CM 267: Michael Gervais on Overcoming Our Biggest Fear
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Everything that you need is already inside you and the investment to go inward, to listen and to feel. And to be honest with your experience of who you are, of your traumas, of your hopes and dreams, that adventure is incredibly freeing.

Welcome to curious mize at work. I'm your host, gale Allen. There are many good reasons to look to others. For example, you might need expert advice or feedback to improve your performance, but there's one reason not to, and that is to determine yourself worth.

When you look to someone else to define you or tell you how to live your life, you lose a lot. And if you find IT hard to believe you'd ever let someone else influence you in those ways, you'd be surprised. Michael chavez is a high performance psychologist who's worked with the lead athletes, artists and leaders.

Through his work. He's learned that one of the biggest obstacles standing in their way is fear of other people's opinions, and he's see just how crippling those fears can be. That's why he's written the book, the first rule of mastery, stop worrying about what people think of you.

In talking to Michael L, I learned how biology sets us up to place a lot of weight on other people's opinions. I also learn how social media is designed to reinforce that fear. Fortunately, Michael shared insights on what to do.

I walk away feeling empowered. Before we start one quick ask, if you like the podcast, please take a moment to leave rating on itunes or whatever you subscribe your feedback x sends a strong signal to people looking for their next podcast. And now here's my interview with Michael garvey. Michael jervy welcomed to the podcast, IT is so great to have you on.

Well, this is the thrill for me to be here with you as well.

Thank you. Go, Michael. In your books introduction, you write, our fear of people's opinions is a hidden pieces.

C, and maybe the single greatest constrictor of human potential. That's a big statement. Can you share an example of what you're talking about and why is such a problem?

sure. And it's quite simple when I give you um these types away I think about IT it's fop e shows up when you don't raise your hand in the meeting because of your fear about what others might think. And it's in that moment you are trying to avoid rejection.

But IT comes at a cost, creativity, innovation, pushing forward the collective mission. You know photo o is checking your phone so you appear to be busy or in demand. Photo o is laughing at a joke that you don't find funny, but maybe even offensive, but you don't want to be rejected.

Or the odone out photos is pretending to know a song or movie that everyone's talking about. You just kind of smile and and go along with IT. Photo o is staying late at work because your boss is still ler. Photo o is pretending to drink at a party so that you're not the odd one out. So photos is this reflexive fear.

What will they think of me if? What will they think of me? When am I OK in their eyes now? And it's tapped into an ancient part of our brain that is highly tuned for survival, to be part of the pack, to be part of the belonging of the pack.

And when we do that, we're safe so to be authentic, to speak truth, to power, to be the odone out, to be yourself, to not know the joke, to say, hey, I don't find that funny to say, hey, hey um boss um I rapped up. Um i'll see later. Thanks, thanks for working late.

You know, to do your thing, there's a cost of potential rejection. In rejection two hundred thousand years ago, from the community, from the tribe, was a near distance. And now IT is not the same. But our ancient brain is trying to figure out how to be OK in modern times. And this is one of the hang of s um that we're still working .

through anything to recognize there around power status difference. You know are there some realities to a needing to be concerned about other people's opinions?

That's a great question because people's opinions materially can matter. So a supervisor or if you if you're try to enter the college world, that the people that are gating, whether you get into a favorite or severity or even university itself or somebody, if your job interviewing and and you're showing up, their opinions materially, matter to you, they hold status in that moment.

And you don't, however, when you do the internal work to know who you are, to have an idea of a compelling future that you're working towards, to be very clear about your purpose, when you've done that alone based work, nobody can do that for you. The powerful thing is nobody can ever take that away. So when you know who you are, you know what you're working toward, that really matters to you.

Somebody's opinion of you holds far less weight. They might not let you in. They might not say you're part of this. They might say actually this is not the place for you, but when again, I can say one more time when you've done the alone work to really know who you are, nobody can ever take that way so they do not have power over you in the most meaningful of ways.

I want to talk a little bit more about human biology because you've already brought up some things about sort of our human bio default settings. And I want to talk a little bit more about how this works almost mechanically. So you explain that our fear of other people's opinions, the photos that you refer to, it's an anticipatory mechanism. It's a preemptive process. Tell us what you mean.

It's a preemptive process to read ourselves for potential rejection, to oriented ourselves towards potential acceptance. So this is not about not caring about another person's opinion. We need more caring people.

We need more empathetic compassion at thoughtful people. We are more like a coral reef social beings that are interconnected. Then we are some other analogy. And so our brains are designed to be part of something.

And there are particular mechanisms that we can point to that are desperately, in some cases, trying to fit into belong because that's for safety happens and is a specific part of the brain that is over scribed in modern times. And we really don't know exactly it's its deepest function. But the default mode network, just like that sounds, is active most of the time.

So most of the time, our computers are not running sequencing and like really grinding at its resources. Most of the time, they are relatively idle. Same with the brain, and that's called the default mode network.

And when the default mode network is active, what IT does is IT says, am I okay? Are we okay? Is this okay? So the default mode, as you would hope, is sorting out survival.

And then the selective attention networks is scanning the world for danger. So both of those mechanisms, the default M I O K is a OKR. We OK is exhAusting.

And then when you do the attention, selective attention and scanning of the world, the external when our focus goes externally, it's trying to figure out where all the threats and dangers are. And one of the greatest threats that is under a under subscribed in modern times is the threat of another person's opinion. Their potential rejection trigger a part of our brain that says, oh, I am.

I getting kicked out because two hundred thousand years ago, getting kicked out was in your descent. Now it's just that you don't fit in. And there are other tribes in this very highly connected, technologically advanced world that we live in.

It's helpful to recognize that there's this process of fear that associated with photo. O, you know, you talk about how IT has IT before addington and after .

yeah the anticipation phase. If there was a pie, the anticipation phase would take up about eighty five percent of the time. And then a smaller slice would be when you're actually in the moment and you're checking.

So you and I are in a social engagement, or we're at a social event, and i'm checking to see in your eyes, in your microchip sions, in your tone, voice, are we okay? And then the third part is the responding. So the anticipation, checking and responding.

And during the responding face, what takes place is that we are there's some predictable patterns we sometimes will control. We are, we will. That's basically in an abandoned at of our first principles of our of our values just to fit in.

That's the laughing at the joke that is going along with something that feels gross to oneself. But if you don't, you're going to get get kicked out and they are going to ostrosky you. So that's that's when we can talk and that's a really jacket pills to swallow.

And then there's a slight less version of that, which is when we conform. IT doesn't feel as jacket as appeal to swallow, but we know we know that we're playing a secondary game and we're just going along with IT. And so those are to the the the most problematic of the responses.

There's also another response which we will confront. And so it's this is a way of as getting on our front food as opposed being on our heels like M I O K anges. If I confront you and I say we on the I know are you saying that and i'm kind of aggressive in my phone and then then you would say, no, no, no, no, no, we're good no, I I didn't mean that that way then I go, oh, so we're okay.

So if I get on my front foot and and check you, then then when it's not happening is you say, yeah, that's what I said or you say, no, I were good. And so IT can be this mechanism to relieve the anxiousness. And that's built on a cycle from a an abuse cycle is that often times people that find themselves and abusive cycle, the tension is so high in waiting and anticipating and fearful.

Am I going to be publicly embarrassing? Am I going to be hit when we get home tonight? Or whatever the the abuse is that they will do something to provoke the abuser, to just get IT over with. And so I think we do that at a at a more subtle level socially to put ourselves back in a position of power, to see if we're actually okay with another person. And so those are couple ways to think about how we tend respond.

You've talked a little bit about this, but I want to go a little deeper on a some of the things you've said. You know this sense of self, this sort of identity, coming up a little bit in what you've mentioned so far. But you argue that there are two on ramps to photo o and they are persons of self, our performance based identity talk to us about those. What do they look like um in what ways do they work against us? What should we know about them?

Well, let's just talk about self worth for a minute. When I was scraping the literature about how is self worth connected to photos, I found a really important piece of research that is under celebrated, which is our sense of self typically is is related to how others see us. And that's not well reported.

Most of the times, especially in the western world, you know, we think that we're supposed to prove ourselves up. That if somebody would just speak to themselves differently, if they would hold themselves differently, if they would you know have Better self um self narrative, then they would feel self confident, self worthy, self worthy. They've had they would have self a steam.

So it's up to the person to to develop that. But there's a theorist and he found that no, actually the collective their assessment of you in the way that they see you and treat you that that dramatically and directly impact yourself worth. So here's how IT relates the photos is that when we lack a clear, stable and positive understanding of who we are, we often look outside of ourselves to see how others feel about us, us.

So we assume others can see us Better than we can see ourselves. And as a result, we end up giving power and credibility to other people's opinions. That's the on rap. So when we rely on the other person to provide a signal to us of approval or rejection, now i've just outsource my sense of self to the world, to you.

And so where the theory did get IT right to say way that's dangerous, that's not the right way to to to move through the world because we're constantly at the wim of the other persons temporary accepts of rejection. So go in and do the internal work to know who you are, to build a clear, stable and positive understanding of who you are, what value you bring to this world, a compelling future that you want to work towards, a purpose that is rich and clear, and that you need other people to to go along the journey with you. And so your job is to have that clear purpose and bring people around.

So that's that's how the self worth thing works, and it's an on rap when you don't really know who you are or what you bring into a particular setting. And so so the way, of course, correct that is to do the a loan work, to go in, to work from the inside out to psychology, which is, you know, my classically trained psychologist with a specialization in sport and high performance. Psychology really is the study of oneself.

And I can't imagine a more important study. You are the most complicated ecosystem on the planet you possess. There are a magical brain and internal ecosystem that we really don't understand, but we know that is the most powerful on the entire planet to date.

And you possess IT, and you guide IT, and you can control IT, and you can listen, or you can abandon. And the study of self is to know how you work, to work from the inside out, rather from the external world, laying on top of you what IT is that they would like from you. And if you don't do this internal work, the world will tell you who you are.

And i'm not so certain that the health of the world is going to build me up. And I don't know, you know, it's gna build anybody up. So this is this is a fundamental commitment that i've seen in witness for last twenty five years of how the world's best Operate. They Operate from a fundamental commitment to work from the inside out to get their mind right. As we say in sport.

you know, it's so interesting as you were talking, I can help but think about the fact that i'm curious if you find that we because we don't have the expertise that you do, we confuse the two. And what I mean by that is i'm a big fan of the N. B.

A. So right now i'm thinking about Victor wanna a. And i'm probably master ing his last, but he's an incredible athlete on the spurs. He's a rookie this year and he just won rookie of the year. And when he speaks, his language is such that he is very committed to the external validation only from the standpoint of guidance or direction.

In other words, he's a very good way of talking about what his goals and aspiration you get, a strong sense of, uh, a deep commit meant to certain values around performance and ability, and very different from sometimes what you hear rooky say. So what I see when I hear him speak, as I see someone who is doing the eternal work and is using the external, is a way to say, am I directionally correct? I'm using the external to get some feedback, but not to tell me who I am.

Others might do something very different, which is they don't have that strength of understanding of who they are maybe and what they want. And so they're using the external to say, this is what you should want or this is what you should do. Is that an accurate representation of the difference, perhaps, between using the external in a way that can be helpful versus using the external a way that so is about you know who you should become without you even weighing in?

yes. And high performance feedback, not just feedback, but high performance feedback is what you're pointing to. So when you know who you are, which means you know your first principles in life, you know the values that those principles rest on.

You have a clear philosophy of how you're gonna about life. And I just gave you three very powerful ideas that are stacked on top each other. And as a whole lot of work that would sit underneath for you to know your values, to know your first principles and to know your personal philosophy.

Okay, once you know those and you know your purpose, the thing that you're working towards that that those become the tuning fork, the primary tuning fork for how experience is experienced, then right then the best in the world tune outside of themselves to very specific people. And those specific people, if they, if they're fortunate enough, are true masters of self and are true masters of craft. And if you are incredibly fortunate, they're one in the same.

So so it's not the retuning to the world to see if i'm okay. They're tuning to people that understand them. They know their know their scar tissues, they know their traumas, they know their ambitions, hopes and dreams.

So when feedback is given, its in context and and when that happens now you got an interview nal calibration tool first, then an external. And when it's a high performance feedback, there's another edition. So the first part is, is what I just talked about with.

They know the person. The second part is in high performance feedback, they tend to ask more questions, then give answers. So masters of coaching another person are so curious about the person's experience, because it's the context of the whole thing, because the person is, the coach isn't on the floor.

And so they say what you see, what you feel, what you would you sense, what was your thought process to that? What do you think the unlock is here? Okay, what do you imagine training to be like, you know, to be able to solve this so that, you know, we can grow from this?

So there's a bunch of questions of a master ful coach that are listed, the the insights from the dower or from the thinker in some cases. And then there are three, two high performance coaching or feedback is that there is um IT. There's a time sensitive period.

So if you can do IT real time, it's amazing, but not everything that allows for real time feedback. And so the second is there's a glow within forty five minutes and then as you move further out after twenty four hours, it's almost a joke IT almost loses so much about you um at the forty eight hour mark. Let's say that IT is almost not worth that.

But what do we do in business? We have quarterly reviews, right? Like like what are we doing? So I spent twenty years in high performing sport and then sati nadella asked me to he's a CEO of microsoft. He said, hey, can you take a look at what we're doing? I'd love to build a culture, and I want to run some things by you.

And can you can you observe us and take a look over doing for a while? And can you wait in on what I want to build? And so I spent some time with microsoft ten years ago, and there's still my most important client right now.

And I was like, you've got to be kidding me. First of all, I don't know how you because are doing that, you are working as harder humans can work without any proper recovery mechanisms. You've got this model that you're gona outsource, you know, your recovery to the end of the year for a three week vacation.

That's not how humans are designed to be optimal. And so and the feedback loops are very complicated in the business world because people are terrified to lose their job. They're terrified to say something that will get cancelled by. But the recovery is not right. The performance and the high performance feedback loops are not not much .

at in this interview, Michael chavez talks about how much our fear of other people's opinions impacts us. If you'd like to take a deeper dive into strategies that help address our fears and exists, check out episode two forty four with JoNathan roads. Other of the book the choice point, he discusses how we can improve our self talk, tap into the power of our five senses and break habits that stop us from achieving our goals.

Nothing with people just being aware of values is the getting changer, but with function to image training. Being ware of your values is just the first stepping stone to really controlling how imagination works and your chapter works, and giving the skills to really focus on on controlling that instinct based.

Very quick choice just now, thinking in depth around wanna doing, why is, why is this choice right now helping a future? me? How's this choice serving me and really how I in control of where I current.

And now let's get back to my interview with my goldie base. You conducted an experiment with a pro golfer, a golf pro and an amateur golfer. And some really interesting findings here. The result illustrate the fears that you've talked about, that we associate with a photo o tell us about the experiment and what you learned.

This was so much fun. This was such an an um opponents experiment because there was real time experiment in the field, if you will have sport. And this was um with red bull and their golf program, and we wanted to understand pressure.

And so there was a club pro and he imbued the experience with so much meaning. So let me set IT up. Okay, actually, mr from the top there was a local golfer.

There was a absolute world's best golfer in right in the middle there was the the local pro. And when did up take? What we did is we measured their physiology under three different conditions of stress.

We measured their psychology under three different um levels of stress. At the first level of stress I give you good example um we put seventeen balls out, I think that was seventeen off the top of my head. We put seventeen balls scattered around a pudding hall and then we had a clippard and one camera that was observing the each person put separately.

And so the the world's best bRicky father, in this case one of the best in the worlds at golf, forgot one camera on him, a clipboard myself, and he's monitored like a measures heart rate, his heartbeat, his skin conductance. And we've got a cap on him to measure his brain activity and he hit fifteen out of the seventeen into the hall. I said, I said to Ricky and I I did same question for all three.

I said, how you do he said, sixteen, seventeen I said, uh, actually Ricky, um you you made fifteen and seventeen he says, now sixteen, nine, seventeen as said no, there's two balls till on the Green and I counted and i'm pointing to the two Green to the two balls on the Green and I said, no, no, no fifteen or something he says, no, I hit and committed to sixteen balls one of them just didn't go in. I can't explain IT, but I made sixteen great parts so that gives you a little bit of an idea about his how he thinks he is fully committed to the shot and on one of the seventeen, he was not committed. And so he says, that's that's that's on me, the the weekend golfer, how you do and there was only like half half of the balls went in.

He because I was great that I was kind of stressful though, kay. And in the local pro he had, I think he had like fourteen out of seventeen that went in. And so almost as good as as the world class person.

And he said, that was so hard, you know, you were watching you at a clipboard. My brain is wired. You're measuring my heart rate as a camera in front of me.

That was so hard. And the same pattern showed up on all three the weekend. Goff, he just, his identity wasn't infused.

He felt stress. But IT was kind of fun, but he felt stress. Ricky, father, the best in the world. He would, when we measure kind of his internal physiology, right before he would cut all of this electrical activity would come up, you would come like to to the line, if you will, of optimal performance. And then, and then he would manage IT for an extended period when he was focusing.

And then as soon as he would pot, IT was like the cup build over and and he he could release all of that physiology, brain, electricity and heart rate would would actually go up and then gives you a chance to come back down. The local pro couldn't manage IT because he imbue the experience with too much meaning. He connected his identity with his performance.

He also identified with being the corner, quote, the expert. And when he was pudding, his identity was under threat. IT was the combination, the cameras, the crowd, the greater, you know, expertise.

And IT was all of that noise that was too much for him to manage because he tied his performance to his identity, which is what most of us do. So judging him a port golfer was judging him a fraud. And that was obviously not one who he wants to be.

So it's a it's a beautiful illustration of the ideal is to invest in your psychological skills and to not tie your identity to the thing that you do. You are who you are and that's that part of you i'm speaking to. That was the same as the age now that when you are twenty three and thirteen and three years old, that that thing that we don't know how to capture that makes you you that is very different than the activities that you do.

And when you can dee couple those too, there is incredible freedom. Incredible freedom on the other side. And again, that's not network.

That's deep work. And it's amazing when people do that work. The freedom on the other side is like I am not beholding to how well I do something.

I am not be holding to whether you roll your eyes at me or give me a big smile of appreciation. I know who I am. I know what my purposes here, which is not an easy test to do.

And they are in lies, freedom. So the historical grades, they, they do not let the external world dictate their internal experience. And that's exactly what i'm pointing to here. When you do the internal psychological work, you do have the chance of of standing for something. And if you're standing for something bigger than you, you can move people.

We rarely talk about the mindset in the attitude of an elite ite athlete, and that's the world that you live in. You work with a eat performers. So I wanted to call out how you describe some of their key traits.

And believe or not, you may or may not have heard of Sally drinking. SHE wrote book, she's writing a lot of books, but she's a sports rider who most recently wrote the book the right call. SHE talked about this two in spending a lot of time with high performers.

And you say, in general, a ead athletes are skilled, embracing discomfort. They recognize the need to get outside their comfort zone, to learn to get Better. They often have a high degree of comfort in newer, chAllenging situations, a willingness to take risks and a tendency to seek out novel experiences.

And what I loved about that is it's also something that Sally was talking about, which is we have a tendency when we see ourselves perform, if we get that opportunity to observe ourselves through video or tape, we get a chance to to hear all of IT. And many of us who are novice as or amateur s we often clinch at the suffer, not good at. And what we find out about many high performers, most of them actually how they got there, is they want to see the bad stuff first. And i'm curiously hear you talk a little bit more about that. Just come forth that they embrace.

I take a funny story to get into IT as I group surfing, and that was my main sport. What's wonderful about surfing is there's immediate feedback. If you hesitate and if you push too hard, like you have to be delicately imbaLance with an unfolding wave, and which is an APP metaphor for the unfolding moment for most of us. And so so I was on a surf trip and IT was the twenty people and um there was a film malgre PH there and IT was IT was it's known as the Kelly slater surfing and so it's a man made human condition perfect wave that's about head high and so the conditions are very stereo and um it's really chAllenging and so they film IT so that you can learn. And um so I was walking into my filming session after I just got done surfing.

I tied off and i'm dry and i'm walking and there's two gentlemen that are being coached a via video and both of them one is a banker and other ones of attorney and there are forty seven years old and is that you've come on and come on in and I said, how's going? And they said, i'm just meeting reality right now, my friend. In my mind, you know, I I thought I was so different than what i'm looking at.

And so um in a little sport, I have such regard for how often they practice vulnerability. Let me explain is that we see them, let's say, the nfl right now there, the nfl is an example. We see them on sunday's play the game.

But what we don't see, and I spent ten year, nine seasons, ten years with the seattle c hawks. And we were fortunate to go win a super ball and in dramatic fashion, also lose a superb. And so what we don't see is what happens during the week in practice, if you will.

So in practice, you have coaches, adult coaches, that determine if you play, how much you play, if you make the team, how many plays will be called for you or not for you. So you've got adults that really have a high level of influence about how your your love affair with you, your sport that you've dedicated, you know, twenty years to fifteen years to, is gone to go. And then in practice, they want to see, the coaches wants to see if you can do IT.

So there's an incredible risk vulnerability that takes place in practice because if you can't do IT, they're probably not going to give you a chance on sunday. And then there's another person is equally physically as talented, technically skilled, mentally process that is trying to take your job and you have to take risks in front of the coaches, your boss, and you have to take risks in front of your peers. And it's not if you don't take a risk, you're certainly not perform at that optimal level.

And if you take too much of a risk, you're not going to perform at that optimal level. There's a vulnerability that is required to move right into that trusting slipstream to be to be connected in this very small window of time where things have to go just right for IT to work. And that vulnerability is practiced multiple times every day of their lives, including game day on sunday.

And so IT is incredibly alpha competitive. Most of us, most of us don't have that frequency of vulnerability because in big business, we can hide and we don't we don't publicly share um you know how much we make or the stats of how good we are on phone calls or emails or you know conversations. Everything that an athlete at every ball than an athlete touches or doesn't touch is started and it's publicly forestry ight and that is incredible.

And i've tremens regard so high performing teams and athletes, they deliberately structure their lives to to purposely kidding themselves in that high stress environment so that they have an honest understanding of what they're capable of. Rather than become the effective stress, athletes make a practice of placing themselves in situations to experience that stress. So, you know, do something uncomfortable every day, as the, as the adage goes, is directly taken from high performing sport.

And they consciously choose to feel their days with chAllenge to be able to, to practice their response to stress. And most of us, we don't even get close to IT. We say, are you kidding me? I'm i'm so stressed because they we haven't taught our people the difference between chronic stress and a huge stress.

So what the grades do is they love a huge dress and they shed IT really well, and they don't move to chronic stress like the rest of us. And i'll give you one more kind of visual. I don't know if you own a dog. Gale.

do you own a dog? I don't. I have in the past, I don't currently have a dog.

So dog owners, as you once one will recognize this, is that when the male person knocks on the door, what does the dog do? They jump up from their comfortable spot in front of the couch, and they run to the door and their hair comes up and they makes some noise barking to alert, to protect. You know, they do their thing.

And as the male person leaves and the dog says, oh, the stress is gone. What they do is they turn around and you can watch, they will roll their head. And their ears were kind of flop, the role, their, their body, their hair starts to come down.

They will have this little swimming in their high corners, and their tail will do this little. 谁， their hairs down, they've literally let IT go. And within four, five steps, back to their comfortable carpeted area, they can roll into the other safety little structure and be done with IT.

They literally sheds, stressed that fast. What do we do when somebody rose her eye in the meeting or puts us under the hot bit? We all talked, and we and we talk about IT and we and we think, right, and we make IT worse and we worry about IT. And so we have to be more like a dog, a little bit more like a dog in some parts of life and a little bit more like it'll lead athlete practicing vulnerably had to be in those spaces where we don't have at all put together and button up, but we know that that was going to make us and help us grow.

What role does our identity play in this? You say that it's a breeding ground for po poo, and you say there's a problem of identity for closure and IT leads to self protection.

Talk to us about that. All this in two ways. When somebody is really talented at a Young age. It's during that youth, ages thirteen to the early twenties, where we're really trying to figure out who we are.

Are we dark and roll? Are we punk rock? Are we country? Are we RMB just a kind of adam metaphor here.

We're trying to figure out who we are, what our identity is, and when we're really good at something at a Young age, the world gives us a lot of attention for that. And we like IT. We like our feels.

And unbeknown to like the impact, our teachers say he, go get him on friday, you know, in high school, like go get that rival. H, I saw you last week. You know, gale, you were so good, like, congratulations on a success. And what they don't realize is your cousin and your, your uncle and your aunt and your parents and your coach and your teammate are pointing to just how special you are in one dimension.

And so IT would make great sense that you would forego the process of expLoring other identities, and you would make what I would consider one of the most dangerous things, one of the most dangerous statements that a person could make is I am an athlete, I am a musician. I am fill in the the performance role and what he does is IT collapses all of who you are, what you do into one. And then you double down, triple down on IT because it's working and you're good at IT and you get this feedback from the world that you are special.

And so we live in a performance obsess culture. And what that does is that creates a performance identity for most of us. So performance based identity is not I am who I am, but I am what I do, and I am what I do relative to how well you do, what you do.

And IT is um so there's the trappings of Young talent to forego identity, and there's a trapping in the obsessed world that we live in for performance that we identify with, with we build a performance based identity. And the off rap, the off ramp, if you find yourselves in one of those two mixes, the off ramp is to go from a performance space identity to a purpose based identity. And if we can do that, that path is pays dividends on a sense of freedom and a sense of power and a sense of being part of something bigger in life.

Same, more about the purpose, peace. Because I can imagine some listening or saying, that sounds all well and good, but that sounds very abstract, very theoretical. And at the end of the day, I have to show up in this meeting and be this certain person and act a certain way.

And I agree with you completely. I think the purpose of values, the first principles, are really what at all about. That's the real game.

And I just would love for you to talk a bit more about when you work with folks and you help them to get at those things, how does that change the way they enter into those spaces? Or how does that how does that change the way they see themselves, the way they see some of these things that come up? What do they literally do differently? Someone rolled their eyes at them in a meeting. What are they doing differently?

There's an engineering concept, its signal to noise ratio. That's also a psychological concept, signal to noise ratio. Some of the most powerful people in the world are working to get to the signal and they're getting out the noise.

And so let's say it's obama, or let's say it's a mother to risa or IT is dr. King junior or its Nelson mandela or whoever comes to mind for you is that they were so clear of the signal, which is their purpose, that the, the, the things that we'll pulling them away, we're just noise. And they were gated out IT devalue.

They devalue all of that noise because they respect how hard IT is and how big their purposes. And they need people to help support them. They don't need to convert the one that is not into IT or against IT.

And that's what we do many of us do is our purpose is not quite clear. So we we walk up the four steps to get on a stage, to have A A moment, to share ideas. And i'm talking about public speaking now. And public speaking is known as one one of the greatest fears. And that fear is not physical, that fear is just social and emotional.

And it's because we walk up their vulnerable to the opinions of other people, unclear about the bigger purpose that we're trying to compelling ly move people towards because IT matters so much to us and has so much personal um we have so much personal connection to IT that when we're sharing ideas publicly, what we're really trying to do is how other people see the purpose that you're trying to move towards and maybe they want to be part of IT. So if mother three so was in this conversation with us, I know we're probably be talking about helping the poor to the poor. If not, model is here to be very clear what we've talking about because his purpose is so clear.

And so yeah that that's the idea and purpose is available for all of us, not just those special ones. And the purpose can be I am trying to put a roof over my kids ahead. I'm trying to get my three kids to college.

You know, I didn't have that chance. What IT doesn't need to be grand world changing, but the the general thing I just want to point to is knowing your purpose is not an easy thing to do. And IT is worth its weight gold. When you do .

quickly on IT, how do you help people get to that? I think over time especially, we get older and were in environments that are more restrictive, where we are conforming, our purpose gets layer over with a lot of this idea of what other people think, how do you help people get to their purpose?

In our distraction economy, businesses are made now to hide jack. Our attention. Purpose is one of the anodos for IT.

So how do you help people do this work? You know, some people need to just push their chair back from the table and go for a walk and come back and then i'm i'm loosely suggesting a protocol here and get a pendent paper and just like say, you know what, i'm going to commit to a grand purpose of my life. Some people can do that.

I I was not able to do with that way. What I needed to do was practice what I would call the thing slice of purpose. Because that former example, like, let me just write that down on a tablet.

You write IT down on on a pad of paper and what a that grand life purposes. Now clear IT was too big for me. And so I needed practice at no smaller way as, okay, what is my purpose for today? And I just practice that for an extended period of time.

And so after, like six weeks, that is kind of boring. And so like I okay, I got IT. My purpose for today actually doesn't change all that much.

So then I go, what is my purpose for this month? What is my purpose for this next half year? Or what is my purpose for this year? And you start just practicing those those loops, if you will, and then pretty quickly IT, when you practice just stacking that idea, like, what is my purpose today? What is my purpose for this week? What is my purpose for the month you could hold on? What is my? What is my grand purpose? Like why am I here? And then because you practice IT, you're just a little bit more clear on the fines.

And if you're fortunate gh to have conversations with people that are wise that you can kind of run some stuff by them, and you also meditate and and be quiet and listen and feel, and eventually over time, those are the basic mechanisms to become more clear about what your life purposes. And i'll make i'll make mine very simple, to make IT even more concrete. My purpose with this short amount time that i'm on this incredible planet with this body, who knows how I got to this body with this language that we've made up, like my purposes to help people live in the present moment more often.

That's that's my whole purpose. If I can help another person spend more time in the present moment, last time worrying, less time persevering about all the things that have gone wrong in the dome glumm in the past, more time in the present moment. That's where high performance lives.

It's where wisdom is revealed. It's where all things that are true and beautiful and amazing are experienced. It's where the prickly parts that the difficult parts of life are also experienced. And it's and it's where the unlocks of what you are capable of becoming and capable of experiencing take place. The present moment for me is the key hole for all of that.

And our minds are flooded with worrying about what others think, flooded with worrying about all the things could go wrong in this, this world that feels like it's so chaotic, it's about to spin off its own access and to trying to protect us from our earlier traumas. That our minds are so unwilled ly active that if we could put in a set of training practices and first principles to help us be here more often, this is where all of the good stuff takes place. So that's my purpose, life to help people live in the present moment more often.

Um love that I love when you say IT IT is a grand, compelling, inspiring, big purpose but at the same time it's also simple. You're not overcomplicating IT for yourself or for people you wanna tell IT to. And I think that makes IT all the more powerful, right? Like you really have gotten clarity on what IT is .

and once you're clear, like that's that's a big rock, the kidney container, once you're clear, then you get have a chance to livers and conviction about something like if you are Christian, jesus s purpose was clear if you were um a budd's butters butters was to help people become a living.

You know wasn't just for him IT was for everybody, if you know so so like the the greatest, most influential people across the planet, they their purpose was clear. And so that is available to you and me, that is available to us. And I want to ring that bell over and over again, like, do that internal work, if above all else, IT is so settling. IT is so settling. When you say, oh, I know what i'm doing here, my purposes put my kids through school period, and then once there, once there, through high school or college or whatever is off, find a new purpose IT can change.

Like there are two questions that I always end the interview with, and the first one has to do with the theme of the podcast, which is curiosity. What are most curious about today?

All I love curiosity, and I love this question that you ask. Curiosity has driven my professional life. What drives people to think and feel and act in the way that they do, especially that relates to being the best version of themselves at the moment.

I'm especially curious about human beings relationship with artificial intelligence, with the relationship with experience in of itself. And that's what I think a lot about right now. How is the new world with our psychology interfacing with artificial intelligence and how how is the human experience becoming hand if we could Better understand how to be great with experience itself?

And then my last question is, you know, there is so much in your book and IT is such an inspiring read and such a helpful read, and we've only really, you know, hit the tip of the iceberg. Is there anything you want to leave the readers with? Is there anything that we haven't talked about that you want to speak to?

Everything that you need is already inside you and the investment to go inward, to listen and to feel. And to be honest with your experience of who you are, of your traumas, of your hopes and dreams. That adventure is incredibly freeing, and it's the study of oneself that allows us to be our very best. And then on top of that, we can. There are psychological skills, technical skills, relational skills, so that we have a chance of being a true master in the way that we experience, experience to great.

No, to leave us on my good has been such a pleasure to speak with you. Thank you so much.

Thank you. go.

Curious minds at work is made possible through a partnership with the innovative or circle and executive coaching firm for innovative leaders. A special thank you to producer an editor, rob maka, belly for leading the amazing behind the scenes team that makes IT all happen. Each epo de, we give a shout out to something that's feeding our curiosity.

This week could zoie h angers article in the atlantic, the mysteries of plant intelligence. And as he shares research that shows how some plants can learn, remember and then adjust their behavior, these findings are forcing scientists to grab L, L. With how we define intelligence. They're also inspiring researchers to use recent advances in tech tic deeper, fascinating stuff.