s about love. It’s about not seeing other people as a flawed version of us. It’s really valuable information.

Pete Mockaitis
Well said. Yeah, that feels like that’s a transformational key right there for many of our relationships, not to see others as flawed versions of ourselves.

Betsy Wills
Especially your spouse.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, but rather a person who has their own unique profile of different levels of aptitudes. Beautiful. Well, now could you share a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Betsy Wills
“A wink is as good as a nod to a blind mule.” Barney Fife said it.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite book?

Betsy Wills
I’m reading Hampton Sides’ The Wide Wide Sea right now. So, my favorite book is always my last book that I’m reading. I would recommend it to anyone. It’s about Captain Cook’s travels. Captain Cook ended up being cannibalized on Hawaii in the 1790s, and it’s a fascinating read.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite tool?

Betsy Wills
Right now, it’s ChatGPT.

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Betsy Wills
It creates images for me, which I think is a lot of fun.

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

Betsy Wills
Network.

Pete Mockaitis
One word, okay. Do it! And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Betsy Wills
I would say go to YourHiddenGenius.com and purchase the book, and you can reach out to me that way as well.

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

Betsy Wills
Bring your best opportunities to your jobs and advocate for doing activities that meet your aptitudes and shed the things that don’t.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. Betsy, thank you.

Betsy Wills
Thank you.

Pete Mockaitis
Olga, welcome!

Olga Khazan
Hi, thanks so much for having me.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I’m excited to talk personality. We are going to get into the goods. Could you kick us off with a particularly fascinating discovery you made while putting together Me, But Better?

Olga Khazan
One finding that really surprised me is that when introverts are told by researchers to go out and act like extroverts for a little while, so to socialize with people for a few minutes and then come back, and they’re like, “Okay, how did that feel?” And they’re like, “Now I feel happier.” Okay, so the introverts feel happier acting like extroverts. And they said something else that was interesting, which is they also said, “I feel more true to myself.” So, they actually feel truer to themselves when they act like extroverts.

Pete Mockaitis
Wow, yeah, I could chew on that one for a while. Like, what is true, then? What is self?

Olga Khazan
I know, right? Yeah, that’s kind of where the book goes. Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Okay. Well, so that’s intriguing right there. So maybe, what’s sort of the big idea with the book, Me, But Better?

Olga Khazan
So, the idea is that our personalities are the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that come most naturally to us but they also help us achieve our goals. So, your personality can help you get a promotion. It can help you stay calm in times of crises. It can help you make more friends. And so, if your personality is not helping you reach your goals, if it’s kind of standing in your way, it’s actually possible to change your personality.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, it is, in fact, possible to change your personality. Olga, tell me, what about being authentic and true to yourself? Aren’t those noble virtues?

Olga Khazan
Yeah, so the problem with authenticity is that what is most authentic at any given moment is not always what is best for us. So, if you think about it, what might be most authentic to you on a Friday night after a difficult week at work is to just be at home on the couch by yourself, watching TV, and drinking a bunch of wine. That might be the most authentically you thing to do.

But if you do too much of that, that’s not healthy. And what the research shows is that, actually, in that moment, what might be kind of best for your mental health is to actually reach out to someone else or to do something a little bit more active or at least more socially connected. So, this is kind of challenging the idea that we should always be doing whatever is… feels most “authentic” rather than whatever will kind of help us follow our values and achieve our goals.

Pete Mockaitis
Interesting. So, well then, this is getting philosophical rather quickly. What does authentic even mean? How are we defining that?

Olga Khazan
So it can be sort of just whatever you feel inside and, like, who you really feel you are, but it can also be the things that you get good at over time because you apply yourself to them and you get practice doing it. So, I talked with one researcher, Sonja Lyubomirsky, who explained that. She now is a runner. She’s like an avid runner. She runs all the time.

But she actually took a while to get into it. Like, in those first few runs, she didn’t really feel like doing it. It wasn’t an authentic thing for her to do. But now that she has gotten better at it, she’s gotten more experience, probably figured out what shoes are the right ones, she does feel like it’s authentic to her to go running. So, what’s authentically us can actually change over time.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, indeed. If we think about authentic as just meaning what you feel like doing and what’s comfortable and natural to you, then, certainly, that would flex and move and shake, versus if authentic is living in alignment with your values, that’s a very different view of what authentic is, versus authentic is just not straight-up fraudulently telling lies.

Olga Khazan
Yeah, exactly. And those values can kind of require us to take on new personality traits to fulfill those values, and I can go into more detail about that.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s good. Well, when we say the word personality then, I get all about the definitions here, what do we mean, specifically, by this term?

Olga Khazan
So, personality, it’s made of five traits. Most psychologists think it’s made up of five traits. You can remember them with the acronym OCEAN. So, O for openness to experiences, C for conscientiousness, E for extroversion, A for agreeableness, and N for neuroticism, which is the bad one. You’d want to be low on neuroticism and you want to be relatively high on some of the other ones.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, so the Big Five, this is great juicy areas of debate, and I’ve read some of the articles. So, as compared to, say, the Myers-Briggs type inventory, that is another thing people use to say, “Oh, this is my personality. My preferences are extroversion, intuition, feeling, judging.” And so, how do you think about the Big Five relative to other personality typologies?

Olga Khazan
So, a lot of people are really invested and really into the MBTI, the Myers-Briggs, and also the Enneagram, like they have a lot of fans and people, like, really know their INTJ thing, and they’re like, “That’s who I am.” So, I really don’t like to yuck people’s yum, or like take that away from them if that’s like really, really important to them.

There is a little bit of scientific basis behind it, so I wouldn’t say it’s just like totally fake, but most scientists steer clear of personality tests that put people in categories like INTJ or like an Enneagram number, because most of us actually don’t really fit very neatly into categories. We kind of fall along a spectrum of all five personality traits.

So, you might be mostly an introvert, but you might be like 30% extroverted, so you’re not totally like an introvert. It’s not like you can never be extroverted. And so, really, what they prefer is to kind of show how you rank compared to all the rest of humanity on these five traits, because they all see them as a spectrum.

Pete Mockaitis
And, tell us, where can we go and see where we fall against the spectrum of humanity on each of these five traits?

Olga Khazan
So, what I used is a website designed by a researcher named Nathan Hudson. It’s a website called PersonalityAssessor.com, and he actually posts well-validated personality tests that other scientists use as well. He just put them in a web-friendly format so you can click through and get a score instead of like leafing through psychology studies and like the index or whatever. So, he’s put it up online but it’s called the IPIP, and it’s usually, like, either 120 or 300 questions depending on which version.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And it’s free?

Olga Khazan
Yeah, it’s free. He uses the data, I think, in his studies, but you don’t have to tell them your name or anything.

Pete Mockaitis
Very cool. All right. Well, that’s super. And then, yes, that debate is juicy because I have led Myers-Briggs workshops in which people were debating, “Oh, I don’t quite know which one fits, which one fits.” And so then with this system, you just completely sidestep this, and although I would say I got to give some pros to the Myers-Briggs for it’s really hard, I think, in a team setting to say, “Oh, I scored really high on neuroticism. How about you?” Like, “Oh, really? No, not at all. You’re the neurotic one,” it seems. And so, that could be sort of an off-putting experience in a team setting.

Olga Khazan
Totally.

Pete Mockaitis
But for a pure introspection situation, I mean, all for it. Let’s go where there’s a boatload of research here, and Big Five has got that going for it.

Olga Khazan
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, the Myers-Briggs is definitely more fun, and I think for, like, usually corporate environments like it, because it kind of also talks about, like, how people like to think about problems and resolve problems, which is not really what the Big Five is doing.

Pete Mockaitis
Yep, understood. Well, so could you give us a quick rundown definition of what do we mean by openness, what do we mean by conscientiousness, etc.?

Olga Khazan
So, openness is like this kind of ambiguous trait. It’s basically like imaginativeness and creativity. Political liberalism is also part of it and, like, verbal intelligence, but not mathematical intelligence.

Pete Mockaitis
If I may, is that actually a part of the thing that they’re measuring, or just a fun correlation they seem to find out there?

Olga Khazan
It’s a fun correlation. What they’re measuring are things like, “I like to debate abstract ideas,” “I like poetry.” Open people tend to like kind of really avant-garde music and art and like foreign films. Like, they’re not watching The Avengers. They’re watching, like, whatever came out at the indie theater last week.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Olga Khazan
So, there’s that. Okay, so conscientiousness is sort of like productivity, organization, meeting deadlines, being really diligent. Extroversion is things like friendliness and cheerfulness, and also just like activity. Like, extroverts are just always on the go. Agreeableness is sort of like warmth and empathy, and also trust in others. And then neuroticism, which once again is bad is depression and anxiety.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, someone who is high in neuroticism might find a given challenge or experience to be more triggering of depression and anxiety feelings. Is that what we mean?

Olga Khazan
Yeah, exactly. So, when I noticed this in myself, it was sort of like, I would have a perfectly fine day, nothing especially upsetting happened, but minor frustrations would kind of start to stack up, and I would kind of start to use them in a story where it was like evidence that, “I’m just cursed and everything bad happens to me. And my life is just bad and it will never go well.”

And so, that’s kind of the cycle I was hoping to break out of, is sort of this, you know, neurotic people that just, like, really latch on to those negative thoughts, very, very hard to see the silver lining, and it kind of sucks the joy out of life, because, really, the amount that you enjoy life is determined moment to moment and day to day, and not sitting back on your deathbed and thinking like, “Did I get stuck in traffic like 12 times or 13?” you know, or whatever else.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, understood. Okay. And so then, your big idea here is that you can take these assessments, PersonalityAssessor.com or wherever, and you can see where you land, but that’s not the end of the story. We have the capability within us to say, “Hmm, I would prefer to be less neurotic, and that is an option for me.”

Olga Khazan
Exactly, yeah. And it’s, basically, so this research, once again, by Nathan Hudson, and a few other researchers have replicated it in Switzerland and other places, is what it basically shows is that if you behave in a way that aligns with the kind of person that you’d like to be, you can actually shift your personality in that direction.

Pete Mockaitis
That sounds important. Let’s hear it again.

Olga Khazan
So, if you behave in a way that aligns with the kind of person you’d like to be, you can actually shift your personality in that direction.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, that sounds a little bit like fake It till you make it.

Olga Khazan
Yeah, that’s, I think, one of the titles of one of his studies, or like one of the takeaways. He’s like, “Fake it till you make it is an appropriate way to change your personality.” Or, he says it in some very academic way, but, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
So, it’s, like, if I would prefer to be less neurotic, I would behave in the fashion like a less neurotic person would behave.

Olga Khazan
Yeah, and neuroticism is one, so, yeah, you can just simply think to yourself like, “Oh, man, this day was so terrible. I got stuck in traffic,” and some of the exercises would be like journaling, “Okay, but what are three good things that happened today?” Or, “What’s a different way of looking at this that’s less negative?” So, I did do some of that journaling, but most of the kind of actionable recommendations for neuroticism are actually various forms of mindfulness and meditation.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, mindfulness and meditation, it seems like there’s a boatload of studies saying it’s good. Can you share with us any of the particularly striking findings here?

Olga Khazan
So, the meditation class that I took, which is called Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, I think it’s like an 8- or 10-week class, and it’s actually been found to work as well as Lexapro for depression and anxiety.

Pete Mockaitis
So, this is an eight-week course. Where does one go about doing it?

Olga Khazan
Anyone can sign up for it. I think you just Google MBSR, and they’re virtual. They’re all over the country. You can go in person. You can go on Zoom. I did mine over Zoom because the pandemic was still kind of going on. But it basically consists of a 45-minute meditation every day, and also a class that is sort of, I want to say, like “Buddhism for Dummies.” It’s very, very watered-down, broken-down teachings from Buddhism presented by the teacher.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And so, just doing that eight weeks later, you’re less neurotic.

Olga Khazan
So, yeah, for me, it did work. It did bring down my neuroticism, especially the depression component of my neuroticism. But I don’t totally get why, because I didn’t ever really enjoy meditation. Like, I kind of always resisted it. I found it really boring. Even at the very end of the class, we did a retreat just in our houses, but we meditated all day, and I found that really grueling. But, yeah, something about it just like it made me less depressed. I don’t know how.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that is such a rich example and experience. I’m glad you’re sharing it with us because I have often had this experience of, they say, “Oh, yeah, mindfulness meditation is very good.” “Okay, yeah, I should do it. There’s a lot of benefits. It’s going to be worth it. There’s a clear ROI on my time. Okay, let’s do it.” And sometimes it’s very peaceful and pleasant. It’s like, “Okay, yeah, I’m glad I did that.”

But other times it’s a brutal slog. It’s like, “I would rather be doing anything but this right now,” and it’s brutal. And so, it’s encouraging to hear you say that you, too, were not feeling it in the moment, and yet, on the other side of it, you’ve got just an emotional experience that is more enjoyable just all the time.

Olga Khazan
So, Jon Kabat-Zinn, who kind of invented MBSR, for lack of a better word, he wrote a book about it. And but one of the things he suggests is, like, it’s best to go into meditation without striving to feel better. Like, you’re not supposed to really be pushing for it to work. You’re supposed to just kind of do it and let it, like, kind of work in the background. And so, that’s sort of what I tried to do, and I guess it did work, like, I don’t know, in its weird, magical way.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so that’s pretty cool, 45 minutes a day. Sounds intense, but it’s only for eight weeks, and then the benefits are lasting without maintenance?

Olga Khazan
I think you do have to maintain it to some level, but I will say that I do not have time to meditate anymore because I had a baby right after I finished the book so I have not kept up my meditation practice. And I’ve found that when I don’t get to any kind of mindfulness, even like mindful walking or yoga, whenever I have like a week or two without anything like that, I do start to feel more just like jumpy and irritable.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, it takes a good week or two, in your own experience. I guess it probably varies person by person, for you to go back to the jumpy spot, but it’s not 45 minutes a day.

Olga Khazan
Yeah, but I would say I wouldn’t tell people that if you don’t have 45 minutes every day that you shouldn’t even bother with this, because there’s a lot of meditations out there that you can do in 10 minutes, 15 minutes, just when you have time. I kind of don’t like this all or nothing feeling about meditation, where it’s like unless you’re committed to do it an hour every morning, like don’t even bother. I think you can just kind of try to fit it in whenever you can, and that’s good.

Pete Mockaitis
That is good. And there’s a study that put a dollar amount on just how good this can be. A reduction in neuroticism can be quite substantial and even put into some monetary equivalency terms. Olga, can you speak to this?

Olga Khazan
Yeah, one study found that even a small reduction in neuroticism was like earning $314,000 more dollars a year, which I think just goes to show how much neuroticism can really grind away at people, and how living this way and just being constantly plagued by negative thoughts can really bring you down so much that it’s like you’re like earning very little money, or if you didn’t have that you’d be basically rich. Because, honestly, our happiness is kind of determined by our level of neuroticism.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, this reminds me of a quote from Epictetus, “Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.” And that so rings true for me, as I’ve lived high-income and low-income years in the course of running business. So, it kind of doesn’t seem so outrageous. It’s like, “Yeah, if you have less neuroticism and are less worried about all sorts of things, it’s like $314,000 can sure take care of a lot of worries, but so, too, could worrying less.”

Olga Khazan
Yeah, exactly. And, I mean, one of the kind of takeaways that I have from the book is that you can improve your life even if nothing in your life really improves. And that’s kind of what happened with me. Like, I had the same exact job before and after this project. I live in the same house. But I, honestly, feel like a lot better and more fulfilled. And, to me, that’s sort of the difference that a small amount of reduction in neuroticism can do.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, there’s the mindfulness-based stress reduction eight-week situation. Were there any other key interventions that were transformational for you there?

Olga Khazan
On that trait specifically? So, I would say, like, honestly, this is strange, but one of the most effective things about that class was that “Buddhism for Dummies” kind of like little aphorisms and things that they would teach us. So, one of the things that my meditation teacher would always repeat is, “Things happen that we don’t like.”

And I know this sounds strange, but I had been going through life thinking that everyone else can make it so that bad things don’t happen to them. They can, like, control their lives to a degree where only good things happen to them. And whenever something bad would happen to me, I would get kind of mad at myself for failing to avert that.

And I think there was just something really freeing. Of course, this is like a group class where we’re all sharing like negative experiences we’ve had, so it’s like even more powerful. But there was something really freeing in being told that some things are just out of our control and that you can’t always prevent bad things from happening.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s a big lesson to internalize, which will have big impact, no doubt. All right. Well, let’s hear about some of the other personality dimensions, if we’d like to be more extroverted or more conscientious or more or less agreeable. Sometimes I think I’m too agreeable, and I would be better if I felt a little bit more comfortable holding my ground, and saying “No, that doesn’t work for me. You’re going to need to fix it.”

Olga Khazan
I actually brought this up because, as I was working on agreeableness, I noticed that a lot of my friendships were falling apart, and I kind of thought, “Oh, if I become more agreeable, my friendships will stop dissolving.” And that one way to do that is just to do whatever my friends want. Right? Like that’s agreeable.

But that’s actually not really true, and I talked with this friendship expert who really drove home the power of boundaries within agreeableness. So, being agreeable doesn’t mean that you just let people walk all over you. It does mean having strong boundaries. So, as an example, in the midst of this project, I had a friend text me and tell me that I wasn’t texting her enough and that I needed to commit to texting her at least once a week to check in with her.

Pete Mockaitis
I’ve never had a request like that.

Olga Khazan
Me neither. So, I was like, “Huh.” And so, kind of my natural reaction was like, “Oh, my gosh, of course. Like, I will text you every week, like, no problem.” But I actually knew, internally, at the same time, that I was never going to do that because I actually don’t like texting. It’s not like a mode of communication that I like, and I also don’t like text check-ins. Like, I really don’t like having to remember to check in with someone when there’s nothing wrong and there’s nothing going on. So, I, basically, immediately fell off of this plan.

And so, I asked this expert, Miriam Kirmayer, I was like, “What was I supposed to do in that situation?” And she said I should have said something like, “Hey, I’m sorry that you’ve been feeling like I don’t text you enough. The truth is, I actually don’t really like texting. Is there another way we can keep in touch? Is there another way that I can meet my needs, but also meet your needs?”

And so, that’s really like the heart of agreeableness is setting boundaries with people so that you are treated well and you do get a say in the relationship but, at the same time, showing people that you value them.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I think that sounds dead on. And so, if we need to, it seems like that that’s the master key is kind of the fake-it-till-you-make-it situation, is if we think that we have been a bit on the doormat side and need to establish boundaries, we would act as though we were a person who were a bit less agreeable to everything.

And it will feel unnatural and uncomfortable and weird in the moment, like, “Oh, my gosh, was I a total jerk? Oh.” You might feel that way when you’re establishing a very reasonable boundary. But then, if this path follows the way it seems like it goes, you’ll say, “Oh, actually, I’m glad I did that. I stood up for myself. I feel good and proud, and maybe even more like myself.”

Olga Khazan
Yeah, exactly. And it’s also a good way of kind of working on agreeableness and working on deepening your friendships with people without feeling like a doormat, which is, I think, one reason why people are sometimes reluctant to try to become more agreeable.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Okay. And how about conscientiousness? I would like more of that, I think.

Olga Khazan
Yeah, most of us would. Conscientiousness is like the trait everyone wants to increase on. It’s the trait that employers really love because conscientious people get to work on time and they do everything really fast and really thoroughly. It predicts like greater wealth and health and all this other stuff. So, I would say a really poignant example of conscientiousness, for me, was this guy, Zach Hambrick, that I talked to.

Zach is a guy who got to college from this small town in Virginia, and growing up he had never really studied and he had never really written a paper or, like, applied himself to school in any way. So, he gets to college and, suddenly, you have to study or else you will, like, fail college and would have to go home. So, he’s kind of lost, but he realizes that he would like to finish college and succeed and get into a grad school program for psychology. He decides he wants to be an academic psychologist.

So, he actually sits down and finds another student just like him who is like someone who doesn’t have a very scholarly background, and they actually study together and learn tips from each other of how to study better and how to, at one point, he bought a book that was, like, how to make A’s or something like that. They would stay up late, like, reading and highlighting these dense psychological textbooks, and it actually worked, like, not right away.

I think his first GPA was like a 2.7 or something like that, but, gradually, he actually did really well on the GREs and he got into Georgia Tech, and, actually, he is now a professor of psychology. And this kind of all happened because of this concept that, sometimes, doing things alongside other people, or learning from your peers, can actually be more effective than having it taught to you by a teacher or trying to do it on your own.

There’s research out of the University of Pennsylvania that shows that when people are told to go learn an exercise strategy from their peers versus just being told by the researchers, like, “Hey, here’s how you can fit more exercise into your life,” the people who learn from their peers actually end up exercising more because there’s something about it, like friendly competition, or just like seeing someone just like you apply those same skills, or, honestly, just having some solidarity, I don’t know. But it actually does work, and it worked for Zach.

So, that’s one strategy that I’d recommend, is like if there’s something you’re working on when it comes to conscientiousness, find someone else who is working on that same thing and learn from them.

Pete Mockaitis
So, I want to find someone who’s working on conscientiousness as opposed to someone who’s just already supernaturally just conscientious.

Olga Khazan
You could try to talk to someone who’s just super-duper conscientious, but I would pick someone who has, like, gained those skills in a way that they can explain to you. Don’t just pick someone who was like born meeting all deadlines and never had to think about it, you know?

Pete Mockaitis
“You just sit down and you do it. That’s all.”

Olga Khazan
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Nifty. Well, tell me, any other key things you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Olga Khazan
Also, for conscientiousness, something that I found really worked for people is this strategy called episodic future thinking, which is where you envision very clearly what’s the positive outcome will look like. So, let’s say you’re really having trouble motivating yourself to get through a spreadsheet, a PowerPoint, whatever else it is, boring work project, you can kind of think about what it will look like to present that PowerPoint.

What are you going to be wearing? How will your boss react? Where is he going to take the team out for lunch to celebrate afterward? And it’s not just like The Secret, like if you can see it, you can achieve it, because it’s actually just motivating you to get through that slog of doing something really rote or really tedious or something that conscientious people find really hard in order to get to that outcome that you really, really want. So, that’s another thing I would recommend for people who struggle with that.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Episodic future thinking sounds fancy, although I think others would call that simply visualization. Are there some nuances or distinctions to be made between the two?

Olga Khazan
I think it’s just whatever you’re working on now needs to be connected really clearly with whatever you’re envisioning. So, it can’t be just like, “Oh, if I finish this spreadsheet,” and then imagine yourself flying around in a private jet with models and stuff. It has to be a realistic, positive outcome based on what you’re doing now.

It could also be a negative outcome as long as it’s not so negative that it’s paralyzing. So, for me, when I was struggling in journalism school, I had a really dead-end job right before I went to journalism school, and I would always just envision myself having to go back to that dead-end job and do these boring tasks that I was doing before I went to grad school. And that would always motivate me to be like, “Hey, okay, I really need to get to my interviews on time,” or whatever else it is.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I like that. So, the dead-end job, it’s negative enough to be motivating, but it’s not, like, horrifying, like, “I’m going to be homeless, sleeping in the ditch!” It’s like that may very well be paralyzing for you.

Olga Khazan
Yeah, it can’t be something where you’re, like, you know, if you’re the kind of person who’s like made so anxious by kind of like bad outcomes that you’re like, “Oh, my God, I can’t do anything now,” just don’t go there. Focus on the positive stuff. But some people I talked to did find negative outcomes really motivating.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, you’re bringing me back to the early days of getting my business going, and it was kind of spooky just like having no income and watching savings deteriorate month after month, while getting going. And it felt as though, “Oh, my gosh, if the savings goes to zero, I’m dead. It’s like game over.” It’s like, “No, no, no, that just means I have to get a real job. I’ll go do…”

I would always tell myself I would end up doing cheese strategy at Kraft Foods just because I felt like a lot of Bain people went to Kraft after their Bain tenure in Chicago. It’s like, “So, I would be excited about it but I could probably find some joy in cheese strategy but I’d really rather not, so let’s go ahead and make this thing work out.”

Olga Khazan
Yeah, I had a similar thing when I did journalism school during the recession, and then I graduated, like still in the recession, and I was like, my thing was always, “Oh.” I was like, “Am I going to have to do PR for people who pour acid into the eyeballs of puppies,” and like spin that to be a positive thing. And I was like, “Well, you know, maybe the puppies don’t really have a lot of feeling in their eyeballs.” I didn’t end up having to do that.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah. You know, Olga, I will hand it to you. Not once in over a thousand episodes has any guest referenced pouring acid into any animal’s eyeballs. This is a first.

Olga Khazan
Well, you said you wanted it to be memorable.

Pete Mockaitis
It is memorable. It’s fresh. It’s original. I appreciate it. So, understood. Well, let’s round it out. Can we hear about the extraversion as well?

Olga Khazan
Sure. So, for extraversion, this is the simplest one, you just have to get out and talk to people. You don’t have to be good at it. You don’t have to be the life of the party. You, honestly, don’t even have to talk that much. Just go to a group activity that involves other people, preferably one that occurs regularly, and you will gradually become more extroverted.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And openness?

Olga Khazan
For openness, the non-drug kind of option is travel. So, just traveling to cultures where you don’t speak the language, talking to people who you don’t totally understand. That kind of thing can really increase openness.

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

Olga Khazan
So, this quote appears in the book, and it’s from David Axelrod, the political consultant, and what he says is, “All you can do is everything you can do.” So, you can set yourself up for success, you can check all the boxes, you can make all the phone calls, you can work super-duper hard, but then, at a certain point, you just have to let go and hope for the best. And, for me, that was really, I don’t know, comforting, especially as someone who was launching a book.

Pete Mockaitis
And can you share a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Olga Khazan
I like this study, also from the book, where researchers, they asked older people, “Have you changed in the past 20 years or something?” And they were like, “Oh, yeah, I’ve changed in all these different ways, I’m so different now.” But then they asked younger people, “Do you think you will change in the next 20 years?” And they were like, “No, I don’t think I will. I think I’m going to stay this way forever,” which just goes to show, like, we do change, but we think that we won’t. So, I thought that was, like, pretty poignant.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. And could you share a favorite book?

Olga Khazan
I really liked How to Say Babylon by Safiya Sinclair. I thought it was just really beautifully written.

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

Olga Khazan
I use TapeACall Pro. It’s kind of janky, but it’s the best we got. That’s what I use to tape interviews.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite habit?

Olga Khazan
My favorite habit is putting everything I need to do in a given day into Todoist, which is also an app, and that just helps me stay really organized, and I just don’t know where I’d be without it.

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

Olga Khazan
I think people really like the idea that, you know the summer between high school and college, how everyone kind of reinvents themselves, and they’re like, “When I go to college, I’m going to be cool, and I’m not going to be the loser anymore.” I think you should be able to do that whenever you want. It doesn’t have to be when you’re 18.

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

Olga Khazan
I would point them to TheAtlantic.com, which is where I’m a writer, and my Substack is at OlgaKhazan.substack.com. And you can find my book, Me, But Better, wherever books are sold.

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

Olga Khazan
Sign up for an improv class.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Olga, thank you.

Olga Khazan
Yeah, thank you so much. This was fun.

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.