Lessons and Tools From Spy Recruiters, Astronauts, and Mental Masters

We’ve interviewed some incredible guests on The Science of Success. From many walks of life including spy recruiters, astronauts, bestselling authors, and more. Across each of our guest’s from widely different fields, we see many overlapping mindsets, strategies, and practices for achieving goals and a more effective life.

We’d like to share with you some of these mindset and strategies to help you achieve your goals. Whatever they may be…

Focus On Your Health

Psychology Secrets of Extreme Athletes, NFL Teams, & The World’s Top Performer with Dr. Michael Gervais — Dr.Michael Gervais has spent years and countless hours in the trenches with high performers. From Red Bull athletes and The Seattle Seahawks to everyday civilians, Gervais has been able to unlock the true potential of his clients by utilizing the psychology of high performance.

What’s Life’s Biggest Trap We Fall Into? — In Matt Bodnar’s widely popular and upvoted Quora answer he takes us through some of the biggest traps people fall into in life and how we can avoid each to get out of our own way in 2018.

The Skeptic’s Guide To Meditation with Dan Harris — Learn more about meditation and the science behind the practice. Dan Harris takes you through his personal journey (including a panic attack live on air) that led him to pursue meditation and report of the science behind the sometimes “woo woo” reputation.

The Neuroscience Behind Building A Sustainable Healthy Lifestyle with Foodist Darya Rose — Sticking to a diet plan can be very, very hard. Darya Rose takes us through how we can set the right physical health goals and use neuroscience to actually stick to them.

Overcome Your Fears

How Do You Become Mentally Strong? — In this Medium article Matt Bodnar take us through an incredible framework for developing mental toughness. Compiling and exploring some of the most validated strategies and tactics to push yourself and grow.

How This Astronaut Survived Going Blind In Space & Tools For Crushing Fear with Chris Hadfield — Chris Hadfield is one of the most decorated astronauts in history. On his first spacewalk he went momentarily blind and was able to remain calm and complete his mission. Chris takes us through some practical knowledge for overcoming irrational fears and accepting others.

Your Secret Weapon To Becoming Fearless with Jia Jiang — Most people actively will avoid rejection. How is this fear holding you back? Jia decided to actively seek rejection each day for 100 days and while his journey is very entertaining, the results he saw were very impactful.

Master Your Emotions

Discover Your Hidden Emotional Insights and What’s Truly Valuable to You with Dr. Susan David — Your emotions are there to communicate through your subconscious. By using Dr.Susan David’s framework and research you can begin to learn how listening to these emotions and using them as a compass can help you make peace with them and achieve more.

The Mental Tools Olympians, Traders, and Top Performers Use To Make High Pressure Decisions with Denise Shull — Denise Shull was the inspiration for Wendy Rhodes character on the Showtime show Billions. She’s coached countless high performers through high pressure situations by using their emotions and inner working to guide them. Find out how!

Get What You Want

Simple Strategies You Can Use To Get Anything You Want with The Godfather of Influence Dr. Robert Cialdini — Dr.Cialdini has been doing incredible work on the art of influence for years. Most recently he unveiled a researched backed tactic that you can begin to use today to help you influence anyone and make a great first impression.

How To Use Influence Tactics Like an FBI Agent — In this article from SUCCESS Magazine we highlight some of the key takeaways from all the military influence experts we’ve interviewed. Everyone from hostage negotiators to FBI Spy recruiters. Learn how you can begin to influence like a secret agent today!

Connect With Others

Never Eat Alone — How Relationship Expert Keith Ferrazzi Built His World Class Network — Keith Ferrazzi literally wrote the book on networking. Through his work and research in relationship building, Keith has identified mindsets and frameworks that you should apply to every interaction and relationship.

Proven Practices for Building The Ultimate Competitive Advantage with Todd Davis — Todd Davis is the Chief People Officer at Franklin Covey and wrote much of the company’s award-winning material. Todd takes us through several ways to build better relationships at work from all hierarchies and how to build the ultimate competitive advantage.

Build The Right Habits

Break Your Phone Addiction (and Your Other Bad Habits) with Charles Duhigg — Charles Duhigg is a Pulitzer Prize winning author and has devoted much of his life and work to discovering why we do the things we do. Specifically how our habits and routines can affect our lives for the better and for the worse. Learn how we can become the masters of our own habits today!

How You Can Use Behavior Design To Create any Habit You Want with Nir Eyal — Nir Eyal has worked with hundreds of companies to make their products more habit forming. From video games themselves to products that pull you back in such as Facebook and Instagram it’s all by design and has Nir’s fingerprints or framework all over it. Learn how you can use Nir’s framework to break your cycle and create the habits you want!

Adam Grant’s Guide To Success and Self-Awareness

As Wharton’s top-rated professor for the past six years running, Dr. Adam Grant knows a thing or two about what it takes to succeed. He’s one of the world’s 10 most influential management speakers, the best-selling author of Give & Take, Originals and Option B and a member of Fortune’s 40 under 40.

In a recent interview, Adam shared with The Science of Success’s Matt Bodnarthe most impactful secrets to success, starting with self-awareness. In the world of self-awareness there’s a lot of talk about recognizing one’s own strengths and weaknesses. Dr. Grant argues, however, that it’s more beneficial and reliable to trust those around you to identify these weaknesses and not rely on your own (biased) soul searching.

Why Is It So Difficult To Be Self-Aware?

According to Dr. Grant, there are two main challenges when it comes to developing self-awareness. First, there are your own blind spots. These are shortcomings that the people around us can easily see, but that we might have a hard time identifying ourselves. As humans, we’re typically better at focusing on how we think we look, versus how others most likely see us. Our blind spots only become visible to us when we solicit outside feedback. When we understand how others view us in the world, it’s easier to change our behaviors and expectations.

Learn the top ten leadership blindspots and how to overcome them here.

We also must face our internal personal bias. Biases include the negative aspects of ourselves that we don’t want to see. For many, it can be easy to see ourselves in our own personal spotlight, as the hero of our own journey, which can lead to overconfidence.

“I think the big lesson here is that any time a trait is easy for other people to see or hard for us to admit, we can’t trust our own judgment of it,” — Adam Grant on The Science of Success

How We Overcome These Challenges

The good news is that these hurdles to becoming more self aware can be overcome. Dr. Grant’s solution is developing two networks of people; a support network and a challenge network.

Build a support network filled with people that you can count on to bring you up when you’re down. These should be the people you trust, those that will always give compliments and increase your confidence.

Your challenge network should be the people who will tell you that you’re not quite where you need to be. These are the people that will push you because they care about helping you get better.

“So if in the last six months somebody has given you really harsh feedback, you’ve probably done everything in your power to drop them from your life. In the short run, that might feel good, it might help with your motivation, but it destroys your opportunity to learn. I think we all need to embrace that challenge network if we want to reach our potential,” — Adam Grant on The Science of Success

When Asked, Be A Graceful Challenger

Many believe the “compliment sandwich,” is a good way to give feedback. This is when you offer criticism in between two compliments in order to lessen the blow. People mistakenly think this is the best way to offer negative feedback, but Grant argues this method only makes it harder for the receiver.

So if you find yourself a part of someone else’s challenge network follow this framework instead. Affirm a skill, value or achievement from one area then give your negative feedback in another. The idea is that you never want to give praise and criticism at the same time for the same project, piece of work or idea. This only serves to delude your feedback all together.

If you want to soften the blow of hard feedback praise something unrelated the receiver has done and start the conversation out in a positive light. Then change the subject to the project at hand and deliver your unbiased feedback. After all, you’re in someone’s challenge network because they trust you to push them. Give them what they expect.

Embrace The Devil’s Advocate

In every situation, business meeting, discussion, etc., make sure there is one person who genuinely disagrees with the majority opinion. It’s important that this person is not just playing a role, but truly has different ideas than the rest of the group. This person should be given the opportunity to argue passionately about their viewpoint thus stimulating divergent thinking. If done properly, the group will be more likely to reevaluate the situation on the table, gather new information, update their criteria and make a better decision in the end.

Make it known that no employee or partner has the right to withhold a critical opinion. Dr. Grant emphasizes the importance of creating a space and culture where dissenting ideas are encouraged. Everyone at the office should feel comfortable speaking up for his or her opinion no matter how different it is from the boss or from the group.

“Personality traits don’t predict behavior. Different ifs activate different thens.” — Adam Grant on The Science of Success

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