Mindset Archives - How to be Awesome at Your Job

Pete Mockaitis
Alan, welcome back!

Alan Stein, Jr.
So great to be with you, my friend.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to be chatting. You’ve got some goodies for us in your book, Next Play. And I understand that this idea came from a book to you long, long ago. Tell us about that.

Alan Stein, Jr.
Yeah. In the year 2000, I remember it vividly, I had just graduated from college and I read Coach K’s first book, Coach K, the Hall of Fame, legendary, iconic former men’s basketball coach at Duke University. He was the one that actually coined the term “next play.” Although, I think even with his admission, this concept of focusing on the present moment is rooted in stoicism, which has been around for, obviously, thousands of years, but Coach K is the first that I had ever heard coined the actual term “next play.”

And Next Play, if I was going to summarize, it would be a framework for stop worrying about what just happened and learn to focus on what’s right in front of you. Stop worrying about what you wished happened and focus on the reality of what actually happened, and to stop worrying about what was and focus on what is.

And he really designed it as a way for his players to not worry about the missed shot or the turnover or the referee’s missed call, but to dial into the exact next play of the game and let go of the previous one. And what I find interesting is when I read that book in 2000, I, conceptually, understood the concept of next play. I mean, it’s pretty straightforward and logically it made sense to me.

But, truthfully, Pete, I didn’t have the emotional maturity at the time to actually integrate it into my life. At that time in my life, I still allowed myself to get emotionally hijacked by some of the most trivial annoyances and inconveniences that we all experience in life. I would find something to the akin of the Wi-Fi cutting out or a barista messing up my order. And that put me in kind of a downward spiral, in a bad mood, you know, for sometimes hours.

So, it wasn’t until maybe 10 years after reading the book that I was able to actually start adopting it and implementing it in my life and really saw the power of how focusing on the next play is such a game changer.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s pretty juicy, Alan. So, I hear you that, yes, this is an idea that, Alan, makes good sense. Okay. Well, we’ll all nod our heads and say that sounds like a wise, proper prudent thing to do. And yet, actually executing it took some time for you to pull off. So, tell me, were there any groundbreaking insights, distinctions, nuances, breakthroughs that helped you actually put it into practice?

Alan Stein, Jr.
Well, what really put it into practice was, 10 years after reading it for the first time, I started working at a high school here in the Washington, DC area, which is where I live, DeMatha Catholic High School, which is a really renowned school for high school basketball, one of the top programs in the country. And their coach at the time was a gentleman named Mike Jones.

And Coach Jones actually put “next play” into practice with everything we did at DeMatha. I mean, he did it with the players. He did it with the coaches. He talked about it on the court. He talked about it off the court. He talked about it with the small things. He talked about it with the big things. I mean, it was really woven into the fabric of the DeMatha basketball culture that we always focus on the “next play.”

And he even had this hand gesture, almost as if he was flipping a page or flipping the script and say, “All right, we’re on to the next play. That play is over. We’re on to the next one.” And it was, I guess, through pure immersion of watching him implement it every single day with our program that I started to implement it in my life.

And it took a little bit of time. It’s one of these things that it’s really hard to just change the snap of a finger, but as I started to implement it in my life and as I witnessed the DeMatha program utilizing it, again, I could kind of see the power and the reframing tool. And then like anything else, just the pure repetition, the more I started to use it, the better I got at actually implementing it.

And here, you know, 26 years after reading about it for the first time, I’m slowly getting a pretty good grip on my ability to move to the next play. And with most of the things that I preach and teach, both on stage and on page, I’m not coming from a place of mastery. I won’t sit here and look at the camera and tell you that I always immediately move to the next play.

But what I will say is I do so more frequently and more often than I have at any other previous time in my life. And I’m able to do it in both the short term and the micro, and I’m able to zoom out and do it in the macro with the bigger transitions that we experience in life. And as I said, it’s just been so profound for me personally.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s intriguing. And this reminds me of a recent guest we had, Shirzad Chamine, who used to run CTI, the Coaching Training Institute, and he’s got a great program called Positive Intelligence. And he makes the point a few times, which seems striking, that he says to linger in a negative emotion for more than one second is sort of unnecessary, problematic, kind of undue suffering that limits our effectiveness, which is just striking, one second. Wow, that’s quick.

But that’s a kind of a similar notion, in terms of rather than a barista messes up your order, you go into an emotional spiral of yuckiness for hours to just say, “Okay, that happened and that was a bummer. Maybe, what can I learn from it? What’s my takeaway? What’s my action? What’s my response?” And, it’s sort of, you know, rock and roll, move on.

I’d say it does seem easier said than done at times. And I actually really liked what you had to say about the physical gesture of flipping a page because I’ve felt that in a couple of my emotional state worlds of gestures, like, “Oh, I’m grounding my feet firmly on the floor. I’m feeling my toes. Okay. All right. I’m sort of cleared up.”

Or, let’s say someone says, “Let’s take a step back,” I’ll actually physically move my whole shoulders and neck back, it’s like, “Yeah, you’re right. I was looking way close at this thing, and I’m going to take a bigger picture perspective,” and that gesture actually is sort of associated and attached with that. Or, I think of sometimes, like, literally shaking it off, like a dog shaking water all off of his body is beneficial.

So, I think some of this physical stuff, for me, is a handy tip to actually executing this. I’d love your thoughts on that and more tips and tactics for actually pulling it off.

Alan Stein, Jr.
The physical and the psychological are intertwined. It’s hard to compartmentalize and separate the two. Our thoughts drive our emotions and our emotions drive how we feel, and those feelings actually resonate and show up in our bodies. And I actually use the same one you just mentioned about feeling my toes and keeping my feet grounded on the floor, as well as the one that I just gestured, which is the next play.

So, I think having any type of physical anchor to connect to these mantras and frameworks is a very helpful reinforcement tool, in general. And you said something else there, really the heart of next play is how you process and how you choose to respond to everything that’s going on in the world around you. Really, next play is not only a tool to help you focus on the present moment.

It’s a tool to make sure that instead of reacting emotionally or reacting impulsively with some of our most primal feelings, instead, we decide to respond thoughtfully and respond purposefully. And that’s the whole point of next play, is that you don’t control the event or circumstance that just occurred, but you always control your response to it.

And I want to encourage others and invite them on the same journey I’m on, which is to do less impulsive reacting and do more thoughtful responding. And where this is most helpful is when things in our lives don’t go our way, when our preferences aren’t met, when things don’t happen the way that we wish they’d happen.

Well, how do you respond then? How do you behave then? Because I’m a big believer, not only will you improve your performance and productivity when you learn to bounce back quickly when things don’t go your way, but I know from firsthand experience, you’ll actually improve your enjoyment and fulfillment in life when you don’t let those negative thoughts linger and you quickly move on to the next play.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. Well, so can you give us some extra perspectives on how to do less impulsive reacting and more thoughtful responding?

Alan Stein, Jr.
The most important part, and this is the part that I struggled with the most, especially when I told you when I first read about the concept, this is the part that got me stuck, is you have to learn how to slow down. You have to learn how to take a breath, take a beat, take a pause, especially when something doesn’t happen the way that you want.

Because it’s in that space, between the stimulus and now your response, that you get to architect and determine how you are going to respond. When we don’t allow for that space or we don’t take any time, then our primal emotions just take over and we’ll react impulsively.

For me, personally, regardless of what the situation is, I’ve noticed that I still have the same thoughts and visceral feelings and physiological responses to when things don’t go my way. I just don’t allow them to drive the car. I don’t allow them to dictate my behavior.

So, a perfect example, I mean, if I’m sitting in traffic or somebody cuts me off, I still feel the primal urge to get angry, to want to honk my horn, or maybe give someone the finger. I’ve just learned to take a beat between actually doing that, and then thinking, “What would be a more appropriate response? What is a response that is more in alignment with the man that I’m trying to become? What is a response that I would want my kids to see me behave as and be more proud of?”

So, for me, it’s all about taking that split second to gather yourself, compose yourself, have some poise, and then be thoughtful about your next play. I want everyone to be less reactive and more responsive. And if you do so, it will help you in your relationship. It will help you in your output and performance and productivity at work.

And, like I said, it will help you just live a more enjoyable, fulfilling life because now you’re no longer allowing what the world does to dictate your mood and to dictate how you feel and dictate your behavior. We’re much more thoughtful in our responses.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I like that a lot. And so, within that slow down, pause, gap moment, you inserted a question, and I think that was lovely in terms of like, “What would be a response that I would like for my children to do?”

And so, I think that’s huge in terms of reorienting where the pathway your brain is naturally going down, it’s like, “Oh, what an idiot. What’s his problem? Hey, does he not see? Does he not care that there was a danger in lives on the road? This jerk, whatever.” It’s like your brain can just go, one thought leads to the next, to the next, to the next.

But when you can ask that question, you’re really redirecting where that is headed in a powerful way. So, I’d love to hear any of your other favorite questions in that mix there.

Alan Stein, Jr.
Well, just so you know, those things that you just said there, and I know you were saying them a little bit in jest, but those are the exact same things I think when someone cuts me off. But as I said, the most important part about next play, and the most important part about our ability to regulate our emotions is separating how we feel and what we think from how we behave and how we respond.

So, I still think those things and that’s still my primal reaction. I just don’t allow that to overdrive and take over and dictate how I behave. So, that pause is where I can insert that question. And the funny part is, it may feel like you’re pausing for an eternity, but it’s usually only a second or two. It’s a couple of heartbeats. It’s really not that big a deal.

No one is saying that when someone cuts you off in traffic that you have to sit there and meditate for the next 20 minutes to think of a thoughtful response. All I want you to do is to feel your feet on the ground and have the awareness in the moment to say, “Hey, I can’t control that that person cut me off, but I can absolutely control how I respond to it. And I want to start choosing thoughtful responses.”

And I find that when we do that, we also start becoming kinder, more empathetic, compassionate people because, as you also just alluded to in your example, when you take a moment to pause then other questions come to mind, like, “What’s going on in this person’s life? Where are they going where they’re in such a hurry that they’re going to be a danger on the road?”

And then it’s a reminder to me that I don’t know anything going on in anyone else’s life at any given moment, especially a stranger in another vehicle. Maybe they have an emergency they’re trying to get to. Maybe they’ve got a sick child in the back of their car. You don’t know. And once again, reframing that allows more compassion and kindness and empathy to enter my heart, which means I’ll have softer, more appropriate responses.

But back to your original question of some other questions we can ask. I try not to label the questions or thoughts or feelings I have as good or bad, or as right or wrong, because it’s completely subjective and it’s completely contextual. What I try to do is I just ask myself, “Is this helpful? Is this a helpful question to ask?”

And my definition of helpful is whether or not it’s increasing my power or is it giving my power away? So, lots of times when things don’t go my way, my initial visceral reaction is to think, “Well, why is this happening to me? This isn’t fair. This sucks.” And once again, that means now I’m a victim of circumstance and environment.

Instead, since those questions are not very helpful questions, when things don’t go my way, I’ve trained myself to ask more helpful questions, like, “What can I learn from this? What can I gain from this? Even though things didn’t turn out the way I’d hoped, what is the next play that can actually help move me forward? How can I use this to actually learn something or make me better?”

Those are much more helpful, empowering questions and they put me back in the hypothetical driver’s seat because now I’m in control. Like I said at the very beginning, I don’t control events and circumstances. I always control my response, and that’s where our power comes from is in the response.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, Alan, this is so good in terms of the, me, me, me focus. I mean, you mentioned sick child, and this brings me back to a story. This, literally, happened to me. I was in Chicago, I think it was after a date, just hanging out, chit chatting in the car. And then we see someone “parking” in what was totally not a parking space.

And so, it’s just kind of like in the middle of things, and we’re like, “What are you doing? That’s not a parking space. Can’t you see there’s no lights? What’s up with this guy?” So, we were like running our mouths about this, and then they very quickly hustled, while picking up a child from the back seat, and then went at a quick pace into the nearby building, which was a children’s clinic, and we were just that oblivious.

And so, I mean, you used that as an example, and it’s not just sort of like an extreme thought exercise, but like, “No, literally, that happened.” And we both felt so ashamed, like, “Oh, geez, we’re terrible people. They genuinely have a sick child at the children’s hospital, and we’re just mocking their parking job. Okay. Well, I hope they’re doing okay.”

Alan Stein, Jr.
Absolutely. Well, I sure appreciate you sharing that and that hopefully has stuck with you.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah!

Alan Stein, Jr.
I’ll give you two rather recent examples for me. Now, one, you’re privy to and your audience isn’t, and I certainly don’t say this to make anyone feel awkward, but as you know, my mom passed away two weeks ago, and my father was married to her for 52 years. I mean, that was his person. So obviously, he’s going through some hard times right now, trying to adjust to his next new play in life, which is, “How do I exist without the person that’s been my sidekick for 52 years?”

And the reason I say that is, for that first week in particular, I mean, my dad was an equal combination of devastated and overwhelmed. I mean, I can’t imagine what was actually going through his mind. And if he was navigating the world and maybe was driving and didn’t put his blinker on, he was driving a little bit slow, or was taking longer to order something when he got up to the front of a restaurant, I can understand why people behind him would be really impatient.

Like, “Hey, this old guy is in my way. Come on, Gramps, let’s go.” And yet, if they knew that a week prior to that, he had lost his person of 52 years, my guess is they’d be a little more patient. They’d have a little more tolerance and a little more understanding. And the reason I bring that up is we should all navigate the world as if those things are happening.

Another example, on a slightly more positive note, I have twin sons that are turning 16 in March, so they’re doing their driver’s ed right now, and I take them practice driving. And when I take them to practice driving, I mean, they’re brand-new drivers. They drive a little slow. They’re a little awkward with the blinker. Sometimes they can’t remember who has the right-of-way.

And we were at an intersection the other day and cars behind us were honking because my son should have taken the left but he was so nervous because there was another car coming. And same thing, I have a feeling, if the car behind us honking knew that there was an almost 16-year-old learning to drive for the first time, they’d be more patient, they’d be more tolerant, and they’d have a little bit more empathy.

And I use both of those as examples because I’m also the person that gets frustrated when there’s an old person in my way or a young person that doesn’t know how to drive. And it’s really helped me soften my responses because I just picture my dad or I picture my sons when I’m in something that is making me feel impatient, and just a reminder that most people are doing the best they can with the tools they have. And as human beings, we should be compassionate to that.

And I have to remind myself that, in that moment, I might be the one that’s being frustrated, but there’s other moments where I’m the one causing someone else’s frustration because we’re all fallible as human beings and sometimes we’re not at our best selves. So, the more patient and tolerant and accepting we can be, I just think we’ll live more fulfilling lives and we’ll create stronger and forge more connected relationships.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I like that so much in terms of, like, living as though that were the case, which reminds me of, which we’ll link to the show notes, there’s a nine-minute YouTube video, which took audio from a David Foster Wallace commencement speech, “This Is Water,” discussing this very concept that we’re so wrapped up in our stuff that we don’t stop, pause, think about the other context there. And sometimes it really is true. And even if it’s not, living that way is handy.

But while we’re talking about generosity or kindness, your chapter three is entitled, “Tell Yourself How Great You Are.” Why is that useful, Alan?

Alan Stein, Jr.
Well, I think the most important conversations we ever have in our lives are the ones we have with ourselves. It’s the little voice in our head. And if anyone watching or listening right now is thinking, “I don’t have a little voice in my head,” well, who do you think just said that to you? Like, we all have the inner voice and the inner monologue.

And I really want to encourage folks, while we’re on this kick of compassion and tolerance and empathy, to learn how to start talking to ourselves in a more kind and compassionate way. I do a lot of work with really high performers.

And it’s been my first-hand experience, as well as the experience of working with these folks, that many times, high performers can be very critical of themselves, can be very judgmental of themselves.

And when they don’t perform to the level that they believe they’re capable of, they actually start to beat themselves up, figuratively speaking, of course. And I want folks to start learning to talk to themselves with the same compassion and kindness that you would talk to a loved one, or that you would talk to a child, or that you would really talk to anyone else.

You and I are friends, Pete. If you called me up after a really hard day, things didn’t go well, you had a couple of podcast interviews, and you had some tech issues, and one of the guests didn’t show up the way that you had hoped, and it was just kind of a tough day for you, as your friend, the last thing I would do in that moment is to be critical of you, is to make certain assumptions and be judgmental and beat you up and make you feel worse.

As your friend, I would want to create a safe space where I could just say, “Hey, man, I’m sorry that today didn’t go well. I know what that feels like. It doesn’t feel good, but just know, man, I believe in you and I know how good your show is, and how good of an interviewer you are. And maybe today didn’t quite live up to your standard, but I know you’ll be better next time because I believe in you.”

Like, that would be the general sentiment in which I would approach you as a friend. So why wouldn’t I talk to myself with that same type of kindness when I fall short? And just to be clear, I believe in holding myself and those I care about to really, really high standards.

None of this is about letting someone off the hook for low performance or for a casual attitude, but it’s about giving ourselves some grace whenever we fall short of expectation because we have to remember we are human beings, we are fallible, we are flawed, and nobody goes through life making all straight A’s. Like, occasionally, we’re going to mess up.

And when we mess up, how we talk to ourselves will dictate our next play. And that next play will dictate how we bounce back and what future performance will look like.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, I’d also love your thoughts in chapter 28, you’ve got “Anticipate Obstacles.” And I’m thinking it’s an interesting game in terms of, thinking about what can go wrong can be helpful in terms of preparation, but it could also be not so helpful in terms of, “Ahh, let’s forget it, it’s too much. I don’t want to deal with all that, or it’s probably never going to work out.” So how do you think about running your brain with this tension?

Alan Stein, Jr.
I don’t ever want folks to be paranoid, but I always want them to be prepared. And there is a difference between the two, obviously. And where I first started thinking this concept was, when I was in the basketball training space and working with elite-level players, I found it kind of comical how many times a player would drive to the basket and get fouled, and that they would get so upset and been out of shape over the defense fouling them.

And I would remind them, like, “Hey, that’s the defense’s job. You do realize the guys in the other color jerseys are trying to keep you from scoring. And when they do that, occasionally, they’re going to hit your arm or foul you. So instead of being surprised that a defender fouls you, why don’t you just assume they’re going to foul you when you go to the basket?”

“Kind of like, you know, hopefully you never have to hear a pilot say this, but if they would say, ‘Brace for impact,’ it’s the same thing like brace for contact when you’re driving to the basket and expect that somebody’s going to hit you. And if they don’t be very pleasantly surprised that you can get to the basket uninterrupted, but don’t be surprised by the contact.”

And for me, I use it in my life in several different ways. As a professional keynote speaker, I have contingency plans for a whole handful of things that potentially could happen during my talk. It could be something like someone in the front row keeps yelling things out, or one of the waiters drops a glass and it shatters in the middle of my talk, the AV goes out and I can’t use the PowerPoint anymore, the microphone doesn’t work.

Like, things that I’m not saying there’s a high likelihood they’ll happen, but there’s a decent chance they’ll happen, and I don’t want to be caught off guard when those things do occur. So, I try to proactively have contingency plans for if they happen, here’s how I’ll handle it.

And of course, if something tangential happens, so maybe they don’t drop a glass but something else is disturbing, maybe somebody’s phone goes off, then I feel more at ease because I’ve prepared for these different scenarios and I’ve imagined them in my mind before they’ve occurred, so when they actually happen in real life, it’s a more seamless transition to move to that next play.

Now I’m not on stage going, “Oh, gosh, I sure hope no one’s phone rings,” “Oh, man, I sure hope no one drops a glass,” I’m not even registering that, I’m not even thinking about it, but if that happens, I will be ready.

And that’s all that I encourage folks to do is to be proactive and giving some thought to some obstacles that may come your way, personally or professionally, and then just have an idea of what your next play will be if they do occur.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s a good feeling, just that confidence that comes from that level of preparation. One of my favorite stunts to pull when I was doing more keynote speeches was, if you’d hear a little bit of an extra hiss in terms of the microphone situation, I just loved saying to the client and the AV tech people, it’s like, “I think there’s a mismatch between the impedance of the source and the line here. I have a microphone impedance matching transformer with me in my bag, which will probably fix that hiss.” They’re like, “Oh, my gosh, we’re dealing with a pro.”

Alan Stein, Jr.
Absolutely. Love that. We can never be too proactive in thinking about those things. And the other way that we use this, the proactivity portion is, most people apply the next play in the moment. As I said, it’s the basketball player who turns the ball over and misses the shot, next play. It’s when the Wi-Fi cuts out, or the barista messes up your order, or somebody cuts you off in traffic, next play.

But where I also want folks to use it is when you zoom back out and you think of the big transitions in life that most of us will go through, and you start proactively thinking, “How am I going to handle this next play when circumstances change?” I’ll use the same two examples from before.

So, my mother passed recently, my dad is not in the best of health, and I say that with a heavy heart. I don’t know how much more time I have with him, hopefully, plenty of more years, but we know that that’s not guaranteed.

But, at some point in the near future, I’m going to go through a transition of having spent the majority of my life with two very engaged, active, loving parents, to then stepping into living my life in a next play when both of my parents are deceased. And who am I going to be and what am I going to do when I step into that new version?

On the same other side, I mentioned I’ve got twin boys that are almost 16. I also have a daughter that’s almost 14. In the blink of an eye, my three kids will graduate from high school and move on to whatever they choose to do post high school. And I’ll be affectionately known as an empty nester. Well, what is my next play going to be when I no longer identify with having children at home? Like, who am I going to be and what am I going to be in that next play?

And there are so many next plays that many of us go through, whether it’s marriage or divorce, or when you’re running your business. Well, what if you get sued? What if you go bankrupt? What if you have to make layoffs? Conversely, what if your business starts growing at an exponential rate and you have to hire a whole bunch of more people right away? How do you maintain your culture when you’re trying to scale very quickly?

Like, all of these could be potential next plays, and I don’t want them to monopolize or paralyze us as we think about them, but I do want us to give some thought to proactively deciding, “How am I going to deal with these circumstances changing if and when they do because there’s a very good likelihood they will?” And that’s where the proactivity and the preparedness comes into play.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, thank you. And whenever we’re chatting, I’d love to hear some tales of you and super pro famous athletes, Kobe Bryant, Kevin Durant, etc. Any memorable stories, moments, experiences from some of the greats that help illustrate some of this stuff?

Alan Stein, Jr.
Sure. Well, I mean, the most memorable one, it’s usually the opening story I give in my keynotes, was meeting Kobe Bryant for the first time in 2007.

And for context, for any of your viewers or listeners that don’t follow basketball as closely as I do, most would agree that in 2007, Kobe was the best player on the planet. And I remember as a young coach at that time watching one of his early morning private workouts and being really surprised at how basic the drills were. He was drilling down on fundamentals that I had done with middle school age players.

Now he was doing them with an unparalleled level of focus and detail and precision and effort, but the actual drills he was doing were very basic. And when I asked him later that day at camp, why a player at his level, the best player in the world would focus on doing such basic drills, he said something that, fundamentally, changed my life forever. He said, “Why do you think I’m the best player in the world? Because I never get bored with the basics.”

That teaching moment, I mean, literally, the hairs on my neck still stand up when I tell that story and it’s been almost 20 years, that the best of the best never get bored with the basics. They have a strong respect and appreciation for the fundamentals, and they try to simplify success, like the sign above my head, that they try to untether from the unnecessarily complex and they just drill down on mastery of the basics.

And that’s really been the foundation to everything I believe and everything I preach and teach on page and on stage is working towards mastery of the basics, and Next Play is a pillar, is an offshoot of that, is a component of, “What is a basic framework we can use to be more thoughtful in our responses and stay dialed into the present moment?” And that’s what it is for me. It’s this whole concept of next play.

And, you know, next play, I mean, I’ve seen, certainly, athletes use it with tremendous results, but I’m now seeing folks in the business world be able to use it as well with equally great success. And I can tell you now, any organization that can develop a next play mentality with their team is going to be at a massive advantage over their competition.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, Alan, tell me, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we hear about some of your favorite things?

Alan Stein, Jr.
No, man, this has been fun. I always love connecting with you. You always spur such great thoughts and ask such great questions, man.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you. Well, now can we hear about a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Alan Stein, Jr.
Funny enough, I was actually watching, like, a reality show on Netflix about real estate. It was called “Owning Manhattan” with Ryan Serhant. And one of the members of his team said, “If you’re not changing it, you’re choosing it.” So that’s a relatively new quote and it just hit me really hard when I heard it.

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

Alan Stein, Jr.
Well, one that I found while doing this book that I thought was really interesting was that the average visceral emotion that we feel only lasts about 90 seconds. If you just let it run through you, and if you just accept it, you’re only going to be frustrated, irritated, angry, upset for about 90 seconds, if you just take that breath and just say, “Hey, I’m feeling frustrated right now.”

The problem most people have is they keep throwing logs on the fire and coal on the fire, and they keep starting that stopwatch over because of the self-narrative and the additional internal dialogue they have when that happens.

So, the barista messes up your order and you feel frustrated, and then you start saying things to yourself like, “Man, this is ridiculous. This guy never pays attention. He’s always messing up my order.” Well, the clock just started over again. “Man, this isn’t fair. I can’t believe this is happening to me. I’m late for a meeting, and now I got to wait for another coffee to be made,” clock starts over again.

And that’s why some people can experience someone cutting them off in traffic in the morning, or the Starbucks barista messing up your order, and they stay in that spiral for hours because they keep starting the clock over through the unhelpful self-narrative.

So, to me, it’s so important just to say, “Hey, I’m a little frustrated that they messed up my order at Starbucks. I’m allowed to be frustrated. That’s okay. But I’m not going to allow it to dictate how I behave or how I show up. And I’m certainly not going to be rude to the barista. These things happen.” And by the time I finished that sentence, it’s been about 90 seconds and I just move on with my day.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Thank you. And could you share a favorite book?

Alan Stein, Jr.
One of the go-to resources, well, I’ll give two. One is the book I mentioned at the very beginning of this called Leading with the Heart, which is Coach K’s first book, where I heard about next play for the first time.

Another book that I recommend very highly is by my good friend, Phil Jones, a fellow speaker. And he wrote a book called Exactly What to Say. And it’s a shorter book, it’s almost more of a handbook and a guide than it is an actual book, but, really, Phil’s whole tagline is, “When you change your words, you change your world.”

And he talks about the power of language and then how certain phrases and statements and questions we can ask, can actually help us get a better response from the people we’re trying to connect with. So, anyone that’s in a leadership position or in a sales position, highly recommend Leading with the Heart by Coach K, and Exactly What to Say by Phil Jones.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite habit?

Alan Stein, Jr.
I’m a real stickler for my morning routines. My morning routine, how I spend the first 60 minutes after I wake up, really primes me for the rest of the day and has a massive influence on what type of day I’m going to have, so I’m very protective of the first 60 minutes of my day.

And within the first 60 minutes, I do the very best I can to not check email and not check social media. I do check text messages just in case there was an emergency or a fire that needs to be put out. But I try not to check my inbox or check social media.

I try to do something that engages my physical body, whether it’s some light stretching or playing pickup basketball or lifting weights or going for a walk. And then, at the same time, I try to do something that gets me mentally or emotionally engaged as well. So read, watch, or listen to something that’s either educational or inspiring.

And if I can check those three boxes within the first 30 to 40 minutes of waking up, it usually sets a pretty nice foundation for how the rest of the day will go.

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

Alan Stein, Jr.
They can just go to my website, which is just AlanSteinJr.com. That’s kind of the central hub for everything that we have going on. And you can also find me on social media at @alansteinjr. on Instagram and LinkedIn and all of the major platforms. I take a tremendous amount of pride in being both accessible and responsive.

So, if someone enjoyed this conversation that we’ve had, and I hope that they have, and they want to share something or ask something, just shoot me a DM on Instagram or LinkedIn. I’m very good about getting back.

And if you have any interest in bringing me in to speak to your team or school or organization. You can find all the information on my programs at AlanSteinJr.com. And then, of course, you can grab “Next Play” on Amazon or Audible or wherever you get your books and audio books.

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

Alan Stein, Jr.
See if you can adopt this next play mentality. See if you can, at the very start, just put an insert, that pause or that breath or that beat, after you feel the visceral emotion to react, and just take a second so that you can be thoughtful in your response.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Alan, thank you.

Alan Stein, Jr.
My pleasure. This was a lot of fun. Thank you, Pete.

Pete Mockaitis
Muriel, welcome back!

Muriel Wilkins
Thank you. I’m delighted to be back.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m delighted as well. Last time we talked executive presence, and that was very fun. And it looks like your executive presence and star has continued to rise and rise. So, congratulations on everything.

Muriel Wilkins
Thank you so much.

Pete Mockaitis
You got a fresh book here, Leadership Unblocked: Break Through the Beliefs That Limit Your Potential. That sounds so important. And I would love to hear, for starters, what’s one of the most common beliefs you’re seeing widespread that is limiting a lot of folks’ potential in their careers?

Muriel Wilkins
I think, probably, the one, they’re all equal opportunity, but the one that I see that really halts people in their career is, “I need to be involved,” because it gets them involved in places that they actually don’t need to be involved in.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, we need to be involved, as in, “I’m reluctant to delegate, let go.” Or, what are the flavors of “I need to be involved”?

Muriel Wilkins
Yeah, I mean, it’s this unsatiating, almost compulsion to have to be engaged in all the things. So, it looks like, “I have to be at that meeting,” “I have to be cc’d on all the emails,” “I have to be the one that has the conversation,” “I have to weigh in on that document.” And what it does is, it does a couple of things.

Number one is it keeps you from being able to advance in a way that you need to because the more responsibilities you get, the more you would need to be involved in in order to deal with all the complexities of your job.

And, secondly, it actually creates a clog in the system, meaning it keeps others from being able to develop, because they then end up become habituated by the fact that you’re involved in all the things, so then why should they do it?

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely. Well, and I’m thinking of yet another downside there is, I recall I was having chat with a fellow Bain colleague. We were talking about, “Oh, what have you been up to? What are you doing?” And he was looking at all kinds of cool opportunities at buzzy startups that had hefty funding and dozens of employees.

And there was one that he got pretty far in the interview process and he was considering it. And he told me he was leaning towards rejecting the offer because of one of several reasons. The CEO of many dozens of employee companies still wanted to review every email that went out to the users.

And I was really struck by that because it’s like, I’ve lived that myself, but then I have a much smaller team. I managed to let it go a long time ago and life has been so much better.

Muriel Wilkins
Yeah, absolutely. And, look, the thing with a belief like “I need to be involved” is, at some point, it served you, right? That CEO, it probably helped him in some capacity at some point where he was cc’d or maybe he had had an occasion where he was not copied on an email and all hell broke loose as a result of that, or he thinks as a result of that. And, therefore, his mantra then became, “You’ve got to CC me on all the emails.”

You know, I think the point here is that just because it works in one situation doesn’t mean it’s going to work in all situations. And, certainly, from a leadership standpoint, there’s no way you can have the sheer physical capacity to be involved in all the things.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, could you share with us a cool story of someone who had that limiting belief and what they did to evolve beyond it and what, ultimately, happened for them?

Muriel Wilkins
Yeah, absolutely. I’m thinking, even as you were sharing the story of that CEO, I’m thinking about a client that I had who, and this is something that I often find, particularly if you’re the founder of an organization or a startup, or you were there from the beginning, even if you’re not the founder, you were one of the early employees, where, quite frankly, it is required that all hands are on deck.

And so, this particular person, she had founded this nonprofit on her own, it was just her. And so, she was used to doing all the things. But then as the nonprofit grew, and again, she really needed to be focused on external fundraising and being motivating staff and thinking strategically and dealing with the board.

I remember one of the conversations we had, she’s like, “But I just find I don’t have time to do all these things.” And I said, “Well, what are you spending time doing?” And she said, “Well, for example, like this morning, I was checking the bathrooms to make sure that there was toilet paper in there.” And I said, “Is that the best use of your time as CEO?”

And it made her really think about it from the perspective of, “Why am I the one doing this?” Not to say that it shouldn’t be done, but that wasn’t where she added the most value. And so, it wasn’t that I was telling her it’s not the best use. I just asked her whether it was the best use.

And so, when she started shifting to “I need to be involved where it’s the best use of my time” it gave her an automatic filter for how should she be prioritizing where she spends her time. And I think that’s what we all need to be doing, is really thinking about it through a filter rather than a universal level of engagement that we need to have in all the things in order to keep things from going wrong.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Muriel, now for just our human need to have stories completed, how did that toilet paper get handled in the end?

Muriel Wilkins
She delegated it. And what’s funny is there were people in her organization who wanted to help. But she also, it’s interesting because these beliefs never come from a bad place. She was also very concerned because they were doing a lot of work and they were a service-oriented organization.

She was also concerned about putting more burden, as she put it, on her staff. She did not want to burden them with more. So, she took it upon herself. She’s the one who would do all these things, but they were like, “Look, you’re better off going out and raising money for us because if you don’t do that, you’re the only person who can do that. If you don’t do that, we’re not going to survive as an organization.”

So, these little things, and the toilet paper was just one example, but when you add up all those little micro examples of where she was spending the time, and we started calling them breadcrumbs, right? Like, stop focusing on the breadcrumbs and focus on the loaf, the mana. Then she started getting it, and her staff was more than happy to focus on the breadcrumbs.

And you know what? They felt like they were adding value by doing that. And so, kind of it worked out. So, it required not only a shift in belief in her, but she needed to have some conversations, be clear around what she was delegating and ensuring that her staff was also aligned around those things.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to get into the rundown of the top seven beliefs that limit us, as well as your approach for addressing them. But before we do it, I’d like to hear, any other surprising, fascinating discoveries you made as you were digging into this research?

Muriel Wilkins
Yeah, so I think there were a couple of things that really struck me, two, in particular. The first is we just talk about beliefs, and what they are. Because when I say the word beliefs, some people are like, “What are you talking about?”

And so, when we think about what a belief is, it really is just an assumption we’re making or a story that you’re telling yourself. Like, are they true? I mean, you came out of consulting, so you know this. I did as well. We make assumptions when we model something or when we put a budget together. But do we know if it’s actually true? We don’t. It’s a hypothesis around what’s going to happen.

And if you put in one thing I learned in consulting was, you put in garbage assumptions to that model, that spreadsheet model, what’s going to come out on the other side is garbage. And so, one of the things that I really loved digging into was the impact of our thoughts and our beliefs on our outcomes.

And there’s been some interesting studies, everything from Carol Dweck’s work on growth mindset to Ellen Langer and Alia Crum’s work around the impact of thoughts and beliefs on health outcomes that undeniably show that it’s not just what you do, but it’s what you think about what you do that has a huge impact on the outcomes you have. So that was number one.

I think number two, when I looked across all of my clients, or I looked at 300 of them, to see if there were some commonalities in terms of the types of beliefs that they had and, lo and behold, I did find that there were some commonalities, the one that surprised me the most is the belief of, “If I can do it, so can you.”

And it surprised me, Pete, because that is a mantra that we use, I have used so many times that I thought was like very motivational, very inspirational. And it can be, but it isn’t always. It can actually be quite debilitating and demoralizing and, quite frankly, get in the way of the thing that you’re supposed to do as a leader, which is to also coach and develop others.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes. And I want to hear, when you mentioned huge impact that you’ve seen from the research, can you share with us any sort of eye-popping discoveries or experiments, pieces of research that made you go, “Whoa”?

Muriel Wilkins
Yeah, my favorite, which I write about or summarize, synthesize in the book is the one by Ellen Langer and Alia Crum. And so, they were looking at, and they were at Harvard. But they basically looked at a group of hotel attendants, so the people that you see when you’re in a hotel cleaning the rooms, doing all the things.

If you’ve seen these folks, they’re on their feet all day or they’re pushing things. They’re doing very much physical labor for eight hours a day. And they ask these folks, “Do you believe that the work that you’re doing is exercise? Like, does it equate working out?” And most of them said, “No, we’re just doing our job. It’s not exercise. Exercise happens after this if I get around to it.”

And so, they introduced to them, “What if you just thought about your work as exercise? What if you just considered your work to be exercise?” which is a belief, right? It’s just a different assumption you’re making about your work. And then they tracked what happened. And what they saw that four weeks after introducing this notion, they saw material enough improvement in a bunch of different health metrics in the folks who they had assigned this new belief.

And so, their conclusion was, and that was the only thing that changed, Pete, nothing else. The work didn’t change, the people didn’t change, their uniform didn’t change. That’s the only thing that changed. So, the conclusion was, again, that it’s not the work that they’re doing, that necessarily just drives the outcomes, but it’s what they think, the thinking about that work, what they believe about that work that then also impacted outcomes.

You know, when I read this study, as well as again, the growth mindset study that Carol Dweck has done, where she did almost the same type of thing as it relates to education, I thought, “Well, my goodness, like, why doesn’t this apply from a leadership standpoint?”

And I have experienced in my own work, part of my frustration as an executive coach for the past 22 years is I would help my clients move to action, move to doing something different but they would always come back to the thing that was frustrating them to begin with or the outcomes that they weren’t getting to.

And what I realized is they were changing what they were doing, but they weren’t changing what was driving the behavior, which is the belief or the thought or the assumption or the mindset. But if we could change that or expand on it, I don’t even like to use the word change, it made it much more sustainable in terms of them being able to have new behaviors, new ways of doing things to then make the out more sustainable.

Pete Mockaitis
And I’ve heard of this study several times, and whenever it comes up, I just wonder, like, what is the intermediate mechanism by which that is occurring? And so, I can only speculate, and maybe they’ve got better speculations or you know, and you can solve this mystery for me.

But in terms of, if you think about it as exercise, you then do it differently and you actually appreciate, “Oh, my heart rate’s getting up a little bit.” It’s like, “Ooh, I’m going to have a little bit more gusto in the way that I’m moving.” And, thusly, there are physiological impacts of that? Or, what’s that sort of intermediate step?

Muriel Wilkins
Think about it in terms of, you know, if I am watching a scary movie, again, I’m saying scary. If we’re watching the same movie and my belief is, “This is scary,” how does my body respond? My body responds for me, I might sweat, I might go like this and hide my eyes. I might clench my fists and my heart might start pumping fast.

But if you’re looking at the same movie, let’s say Chucky, which was the first movie my husband took me on a date, I would say that was scary for me. He thought it was funny, right? So, what did his body do? His body, his eyes lit up, he was jittery in his seat, he was laughing. Same movie, different response based on what we think about what we’re seeing in front of that screen. So that is my anecdotal way of explaining it.

And I think the same holds true in anything that we do, right? We all might look at a situation and approach a situation, and certainly in the workplace. How we experience any workplace situation, in particular the challenges, is impacted by the way we think about that situation, by what we think about ourselves, about how we think about the other person that’s part of that situation, or what we think about the context.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly, yeah. I’m thinking about perhaps giving a speech or presentation. Some people say, “I’m so scared. I’m nervous. I’m terrified.” Others say, “I’m so excited. I’m pumped up. This is going to be awesome.” And it just has that whole cascade of downstream effects there.

Muriel Wilkins
Yeah. And, look, and, by the way, I’m not a person who sits here and say, “Oh, my gosh, just think it and it will happen.” Like, that’s not what this is all about. I think it’s much more about having alignment, right? If what you want to have happen is to show up as confident in that presentation, or what you want to have happen is the audience leaving feeling like you’re engaging, then you ought to work backwards and say, “If I want to show up as engaging to the audience, how would I need to act in that presentation?”

“How would I need to behave in that presentation? And if that’s the way that I need to behave, then what do I need to think in order to be able to behave that way? Or, how do I need to feel in order to behave that way? And if I need to feel that way, then what do I need to be thinking about the audience, about the presentation, about me, in order to increase the probability that I can actually feel and behave in that way?”

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I like that a lot. So, working backwards there, in terms of my thought or belief leads to my feeling and then my presence, how I’m showing up leads to the impact or transformation. And then as you explore that chain, you could even see, “Well, I need to think or believe that,” I don’t know, “this thing’s really going to work.”

And so then, we’d say, “Well, what are my doubts? Well, why don’t I go investigate those? OH, hey, what do you know? It looks like the odds really are good that this thing is going to work, and that it will naturally flow through.”

Muriel Wilkins
Yeah. And, look, and it’s not to lie to yourself. It’s also the point that many beliefs can exist at the same time, right? And so, again, going back to the example of the presentation, yeah, I could still say, “Oh, my gosh, like, I might mess up my words.” That certainly could be true. We don’t know if it’s actually going to happen.

And I have this belief that, “If I mess up my words, people are going to think that I don’t know what I’m talking about.” And I can also believe that what I have to say is really interesting and that others will be interested in it. So, which of those two is best going to serve me if my goal is to be engaging in that presentation? The second one.

So, it’s not to say that the first one doesn’t exist. It’s just that it’s not helping me right now. So why pick it up, right? It’s like if I’m trying to be healthy and in front of me is a carrot or a bag of potato chips, right? Both are good, and I’m making the choice based on the outcome of I want to be healthy, I’m going to pick up the carrot.

If it’s like, “Muriel, you just want to satiate your taste buds right now,” if that’s the goal, then I might pick up the potato chips. Just make sure that the way you’re thinking about something and the way you’re acting is aligned with the outcomes that you want rather than just based on default or habit.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Thank you. Well, could you give us the quick, I don’t know, two- three-minute version of the rundown of the seven beliefs you highlight here?

Muriel Wilkins
Yeah, absolutely. So, we already spoke about one, which is “I need to be involved,” which is basically, the way you see it is somebody just wants to be involved in all the things. I think the example of wanting to be copied on everything is a great one, and that’s a telltale sign that that might be there for you.

The second is “I need it done now,” which has a sense of not only wanting completion on all the things, but also urgently. So, there’s almost this, what it leads is what’s known as toxic productivity, which is everything needs to be done at any cost.

The third is “I know I’m right.” It typically shows up as the person who, you often hear them called as they always want to be the smartest person in the room. What’s tricky about that one is those folks actually do have an uncanny ability to know the answer and see around the corner. They’re just doing it in a way that doesn’t serve their goal, which is to also get other folks to align with them.

The fourth is “I can’t make a mistake.” And so, that’s pretty self-evident. It’s this belief that no mistakes are acceptable in any type of way. And it really is grounded in this notion of underlying it all, feeling like, “If I make a mistake, I won’t be able to recover.”

The fifth one is, “If I can do it, so can you,” which is, again, one of those that sounds motivating, but can be quite debilitating. We have, “I can’t say no,” as the sixth one. And then the last one is, “I don’t belong here.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so what’s interesting is each of these has many particular flavors, variations, facets. For example, “I can’t say no,” I can imagine it’s sort of like there’s a, “Or, what?” And like the, “Or, what?” it could be totally different for people.

Muriel Wilkins
That’s right.

Pete Mockaitis
Like, “Oh, they’ll think I’m not a team player,” or, “I’ll get fired,” or, “I will miss out on this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that’ll never come back.” Just for one demonstration, can you give us a feel for the different variants of, say, “I can’t say no”?

Muriel Wilkins
Yeah, I think that’s a great nuance that you’ve pointed out, Pete. And I think, in order to understand the variance, because, by the way, you can have this belief and it shows up in varying ways depending on the situation or different even times in your career or your life. But what I think is important to understand is where these beliefs come from, right?

You weren’t born with them, they were learned. And they were learned because it is what got you through something, that got you through to the other side. They actually helped make you successful. A lot of times, in your family of origin or maybe in your schooling or maybe in your community or maybe just out in the world, but now in this particular context, it might not be helping.

Even though they are variants, they all have a commonality, which is, “What is the need that they’re trying to fulfill? What are they trying to make sure that you get?” Fundamentally, under each of these beliefs, we are all trying to get three needs met. The first is the need to feel worthy. The second is the need to feel connected. And the third is the need to feel safe, okay?

We all have these fundamental needs in the workplace, outside the workplace, when we were two years old, and when we are 55 years old, right? So, many of these beliefs come from a place of trying to get these needs met. So, the, “I can’t say no,” for example, well, when you dig down, when I work with my clients and we dig down and say, “Well, why can’t you say no?” They might say like, “Well, I don’t want to disappoint them, right?

Well, what would disappointing them mean? Ultimately, when you feel, you know, I remember my daughter told me once when she was younger, she said, “The worst thing that you could ever tell me.” She was like eight. She said, “The worst thing you could ever tell me is that you’re disappointed in me.” I said, “Really?” I said, “It’s not that I don’t love you.”

She said, “No, no, no. It’s that you’re disappointed in me.” And I said, “Why?” And she said, “Because I would feel like you’re literally just, like, turning your back on me,” which basically told her those words meant that she would no longer be, in her eight-year-old mind, would no longer be connected to me, right? And so that was her articulation.

But at the root of “I can’t say no” is a sense that, “If I say no, I will be disconnected from the people who I am trying to do something for, or from the work. So, yes, on the other hand, means that I am connected, right?” And so where might that come from? Maybe at some point in your career, in your life, or whatnot, you learned that saying yes kept the relationship going, kept the connection going.

But does it still serve you? And is it necessarily true, now, universally, that if you say no, it will destroy the connection? And vice versa, as many people find out later in their career, “Even though I’m saying yes to everything and taking all the things on, I still am not maintaining the connection. I’m still not getting the promotion. I’m still getting fired. I’m still the last one here and abandoning myself rather than being able to care for myself and care for the work at the same time.”

So, it’s not that, all of a sudden, I want people to say no, no, no, no, no, no, no all the time. It’s just understanding that that rule that you have in your head that may have served you at some point is not a universal rule. You have to be able to adapt and recognize “When is it helping you, and when is it not?” So, there are times with my clients where I’m like, “Yeah, you can’t say no. This is one you can’t say no to. You got to do it.”

But then there are others who’s like, “Really? What are your other options?” Well, you’ve got yes, you’ve got maybe, you’ve got a stream of other options that you can choose as a response. It doesn’t always have to say yes, be yes.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I love that. And it sounds like we’re starting to get into it a little bit, the process, your framework, when you are addressing these pieces. Can you walk us through these steps?

Muriel Wilkins
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the first step is that you have to uncover that there’s actually some place where there’s misalignment. And so, what I tell people and try to short-circuit it and I talk about it in the book is the minute you feel something is off, that’s the only way I can describe it. And that can come from an external cue.

Somebody’s not getting what they want or you didn’t get the promotion or you’re not getting the feedback you want or you’re not, something is off. There’s a gap between what you want, the outcome you want, and what’s actually happening. The audience seems bored. But there are also internal cues, and I would much rather people face the internal cues, because they usually suggest it before the external ones come up.

And the internal cues, you know, I’m pointing at my chest, my heart space here, is my chest tightens. Something feels off. I get like a little tingly. Something feels off. I’m worrying about something, but I don’t even know what I’m worrying about. Something feels off. So, the first question is, or awareness is, “Something doesn’t feel like it’s happening the way I believe it should be happening.”

And then the second question is you have to name what is the belief that might be driving that dissonance, right? So, “What is it that I’m believing?” And this is a simple question, “What is it I’m believing about myself? What is it that I’m believing about the situation? Or, what is it that I’m believing about the people involved or the stakeholders or whatnot that is contributing to me behaving or feeling in this way?” Okay? And so, that’s where the naming happens.

And what I found is that when we got down to it, it typically, at least for my clients, ended up being one of these seven. Those were the top seven. There are certainly others. And so, I’m not suggesting that these are the only seven. It’s that at least it gives you a jump start as to what they might be. Once you can name the belief, then you want to move to, before you move to action, which is, “Okay, well, Muriel, what do I do about it?”

You want to actually unpack it a little bit, and that’s step number two, unpack it. The unpacking is becoming friendly, getting to know that belief, because it’s been around a long time. You better believe it. So, you’ve got to look at it and say, “In what way has it helped me? And in what way is it not helping me? Why do you want to do that?”

Because this is not about getting rid of the belief. Again, it’s just putting it to the side so that when it is helpful to you again, you can pick it up. And the only way you’ll know when to do one or the other is if you become familiar with it. And just asking yourself, “In what moments has it helped me? And in what moments does it not help me?” you are then having more agency and taking control more about what your beliefs are and your thoughts and assumptions are, rather than just, again, looking at them universally.

Once you do that, then you can move to the third step, which is the unblocking. The unblocking has two pieces and it’s very important. The first step is reframing the belief. So, you’ll say, “Okay, well, if that belief’s not helping me, which one would?” And it’s just as a reframing. So, instead of, “I need it done now,” what if it’s, “I need certain things done now,” or, “I need the things strategic, that have strategic value done now,” or, “I need the things that are most important done now”?

Or, we even drop the now, “I need to focus on the things that are important for us to do.” And that little reframing, you can then channel into the last step, which is the actions. If that is my new belief, then how will I approach this situation or this work in front of me or my team or myself, right?

The issue is most people try, because we are so action-biased, most people try to short-circuit the whole process and go straight to, “Oh, there’s a problem? What do I do? What do I do?” And that works, but that’s the fake-it-till-you-make-it approach and it’s not sustainable. We see this happen all the time with people outside of the workplace, with people who try to lose weight, for example.

It’s, “I’m just going to start exercising January 1st.” Well, we all know what happens by Feb. 14, right? Valentine hits and it all goes out the window. Why? Because the action change, but the mindset around relating to exercise, relating to working out, relating to all those things are not sustainable. And so, you go right back to the actions you were doing before because your actions will realign with the way that you think about it.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, sticking with that example for a moment, let’s say that we’re faking it till we’re making it in the world of exercise, your diet, health stuff, what are some ways some of these particular beliefs show up? Maybe just walk us through that whole process in which someone is engaged in that but it’s not going to end well, tell us, how might the execution of the three-step framework unfold to land in a happier place?

Muriel Wilkins
I’ll use me as an example. So, I have wanted to build my strength for a while. I’m a cardio person. I have been a long-time runner. Did distance-running for a long time, until my hip gave out on me.

And I thought to myself, I’d been told for years, “Muriel, you need to balance out your cardio with strength.” Okay, I tried. I would say, “Okay, yep, I’m going to start this program.” Went to action, but never, mindset-wise, it was, “No, cardio is where the real value is at. Running is where the value is at.” So, guess what I did most of the time? I ran, and within a couple weeks I would give up my strength training regimen, okay?

Until I recognized that, because of my hip injury, a couple ortho doctors told me, “If you don’t strengthen your hip more and your muscles around it, you’re going to have some serious issues down the line.” Okay, so how do I need to rethink about this? I need to rethink about this not in terms of training for a race, I need to rethink about this in terms of longevity, right?

What do I believe about longevity? Oh, what I believe about longevity is both my cardio and my strength is equally important to contribute to the type of healthy longevity that I want. Reframe, okay? That mindset of training for a race, “Cardio is where it’s at,” was not helping me. Okay, that I realized.

Once I understood where that original mindset came from, which was past the uncover, I could move to unpack. Why was I thinking, why was it helping me all this time? I knew that my success had come from racing, so I wasn’t letting go of that being the belief. I became very clear. I’m not racing anymore. That got me past the second phase.

Third phase, reframe, I now have new ways of thinking about my exercise routine. Okay, now I’m thinking about it differently, I can move to action. And every time I slip up on the strength training, which I still do, I go back and I say, “Okay, how am I thinking about this? Why am I slipping up on the strength training? I’ve got to rethink how I’m framing it.” And I go back to the longevity piece, which helps me continue with it.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, perhaps we have an eighth major belief there in terms of this isn’t valid. Maybe that’s related to “I don’t belong here.” It’s like, “You know, doing the strength training thing, that’s not really me. I’m more of a cardio person, a racing person, not down with the gym bros grunting and doing huge plates and all that. So, I don’t see the value here.”

But then, when there’s a new belief, indeed, it is transformational. I think I felt similarly, in that having a bodybuilder-like physique, I think, once appealed to me as maybe a 16-year-old. Never really happened. But now that’s just, it doesn’t matter at all in terms of my interest. But when you talk about longevity, I think about Peter Attia, and Outlive, and some of his things.

It really is, “Oh, well, would you like to be able to play with your grandchildren in your seventies and eighties?”

Muriel Wilkins
Yeah, different outcomes.

Pete Mockaitis
As opposed to being sort of stuck in a chair the whole time, and I’m like, “Well, I would. I would like that.

Muriel Wilkins
Yeah, absolutely. And, I mean, you mentioned him, but that is what changed my framing of thinking about this was actually reading his book.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, it’s a good one, Outlive.

Muriel Wilkins
And so, it was like, “Yeah, I want a different outcome. So, what do I have to do? I can’t keep thinking about it the same way. I’ve got to change the way I think about it or else I can’t get with this program.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. And I think about beliefs about value can be interesting, in that you may come to the opposite conclusion in terms of, “Hey, you know what? This thing really isn’t worth doing. I could just stop beating myself up and trying to get back on the wagon and just let it go.”

Muriel Wilkins
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, here’s the thing, and what really drives me, Pete, like we ought to work every single day or we have work, but work is part of our life, whether we like it or not. And it can be truly challenging. A big part of my career is built on the fact that work is challenging for people. I would be out of a job if they didn’t consider it challenging. And I want to be out of a job. I truly do.

And what I find, though, is that people do not give themselves credit for how much control they actually have about how they experience work. And this might sound very controversial, right. because we tend to say organizations have a responsibility to make us feel like we belong, organizations have a responsibility to make us feel like this, this, and that. And I actually absolutely agree.

I am not absolving any organization or system for making you feel a certain way. They have a responsibility. And you also have a responsibility for yourself when you go into that job or into that workplace. And so, your part of your responsibility is saying, “How am I approaching this? And how am I thinking about it?”

Because, again, what the research has shown is how you think about something does have an impact on how you experience it. And I don’t know about you, but if I know that I actually have half the currency to influence how I experience anything, why in the heck am I going to wait for somebody else to change my experience?

I’m going to at least try to make it 50% better, my part of it. If they don’t want to clean up, and I don’t want to rely on the other person cleaning up their side of the room, let me clean up my side of the room and at least know that I’ve shifted the energy a little bit by cleaning up my side of the room.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Muriel, could you give us another fun example of someone who worked through this kind of process of examining the belief, starting from sensation, and, in fact, saw just this outcome, a transformation of the experience of work into something much more lovely?

Muriel Wilkins
Yeah, absolutely. So, I think one that comes up also a lot is the belief of “I know I’m right,” you know? And these are the folks who, quite frankly, they tend to be high achievers. They have been known as being very smart, particularly as they were growing up. They get things very quickly. I suffered from this one, quite frankly, and still have to manage it.

And so, I had a client where he received some feedback. The feedback didn’t say, “Oh, he knows he’s right all the time.” It didn’t say that. What it said is, “He talks over people. He interrupts in meetings. He makes people feel like they’re not smart.” I mean, so the feedback said, “You talk to him and you feel stupid afterwards because of the way that he responds.”

“He did not give a chance for people to come up with their own responses. He would question them in a way that, quite frankly, they didn’t even want to share what they thought out of fear that he was going to sort of come down on them.” And we’ve all experienced those individuals at some point in our life. I will raise my hand and say, unfortunately, I have at times been that individual.

And with my client, even when he got the feedback, he was very like, “It’s wrong. It’s not right. It’s not right.” And it wasn’t till, and I talk about this in the book, like he not only got it from people on his team, he got it from his peers, and that became an issue. And because they didn’t want to work with him, quite frankly, at that point, which was hard to then get the work done, because he needed his peers to get the work done.

And it wasn’t until he saw himself on a Zoom, we had recorded a Zoom meeting that he had been in, and he saw not how he was behaving, he saw how others were responding to how he was behaving, which was again, the interruptions, the constant “Got it, got it, got it, got it.” And, particularly, he saw the look of frustration from his boss, and he valued what his boss thought a lot.

And that’s when he said, “Okay, that’s not the way I want my boss reacting to me.” So that was the beginning, for him the large part was even getting the, like, “Yes, there is dissonance and I want to do something about it.” So, then we were able to name like, “Why do you think she responds that way? When you speak in this way in a meeting, what is going through your head…” that’s the question I ask him, “…when you interrupt, when you talk over people?”

And I remember, he just with exasperation, he’s like, “Because I know what we need to do.” He’s like, “I know what we need to do. I know what the answer is. Why are we spending time talking about this? We’re wasting time.” That was the belief. And he was applying it for everything. And so, for him, the unpacking piece, which is the second stage, came from this place of his whole life he had been valued for being right.

He was a top tier scholar. I’m not going to go into specifics because then he might be identifiable, but like, he was top of the top of the top. But anybody who has done well, particularly at school, and gotten rewarded for it, may suffer from this one. So, he understood that, while it may have served him well at school, or it might have annoyed other students, but he didn’t really care, it wasn’t serving him well in this role that he was in now.

And so then, we reframed it, right? And the reframe was based on, “What’s the outcome that you need to achieve?” And the outcome he needed to achieve was, “It’s not just about getting the task done. I’m now in a position where I also need to get buy-in from my peers, and certainly buy-in from my boss. And so, what would I need to believe? What would need to be my operating assumption and principle in order to show up in a way where I was more collaborative in order to get to that outcome?”

And it was, “My job is not to always give the answer. My job is to help guide people to the answer,” which then led to him being able to listen a little bit more, ask the questions, wait till at least people finish talking. Now, will he ever be known as the warm and fuzzy guy? No.

But was there a marked improvement in terms of how others experienced him? Absolutely. And he was able to then move through some of these projects that he needed to get done with others a little bit more seamlessly than he was in the past.

Pete Mockaitis
What I like a lot about that story with uncover the blocker is there are perhaps many ways to illuminate this above and beyond simply introspection. It’s like here we’ve got some technology and work, a recorded Zoom meeting, “Oh, okay.” And that shows some things that you may not get with looking into the sky with a journal in hand.

Muriel Wilkins
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, that’s why I think it’s both sort of a mechanism of there are external cues and then there are internal cues. For me, personally, I don’t really care where your cues come from, know. As long as you are aware that, again, the math isn’t math-ing, what you want to have happen is not actually what’s happening, or something’s getting in your way.

And sometimes, again, you know, it’s nice to know about the internals because you can short-circuit that a little bit faster than waiting till you get, you know, so for him, what would have been an internal cue, an internal cue would have been able to read the room, not necessarily waiting for the Zoom. Now what’s interesting in this particular example is that, with practice, he became better at reading the room, right?

And that’s what I’m looking for. It’s not necessarily that you get it right every time. It’s that he got to a point, and that’s what I look for with each one of my clients and I look for, for myself, is the course-correction time taking less time. So, “Am I able to notice?” It’s, was he able to notice in the moment that, “Okay, yeah, I just interrupted for the third time, and that person looks a little exacerbated. Maybe I should switch course right now.”

“Yep, I’m totally anchoring in the ‘I know I’m right.’ I can hear it. Let me reframe so that I can be more collaborative in this meeting if, indeed, that’s my goal.” Because if that’s not your goal, if your goal is to come off as the smartest kid in the room, as the 360 said, then keep doing what you’re doing. We don’t need to do anything differently.

Pete Mockaitis
Right. And I’m thinking, when it comes to these reframes, so we move from “I know I’m right” to “My role is to help others find solutions, not to always give them the answers,” I think that, in my experience when making that shift, in the moment it can feel revelatory like an epiphany I’m kind of excited about.

And then, yet over time, it doesn’t really feel as though that is, in fact, the dominant operating model inside of my feelings, nervous system at work. Do you have any pro tips on reinforcing the enlightened reframed such that it’s really sticking and taking root?

Muriel Wilkins
Yeah, look, I think that what’s very cool about beliefs is that they’re so malleable, right? And so, I actually think that this model works if you are curious. And so, I encourage people to continue to be curious about it because that may not be it. The reframe might not be what’s going to last forever and ever and ever. You may need to reframe that even more.

And so, you want to constantly be asking yourself. The real rule of thumb is really keep being curious about, “What am I thinking in this moment?” And the more that you can keep thinking, or, “What am I thinking as I walk into that meeting? What am I thinking as I go into that conversation? What am I thinking as I’m about to do this presentation?”

And the more you can make that curiosity starting point, the beginning of your planning for anything, the more you will let those beliefs evolve even more so that you can discover, “Oh, that’s not it. Maybe it’s something else,” and that’s okay, right?

The issue is when you just are so attached to that one fundamental belief, one of the seven or whichever other one you’re tied to, that you end up not doing anything differently. You just keep doing the same thing over and over again, which as we know is the definition of insanity if you’re expecting different outcomes.

And so, the whole notion is, if you want to do something different, just being curious about what’s driving that doing. And continue to mold it, continue to, I personally practice this a lot and it comes a little bit more naturally, but it’s taken me years to master. I don’t even think I’ve mastered it, but years to kind of habitually be curious about what I’m thinking in the moment.

And I will be like, “Yep, I got it.” And then three months later, I’ll be like, “Oh, there’s another level to it. It’s not only this, it’s also that. Okay, that’s cool, let me try that one now.” And so, you have fun with it a little bit.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Well, Muriel, tell me, any other key things you want to make sure to mention before we hear about some of your favorite things?

Muriel Wilkins
I mean, look, I think the main thing is, that I would love for folks to take away is, again, this notion of you have so much more in control than you might give yourself credit for. And true agency is an ability to have a choice.

And one of the areas, and probably the primary area that I believe we all have a choice with is how we think about anything. And so, if you want to have a choice in how you experience anything, start with what’s most in your control, which is your thoughts, your assumptions, and your beliefs.

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

Muriel Wilkins
Well, one of the quotes that inspired this work, and is a favorite quote of mine, that comes from the world of Buddhism is, “Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.” And that’s the quote, right? Pain is always going to happen. Challenges are here and they will cause us pain. The goal is not for the challenges to go away. But how we respond to those challenges can either make us feel like we’re suffering or we can have a different experience with them.

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

Muriel Wilkins
Right now, my favorite tool is breathing. It’s, literally, recognizing and applying the fact that I can change how I experience anything by just changing the way I breathe as I’m going through it.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite habit?

Muriel Wilkins
My favorite habit is every night texting my kids because they are now off to college, and I text them “Good night” and “Love you” every single night.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And is there a key nugget you share that really connects and resonates with the clients, they retweet you and you’re known for?

Muriel Wilkins
Every now and then we get we go there, and I said, “Listen, I’m not religious, but I’m going to drop some Buddhist knowledge on you, right?” And, yeah, I tell them like, you know, pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional. And you can just see in their face that they get it.

Again, this whole notion is they have more control around how they experience something. And, particularly, from a leadership position, if you’re in a leadership role, the way that you respond to something has so much impact on everyone else. And so, the ripple effect is real and be a good steward over that.

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

Muriel Wilkins
Yeah, so if you want to learn more about all the things that I’m involved in, MurielWilkins.com is the best place to take a look. And I’m on LinkedIn at Muriel Wilkins, and on Instagram @coachmurielwilkins.

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

Muriel Wilkins
My final call to action is be curious about your mindset. Don’t go straight to doing. Take a pause and just be curious about how you’re thinking or what you’re thinking about what you’re about to do.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Muriel, thank you.

Muriel Wilkins
Thank you, Pete. Always a pleasure.