Tag

Mindfulness Archives - How to be Awesome at Your Job

Mar 16
0

1137: How to Build an Unbeatable Mind with Former Navy SEAL Commander Mark Divine

By | Podcasts | No Comments

Mark Divine reveals his strategies for forging mental clarity, focus, and resilience at an elite level.

You’ll Learn

  1. How to fix your broken attention span
  2. A simple 20-second breathing protocol for resetting your nervous system
  3. How to fuel extreme motivation

About Mark

Mark Divine is a former Navy SEAL Commander, entrepreneur, and NYT Bestselling author with PhD in Global Leadership and Change who has dedicated his life to unlocking human potential through integrated training in mental toughness, leadership, and physical readiness.

He owns and runs the SEALFIT Training Center in San Diego, California where he trains thousands of professional athletes, military professionals, SWAT, First Responders, SOF candidates and everyday people looking to build strength and character.

Resources Mentioned

Thank you, Sponsors!

Mark Divine Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Mark, welcome!

Mark Divine
Hey, it’s great to be here, Pete. Thanks for having me.

Pete Mockaitis
I’m excited to hear your wisdom when it comes to having an unbeatable mind and resilience and so much good stuff. Could you maybe kick us off with a thrilling story that tees up some of these great lessons about mental toughness? No pressure.

Mark Divine
Thrilling story. Okay, so I was at SEAL Team 3 doing some parachute training. I jumped out of a helicopter about 1200 feet in the air. I was a second jumper out and it’s a static line jump so it was pretty low. It was nighttime. So I’m popped out and my chute deploys, which is always a good sign, as you might imagine. And I’m thinking, “This is just beautiful evening and I’m doing a dream job,” like anyone would love to be, like jumping out of a helicopter in the middle of the night and the moon is bright and everything.

And I, suddenly, see another jumper coming toward me, which was unusual because, as a second one out, I should have been above this guy, but somehow he must have had an uplift and he was coming right toward me. And, of course, from our training, I knew that for a mid-air collision, you’re supposed to pull your right toggle.

And so I pulled my right toggle, and he’s supposed to pull his right toggle, and both jumpers would then veer away.

Pete Mockaitis
Makes sense. Good standard rule.

Mark Divine
Yeah, that’s the SOP, standard operating procedure. So I pull my right toggle, he pulls his left toggle, and he collides with my chute, and my chute just collapses. Now, mind you, I’m about 1,000 feet in the air then, and that is about one second per 100 feet, so I’ve got about 10 seconds to live.

And so I immediately went into the practices that I had been training, you know, not just in the SEALs, but for four years prior to, through my Zen and through my martial arts training. And that was the default mode for me, which was I obviously very grateful for because it saved my life. So I just started breathing really slowly, calmly, and reciting the mantra.

Pete Mockaitis
There’s not too many breaths with 10 seconds.

Mark Divine
Right. Exactly. I had about six or seven of those breaths on the way down. Probably a lot less than that, actually. And the key point is I didn’t react with fear. So my parachute absolutely collapses. So I go through the SOPs, I’m calming my mind, I’m breathing deeply, I’m remaining positive about this situation, and I start to yank on my risers, which is the first thing you’re supposed to do to try to get them to get air, and I got nothing, no response.

And so I think, “Okay, second order of business here is to deploy my reserve.” So I take a deep breath, calmly. Pulled out my reserve ripcord, punch it, throw it out, and my reserve doesn’t catch any air. Now I’m down to about 300 feet.

And at the same time, I’m just super calm, right? I’m not like freaking out, which allowed me to think, “Okay, maybe I can go back to the main and work that one again.” So I went back to that and started yanking on those risers again.

And about 100 feet above the ground, which is practically nothing, my main chute caught enough air so that when I landed, I landed hard, but I was super relaxed and I did a perfect parachute landing for a PLF, meaning I just rolled out of it and ended up actually standing.

The reason this was interesting is that had I not had the training that I had, I would undoubtedly have reacted with fear. And my heart would have been racing, my mind would have been racing out of control. I wouldn’t have been able to calmly and methodically think through how to solve the problem in the eight or 10 seconds that I had.

And so I walked away without a single broken bone, which is pretty incredible. That scenario, not necessarily like a parachute accident, but I had multiple scenarios like that in my SEAL experience, my SEAL days where, you know, shit hit the fan, everything went wrong. And instead of reacting negatively or reacting out of fear, I was able to calmly deal with the problem.

Now, you might think, “Well, all SEALs are trained this way.” And it is true, right? We are trained to be calm under pressure and whatnot. But to have these skills in the first year of my SEAL career was fully attributed to meditation. And I started a practice of Zen meditation when I was 21. And it’s a big part of really why I became a SEAL. And I could tell that story, too.

But it really had a profound effect on my nervous system and my ability to focus and to just develop clarity under extreme pressure, which I found to be pretty useful as a special operator. Anyway, so I think experiences like that led me to want to delve deeper into those practices, into the development of what I now call unbeatable mind, development of the mind and the body and the spirit, and really plumb the depths of what’s possible for a human being.

And so that’s why, later on, I ended up kind of really refocusing and really going deep into that territory of human performance and the what’s possible for humanity, which is what I do today.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, mission accomplished, sir, and a thrilling story delivered. So you’ve learned a lot about this stuff with regard to mental toughness and staying calm under difficult times. Can you share what’s perhaps the most surprising or counterintuitive thing you’ve learned that when you share with people, they’re a little bit puzzled, like, “Really? Is that true?”

Mark Divine
Well, when I teach SEALs, I have to, like, use stories for the young guys, right? Sometimes I’m training 18-year-old kids who want to be a Navy SEAL. And one of the stories I tell them, and they come in and think, “Okay I’m going to…” they’re going to learn mental toughness and how to be a badass Navy SEAL from Mark Divine and through my SEALFIT team and program.

And they think mental toughness is just about really learning how to be hard, like how to tough it out, how to get through, you know, like my teammate Goggin’s story, it’s like, “Okay, you can always do more, you know? When you hit the wall, you’re capable of 40 times more, I just got to be tougher. Suck it up, buttercup.”

And I say, “You know, that’s actually really flawed thinking,” right? It’s important to be hard when you need to be hard, but it’s also incredibly important to be soft when you need to be soft. And what I mean by soft, because SEALs don’t like that language, like, “I’m not soft.” I say, “What I mean by that is to be really flexible and pliable and relaxed and to learn how to to let go.” So you can interpret that a lot of ways.

So the story I would tell is, like, “If a tsunami is coming, and it was inevitable that it’s going to just knock everything down in this path, would you rather be the mighty oak and strong? Or would you rather be like the the lowly reed and super flexible?”

And they said, “Well, in that scenario, I’d rather be the reed because the reed is just going to get washed over and then it’s going to pop right back up and carry on with its life. Whereas, the oak is just going to get swept away and it’s going to get killed.” See, that’s right.

So mental toughness, the big aha is that mental toughness is actually a balance between the hard and the soft. And, also, if you want to use the Eastern concept, the balance between the yin, which is the hard, and the yang, which is soft. Yin represents forcefulness, you know, get-it-done mindset, pushing through the pain. And the yin, the soft side represents receptivity and creativity and flexibility and taking time to recover and relax.

So one of the reasons that the SEAL athletes that I train are so successful is this principle put into practice through their training regimen, through how they navigate their lives, through how they approach even a single day. You’ve got to balance the hard and the soft, otherwise, you’re going to break.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, could we hear a story of someone who internalized some of these principles and saw cool transformation as a result?

Mark Divine
Every one of the SEALs that I’ve trained have internalized it. They commit. I’ll give you an example. So there’s a guy named Shane. Now Shane recently got out of the SEALs and went to Rutgers Med School. He’s now a doctor.

But he came to me as, like, an 18-year-old, like hardcore, you know, heavy weightlifter and just really kind of beast-mode guy. And most of the guys come, you know, if you want to be a Navy SEAL these days, like you’re already pretty fit.

And what I do through my training, or did, was round you out and give you all the skills of mental toughness, resiliency, emotional control, the softer side. And then I make sure that the physical is going to be sustainable for the year-long training that you’re going to be in.

And what I mean by that is most guys come to me and they’re just, what they lack is not, they’re great runners, they’re great, you know, in all around great shape, but they lack the durability to punish their body the way the SEALs will punish it every single day.

And so that durability is kind of a mixture of like physical stability, usually in your joints, and your spine, as well as the ability to hold your mind on the task over a long period of time, which brings in the concept of yin and yang, or hard and soft.

And so we train them. So I had to train Shane to basically get out of his own way and stop just pushing like everything was a competition. So we call it co-opetition. Everything was a competition in the sense you wanted to compete with yourself and put your best effort in. But if that best effort was going to lead to an injury or degradation of the team, the team’s capacity, then that was flawed thinking.

And so what I taught Shane was that, even in the course of a single evolution and also in a day, like we consider each day like a major evolution, like it was a performance sport just to get through the day. Because when we train for a special operation, you’re training like eight hours a day or longer just to get ready for it. And then when you go through training, you’re training for 12 to 16 hours a day.

So we would do hard things during that, but we would also spend time sitting and just doing what I call box breathing, just breathing for arousal control. And we would spend time meditating and concentration practice to deepen our attention control and our concentration. And I had them doing yoga.

In fact, at first, back in 2006, when I was doing these, teaching these skills, I learned very quickly that I shouldn’t call it yoga because the guys would cross their eyes and some guys are like, “Well, my religion forbids me from doing this.” I’m like, “What?” So I changed it to functional mobility, integrated development, those types of terms I used. And you see those throughout Unbeatable Mind.

But if someone who’s ever really approached development the way from a different perspective, you could say, “Well, that Unbeatable Mind is actually kind of a compendium or a combination or integration of Eastern practices, such as yoga and mindfulness and breath work, with Western practices of peak performance, sports psychology, Western therapeutic depth psychology, and a little bit of just Navy SEAL kickassery.”

So I brought all that together and I had to, like, simplify it and present it in a way that an 18-year-old kid would be like, “Yeah, this is awesome and it really works.” So I taught Shane and these other SEALs how to not just be hard, but to balance that out with these practices that really created a total warrior, right, a warrior that could be calmly sitting in a meditative posture or visualizing their mission, but they’re simultaneously just absolutely alert, and the explosive power that they have is like a coiled spring, right, but it’s locked and loaded. It’s not going to it’s not going to release until absolutely ready, right?

And those are the skills that I think are super valuable for everyone these days. We have a saying that, in the military, we prepared for VUCA – volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity. And back in my day, that was episodic. Like, you go to war and you’re going to VUCA, or, if you’re going to do a specific operation, maybe a clandestine op, the VUCA is basically time on target, or if something goes wrong.

But nowadays, they’re using that term pretty frequently in the business world because everything is changing so fast, and it’s so volatile, and so uncertain, and so complex and ambiguous that the entire business world now is VUCA and it’s persistent, it’s not episodic.

So the skills that I taught the SEALs and I taught through Unbeatable Mind are now looking more more useful, if not imperative, for business leaders and everyday leaders for that matter. This idea that you have to be calm and clear and focused and, basically, be able to declutter all the crap, discern what’s really important, what’s really true to be in control of your thoughts and your emotions at all times so you don’t get triggered into reactivity.

And to be an exceptional teammate because your ego has been honed, refined, polished, set aside, whatever term you want. And you really are recognizing that what’s in your interest is usually what’s in the team’s interest. So you put your eye on the team and help the team succeed. And through the team’s success, you find success and also more purpose and meaning.

So the transformation is multi-dimensional, in other words. We’re transforming an individual to be more capable from a skill perspective, but also more competent, confident, and conscious from kind of the internal awareness and sense of self and perspective lens.

Pete Mockaitis
Very cool. Well, let’s talk about some of the secret sauce, the means by which one pulls off some of these cool things. So holding your mind onto a task for a long time is something you highlight. And that’s something that I hear from listeners that it’s hard in terms of there’s a lot of, you know, pings, beeps, distractions, emails, whatever, or there’s just a task that’s boring, it’s not interesting to them, or it just keeps going and going and going. What are some approaches that we could use to pull that off well?

Mark Divine
It’s a great question. And there’s a lot of simple tactical things, and then there’s the stuff, the training your mind. The tactical things are to really just commit to doing less things and doing them better. So stop multitasking. Multitasking degrades your output by about 40%. So you think you’re getting more done, but you’re actually getting 40% less done and you’re doing a worse job at it.

And multitasking trains distractibility. And people say, “Well, I only do one task at a time,” but if you’ve got your phone near you, and you’re prone to looking at the alerts when they pop in, because you think, “Oh, there’s an important text,” or, “There’s an important phone call,” that’s multitasking.

And that’s training distractibility. So you’re bleeding off your attention, bleeding off your ability, your energy, actually, right, which is going to lead to low-grade motivation, you know, like piercing a balloon and it’s just bleeding out. So things like that. Starting to turn off, like I have no alerts on my phone whatsoever.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, me, too.

Mark Divine
And that was fairly up, finally had to be like, “Get this thing out of my…” I wanted to throw my phone in the frickin ocean one day. I’m like, “I’m tired of this thing.” So I took off all the alerts. And take a vacation from the phone. Every day, you should have that phone out of your sight for a couple hours or longer. And, certainly, when you sleep.

But you also should take a vacation from it like once a week for the whole day, or most of the day. So I think it’s kind of like intermittent fasting with your digital device is a really smart thing because you’re getting your attention back and you’re rebuilding energy that was bled off through that device.

I don’t watch any news or any like network TV. Like, network TV, it’s built today for high-speed mind that is a very distracted mind. Even I heard Netflix, like, I can’t watch Netflix because most Netflix shows and movies are designed for split screeners.

Pete Mockaitis
I’ve heard that, yeah, that’s why they keep repeating things now.

Mark Divine
Yeah, there’s no depth whatsoever. They basically expect that the viewer is not paying attention. And that’s why they’re skin deep and they skip all over the place, and they don’t leave any of the plot for you to figure out anymore, you know?

So if you think you need that playing in the background while you’re doing work, my son does that, and it’s because his mind is trained that it needs that kind of distraction. And it’s unfortunate because it’s bleeding off your attention.

And the other thing is, like, with those shows and also with commercials, they move so fast that they’re training your brain to have that kind of fast twitch reactivity, which is very challenging then when you try to shift focus and do any deep work. Your brain needs to actually slow down and you need to learn how to slow your brain down in order to do the deep work. So I recommend not even watching TV.

Forget about how negative this stuff is and the reality that even through the TV shows and the movies, not just the commercials, but your mind is being trained and conditioned to accept a reality that might not be true. Let’s not even talk about the news, right? That’s just pure mental conditioning and propaganda.

I have a saying that I like to say a lot, but if you’re not training your mind, then someone else is training it for you. Because, essentially, your mind is the sum total of all that you’ve consumed mentally through your experiences, through your reading, through your screens, and through the interactions that you have.

So if you want to change your mind, then you’ve got to change the input, and you’ve got to basically deconstruct all the false ideas and beliefs and ways that your brain works, such as being extremely distractible and operating at like a gamma level when you should be operating at a high alpha, low beta level. So those are the tactical things.

The training aspect of this piece, Pete, is like radically simple in its form but difficult in that it requires a lot of discipline to do. And it’s simply, like I use the box breathing, which I referenced earlier, as a container for a series of mental discipline practices that bring you that calm, focused, clarity and ability to really, really get shit done at a high level without the distractions.

So let me explain real briefly how that works. So box breathing, it’s a practice that I coined back in 2006 when I was training. Remember I said I couldn’t use like yoga terms and, you know? I had learned breath practices through my Zen training when I was 21.

And then later on, I really did get into, like, the traditional eight limbs Ashtanga yoga, which is mostly about meditation, concentration, self-awareness, introspection, and the stretchy bendy physical part is the least of it. It’s a process of transformation. And so I learned breath practices through there, and I knew it was called pranayama.

And pranayama means controlling the life force because breath is life. It’s not just oxygen. It’s life. It’s prana. It’s chi. It’s energy. So when you do breath practices, what you’re doing is taking control of the life force and you’re consciously using that life force to purify your mind, open your heart, and to train your mind to tap into greater powers that every human being has the capacity for.

So instead of calling it pranayama, because I tried to do that for a couple of my classes, and they’re like rolling their eyes and thinking I’m gone off the deep end. So I just said, “Okay, we’re to do a simple practice.” I called it box breathing.

And that is to all the principles that we now know to be so important for breath work, were kind of unknown back in the mid 2000s. But I knew what worked for me and I’ve been practicing and training and seeing the benefits on myself for years. And that is deep diaphragmatic nostril breathing, right?

Nostril breathing, mouth closed, eyes closed if you are in a practice setting. Eyes open if you’re like standing in line, or at the bank or something, you can do this practice. And that deep nostril breathing, we did it in a pattern of five count inhale, five count hold, five count exhale, and five count hold. So it had a pattern of a box or a square, hence, the box breathing.

So if each count is roughly one second, you’re talking about a 20-second interval for one full box breathing cycle, and that’s three breaths per minute. And, over time, when you practice it, if you turn this into a daily practice, and my recommendation or my prescription is 20 minutes in the morning when you first wake up, and 20 minutes in the late afternoon, over time, this has an extraordinary effect just on your physiology.

And here’s what it does. Number one, because you’re breathing through your nose in that slow, controlled, deep, diaphragmatic way, you’re massaging your vagus nerve, and that’s stimulating your parasympathetic nervous system, which is your rest and digest.

That’s the yin function I was talking about. That’s the receptivity, the calming, the relaxation, which is getting your body and your brain into homeostatic balance. So you’re bleeding off all the excess stress that you built up over your lifetime until you get into this perfect state of homeostatic balance.

And the other thing that happens is, because you’re breathing in slowly, five count in, five count out, and holding for five count, when you’re operating throughout the day and you’re not doing box breathing, which you’re not going to be doing that most of the day, you’re going to be doing regular breathing, but your breathing, then, naturally begins to reshape itself into that form of five count in and five count out through the nose.

And we now teach that and we call it tactical breathing as a practice, but it becomes something you quite naturally do. And so that’s six breaths per minute, right? Five seconds in, five seconds out, that’s 10 seconds, times 60 seconds, that’s six breaths per minute.

Pete Mockaitis
So no holds in the other word, in that way. Okay.

Mark Divine
Yeah, right. So during the day, the practice will lead you to this natural nostril breathing, six breaths per minute, which, astoundingly, research has come in on this in the recent last two or three years, that that is the ideal breathing pattern for health and longevity. And we just kind of stumbled on this and we’ve been teaching it since the early 2000s. So what an incredible benefit.

And, again, we’re just talking about physiological at this point. The term we use is arousal control. You’re controlling your arousal response. And your out arousal response is simply your left hemisphere brain is wired to detect threats. And it’s five times as negative as it is positive as a result of that.

So you’ve got this mechanism built for survival that is through the amygdala, constantly sniffing everything that’s happening in your environment, every stimulus, external and internal, and saying, “Is this safe or is this unsafe?” And at least five times more than positive, it’s saying, “It’s not safe. It’s negative.” And when that happens, it activates your sympathetic nervous system, which is your fight or flight or freeze.

And that’s dumping adrenaline and epinephrine and cortisol into your system to get your body ready to fight. Well, the problem is 99% of the time, it’s really not a threat, right? It’s really not a threat, right? So that alert comes in, you think it’s your boss, the phone rings and you see that it’s a creditor, you know, you’re in traffic and someone cuts you off, then that could be a threat, but most of the time it’s not.

But you’re reacting negatively and it’s jacking you up into this sympathetic arousal response. And the problem is that, when your sympathetic nervous system keeps getting triggered like that, then your parasympathetic response atrophies. It quite, literally, goes offline because it says, “Well, you don’t need me.” It’s not getting, you’re just like other channels in your brain. If you don’t use it, you lose it.

So what I found is, even with these young guys that I work with, and every one of the older clients I work with, they’re stuck in hyper arousal. So this simple practice of box breathing will reset their nervous system so that the parasympathetic nervous system comes back online. And then it slowly and, with certainty, bleeds off all that excess stress, and brings the hormones back into balance, and then you’re sleeping better, you’re feeling better, you got more energy, so you’re exercising better everything comes back into balance.

And people, just through this practice, have literally lost excess weight they were carrying just by breathing effectively. It’s pretty extraordinary. So that arousal control has a pronounced and profound physiological and physical effect to bring your body back into balance.

And guess what? Your brain also, because it’s part of your body, comes back into balance as well, and your brain starts to operate more effectively instead of that high gamma distracted state, which is reinforced by your environment, in this culture that we live in, with this fast pace and constant distractions.

It begins to actually function at a slower level, in a mid-beta range, and even when you’re doing the box breathing practices, it’ll drop into a high alpha or mid-range alpha. This has extraordinary benefits now in the mental realm because the subjective experience of that is of more calmness and more clarity because your mind isn’t racing. You get less of the monkey mind popping around, popcorn mind.

So, already, it’s having an effect on training the quality of your mental experience. So the physiology then spills over into the psychology. Well, the second part of this, Pete, is that I asked the students to focus keenly on that box pattern like they’re Inspector Clouseau, and they’re watching every little nuance of it, every little nuance of the inhale with internal eyes like they’re watching it and they’re experiencing it with their internal senses.

You have five external senses and a number of, I’ve read, five internal senses. I mean, internal sight, internal auditory, internal sensations. And so you turn those directly toward the breathing pattern itself.

And we say, “You watch it closely. You can even visualize it if you want.” We have an app called Unbeatable Mind Box Breathing where we it shows a box being filled in as you do the breath, so you can watch that for a while and then visualize it.

Now what that is doing is holding your attention on one thing and one thing only, and that’s this box pattern. So this is like classic Zen training. All Zen training starts out with concentration. In fact, Zen is primarily a concentration path. It’s one of the two primary paths of meditation, are concentration or mindfulness.

What most people don’t realize is that concentration is a prerequisite for mindfulness. And this is why people jump into mindfulness and they fail, because they just simply can’t do it, because they can’t control their mind. They can’t control their attention.

So by holding your attention on the box pattern, what you’re not doing is paying attention to all the other thoughts that come. They’ll still come and go. You’re not like, you can’t not have those other thoughts, because thoughts happen to you.

And you can generate thoughts, but most thoughts, you know, the default mode is thoughts happen to you, 60,000 thoughts a day and 59,500 are the same thoughts that came to you yesterday. They just happen to you. And when you think you’re thinking, it’s when you’re taking a thought that happens to you and you’re grabbing onto it. And then you’re generating secondary-level thought, like rumination or pondering or like planning, that type of thing.

So when you’re doing the box breathing practice, you’re holding your attention simply on the box pattern. You’re ignoring the rest of the default mode network thoughts. But what will happen is your mind, because it’s especially in the early stages, will kind of wander over there and start ruminating or start grabbing on because it gets bored. And so then the practice is to notice that and to bring it back to the box.

And so you’re training now three things. Arousal control, which we already talked about, that’s the physiological. Now we’re getting into the mind, attention control, which is to hold my attention on just one thing. All I’m asking you to do is this one thing, just hold your attention on that box pattern.

But notice when your attention either gets split and you’re focusing on the box pattern and thinking about something, or if you’ve completely wandered off the reservation, notice that and notice it earlier and earlier and come back to the box pattern and hold your attention on the pattern for longer and longer. And we’re shooting for 50% of a 20-minute session.

If you can hold your attention on the box pattern for 10 minutes, you’re actually doing really well. And you’re deepening your powers of concentration. It’s like gathering up all your mental energy, which was being thrown out there like a floodlight, and you’re focusing it like a laser beam, and you get really, really sharp and penetrating mind. That’s extremely valuable.

Pete Mockaitis
And, Mark, when you say 50%, now you’ve got my optimizing, point-scoring, loving self going. I’m curious because, I mean, I’ve done a number of mindfulness-y things. I even have the Muse headband. And so it’ll give you some numbers about how much I was relaxed or whatever. But I’m curious, since I do find that quite motivating, is there a means by which you can see, “Oh, I was 41% last week, and now I’m 43%”? Or  is that unknowable?

Mark Divine
If you want to collaborate on creating a wearable that can track that, I’d be all ears. No, it’s clearly subjective. I’ll give you an example of why, or the reason why I know this to be true. I mentioned that this second part is very similar to Zen training. And I spent four years training Zen, before I went into the SEALs, under the watchful eye of a guy named Tadashi Nakamura, who’s still alive. He’s in his eighties in New York.

He’s a very famous grandmaster martial artist, runs a martial art program that he created called Seido, which means the way of sincerity, and headquartered in Manhattan. So I was in Manhattan after college for four years, got my MBA at Stern School of Business, NYU, and, believe it or not, became a certified public accountant in New York.

But during that time, probably the most momentous thing that happened is I trained under this guy, starting as soon as I got to New York, I just stumbled into it. Since I was 21, I trained with him for four years. And, of course, did all the karate stuff, got my black belt.

But what really transformed me was he was a Zen teacher, had a Zen class every Thursday night, which I joined with about 10 other black belts. And we would then go to the Zen Mountain Monastery up in Woodstock, New York several times a year for these long four- to five-day sits with the Zen monks.

And the basic practice, and he never deviated from this, and you’re sitting on your bench, was simply eyes closed, inhale, exhale through the nose, and count one, but don’t think of anything else. Inhale, exhale, count two. Don’t think of anything else.

And the goal was to get to 10. And, of course, the first few times I did it, I got to 10 no problem, but when I was honest with myself, I was thinking the whole time, and I realize, “Oh, shoot, now this is really serious.” If you think, you have to go back to zero.

So inhale, exhale, “I’m doing great. Oh, shoot, I just had a thought. Back to zero. Inhale, exhale, one. Inhale, exhale, two. How am I doing? Oh, I’m doing good. Oh, I’m thinking. Back to zero.” Or, if you start thinking, your mind is just wandering off the reservation, which is going to do until you train it.

So it, literally, took me, Pete, about a year before I could, with integrity, say that I got to five without any thought, without any other competing thought in my head. And I once asked him about it, and he said that that actually is really good, for students of Zen to be able to have that.

Now we’re talking about roughly a five-count inhale, five count. Back then he didn’t specify. That was my add later on. But we’re roughly talking about just one minute. You know what I mean? Five rounds is only about a minute. Wow, that’s how busy your mind is.

So if you can sit and still your mind for a minute and have no thoughts whatsoever, that is profound. You know, the Buddha said once that you could find enlightenment in a single breath if you’re paying close enough attention.

So I think that’s really, it’s a great mark or target to shoot for. And anyone listening who tries it or has tried this will agree with that, it’s not easy. It’s really not easy because, again, the brain has just not been trained this way. I think there will be a time in the future where we teach these skills to young kids, kind of like they would do for the Panchen Lama or the Tibetan monks for the kids, they start them young.

It’s extraordinarily valuable to do this type of training at a younger age when your brain is still developing. In fact, one of the reasons I think I had such extraordinary benefit with my meditation practice is because I was 21 when I started. And now the male brain doesn’t fully develop until it’s mid to late 20s.

And so, neuroplastically, my brain was just on fire developing all these new pathways, all these new skills through my meditation practice in my early 20s. And it’s completely changed my life. So it’s a valuable, I think, that’s just, you know, I use that 50% just partly to motivate people, but also to help them understand that, you know, just be easy on yourself. This is not easy work. So be kind to yourself, in other words.

Pete Mockaitis
Understood. And so we talked about being able to persist, hold our mind onto a task. I’d also like your take on how to start something. If we’re dragging our feet, we’re procrastinating, we’re, “Ugh, I don’t feel like it,” have some avoidance, do you have any pro tips there?

Mark Divine
Well, probably the biggest pro tip is, whatever you’re going to do, whatever you want to do, make sure that you should do it. And so you say, “What do you mean, Mark?” Well, remember earlier I said we should all be doing less things better. And then the question is, “Okay, good, I agree with that. But what things should I be doing that go in that bucket of less things? What makes it through that wicker?”

Well, it’s the things that you should be doing. And the things that you should be doing are always going to be related to who you are, not what other people think you should be, or should be doing, or what society thinks you should be doing, or what your parents think you should be doing.

And so the most effective way to develop extreme motivation and personal accountability is to get clear on who you are and why you’re on this planet and what you’re going to do about it, your mission. So this is like one of the most fundamental things I teach. In fact, it also is probably the ultimate secret to resiliency and mental toughness is when you’re doing what you know you’re supposed to be doing, there is no quit.

No matter what also comes up to you, you just navigate it with grace because you know it’s there to help you learn, and it’s just something you have to go through. It’s going to make you stronger. It’s going to help you fulfill that mission.

Now my feeling is, unless you’re blessed with this insight at a young age, is that the best way to really get clear about who you are and why you’re here, and then what you can do about it, is through a practice of stillness. Well, guess what box breathing is? It’s a practice of stillness. So we can build that into the practice.

I mentioned earlier, box breathing is a stacked practice. We’ve already talked about arousal control, attention control, concentration. It naturally opens up to mindfulness. And as I mentioned earlier, concentration is a prerequisite of mindfulness.

The part of you that is focusing on the box pattern and that notices, the part of you that notices that your mind has wandered becomes your primary seat of awareness. In other words, instead of identifying with the thoughts, you become identified with the witness of those thoughts, which is the ultimate aim of mindfulness, is to see yourself in the perspective of the witnessing, non reactive, aware human being that is seeing thoughts and emotions happening to you and through you, but you’re not caught up in them. You’re just watching them as if you’re watching a play.

So when you develop that skill, then you’re in a state of receptivity. Every other skill that I’ve talked about is the yang, it’s an active process. But when you get into that witnessing awareness, then you shift it into your contextual mind, your right brain, which is beyond space and time. It doesn’t have the same construct. It doesn’t create sense of separation in space and time. That’s all the function of your left hemisphere, your left brain.

So you’re in your right brain and you’re in that witnessing awareness, and in that space, you become connected to the rest of your mind, your heart, and your gut. And we now know that the heart and the gut are brains. They have neurons, neurological processing, neurochemicals, neurons itself. And so in that receptive space, the right hemisphere is what connects to your heart, mind, and your biome, your gut mind, and your entire enteric nervous system, your entire body becomes a mind and an antenna.

And so in that very calm and receptive state, witnessing state, you begin to get messages from your heart. I mentioned earlier, my meditation led me into the SEALs. I knew nothing about the SEALs when I went down to New York. I was planning on being a CPA and making a lot of money and going into investment banking.

But the longer I sat on that meditation bench, now two years or three years into it, I started to get messages that I was meant to be a warrior and that I was misaligned, that I was heading down the wrong path fast. And it really kind of created like this existential crisis in me.

Like, I thought I had a midlife crisis at 23 years old because I’m like, “Well, how is it that I’m sitting here in a suit and tie and racing toward this MBA, CPA, and to make a lot of money? How is it that I’m supposed to be a warrior? Why am I getting all these signals that I’m 100% misaligned and going down the wrong path, and I’m going to live that life of quiet desperation that Henry David Thoreau talked about?”

Well, it’s because my heart was telling me that I’m a warrior, I’m meant to be a warrior. And so I started to take it seriously. And I started to ask better questions, “Well, if I’m meant to be a warrior, then how? How am I supposed to serve as a warrior?”

And that’s when the world, you when you start getting close to your own truth, then synchronicity happens. So, for me, the synchronicity showed up in the fact that I walked home one night, kind of pondering this existential crisis I was having, and I walked right by a Navy recruiting office, and there was this poster there, and it didn’t say SEALs on it.

It said, “Be someone special,” and it had pictures of Navy SEALs doing what I thought was pretty cool shit, like jumping out of airplanes. And I was like, “That’s how. That’s it. Thank you, universe. That’s how I’m supposed to be a warrior.”

So back to your question. If you lack motivation, it’s probably because what you’re doing is not the right thing and you’re misaligned. Now that, you know, what do you do then is another, you know, that’s a whole different discussion.

Because if you’re misaligned, it’s not going to go away. It’s just going to keep getting worse and worse. Your motivation is going to keep declining. You’re going to get more and more burned out. You’re going to feel more and more disconnected.

And I think a lot of people in our culture suffer from that because they’ve been taught that, “You know, I’m supposed to be a lawyer,” or, “I’m supposed to be a doctor,” or something. And it may be completely off from what they really are meant to be doing in this life. And when I say meant to be doing it, it’s not a job or a career. It’s who you are. But it can be encapsulated in a career.

Like, being a Navy SEAL was a job, but it certainly sparked and allowed me to express the warrior in me. But I always said that my purpose was to be a warrior, not a Navy SEAL Admiral. Because if I had said, “I’m going to be a Navy SEAL Admiral. Well, that’s my purpose,” we wouldn’t be having this conversation today. I’d be still in the Navy probably.

But, no, my purpose was to be a warrior, and that transcends the structure of what you do. It’s really about who you are, what your beingness is. So if you’re doing something that isn’t in alignment with your beingness, then you will experience a little bit of crisis. And crisis literally means opportunity for transformation. That’s what crisis means. So it’s an opportunity for you.

So to face that opportunity and say, “Okay, I hear what Mark is saying and I think I’m in that boat. The reason I’m burning out, lacking motivation, it’s not because I just have a shitty job, it’s because I’m misaligned. So what I need to do is go learn to sit in silence and to open up my mind so that I can hear my heart’s calling, and get a greater understanding and some clarity about who I really am and why I am on this planet at this time so that I can align with that.”

And aligning with that might not be leaving your job. Like, if you’ve invested 20 years or you’re waiting for a pension or something like that and you got a family to feed and a mortgage to pay, I’m not suggesting you just blow it all up, but you could find meaning through some service.

Maybe it’s like you were meant to really work with the earth. You just love it, and so you start a garden or you go develop a community garden somewhere. And it’s going to be different for every single person. And some people, I’ve worked with tons of clients who, like, literally have left their jobs to start their own business.

Or, I think there’s probably like 15 or 20 clients I’ve worked with who have gone off and written books because they really had that urge, they felt that need to really say something, put something out in the world, creatively like that.

So that’s the fastest path to motivation, really, is to discover who you are and what you’re meant to do about it, but that’s a slow path. It can be a slow path. It takes time, it takes patience, and it takes contemplation.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, Mark, we’re having fun here. It’s time to hear about a few of your favorite things. Can you kick us off with a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Mark Divine
What a man can think and believe, he can achieve. That was Napoleon Hill. The first book I read that ever really kind of touched on a greater human potential than what most of us are taught. So Think and Grow Rich. If you haven’t read Think and Grow Rich, that’s a must read. I think I’ve read it about 10 times.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, you mentioned Think and Grow Rich, do you have any other favorite books?

Mark Divine
One of the books that really blew my mind and got me down the rabbit hole of what’s possible for human beings, and it’s the only book that Steve Jobs carried on his iPad, by the way. It’s called the Autobiography of a Yogi by a guy named Paramahansa Yogananda. That’s doozy. I highly recommend that one.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite habit?

Mark Divine
Box breathing.

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

Mark Divine
If you want to move fast and break things and do great things in the world, then you’ve got to slow down and spend time in silence every day, spend time cultivating these qualities that we’ve talked about in the show, and get really clear around who you are and why you do what you do, so then you can go out and bring it to the world.

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

Mark Divine
MarkDivine.com, and Divine is spelled D-I-V-I-N-E, that’s my personal website. Pretty much anything you need is there, or would find interesting. UnbeatableMind.com is my training program, and so we’ve got great programs, great courses, and a community, and even a mental toughness certification that teaches all these principles, and you can go teach it to others or help others.

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

Mark Divine
Yeah, I would challenge you, you, Pete and your listeners, to take up a practice of box breathing and try it out for 30 days. If you don’t think you can afford 20 minutes in the morning, 20 minutes in afternoon, just do 10 minutes and 10 minutes, or just do 10 minutes in the morning. But do it every day for 30 days. And prove that I’m right. Don’t take my word for it. Be that study of N equals one. Prove that I’m right. Even 30 days of daily practice can be utterly transformative. So do that. I challenge you.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Mark, thank you.

Mark Divine
Yeah, hooyah! It’s been a lot of fun. I appreciate you, Pete.

Jan 15
0

1120: How to Stop Living on Autopilot and Choose What Matters Most with Erin Coupe

By | Podcasts | No Comments

Erin Coupe discusses how to redirect your attention from the energy wasters to the things that matter to you.

You’ll Learn

  1. How to stop getting in your own way
  2. The trick to quieting your negative inner voice
  3. Two rituals to keep you in control of your day

About Erin 

Erin Coupe is a speaker, executive partner, and founder of I Can Fit That In, a movement helping high-achievers shift from imminent burnout to fulfillment through intentional living and self-leadership. After nearly two decades in global corporate roles, Erin embarked on a personal transformation that led her to integrate neuroscience, energy work, and spirituality into business and life. Today, she empowers leading professionals to trade autopilot for alignment, and design lives that feel as good on the inside as they look on the outside. Her work challenges hustle culture with a grounded, soulful framework for sustainable success and well-being.

Resources Mentioned

Thank you, Sponsors!

  • Monarch.com. Get 50% off your first year on with the code AWESOME.

Erin Coupe Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Erin, welcome!

Erin Coupe
Thank you, Pete. It’s great to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, it is great to be chatting with you and I’d love to hear, for starters, so founding, I Can Fit That In and writing a book, I Can Fit That In, could you share with us a surprising discovery you’ve made about us humans while walking this adventure?

Erin Coupe
Yeah, I’ve made it about myself, first and foremost, and then with clients. We get in our own way. We have a lot of limitations in our minds by the way of thoughts we have repetitively, which become beliefs. And left unchecked, those do not serve us. Go figure. And in the long run, when we do start to check those thoughts and really reframe those beliefs, we can achieve so much and live a much more fulfilling life.

Pete Mockaitis
Can you give us some top examples for how we get in our own way?

Erin Coupe
Well, I would say one of the top ones is that we believe things for a very long time that are actually not necessarily our own truth. They are things that are picked up along the way through societal or familial structures and systems. And they are beliefs that maybe, at some point, did serve someone in our lives, but maybe they don’t necessarily serve us. So let me just give you an example.

Growing up, you learn when you are a young child that you need to look both ways before you cross the street. That is a belief that will serve you your entire life, no matter where you go on this planet, right? It is something that was ingrained in you and you act upon that every single day, right, whether you’re driving, riding a bike, walking, you name it.

A belief that you’re never going to be good enough to be this or like that or this kind of person or live in that kind of place or whatever, there is absolutely no truth in that. It is not grounded in any sort of reality or fact, but maybe someone has told you that along the way.

Maybe it was a teacher or a coach or a parent or a grandparent or an aunt, uncle, sibling. Someone maybe has told you something like that that is not your truth. And yet if you continue to believe that, it will hold you back from your own potential.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so I’m intrigued. We got one belief that you shared that works great for the whole life. You have one that seems like rubbish nonsense from the get-go. Could you also give us an example of something that, hey, that worked great before, but now it’s no longer working for you?

Erin Coupe
I’ll just give you from just one of my own experiences with this stuff, is that I believed for a long time that there’s no way I could start my own business. Now, the reason I believed that is because I had the stability and the security of a corporate job for a very long time. And while I knew I was onto something and wanting to start my own business based on passions, I also didn’t feel like it was meant for me.

I sort of saw entrepreneurship as something that was unreachable and something that was meant for other people, but definitely not someone like me. And yet, no, that’s not true. Who was I to tell myself that every single day without ever even trying it, right? So, I would let my own mind hold me back for a few years of wanting to start my own business before I actually did it.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s really interesting. And could you elaborate on that notion that, “There’s no way I can start my own business. That’s for other people and not me”? I’m wondering, is that just sort of the open and shut of it, or are there some sort of particular subpoints on the outline of that belief, if you will, in terms of, because I mean, someone might just say, “Well, why Erin?” It’s like, “Oh, I guess there’s no reason. Silly me. And I chuck it behind.” But is there more sort of support under that belief?

Erin Coupe
There’s a lot underneath it. And the thing is I teach this in a lot of my coaching and in my book. If we don’t go inward and actually start to dig as to why we believe something that no longer serves us, or maybe it never has, but it certainly doesn’t serve our future self, if we’re not doing that, then we’re just letting these sorts of fear-based beliefs drive our actions, or as I say, our inactions. And the inactions are even more important, many times, than the actions.

Because if you know that there’s something that you’re after, but then you look at everyone else and go, “Oh, that’s meant for them, it’s not for me,” that’s just a victimhood mindset. There’s no one that’s going to come in and change that for you. It is a personal responsibility to take a look at it and shift it into something that feels more aligned and feels more true to you.

So, at the very bottom or the very root of that belief I just shared with you that I held for some time, it was that I didn’t believe I was good enough to start my own business, and that was rooted in fear that people wouldn’t want what I have to offer.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, and it’s intriguing, and I guess if you dig into it, you’ll find different things at the root. And I’ve heard, I’m thinking about this specifically, if I can’t start my own business, and one is that, “But, boy, I just don’t think I would have the discipline to do all the things if I didn’t have a boss to report to.”

And I think there’s sort of an answer to everything in terms of, well, you could run experiments, get a coach, get an accountability partner, or find a co-working space, or make some commitments, you put some money on the line, whatever. Like, that’s solvable. Or, one I heard often, so in the United States for international listeners, there’s a bit of a health insurance situation, which is tricky.

It can be rather pricey if you’re on your own to take care of health insurance. And I’ve heard some people say, “Oh, well, I got to keep the job because I need the health insurance.” And so sometimes that is just some exploration away in terms of getting some quotes, and say, “Whoa, that is pricey, but it’s not, you know, astronomical. Now it’s a number that could be contended with.”

Erin Coupe
Right, no, absolutely. They are very real realities in any country, right? But that said, these beliefs aren’t just about starting a business or not.

Some of these beliefs are also just like very basic stuff. Like, for example, busyness equals importance, and, “My self-worth is measured on my output and my productivity.” Like, is that true? Well, no, it’s actually not true. You’re worthy, regardless of how much you can crank out every day, right?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Okay. Well, so tell us then, what’s a little bit of perhaps the process of, you notice, “I’ve got this belief that it’s not helpful. It may or may not be true, but it doesn’t seem helpful.” What’s our next step? What do we do with that?

Erin Coupe
Yeah, the first and foremost thing is, you know, self-awareness is something that has to be developed and cultivated. It is not something that is supernatural to us. And the reason it’s not is because we do have this thing called society, right? We are raised by people in cultures that are just doing the best they can with what they know.

So, if everyone is just doing the best they can with what they know, then we are going to be a byproduct, essentially, of what we’re raised within. So, that being said, self-awareness comes down to not to be confused with self-analysis. I’m very, very keen on the fact that people have to understand this is not about analyzing yourself.

What self-awareness is, is knowing your sort of triggers and what makes you emotionally feel distraught or not like yourself, but then also what are some of those thoughts that you have that you don’t really want to have, the ones that really do hold you back or feel like they’re heavy or they’re daunting, but you’re having them repeatedly. Self-awareness is about noticing those things.

And the real key, the key aspect of this is, you know, Harvard Business Review said, in a couple of different research pieces that I found as I was writing the book, 85% of people believe they’re self-aware, but only 15% are. And that was as of a few years ago.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, we’ve had Dr. Tasha Eurich on the show a couple times, yeah, discussing some of that.

Erin Coupe
Yeah. And so, that’s the thing. It’s, like, if that’s the case, and that means we all have some ability to improve, we all have the ability to improve our self-awareness. And if we don’t, like I said in the beginning, if we don’t start to check some of what’s happening inside of us, understanding the emotions and the reactions that we’re having, and then being more aware of the thoughts that we have so that we can start to direct those thoughts, some may call it choose thoughts, right? We do have the ability to choose.

If we’re not doing that, we’re not self-aware. If we’re not noticing our emotions and our triggers and processing that, not necessarily always in real time, but as much as we can. And if we’re not questioning some of the thoughts we have, which turn into beliefs, then we’re not self-aware because how can we be? We’re just running on autopilot reacting to everything coming at us.

Pete Mockaitis
And I’d love your take on the choosing or directing of thoughts. Let’s say, we’ve started to take some steps here. So, it’s like, “Okay, it looks like I’ve got some sort of a belief that my value or worth is contingent upon my output or my success or results.” And then I get a disappointment, I try a thing really hard. I don’t get the outcome I want and I’m bummed. And then, I’m talking to myself in a not so handy way, like, “Oh, I’m a loser. This will never work out.’”

Okay, so he’s like, “All right. Oh, okay. I listened to Erin, and I’m hearing this is some self-awareness I got about me and how I operate and some thoughts that are popping up that I would prefer to choose otherwise, and yet they’re there. I got either some thoughts, there are some emotions. Now what?”

Erin Coupe
Yeah, thoughts create emotions, and emotions create thoughts, so it can be a very vicious cycle, right? I always talk about this kind of like a spiral, you know. And if it’s a funnel spiral and you start up here with a thought and emotion, eventually you’re going to keep going down that spiral.

And that’s why it’s called spiraling, and I’m sure you and your listeners, myself included, have all had that experience of what it means to feel a certain way and then think more of those things that make you feel that way again and again and again.

So, the awareness piece is about understanding when you are super reactionary, and creating a pause, an intentional pause, to take a look at what’s happening. And then this is not something that you can do by talking to another person, and saying, “Hey, what is happening within me right now?” This is something that only you can do with you.

Now people do things like therapy and what have you, in hindsight, yes, that could be helpful. But in your own self, what are you saying to you that you just no longer want to believe? What are you thinking that you no longer want to think? And what are you feeling that you want to shift? The awareness piece is the very first conscious step to making those shifts.

And without the awareness piece, those things are not going to shift on their own. Yeah, you might get a good night’s sleep and feel a little better the next day, but you’re still going to have the thoughts and the emotions and they’re going to keep rising up, right?

So, first of all, emotions are not a bad thing, and a lot of people want to only hold on to the really good ones, the excitement, the joy and the happiness and all that stuff, and they want to shine everything else that they feel.

Now, jealousy, envy, anger, irritability, all of it is just information. It’s just information. Where are you thinking about things that don’t serve you? Where are you believing things that don’t serve you? Where are you putting your energy or your focus or your attention that actually is not moving the needle in the way that you want to, or that is focusing on something that is just negative or not worth your time and attention, right? So, this is where that awareness piece is first and foremost.

And then the second thing is, and I like to give people this tool, one of the things that you can do that is so helpful is start to name that voice that talks to you in a way that you don’t like being spoken to. So, it’s like, would you talk to a friend the way that you talk to yourself in your own head? Would you go tell a friend to believe that they’re not worthy unless they have produced X amount per day? Or would you go tell a friend that they should equate their importance in life or how much they matter based on how busy they are?

Like, no, you would never do that, right? So, talk to yourself in a way you want to talk to. And one of the ways that you can start to make that distinction or delineation is to give that voice a name, that voice that likes to talk down to you. It likes to be mean, demean you, demoralize you. It likes to sabotage you. My own voice, her name is Erica. Lovely name, but it just works.

Like, Erin is who I am in my heart. That is my truth. That is my authentic self. That’s my essence, my core. But Erica is that person in my head who is literally just my ego. We all have one. And she likes to do things and say things that are just not so kind, right?

So, I can notice when she’s speaking up and I can choose to listen and to follow what she says, or I can choose to speak back to her and say, “Erica, I get what you’re doing. I understand. I totally know you’re here. I’m not going to shun you. I’m not going to act like you’re not here. But I don’t have to listen to that right now. I’m going to choose this direction or this thought instead.”

Pete Mockaitis
And I’m curious, how did you settle on the name Erica?

Erin Coupe
It felt like it was very similar to my name and it just felt right, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s like an alter ego.

Erin Coupe
Yeah. I mean, I’ve heard people be like, “Oh, it’s the devil,” “It’s Poseidon,” people give it whatever name they feel some sort of, I would say, a visceral response to most of the time. Some people pick up some terrible boss’ name or something like that, but, whatever.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s interesting. In a way, I think that kind of matters, well, you tell me, because if you think it’s like the devil or a boss that you couldn’t stand, then it almost feels like this is an enemy that must be conquered, pushed against, vanquished, as opposed to a helper, like, “Oh, I see you’re trying to keep me safe or point out some watchouts, and thanks for your input…”

Erin Coupe
I agree.

Pete Mockaitis
“But I want to take a different path here.” So, I don’t know, do we want to dominate the alter ego or do we want to placate them, or what’s our optimal strategy?

Erin Coupe
Well, here’s the deal, it’s never going to go away, right? So, I’m a big friend to it. Like, I believe that we have to accept that it’s there. It has a purpose, right? Like, its purpose is that it likes to create predictability. It likes knowing what is going to happen.

The problem is, there’s no way to know what’s going to happen. It doesn’t know the future. It cannot predict the future. It only can decide and tell you things based on the past. That is very, very important to understand. Why listen to this voice in your head who has no idea what is going to happen?

Now, keeping you safe and all of that, yes, I mean, if you’re near a cliff and it’s slippery, like there’s some real scenarios there about keeping you safe. And so, fear will kick in and you need to listen to that voice. But if it’s just kind of your everyday life and it comes to making decisions and choices in your everyday life, I mean, how much do you need to just stay in that comfort zone, which is many times just familiar, and that’s why it’s comfortable, even though your growth lies outside of that?

We choose sometimes that predictability and that safety zone, that comfort zone, because anything outside of that is scary to our ego.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Very good. Well, you also talk a lot about rituals, so I’d love to get your pro take here. How does that fit in to I Can Fit That In?

Erin Coupe
Yeah, so “I can fit that in” is a mindset shift, essentially. Going from, “I don’t have time for that,” or, “I never have time for myself,” or, “I never have time for the things that matter to me,” to, “I can fit that in because it matters to me,” “I can fit that in because I want to give energy to it,” or, “I can fit that in because I want to receive energy from it.”

This is a complete 180, right? When we tell ourselves that we don’t have time for something that matters to us, all we’re doing is slipping into resentment, deep-seated anger, and a victimhood mindset. Versus, if we start to ask ourselves, “Is it worth fitting in?” if it matters to you, you’re going to find a way.

Just like if you think about, I don’t know, like dating, anyone who’s ever dated before, right? Like, most of us who are adults have. If you really want to see someone, you’re going to find a way to put that into your schedule. You’re going to find a way to fit that into your day, right?

Same goes for how we care for ourselves, how we care for others, how we show up with others, whether that’s our communities, our families, our friends, our colleagues, our clients. Rituals are the answer, from my perspective, on how you start to fit in what matters to you. You ritualize certain things that otherwise may just be an afterthought, or may just be things that kind of fall by the wayside in your everyday life when you don’t want them to.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, “I can fit that in,” as a reframe, is almost the affirmative positive opposite of, “I don’t have time.”

Erin Coupe
Exactly. Not about time management, whatsoever.

Pete Mockaitis
And so then, in a way, it also has, I guess, the contrary or opposing point. If there’s something that doesn’t matter to say, “I don’t have time,” is not really truthful, so much as it’s like, “That does not actually matter to me enough for me to choose to fit that in.”

And so, I don’t know, you probably want to use different language when you’re declining opportunities presented to yourself by others. But if you’re being real with yourself and how you’re choosing to deploy your time on this earth, I mean, that’s what’s really going on there.

Erin Coupe
That’s absolutely right. I mean, that’s why on the cover of the book, there’s a Luna Moth, which symbolizes transformation and growth, and there’s a pair of scissors inside of it, right, that are shown within the Luna Moth.

The scissors mean cut out the stuff that doesn’t matter. Cut out the stuff that drains you, right? That requires radical responsibility. Because a lot of people squander away so much time, energy, and attention on things that literally do not move the needle, do not add value, and bring absolutely no energy to them. In fact, they siphon energy from them.

And until they take stock of what those things are and start to put something else in place of them by way of a ritual that is meaningful, something that feels good, something that adds value to your life, brings vibrancy and vitality, something that delivers energy, which ultimately increases productivity, efficiency, and effectiveness.

So, I’m big on this productivity, time management thing. I’m like, we’ve kind of had this all wrong all along. We’ve been thinking about things about, “How much can I habit stack and productivity hack my way to effectiveness and to efficiency?”

And in the long run, a lot of that way of being, which is oftentimes very autopilot, very reactionary, very routine, what that ends up doing is draining us of the very life force that we’re trying to get more of.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, could you give us some examples of some top things that people do a lot that we might be better off getting the scissors to and cutting right out?

Erin Coupe
Well, first of all, we talked a little bit about it, but the way we talk to ourselves, that’s a big one. In the book, I call it like tending to your inner garden, right, the garden in your mind. If you think about a garden, when weeds grow, what do they do?

They actually keep the nutrients from the flowers or the bushes or the trees that are trying to grow, right? So, we got to get rid of the weeds in our own minds so that the stuff we want to really feed can start to really take root and grow and we can feed those seeds and nurture them.

I would say, there’s a lot of stuff that people do. So, there’s like kind of, I’ll just call it like the top few that I’ve seen over the years, again, myself included. So, for me, it was a daily 5:30 glass of wine for a while, which just became an unconscious habit. I just thought I needed to take the edge off every day, you know, “Oh, just take the edge off.”

Well, a couple of years of that, why didn’t I check myself and say, “Well, why do I need to take the edge off? Edge off of what?” So, starting to be very responsible with myself around, “Why am I choosing that rather than just choosing to be present with my toddlers at the time, and just be in the moment?”

And I needed, instead, to escape or go elsewhere for just a little bit, which one glass of wine would do. But you know, that is a big thing that people do. Substances, of course, that’s a thing.

Netflix or TV every night. There’s nothing wrong with choosing something that is mindless to just let your mind kind of wander and just do nothing, but if you’re going straight from work into managing your household into just letting something like TV news, etc., social media, take over, where is the time with yourself?

Where is the time where you actually get to know what’s happening in your own mind? Where is the time that you actually sit in stillness or allow yourself to be maybe more meditative or more reflective or to journal, those kinds of things, right?

So that’s where a lot of people choose something to keep themselves busy, even though that might not be productive, per se. And then other things, gaming, gambling, stress eating, all that kind of stuff. Those are the major ones that people end up kind of choosing unconsciously.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, and you talk in your book about autopilot, and I think that’s really eye opening because I’ve had this happen to myself in which I end up, you know, I’m clicking all over social media or the news or something. And it is, it’s just autopilot because you know it’s there. And I think if I actually stop and assess like, “What am I trying to get from this experience?”

And so, sometimes I could pinpoint it pretty precisely, it’s like, “Oh, what I want is to be utterly fascinated by something that engages the whole of my attention in an interesting, energizing way.” And every once in a while, social media will do that, it’s like, “Oh, my gosh. Wow, check this out. This is fascinating,” or, “Whoa, look at this article.” And so, every once in a while, that happens, but most of the time it doesn’t.

And so, you mentioned gaming, but I think that I actually have noticed that if I choose to do another activity, it can be recreational, but let’s say I’m going to do, I don’t know, a game like some chess puzzles or a Tetris battle, you know, it could be short, discrete, and accomplish that more reliably, and have an actually more clear exit ramp than, “Oh, this story goes on endlessly and links to many other questions” and delivers what I’m after with a better success rate and lower amount of time. And I feel better afterwards.

So, in terms of, and I like what you said. You could do something mindless but make it a winning mindless choice instead of just a default mindless choice.

Erin Coupe
I love how you framed that and it’s so true, because think about how you feel different after playing Sudoku, or doing a puzzle, or playing cards, or a board game with your family. Think about some of those things that you do versus getting sucked in where your energy is just siphoning away from you.

The mind is literally doing something different. All of the social media stuff is designed, very, very intentionally, to take from you. It’s why it’s free, you know? It’s just taking, taking, taking. Whereas, all these other things, you’re actually giving to yourself. You’re actually pulling energy back in because you’re using your mind in a completely different way that is more reflective and that is more intentional and conscious.

So, yeah, that default mode, look, we’re all going to do it, and it’s there for us anytime we want it, right? There’s no such thing as perfection here. But what this is about is realizing, like, look, if there are things in our lives that we want to go differently, or we want to create, or we want to get after, or we want to achieve, whatever that is, it’s up to us to make these shifts in our day-to-day where we start to feel better or feel different about the choices we make.

And I don’t know about you, but when I feel good energetically, when I’ve slept well, I’ve eaten well, I feel good about the work I’m doing, I feel good about how I’m showing up with my family, like how I’m showing up for myself, all those things, I am capable of so much more and I see way more possibility. And this is true for everybody I’ve worked with.

But when we are the opposite of that, when we’re just completely on autopilot, totally reactionary, I mean, I used to wake up going, “Ugh, another day,” you know, and I look back at that woman and think, “Geez, I can’t even believe that was the same person.”

But that’s the cycle I was in for so long where I just made all these choices that matched that energy. I came at life from that place and nothing ever felt like it was possible. Everything felt hard and heavy and distant, right?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well, I’d love to get some of your perspective work with so many people. When it comes to some of these rituals, what are a few that have been super transformational? Like, a lot of people have found, by spending just a few minutes doing X, Y, or Z ritual, presents a tremendous return on the backside?

Erin Coupe
Yeah, so what I’m not big on is like join the 5:00 a.m. club. Like, this isn’t about a routine. However, what I will say is that people do find, when they give themselves, just themselves, a little time in the morning, they start to feel way different about their lives overall. So, it doesn’t mean it has to be 5:15 or 5:30 in the morning.

But think about, like, if you have children, what time are your kids up and moving? Where else are you alone in your day? Where else do you have time for just you with you? And this isn’t even just about like, “Okay, I’m going to go to the gym,” right, because even that, like you’re doing a different activity, which could be a ritual, it could be something that you’re intentionally putting in your life, very much so.

But where do you get time, just you with you, to set an intention for your day, to think about, “What do I want to feel today? How do I want to experience life today?” And making a choice, “Today I’m going to feel calm. Today I’m going to feel excited. Today I’m going to go into that meeting and I’m going to be this person because I know this is me and this is what I want, or I know that I’m capable of working with this client,” or whatever it is.

But setting an intention is really, really powerful because what it does, neuro-scientifically, it will prime your brain to actually notice that you are being that or feeling that, right? So that’s a really important thing that I see a lot of people do that is a game changer.

Pete Mockaitis
Setting an intention. So, what are the ABCs of pulling that off?

Erin Coupe
Literally, to tell yourself what you want to feel. It is very simple.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Like, in terms of in advance, like, “As I enter this conversation with Erin, I want to feel curious and positive and presence.” It’s like, “As I pick up my kids from school, I want to be optimistic and supportive and patient.”

Erin Coupe
And even, “I will be. I will be.”

Pete Mockaitis
“I will be.” Okay.

Erin Coupe
Yes, affirm to yourself.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, by maybe visualizing myself, doing, feeling those things, or just saying some words.

Erin Coupe
You are more likely to experience those. If you tell yourself that that’s what you will feel, you are more likely to experience that in that moment. So that’s key.

Pete Mockaitis
And I’m also thinking about, we had a Shirzad Chamine of Positive Intelligence, great app, great program. And he says that even the opposite is sort of true. We’re not setting an intention to be grumpy.

But you realize when you step in, “Okay, I’m about to step into a situation where it’s likely that I am going to experience some skepticism, some critiques, some, you know, squinty looks from folks who aren’t quite buying what I’m selling. “And that might make me feel self-conscious, defensive, whatever. My classic saboteurs might respond to that.”

So, just having a heads up, like, “Watch out. This is a thing that can happen. And, instead, I’m going to,” or, “I will feel or respond in these ways,” can be surprisingly very handy to not falling into the traps.

Erin Coupe
Yeah, well, what intention is, essentially, is momentum behind your actions. So, if you are not intentional, you are in a cycle of firefighting all the time, just putting out fires, right? You’re just reacting to everything around you. Instead of being the director or being in the driver’s seat, you’re sitting in the passenger seat. You’re just letting life happen to you instead of believing that it happens through you and for you.

So, these are two very different, again, distinctive mindsets, right? Coming at things from a place of, “This is what I intend and, therefore, it is more likely to happen,” versus, “I’m going to be completely unintentional and just absorb whatever comes at me and react to it as it does,” right? Like, very, very different forces, if you will.

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

Erin Coupe
You know, I feel like you asked me a little bit more about other rituals that people like to practice.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yes, yes, please. Lay them on me.

Erin Coupe
And so, we talked about setting an intention. Another one that I like to mention is breath, I mean, the importance of breath. And not to sit here and teach breath work. But there’s a game changing technique called the 4-7-8 that I have used with hundreds and, at this point, probably thousands of people. And it literally does change the way that you respond, not react to life.

And so, we all have situations, right? We all have things that go on, whether it’s someone that cuts us off on the road, or we get an email from a client that’s not so nice, or our mom texts us something about our crazy brother in the middle of the workday, and it totally derails us or distracts us.

If you breathe in this certain way where you spend about 90 seconds focused on your breath, and you inhale for four seconds, you hold for seven, and you exhale for eight, and you do that on repeat, like six times, like it’s you at about 90 seconds, it is proven that 90 seconds is what it takes for an emotion to dissipate.

Now it doesn’t mean the situation goes away, but it means the emotion that was reacting within your body will start to calm down. And when that does, you can respond from that place. So, think about it, again, if you’ve got children, or if you’ve got some crazy partner, or a crazy neighbor, or whatever it is, something is going on and you just react to that, you’re more likely to spill fuel on the fire, right?

And things are probably going to be tense and stressful and emotional and all the things. Versus, if you can create a little bit of space, 90 seconds for yourself to just breathe through it before you choose a response, then you are going to be able to respond in a way that maybe you wouldn’t be as stressed out, maybe you wouldn’t cause as much tension, maybe you wouldn’t have as much aftermath to deal with from whatever that situation was and how you reacted to it.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, let’s talk 4-7-8 breathing. So, Andrew Weil, I believe, is the popularizer of this. Whenever I watch his videos about this, he talks about my tongue placement and making a whoosh sound. Is that important, Erin?

Erin Coupe
No

Pete Mockaitis
Or is there anything to focus on, like my diaphragm, or just, hey, 4-7-8, it’s all good?

Erin Coupe
There is no right way to do this, just like with meditation. There’s no right way to meditate. Like, I’m very big on let’s remove a lot of the myths and just use what works. The reason this breathing technique works is that your mind is actually focused on the breath. It can’t focus on two things at once.

So, think about it. If you don’t focus on something when something triggering is happening, what is your mind going to focus on? The emotional reaction. That’s what it’s going to focus on. It’s going to think and think and think and overthink about that reaction to the emotion that it’s experiencing, versus allowing yourself to breathe through that experience will bring the energy down your body where the emotion will move through you. You will experience the emotion, but you won’t overthink it because you’re focused on something different.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Thank you.

Erin Coupe
Yeah, you’re welcome.

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

Erin Coupe
Probably one of my favorites is that, “You don’t have to be great to get started. You just have to get started to be great.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Very good. And a favorite experiment or study or piece of research?

Erin Coupe
One thing I’m very interested in is the stars, the universe, the planets, you name it. And there’s a guy named Gregg Braden who kind of calls himself a scientist turned, I forget, like spiritualist or something. But he explores kind of the metaphysical, kind of quantum mechanics side of things and how the universe works from a very human perspective.

He’s got, like, seven books, and I, very kind of slowly, dig through them. And I like to learn, I like the experiments that he works with in these.

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

Erin Coupe
Well, meditation. I’m an intuitive person and I’ve developed that intuition over time. So, one of the things I use is, before I say yes to working with a new client or yes to an opportunity, I meditate and I ask my intuition basically, “Does it serve me? Is it aligned with me? Am I meant to serve the people that I’m being asked to serve?” Those kinds of questions.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And is there a key nugget you share that folks really resonate with and will quote back to you often?

Erin Coupe
I would say, “You are the architect of your life” is something that I use a lot, and also, “Your well-being is a reflection of your mindset.”

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

Erin Coupe
ErinCoupe.com, so that’s E-R-I-N-C-O-U-P-E.com. I am also at @authenticallyec on Instagram.

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

Erin Coupe
Rituals, not routines. Input rituals, fit in the things that matter most to you, and cut out the things that are draining you out of obligation or just autopilot routines.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Erin, thank you.

Erin Coupe
Thank you, Pete.

Dec 15
0

2025 GREATS: 1045: How to Stop Overthinking and Build Mental Resilience with Joseph Nguyen

By | Podcasts | No Comments

Joseph Nguyen discusses the hidden relationship between thinking and suffering—and offers a powerful framework for achieving peace of mind.

You’ll Learn

  1. How to spot and stop negative judgments
  2. How to PAUSE overthinking
  3. How to beat procrastination with SPA

About Joseph

Joseph Nguyen is the author of the #1 international bestselling book, Don’t Believe Everything You Think, which has been translated into 40+ languages. He is a writer who helps others realize who they truly are beyond their own thinking and conditioning to live an abundant life free from psychological and emotional suffering. When he’s not busy petting his three cats that he’s allergic to, he spends the rest of his time writing, teaching, speaking, and sharing timeless wisdom to help people discover their own divinity from within and how they are the answer they’ve been looking for their entire lives.

Resources Mentioned

Thank You, Sponsors!

  • Vanguard. Give your clients consistent results year in and year out with vanguard.com/AUDIO
  • Quince. Get free shipping and 365-day returns on your order with Quince.com/Awesome
  • Taelor. Visit taelor.style and get 10% off gift cards with the code PODCASTGIFT
  • Cashflow Podcasting. Explore launching (or outsourcing) your podcast with a free 10-minute call with Pete.

Joseph Nguyen Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Joseph, welcome!

Joseph Nguyen
Thank you so much for having me, Pete.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to talk about your area of expertise. Your book, Don’t Believe Everything You Think, has just taken off tremendously. Congratulations.

Joseph Nguyen
Thank you.

Pete Mockaitis
And the title is so good. It’s so funny, Amazon auto-completes if you type, “Don’t believe everything you think.” It’s like, “Nice.”

Joseph Nguyen
Yeah, that’s a great advertisement, I guess, and a great slogan just to have all over Amazon. It’s what it should be, instead of all the stuff that we don’t need to be buying.

Pete Mockaitis
Don’t buy many other things here.

Joseph Nguyen
Exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so can you take us through the journey a little bit of how you and your relationship to thought and the insights that you discovered came to be in your own personal lived existence?

Joseph Nguyen
A lot of what I’ve come to realize comes from, this is not new information. This has been here for eons, thousands of years, from everyone and so many different countries, cultures. I mean, I draw influence from Western philosophy, Eastern philosophies, Zen Buddhism, Christianity. So much cognitive behavioral therapy. Like, you name it, there’s probably some sort of influence there.

But I think the only time that I was able to actually integrate it into my life was when I sort of hit a rock-bottom moment where, after I really tried as much as I possibly could all the options that were available to me, like, I mean, there’s therapy, there’s acupuncture, acupressure, there’s going vegan. I did all these things and it didn’t really quite work until it forced me to look internally.

I was trying to do everything to change everything outside of me, so changing people’s behaviors, how they viewed me, how they judged me, wanting and trying to earn other people’s approval, love, all these sorts of things, all these attempts at finding what could only be found within. So, I think the moment where I kind of hit rock bottom, which was a point in my life where, I mean, I had a business that was growing. It was going great. I accomplished a lot of the goals that I had, but at the cost of my own mental health.

So, every single day, I was just so chronically anxious, borderline depressed. I was probably depressed. I just wouldn’t admit it to myself that that was it. And I just didn’t know when the next client was coming from. I didn’t know if we’re going to have enough money, food. My partner, now wife, she had a lot of physiological illnesses.

So, she had gastroparesis, and so she couldn’t eat, got a feeding tube, hospitalized multiple times. All of that was happening concurrently with, basically, my business falling apart. Then my business partner and I split. I went 50,000 into debt at around 21, 22 years old. And so, all of that happened within a span of about a year.

And so, that was probably the rock-bottom moment that I hit, where I thought, after accomplishing everything that I wanted, that it would give me this internal peace and joy, but it did the exact opposite. And that was because I didn’t realize where peace comes from, and it doesn’t come from manipulating the environment or other people or the world to whatever I think it needs to be. It comes from releasing that desire, that need to change everything outside of me except myself.

So, rock bottom, I think pain is a great motivator and catalyst for change. Most people, like myself, probably wouldn’t change if it wasn’t absurdly painful. So, I’m actually very grateful for those experiences, but it’s quite difficult to go through it. But that was the genesis of the turning point for me.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, thank you for sharing that. That’s heavy, and it’s a lot. And I think what you’re articulating dead on, we just chatted with Anne-Laure Le Cunff, who discussed the arrival fallacy, this notion, “Ah, yes, when this happens, then it’ll be smooth sailing. I’ll be happy. I’ll be free. I’ll be at peace. All my problems will be solved.”

And it just doesn’t work out that way. And sometimes we don’t believe it until, as you’ve said, we experience that pain. We have arrived and go, “Uh-oh, shoot, these feelings are still there, that lack of peace is still there.

Joseph Nguyen
Yes.

Pete Mockaitis
So, what then? What happened next?

Joseph Nguyen
So, it basically forced me to look inside, because I was trying all these modalities to help, and they did help to a certain extent, but it didn’t really change that much. And it puzzled me, because I thought to myself, “I surely can’t be the only one going through this. So that’s when I started looking for a lot of different solutions.

And then I started questioning my own experiences, and other people’s experiences too, which is I think most people, if not every single human, goes through extremely difficult and challenging events and times or even traumas.

And so, I started to ask myself and run thought experiments, where it was like, “If two people, have similar traumas, how is it possible that one person can spiral downwards and fall into a deep depression and isn’t really able to get out of it, while another person who has gone through something similar is able to make amends and make peace with the past and become okay with what happened?”

And not only that, but become empowered by what happened and go on to want to help other people not experience the same thing. How is that possible if we can’t go back and change the past? So, neither one of them went back to alter the events in any single way, which means it’s not the events that was changed, but their own thinking about what happened to them.

And so, that sparked an epiphany, which was, our emotions don’t come from external events, they come from our own thinking about the events, which is our own judgments, our own opinions, our own criticisms about the event, or even ourselves and our own thoughts about whatever happened. And so, that was what kind of made a giant light bulb moment for me, which is like, “Oh, my gosh, there’s no way to change the past, but I can always change the way that I’m viewing it. Is this helpful or hurtful? This sort of incessant nonstop negative judgment of life, of myself, of other people?”

And so, that spawned a whole slew of new questions for myself, which was like, “Why do I do that? Why do I constantly wish things were different? Why do I constantly tell myself that I’m not enough, not good enough, not smart enough, not whatever it is, and repeating these stories to myself?” And I never stopped to ask myself, “Is that actually helpful? When has overthinking helped me?”

And so, I realized then that overthinking doesn’t solve problems, it creates them and exacerbates them. And I just didn’t understand that I could just not judge, negatively judge, the things that are happening in my life or myself. That was an extremely liberating moment for me. And, I mean, most of the thoughts that we have, we have over 60,000 thoughts in a single day. How is it possible that every single one of those thoughts is true? There’s no way, right?

And if it were true that we are our thoughts, what happens to the thought that just passed our minds, that just left? We’re still here.

Pete Mockaitis
I’d disappear.

Joseph Nguyen
Yeah, yeah, yeah, we’re still here, right? So, that means we are something beyond our thoughts. Same thing with emotions. If we are our emotions, if I am depressed, or if I am anxious, if I am those things, or I am happy, what happens when those things pass, anxiety or happiness? I’m still here. How is that possible?

So, we are not our thoughts and we are not our emotions then. We are something greater than that. And that is the feeling and the space that I sink back into to finally find some peace because I realize that everything in life is transient, including our thoughts. And if we are the common denominator that is still here, then those fleeting things can’t be possibly us. That was the eye-opener for me.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Wow, there’s so much good stuff here, and I’m just drawing all kinds of connections. I recall I was in a therapy session once, and I posed the same question, and it’s like, “So, is it true that, like Nietzsche or Kelly Clarkson says, that which doesn’t kill you makes you stronger?” Or, is it the opposite experience in which, “No, I had a bad thing happen to me and I’m somehow less strong, weaker, not as capable as a result of the experience”?

So, it’s like, “So which is it? And under what circumstances, and why, and what’s the distinction?” And he didn’t give me the easy answer, “That’s one of the greatest questions of therapy.”

Joseph Nguyen
He was amping you up, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
So, yeah, I mean, and that is one of the assertions, I believe, of cognitive behavioral therapy or of Shakespeare. There’s nothing good or bad, but rather thinking makes it so, and our cognitive distortions or our thoughts about things and judgments shape the emotional reactions and experiences we have. And we had a Navy Seal Alden Mills sharing some similar notions, like, “Hey, is this thought helpful or hurtful? All right. Well, then let’s bring some energy to the helpful thoughts.”

And we got some real wisdom there. It’s, like, we cannot be our thoughts, we cannot be our emotions, because our thoughts and our emotions are ever shifting and changing. And that sounds wise and familiar. Is this coming from a wisdom tradition? Or is this a Joseph original?

Joseph Nguyen
Oh, no, nothing is original from me. Creativity is just a blend of a lot of different parts and combining it into something seemingly new. But it’s all from Eastern philosophy, some Western, right, some Stoicism, Zen, Buddhism, in that there’s tons of psychology in there, right? Like cognitive behavioral therapy uses so much of this in terms of questioning our own thoughts, our own emotions, trying to figure out the root cause of all this. So, all of that, I definitely stand on the shoulders of many, many giants from centuries or millennia.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, you put a stake in the ground, and it seems like you’ve got some real conviction here, that it is, indeed, our thoughts and judgments and overthinking, over-thoughts, about a situation that is the source of our depression, anxiety. And I’m thinking, is it the only source, the primary source? Are we sure about this? It sounds true-ish, but what’s our best evidence for it?

Joseph Nguyen
Yeah, that’s a great question. So, in terms of emotions, there’s no way to really prevent “negative emotions.” Those will always come and go. What I propose in the book is less about preventing them, but to reduce the time spent experiencing those emotions. Because a lot of times, we are replaying and ruminating on memories of the past, and bringing them into the present moment and reliving that experience from a certain vantage point of it, which may or may not be true, I don’t know.

But if it makes us feel a lot of anxiety or depression or resentment, is that possible for us to change? And if so, then how? And so, in the book, I started to realize, like, let’s say there’s a lot of people in veteran hospitals or recovering in Alcoholics Anonymous or tons of people who have been through so many different things. How is it possible that there’s people that have gone through something similar, but then have different results?

So, it’s like, “What are they changing? They’re not going back in the past to do that, so they’re changing something now in the present moment to alter their experience.” And so, that’s where the book is coming from, which is like, “What can we do now that things have happened, and becoming more resilient, right?”

This is building and training emotional regulation and resilience rather than a prevention of emotions in totality, because a lot of times, sometimes emotions are very helpful. They help to protect us. They help give us signs. All emotions are messengers to help us and to show us what we need to pay attention to. That’s all emotions are.

But if we believe them to be the only source of truth and an ultimate conclusion about ourselves, then that’s where we run into trouble. And, let’s say, if we’re really depressed, then we might think about ourselves, and say, “We’re not enough. We’re not lovable. We’ll never find love.” These sorts of beliefs about ourselves, which is what I call “thinking” or “negative judgments,” those things are not necessarily that helpful and they harm us more than help us.

And so, is it possible to let those things go? And if so, how? So, for me, why I use the word “thinking” in particular is because it’s the best word I could find to explain the phenomena of just ruminating negatively on something. So I make a distinction in the book, thoughts versus thinking. A thought is a neutral observation or intuitive prompting about an event that happened.

Pete Mockaitis
“I would like to eat some food.”

Joseph Nguyen
Yeah, that is a thought.

Pete Mockaitis
I mean, that’s a desire.

Joseph Nguyen
Yeah, that could be a desire.

Pete Mockaitis
A thought and a desire.

Joseph Nguyen
Yeah, and then thinking, on the other hand, is a negative judgment about an event or your own thoughts. So, let’s take a scenario.

Pete Mockaitis
“I’m overweight. I shouldn’t eat all this food.”

Joseph Nguyen
Right. See, “should” is a great indicator that we’re thinking, right? That’s usually a preliminary word that we use before we judge ourselves. And so, an example of this is, let’s say it’s raining outside. A thought is, “It’s raining.” That’s a neutral observation. Thinking, on the other hand, would be something like, “Why is this happening? Why does this always happen to me? This rain completely ruined my day. I’m always unlucky like this.”

All of this thinking about the thought of it raining is not as helpful to us and is the source of all this suffering. So, let’s say we did have something planned and it rained and it ruined our day, that’s unfortunate, right? Like, we had plans, we planned for it, but is it possible to not let it ruin our entire day? Is it possible to let go of this emotional suffering within a few minutes?

And so, that’s why I say that’s the thinking part of whatever is going on. And although we can’t change the event or even our initial thought of it, we can always let go of the thinking or judgment about whatever is going on, and that’s where the power lies. For example, thoughts have no power over us unless we believe them to be true, right? So, the belief in the judgment is what causes this suffering and is the difference.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes. Well, now, as you use the word “thinking,” I am wondering if we could have other, do some other thinking, or judging about the rain in a positive fashion, in terms of, “At last, the crops will be nourished by this rain,” or, “You know what, let’s just frolic like a child.”

And so, in your definition, would you still call that thinking even though it has maybe a positive vibe or feeling associated with it?

Joseph Nguyen
I think there’s two different categories of what we can call positive thinking. On one hand, it could just be an intuitive prompting. An example of that would just be, “It’s raining. Let’s go outside and play in the rain.” It doesn’t necessarily have to skew towards, “This is the best thing that’s ever happened in the entire world.”

See, like where we can over-exaggerate positive thinking is equally where we can fall short of it because who’s to say it is the best thing in the entire world? Because if it’s raining here, it might flood somewhere else. So, it’s very difficult to just, ultimately and conclusively, say if this is good or bad. And so, if we are overly positive about something, then it opens us up for, “Well, what if that might not be the case?”

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, so it might feel good, but we’re not necessarily getting closer to truth or accurate representation of reality.

Joseph Nguyen
Correct, yeah. And we can skew both ways, and that’s when positive thinking can then open us up all sorts of cans of worms. But that’s not to say that positive thinking doesn’t work, and I don’t want to say that at all. It certainly does work, but the question is, “Is it sustainable? And is it based in reality?” So, if we observe the rain, and we’re like, “Oh, look, it’s like nourishing the crops,” like that’s a neutral and true observation, like it is feeding the plants and all that stuff, and we can feel good about that.

But what I also observed as well was, once we let go of the negative judgment about things, we are naturally at peace. We are naturally more joyful. We skew towards that way. And if you look at children that are a couple years old, they skew towards happiness. They’re smiling, they’re happy, unless they’re like hungry or like something is physiologically wrong. They’re generally just very positive, very happy, laughing all the time.

And that’s our natural state as well if we don’t negatively judge whatever situation is going on. If we let go of worrying about the future or ruminating and resenting the past, that is our default state. So, you don’t necessarily have to try to be positive. And other examples I love giving is, think about or recall a time where it’s like you were very anxious, or stressed, or overwhelmed. Like, how much thinking is going on?

Pete Mockaitis
Plenty.

Joseph Nguyen
Too much, right? But then if we flip and invert the question, recall a time when you were your happiest, in a total state of flow, and you lost track of time, how much thinking was going on then?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, it’s, I guess per your definition of thinking, like, very little. Although, if you’re in a flow and doing a thing, you naturally have to—

Joseph Nguyen
You’re having thoughts.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, you’re having thoughts, but you’re not thinking in the Joseph-sense of the word.

Joseph Nguyen
Right, you’re not negatively judging the thoughts or experience that you’re having. You’re just in it, you’re fully immersed. That’s when you lose a sense of self, actually, and that’s when we are no longer psychologically suffering. And some people in the spiritual community will call this like the death of the ego. It’s when you just dissolve and you feel at one with everything. That’s what flow is and why a lot of times people will say like that’s this ideal state for humans to be in.

Athletes experience this very often when they’re in and playing a game during a competition. They’re not so much thinking about what’s going on. They are just intuitively responding and being there. And that’s like our ideal state that we’re in. Actually, the times that athletes think too much, they tend to miss the shots, or think too much about something and overanalyze, and that’s when they freeze and choke when they could have definitely done something different.

The same thing is true for our own lives. The more that we constantly just ruminate, judge, and criticize ourselves, other people, events, we tend to freeze, and go into fight-or-flight mode, and act as if our life really is in danger, and operate from a place of fear rather than love and expansion and joy.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Joseph, we’re getting near a zone I’ve been pondering for a while, which is, you talk about when we feel a sense of peace or joy and flow, contentment. And I’ve been reflecting on the distinction between contentment and boredom. Because, in terms of an external view of the situation, they’re almost the same.

It’s like, “Nothing’s really happening right now.” And yet, when we feel bored, we’re restless, agitated, and, I guess, negatively judging, “I don’t like that nothing’s going on right now,” versus when we are content, it’s like, “Ah, nothing’s going on right now.” And that feels restful, rejuvenating, restorative, and we like and appreciate the space that we find ourselves in.

So, I guess that is perhaps one of many examples of the judgment we bring to a situation, shaping it, but I’d love your pro tip. If we find ourselves bored and would rather be content, what should we do?

Joseph Nguyen
Yeah, great question. So, boredom is not necessarily a bad thing. Boredom, a lot of times, is the birth of creation, new things, new hobbies, new thoughts, new ideas. If we’re not bored a lot of the time or sometimes, then we’re actually just recycling a lot of the same material from the past and constantly going and we feel like we’re in the hamster wheel. So, boredom is not necessarily bad. And when you see kids get bored, what do they do? They invent.

Pete Mockaitis
They invent some games.

Joseph Nguyen
Exactly. That’s what humans do. When we’re bored, we create, and so it acts as a great motivator. But where things can go a little bit south is when we say, “Oh, instead of being content with what’s happening right now,” let’s say we’re on vacation, “I should be working. If I’m working these hours, I could make so much more money or I have all these emails I need to get to.”

You’re not able to actually enjoy yourself in the present moment, and you’re constantly thinking about the future and all these things you need to get done, that’s when the “boredom” or what we would call that in that case, that’s when it robs our peace and takes it away from us is when we think we need to be doing something else other than what we’re currently doing or experiencing.

So, in that case, what I love recommending to do is just to schedule those things and just, like, if you’re on vacation, like that’s the boundary you need to draw for yourself. But if we don’t draw boundaries, it will creep in. All of these beliefs that we have, all these negative judgments that we have about ourselves or what we should and shouldn’t be doing, they will come in unless we set that boundary for ourselves.

Like, “If I’m on vacation, my phone is off,” or, “I’m not taking emails or whatever it is.” But without those, they will creep in and they will start to fester and become uncontrollable at that point. And this is really a practice of presence more than anything else. Are we able to do and give our full attention to what is happening right now in front of us? Or, are we distracted and thinking about something else in the meantime?

Peace comes from being present. It is a natural byproduct of doing so. The more that we are able to do that, that’s the happier we will be, for sure.

Pete Mockaitis
I’m reminded of the Scientific Journal article, “A Wandering Mind is an Unhappy Mind,” which, I think it was Kahneman and company looked at just that in terms of empirically checking with people and, “Hey, what are you doing? What are you thinking about?” and seeing the results. So, that’s that there. When you say boundaries, my first thought is sort of external things, like, “I will not be picking up my smartphone,” “I will not be answering emails on vacation.” Do you have some thoughts for boundaries we have, like with ourselves and our own thoughts or experiences?

Joseph Nguyen
Those are the most important boundaries because we can change everything external but if we don’t change anything internally then we’re still going to suffer a lot emotionally. So, some of the most important internal boundaries that you so aptly alluded to are the judgments that we’re making that is really at the core of our emotional suffering, of our resentment towards others, to ourselves.

If we don’t draw that boundary, and say, like, “We will no longer judge ourselves in this light,” then we’re going to keep doing it. And we do this mostly because we’re not even aware that there’s an option out, that, “Oh, we can just not judge everything that’s going on? Like, there’s a way that, as I go about my life, I don’t have to constantly narrate and say this is good, this is bad, this is right, this is wrong, this should be happening, this shouldn’t be happening?”

We just aren’t taught that. Most people just don’t know, and I wasn’t aware of that until I was basically smacked in the face with it and had to hit rock bottom to find it. But that is probably the most important boundary to set, which is, “Can we let go of the judgments that we’re having about ourselves, the world, whatever’s happening? Are we able to enjoy it as it is?”

When we go about life, most of the time we judge everything, “This person’s good,” “This person’s bad,” “This person’s evil,” “This person’s not,” “This is beautiful or ugly.” Like, there are so many things that happen. But when we walk in nature, like how many of us are saying, “This flower is ugly. This flower is like beautiful,” or, like, “This tree is crooked or what”?

Like, we just observe and enjoy nature as it is rather than constantly pick apart every single thing that we think is wrong with this tree. As soon as we do that, that’s when we suffer. So, nature is a great way to reset because of that and it brings us back to our true nature, ironically, of just being aware and giving our full attention to someone without judging them. That’s what the basis of love is, unconditional love, which is to fully accept someone as they are without wanting to change them, without wanting them just to be something different.

Full acceptance of that is where peace comes from. This not only goes for people, but for situations, anything. That is the root of unconditional love. And use that thought experiment for yourself. Like, when do you feel most loved by someone? When they’re constantly judging you, nagging you, saying you should do this, saying you should be different, you should be better, you should be doing any of these things, or when they fully accept you as you are without judging? That is the goal of everything.

Pete Mockaitis
I love that. My children would say, when we do hugs and kisses in flying blanket mode.

Joseph Nguyen
Exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
But it falls into a subcategory of what you’re describing. I like that notion about the narration that we’re just doing it all the time, and it might not even seem too intense, like, “I’m such a stupid idiot.” But even just like, “Oh, oh, oh, the sun is kind of in my eyes. Oh, it’s kind of hot. Like, oh, I’m getting tired.”

Like, there you are in nature, you might not be condemning the tree for being crooked, but we are narrating and judging – well, I am often – experiences they’re in, in terms of like the air temperature or the illumination that is not perfectly aligned to the preferences I have in that moment.

Joseph Nguyen
Yeah, and that’s where all the suffering comes from, is just what we wish would happen, what we want the world to be. But peace comes from letting go of what we wish everything would be and accept it for how it actually is. And, yes, same goes for anything in life, people, even ourselves. In AA, like one of the first steps is acceptance. The five stages of grief, acceptance is what you’re trying to go for.

And in CBT, acceptance of whatever emotions we’re feeling is also a core component of the whole process. So, at the end of it all, like all these different modalities are pointing to the same thing, which is, “Can I let go of the judgment that I’m having of whatever is happening and going on?” Once we’re able to let go of that thinking mind, the fear-based mind and the judgmental mind, then we’re able to find a little peace.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, you said that we have the option to stop the narration, and I am a frequent Audible listener who likes to pause my audiobooks. And I understand you’ve got a little acronym you can walk us through.

Joseph Nguyen
Yes, exactly. So, this acronym, I tried to make it as actionable as possible in terms of, I mean, what we’re doing is letting go of the judgments. That’s the whole purpose of this. And so, this makes the act of letting go a little bit more tangible. So, the first letter in the acronym is P, which is pause. So, pause and take deep breaths, and you don’t need to get fancy with it. Just take five deep breaths. There’s no specific way you need to do it.

But it’s been scientifically proven that taking deep breaths allows us to lower our heart rate, to regulate our emotions, and to come back to center. So, just do that in the beginning of anything, because it’s really hard to regulate or do anything or make decisions or come back to yourself when we’re in a fight or flight mode. Next is A, which is ask ourselves, “Is this thinking useful?” Just like the other psychologists you mentioned before, like, “Is this thinking making me feel the way that I want?” If not, the next step is U, which is understand that you have the ability to let that thinking or judgment go. We always have that power. We may not be able to control our thoughts, but we can always control our thinking about the thoughts, and therein lies our entire power to change our experience of life.

S is, say and repeat the mantra, “Thinking is the root cause of suffering.” You can use any mantra in this matter. Another one, for example, would be, “I let go and choose peace.” Any mantra rooted in truth will work, and it needs to be short and memorable. What mantras do is that it’s very difficult to think of two things simultaneously.

So, what it does is it focuses your attention on this one thing, which means you can’t be thinking about the future or ruminating about the past. So, it forces focus and attention on something that is true. So, repeating that for maybe 30 seconds to a minute is really all you need, and that will slow the thinking mind. It will calm things down significantly.

That’s the basis of Transcendental Meditation as well, what a lot of the Tibetan monks use to go beyond the mind and to achieve oneness with the universe. But we take it here and you’re able to use it in real time.

Then E, the last step is to experience your emotions fully without resistance. So, we’re not trying to bypass the emotions by just not thinking about it. We’re actually removing the judgment of the emotions because what we resist persists. So, if we are resisting the anxiety, it usually gets worse, which is why a lot of times, when someone has a panic attack, they’re much more prone to more panic attacks simply because that’s how, it’s just like self-fulfilling, so to speak.

It’s like once we experience something and don’t want it to happen, we just put up a wall and just constantly resist it. But in physics, an object in motion will stay in motion, right? But also, for every force, there’s an equal and opposite force happening. So, if you have this force of an emotion and you’re resisting the emotion, that emotion is going to constantly be there and it’s going to stay stuck unless it passes through your system.

Anything that is stuck creates a significant amount of suffering. So, for a slightly more comical and light-hearted example is, like, if you eat a lot of food and it doesn’t pass through your system, what happens? Like, a week, a month passes, it’s going to be very painful and it’s going to cause all sorts of issues.

The same thing is true for our thoughts and emotions. The more that we hold on to our thoughts and don’t let them pass through, the more it’s going to cause us a lot of emotional suffering. Thoughts, emotions, all these things are transient and meant to pass through us, just like water flowing through a river.

As soon as a river is dammed up, that’s when wildlife begins to dwindle, fish begin to die, all these things start to happen. But as soon as the river is able to flow, that’s when life begins to flourish. That is the same thing for our own lives. So, letting thoughts and emotions pass through us without resistance. So, the way to do that is to create space within ourselves, to honor and hold the emotions, and to not judge them.

See them as another entity, like our inner child, or even one of our own children, and to hold them within our hearts, and to give them space to be there, without judging them, without saying, “You shouldn’t be here. Why are you here again?” That’s what we say to these emotions a lot of times, like, “Why are you still here, anger?” And we’re angry at the anger, and so it just compounds.

But as soon as we say, “Oh, you’re welcome here. You’re not an enemy. It’s okay.” As soon as you give children space, time, and attention, things begin to settle and we’re able to regulate. The same thing is true for all of our emotions and it passes so much more quickly when we’re doing this rather than kind of putting up a wall. So that’s the whole entire process.

Pause, take deep breaths. A, ask yourself, “Is this thinking helpful or useful?” U, which is understand you have the ability to let that thinking go. S, which is say and repeat the mantra. And E, which is experience your emotions fully without resistance.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Thank you. And if I may put some numbers into this, so you had a mantra, I counted, it was about seven words. Is that around the length that we’re thinking about? Like, if you push it to 20, it’s outside mantra zone?

Joseph Nguyen
Probably. It just creates so much more thinking and you’re probably going to have to try to remember, “Am I saying it right? Did I forget a word?” And you’re trying to make it as simple as possible so that you don’t have to overthink it.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And then with experience, I think when I’ve resisted, historically, it’s been almost out of a fear that, “If I begin to experience this sadness, this sorrow, this grieving at this deeply unfortunate thing that has occurred, then will it swallow me? Will it persist for a long time and impact the things I need to do this day, this week, this month?”

And so, I can sometimes push away. But you say with the water flowing situation, and that which we resist persists, we are better off experiencing it fully. I mean, Joseph, for those fellow aversive pushers, away-ers…

Joseph Nguyen
Master push-up-ers, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
…how long are we in for a rough emotional experience if we allow it to hang out?

Joseph Nguyen
I will say shorter than if you’re resisting it.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Joseph Nguyen
So, the irony in it is that, when we’re pushing it away, we think that we’re not dealing with it but we’re still suffering. We’re constantly thinking about it, we’re wishing it were different, we’re ruminating on it constantly, but what we don’t understand is that when we just allow it to be there, that it passes so much more quickly.

I think neuroscience is saying now that it takes about 90 seconds for an emotion to be regulated in our bodies. The only reason why it’s prolonged most of the time is that we begin ruminating on the event or judging the situation that happened, and it resets that time period. So, we’ll go 90 seconds, and right before that, we think about it again, we’ll judge it again, and it keeps prolonging the cycle.

And so, it only takes a few minutes to do this and to let go, and it’s not like the entire emotion will go away, but the intensity of the emotion will be drastically reduced than what it was when we were resisting. And, over time, as you build the muscle of emotional resiliency and emotional regulation, it becomes a little bit easier to do every single time. And the threshold in which we become overwhelmed is significantly expanded, so we can take on a lot more in life.

We’re able to do a lot more. We’re able to endure a lot of these events with a lot more grace and a lot more love. But, yeah, it’s definitely scary to kind of allow these emotions to come in because we think that we might not be able to handle it. We might crumble under the emotion. But you have to ask yourself, like we were saying before, like, “Am I my thoughts? Am I this emotion?”

And think about all the difficult times and trauma that you’ve been through, and all the trauma, like, you’re still here. So, I mean, you’re greater than every single emotion that you’ve ever experienced. And the same is true now and it will ever, and it will be true forever because those things are not us.

Pete Mockaitis
Joseph, beautiful stuff. Could you share any final thoughts before we hear about some of your favorite things?

Joseph Nguyen
Yeah, I would run micro-experiments with yourself. Like, you actually don’t have to believe anything that I’m saying, ironically, like the book title. Test it out for yourself. See if it’s true, if thinking is the root cause of your emotional suffering. And the way that you can test this out is to try to suspend judgment, negative judgment about yourself, your own thoughts, your own emotions, external things, people, circumstances.

See if you can suspend judgment for about seven days. That’s it. You don’t have to do a month. You don’t have to do a year. Just see if you can let go of the judgments that your mind is creating, for seven days and see how you feel afterwards. If it significantly improves your emotional well-being, awesome! Continue doing it.

And if it doesn’t, that’s completely okay, and you can find another modality that might work for you. But at the very least, try it and see what happens. And it is only through our own lived experience that you know what truth is, rather than just taking someone’s word for it. So, that’s what I would encourage everyone to do, and just see for yourself.

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

Joseph Nguyen
One of my favorite quotes is actually in the book, which is from Jonathan Safran Foer, which is, “I think, I think, I think. I’ve thought myself out of happiness one million times, but never once into it.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, very good. Very good. Thank you. And a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Joseph Nguyen
The neuroscience study that I was alluding to before, I don’t know exactly what experiment it was.

But they were studying about how long it takes for our emotions to actually pass through our systems, and it was about 90 seconds, which was mind-boggling to me because I thought it would take, you know, like multiple minutes or at least like, I don’t know, 10 minutes, for like, if you’re angry of something, like it feels like it takes way longer than 90 seconds.

So, that was a profound shift in me to realize that, “Oh, my gosh, like it is possible to let go of a lot of these emotions quite quickly.” And it’s actually important to follow this. You don’t have to follow this process, specifically, but you can follow any process, but it’s really important to do it in real time as you’re going about your day.

So, this process is, if you’re experiencing something in traffic, or your boss says something, or your parents say something, or your friends says something that creates a negative emotional reaction within you, it’s important to use the process then rather than only use it in the morning or in the evening like meditating, right?

That way you are actually strengthening your emotional resiliency throughout the entire day. It’s a little bit easier to find peace when you’re alone in your room and it’s dark, your blindfolds are on, there’s like Zen music, right? It’s like a little bit easier to find peace there, but the true test is, “Are you able to find peace while also, like let’s say your boss is screaming at your face, or making fun of you, or your friends are doing something that you don’t really approve of, or your parents are criticizing you in front of other family members?

That’s the time that you’re truly tested for, if you’re able to find peace. And this is something that you can use during those times rather than you need to bust out like a 30-minute meditation just to find a little bit of alleviation. So, that’s one other thing I would do, too.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, thank you. And a favorite book?

Joseph Nguyen
This one’s very interesting, maybe slightly controversial, but it currently is Outwitting the Devil by Napoleon Hill.

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

Joseph Nguyen
I like to use this particular framework on just when I’m doing work because I have issues, a lot of times. Just like procrastinating like most people or just putting off things that I know I need to be doing. And one of the most effective things that I’ve done is to follow the SPA methodology, which is just, if I’m overwhelmed by something, just take the next smallest possible action, so SPA, and doing that.

So, if it’s, “I need to write another book,” that’s a pretty big task, pretty scary, daunting, and it’s like, “Am I able to bust out a whole book in this one session?” Now, that’s typically what the mind thinks of. But if I break it down to the smallest possible action, like, “Am I able to just open the Word document? Can I just do that?” And I’m like, “Yeah, I can definitely click on Notion and open it up. I can definitely do that.” And if I still can’t do that, “Can I just sit at the computer desk?”

Pete Mockaitis
Yes.

Joseph Nguyen
So just keep breaking it down.

Pete Mockaitis
“Sit up from the couch.”

Joseph Nguyen
Yeah, sometimes it’s hard, right? Sometimes it’s really hard. And so, it’s okay if we need to break it down into those baby steps, but that works wonders for me. So, it’s like, “Can I write one sentence?” And when I write one sentence, I’m going to want to write another sentence, like I’m just going to go.

And, lo and behold, there’s like a couple dozen sentences, a couple hundred words pass, and that was way more progress than if I force myself sit down and write my book. That’s a big task. So, smallest possible action is what I like to default to when I am frozen in procrastination or analysis paralysis.

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

Joseph Nguyen
Our emotions don’t come from external events, but from our own thinking about those events. That is something that people just didn’t really realize, and so it’s like a massive epiphany moment for them. Other ones are just like, “I didn’t realize that I could just stop judging. I had no idea I could just not listen to that incessant negative critic in the back of our minds, and that I could just be and just be present. I don’t have to be thinking about something else or doing something else. I can let go of whatever that incessant chatter is, and to finally find a little bit of peace.”

Yeah, that big epiphany was like, oh, yeah, during the times that we are happiest, like we’re not really thinking about anything else, or ruminating on anything. We’re just there, fully engrossed by the moment. And so, those are probably like some of the biggest nuggets that people have gotten.

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

Joseph Nguyen
Probably, I would say my website and newsletter, so JosephNguyen.org, J-O-S-E-P-H N-G-U-Y-E-N.org. You’ll be able to find like my newsletter there, sign up for it. I do have a YouTube channel. I don’t post that often but a lot of the content there is evergreen. All my socials are just itsjosephnguyen, I-T-S and then Joseph Nguyen. Those are probably the best places to find me, but email is where you’ll be able to be up-to-date on any new projects I’m working on.

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

Joseph Nguyen
Let go of the fear of being judged. The more that we’re afraid of being ourselves, to be awesome at our jobs, the less effective we’ll be. And sometimes being ourselves will ruffle a few feathers. People will judge us one way or the other, even if we’re playing conservatively and not really showing that much at work.

People are still judging us anyway. So, we might as well be judged and criticized for being who we truly are rather than masquerading ourselves behind something else. And the more that you’re able to be yourself, the more awesome you’re going to be at your job, the more that you’re able to lean into your own gifts, your own talents, your abilities. All of that is usually held back if we’re afraid of what other people are thinking.

So, stand up for yourself, do what you believe is best for the work that you’re doing, and definitely defend it, and to not just let it be pushed over. Because at the end of the day, if you’re coming from a place of love, generosity, true selflessness, and wanting to do the best that you possibly can, there’s no shame in that at all. So, if you’re going to be criticized, definitely be criticized for doing what you believe is right, rather than hiding behind and playing it small.

Pete Mockaitis
Joseph, beautiful. Thank you.

Joseph Nguyen
Thank you so much, Pete. It’s been such a pleasure and so much fun with you. I love your energy.

Dec 01
0

1114: How to Achieve Authentic Thriving with Jon Rosemberg

By | Podcasts | No Comments

Jon Rosemberg discusses how to break free from limiting beliefs and reclaim control over your life.

You’ll Learn

  1. The difference between succeeding and thriving
  2. How to shift out of survival mode with A.I.R.
  3. How to spot and challenge limiting beliefs

About Jon

With over two decades coaching Fortune 500 executives and global teams through deep transformations, Jon Rosemberg has learned firsthand that growth begins when we courageously reclaim our agency. His personal journey, forged by immigration, loss, and career reinvention, inspires him to blend hard-won business insight with cutting-edge research to guide others toward greater meaning. Driven by his belief in human potential, Jon co-founded Anther, a firm dedicated to transforming uncertainty into possibility. He previously led high-impact initiatives at Walmart, Procter & Gamble, Indigo, and GoBolt.

Jon holds an MBA from Cornell University and a Master of Applied Positive Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania, where he serves as an assistant instructor. Originally from Caracas, Venezuela, he now lives in Toronto with his wife, Adriana, and their two sons.

Resources Mentioned

Thank you, Sponsors!

  • Vanguard. Give your clients consistent results year in and year out with vanguard.com/AUDIO
  • Quince. Get free shipping and 365-day returns on your order with Quince.com/Awesome
  • Taelor. Visit taelor.style and get 10% off gift cards with the code PODCASTGIFT
  • Cashflow Podcasting. Explore launching (or outsourcing) your podcast with a free 10-minute call with Pete.

Jon Rosemberg Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Jon, welcome!

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

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

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

Pete Mockaitis
I think the answer is yes.

Jon Rosemberg
Yes. And what does that feel like?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jon Rosemberg
You got it. Yes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jon Rosemberg
Marshall Rosenberg. Yes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jon Rosemberg
Yes. Yes. A resounding yes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite book?

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

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

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

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

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

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Jon, thank you.

Jon Rosemberg
Thank you, Pete. I appreciate it.

Nov 03
0

1107: How to Confront Your Inner Saboteurs with Shirzad Chamine

By | Podcasts | One Comment

Shirzad Chamine offers quick but powerful strategies to rewire your brain for better results.

You’ll Learn

  1. Why you can’t think your way out of stress
  2. How to take command of your mind in just 10 seconds
  3. How strengths become saboteurs

About Shirzad

Shirzad Chamine is the author of the New York Times bestselling Positive Intelligence. Shirzad has lectured on Positive Intelligence® at Stanford University and has trained faculty at Stanford and Yale business schools.

Shirzad has been the CEO of the largest coach training organization in the world. A preeminent C-suite advisor, Shirzad has coached hundreds of CEOs and their executive teams. His background includes a BA in psychology, an MS in electrical engineering, and an MBA from Stanford.

Resources Mentioned

Thank you, Sponsors!

  • Vanguard. Give your clients consistent results year in and year out with vanguard.com/AUDIO
  • Quince. Get free shipping and 365-day returns on your order with Quince.com/Awesome
  • Cashflow Podcasting. Explore launching (or outsourcing) your podcast with a free 10-minute call with Pete.

Shirzad Chamine Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Shirzad, welcome!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Shirzad Chamine
Exactly right.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Shirzad Chamine
Aha. Okay, good.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pete Mockaitis
Lovely. And a favorite book?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Shirzad, thank you.

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