Pete Mockaitis 

John, welcome. 

John Miles 

Pete, it is so fantastic to be here. Thank you for the honor of having me on. 

Pete Mockaitis 

Well, yeah, I’m excited to dig into your wisdom, and I’d love it if you could kick us off with any particularly striking, or surprising, or extra fascinating discoveries you’ve made while doing your interviews and putting together your book, Passion Struck. 

John Miles 

A person I love to quote, because I love her work, is Sharon Salzberg, and she has a quote that I just love, that “There’s no commodity that we can take with us. There’s only our lives. And whether we live them wisely or whether we live them in ignorance, and this is everything.” 

Pete Mockaitis 

Okay. And tell me more about how that really grabs you. 

John Miles 

It grabs me because I think so many of us live in the subconscious. We’re not really active and being intentional in creating and crafting the life that we want, and so we end up living it in a way that isn’t as authentic as it could be to what we could accomplish if we were aligning our actions with our ambitions and our long-term aspirations. And I think that’s really what she’s getting at is the well-lived life versus a life of just going throughout our days as if we’re a pinball, actively engaging with everything around us but doing it in an unintentional way.  

Pete Mockaitis 

That’s a cool visual, or should I say a haunting, shocking visual, thinking about a pinball just bouncing around and actively engaging with everything, when some things are better to not be engaged with at times. Could you make this all the more real for us with a cool story of someone who found themselves kind of in pinball mode and then made some changes and unlocks some really cool stuff?  

John Miles 

Yes. So, a great person to highlight would be Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, who I highlight in the book. 

And I think his story is a great one to illustrate this point, because if you look back upon it, we see the person today who’s the megastar, one of the highest paid actors in Hollywood, but at the beginning of his career he actually spent a pretty considerable amount of time without any money, basically living almost homeless before he found his way to going into the WWE, but at that time he was going by his real name, and it wasn’t until sometime after that that he took on The Rock, which was actually his father’s name, and started to build his career. 

But what really differentiates Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is that he is a constant reinventor. There are so many times in his life that he could have plateaued and stood where he was, but he continuously strove to take those steps that would take him to the next place. And so that led him next into acting and then, even when he was an actor, he envisioned himself becoming even a greater actor in the pinnacle of male actors of his time. And it was through this constant manifesting that he took himself from this point where his life was completely at a point of desperation to what we see today. 

Pete Mockaitis 

Yeah, that is powerful. I understand, in his story, that he pretty much just declared, “I’m going to be a superstar,” and he took inventory of what’s up, he’s like, “Well, I’m pretty good at building muscles so that’s going to be part of the differentiator, and I’m going to hit the gym like mad in order to really become jacked, huge, shredded, etc.” so as to facilitate his journey to superstardom. 

John Miles 

No, I think that’s absolutely the case, and I think you bring up something that’s really important is, he had already started having this long-term aspiration that he wanted to manifest. And then I think what he did, and so many failed to do, is he started to take those daily actions that were getting him closer, and he aligned those actions with the short-term ambitions that he had along the path to reaching the long-term aspirations that he wanted. And that’s really the core of a lot about what I talk about through the lens of Passion Struck and creating a passion-struck life is aligning those three very things.  

Pete Mockaitis 

Well, it sounds like is that how you would articulate the big idea or core message of Passion Struck to make the shift from just existing and reacting and bouncing around like a pinball to getting in the proactive driver’s seat and making it happen? Or how would you articulate the key thesis? 

John Miles 

Yeah, well, the core thesis is it is a state of alignment, like I talked about, where actions, intentions, ambitions, and aspirations are in perfect harmony, but it’s more than that. It really represents a transformative mindset and behavior shift that’s essential for what I think is rewiring the patterns of default that so many of us end up dictating our entire lives to attaining. 

And it really emphasizes the importance of synchronizing what we do, why we do it, what do we hope to achieve, ensuring that every step that we take is infused with purpose and passion. And so that’s what Passion Struck really is, is it’s this never-ending pursuit of becoming your ideal self the best that you could possibly be. 

Pete Mockaitis 

Oh, that’s great. Well, you’ve got six mindset shifts and six behavior changes, and I’m going to rattle off the quick one-sentence version or teaser of what those are in a moment, but first I want to give you first crack at it. I love that turn-of-phrase you had, “rewiring our default setting.” So, answer me this, John, if there were a single setting within us, a toggle switch where we could shift the default from A to B, what do you think is the most leveraged impactful shift we could make? What’s our default setting? What’s the optimal setting? And how do we make that transition? 

John Miles 

I think for me, what’s top of mind today is motivation and what motivates us. So, I think in default, we tend to be motivated by the extrinsic things in life, the things that we’re led to believe will bring us happiness and success, which comes down to the money we make, the way we present ourselves to the world, the houses that we own, the neighborhoods we live in, the cars we drive, the titles we hold. 

And I think the shift that we really need to make is a shift towards intrinsic motivation acting as the cohesive glue that links our mindset, our behavior, and our deliberate action. That doesn’t mean that you can live without extrinsic motivation. It just means that the default should be more leaning in on the internal drive that fuels our journey towards a life of passion and purpose.  

Pete Mockaitis 

That does seem like a superior setting to be rolling with. John, tell us, how do we go about flipping that switch? 

John Miles 

So, I think right now, there is a profound sense of what I call un-mattering in the world. And before I started this journey of creating Passion Struck, I was given this vision over a decade ago that I was being called to serve, at the time, the words that were coming to me were the lonely, hopeless, broken, beaten, bored, battered of the world. And I had no idea what to do with it because my back story at that time was, I was a successful business executive. I was a C-suite exec in a Fortune 50 company. 

And so, when I started hearing these things, I had no idea what it was calling me to do, why or what even I was supposed to be doing to serve these people. But I started to examine my own life and what was going on in it, and I find that we are often best positioned to serve the people that we once were. And that’s absolutely what I talk about because I was living a life where I was consumed with the extrinsic motivations, and on the outside it looked perfect. 

But inside I felt completely numb and detached from the authentic self that I wanted to be. And I felt this profound sense of feeling that I didn’t matter, that I didn’t feel like what I was doing was fulfilling. 

And so, what I really then went on with this was this journey of me-search, of really doing core introspection into what was driving that state and how do I pivot to really having a different set of goals that were guiding me, and reformulating how I was thinking, how I was perceiving what I wanted in life, but more importantly, how I could teach others to really understand that they did matter, and that this feeling of being significant and valued is really anchored in our intrinsic motivation, energizing our pursuit of goals with relentless determination, and the inner spark that not only influences how we persevere through challenges that we face, but also guides and defines our actions towards the objectives that we want in life. So that’s the path that I ended up taking. 

Pete Mockaitis 

Oh, awesome. Well, I’d love to take just a couple minutes to dig into that journey a bit. When you said given this vision and hearing these things, what is the source, the message, the messenger? How did that land in you? 

John Miles 

So, it started to hit me at a point where my life was really consumed with the constant grind, and I have always been religious. And I decided to take courses that are offered in the Methodist religion called Discipleship, where for 36 weeks I went through an intense two-times a week class where we went through the entire Bible. 

And while I was going through that, it also awakened in me, and I think that this is something, whether you’re religious or not, I think sometimes we go about taking on a new challenge, and by doing that challenge, it opens us up to introspection, and that’s absolutely what it did for me, and I started to question the whys behind how I was living my life.  

Pete Mockaitis 

And that is a theme we’ve heard before. It’s like when folks engage, whether it’s a faith, or wisdom tradition, or intense introspective situation, yes, insights pop up and it can be a sort of an epiphany, a transformation, a life changer, a redirector of great consequence. So, we’ve heard that kind of a story before, so we’ll call it a theme, John. We’ll call it a theme. 

So, let’s dig in a little bit. We’ve got six mindset shifts, six behavior changes. And inside your mindset shifts, we’ve got the mission angler, muster the power to do something great; the brand reinventor, never being afraid to reinvent yourself; the mosquito auditor, avoid the most dangerous animal on the planet; the fear confronter, realizing that you are your greatest competitor; the perspective harnesser, zoom out and tap into its power; and the action creator, permit yourself to dream the dream. 

I’m most intrigued by talking about harnessing perspective, zooming out and tapping into the power. Lately, I’ve just been seeing that as a theme in terms of, like, I’m going about my life and I see my iPad, my iPad shows me an image, like Apple Photos does of, “Oh, here’s what was going on three years ago!” You’re like, “Whoa!” Or just looking at photos in general is like, “Wow, that’s a totally different time and place and an experience and perspective, and wow!” because it feels like, for me, at times, what you’re up in in this moment is, all there ever was, all there ever will be. 

And Daniel Kahneman has got a great quote, “Nothing is as important as you think it is while you’re thinking about it.” And I think that is so on the money. So, help us out here, if we want to harness some perspectives, how do we in fact zoom out and tap into some good power of broader, wiser perspective?

John Miles 

Yeah, so I think the first thing for the audience to understand is, in the Western mindset, that most of us who are listening to this likely have been brought up in, it’s deeply rooted in Greek philosophy which excels in linear learning. So, this whole concept of both/and thinking, which is really an Eastern concept doesn’t get really bestowed on us, so we really enter the world by thinking and viewing it as either/or instead of through the paradoxes that amplify the way we think. 

So, to think about this, and this both/and paradigm, it’s really thinking that our life has the possibilities where we can do things such as balance hard work with rest, merge self-discipline with self-compassion, finding harmony between solitude while also having community, integrating mind and body and so on and so forth. But the way I try to break it down in this chapter is I go into the behavior science behind it by looking at the works of Marianne Lewis and Wendy Smith who wrote a great book called Both/And Thinking, and then I use the example of a good friend of mine, astronaut Chris Cassidy. 

And I think Chris’s journey really highlights this difference in perspective and how it reshaped how he viewed challenges, how he viewed the world around him, and I’ll just give a couple examples of that. So, one of the core stories that I remember Chris talking to me about was his time going through basic underwater demolition school training to become a SEAL. 

And as he was going through Hell Week, everyone who’s there is miserable. But I remember him telling me that, in this point of misery, as he was colder than he’s ever been in his entire life, he looked down the line of people who were next to him, and he saw a Thai exchange student who was very thin, used to a completely different climate, and was so uncomfortable that he was actually buckling two and fours, he was looking at Chris, and Chris was looking back at him. And he realized that no matter how bad he had it, someone else had it worse. 

And it kind of gave him this courage to view life differently. Instead of looking at this as a never-ending trial, he looked at it as an opportunity, one, to see how far he could push his body and to view it as if it was a rubber band where he could expand or detract these trying moments in life. And he found through that, he could reshape his perspective to seeing that this was going to have a finite end. 

And all he needed to do was to concentrate on taking the conscious actions to let go of the things that were impacting him from achieving that goal. And that ended up leading him then throughout the remaining training and time in the SEALs as viewing these things that he would find himself encountering as finite periods of stress or trauma or action, and then training his mind to get through them. So, I think that’s just one powerful example of how you can implement it. 

Pete Mockaitis 

That is cool. And, boy, that feels like we need to have a movie scene of this eureka epiphany moment of enlightenment there. And I think that’s often the thing about perspective, is these things are objectively true, “Yes, this is temporary. The training will conclude.” And, yes, it is true, someone else has it tougher than you. 

And it seems like where I run into trouble, and I think many do, is those perspectives, while true, don’t get the focus, the attention. Like, your mind is consumed, like, “Oh, my gosh, this hurts a lot. I don’t know if I can handle much more of this.” And that is the dominant perspective and narrative that is running the show in your brain. Any pro tips, John, on when you’re in the midst of a small perspective dominating the scene, how to return to the broader perspective? 

 John Miles 

Yeah, to me, this is something that I refer to as the growth paradox, and I think real growth is like farming. It’s not instant gratification. It requires consistent effort and practice. And what that ends up doing is it leads to exponential returns over time. So, a core thing for the audience to think about is lulls and plateaus in our life shouldn’t be viewed as times of failure or not making progress, but as stages for future growth, and that’s something that this growth paradox teaches us about. 

Another one would be the failure paradox, which is looking at failure as a valuable teacher, which I’m sure many people have explored on this show, but each failure provides insights and learning opportunities just as James Dyson’s many inventions failed as he was creating prototypes before he successfully created the vacuum cleaner and then many of the other inventions that have come from Dyson’s products since then. So those would be two examples. 

 Pete Mockaitis 

Okay. Well, now, when it comes to, you listed six intentional behavior changes, and I’m going to give a little quick overview here. We got the anxiety optimizer, how to be on edge without going off the edge; originality embracer, realize that originality necessitates adaptability; the boundary magnifier, understand that sometimes being right means being alone; the outward inspirer, speak or act with your feet; the gardener leader, practice eyes-on, hands-off leadership; and the conscious engager, keep the main thing the main thing. 

I want to dig into the anxiety optimizer. We’ve had Morra Aarons-Mele, who’s great, talking about making anxiety your friend when you are trying to achieve stuff and to not let it consume you. So, let us know, what are your best practices you’ve discovered in terms of how do we make the most of the power, the fuel that anxiety can give us without just freaking out and losing it? 

John Miles 

So, I think it’s important, before we even go into that, to define why this is so important for us to master. McKinsey did some groundbreaking research on this zone of optimal anxiety, and what they found was that leaders who were able to perform in this state, outperformed their peer group by over 400%. Another way to think about that is they were able to accomplish, in two hours, what their peer group was doing, in eight to ten hours. 

So, in Passion Struck, why this is so important is I talk about, later in the book, the psychology of progress, and a core theme of that is that time is malleable. Well, in order to find more time, to take more action to move your life forward, you have to be better at utilizing it. And that’s, where getting into this optimal state of anxiety, is extremely important because in those two hours, if you learn how to do this, you can do what others are doing in eight to ten, which also opens up your life to have more balance in it and to develop and cultivate more relationships. 

So, at the core of this, it’s really thinking about your life as if you’re walking a tightrope. And on one side of the tightrope is overwhelming fear, and on the other is an indifference, and the state in between is what we talk about with finding the state of optimal anxiety. Anxiety is like a boon and a bane. A certain level gets you fired up, ready to take on challenges, but too much, it’s like you’re crashing a party like an unwelcome guest who doesn’t know when to leave. 

So, this is really science-backed strategy that’s crucial for achieving anything that you want in life. So, I talk about two different ways of doing it, there are more than these, but I really focus this chapter on another SEAL named Mark Devine, who many people have probably heard of, and also a race car driver named Jesse Iwuji. 

And Mark, when he was going through BUD/S himself, similar to Chris, was the first SEAL leader where his entire boat crew actually graduated from BUD/S. And the reason that that whole crew was able to do it was because he taught them four critical things that allowed them to exist in the state of optimal anxiety. The first was breath control. 

He, at first, started teaching them the simple practice of box breathing, which, if someone wants to experiment with this, just think of yourself doing a box, and breathe in for four seconds, breathe out for four seconds, etc. But this breath control is a dynamic way for you to control the energy that’s flowing through you and to really target it in a different way by quieting down your emotions. 

The second thing he really taught these folks was to have a positive internal dialogue, in that, similar to the way Chris, as I talked about, shifted his perspective, they too could shift that positive internal dialogue and how they were approaching their days and the activities that they were going through. The next thing he taught them was the power of imagery and how, having that imagery of them graduating BUD/S, of them becoming a SEAL, and seeing that optimism and success would change the way that they were viewing the longevity of the task that was ahead of them. 

And, lastly, and I think one of the most important things he taught them was the importance of targeted focus, of being present in the moment and getting through the activities that we were doing. So those four things – breath control, positive internal dialogue, imagery and targeted focus – are the things that I highlight in the book. But a way that a person could think about this is we often end up spiraling. And one of the initial things that we can do, is if you practice that breath work, it allows you to have awareness. 

And, to me, awareness is half the battle won, because if we have awareness, we catch ourselves before we even start spiraling because we notice when unease starts creeping in, and that perhaps prickly feeling or that thing where your hair is rising, and that’s your cue to understanding that you need to start taking some deep breaths and slowing everything down to allow yourself to get clarity. So that would be one starting point that I would talk about. 

Pete Mockaitis 

Yeah, that’s really cool, and you’re making me think I really need to finish that book by Mark Devine, the Unbeatable Mind, I think it’s called. I’ve started it, and too many books crowded it out, but there’s a lot of goodness there. So, I’m intrigued by this notion of optimizing anxiety. It seems like there are some interconnected ideas here, whether it’s Stephen Covey talking about the growth zone is in the middle of the panic zone and I think the complacent zone, or Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi says your flow state is when the task is not so easy that it’s boring, and not so hard that you’re overwhelmed, freaking out. 

So, it seems like all three of these conceptualizations have some overlap, but I like the way that you’ve zoomed it in on anxiety as an emotion, a signal, a trigger for you to tune in to these dynamics that are going on. Is optimizing your anxiety level just the same as Covey style being in the growth zone, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi style being in the flow state? Or are there some nuances, distinctions that you would highlight within this framework? 

John Miles 

No, you’re right, it is similar to both of those things, and that flow state is a critical and core component of it. To me, I think the phrase that really captures this the best is to learn to be on the edge without going over the edge. And the best vision that I heard to capture this was talking to NASCAR driver, Jesse Iwuji, who told me, when he’s driving the car, when he was too cautious, it would cause him to wreck because the other drivers were expecting him to do things that were more aggressive in his driving style. But when he tried to take it too far to the edge, he also would wreck out because he was trying to push things too much. 

So, it was really finding that balance in between those two where he learned how to position himself to be on the edge without going over the edge. And to me, that’s what makes this a little bit different. It’s like riding the wave without wiping out because we’ve all heard of athletes who are in the zones, artists losing themselves in creation, coders crunching lines of code until time blurs. But what I’m talking about here is the underlying, really, emotion that lies underneath it, and how do you calm that as your entry point into going into this state. 

Pete Mockaitis 

And to flip it, what if we don’t have enough anxiety, like we’re too we’re too passive, chill about a matter, and we would do better to crank it up? I guess what’s resonating for me is I’m thinking about there’s a time where I was hosting leadership conferences. I remember the first time I did it, I was kind of anxious, like, “Oh, my gosh, I’ve never done this before. This is a big role, a big deal. Got to really make sure everything is done well,” and things went rather well. 

And then the second time, I was like, “I got this. I know how this is done. Been there, done that,” and it went not as well. I was too passive and it would have behooved me and the attendees had I been more anxious the second time around. Any pro tips when what’s necessary is to crank it up a bit? 

John Miles 

Yeah, I think I have a tendency probably, as people are hearing me talk, to be more like what you were describing. And so, for me, if I’m giving a talk in that example, I really do my best to amp myself up, because if you’re too subdued, like you were talking about in that situation, people aren’t going to feel the energy reverberating from you that you want them to feel. 

So, I think it’s really having that self-awareness, which I talked about earlier, of understanding where your emotional state is, and the task that you’re trying to complete and readjusting it based on the situation that you’re faced with. So, in that same situation, if I’m behind stage, getting ready to go out there and give my best, I’m really pumping myself up. 

And something that I actually do is I visualize myself being someone other than myself at times. I often, going back to Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, picture myself as him coming on the stage, and how would he present himself to the audience, what emotion would he give. And when I do that, and I think about portraying him and the emotions on the stage, it completely changes how I myself am showing up and transforming it into a more profound version of myself. 

So, I would encourage the audience, if they’re facing the same situation, that’s something that I like to do, I was taught that by a speaking coach, is imagine someone else that you want to emulate and picture yourself being them as you’re going throughout that activity.  

Pete Mockaitis 

Oh, totally. We had a guest who used the term psychological Halloween-ism. It’s like you’re donning the costume of the superhero or whomever that you want to be, and, sure enough, somehow that just kind of influences your thoughts and attitudes and behaviors and results. Go figure. Really cool. Now, to that point about Mark Devine with those four things, with the visualization imagery, any pro tips or do’s and don’ts on visualizing well? 

I think sometimes, for example, in a tough spot, if you’re visualizing, “Oh, just a few more minutes till we get a meal,” or a donut, or a smoke, or whatever you’re craving and feel deprived of, that sometimes that could be a counterproductive strategy in terms of getting the best from yourself over the long term. What are your perspectives on best and worst practices for visualizing and using imagery well? 

John Miles 

Yeah, to me, what I think is most important about it is being consistent in your application of it. And for me, there are three different ways that I like to do visualizations. The first is I like to do activations. So, in the morning, I get up really early, 5:00 a.m., I go on this walk with my dog, and I use activations, which is a little bit different than a meditation. I’m activating the way I want my life to unfold. I’m activating how I want my day to go. 

And so, I picture for myself what I want the day to look like when it’s complete, and I kind of walk through what I want my morning to look like, what I want to get accomplished, what I need to do in the middle of the day, what I need to do in the late afternoon, but then also visualize how I want to show up for my loved ones. So that’s one way that I think you can do it is through those activations. 

Another way that I like to do it is through journaling, and really just going into a free flow of thought about, “How am I showing up today? What am I feeling?” and getting those raw emotions out on paper. And then, really then, if there’s a gap between the ideal state that I want to live that day in, then really visualizing, “What actions do I need to take in my energy, in my focus, in how I want to change the very aspects of how I’m going to lead my life for the next few hours of the day?” 

And so, those are two things that I found helpful for me where I use activations or journaling to help me get into that state of internal dialogue, and really that imagery that I want to see for myself and how it’s shaping the immediacy of, for me, the day and the transition points between it. 

Pete Mockaitis 

And so, when you’re visualizing that optimal day outcome, are you sort of imagining yourself in the process of, “Okay, and I’m going to write some stuff. I see myself – third person, first person – at the keyboard, clacking away, or I am admiring the written words with a beaming grin of pride”? Like, what are some of the details of a visualized scene that you construct? 

John Miles 

So, for me, I’m more visualizing the outcomes. Like, this time that I have, what are the outcomes that I want to achieve and in what time frames do I want to achieve them? So, it could be envisioning myself preparing for an interview that I’m doing on a podcast. It could be, as you were saying, visualizing myself writing chapters of a book or a blog that I’m working on. It could be me visualizing a phone call that I’m going to have and how I want that phone call to go to produce the outcome that I want. 

So, I’m really outcome focused and how I’m trying to use this imagery to think through the day and the positive outcome that I want to achieve through the actions that I’m doing. 

Pete Mockaitis 

Awesome. Well, John, tell me, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about a few of your favorite things? 

John Miles 

No, I’ve really enjoyed this. Thank you. 

Pete Mockaitis 

All right. Well, now could you give us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?  

John Miles 

This one is from Henry David Thoreau, and he says that “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” And I also love the quote by Mark Twain, that 20 years from now, you can look back upon your life, and you can either choose to live it by stepping out into the unknown, or you can choose to live it, as Sharon Salzberg said, in constant anticipation of what if or could be.  

Pete Mockaitis 

All right. And could you now share a favorite study or experiment or bit of research? 

John Miles 

So, some research that I really like is that of Dr. Benjamin Hardy and some of the work that he’s done with Dan Sullivan. Top of mind to me is some of the work that he’s done on future self where he’s looked at the difference between the gap versus the gain, where so many of us live in this comparison trap where we’re constantly living our lives in the gap because we’re trying to compare who we are to some ideal that is just almost impossible for us to achieve. 

It would be like me trying to compare myself as a speaker to Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, or to Ed Mylett, or someone who’s been doing this to an extremely professional level. Whereas, I could be looking at my life in the gains that I’m making where I’m comparing my current self to my past self, and looking at the incremental progress that I’ve made. And I think that’s really important when we think about the life that we want to craft, is, “How do we develop the mindset shift from going from the comparison trap of living in the gap to living our lives more in the gains?” 

 Pete Mockaitis 

And a favorite book? 

John Miles 

I think one of the most profound books I’ve ever read that’s influenced me personally was Quiet by Susan Cain.  

Pete Mockaitis 

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

John Miles 

At first, I was fearing what AI would do, and so I was trying to not use it, but I’ve really figured that it’s not going away. So, if AI is going to be around for a long time, I better become an expert at using it. So, I have really been going further and further down the rabbit hole of what are different ways that you can use AI to make not only your career better, but your life better. 

Pete Mockaitis 

All right. And is there a particular nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks; they quote it back to you often? 

John Miles 

True success really comes down to winning the battle with yourself. Those, I believe, who persist in the pursuit of their dreams, no matter what the hurdles, are the winners in life because they’ve won over their weaknesses. And to me, that is really a profound thing that I want people to take away, is that we all have our different definitions of success. 

But to me, the biggest battle that any of us have is with the inner critic that presents itself to us at each and every day, and learning how to win over that critic, and to overcome the self-limiting beliefs that hold so many of us back, to me is the key to what Sharon Salzberg was talking about in how we choose to live our life, whether we choose to live it in excellence or with ignorance. 

Pete Mockaitis 

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

John Miles 

So, the two best places would be my two websites. If you want to learn more about me personally, you can go to JohnRMiles.com. If you want to learn more about the Passion Struck Movement, my podcast, things like that, you can go to PassionStruck.com. And a really great thing that people can do, if they want to try it out, is I created a quiz when I launched the book that will help people understand where they sit on the Passion Struck continuum. It’s about 20 questions, it takes about 10 minutes, and they can find that on PassionStruck.com. 

Pete Mockaitis 

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

John Miles 

Yes. Often our choice of career is dictated more by the allure of stability and safety than by passion and fulfillment. And I ended up being about 20 years into my career when I came to the profound realization that I had become an absolute expert at making money for others and making others dreams come true, but I wasn’t making my own dreams come true. 

So, really, it’s confronting this fear of uncertainty that pushes many of us towards professions that we feel less connection to, resulting in what I think is so many people feeling unfulfilled or disengaged in the workplace. So, what I would encourage people to do is to take that other path, the path to start making your own dreams come true, and finding something that you feel is fulfilling at your heart, and that you wake up just with this unending desire and passion and ignition within that it’s propelling you to just want to do that with your life. And that really gets down to exploiting your uniqueness, your unique gifts, to find a problem that’s worth solving in the service of others. 

 Pete Mockaitis 

Beautiful. Well, John, thank you. I wish you many more adventures and days of passion. 

John Miles 

Well, thank you so much, Pete, for having me on your show. That was an absolute phenomenal interview, and I can see why your show is so popular. 

Pete Mockaitis 

Well, thank you. Appreciate that. 

Pete Mockaitis

Dan, welcome.

Daniel Goleman

Thank you, Pete. Pleasure to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to talk about some insights from your book, “Optimal: How to Sustain Personal and Organizational Excellence Every Day” but first I think, when people hear and see your name, they think, “Oh! Emotional intelligence!” So, you’ve been pursuing this stuff for, well, how long has it been?

Daniel Goleman

The first book was in ’95.

Pete Mockaitis

Yeah, there you go.

Daniel Goleman

When you were probably in nursery school, I would guess. I don’t know.

Pete Mockaitis

I was 12 years old.

Daniel Goleman

Twelve years old, there you go. So, I’ve been doing it a long time and it’s really interesting. The research has gotten better, that’s why I did this book. And when I did the first book, it was really kind of hypothetical, anecdotal. Now I wrote “Optimal” with Cary Cherniss, who was my fellow co-director of a consortium for research on emotional intelligence, and we’re just basically harvesting lots of research.

But in terms of how to be awesome at work, I think the most interesting research comes out of Harvard Business School. It’s what we start the book with. It’s a profile of a good day, and it comes from a study where they had hundreds of men and women keep a journal about what it was like today at work and what happened and how they felt. And from that there’s a kind of composite of a perfect day at work and it goes like this.

You’re very engrossed and engaged in what you’re doing. You’re totally focused. You’re not distracted. You like what you’re doing. You feel good. You’re in upstate, and you feel very connected with the people you’re working with. That turns out to be a high productivity state. And leadership is the art of getting work done well through other people. So, when you’re in that state, you’re helping your boss, and your boss knows it, but you’re also being at your best.

Pete Mockaitis

Well, yeah, that sounds like a fantastic place to be. So, tell us, how often do we tend to get there as professionals? Like what proportion of our days fall into this good-day zone?

Daniel Goleman

That’s a question that we don’t have an empirical answer for, but I would say it also varies a huge amount from person to person. And the lovely thing about this particular zone of high productivity is it’s different from the famous flow state. The flow state is that one time you were absolutely at your best, you know, you can’t believe how well you did. The problem with flow is that it just happens to you. You can’t make it happen. You can’t produce it.

The optimal state, on the contrary, is on the same spectrum, a little lower than flow I would say, but your attention is very important. And, in fact, attention is a way to get into that optimal state. Paying full attention to what you’re doing now or what’s most important to you right now as a doorway into the optimal state.

And the nice thing about attention is it’s a muscle. It’s a muscle of the mind. It’s like, you know, when you go to the gym and you lift weights, every rep makes that muscle that much stronger. It’s the same thing with the brain circuitry for attention. If you do an attention training or attention development exercise, you get better and better at it.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. Cool. Well, so I’d love to hear, could you tell us perhaps a story of someone who wasn’t having such a good proportion of these optimal days, and they were able to do some cool brain training in order to turn that around, and what happened for them?

Daniel Goleman

Well, the brain training I’ll share with your listeners, it’s very simple. Sometimes it’s called mindfulness of the breath. It’s just if you take any meditation method and you strip away the belief system from a cognitive science point of view, they’re all developing attention. They’re all helping you ignore distraction, which today is worse than ever for people. We all have these little phones with us that carry the things that interests us the most, which are our biggest distractions.

So, by bringing your attention to your breath, the in-breath and the out-breath, and then the next breath, the in-breath and the out-breath, doing that systematically as a training, the same way you go to a gym, for example. It turns out that the research shows that this makes people better and better at bringing their focus to what they need to do right now, and that is how that state blossoms, the optimal state.

Pete Mockaitis

Well, that’s lovely. Could you share with us any particular studies or quantification of just how much better we get at that and how much of a dose I need to do of this sort of a practice in order to reach those benefits?

Daniel Goleman

Well, I did another book called “Altered Traits” which reviewed all of the hard science about all this, and it shows there’s basically a dose-response relationship that is the more you do it, the better you get, the better the benefits. I would recommend people who’ve never done this starting with just five minutes a day and then building up from there. The longer you do it the better it is, and that means that the stronger the circuitry for paying attention gets.

There was a study done at Harvard that shows people are distracted about 50% of the time, generally, in life. More so at work, it turns out. And so, if you want to be in a better state, if you want to be at your best at work, this is the kind of thing that will help you do that because it helps you ignore distractions.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. And with regard to this dose-response curve, I’m wondering, is there a point of diminishing returns, like after you’re doing six hours, it’s not doing much more for you than when you’re doing five hours? Where would we put that?

Daniel Goleman

Well, frankly, very few people are going to do it five or six hours. You’d rather be like a monk or a nun or something to do it that much. But if you do it over years, if you do it maybe a half hour a day every day for a long time, you start to see, we’ve seen in our research, many more benefits from this.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. And can you tell us about the particulars for how that’s done excellently? So, if we’re, for example, I’ve heard it said that it is ideal to have a posture that is alert yet relaxed, like you’re not lying down, and if you’re sitting, you’re not hunched over and you’re not standing at an attention, can you talk to us a little bit about the nuances or the particulars that make a practice optimal?

Daniel Goleman

Definitely. Well, first of all, before you get to your posture, let’s get to where you’re going to do this and when. You’ve got to find a time in your day when you can be someplace where no one’s going to disturb you. You don’t have to answer the phone, kids aren’t going to come in, or the dog is not going to jump on your lap, whatever it is, and you need a space you can control or can be controlled for you.

And then the basic instruction, as you said, is just to sit up straight. Not tense, relaxed, with your spine straight. You can do it in a chair easily, and then bring your attention to your breath, the in-breath and the out-breath, and then the next breath, the in-breath and the out-breath. Then your mind is going to wander at some point, and when you notice it wandered, you bring it back to the next breath. That’s the critical moment. That’s the strengthener because that’s a moment of mindfulness. It’s when you bring your mind back from distraction to the point of focus, where you get the payoff from this.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. And if I can maybe vocalize a concern or response, “But, Dan, that sounds so boring!”

Daniel Goleman

People actually often say the opposite.

Pete Mockaitis

Pray tell.

Daniel Goleman

They say, “My mind is…I can’t control my mind.” Rather than nothing happening, too much is happening. And the answer is good for you. That means you’re finally paying attention to how your mind actually is.

That’s a normal beginning response. You start to see how active your mind actually is. Usually, we don’t notice it. We get carried away. We pay attention to this and to that and to this and that. We go wherever our mind does, but then you realize you don’t have to do that. You can start to control your mind. So, that’s a normal response. People rarely say they’re bored.

Here’s what you need to understand, Pete. The body is designed to have a fight or flight response, technically sympathetic nervous system arousal, to an emergency, to stress. The problem for so many of us at work is that it’s unremitting. It’s relentless. You’re stressed all the time. You never have a chance to do what the body needs, which is a recovery period. It’s called parasympathetic arousal, and it’s the downtime when the body rests and recovers. And if you never get that, you’re going to become emotionally exhausted that leads to burnout.

The antidote is something I really urge people to do, which is to schedule something that’s recovery for you, that’s relaxing, you know, playing with a pet or a kid, or being with a loved one, or meditation, yoga, walk in nature, whatever does it for you, but schedule it every day because it seems like it’s irrelevant. Like you were saying, “Well, isn’t this going to sound boring to people?” No, this is important. This is your time to yourself to help yourself be ready for the next period of stress, which is so-called work.

Pete Mockaitis

And, Dan, tell me, if some say, “You know, the way I really like to unwind is by watching movies or playing video games or being on social media,” does that count, Dan? Or, what do you think about that?

Daniel Goleman

Well, I would say that those are other forms of distraction. Sorry, I don’t think they count as recovery. Recovery is a time when you don’t think about those things you otherwise ruminate about and worry about. So, it needs to be something where you break the flow, maybe it’s a video game for you, but if you get really, like, into the game and I’m very excited by the game, it’s not recovery. Sorry. It’s what we call eustress. It’s a form of stress. It might be enjoyable, but still, it’s not that total rest and relaxation and recovery. That’s what you need.

Pete Mockaitis

I think that’s well said, because I guess, whether it’s a movie or a game or whatever, some of them are intense, like, “I’m shooting down 99 other people,” and others are more chill, like, “Okay, we’re making some lines in Tetris. All right. Here we go, doo-doo-doo-doo, in the groove.”

Daniel Goleman

But if you were to be measuring the physiology, your physiology, while you do that, it’s just as bad when you’re stressed.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. So, here we go, we got one key principle, is that great days consist of doing stuff with uninterrupted focused attention on a thing, and one way we can get better at that is by doing a mindfulness practice and making sure that we have some restorative breaks built into our world. Tell us, what are some of the other master keys to being optimal?

Daniel Goleman

One of them goes back to Reinhold Niebuhr’s “Serenity Prayer.” You know that prayer that’s used in AA?

Pete Mockaitis

That’s right, yeah.

Daniel Goleman

“Give me the wisdom to know the difference between the things I can change and the things I can’t.” And implicit in that is the ability to adjust to things we can’t. So, think about your boss at work, some people are lucky and they have a great boss and some people aren’t so lucky. I’ve gone around the world asking different business groups, “Tell me about a boss you hated and a boss you loved, and a quality that made that boss so awful or so good.”

And the bad boss is invariably kind of an emotional Neanderthal, and the good boss is, frankly, emotionally intelligent. It’s someone who’s available, who’s empathetic, who’s supportive, who gives you clear direction, things like that. So, if you have a bad boss, day in and day out, or bad working circumstance, the question is, “What can you do in that situation that you can’t change, you have to live with, to make it more manageable for you?” And what I would say is manage your internal state.

I once had a boss that I hated and I became kind of avid meditator in the morning, so that when I went to work, I’d be at my best. So I could stand him, basically, and do my best work. And I would say that managing your internal state is something you have control over. I don’t know if you, Pete, you’re familiar with the book, “Man’s Search for Meaning” by Viktor Frankl.

It’s a great book, and Frankl survived four years in Nazi concentration camps. And he said the way he did it was by managing his internal reaction to what was going on, and that’s what saved him. And I think it’s very profound because it implies any of us can have more control over our inner world. And it’s our inner world, bottom line, that makes the difference for how we feel at the end of the day.

Pete Mockaitis

Oh, I love that. So, let’s talk about some of the practices by which we can manage our inner world and our emotional states. So, you have a scenario for there’s a bad boss, someone you dread interacting with, seeing, experiencing, and one approach is doing some mindfulness meditation practice in preparation for that. What are some of the other super effective tools you suggest we can use for managing our own internal emotional states?

Daniel Goleman

So, the mindfulness, the breath, the attention training that I mentioned, the payoff from that is gradual. It’s not like you’re going to do that at work. You’re going to do it every day or a few days a week, and the benefits come slowly. I would say if you know you’re going into a stressful encounter, you’re going to be with that person you can’t stand, for example, whoever that is, there’s something that’s used by Special Forces that I recommend. It’s a controlled breathing method. It’s called box breath, and it has a very powerful effect on your physiology.

The box breath is sometimes called four by four by four. You breathe in deeply so your belly expands. You hold your breath for as long as it’s comfortable, and then you exhale for as long as it’s comfortable. And if you do that, six to nine times, it actually changes your physiology, your body state, from being tensed, fight or flight, sympathetic nervous arousal, to that recovery mode, to parasympathetic.

It lowers heart rate. It lowers blood pressure, and it does it on the spot. And you can you can do it at work, it’s not that obvious what you’re doing. And it’s used by Special Forces, for example, before they’re going to go into a big whatever that they know they’ve got to prepare for. And I say why not use it at work?

Pete Mockaitis

Yes. Now, Dan, I’m loving this. So, I’ve heard of box breathing, and I’ve done it, and you’ve got some nuances there that I just delight in there. So, now I had heard it suggested that you do, it’s a box, like your inhale time, your hold while inhaled, your exhale time, and your hold while exhaled are the same. So, it’s like you could draw a box with four completely equal sides. And so, I had heard like, “Oh, do for, like, four seconds.” And so, you’re saying, “Ah, instead of doing four seconds, do it as long as you comfortably can on each of the four steps of the way.”

Daniel Goleman

Yeah, and it might be six seconds for someone. Who knows? I don’t think counting the seconds is the point. I think tuning into what’s comfortable for you is more to the point, and if you can hold it longer than the count of four, do it. If you can hold your breath for longer than that, if you can exhale for longer than that. In other words, find what works for you in this.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. And also, you said six to nine times. I love the specificity. And so, that has been shown in the research to get the job done, that that amount of breathing will have a noticeable difference, just six to nine of those loops?

Daniel Goleman

That’s right.

Pete Mockaitis

Beautiful. So, like three-ish minutes and you’ve got a transformation. That’s what I’m talking about, Dan. Thank you. All right. Well, hey, lay it on us. What else we got? We got the mindfulness meditation. We’ve got the box breathing. What are some of your other faves for the emotional state management?

Daniel Goleman

If you’d like a third approach, one thing that some people find very useful is monitoring that voice inside our head that gets us out of bed in the morning, it has us propelled through our day, and then puts us to sleep at night. That’s self-talk, it’s called, technically. And monitoring self-talk, you may find, for example, that you’re being too critical of yourself, many people are. You may fixate on the things you did wrong and not encourage the things or celebrate the things that you do well. That is a way that we make things even more stressful for ourselves.

And so, there’s a wonderful book called “Learned Optimism” by a guy named Martin Seligman, a psychologist at Penn. And what he says is that you can talk back. You don’t have to believe your thoughts. And you can, if you find that you’re being overly critical, that you ruminate about the things you got wrong, he’d say, “You know, remember the things that you do right, the things that you do well.” In other words, look at your strengths, not just at your weaknesses.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. So, monitoring the self-talk, I hear you there in terms of our self-talk may be like, “Oh, you always screw this up. You’re such a loser. This is rubbish. Oh, this is not going to work out. It never works out. This is too stressful. Why do I… How did I commit to this? How did I get myself into this?” Okay, so we got that groove. Not so encouraging. So, when it comes to the monitoring, I mean, I can maybe notice, “Oh, I got some negative self-talk going on here.” When it comes to monitoring, what is the practice or protocol or approach?

Daniel Goleman

In cognitive therapy, which uses this approach, they often will tell someone, “Notice what you keep telling yourself.” Very often, the critiques are repetitive. It’s like the same thing in various forms over and over and over again. And prepare yourself, rehearse something you could say back to those thoughts. Like, “I screwed that thing up at work, and that proves to me because of my negative self-talk that I’m an idiot.”

But what could you say to yourself when you notice you’re doing that negativity thing? You could say, “Actually, you know, usually I don’t mess up. Usually, I do pretty well. And I remember this time and that time and that time that I actually did just fine.” And so, you purposely bring that to mind to counteract the negative thoughts.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. So, we’ve got some rehearsal in advance. Lay it on us in terms of, if I’ve got some self-talk that says, “Ugh, I’m so tired. I really just don’t feel like dealing with this. This is so overwhelming,” what are some good responses?

Daniel Goleman

So, it sounds to me, Pete, that you’re evoking a situation where it’s kind of relentless and you’re feeling burned out. Is that right?

Pete Mockaitis

It could be burnout. It could just be dread or reluctance or procrastination, in general. It’s like, “Oh, this is a task I don’t feel like dealing with, and here it is. Ugh.”

Daniel Goleman

Okay. So, maybe you remind yourself, “Why do I need to do this? Why is this important? This is part of my job,” maybe. “And what is my state right now?” you might ask yourself. “And what can I do to upgrade it so that I can be up to the task?” I think one thing you can do is pay more attention to what you’re doing right now. One of the things that you’re letting happen, I suppose, is that your attention is just wandering, “Oh, I don’t want to think about this. I don’t want to do this.” You’re just basically letting yourself be distracted. And so, you could intentionally up your focus right then, “You know, I don’t love this thing that I have to do, but I have to do it for this reason, and so I’m going to really do it. I’m going to pay full attention to what I need to do.”

Pete Mockaitis

All right. Well, Dan, tell us, when it comes to having optimal days, we’ve covered a few things here. Where should we go next?

Daniel Goleman

Well, it turns out that emotional intelligence allows this more often. Emotional intelligence is four parts: self-awareness, managing your emotions, empathy, and relationship management. That’s the whole package, and some of us are better at some parts and less good at others. So, I’ve been talking about the first two parts, self-awareness and self-management; tuning into what you’re feeling and then managing those feelings. But there are other aspects of self-management. It’s not just about reducing the negative emotions, like, “I can’t stand this. I hate my boss,” whatever it may be. That’s part of it.

But another part is marshaling positive emotions, being optimistic, being positive about what’s happening, keeping your eye on goals that matter to you. Maybe you don’t like this particular part of your job, but you know that you want to advance at work. Maybe that’s a long-term goal. So, you remember that at that time, and you tell yourself, “This is part of the job I really don’t like, but I have to do a good job because I’m going up the ladder,” perhaps. That’s one way of doing it.

Then there’s empathy. Empathy is really interesting, Pete. There are three kinds of empathy. One is cognitive empathy, “I understand how you think about things. I see your perspective.” AI is very good at cognitive empathy. But then there’s emotional empathy, “I know how the person in front of me feels because I get a sense of it in my body.” There are actually, when you have eye contact in a real interaction, face-to-face, you establish a kind of invisible, instantaneous, unconscious bridge, brain-to-brain, and emotions pass very effectively on that bridge, so you tune in to what’s going on, and you pick it up. That’s emotional empathy.

The third kind of empathy is actually the one that we want in our boss. It’s called empathic concern, “I not only know how you think and feel, I care about you.” And these are each based in different parts of the brain. So, if you have a boss who has this third kind of empathy, you feel you can trust that person, you feel rapport with them. If you are a boss, if you have direct reports, and you’re that kind of person, then the people who work for you are more likely to give their best effort because they like you as a person.

They feel that you support them. You might even inspire them. You might articulate some meaning or purpose to what we’re doing that is even greater than the job itself. And that turns out to get the best efforts out of people. But at the very least, you can guide them, you can coach them, you can help them get better at what they’re doing. All of that makes people feel really good about their boss. So, that’s the third part. And then there’s putting that all together to have effective relationships.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. Well, I’m curious, Dan. Let’s say, folks, their hearts are in the right place. They would like to demonstrate this and provide this for the people they care about in their lives, their colleagues, their friends and family. Assuming that’s there, what are some ways folks fall short in terms of, like, maybe they’re unconscious, that there are things that they’re doing or not doing that are just sabotaging their ability to effectively be empathetic, empathic, in a way that that folks can receive and appreciate?

Daniel Goleman

Well, one of the common colds of this is having relationships that are purely transactional where you only talk about what needs to be done. You never talk about the person, “How are you doing? What’s your life like?” In fact, one thing that I advise, I’m often asked, “What can we do when we work only by Zoom? We never meet each other.”

You know in the old days, or maybe still in some workplaces, you have a nine-to-five situation where you’re with someone five days a week for all those hours and it’s just natural that you find out about them as a person. You get to know them. It’s the, “Let’s have lunch together,” or, “Let’s have a beer after work,” or just around the cooler, water cooler, whatever it is.

But casual conversation matters because it knits people together. And if you don’t have that, if you’re working by Zoom, I think it’s important, particularly if you’re a leader, say, of a team, to replace that with a one-on-one, with the individuals on that team, for example, where you talk about the person, not the job, “But what do you want from life, from your career?” for example, or, “How can I help you?” That starts a very different kind of connection.

Pete Mockaitis

Alrighty.

Pete Mockaitis

Well, now could you tell us about a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Daniel Goleman

The first person to benefit from compassion or caring about other people is the person who feels it.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. And a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Daniel Goleman

Well, one thing I like talking about are the studies that established the social brain circuitry, which are relatively new in neuroscience, and one of them had to do with a neuron in a monkey’s brain that only fired when that monkey lifted its arm. This was a lab in Italy. One day, the neuron was firing, the brain cell was firing, and the monkey wasn’t moving, and they didn’t know why.

Then they realized it was a hot day in Italy. A lab assistant had gone out for a gelato. He’s standing in front of the monkey, and every time he raises his arm to take a lick of the gelato, the monkey’s brain cell for that same movement fired. That was the discovery of mirror neurons. And it turns out that the human brain is peppered with mirror neurons, and they tell us what the person in front of us is not just doing and intending, but what they’re feeling. Mirror neurons are a very important aspect of the social brain and of empathy.

Pete Mockaitis

And a favorite book?

Daniel Goleman

I’ll say “Man’s Search for Meaning” by Viktor Frankl.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. And a favorite tool, something you use to be awesome at your job?

Daniel Goleman

Listening.

Pete Mockaitis

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

Daniel Goleman

I’d point them to my website, DanielGoleman.info.

Pete Mockaitis

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

Daniel Goleman

Pay attention.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. Well, Dan, this is fun. I wish you many optimal days.

Daniel Goleman

Thank you. Likewise, Pete. Great.