Trading Your House For A Tulip, Your Love Life, And What It All Has To Do With Making Better Financial Decisions with Dr. Daniel Crosby

In this episode we explore how you can learn from dating mistakes to make better financial choices, the most expensive words in investing (and how you can avoid them), why highly qualified experts are wrong more than 94% of the time, the importance of focusing on process vs outcome and much more with Dr. Daniel Crosby.

Dr. Crosby is a psychologist and behavioral finance expert as well the author of New York Times Best-Seller "Personal Benchmark: Integrating Behavioral Finance and Investment Management” as well as “Laws of Wealth: Psychology  and the secret to investing success.” He was named named one of the “12 Thinkers to Watch” by Monster.com, a “Financial Blogger You Should Be Reading” by AARP and listed on the Top 40 Under 40 by Investment News.com. 

We discuss:

• How Daniel works to integrate the messiness of human psychology into fields like economics and finance

• How your emotional state colors your perception of risk

• How you can learn from dating mistakes to make better financial choices

• The most expensive words in investing (and how you can avoid them)

• The insane “tulip” craze and what it says about financial markets

• Why in our efforts to manage risk we often create the outcomes we are trying to avoid

• How you control what matters most (often without realizing it)

• The importance of focusing on process vs outcome

• Why “you are not special” and how that advice can save you a lot of money!

• Why experts are wrong 94% of the time

• Why really successful people automate their day and free up their cognitive power for more important tasks

• How to be aware of the biases impacting our thinking and get a second opinion

• The importance of being “not stupid” instead of being smart

• Existential boundary experiences and how they can transform you

• How to break out of the glorified business of our daily lives and embrace the inevitability of our own mortality

• 2 simple and actionable steps you can take right now to improve your personal finance and investment knowledge

• And much more!

Thank you so much for listening!

Please SUBSCRIBE and LEAVE US A REVIEW on iTunes! (Click here for instructions on how to do that). 

SHOW NOTES, LINKS, & RESEARCH

• [Book] Superforecasting by Philip E. Tetlock and Dan Gardner

• [Book] The Dead by James Joyce and Fasano Thomas

• [Book List] Irvine Yalom Books

• [Reading List] Nocturne Capital Reading List

• [Book] Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

• [Book] Nudge by Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein

• [Book] A Few Lessons for Investors and Managers From Warren Buffett by Peter Bevelin and Warren Buffett

• [Website] Berkshire Hathaway Inc. Shareholder Letters

• [Book] The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham, Jason Zweig, & Warren E. Buffett

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

[00:02:24.2] MB: Today we have another exciting guest on the show, Dr. Daniel Crosby. He is a psychologist and behavioral finance expert as well as the author of the New York Times bestseller, Personal Benchmark: Integrating behavioral finance and investment management, as well as, The Laws of Wealth: Psychology and the secret to investing success. He was named one of the 12 thinkers to watch by monster.com, “A financial blogger you should be reading” by the AARP, and listed on the Top 40 Under 40 by Investmentnews.com. 

Daniel, welcome to the Science of Success. 

[00:02:53.6] DC: Thank you, it’s great to be here. 

[00:02:55.6] MB: Well we’re very excited to have you on. So for listeners who may not be familiar with you, can you tell us a little bit about your background and your story?

[00:03:05.1] DC: Yeah so I have sort of a varied background, I went to school initially to be an investment manager. After a year in school left to go on a mission for my church, so I spent two years in the Philippines. I came back with I think a bigger heart than I left with and decided I wanted to go into a helping profession, so I choose psychology. 

About two or three years into a PhD program in psychology, it was getting a little too heavy for me. I was taking work home with me. It was bumming me out talking to sad people all day and so I said, “You know, I love thinking deeply about why people do the things they do but I think I need to look for a business application of behavioral principles,” and so long story short, I’ve landed in sort of this middle ground of behavioral finance, which is a blend of psychology and decision making and finance. 

[00:03:54.2] MB: That’s fascinating. So for listeners who have never heard that term, behavioral finance, tell us a little bit more about that? 

[00:04:00.6] DC: Yes, so behavioral finance is really just trying to integrate the messiness and the irrationality of human decision making into the financial planning and investment management process. It’s hard to believe I think for people who come from the outside but for years and years, hundreds of years economic models were built on this idea of rational man. So built upon this mistaken notion that people are thoughtful and prudent with their money, which I think we can all point to instances in our own lives when that hasn’t been the case. 

So behavioral finance study is basically the mistakes and the fears and the heuristics that drive decision making and tries to incorporate them in and help people make better decisions. Then on the flip side, some of what I do is how do you make better investment decisions, how do you pick better stocks by taking the other side of trades where people are being greedy or fearful? So there’s a lot to it but basically it’s about integrating humanity back into finance. 

[00:05:04.0] MB: I think that’s so important and something that we talk about a lot on the Science of Success is the idea that many fields, and I think economics, finance, etcetera were definitely guilty of this 10 or 15 years ago, really don’t incorporate the actual reality of human psychology into their evaluation of human behavior. 

[00:05:25.2] DC: Yeah, that’s so true and I mean really, this was done frankly not because anyone believed it per say because, like I said, I think it’s fairly simple to think of reasons of why you could contradict a rational man type theory. But really, I think it was done this way to build elegant, beautiful mathematical models. So your math gets a lot harder, the algorithms don’t get as elegant when you have to plug Joe six pack into the equation and so it’s not quite as pretty but it’s maybe a little more realistic. 

[00:06:00.6] MB: So you have a TED Talk where you talk about the concept of understanding money and how people think about money through the lens of love, can you share that idea or explain that? 

[00:06:14.3] DC: Yeah, so I find it to be my life’s mission to make these things more accessible, some of these notions more accessible. Because I have done, I’ll be honest, basically none of the primary research on the things that I write about. It’s been done by people far smarter than me typically in academic settings but what I have done is I’ve taken these ivory tower concepts and have broken them down in a more simplified way that people can understand.

Because I am from Alabama and that’s what we do in Alabama, we make things as simple as possible and so yeah, I have done three TED Talks and one of them was called Sex, Funds, and Rock and Roll and it’s in that TED Talk I compare romantic love, the irrationality of romantic love to the way that you invest or make decisions around your money. Talk about everything from the irrationality of playing the lottery all the way down to things like the way that emotion colors risk perception. 

When you’re in love with someone, the reason we have a 50% divorce rate or whatever is when you’re in love, you’re not very critical. You’re not a very good assessor of risk when you’re in love because our emotional states tend to dictate how much risk we do or don’t see in our environment and so if we’re feeling great, the world looks great and we don’t tend to see much risk in the world around us, and so in investing and in love, maybe we need to be a little more critical and a little more even-headed but it’s certainly easier said than done especially in romantic love. 

[00:07:50.8] MB: And you shared a couple different biases in that talk, one of them was the, as you called it, the “fixer upper bias”. Which is the idea that if you’re dating somebody that you can change or transform them and how that applies to people’s personal finances as well. 

[00:08:03.7] DC: Yes, so the fixe — sort of the analog, I mean I think we are all familiar with the love part of that equation. You know, we’ve all probably had the experience of dating someone with an eye to changing them or hoping that they would become more the person that we need them to be. The way that that plays out in our investment lives is that we tend to over invest in things that are proximal to us. So this takes a couple of turns, right? 

One is called the “home bias” where we find that people dramatically over invest in stocks of their own country and it’s actually less of a problem in the US than elsewhere just for the simple fact not that we do it any less but the US is a bigger part of the world economy than say Greece. But someone, like people in Greece, tend to invest in Greek companies which is only a very, very small part of the world economy. 

Likewise people in the US tend to be overweight the US economy, which accounts for about half of the stocks and half of the market capitalization of stocks globally. So we tend to think things that are closer to home are safer, that’s not always the case. The other way that this applies is that we think that if we work for a company, we can single handedly make it better. So I spoke with someone recently who had $5 million in one stock, all of their money, $5 million was all the money they had and it’s a great deal of money. 

But they had all of the $5 million in one stock because that was the large publicly traded company they worked for and his thought was, “Why would I spread it around? Why would I diversify where here, I can put it in the company where I worked directly?” well of course the irrationality there is your one person. You’re the 372nd accountant in this large multinational corporation. You can’t move the needle all that much, but just like a bad romantic partner, we think that because we’re involved things will get better by virtue of our involvement alone and that’s not the case. 

[00:10:07.3] MB: Another bias you touched on, and I found this one really fascinating, was the idea of “this time it was different”. Or I think another term for it might be the concept of “new era thinking”? 

[00:10:17.6] DC: Yeah, so “this time it’s different”, those words have been called the most expensive words in investing. So “this time is different” with respect to romantic love, I talk about Elizabeth Taylor who was married, I don’t know and I can’t remember, four or five times at least and the thought there is that, “Well yeah, those past guys were bad for XYZ reasons but this time it’s different,” and we’re always just plunging forward never taking the time to look back and see what happened. 

So we see this type of new era thinking and investing as well in every major bubble and crash has had this new era thinking. You know, if you go back to the turn of the century when we had the “dot com” bubble, I think this sort of new era thinking of the day was that traditional metrics, like price to earnings and even sales and profitability didn’t matter because we were in this brave new world where things like eyeball share and clicks and things mattered in this sort of new economy. 

And the thing that’s so tricky about new era thinking is that a lot of times it is characterized by half-truths. Because as we know, the internet was indeed a big deal. I mean it did revolutionize life and business in ways that I think we probably couldn’t have even imagined 15 or 20 years ago. But what isn’t the truth is that traditional metrics like earnings and profitability and things would be out the window, right? So a lot of the danger of bubbles and bad economic decision making is that they are half-truths. 

And if you go back in history, if you go back to Amsterdam hundreds of years ago, there was a point in Dutch history where a single tulip bulb was trading for as much as a town home and that’s because they were engaged in this new era thinking that says, “Hey, we have this scarce commodity. People will never be sick of tulips. They’re going to appreciate forever, and we’re going to be a very wealthy county.” So we have to check ourselves and say, “Look, there are certain laws of the universe and these things tend to come back down to earth and this time may not be so different after all.” 

[00:12:28.5] MB: So in the context of the current financial markets, where do you think that kind of framework applies?

[00:12:35.3] DC: I think we are in a dangerous position right now I think because we’ve got two things going on. For a lot of people, I don’t know how old you are. I am in my mid-30’s, get it creeping towards late 30’s but in my mid-30’s and some of my first experiences of investing were bad. I mean some of my first experience as an investor, having a job and having enough money to put a little aside and then you’re talking 2008-2009. 

So there is that primacy and recency effect, right? So I have an early memory of a very bad time and I think no matter what people’s age, people still are a little gun shy from such a dramatic come down, what is it now? Seven or eight years ago now. But then I think we have the recent past which is seven years of extremely good returns, very little volatility over the last seven years. So people are simultaneously scared because of what happened seven or eight years ago, and spoiled because of seven or eight years past of really nice returns with very little volatility by historic standards.

So I think we’re ripe to be frightened and make really poor decisions the next time the market takes a dip and I mean it will. It will, this is already one of the longest bull markets of all time and it’s really a matter of when and not if and so people need to prepare themselves a bit for the inevitability of that. 

[00:14:08.2] MB: So tell me the story of one of your first consultations as a psychologist? You had a grad student who wanted to become an epidemiologist, and how do we create self-fulfilling prophecies that can create negative outcomes in our lives? 

[00:14:24.2] DC: Yeah, so my very first every client, so my PhD is in clinical psychology even though I work in a very different field now. I had to get thousands of hours of face to face consultations at clinical hours with clients and so my very, very first client was a beautiful college student, very bright, very talented and very intimidating to me as a brand new therapist. So she walks into my room and she brings with her six envelops and says to me, “Look here is the story.” I go, “Well hey, what did you got there?” 

And she says, “Here’s the story. I wanted to be an epidemiologist all my life. I’ve always wanted to go get a PhD in this. I’ve brought you this six envelops because these are the six programs that I have applied to, to get into a PhD program. They have all written back to me and I cannot bring myself to open these letters because if it’s bad news, I’m going to be crushed. I’m going to be just heart broken by this bad news because this is what I wanted since I was very young.” 

And so very inelegantly and articulately I’m sure, we sort of worked around over the course of the next session or two, to the point where I helped her try and understand that often times in life in our very efforts to manage risk and make ourselves safe, we bring about the certainty of the very thing we’re trying to avoid. So in her efforts to spare her feelings and avoid potential bad news, she was running up against a deadline. You of course have to respond to these schools and tell them if you are coming or not. 

She was running up against the deadline that was going to lead her into a certainty of a bad situation, and as a clinician and as a financial adviser, I see that again and again. I very, very commonly saw people who had been hurt in romantic relations say, “Well I am never going to love again because if I never love again, that’s how I keep from being lonely,” right? And it’s of course very paradoxical because in the act of trying to avoid heartache and loneliness, the possibility of heartache and loneliness, you bring about the certainty of those very things. 

And I see the same thing in financial markets. People fail to invest, they fail to take the ride and endure the volatility because they are scared of losing money and it’s very scary and we all work very hard for our money and it is scary but in their failure to do that, they bring about the certainty that they’re not going to be able to retire. We’re losing 3% a year, you’re losing 3% a year on your money if you are not invested just because of inflation. And so in love and in finance, I think people try and manage risk too closely and in their efforts to do so, bring about negative realities that could have been avoided all together. 

[00:17:21.7] MB: So how can we let go a little bit and not manage those risks so closely? 

[00:17:29.9] DC: You know, in The Laws of Wealth, my new book, I talk about a couple of ways I think in the first couple of chapters. I think one thing that people can learn is that the title of chapter one is You Control What Matters Most, and I think that’s an empowering message that’s little understood by the average investor. Just a couple of stats on that, a recent study by a big asset manager, they surveyed financial advisers and then they surveyed their clients. 

So of the financial advisers, 83% of them thought that the best thing that they could do for their clients was manage their behavior, help them manage their emotions, and make good decisions. Not picking stocks, not managing taxes, not doing any of this. Managing behavior and decision making was what financial professionals perceive to be the number one value add and the research, without getting too boring, the research backs that up. 

But then they turn around and asked the clients of these financial advisers, “Is it important to you to get help around behavior and decision making from your adviser?” And only 6% said “yes”, and so the average investor over the past 30 years the market’s given us about eight and a quarter percent a year over the last 30 years and the average investor has only kept 4% of that because they’ve entered and exited the market at exactly the wrong times. 

They’ve bought in when things were expensive, they’ve jumped out when things were cheap and scary, sort of rinse and repeat and so I think if people better understood that, “Hey, I have more control over this process just by virtue of doing a couple of boring things, like putting aside money every month, staying the course, being calm and collected.” I think the average person thinks it’s in the hands of Janet Yellen or Warren Buffett or the European Central Banks or just some far flung, exotic, hard to understand entity. If people understood that they are in more control than they think, I think that would be a positive first step toward them taking back control of their financial lives. 

[00:19:37.5] MB: So when you say that they have more control than they realize, is that a focus on the process of investing itself instead of the outcomes? 

[00:19:47.0] DC: Yeah, absolutely. I talk a lot about process versus outcomes in the book and there’s this great story that I share in the book by a guy who used to work in the LA Dodgers front office. A guy names Paul DePodesta. He was featured in Money Ball. So he talks about going out with a friend who had had too much to drink and they are playing black jack one night and his friend was drunk and he has a 19 and his friend wants to hit. 

His friends wants another card and so DePodesta is like, “Man, you cannot hit. You are sitting on 19, you can’t hit. Don’t do it, stay put,” and so the friend says, “Get lost. I am doing it, I’m going in.” So he hits and he gets a two and so the friend is ecstatic. He’s jumping up and down because he wins a big hand and he says to DePodesta like, “See? You’re an idiot,” and DePodesta makes the point in his article, you can have a good outcome and still be a moron. 

And that’s what I am trying to help people guard against in the book. I give 10 commandments of investor behavior in The Laws of Wealth to just say, “Look, if you manage the process, if you control the controllable, things are going to come out in your favor overtime,” and the thing about the market is, it is uncertain, it’s unpredictable in the short term. But people who are process oriented and have a behaviorally sound process went out over long terms. So yeah, a lot of people get in trouble in the market because they have early success for the wrong reasons, you know, just getting lucky and they end up chalking that up to skill. 

[00:21:24.7] MB: And being process oriented is something that I am a huge fan of and we actually talked about in previous podcast episodes. We had an interview with an amazing insightful guest, Michael Mauboussin who’s another person actually in the financial world about how you can really be processed focused. So for listeners who are interested, I would definitely recommend checking that episode out. 

One of the 10 commandments that really jumped out of me that I thought was really interesting was the commandment that “you are not special”. Can you tell me about that? 

[00:21:52.1] DC: Yeah, it really goes to being process oriented because I think a lot of people who get into investment management or even retail investors think they have some sort of special edge and you harken back to the gentleman I mentioned earlier with the $5 million dollars. His special edge in his mind is was he had some control over this. I know people who work in tech who invest heavily in tech because they say, “Hey, you know this is my world. I understand it.” 

And being a great investor is about driving out this idea that you have special knowledge or that the rules don’t apply to you because I, again and again, meet people who understand the rules of investing. I mean simple things like diversification, staying the course, dollar cost averaging, which means putting a little money in each month or each year and they just fail to do it because they think that they’re somehow different. 

And this is a very human tendency to be overconfident and in fact, the research shows that you are basically either overconfident or you’re depressed. There is not a whole lot of middle ground unfortunately. So most of us, aside from the sort of clinically sad, have a great deal of overconfidence and I sight research in the book that talks about 94% of men thinking they’re better looking than average and 100% of men thinking they’re more inner personally savvy than average. 

Most of us have a vested interest from an ego and self-esteem standpoint of thinking that we’re better than average. But bring that human tendency to the world of investing is very dangerous. I talk in the book too about our tendency to delegate the dangerous and own the optimistic. Delegate the dangerous, own the optimistic. When we’re asked to rate other people’s likelihood of getting cancer or getting divorced or losing money in the stock market, we can do a very good job. 

But when it comes to rating our own likelihood of getting cancer, of getting divorced, whatever, the numbers get very, very scute because we don’t see ourselves as clearly as we ought to and so this is why I think working with a financial adviser, getting a second opinion, having a partner to check your thinking, I think that’s the reason that all of these things are so important in the world of finance. 

[00:24:18.8] MB: It reminds me of that famous study about drivers, right? It’s the same thing that the majority of drivers think that they are above average. 

[00:24:25.5] DC: Absolutely. 

[00:24:26.8] MB: And it also makes me think of something, I previously used to work on Wall Street and one of the things that I always think when somebody tells me that they think they can beat the market or whatever is, “Do you really think that you can beat these hedge funds that have billions of dollars invested in algorithms and data farms of computer that are micro timing all these trades?” There’s almost no way that you are ever going to actual generate meaningful alpha as a result of what you think is a novel insight that you just saw on CNBC about some company. 

[00:24:58.6] DC: Yeah, I mean it’s a zero sum game and so if hedge funds are winning, someone else is losing by a comparable margin and the odds are it’s you, right? I mean there’s the old saying about “if you get in a card game a few minutes in and you don’t know who the sucker is, it’s you,” right? And I think that the same could be said of investing. 

[00:25:18.6] MB: So you touched on this briefly, but how do we combat that bias or how can we help mitigate some of that overconfidence?

[00:25:26.4] DC: I think that one of the most important ways, one of the things that I advocate for in the book a whole lot is just being rules based. The book is really, I mean it’s called The Laws of Wealth and it really is a book of rules and so there’s fascinating research in the book and I just give the whole book away I guess at this point. Because one of the things that we talk about in the book is how often expert discretion is beaten or mashed by just simple rules. 

One of the studies that I talked about in the book is actually a meta-analysis. So it’s a study of all the studies, it’s a study of over 200 studies on simple rules-based decision making versus human discretion. So like you making your own choice and it studies everything from studies about prison recidivism and parole to stock picking to making a medical diagnosis and it’s found that simple rules beat or match expert, like PhD level discretion, 94% of the time. 

And so following the rules is such a big deal and so what I’ve tried to do in the book is set forth rules for managing money and managing your behavior and just try to put that on autopilot to the extent possible. I like reading about really successful people and one of the hallmarks of really successful people is that they try and automate their day and free up cognitive room for thinking about more important stuff. 

There’s been a lot of talk about President Obama just wearing two types of suits. He just doesn’t want to think about it. He doesn’t want to think about what he’s going to wear, he’s got bigger problems and then I’m from Alabama, so we’ll use Alabama football one. Nick Saban eats the same thing every day. The same thing every day for breakfast, same thing for lunch because he wants his mental energy and his time streamlined and he wants that available to think about other things. 

So I think that investing is one place where the rules be discretion almost all the time and that’s one of the best ways around introducing negative emotion into the process. 

[00:27:32.1] MB: And we talked about, in previous episodes, the importance of meta-analysis studies and how valid they are. One of the things that fascinates me is research by people like Phillip Tetlock who talk about how wrong experts are. Can you dive a little deeper on that topic? 

[00:27:49.9] DC: Yeah, so Tetlock wrote a recent book that everyone should check out called Superforecasting where he refines some of his early studies. But Tetlock’s early work, which really put him on the map showed basically how bad expert judgement intended to be and some of the parts that I like about his original work was he showed that the more popular a pundit was, the less likely they were to be correct. 

So if we think about how a pundit or a talking head comes into notoriety, let’s say in my world of finance and investing, often times it’s by making a dramatic call about sort of an unexpected event. So people who correctly called 2008-2009, if you watched The Big Short, some of those people that profited so dramatically from the housing crisis. So that’s how someone gets famous from making a big improbable call. 

Well probability being what it is, a lot of times those people tend to keep making large improbable calls and then are increasingly off in subsequent years and you saw this with John Paulson, the big hedge fund manager who made the biggest trade of all time, more or less. Made a billion dollars shorting the housing market and then in subsequent years, lost 36% when the market was up double digits. So again, a lot of times people are perma-bullish or perma-bearish. 

They run into one, they run into a nice opportunity where reality coincides with the thing they’ve been saying for five years but then those things tend go away overtime. So yeah, Tetlock found that expert judgment wasn’t all that great. Found that the more famous an expert was, the worst they tended to be, and also found that most experts were very resistant to feedback about how to improve their processes and had lots of excuses like, “I was too early.” Or, this is my favorite, “My prediction actually changed the course of history. You know, I would have been right but because everyone listened to what I said, I actually moved the market or changed history, messed up the space time continuum, as it were.” 

[00:30:03.7] MB: It’s such an important finding because people so often just defer to these experts or authorities, these talking heads, especially in the case of financial news many times and it’s so critical to be aware of your own biases and understand your own thinking to the level where you can see, “Hey, I am clearly falling prey to some serious bias right now.” Like those experts who are coming up with a ridiculous justifications for why they are consistently totally off base. 

[00:30:31.8] DC: Yeah and I think this is where we almost can’t do this ourselves. Chapter two of the book is titled You can’t do this alone and we are programmed not to see our biases. Again, if we think about this optimism bias, that’s in place for a very good reason. I mean we’re happier people because we have this optimism bias and if you think about entrepreneurship, if entrepreneurs correctly assess the probability of having a successful small business, no one would ever start a business, right? It’s only because we have this over-optimism that we see stuff like entrepreneurship because the odds are crummy. 

So what we need to do is enlist an outside view. We talk about the inside and the outside view. So run your idea by that friend of yours that’s such a good friend that he or she can give you critical feedback and it won’t damage the relationship. In the case of finances, I found and I talk in the book about how people who work with financial advisers tend to do two to 3% better per year than those who don’t and it has nothing to do frankly with the financial acumen of those advisers. It has to do with keeping you from doing stupid stuff. So having that trusted outside voice is, I think, the only way. You can educate yourself about the basics of biases but man, it’s awfully hard to white knuckle that when you’re in your own head. 

[00:32:01.9] MB: The idea of not being stupid is something that Charlie Munger, who’s one of my favorite thinkers and Warren Buffett’s business partner. He talks a lot about that both he and Buffett focus on is the idea of that they’re not setting out to be the smartest and greatest investors of all time. They just want to eliminate bias from their thinking and try to be consistently not stupid. 

[00:32:23.3] DC: Yeah. I think that sort of defensive, that first do no harm approach is the hallmark of a good investor and when I look at my own process, the very first thing I do is screen out stocks for risk. I mean that’s the very first thing I do. Because a lot of people don’t see risk in return in finance and elsewhere in life as opposite sides of the same coin. 

So I am wholly on board with this first do no harm, first root out the bad stuff approach to money and to life. I think there is a lot of wisdom there, and like you said, those guys have gotten very rich off what is a decidedly unsexy approach of just buying beaten down every day Staple stocks and it’s worked out extremely well for them clearly. 

[00:33:12.5] MB: Changing gears completely, you wrote a fascinating children’s book called Everyone You Love Will Die, tell me about that? 

[00:33:20.4] DC: So I have three kids. I have a seven year old, a soon to be three year old and then a tiny baby, three months old and so being a dad is the greatest, my favorite thing to do. But one thing I’ve learned with my seven year old is that they start to have tough questions. And so the other day, she’s asking me about God and the nature of life and evil and why do bad things happen to good people and all these different things that her little mind is beginning to take in. 

So we had a friend passed away and so one of the things that I found useful when talking to my kids about everything from the impermanence of life to marriage equality and everything in between is to write poetry. That’s a way that I can communicate with my kids. So I wrote this poem that’s the basic gist of it was there’s lots of ways, everyone dies so you’re here today and so am I. It sounds like a depressing title, Everyone You Love Will Die and it’s of course meant to be provocative. 

But it is actually a sweet book in practice and the gist of it is look, we’re not here forever so let’s make the most of it and let’s put first things first. Put family first and do what matters first and so I wrote this poem that lists all of these funny ways that people could die and then in the end says, “So hey, let’s spend today together.” So I wrote this poem, I put it on Facebook and a talented friend of mine liked it and sent me all these mocked up drawings of the different humorous ways in which people die in the poem. 

And so she said, “Hey we should make this a book,” and so I said, “Okay, what the heck.” So we put it on Kickstarter. It became the Kickstarter whatever, editors pick of the day and it got funded in 10 hours and we printed a book. So it was very fun. I actually made no money off of it. It’s obviously hard to get a book called Everyone You Love Will Die published by a big publisher but it’s one of the professional things I am most proud of. So thanks for bringing it up. 

[00:35:38.8] MB: You know it is such an important lesson and something that I think is easy to be intellectually aware of but really hard to internalize and live. Which is, for somebody who is listening, how can they snap out of the day to day grind of their life and really embrace that lesson that we only have a fine amount of time here and you really have to live your life fully? 

[00:36:04.6] DC: Well for me, it’s funny for me I know that it’s hard for most people to grasp, I was born on the day that my grandfather died. I am named after him, I look just like him, I never met him, he died two years to the day that I was born. So I feel like because of that, I’ve always had this weirdly more acute sense of impermanence than most people. So for me, the things that work are the following: First of all I try and I really read literature that considers the inevitability of that. 

Maybe that’s a really heavy for most people but I find that the inevitability of death does more to energize my life than just about anything else. So for me, literature, art, movies that speak to that and our fears around that are powerful and then other thing is I don’t know what the layperson’s term for this is but the shrink term for it is an existential boundary experience. So to explain, let’s say you’re driving and someone’s texting and they almost hit you. 

You’re like, “Holy crap! It was almost over for me there,” and you have this moment and maybe it’s half an hour, maybe it’s 10 minutes, you have this moment where death is a little closer to you or maybe it’s a death of a friend. You have this moment where everything comes into focus and you say, “Look if I have been hit by that car today, did I do enough?” Like, “Did I tell the people I love that I love them? Did I spend enough time with my family? Did I prioritize work to the exclusion of things that were more important?” 

And I think in those moments, they’re fleeting because you quickly get back to life and busyness, but in those moments, I think you have to journal, catalog them, write them down, make commitments when those moment happen to say, “Hey, I’m going to do things differently,” and have people hold you to those things. Because you’re right, I mean I think a lot of people — I think we live in a society that glorifies business in maladaptive and unproductive ways. I think a lot of us, unfortunately, just stay busy until we pass away and we live a lot of life on the table. So I think it’s an important thing to think about, like you said. 

[00:38:26.5] MB: What would an example be of one or two pieces of literature or movies or whatever that you think might examine that topic? 

[00:38:34.9] DC: I just finished The Dead which is very on the nose, right? I just finished The Dead which is part of James Joyce’s Dubliners collection of short stories. I’d absolutely recommend that. There’s a gentleman by the name of Irvin Yalom who’s a psychiatrist in California who writes very beautifully about death and existential boundary experiences so those are the two off the top of my head that I think I’ve read most recently that put me in that frame of mind. 

But Yalom is sort of the, in my mind, the Freud or the Jung of our day. He’s probably the best guy doing it right now so he’s who I’d point you to in addition to all the Russian literature and other people who are notoriously good at bumming you out. 

[00:39:26.7] MB: Well we’ll definitely include both The Dead and a few of Yalom’s books in the show notes. Kind of broadening that question out, other than The Laws of Wealth, which is a great book about a lot of the topics we’ve talked about goes much deeper into the research and is an incredibly useful tool. What would you recommend for people who want to do a little bit more research and dig into some of these topics? Where would you suggest they start? 

[00:39:52.2] DC: So I get asked this question all the time. So at the risk of plugging my own thing, I came up with my own reading list. So if people just Google “Nocturne Capital Reading List” I have all my favorite behavioral finance books and I have them categorized by the sub-category they speak to. I think just some of the classics though, just off the top of my head, Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow is about the best and most comprehensive thing out there. It is a little bit of a heavy read. I mean it is a long book but it is very fascinating. 

Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein’s book Nudge is about the best around in terms of speaking to policy nudging and pushing behavior in a good direction in everything from kid’s school lunches, to smoking bans, to safe driving, so if you are interested in that. And then in terms of the more financial side, I read some of the classics. I read Ben Graham and The Buffett Letters and things like that but I have a pretty comprehensive list of 15 or 20 if you just look up “Nocturne Capital Reading List”.

[00:41:04.0] MB: Well we’ll definitely include the reading list in the show notes as well. 

[00:41:06.8] DC: Great. 

[00:41:07.9] MB: So for somebody who is listening here, what is one piece of simple actionable homework you would give them to implement that they might be able to use to improve their personal finances? 

[00:41:19.2] DC: I think there’s two. I will double down and give you two there. So I think one would be to pick five of the books off of the list, which will be included in the show notes and read five of those books. The interesting thing about investing is there’s such a quickly diminishing marginal returns on investment knowledge like if you read three, four, five books you will have 90% of all the knowledge you need to be a savvy investor and you can read a hundred more books to get to the next five to 10% of the way. 

Just because I think investing is simple, but not easy. So I think that people would do very well to educate themselves on the fundaments of that and I’ve tried to give a good starter with those books and then the second thing I would say is get a financial adviser and look for someone who charges a reasonable fee who emphasizes planning and handholding and behavioral coaching because the other stuff is honestly a dime a dozen. 

You can get anyone to put you in a well-diversified portfolio, that’s not hard to do. What you really need is someone who’s a good fit and is going help you get that extra 3% a year that the research says you get when you work with an adviser by virtue of them helping you to make better decisions. So those are the two easy pieces of advice. Educate yourself, three to five books, and then find someone to help take you the rest of the way and then read books about more interesting things like The Impermanence of Life. 

[00:42:53.4] MB: Where can people find you online? 

[00:42:55.6] DC: Twitter, @danielcrosby and Nocturne Capita,l with an E like the music, nocturnecapital.com. 

[00:43:04.6] MB: Well Daniel, thank you so much for being on the show. This has been a fascinating discussion and I have learned a tremendous amount and we’ve really enjoyed having you on here. 

[00:43:12.6] DC: Thank you, it’s been my pleasure. 

Influence Anyone With Secret Lessons Learned From The World’s Top Hostage Negotiators with Former FBI Negotiator Chris Voss

In this episode we discuss the secret lessons hostage negotiators around the world use to win the day, how to understand and influence people’s emotional drivers, the two words that can transform any negotiation, the biggest hallmarks of powerful master negotiators and much more with the FBI’s former lead international kidnapping negotiator Chris Voss.

Chris Voss is the founder and CEO of the Black Swan Group, an adjunct professor at Georgetown and University of Southern California. During his 24 year term with the FBI where he most recently served as the FBI’s lead international kidnapping negotiator, Voss worked approximately 150 kidnappings worldwide, from the Middle East to Haiti including a number of high-profile kidnappings. Voss has been trained by the FBI, Scotland Yard and Harvard in the art of negotiation and negotiated with likes of terrorists, hostage takers, and bank robbers.

We discuss:

• FBI’s behvaioral change stairway they use to negotiate with terrorists and hostage takers

• Why emotional intelligence is at the forefront of business success today

• How to leverage “tactical empathy” in your life to achieve the results you want

• How to create leverage to influence anyone in the world by understanding their emotional drivers

• Why you should never be mean to someone who could hurt you by doing nothing

• Why understanding is NOT the same as agreement and why that is important

• The biggest barrier to negotiation success is not complexity - its overcoming the awkwardness

• How repeating the last 1-3 words someone said can have a huge impact

• Why winning in a negotiation is not the same as beating the other side

• The incredible importance of listening and how you can cultivate “active listening"

• The power and importance of open ended and clarifying questions

• How to draw out the hidden cards from the other side of a negotiation

• The secrets hostage negotiators AROUND THE WORLD use regardless of cultural dynamics

• The two most important words in any negotiation

• The three different types of negotiator and the strengths and weaknesses of each

• How changing one question totally transformed the kidnapping negotiation for Jose Escobar

• Why Chris would “never lie to anyone he’s not going to kill"

• Why Chris hates compromise in any negotiation

• The “F Word” in negotiations and why you should be careful with it

• One of the biggest hallmarks of powerful negotiators

• And much more!

Thank you so much for listening!

Please SUBSCRIBE and LEAVE US A REVIEW on iTunes! (Click here for instructions on how to do that!). 

SHOW NOTES, LINKS, & RESEARCH

• [Book] Getting More by Stuart Diamond

• [Book] Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss and Tahl Raz

• [Website] The Black Swan Group

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

[00:02:23.3] MB: Today we have an incredible guest on the show, Chris Voss. Chris is the founder and CEO of the Black Swan Group, an adjunct professor at the Georgetown and the University of Southern California. During his 24 year term with the FBI where he most recently served as the FBI’s lead international kidnapping negotiator, Chris worked with approximately a 150 different kidnappings worldwide from the Middle East to Haiti including a number of high profile kidnappings. He also has been trained by the FBI, Scotland Yard and Harvard in the art of negotiation and negotiated with the likes of terrorists, hostage takers and bank robbers. 

Chris, welcome to The Science of Success.

[00:03:01.2] CV: Thank you very much, happy to be here. 

[00:03:03.8] MB: Well we’re super excited to have you on. So you obviously have an incredible background, tell us a little bit about your story and how you got down this path?

[00:03:14.0] CV: You know I was walking through the corn fields of Iowa when I realized that I had to be a hostage negotiator, no. You know, a police officer, FBI agent, New York City, part of joint terrorist task force, actually I’ve been a SWAT guy. The crazy thing was I had been on the SWAT team in the FBI and I had a reoccurring knee injury and providence, the universe got me into this whole communication thing, verbal communication, what a concept, right? 

But I knew we had hostage negotiators and I decided I wanted to learn how to be a hostage negotiator and then it landed into just basic human communication and how do we communicate with people who really don’t see eye to eye to us no matter how intense that is and it was great. I found it much more interesting and it added a lot to the rest of my life and now it’s making work in business and personal life. 

[00:04:08.8] MB: And you’ve obviously been through some incredibly difficult, tense negotiation situations. What are the concepts that, I believed you’ve talked about it and something that I’m really interested in, is the idea of the behavioral change stairway. Could you explain that concept a little bit? 

[00:04:25.0] CV: Well, it’s the idea that there’s a progression of how we get to where we want to go and the shortest distance between two points is not a straight line. It’s like what I like to talk about in communication all the time because, we want to go directly at what we want. And the stairways, it really started as two dimensional representation of we’ve got to make some steps and each step then becomes the foundation for the next step and the first of it is just basic developing a rapport. 

You develop a rapport by, I’ll use the term that puts everybody to sleep, empathy. Most of the time, when was the last time you were at a cocktail party and you had an exciting conversation about the latest developments in empathy? It’s probably not being talked about on CNN but it’s really an indirect root to establish in a great relationship is letting the side know you understand them and showing them how you understand. 

And one step leads to another, which basically then puts you in a position to influence other people. It’s based on trust and it’s based really on emotional intelligence and one step at a time was each step being a great foundation for the next and you can influence outcomes. You can change people’s minds. 

[00:05:39.7] MB: And one of the things you’ve done incredibly well is bring emotion into the process of negotiation, which originally started out as a very dry, logic driven field. Can you talk about that a little bit? 

[00:05:52.3] CV: Yeah, well you know I’m not bringing emotion in at all. It’s there, it’s the elephant in the room. I mean there’s this monstrous creature in the middle of every communication and what we want is based on what we care about. You know, you make every single decision, each one of us, I make all my decisions based on what I care about and that makes decision making by definition an emotional process. So my approach is let’s stop kidding ourselves. 

Hostage negotiators don’t kid themselves about emotions. So they said, “Okay, look this is an emotionally driven situation. Give me a set of tools where I can navigate these emotions.” The history of business negotiation has been this fiction that somehow we’re rational and we’re logical, and I’m sorry and that’s why emotional intelligence has become to the forefront of business success today. Study after study, survey after survey shows that the top performers of every level at business are those who are using the most emotional intelligence, every single level. 

Even IT internet related interactions, you have to be able to communicate with people to get stuff done and so give me the tools from hostage negotiators, the tools that are designed for maximum success in emotions and do they apply to our business and personal life? Absolutely. Because we’re driven by what we want and so it’s a recognition of the reality of we make our decisions based on what we want. Emotional, what we care about, emotional intelligence and these are the skills, these are phenomenal skills. 

[00:07:35.1] MB: You made an incredible point, which is that it’s not that you’re bringing emotion into the process, it’s that it’s already there and we just have to learn to work with it and accept and recognize that fact.

[00:07:47.4] CV: Yeah, it’s just there. I used to have to try to make the case for it and scientists don’t understand what hold together the universe and because they can’t measure it they say, “Well there must be something out there called dark matter. It must be dark matter,” and I used to say emotions are the dark matter of negotiation because we don’t know what it is. We can’t wrap our minds around it, but it holds everything together. So let’s recognize that it exists and maximize it and this stuff is very effective. I mean you can’t get away from it. 

[00:08:21.7] MB: And you touched on empathy a moment ago. Tell me about how to sort of leverage that, especially in a situation where somebody listening might think, “How can you have empathy for a terrorist or a hostage taker?”

[00:08:34.7] CV: Right, right and you know what? This is not your grandfather’s empathy either. I mean we’ve learned enough about it over the years and that’s why I changed the term in my book to “tactical empathy”. I mean we know what this is. We know what we’re looking for and we know how it affects people. So I’ll tell you in advance what are the triggers you want to look for and it changes people’s outcomes. It’s the real essence of connecting with someone because everybody can help you. 

There is an old saying, “Never be mean to someone who could hurt you by doing nothing,” and there’s pretty much everybody that you interact with can probably hurt you by inaction or choosing not to do something. So if you are willing to accept that that’s true, then the flip side is, pretty much everybody you interact with can help you in some small way if they feel like it and they feel like it when you connect with them, when you have rapport with them. When they feel like you understand them. 

When they look at you and they say, “That’s right. I believe in what you just said,” and it can be something as simple as taking your application and then putting them on the bottom of the pile because they didn’t like the way you spoke to them to putting them on the top or maybe taking your application or whatever you want, your request, and directly walk in it and see the boss at that moment. Or it’s the Macy’s sales person who looks two ways to see if the manager is around and then decides to give you the employee discount because they like the way that you talk to them. I’ve had that happen to me a number of times. 

You know somebody is always in a position to help you if they feel like it and when you start accumulating this over a long term period of time, it’s a return on your investment and you find yourself with great relationships in business deals, and somebody comes to you and says, “Hey you know what? I looked out for you today. There was this problem coming and I went ahead and dealt with it because I knew it was going to catch you off guard,” and that’s the way you become successful over a long period of time and you’re happier and the people that you do business with like doing business with you.

[00:10:40.3] MB: So how can somebody who’s listening right now apply the lessons that you’ve learned from building empathy or creating tactical empathy for someone like a terrorist or a hostage taker and what are some practical ways they can apply that in their own lives? 

[00:10:55.9] CV: Okay, great question and I’m glad you brought it back because the exercise, the challenge is, let’s define tactical empathy. The same way Daniel Goldman calls it cognitive empathy and Goldman says that actually sociopaths are the best at this and that’s simply recognizing what’s driving the other side and then articulating it back to them in a way where they feel hurt. So this is what’s important here is what’s not said. 

I’m not saying you agree, I’m not saying you disagree. If I neither agree nor disagree with your position, if I simply understand where you’re coming from and recognize it, that gives me the ability to have empathy with anybody. I can know what drives you without agreeing with it and then I can have empathy with a terrorist or sympathy for the devil. Empathy with a terrorist, not quite the same thing. I’m not agreeing it, I’m not feeling it, I am just seeing it. 

And because of that, I can tell you, with Jihadi John, the killer from ISIS, I can tell you what drives him and as soon as I know what drives him because I simply recognize it, now I can influence it, I can move and I can change it. I might not be able to change it a little, I might be able to change it a lot. But I am greedy in my influence and I want to and I am very particular. My dollars are scarce, so I am not spending my dollars when I can spend emotional intelligence and change the outcomes at the same time and with that, it gives me the power to have influence on anybody on the planet. 

It might not be a little, it might be a lot. I’m not willing to leave anything on the table so I’ll take whatever influence I can get to try to change the outcome. If you can accept that you only have to see where the other side is coming from to be able to then take apart what their drivers are and maybe dismantle them and rebuild them a little bit, their emotional drivers, you can then have influence on anybody on the planet and that’s what a hostage negotiator does. We put ourselves in a position to influence anybody. We don’t have to like them, we just have to be willing to influence them. 

[00:12:54.4] MB: I love that point that it doesn’t matter what your starting point is, you can create influence with anybody on the planet if you are able to really dig in and understand what they want, what they’re feeling and thinking emotionally and what drives them. 

[00:13:09.2] CV: Yeah and it’s important to draw the distinction that understanding is not agreement. Now that scares some people. That scares a lot of people. I can understand Bernie Sanders supporters, I can understand Donald Trump supporters, I can understand Hillary Clinton supporters. I can understand all of them and soon as I know where they’re coming from, it gives me an opportunity to adjust where they’re going. 

[00:13:34.1] MB: You touched on this concept a moment ago, the idea of, and maybe it’s a little bit different, but the idea of mirroring. Can you talk a little bit about that? 

[00:13:43.0] CV: Yeah, sure. A mirror is, and it’s not the mirror that everybody else thinks of. Most people see mirroring as, “Let me mirror their body language, let me stand like they stand. If they’ve got their chin in their right hand, let me put my right hand in my chin. If they’re leaning against the wall, let me lean against the wall.” The mirroring of the physical body language, that’s not it. It’s simpler and it’s actually more powerful. 

The mirroring a hostage negotiator does, what the difference is, the mirroring is just the repetition of the last one to three words that someone has said. The last one to three words that someone has said? Exactly. Just exactly like that, and it’s a great simple tool that feels enormously awkward when you do it. When I am training people I have them do it right away because the biggest barrier to these skills is not their complexity or the intellectual challenge of understanding them. 

The barrier here is feeling awkward because it’s different. You feel awkward, the other person feels listened to. A mirror triggers, punches of button in somebody else’s mind. It’s like reword what you just said and go on. It’s always a command. It’s the closest thing that a lot of people that I have trained they say, “Wow, this is Jedi mind trick. A Jedi mind trick? It’s a Jedi mind trick.” Because people love it and they want to go on. 

It was a funny story that, it made me look funny and that’s why I included it in the book. I had an employee that was mirroring me for 45 minutes once and I didn’t even know it. My son was sitting there and finally he couldn’t take it anymore, he goes, “Stop at doing it, don’t you see what he’s doing to you?” And I was like, “No, what’s he doing?” “He’s been mirroring you for the last 45 minutes, you didn’t even know it. You just enjoyed talking so much he kept you going.” 

[00:15:33.1] MB: So it’s really just as simple as repeating back the three or four words that they said? 

[00:15:37.9] CV: Right, you pick up one to three words and the problem that solves also is like most of us when we say what we mean, we often use words that are very carefully selected for our own brain and we know what we mean by that but there is a pretty good chance actually, it isn’t exactly the way the other person is thinking and your perfect words are kind of missing the mark and if somebody says, “What do you mean by that?” 

Well most likely they repeat the exact same words only louder. It’s like an American trying to be understood in France. I just say it again, only louder and what a mirror does is it flips that switch so the person will repeat what they’ve said in different words. It’s how you get someone to paraphrase themselves is what it really does. It triggers a paraphrase and you don’t have to paraphrase for them, you let them paraphrase and you’re going to increase your meaning. 

The other thing you’re going to do, you mentioned moments before, it buys moments for you in the conversation so you get more time to think and the other thing that mirroring does and I’ve got a client of mine who’s one of the smartest people I’ve ever met, he mirrors the other sides negotiation position. So key words in it every time, because he knows how they respond tells them whether or not they’re firm or whether or not they’re open for conversation. And when you get someone to paraphrase themselves, that gives you a real clear idea of the firmness of their position. 

[00:17:07.9] MB: So the idea of buying moments in a conversation, I know you’ve talked about the importance of listening and I want to dig into that, but also the idea that if you’re focused on only on explaining yourself and explaining your arguments, it’s really, really hard to kind of step back and understand what the other side is saying. 

[00:17:25.1] CV: Right, yeah good point. You need this moments because some people have described the art of negotiation as letting the other side have your way. Well how do you let the other side have your way? You’ve got to get the other guy talking, which means you have to be quiet and you have to keep them talking. Winning in a negotiation is not beating the other side. 

Because when you beat the other side, actually you leave resentment planted in them and they want to pay you back if they feel beaten and what’s going to happen is it’s going to erode your implementation and as a human being or as a company, revenue is realized when it comes in not when it’s promised, which means you don’t make your profit when the deal is signed. You make your profit as the deal is implemented, even if it’s in an agreement between a husband and wife. You both realize value as you carry out what you agreed to. People who feel beaten aren’t going to want to implement. They’re not going to want you to realize your revenue or again, they’re going to hurt you when they can by doing nothing. 

So you buy these moments so you let the other side talk that you find out what’s possible, never be so sure of what you want that you wouldn’t take something better. You’ve got to hit the other side what those better things might be and then when they came up with a great idea that you didn’t think of, you look at them and you congratulate them for how smart they are and then they’re going to implement. You’re both going to like it and you’re both be better off and so you’ve got to let the other side go first in order to get there. 

[00:18:55.9] MB: So going back a little bit to talk more about how we can be better listeners, tell me about the concept of active listening and how can we cultivate that? 

[00:19:04.8] CV: Well, it’s not just active but it’s proactive. So you cultivate that first, the first and simplest way to cultivate it is to shut the front door. Is to go silent and, you know, we talk about moments, what’s a moment? A moment is three seconds. Give the other guy a chance to speak and then actually try to paraphrase what he said or ask a clarifying question. There’s great power and clarity when you’re trying to pull clarity out of the other side. 

Paraphrase what they’ve said. Mirror the last three words of what they just said to get them to paraphrase. You’re designing a communication process that draws the other side out, which the other thing that you want the other side to do is you want them to show you their hidden cards. In every conversation, in every negotiation, there are things that we’re holding close to the vest that’s really important to us. That’s why we’re holding them close to the vest. 

There are hidden cards if you will are proprietary information, are secret information that happens every time. If you are holding cards, so are they and where the real magic lies is where those cards overlap. So you’ve got to get the other side to trust you enough by listening, what we used to call active listening, which is not just sitting there with your mouth shut and glaring at them intensely. But it’s asking them a good question, asking them what or how. 

The two biggest great questions start with the words “what and how”. Or trying to draw them out with some clarification and then give the conversation back to them. Most of us when we talk, we want to talk for half an hour. You know, ask them a question and let them start talking again. Encourage them. It’s a very encouraging process but it’s very much how you get at their black swans, there are hidden information, their secret hidden cards where you make great deals. 

[00:21:06.2] MB: The two greatest questions start with the words what or how, explain that? 

[00:21:10.6] CV: What and how, people loved to be asked how to do something. People loved to be asked, “What about this works for you?” Of the list of open ended questions that you could use. What and how are the most powerful because they make the other side feel good. In many cases, you’ve just done though is especially with how, you’ve caused them to take a look at the overall situation and the context of it and you’ve also caused them, you know, one of my first favorite way of saying no is, “How am I supposed to do that?” 

There’s two things about saying that. First of all, it’s those words but secondly and even more importantly is your tone of voice. Because people can either feel like you are asking for help or you are making an accusation. I can say, “How am I supposed to do that when you present me with a difficult challenge that I can’t accomplish?” Or I could say, “How am I supposed to that!?” The exact same words but completely different meaning which is an accusation and I am signaling that I don’t like what you want and maybe even then I don’t like you, which is bad for the communication. 

So the how questions are one of the most flexible things combined with tone of voice to draw the other side out or even to set a boundary and say, “Look, I can’t do that, and I need you to take a look at the whole context here and I need you to look at me when I say how am I supposed to that?” And it lets you know that I want to cooperate with you but what you just put on the table just doesn’t work. 

[00:22:42.9] MB: And you touched on this in that explanation, tell me more about open ended questions and why they’re so important? 

[00:22:49.6] CV: Well they invite the other side to talk, they show that you’re willing to listen and they are the most flexible overall. You can actually, and some people have been running circles with the how and what questions, so how do you follow up a how and what question is extremely important also. Every CEO in the planet has been asked, “What keeps you awake at night?” And they’re tired of that question. Not that they’re tired of that question but as soon as they’re done answering, the person that asked them doesn’t listen to the answer in any way, shape or form. 

And that gets back to a little bit of the active listening or the proactive listening I’ve talked about before. If somebody answers your question, somebody answers your how or what question, you’ve got to show them that you are paying attention and that you just didn’t have a preset list of things that you want to say regardless of what their response is. But there is a list of what’s called a reporter’s question. It’s the who, what, when and why, how and where? And the how and what questions actually invite the longer answers. If I ask you “when, where, who,” those are all very short answers, very concise answers that don’t invite a lot of conversation. 

If I ask you why even when I want to know why, you feel accused. Why did you do that? Why did you wear that shirt? Why did you get up at 7 o’clock this morning? So one of the advantages I have as a hostage negotiators having used these skills in literally every culture on the planet, interesting side note, every hostage negotiation team whether in Japan, whether they’re in China or whether they’re in Nigeria, whether they’re in Latin America uses the same skills and these skills have been road tested in every culture and they work on use because we’re human beings. 

The why question in every culture on the planet, we always ask why when we think someone is doing something wrong. We’re like battered children for why, we always feel accused and so that’s why we knock that off of our list of questions asked. Now you may need to know why, you just turn it to what question, instead of saying, “Why did you do that?” You say, “What made you do that?” So if you throw all the rest of these out, you’re left with the what and how questions and they’re the most powerful. 

[00:25:06.6] MB: Tell me the story of Jose Escobar’s kidnapping? 

[00:25:10.4] CV: We used to use, Jose Escobar was really when we moved completely away from the classic proof of life question, you know, “What was the name of Jose’s first dog when he was a kid?” The what questions that are designed to enlist a one word answer and there are security questions for our computer, there are security questions for our bank accounts, our credit cards, it’s a question that sounds like an open ended question and it’s usually a one or two word answer and only one person on the planet can answer it. 

That used to be the proof of life question, and we realized that we won’t get long answers. We didn’t get that much out of it. It was real easy for the inside to answer it, it took no effort on their part and bang-bang, we proved somebody was alive but we really didn’t get anywhere else and we switched that to, “How do we know Jose’s alive and how are we supposed to pay you if we don’t know he’s alive?” And that massively changed the dynamic because the other side, killers, terrorist, murderers, it made them stop and think. It made them look at the context, it made them look at us. 

It accomplished all the things that we want to good how question to do and the thing that I realized more than anything else was because he turned dilemma in business is, how do you get to the decision maker? Well, kidnapping organizations are businesses and the decision maker is never the negotiator just like every business negotiation. We found out after the fact is that we kept asking the representative, the negotiator of the group acting on the decision maker’s behalf, “How do we know Pepe’s alive? How are we supposed to pay if we don’t know if he’s alive?” 

Their representative kept going back to the jungle and huddling up with the rest of the kidnappers saying, “This is what I’m being asked, this is the answer that I’ve been giving. I just want to know if this is the best way for us to proceed based on the question,” and they spend a tremendous amount of time, we found out afterwards, talking about whether or not they were going to take Jose to town and put him on a phone. 

When we realized that that adjustment from “what was the name of Pepe’s first dog”, or Jose’s first dog. I call him Pepe now and then because that’s actually his nickname and how do we know Jose is alive? It changes the whole dynamic on the other side and they get together and they worked together in ways that we know that we had never made kidnapping groups work together before. Jose ultimately escaped and part of us getting them to work together and slow the situation down contributed to his opportunity to escape. So that was our adjustment, getting away from one word answers to the how question and we gained a tremendous amount of power over the other side when we did that. 

[00:28:00.5] MB: And how can that same proof of life concept be applied in a business context? 

[00:28:05.3] CV: Yeah, it’s a great question and it gets back to in business, the primary objective is to get to the decision maker, get past the blocker get to the decision maker. That’s faulty because first of all, that treats the blocker, who’s the important player on their team, as if they need to be dismissed and that sends a bad signal and it sets your blocker up as actually a dill killer on down the line because never be mean to someone who can hurt you by doing nothing. 

As soon as you’re dismissive of the blocker, the blocker now begins to slow you down or chooses to let you be hurt by things that they can hurt you with inaction. So we need that blocker, we need the blocker to feel included to get to the decision maker and the how questions begin to involve the blocker in our solution. When you’re talking to the blocker in business, the representatives, the sales rep, the secretary whoever it might be, you would ask things like, “How are your objectives proceeding with your company? How can we work with you so that everybody is better off? How does what I propose fit into what you guys are trying to accomplish?” 

“How does what I propose fit into what you guys are trying to accomplish”, now suddenly makes your blocker feel involved and wants you to succeed because they are going to answer you and they’re going to want their answer to succeed and as soon as they give you that answer, you now have a collaborator on the other side as oppose to a blocker and they now start to work with you to work with the decision maker who’s the person you’re trying to get to. 

Because once you get to the decision maker, after you’re done talking to them, the decision maker is going to go back to the blocker and say, “What did you think of this guy” or gal? “How did they interact with you?” They’re going to say, “Thank you for bringing this person to me because this fits into our objective. So they’re going to say, “Don’t ever let that guy through again.” Your blocker is going to have a tremendous to them how all of that is teed up to the decision maker and that’s what the how questions are designed to do, pull the other side together behind your objective.

[00:30:11.2] MB: That’s fascinating. So what are some of the other parallels you have seen or some of the ideas that have crossed over from hostage negotiation to business negotiation or negotiation in everyday life? 

[00:30:24.1] CV: Well the other side always wants more. They just don’t know where it is and as soon as they feel listened to, they’re going to be more amenable to other ideas. There are three basic types in negotiation and they get us back to the caveman response because the caveman part of our brain, the amygdala, that where every thought goes through there. Evolution hasn’t evolved that out of our brain, it’s still there and so when the caveman saw something, he thought, “I run from it, I kill it, or I make friends with it and it becomes part of my tribe.” 

Fight, flight or make friends. I eat it, it eats me, I mate with it, however you want to describe those three basic responses but in each one of those responses, coming to an agreement is a secondary benefit. There’s always something more important to the other side than coming to an agreement and part of that is always in being understood. So if I can gain leverage on you, if I can get more of what I want by not spending a dime but by simply letting you know I understand, then I open up the opportunity to get more for me and to have you like it. 

Stuart Diamond wrote a book that I loved the title of it’s called Getting More. It sounds very selfish but it’s in fact what we all want. We all want to do better, getting more is also about having, from my context, it’s also getting more by having better relationships. By having someone want to collaborate, by having the same person want to do business with you again instead of you needing to search for new business counterparts all the time. 

I have tremendous respect for Donald Trump and what he’s accomplished as a negotiator and as a business man. Understand that he needs to change his business venues every few years with his very aggressive approach because people get tired of that aggressive approach. When was the last time he put up a building in New York City that came anywhere near to Trump Tower at the Grand Central Station? Magnificent pieces of real estate that he did back in the 80’s. 

Having to look for new business partners all the time means that he has to continually move from place to place to place. Not all of us have the ability to do this. Most of us like Warren Buffett would, I’d rather be like Warren Buffett because he’s got to be not only the richest guy in Omaha but he maybe one of the richest people on the planet. He hasn’t gone from place to place to place to place and not all of us want to move from place to place to place almost as if we’re in the witness security program. We want to stay in one place and we want to flourish and we want to prosper. 

And you do that by having great relationships and having people wanting to continue to do business with you and that’s a lot of what this is really designed to do. 

[00:33:20.7] MB: So you talked about the difference in style between Trump and Warren Buffett. Tell me about how that plays into this sort of the three different negotiating styles, which you touched on as well, and describe a little bit what each of those styles are. 

[00:33:36.0] CV: Well you know one style is a very extremely assertive. I supposed that even more say it’s sort of aggressive and the aggressive style is intoxicating because you beat the other side and you have victory and you celebrate. The problem with that is, the more people you beat, the fewer people want to do business with you and what really comes to pass is as I was talking to an executive in an energy company in Boston several years ago, the CEO of the company. 

In his industry. He developed a relationship of being a very tough negotiator and after a while, no one would make deals with him. Everybody that he talked to if by definition you did business with him, he won that meant you lost, nobody wanted to do business with him and he was in the position where he actually had a deal on his desk that he negotiated every single point with the CEO from the other company and the CEO refused to sign. 

Having negotiated and agreed to it at every point when it came to signing at the bottom he wouldn’t sign and he said, “I know why this guy won’t do this. I’ve got such a reputation as a tough negotiator. If he signs a deal that means he lost and he knows his board’s going to fire him because he lost,” and that’s the residue of being the very assertive guy. When you always win and the other side always loses then pretty soon people lose their appetite for that and nobody wants to do business with you and with all due respect for Mr. Trump, his business is spread all over the world. 

He doesn’t stay in one place. He’s not putting building up in New York City anymore, he’s not building casinos in Atlantic City anymore, he’ll build a golf course or a resort in one location and then he will have to move on and my assessment is he’s left such a toxic residue with each deal that people don’t want to continue to do business with him. That’s one type, now he actually prefers to be understood, interestingly enough, and the book that he’s gotten some criticism over. 

As to whether or not he wrote it, I don’t know the art of the deal, I don’t know if he wrote it or not and his co-author is bad mouthing him now which is another interesting residue of being assertive but I read that a long time ago and he was more than willing to talk about and described the people that could handle him and there are people that have handled him. His son in law is one of them. His son in law was not one of the assertive-aggressive types, his son in law is very analytical. 

His son in law is very quiet, Ivanka’s husband I believe and in this is a great description of what I refer to as the analytical guy. The analytical guy doesn’t like open conflict. He sees it as being extremely non-productive. The analytical guy thinks things through and you will never discuss a problem with an analytical person until they have at least one solution and probably multiple solutions. So the analytical guy, the non-open combat guy can do very well with the assertive negotiator and you see that play out in Donald Trump’s organization with the people that he seems to have the most respect for. 

So that’s the second type, and then the third type is the person whose relationship oriented and they make friends. They bring you into their tribe, they want you to be part of their life, they want to have a long term ongoing relationship with you, they’re likeable and there’s an interesting statistic that people who are likeable, you’re six times more likely to make a deal with someone you like and that becomes a very strong tactic to be brought into a negotiation. You can understand that if you are likeable, people will want to do business with you. 

That sounds crazy, right? Why would you want to do business with somebody you like as oppose to somebody who feels like they’ve got punched in the face by you. So likeability is the third core attribute and in my view the great negotiator combines all three tribes. A great negotiator is assertive without being aggressive. A great negotiator thinks things through and comes up with multiple options. A great negotiator develops a good relationship with you and is very likeable and you want to continue to do business with them. So whatever your default type is, I’m here to tell you don’t discard it, add to it and add to it by evolving and improving not by changing. 

[00:38:03.2] MB: You’ve said before that you would never lie to anyone that you’re not going to kill. Tell me about that? 

[00:38:09.4] CV: Yeah, you know, that came up because when I went through Harvard Law School’s negotiation course as a student and I was, I’m the only FBI agent, I think, that every went through the class who wasn’t a student. They said, “You know, what do you feel about lying?” Because they are very much against lying. Lying is a bad idea and I said, “Well as a hostage negotiator, I’d never lied to anybody that I am not going to kill and even then, I’d probably don’t do it because somebody they know is going to find out about it and I’m going to have to pay for it.” 

I mean lying is this great seductive trap, “Maybe I can just get what I want right now if I tell this one lie and I’ll fix it later.” Well there’s a couple of problems with that. You just set a ticking time bomb on yourself that’s going to blow up because nobody likes being lied to. That’s the first problem. The second problem is, what if they were trying to trap you in a lie to begin with? 

Most people, the practiced liars try to trick us into lying to see if we will. I mean they see it a million miles away and there are some negotiators that actually try to seduce you into a lie early on so they can see your first tale. They will ask you a question they know that you won’t give you a straight direct response too. So many times the temptation to lie is actually a trap set by the other side. All right, so let’s pretend that it is not a trap and most of the time it is. If I lie to you, you’re going to make me pay for it and then their trust is broken, you’ll never going to believe me again. 

And if I can get away with that lie, and I never have to deal with you again, since you’re in my world to begin with, you’re going to tell somebody that I lied to you and my reputation is going to precede me. There is an old phrase, “Do something right, three people know about it. Do something wrong, 12 people know about it.” So there is a 12X multiplier on lying and that gets around and then pretty soon, you’re done in your community and you’re going to have to join the witness security program because you’re going to have to move on. So there’s just so many things wrong with lying. It’s just such a bad idea. I’m not interested in letting myself in for those kind of problems. 

[00:40:20.6] MB: So how do you feel about compromise in a negotiation? 

[00:40:25.2] CV: You knew you were going to ask me that question. I hate compromise. The spirit of compromise is a great thing, the practice of comprise is a bad thing. The best descriptor for compromise is I’ve got this great gray suit on and I’m not sure whether or not I want to wear a black shoes or brown shoes, so I compromise and I wear one black and one brown. That’s compromise. “I’m not sure if you’re right, you’re not sure if I’m right, we’ll take a little bit of each one’s idea and let’s put it together and see how it works,” and a lot of times compromise is a little bit lazy. 

Look, I’m sorry for those of you that compromise but take a little more time, find a better outcome. Compromise is watering down solutions and then the secondary part of the problem with compromise is we always feel loses twice as much as we feel equivalent gains. So when I compromise, I feel I’ve given in and I’ve lost something and it’s going to sting me and for me to feel even with you, I need you to lose too. Compromise is a path to lose-lose and then if a loss feels twice as much as an equivalent gain, if I lost five, I want you to lose 10. And if I make you lose 10, then when you lose 10, you’re going to make me want to lose 20 to get even, and it’s this vicious spiral and I’ve heard a lot of people describe negotiation as, “Well we were both unhappy so then I know it was a great deal.” 

That’s not what I want. I don’t want to be unhappy with the deal and I don’t want to be at a deal where I am not satisfied until I make you feel unhappy. It becomes this vicious spiral and if you just take a little more time and maybe hear the other side out, maybe they’ll throw something on the table that you really like and instead of asking them to compromise, you take their better solution. That gets you out of the vicious spiral and maybe put you into a virtuous circle where things are getting better all the time instead of getting each other back. So compromise is a dangerous whirlpool trap that I don’t want to get sucked into. 

[00:42:35.7] MB: Tell me about the idea of shaping what is fair in a negotiation? 

[00:42:40.7] CV: Fair is the F word. You just used the F word on me in a negotiation. Oh my God! Fair is this emotional, bang-bang word that if I say, “Look, I just want what’s fair,” which is said all the time, I’ve just accused you of being unfair. It’s what manipulative negotiators do. It’s what the NFL owners did when they lock the players out. The NFL players said, “We’ll be happy to come back to work as soon as you open the books and show us what you’re offering us is equitable based on revenue,” and the owners didn’t want to answer that question. 

So they said, “We’ve giving the players a fair offer.” It was a cover for a position of weakness. We use the F word, the word fair, when we’re afraid we can’t defend our position but somehow we’re losing. So it’s actually a great tip of the iceberg window into what’s going on with the other side. Nobody ever uses the word fair when they are coming from a position of strength ever. Because if you’ve got a position of strength, they’ll just lay it out. 

We often use fair when we’re afraid of a loss coming our way and we can’t defend ourselves from that loss and interestingly enough, I tell, in all the masters of business administration programs that I teach in, watch for the word fair and I’ll bet you you’d see it come up in nearly every negotiation you have and I’ll be darned if that isn’t true. So people are covering positions of weakness all the time and fair is the word that comes up more frequently than price and is always an indicator of the other side’s feeling of insecurity. 

[00:44:32.0] MB: That’s fascinating. I love that idea that when somebody starts talking about fairness, it’s really a tell for weakness or lack of strength. 

[00:44:40.2] CV: Yeah, it is. 

[00:44:43.2] MB: So changing gears a little bit, and this something I’m fascinated about, tell me about the Chase Bank robbery? 

[00:44:49.6] CV: Yeah. Well, bank robbers with hostages happen all the time in the movies and in the real world that we live in, it happens about once every 20 years in the entire country. So I was fortunate enough to negotiate at the Chase Bank robbery with hostages and literally it was in New York City and the last bank robbery with hostages in New York City was 20 years before that. We get into this bank robbery and we expect bank robbers upset about being trapped and we get a stone cold manipulative guy on the other side who is absolutely convinced that he can work his way out of this and it was the first time I learned about the use of personal pronouns. 

We couldn’t get this guy to use “I, me or my, I want”, you know, “this is my idea”, “this isn’t making me feel good”. We couldn’t get him to use a singular personal pronoun to save his life. He always used “we, they and them”, he always talked about the guys, the other guys in the bank as being the more dangerous ones. You know, “I’m not sure because I don’t know what they’re going to do.” He was always laying it off on them. I’ve came to found out that this is the hallmark of powerful negotiators in business. If you’re sitting across the table from someone that is constantly talking about the people that are not at the table, the rest of his team. You know, “My board of directors,” the guys that are not in the room that is a sign of the dominant decision maker in the group. 

They are covering their influence with plural pronouns because they do not want you to corner then and in the Chase Manhattan bank robbery, we had the mastermind of the bank robbery on the phone from the very beginning. He’d manipulated everybody and he was hiding that manipulation from everybody and he didn’t want us to know that he was the ring leader. So he was happy to pick up the phone and tell us about the other guys that were inside and he had to ask permission from them. He was constantly laying it off on them. 

I saw this in a kidnapping in the Philippines about 10 years after that and have come to learn that the dominant decision maker will avoid singular pronouns like the plague. He’s hiding or she is hiding their influence. So you’re talking to somebody who’s always using plural pronouns and trying to defer to others, you’re talking to a powerful and influential person and they know it and they don’t want you to corner them and that was the biggest lesson in the Chase Manhattan Bank. 

[00:47:25.8] MB: That’s such a fascinating story and obviously an incredibly important negotiating lesson as well, thank you for sharing that. What would one piece of homework be that you might have for some of the people listening to this podcast? 

[00:47:39.5] CV: You know watch the interactions around you just a little. Watch people talking at each other because they both want to go first and watch when one of them gets tired and the other keeps talking at the tired person, you’ll see the tired person try to get the other side to shut up by saying, “You’re right, you’re right, you’re right.” Watch the number of agreements that one person thinks was made when the other person just said, “You’re right,” with no intention of following through. 

Study the dynamics around you a little bit and you’ll see that if you will listen first, you’re going to save a lot of time and you’ll see that “you’re right” is what people say to you to get you to be quiet and when you can get out of that, the homework then is try to get people to say “that’s right” instead of “you’re right” and then see what happens. I can promise you that amazing things will happen. 

[00:48:46.5] MB: What are some resources you would recommend for listeners who want to do some more research about negotiation and some of the things we’ve discussed today?

[00:48:54.8] CV: All right, so I’m going to say I want you to buy my book, Never Split the Difference. I think you’re going to get a return in your investment before you finish the first chapter. I think it’s a great book primarily because I got a great co-author who wrote a readable book and the feedback that we’ve gotten back constantly from everybody that’s read it is, “It’s useable, it’s counter intuitive, and it’s an easy read.” It’s not unusual to have somebody tell me they’ve read it multiple times. So I’m going to ask you to buy my book. 

Now, we’ve got a bunch of stuff on the website, blackswanltd.com, that’s complimentary. It’s free. We give away a lot of free stuff. We’ve got a twice a month negotiation advisory newsletter that’s very short pieces to give you useable information that comes out twice a month. It’s called The Edge and it’s free. We’ve got a variety of different short PDF reports that will supplement your negotiation. Those are free, we’ve got some e-mail negotiation lessons that we charge you for and I think that they’re a great buy. You are going to get seven times your value out of anything that you buy from us and you’re going to get tremendous amount of value off our website and the free stuff also, blackswanltd.com. 

[00:50:20.0] MB: And I can agree, Chris’s book is amazing and he obviously, anybody listening to this can tell that he has been through some incredible, and incredibly difficult negotiations and there are a ton of lessons from his book. Well Chris, this has been amazing. I’m so fascinated with your story and your background and all the work that you have done. I just wanted to say thank you very much for being on the Science of Success.

[00:50:43.1] CV: Man, you are awesome. Thank you for having me as a guest. 

How To Execute on Huge Goals, Take Action, and Create The Results You Want with Neil Patel

In this episode we talk about execution, how to break down big goals into actionable steps, how and why Neil hired a “mama” for himself, the “ten minute rule” that could help you achieve big productivity gains and how to optimize your life to free up huge amounts of time with entrepreneur Neil Patel.

Neil is the co-founder of Crazy Egg, Hello Bar and KISSmetrics. The Wall Street Journal calls him a top influencer on the web, Forbes says he is one of the top 10 online marketers, and Entrepreneur Magazine says he created one of the 100 most brilliant companies in the world. He was recognized as a top 100 entrepreneur under the age of 30 by President Obama and one of the top 100 entrepreneurs under the age of 35 by the United Nations. Neil has also been awarded Congressional Recognition from the United States House of Representatives.

We discuss:

• How to break huge goals into small bite sized tasks that you can quickly and easily execute

• How Neil defines success and why money wont make you happy

• The "10 minute rule" and how it can help you achieve big results

• “Hacks” that Neil recommends for those who want to climb the corporate ladder

• How to go from A to Z by skipping B, C, D etc and getting straight to the result

• Why you don’t have to take the traditional path the everyone else does to get what you want in life

• The strategy Neil uses to pitch huge deals to corporate executives

• How to optimize your life to save time and free your time up

• The rules that Neil uses to improve and use his time more efficiently

• How Neil hired a “mom” to cook him breakfast and do his laundry (and why!)

• How to manufacture and generate luck for yourself

• Why shouldn’t “rent your dreams"

• How to take action on the things that matter and actually create results, so you can stop spinning your wheels

• And much more!

Thank you so much for listening!

Please SUBSCRIBE and LEAVE US A REVIEW on iTunes! (Click here for instructions on how to do that!). 

SHOW NOTES, LINKS, & RESEARCH

• [Website] neilpatel.com

• [Website] QuickSprout

• [Guide] The Complete Guide to Understanding Consumer Psychology by Neil Patel and Ritika Puri

• [Assesment] Intuit Personality Tests

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:12.4] MB: Welcome to The Science of Success. I’m your host, Matt Bodnar. I’m an entrepreneur and investor in Nashville Tennessee and I’m obsessed with the mindset of success and the psychology of performance. I’ve read hundreds of books, conducted countless hours of research and study and I’m going to take you on a journey into the human mind and what makes peak performers tick, with a focus on always having our discussions rooted in psychological research and scientific fact. Not opinion.

In this episode, we talk about execution, how to break down big goals into actionable steps. How and why Neil Patel hired a mom up for himself, the 10 minute rule that could help you achieve huge productivity gains, and how to optimize your life to free up huge amounts of time with entrepreneur Neil Patel. Because the Science of Success has spread across the globe with more than 550,000 downloads, listeners in over a hundred countries, hitting number one in New and Noteworthy and more, I give away something awesome to my listeners every single month. 

This month I’m giving away $100 Amazon gift card to one lucky listener. All you have to do to be entered to win is to text the word “smarter” to the number 44222. Again, that’s “smarter” to 44222 and if you want 10, yes 10 extra entries into the giveaway, leave a positive review on iTunes and email me a screenshot of that review to matt@scienceofsuccess.co. 

In our previous episode, we explore the link between trauma, mental health, learning disabilities and genius. Looked at a number of historical figures and how they harnessed struggles like depression and ADHD to achieve world changing results and examine the practical steps to overcome your struggles today with Dr. Gale Saltz. If you think you have a challenge you can’t overcome, listen to that episode. 

[INTERIVEW]

[0:02:08.1] MB: Today, we have another awesome guest on the show, Neil Patel. Neil is the cofounder of Crazy Egg, Hello Bar and Kissmetrics. The Wall Street Journal called him “a top influencer on the web”. Forbes says he is one of the top 10 online marketers, entrepreneur magazine says he created one of the hundred most brilliant companies in the world. He was recognized as a top 100 entrepreneur under the age of 30 by president Obama and as one of the top 100 entrepreneurs under the age of 35 by the United Nations. Neil has also been awarded congressional recognition form the United States House of Representatives. 

Neil, welcome to the science of success.

[0:02:45.4] NP: Thanks for having me.

[0:02:47.1] MB: Well we’re very excited to have you on here. To kind of get started, obviously have an amazing background. For listeners who may not be familiar, tell us a little bit about you and your story?

[0:02:57.2] NP: Sure, just a serial entrepreneur, started off at the age of 16 looking for a job, couldn’t find one, decided to create my own job. Failed miserably for many reasons but one of the main reasons was I didn’t know how to get traffic to the site. So eventually I learned how to drive traffic to the site, still couldn’t figure out how to make money but I decided that, “You know what? It’s just better if I do consulting from marketing perspective for other people.” 

Got good at it, got value, they referred me to more clients. Eventually started a consulting agency, then from there I realized I hate it but through the whole process I learned that these companies don’t know how to optimize their site for conversions and sales and they don’t know how to look at metrics and that’s how I started my software journey and started focusing on optimizing for conversions and SAS sales, et cetera.

So that’s pretty much the gamut of my entrepreneurial journey. I also blog too, right? Which some people know, some people don’t, at Quick Sprout and neilpatel.com.

[0:03:54.4] MB: So in a recent interview, Tai Lopez asked you, "What are you the best in the world at?” What was your answer?

[0:04:00.7] NP: I don’t remember. That was, I did that interview a while ago.

[0:04:03.3] MB: All right, that’s fine.

[0:04:05.1] NP: I’m good at driving traffic to a website. I don’t know if that’s what I said but that’s probably what I’m really good at, driving traffic to a website. I’m good at converting those visitors into customers and I’m really good at learning from mistakes and executing really fast.

[0:04:17.9] MB: Yeah, so executing was the answer that you gave him. And I’m curious, how do you execute and for people who are struggling with execution, what do you think they could do to improve?

[0:04:29.8] NP: The biggest problem with execution is people look at these big giant tasks and they’re like, “Okay, we’re going to get this done.” It’s too big. But what I found is when people on small bite sized tasks, like I want to just purely focus on hypothetically let’s say you’re trying to build a bigger audience. Then you break that down to smaller tasks. Okay, SEO could be one of them, social media could be one of them, and blogging could be another one. And then you’re like, “Okay, let’s tackle blogging.”

Well what’s the first step of blogging? Write a blog post. What’s the first step of writing a blog post? Come up with some ideas, right?  And I’m not breaking down as granular as they could be, you could just be for your task, “All right, today I want to focus on coming up with ideas for a blogpost, picking one, creating the draft. And then another task could be to write it, another task could be after I write it, publish it. After I publish it, promote it,” right? I’m breaking this down to such small task that it’s much easier to complete them and when you do that, you're more productive and you typically get way more done.

[0:05:37.5] MB: People who struggle often have this big goals but they fail to connect that to specific actions they can start taking right now.

[0:05:47.0] NP: That’s correct, yes.

[0:05:49.2] MB: What are some of the things you might be able to do or listeners to this podcast could potentially do in terms of sort of chunking down those tasks into day to day actionable steps?

[0:06:02.2] NP: I use task lists or like to-do lists, I think that helps a lot. I don’t think there’s much more that you really need to do other than just break down the task into small things, do your to-do list and then each day go over, did it work? Did it not work? Did you accomplish what you wanted to? If so great, how so? If not, why? What would you change to fix that?

[0:06:24.5] MB: That makes a lot of sense. Let’s change directions a little bit, how do you define success or what makes somebody successful to you?

[0:06:33.3] NP: What makes someone successful to me is them loving what they’re doing in life and doing great at it. That’s really it, right? Because if you’re happy, then you’re good to go. In my eyes, you're successful. If you’re not happy then something’s off. It doesn’t matter how much money you make. If you don’t love what you're doing, you’re not enjoying it then something’s off.

[0:06:50.7] MB: Why do you think people fall into the trap of constantly sort of seeking out more money or more whatever it might be? 

[0:06:58.7] NP: That’s what they think will make them happy and eventually people learn as they make more money that money doesn’t really make you happy. 

[0:07:05.7] MB: Did you learn that lesson from personal experience?

[0:07:09.4] NP: I did in which I would just, I started my first business because I wanted to make money, and as I started to make it and as I started to make it and I started buying useless things that I didn’t even care for but not too many useless things. Eventually I figured out that hey, none of this really matters. But what I really do enjoy is just focusing on businesses that I love.

[0:07:28.4] MB: Let’s segue into discussing your recent book Hustle. Tell me a little bit about that book?

[0:07:34.7] NP: Sure, if you look at the world right now, the people who are really rich are extremely rich, the poor, poor and the middle class is depleting, right? It’s not just me that thinks have the stats show that as well. A lot of the people who aren’t successful, which is the majority, feel that, “Hey, I wasn’t born with wealth, I didn’t’ grow with silver spoon I don’t have that Harvard degree, you know, all hope is lost.” 

We know that’s not the case because a lot of this entrepreneurs are doing successful even people who are going to the works force and climbing up the ranks, a lot of them didn’t come from the best education, it didn’t come from a family that just give them tons of money and what we ended up our goal, what we wanted to do was to teach this people concepts and strategies that they can use to increase their odds of succeeding when the odds are stacked against you.

[0:08:27.5] MB: You, in the book, kind of break things into what you called a three part framework of hustle. What are each of those components?

[0:08:34.0] NP: Yeah, the components of hustle. So it depends on where you want to start, right? The biggest thing that we end up breaking down into the book, there’s four main ways that we teach you how to grow but we try to break down everything in the book under the main concepts of money, meaning and momentum, right? There’s subsections within each of them. We teach you a lot of different concepts, for example, one of the concepts we teach you is a 10 minute rule in which if you have goals in life, how can you focus just for 10 minutes out of your time?

The reason I say 10 minutes and this is really important is, most people when they’re trying to achieve something they’re like, “Okay I want to create XY and Z company or I want to work for myself and be financially independent,” that’s their goal. But how do you get there? So we teach you how to break down these goals, these tasks into small little 10 minute chunks, you try something out for 10 minutes, does it help you achieve what you’re trying to go through in life, right? If it does, great. If it doesn’t then you should redo something else for 10 minutes. 

Then we also teach you other concepts on how to grow. Some people you realize that hey, the corporate route is great for me and we teach you how to climb the corporate ranks. Or you may realize that you’re inside of a company and you don’t want to be inside, it’s best for you to do entrepreneurship. We break down concepts on how you can try entrepreneurship and go for it even when you’re within an organization, right?

Or we even break down that hey, you’re outside and you're trying to figure out how to get into the corporate world or get a job, right? We break down concepts like that. But we teach you many different concepts we call little “hacks” on how you can do the small bite sized things to succeed in life.

[0:10:22.2] MB: Let’s drill down into one of those categories, for example the corporate route. For somebody who’s listening to the podcast right now that is in a corporate job and wants to stay there and kind of succeed and thrive, what are some of the tops that you would give them or some of the hacks that you would give them?

[0:10:38.6] NP: Yeah, so if you’re in the corporate world and you’re trying to figure out the upside like how you can grow, there’s a few things. One, a lot of people who work in the corporate world, all they do is just try to focus on pleasing their boss. Don’t get me wrong, you can please your boss and you should, but you also have to think about yourself. Is what you're doing only helping your boss succeed? Are you focusing on helping them achieve their goals? Or are some of the things that you’re doing also helping you achieve your goals, right? 

One simple thing that you can do is if you're in the corporate world, once you figure out, “All right, am I focusing on helping myself improve?” In many cases you’ll find that most people are just focus on pleasing their boss. That’s great and all, but why not have a conversation with your boss and say, “Hey, here’s where we’re at, right? I love this company I want to be here for life, I love what you’re doing and I want to follow in your footsteps. What are some things that I can do to make your life easier or to show the company or to help out the company,” right? 

In essence you want to put the company first, not just your boss but the company first. Not necessarily focusing on pleasing your boss but the companies calls an objective, right? Because even if some people hate you but you 3X the company’s revenue, someone’s going to notice. And if you can find out what those specific items are and you can help them achieve it and go above and beyond, people will start noticing and you’ll start realizing that you can start getting promotions within the organization or climbing up the corporate ladder.

[0:12:13.5] MB: So a moment ago you kind of threw out the term and I actually used it too without really thinking about it, the term “hacks”. You and I are probably familiar with what that means but for somebody who is listening that may not know what that is, can you explain kind of what a hack is or what it means to hack something?

[0:12:28.7] NP: Yeah, a hack is, think of it as a shortcut to get to the result. If you want to go from A to Z, most people think you have to go A, B, C, D, E, X, right? Why can’t you jump around? Who says you can’t go backwards and just go form A and then in the alphabet and go backwards all the way to Z, right? Let’s just say example of a hack, it changes in the corporate world or in life on what each hack is, but in general, the whole concept is you don’t have to take the traditional path that everyone that everyone else does to get to where you want in life. 

For example, in my dad’s age, you would go to high school then you go to college, you get your degree, you work at a job, you stay there forever, you may go back to school to do more further learning then you may get raises, you’re pretty much there for life. That’s how my parents were brought up, that’s how they were taught. The world doesn’t necessarily work that way. Just because you go to college, you got a good degree even from Harvard and then you go back and then you get your Harvard MBA, it doesn’t mean that you’re going to get promotions or raises or do better, right?

There’s no guarantee, and that may not even be the most optimal route. Sometimes a person who does the best as a guy who is closing the most amount of deals or most well network or the guy who is going above and beyond and then being really creative with the strategies, whatever it may be. But we teach you that, “Hey, think outside the box. There’s a lot of quicker solutions to get to where you want and just taking their traditional route.”

[0:13:51.2] MB: I love that and it’s something that I’m a huge fan of as well, is the idea of kind of thinking nontraditionally, thinking outside the box and shunning conventional wisdom and figuring out, “All right, is there a shorter path from where I am today to where I need to get that defies the conventional wisdom of you need to do XY and Z?”

[0:14:09.9] NP: Exactly.

[0:14:11.4] MB: So you have some really fascinating stories from your background of how you’ve applied that concept. Everything from sort of hacking the idea of a personal driver to hacking some of your college course work. Could you tell a few of those stories or share some of those examples?

[0:14:26.4] NP: Sure. I’ve done everything, the driving one I’ve done quite a few. I’ve done driving ones where I leased a car and then I took the leased car, gave it to people for free but they would have to drive me around and then I didn’t have to pay for gas and maintenance. I’ve even done stuff for different things like where I don’t have a car and people drive me around and I give them advice, right? They can pick my brain, drive me to the airport and wherever I need to go.

I’ve done a ton of hacks, just questions is, what category or industry? Yeah, I always look for creative solutions. Nowadays, I mainly just use Uber, it’s so convenient, right? It’s a big time saver, I actually optimized most things for saving time in life. I’ve done a lot of other hacks too in business that are really creative like if you want to get to someone in a high position and get a deal done, instead of emailing I’d be like, “I want to apply for this job or this contracting position,” I’ll just email them saying everything that they’re doing and how to fix it and I would give it away to them for free. As crazy as it may sound, what happens is some of these people are like, “Okay, we’ll hire you.” Like that’s the best resume ever, right? You’re telling them what they’re doing wrong and what you would fix.

[0:15:37.8] MB: That’s a great example. So what are some of the ways that either somebody listening or even I personally could optimize my life to save time or how have you applied that lesson because I think everybody could use some more free time or use more time in general.

[0:15:51.8] NP: I use a program called Rescue Time, it’s the most optimal thing that I’ve ever done in my life, what Rescue Time does is, it just tells you where you're spending time and where you’re wasting it. From there you can just optimize. Like it will tell me, “You’re spending too much time on Facebook,” for example.

[0:16:07.5] MB: What about outside of kind of the digital context, are there any tools or hacks that you use to free up your time?

[0:16:13.9] NP: Outside, I mainly use an assistant, you can try virtual assistant or personal assistant. I also go by certain rules, like if I tell someone I’m going to do something, I do it right then and there. Or I send myself a note or reminder, because it makes you more efficient . If I open up an email I make sure I answer it right then and there or else I won’t open it because if you don’t then you have to reread it.

When I’m also doing task or driving around or whatever it may be or in meetings, I always analyze it after just for like a quick 30 seconds. Like, “How did it go? Could I have got to the point quicker? Where am I wasting time? Where was the pitch weak?” Whatever it may be, “Where were we inefficient as a group? Where was it a miscommunication? How can we set it up to be more efficient?” 

And it usually revolves around communication because if everyone was on the same page beforehand, everyone would save much more time right? So we just look a lot of little things like that and then you optimize from there. It’s just creating that right mindset mentality.

[0:17:07.3] MB: So it sounds like mindset is a huge piece of it. The next piece with a tool similar to Rescue Time is perhaps kind of measuring where you are in the status quo and then from there, taking that information and optimizing sort of your life and your workflow around time efficiency.

[0:17:23.1] NP: That’s correct, yes.

[0:17:25.7] MB: Do you use some of the things you just mentioned about kind of your productivity framework, only touching things once, et cetera, is that derived from something like GTD or what is sort of your productivity framework that you use?

[0:17:38.5] NP: I don’t really use any framework. I just naturally — so my personality trait, when we took like a personality quiz, I don’t feel happy unless I feel like I’m getting stuff done, which is weird but that’s just how I am. Most people aren’t like that. In general, what I would tell people is, I like doing task list and breaking down into small task and just focus on accomplishing them each and every single day.

[0:18:03.7] MB: That makes a ton of sense. One of the other ways that I remember a story about you kind of outsourcing something in a nontraditional way was hiring a mom. Can you tell that story?

[0:18:13.8] NP: Yeah. I have a mama, I still have her, her name is Jackie, I love her to death, I call her mama though. Mama gets all my stuff done. I put out a Craigslist ad looking for a mama. She does everything from packing for me to cooking to cleaning like whatever it may be and it just helps make my life so much more efficient so I can focus on work.

[0:18:33.6] MB: Some people listening might think that it’s ridiculous to hire somebody to cook your breakfast or do your laundry or whatever. Why do you think that that is a prudent investment?

[0:18:43.6] NP: It helps you focus on what’s most valuable for you, right? I believe in optimizing for time so why not just focus on what you're good at and I found out I can do my own laundry but it takes me forever to do it compared to other people and I lose way more money compared to just focusing on just getting one thing done which is my work, growing the business.

[0:19:03.7] MB: You touched on something there that I think that a lot of really highly productive people think differently about this particular concept, which is the idea that whatever your “hourly rate” is or whatever you value your time at, if their activities, you’re performing hat are sort of under that hourly rate, regardless of how silly it may seem on the surface to hire somebody to do that, it’s actually really efficient to pay somebody say 10 or $15 an hour if you view your time as being worth a couple of hundred dollars an hour to do all of these tasks for you.

[0:19:37.9] NP: Exactly, you got it right.

[0:19:40.6] MB: Yeah, I’m a huge fan of that whole concept as well and I have things like a virtual assistant and focus on trying to optimize my time in a similar fashion. Changing gears or actually touching on something you talked about a second ago, you mentioned a personality test around sort of what are your biggest strengths or what are you kind of focusing on or what do you like to do that makes you feel productive. What is that test, and is that something that you think is really important in terms of optimizing around people’s strengths as supposed to focusing on fixing weaknesses?

[0:20:09.1] NP: It is. I don’t know the exact name of the test, it’s the one Intuit uses as an organization and we hired some consulting years ago, I forgot his name. Good guy. And we just copied the same person who test that Intuit use and the reason being is you can tell who people are in an organization and how they are and how they prefer to get work done and then you can just align up and try to do similar things, right? Like if you know how certain people, what motivates them and what makes them happy, then you know what you should be focusing on to try and help them accomplish goals or help the company become more productive.

[0:20:44.6] MB: I think in many ways, that same principle of kind of, leveraging or focusing on strength as opposed to trying to repair weakness, kind of dovetails back into the same concept of focus on the skill sets and the things that you’re really good at in terms of making money or doing what you love and then outsource or find somebody to do the other stuff, whether it’s driving you around, whether it’s cooking your breakfast or whatever it might be, right? It’s kind of the same two sides of the same coin in many ways.

[0:21:12.5] NP: Exactly, you got it right.

[0:21:15.0] MB: Another concept that I know you’re a big fan of and you’ve studied deeply is psychology and how to kind of leverage that. Obviously this podcast is focused deeply in psychology. Tell me some of the ways that you’ve leveraged psychology to help you be more productive, to influence people, and to kind of drive some of the results that you’ve achieved in your life?

[0:21:34.9] NP: Yeah, for me, we’re all humans, right? You have to figure out what makes people tick. Now you don’t want to use it like abuse them and manipulate. But in essence, by studying psychology and understanding it, you can get a much better understanding of what you should be doing or the messaging you can put on a website or what to use within meanings, et cetera. Just try to close more deals. What we end up doing our base of psychology is just how can you use the right words and phrases that correlates with people to make them understand what you’re trying to convey? So then that way you’re wasting less time and you’re going to the point and hopefully you’re causing more sales and creating a better experience for both people.

[0:22:18.8] MB: For someone listening that’s interested in whether it’s driving more business, sales, leads, whatever it might be, obviously you’re a deep marketing expert. How could they embark on that journey in terms of starting to understand some of the psychology pieces of that?

[0:22:33.4] NP: You’re asking, how can someone go about understanding psychology and learning it when they’re starting off?

[0:22:40.1] MB: Generally yes, but specifically within the context of kind of applying that to a marketing.

[0:22:45.3] NP: Sure, she have a Definitive Guide to Psychology on my blog, quickspot.com. It pretty much breaks down all the necessities, it’s like around 30,000 words all for free.

[0:22:55.2] MB: That’s awesome, well we’ll definitely include that in the show notes so that people can access that. What are one or two of those take away for listeners that might be driving or can’t access it right now.

[0:23:07.0] NP: Sure. So a few tips is, psychology is all about understanding people, right? The mind of the person, how you can get them to what makes them tick in essence. So one little simple tip is, don’t just assume that making some changes with your website copy or colors will affect sales. Why not survey people to really truly understand who your buyers are, who your customers are, what makes a certain people happy, love your product or service and what makes the people who are disappointed hate it.

Because if you can find out that hey, the people who love my product love it because XY and Z reason, you now know you can focus your messaging, your copy, et cetera just around those people. 

[0:23:50.2] MB: That’s a great tip. Circling back a little bit to some of the lessons from Hustle, there were a few terms or kind of ideas from the book that really resonated with me that I’d love to touch on. Tell me about the idea of “don’t rent your dreams”?

[0:24:05.6] NP: Yeah, the biggest problem right now is people and we discuss this a bit earlier, they’re not doing what they want in life, right? They’re working for someone else and not just working at a corporate job, but think about it, that barista at Starbucks, do you think they’re really doing what’s making them happy? No, they’re helping their manager, the company, achieve their dreams and their goals but not theirs. 

That’s what it comes down to is in an organization, whether you're doing your own business or whatever it may be, you need to make sure that you’re accomplishing what you want as well. It’s not just about helping the other person like your boss fulfill their destiny, their dreams, their goals. What about you, right? As an individual. You need to make sure that whatever you’re doing also benefits you as well.

[0:24:52.4] MB: What about the idea of manufacturing luck? I love that concept.

[0:24:57.7] NP: Yes, so the problem with most people is or the problem out there, most people feel that the people who are lucky or do well is like, “Oh they have good luck.” I myself don’t have a lot of luck. Well, that’s not always the case, a lot of times, you’re not feeling lucky because you’re not doing something that can help you generate luck, what I mean by that is if you don’t take action, you’ll never be luckier, the right things won’t happen. So Patrick, one of my coauthors, his son wanted to go find fish in Little Pond Creek, whatever you want to you want to call it.

So his son’s like, “Daddy, let’s go find some fish.” Dad looks down at the water and be like, “Shane, let’s go, there’s nothing there.” Shane looks back up at his dad, doesn’t say anything, jumps into the water like it’s shallow, right? Shuffles his feet, next thing you know, fish pop up. In essence, he manufactured his own luck, right? If you take action, you’re much more likely to get lucky. If you don’t take any action, how are you ever going to get lucky?

[0:25:58.2] MB: There’s a great quote that I think dovetails with that, which is, “Luck, this is where preparation meets opportunity.”

[0:26:03.7] NP: That’s an amazing quote, yup.

[0:26:06.0] MB: I think many people can often get stuck kind of feeling like things aren’t going their way or they’re never getting a lucky break. But the reality is, you can always find a way to take action and create results out of the world.

[0:26:19.0] NP: Yeah, no, totally. The biggest thing that we’ve learned with the whole process, especially writing the book, most people have it in them to do well. They just need the principles, the concepts that can help them take action in the right place and focus their energy on what matters versus just spinning their wheels and feeling like they’re stuck.

[0:26:40.3] MB: How does somebody differentiate between taking action on the things that really sort of drive results versus things that don’t matter?

[0:26:49.6] NP: It comes down to if you spend 10 minute just focusing on something that you think will help you accomplish your goals, your dreams, and if you end up feeling, after about 10 minutes if you feel like it’s helping you accomplish your goals and dreams, great. But if it doesn’t then you need to go back to the drawing board and try something else. It’s that simple, just do something for 10 minutes and you’ll know if it has a chance of helping you accomplish your goal.

[0:27:16.3] MB: So I know we’re ended on time and you’ve got to go. Tell me, where can people find you online?

[0:27:21.1] NP: Neilpatel.com.

[0:27:22.7] MB: Awesome. Well Neil, thank you very much for being a guest on the show and we really enjoyed hearing from you.
 
[0:27:27.0] NP: Thanks for having me.

How to Overcome Trauma, Mental Health Struggles, and Learning Issues to Achieve World Changing Results with Dr. Gail Saltz

In this episode we explore the link between trauma, mental health, learning disabilities and genius, look at a number of historical figures and how they harnessed challenges like depression and ADHD to achieve world-changing results, and examine the practical steps you can take to overcome struggles today with Dr. Gail Saltz.

Dr. Gail Saltz is a Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the New York Presbyterian Hospital Weill Cornell School of medicine and a psychoanalyst with the New York Psychoanalytic Institute. She is a columnist, bestselling author, podcast host and television commentator and one of the nation’s foremost go-to experts on a variety of psychological and mental health issues, having appeared on Good Morning America, Dr. Oz, The View, Dateline, 20/20, Primetime, Today, CNN, CBS This Morning, MSNBC, The Oprah Winfrey Show and more.

We discuss:

• How people like Vincent Van Gogh and Abraham Lincoln harnessed their mental issues to achieve success

• Deconstructing the “psychobiographies” of some of the greatest achievers in the world (DaVinci, Einstein, Lincoln, etc)

• Close to half of americans struggle with some sort of mental health issue

• What people who are embarrassed about seeking help can do

• Why “mental illness” is often a STRENGTH and the greatest achievements are a often a DIRECT RESULT of struggles with issues like dyslexia, anxiety, depression, etc

• How Abraham Lincoln struggled his whole life with depression and why it gave him the empathy to reshape history

• How Einstein overcome crippling ADHD to change physics

• Practical steps that someone can take who is struggling with anxiety and depression right now

• How to hone-in on your strengths and leverage them

• How we get caught in defeating stories that we tell ourselves

• How to identify and “re-write” self-defeating stories that we tell ourselves

• A few actionable insights into how to improve and build relationships from one of the best sex and relationships experts in the world

• How to LISTEN better, improve communication, and build better relationships

• And more!

If you think you have a challenge you can’t overcome - listen to this episode! 

Thank you so much for listening!

Please SUBSCRIBE and LEAVE US A REVIEW on iTunes! (Click here for instructions on how to do that).

SHOW NOTES, LINKS, & RESEARCH

• [Website] Dr. Gail Saltz

• [YouTube playlist] Psychobiography

• [Book] Einstein: His Life and Universe by Walter Isaacson

• [Podcast] Dr. Gail Saltz

• [Website] The Gottman Institute

• [Amazon Author Page] Harville Hendrix

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

[00:02:18.0] MB: Today, we have another exciting guest on the show, Dr. Gail Saltz. Gail is a clinical associate professor of psychiatry at the New York Presbyterian Hospital, Weill Cornell School of Medicine and a psychoanalyst with the New York Psychoanalytic Institute. She is a columnist, bestselling author, podcast host and television commentator and one of the nation’s foremost go-to experts on a variety of psychological and mental health issues, gaving appeared on Good Morning America, Dr. Oz, The View, Dateline, 20/20, Primetime Today, CNN and many more shows. 

Gail, welcome to The Science of Success. 

[00:02:53.8] GS: Thank you Matt for having me. This is such an important topic. People are very consumed with how to further themselves, but often lacking particular coping tools. So I’m really excited that you are having me today. 

[00:03:07.6] MB: Well we’re thrilled to have you on here. So to kind of get started, tell us a little bit about your background and how you embarked on this journey? 

[00:03:16.1] GS: Well, I am a psychiatrist. Actually originally after I finished medical school, I thought I was going to be an internist. So I did a residency in internal medicine and then I decided, “You know, I am really so much more fascinated with people’s minds,” that I decided to do residency in psychiatry, which I loved and then continue my training. I did a fellowship in treating of sexual dysfunction and then I did my psychoanalytic training. 

So woe is my poor parents that paid for many, many tuitions but I had many different areas of training all leading to being a psychiatrist, psychoanalyst and then ultimately, feeling that it was really important that many people, not just people who decided to enter treatment or could afford treatment could have access to understanding the tools that psychiatry and psychoanalysts can provide for their everyday lives. So I started talking with the lay public I’ll call it or public education through writing, through television, through radio. 

Because it’s really, let’s put it this way: close to half of Americans do struggle with some sort of mental health issue and we can’t really afford to write off half and people are really limited in getting help for themselves often by stigma, feeling the embarrassed, they are not comfortable, they don’t want to acknowledge what’s going on or sometimes because they really don’t have access to it. So it’s really been my pleasure actually to be able to have methods of communicating with larger groups of people who are looking for ways to be emotionally “weller", let’s say. More intact, have more health, have better relationships, be better parents. 

So that’s a lot of what I did and continue to do and then that has led to other interesting areas for exploring this issue one of them being, for example, I have had a few series at the New York City’s 92nd Street Y, which is an amazing cultural institution with all kinds of educative programming going on and one of the things that I do there is this psychobiography series where we look at iconic figures and sort of what made them tick. 

[00:05:45.0] MB: And I’m really fascinated by the whole psychobiography series that you’ve done and I know a number of them are available on YouTube. Tell me about what is a psychobiography and what made you want to study these interesting and different people? 

[00:05:59.6] GS: Well psychobiography is taking the field of, I would say psychoanalysis, what do we really understand about what shaped someone from their early life and also from psychiatry from their biological genetic givens? What shaped them into the person that they ultimately became? And I think that while you can’t diagnosed someone who’s deceased or really diagnosed someone who you’ve not treated or met, you can surmise quite a bit about the patterns of their lives and influences. 

Of important people in their lives often from what they have expressed, via letters that we can find, via writings, behaviors that have been clearly documented. So I find historians for these different subjects. I try to choose people that I think people are very curious about because they have not only incredibly successful and changed the face of really history as we knew it in a particular field. So that could be the arts, it could be the sciences, it could be music. 

I’ve done psychobiography’s on wide ranging, Vincent van Gogh to Albert Einstein to Mozart to Jackson Pollock to presidential past leaders, FDR and Lyndon Johnson. The idea is sort of, “What made them who they were and then in turn what they did with that and how that influences the rest of us throughout time really?” So I get a historian who’s really the expert on that subject and then I try to provide the psychoanalytic understanding of what we can gleam from their past behaviors. 

It’s really fun, it’s really interesting and I think that an audience often can not only find it interesting but find some comfort in the idea that these people were far from perfect. In fact, what I found to be fascinating is that no matter who I look to as the subject, there is always some pretty major issues going on. A psychiatric illness or a learning disability or an early trauma but there is rarely someone who just had nothing going on that was really difficult in their past. 

[00:08:38.0] MB: That’s such a fascinating finding and something that I think people especially in our modern society of social media and instant gratification and the idea of presenting a perfect image of yourself all the time, don’t really think about is that many or if not most, if not all of the people who have had a huge impact on history, on shaping our culture. These people dealt on real challenging mental issues in many cases. 

[00:09:06.7] GS: Absolutely and it’s been really amazing to me how many audience members come up to me afterwards and say, “You know, this just really inspired me to think about, for example, my son who was let’s say is struggling with depression and I hear about Abraham Lincoln and his lifelong struggle with depression and the ways in which actually for example in that case, the features of say greater empathy when you’re a person who’s struggled with depression. 

The ability to really tap into what other people are thinking and feeling and be very sensitive to that and how that helped Lincoln to be the kind of president that he was. That people say “Oh gosh this makes me feel like there’s a potential real strength for my child, or for myself, and I have overlooked that and I want to think about how I can tap into that for that loved one of mine and that is a wonderful thing because we tend to think of these issues as being solely negative and horrible, which is why they’ve been so stigmatized. 

[00:10:21.9] MB: That’s fascinating and one of the things that I find really interesting is in many cases, people only hear about or concentrate or focus on the instances that somebody that’s had a serious breakdown or failure or whatever as a result of let’s say depression or anxiety or something like that. When in reality, many of these really important historical figures not only dealt with these major issues but overcame them and changed millions of lives, change the course of history, etcetera. 

[00:10:54.7] GS: Absolutely and not only did they overcome them, but they often whatever they did let’s say that we find so astonishing and amazing is in some ways a direct result of the thing that they struggled with, that they are often very specifically connected and that led me to start doing some research and speaking with many neuroscientists and many clinicians and so I’ve spent the last few years actually talking with many people who actually you may not know and some who you will know and even some kids who struggled with exactly this. 

Something really, really difficult but it’s clearly connected to some impressive strength for them and that has had me working on this book that will come out next March called The Power of Different: The link between disorder and genius, of which there is a significant link. So really look at the hard wiring, what’s going on there? Why that is? What do we know and understand about it? which is something that I explore on my current podcast, The Power of Different. 

And I think you would be surprised that it’s not hard for me to find people to talk about this. That we tend to be such a celebrity oriented, perfection oriented society and we think, “Oh all of these people just did it from the get go and they’re so together.” When you scrape the surface really they would tell you that that’s not the case. 

[00:12:34.5] MB: So I’m curious and I want to dig deeper into the whole idea behind the power is different, one of the things that you made a very important distinction that I did not make earlier is that it’s not just that they overcame these struggles. It’s that this in many ways, for example, Lincoln’s depression gave him this deeper empathy. It was the other side of the coin that this was their biggest strength and really shaped who they were as a person and shaped the great successes that they had in their lives. 

[00:13:05.3] GS: Exactly. Of course I don’t want to say that people who are struggling with a real mental illness should not seek treatment and have treatment because they should. But having treatment and helping yourself in terms of struggling less does not in any way diminish the particular strengths that are associated with having that kind of problem. So for instance, in Lincoln’s day of course there were no treatments and actually in Lincoln’s day, melancholy which was depression was called, was not viewed the way it is today. 

People with depression are often seen as kind of romantic figures or really pondering, really thoughtful let’s say and we now understand that that maybe true but it shouldn’t be romanticized. It really can cause terrible suffering. But on the flip side, Lincoln is a great example but I can give you a million examples but in his case say, his ability to tap into what other people were thinking and really be attuned to that, allowed him to bring in political partners and work with other groups and not erect a wall but instead extend himself and really get consensus by standing in other people’s shoes in a unique way, which is part of what made him such an amazing leader and president. 

And of course, empathetically understanding that slavery was wrong and be extremely motivated to do something about that and in addition, another feature of depression is actually realism, which sounds like, “Well, so what?” But really, those of us who are not depressed to some degree we tend to see things a little bit through rose colored glasses. which is nice and really pleasant and it’s not that far off of “real” but it does tend to be on the optimistic side. 

But people with depression, it’s not so much that they see things in a negative light that doesn’t exist. It’s that they tend to see things more realistically and in the case of Lincoln at a time when we were looking at a civil war that was hugely important. That made him able to anticipate things that were coming into view, which others might not have and again added to his being a particularly good leader at that time. 

[00:15:37.9] MB: I’d love to hear another example either from the psychobiography series that you’ve done or somebody else maybe besides Lincoln that struggled with a different issue. 

[00:15:49.4] GS: Sure, let’s see. Well Vincent van Gogh, obviously suffered tremendously. He obviously had a repeated apparently psychotic episodes which people debate with the diagnosis is. From my research into his various symptoms, it looks up from out here most like something called temporal lobe epilepsy, which is a psychiatric diagnosis. It means that you are having a seizure disorder but your seizure activity is in the temporal lobe, which is an emotional center. 

And therefore, you don’t see movement like you do usually when we think of people with epilepsy and we think of them having a convulsion. We think that they are moving and when you are having seizure activity with temporal lobe epilepsy, what you get is this what’s called stickiness where you have these intense relationships, you are very clingy and attached to people but you also tend to fight with them a lot. So they are very labile relationships and that obviously was a negative for Vincent van Gogh. 

You have mood fluctuations, which also obviously caused him a lot of pain and discomfort but what you also have is often visual and even auditory hallucinations and the visual hallucinations are often like intensely colorful and attached to emotional state and it is very possible that part of what motivated his painting in the way that he did had something to do with what he experienced, what he saw that he may have seen things in distorted ways, in unusually colored ways and that may have been very connected to his temporal lobe epilepsy. 

[00:17:33.8] MB: What about somebody like a Da Vinci and an Einstein? Did either of them struggle with anything in particular? What did you find from conducting a psychobiography of them? 

[00:17:42.1] GS: So Einstein of course is greatly argued about and again, I am clear that you can’t give a definitive diagnosis, but what is apparent is this: Einstein was an extremely poor student early on. By early, I mean through high school. He was often found to not be paying attention at all except to things that he really loved, which was physics and math and teachers often became very irritated and were punishing and he left school and ultimately come back to school at some point. 

And he had a lot of difficulty in his relationships, many things which sort of smacked of, I guess I’ll say attention deficit disorder meaning he would be very distractible about things that were not interesting to him but extremely hyper focused on things that were interesting to him. Hyper focus is something that is a side effect which if used well, I guess I’ll say can really be an incredible strength but unfortunately in today’s… 

For example, teenage boys struggling with ADD, they tend to hyper focus maybe on video games which are very rewarding and obviously not something that is necessarily going to produce a genius finding and so that is a difficult thing for parents but in the case of Albert Einstein, his greatest discoveries and greatest papers about the universe really occurred within a one week period. There were three different findings and they were three different papers. 

And they all happened while he was working in the patent office, a very menial job that he found to be boring and it brought in some money so that he could survive but it was not exciting as this other area and he sort of sequestered himself for this week and was so intensely focused that he produced this really extraordinary, I mean of course obviously Einstein was intellectually in this area clearly a genius. But his ability to daydream, he talked about that he started this study so to speak by just looking out the window and imagining that he was riding a light beam. 

And that was a big part of who Einstein was. His ability to daydream, to think creatively, to let his mind wander and something that annoyed the heck out of teachers who at that time didn’t want his mind wondering, they want him to be studying whatever they were teaching him but that’s what he did. That’s who he was and on the flip side was that it really informed his ability to think outside the box in these very creative ways, something that really is known to go along with attention deficit disorder and then hyper focus, when it came to an area that really interested him. 

[00:20:40.6] MB: And for listeners who are curious, I am a big fan of Einstein. One of my favorite biographies of his is the Walter Isaacson Biography, which I’ll throw into the show notes. 

[00:20:49.9] GS: Yeah, that’s an amazing and incredibly well done biography and I think that he really makes clear his early school struggles and many other features that actually are consistent with this kind of thing. 

[00:21:05.4] MB: Another psychobiography that you have done was one of my favorites and I am also a huge fan of his is Leonardo da Vinci. What was some of the learnings from that? 

[00:21:14.0] GS: Well we have much less available to look at obviously because it was so long ago. When you look at people, the farther you go back in history, often the less you can find because of course, less survives and so there is less people to say things but again, he was remarkably able obviously to think in these many different directions because we think of Leonardo da Vinci, we think of him being a great painter and of course he was. 

But he also came up with this many inventions that were related to military practice, flying and so he was a thinker in so many different directions but again, from an intentional perspective he was interested in solving a problem and that’s where the interest ended. So he is also rather famous for not completing things and painting projects, he would solve what he deemed to be the problem in the creation of the painting or the invention and then it was left. 

And so sadly for him, he had trouble getting paid for things. He had trouble in that sense making a living or completing things but he again, you wonder about his ability to attend or in that sense, buckle down but at the same time, it left his mind free to really be creative and out of the box in so many different directions that he was viewed certainly at least as extremely accomplished by those who noted what he at least started. 

[00:22:59.4] MB: Let’s zoom out a little bit, you touched on this earlier that you have a new podcast called the Power of Different, tell me a little bit more about that. 

[00:23:08.3] GS: So it’s trying to understand the same thing in the sense but with today’s people. Trying to understand and help people see the ways in which they may struggle earlier on weather that is something difficult that’s happened in their lives and maybe a mental health issue, it may be a learning issue but it might also be a loss that they had. Recently interviewed Stacy London who talked about her early struggles with complete body psoriasis, which socially made life extremely hard for her and also, synthesized her to the issue of body and beauty and ultimately probably contributed to having eating disorder, a body image issue. 

So a lot of her growing was really difficult and she had a lot of struggle but ultimately, that became very connected to the idea of in her mind of how can someone feel beautiful in their own way that isn’t necessarily directly connected to conventional beauty? Because this is something she really struggled with. 

That ultimately led to her movement into that field and her application of the thoughts that she’d struggled with to other people and certainly something she could sympathize and empathize with and so she has really made a highly successful career in television and in writing and into consulting and working for Vogue and so many things. All around this issue of body image and styling for anybody’s body. So anybody should be able to feel attractive and comfortable in their own skin and authentic and beautiful not related to just cultural standards. 

[00:25:12.5] MB: Who are some of the other guests that you’ve had on and what have you learned from their experiences? 

[00:25:16.6] GS: Well so, I am just getting rolling and it is fairly new but let’s see, Dov Seidman. He is the CEO of a company that’s made many, many millions of dollars. A highly successful company. It’s a legal company that helps other businesses with compliance, with how to be ethical and compliant and create that culture in their business, which is something as you can well imagine is very needed today. 

But Dov is a man who, and he’s been highly successful. But Dov is a man who has severe dyslexia and failed out of school, just had a terrible, terrible time and he really tells the story of this experience of feeling broken and repeated failure and how it has informed his movement along the way. Ultimately, he was able to make his way to Harvard Law School, which is really an amazing story and create this very successful business. 

But it was important to him that the business be around this issue of honesty and ethics and authenticity. That really came out of early struggles that he had and that’s what he’s been successful in. Actually up now is Steve Silberman, who you might know as the author of NeuroTribes, which is an award winning and bestselling book about autism and the particular strengths that come along with autism. So he is very, very extensively versed in this area and we talk about that. 

[00:26:53.4] MB: So for somebody who’s listening right now and maybe they are struggling with anxiety, depression, something like that, they see somebody like Lincoln who overcame some of these struggles but they still feel helpless. What sort of practical steps could they take towards applying some of these lessons and applying the concept of the Power of Different? 

[00:27:15.1] GS: So what I would say is this, when you are struggling with something, you should absolutely get an evaluation and potentially treatment depending on what that evaluation shows. Because there are many treatments, let just say depression for example. Some of which you can do on your own for example exercise greatly impacts depression and I’m not talking about a walk around the park. I mean 30 minutes of vigorous multiple times a week exercise, which is both preventive in terms of depression but also just as effective as medication for mild to moderate depression. 

And so there are things that one can do for themselves like mindfulness, exercise, eating well, sleeping well and then there are things that treatment can provide, psychotherapies that can be extraordinarily helpful and/or medications that can be helpful depending on how severe the situation is. So one should definitely treat themselves and because there is no reason to struggle. But at the same time, you want to spend some time on that. You also want to spend some time on trying to identify what you’re strengths are. 

So I think sitting with yourself and thinking about things that you do see that you are good at, let’s say, and you have been able to do in the past or sometimes people really have difficulty identifying this, therapist could help with that. Sometimes actually a career counselor could even help with that. There are particular self-test one can administer to look at what your particular strengths are. But you do want to hone in on those strengths and how can they be applicable in the world wide environment and you want to spend time honing those things. 

So if empathy is a strength of yours, you want to think about the ways in which you employ that in the world and have some focus on that as well and think about whether for instance are you in a job or career where you can use empathy? And if you’re not, do you want to move in that direction in some way to try to be able to use it more since it is one of your strengths? 

[00:29:28.2] MB: And this segues a little bit into a previous book that you have written. I am curious, how do we get trapped in defeating stories that we tell ourselves? 

[00:29:38.8] GS: Ah yes, well we all do and so I don’t want to say, “Oh there’s something wrong with the person who does.” It’s very common for early in life to have a narrative, your own story that you tend to say, “This is who I am and this is why.” It becomes part of our character really and when you play that loop over and over again, it reinforces it and it’s really hard to see your way out of it. So in that book, I try to detail for people the most common stories. 

Some people are very self-defeating or masochistic. Some people are very dependent on others and feel they must be or some people feel very inhibited and feel they can’t break out of that shell because there are so many things that they have to be afraid of in revealing themselves and feeling rejected potentially. You know there an infinite numbers of stories that one could tell themselves but it’s based in psychoanalysis or psychodynamic work to try to understand or self-analyze what your particular stories are and ways that you might measure them, let’s say, against reality. 

And consider the possibility that they are rooted more in your mind than in truth or in the outside world and ways that you might amend those stories. Because one’s self-perception greatly guides how you act in the world and then what you put out there, people tend to reflect back. So you can really change your trajectory, not to mention the happiness that you have because of how you feel about yourself by really reevaluating those stories.

[0:31:24.4] MB: So how can we go about amending or sort of rewriting some of this stories?

[0:31:30.3] GS: I think that the number one goal is to identify the stories that you have, even if self-observation goes a long way and sometimes when you really zero in and realize, “Oh yeah, I really do think that about myself,” sometimes even just the observation helps you to change it. I often tell people to sort of write down those scripts, those stories and you know, ponder them.

Give them some thought. Think about whether, you might want to amend some of them, you want to try writing a slightly different script. Maybe I feel like I always have to for example be subservient to my partner, they really should always come first because I don’t deserve to be coming first and then try on for size an amended story. No, I really, you know, I deserve as much as anyone, I’m going to put myself first half of the time and we’ll have to make compromises and you have to sort of embrace that story and go out and give it some test runs.

[0:32:39.0] MB: So that actually brings up another topic that I’m curious about. I know you’re a deep expert on sex and relationships and that’s something that we’ve spent very little time on our show but obviously, something that’s vital to living kind of a happy and productive life. For such a deep topic that I’m sure we could talk for hours about, with the little time that we do have, what are some actionable insights or kind of concrete take away that you might be able to share with our audience in terms of improving in that area of your life?

[0:33:09.8] GS: Well, it’s huge, let me just say. So I’ll obviously be scraping the surface but I think people often forget that relationships really are the number one source of happiness in life. It’s not money, it’s not fame even though a lot of millennials often feel like it is. But it really is the quality of the relationships in your life and those take work, they really do and they can never be one sided, that never ends up working even if you feel like you’re always on the receiving end. Ultimately the other person won’t stay and won’t be happy.

So it is about compromise and that means it is about a lot of communicating, it is about sitting down and being willing to listen. I would say, if you could add one thing to your relationship now, you would be that you’re really listening to your partner, your friend, you’re mirroring back what you heard so they feel understood, and then you’re asking for the same thing that they take a turn and listen to you. That they be able to express what they heard from you. That is usually the first step in really having good communication, which ultimately, because everybody has to compromise in relationships is what leads to longevity and stability in relationships.

[0:34:30.2] MB: What can we do to be better listeners?

[0:34:33.3] GS: Well, in short form, sometimes you got to shut up. It’s hard because we’re always feeling like, “I want to get my stuff out, I want to get my stuff out.” But sometimes you do have to just be quiet and put down your phone and your computer and what you’re reading and sit and look at the other person and hear what they’re saying and after you’ve listened for a little while, you want to say back to them what you think you heard so they can correct you if in fact you’re hearing through the prison with your own feelings and you didn’t quite get it.

You want to give it a few chances to make sure that you’re really listening and getting it before you have a response and in today’s world, we tend to be like, “You know, I’m listening to you for 30 seconds and then I got to answer my email and I’m looking at this, “Oh, this beeped.” We have trouble attending to the people who really actually are important in our lives. I would say that active listening is what I’m talking about and it’s very important.

[0:35:36.1] MB: For the topics that we discussed today, what are some potential resources where people can kind of do some research, find out more, kind of dig in and learn about this topics?

[0:35:46.9] GS: Wow, we talked about a lot of topics so if you’re interested in psycho biography and actually it so happens that as you pointed out, some of them are up on YouTube but most of them are up on the 90 second street wise website, 92Y.org and so if that kind of content interests you, you can find them all there, there are many. I will be talking about this concept of finding the strengths and our differences on my podcast, The Power of Different podcast. 

When it comes to trying to improve your relationships, I think there’s so many resources, although, some are better than others to be perfectly honest. There are I would say, I actually often write about relationships for health, magazine and health.com but there are many I think good authors in the arena of relationships. Carlo Hendricks is a wonderful write, has written numerous books on love and relationships and active listening and I think he’s very good.

The Love Lab, which is in Seattle, puts out a lot of great information about relationships and many wonderful writings, I think they’re very helpful and I think if you’re having a very particular kind of problem, it’s very reasonable to seek therapy, which is better earlier than later if you’re really having a struggle in your relationship.

[0:37:12.5] MB: What does one piece of homework that you would give our listeners?

[0:37:16.6] GS: For relationships, I actually would say, it’s wonderful to — two things I would say for your partner relationship, I would sayfo home, try to practice active listening with taking turns and doing that but I would also say that in our frenetic and emotionally charged lives, we often forget to just be affectionate to our partners, I’m talking about sex which is very important but I’m just talking about holding hands or putting your hand on your partner’s neck and give him a squeeze or giving your partner just a kiss because that can be so much of you know, I love you, I like you, I want to be with you, you’re important to me, we often just forget to do that, we just zoom in for just the sex or nothing. That in between affection can make all the difference.

[0:38:15.3] MB: Where can people find you online?

[0:38:17.8] GS: Well, let’s see. I have a website at www.doctorgailsaltz.com, they can tweet me, @doctorgailsaltz, I have a Facebook page that can find me there. So there are many methods of finding me. I love to get questions, I do answer them and I’m happy to do it.

[0:38:38.9] MB: Well Gail, thank you so much for being on this show, this has been a fascinating discussion and really, really interesting to kind of dig in and learn about a number of historical figures who have overcome — or not even overcome but really leveraged what many would consider sort of stigmatized problems or mental illnesses and achieved incredible results.

[0:38:58.4] GS: Thank you so much for having me, it was really a pleasure.

[0:39:01.0] MB: Thank you for being on the show.

What Makes People Turn Evil, Time Paradoxes, and The Power of Heroism with Dr. Philip Zimbardo

In this episode we discuss how to create evil in a research laboratory, what makes people “turn evil”, we examine the definition of heroism, dig into the famous Stanford Prison Experiment, explore time paradoxes, and much more with the legendary Dr. Philip Zimbardo. 

Dr. Zimbardo is an internationally recognized scholar, educator, researcher and media personality, winning numerous awards and honors in each of these domains. He has been a Stanford University professor since 1968, where he conducted the famous Stanford Prison Experiment. His career is noted for giving psychology away to the public through his popular PBS-TV series, Discovering Psychology, along with many text and trade books, among his 500+ publications. He was recently president of the American Psychological Association.

We discuss:

• How to create evil in a research laboratory

• The different kinds of evil

• Is there a fixed line between good and evil?

• What is the definition of heroism (and how its distinct from altruism)

• How Dr. Z defines evil (and why thats important)

• What happens when you put only good people in a really bad situation?

• The inside take on the famous Stanford Prison Experiment

• How a situation can create an emotional breakdown in a normal, healthy, smart person in less than 36 hours

• The social processes that can grease the slippery slope of evil

• How normal people can transform into monsters

• The substantial risks of dehumanization

• The power of the heroic imagination

• How teachers can bring the best out in their students

• The time paradox and how we live with vastly different time perspectives

• How conflicts derive from people’s differing time perspectives

If you want to hear from a titan of psychology about the inner workings of the human mind - listen to this episode! 

Thank you so much for listening!

Please SUBSCRIBE and LEAVE US A REVIEW on iTunes! (Click here for instructions on how to do that).

SHOW NOTES, LINKS, & RESEARCH

• [Explanation] Milgram Experiment

• [Explanation] Stanford Prison Experiment

• [Movie Trailer] Stanford Prison Experiment

• [Amazon Movie Stream] Stanford Prison Experiment

• [Book] The Time Paradox by Philip Zimbardo and John Boyd Ph.D.

• [Website] Time Paradox Site

• [Book] The Lucifer Effect by Philip Zimbardo

• [Book] The Time Cure by Philip Zimbardo, Richard Sword, and Rosemary Sword

• [TEDTalk] The Psychology of Evil by Philip Zimbardo

• [TEDTalk] The Psychology of Time by Philip Zimbardo

• [Video] The Heroic Imagination Project

• [Website] The Heroic Imagination Project

• [Email] admin@heroicimagination.com

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Today, we have a titan of psychology on the podcast, Dr. Philip Zimbardo. Dr. Z is an internationally recognized scholar, educator, researcher, and media personality, winning numerous awards and honors in each of these domains. He has been at Stanford University, as a professor since 1968, where he conducted the famous Stanford Prison Experiment. His career is noted for giving psychology a way to the public through his popular PBS TV series, ‘Discovering Psychology’, along with many texts and trade books among his 300 publications. He was recently president of the American Psychology Association. Dr. Z, welcome to the Science of Success.

Dr. Z:	I’m happy to be here, Matt, and happy to share some ideas with your listeners.

Matt:	Well, we’re so excited to have you on here. I know we’re a little bit time constrained today, so let’s just jump right in. Starting with the idea of the psychology of evil. Tell me about what makes people go wrong. What makes people turn evil?

Dr. Z:	Well, I’ve been studying evil in a curious way by creating it in research laboratories. I was interested in this topic since I was a little kid. I grew up in poverty, in the ghetto, in the South Bronx of New York, and if you grow up in any ghetto, there are always men who are there—evil men—to corrupt kids, getting them to do criminal things for money: stealing, selling drugs, taking drugs, getting girls to sell their bodies for money. Some of my friends gave into that temptation and other kids didn’t. So, evil, again, as we know from the Bible, it’s all about giving in or resisting temptation. So, as a kid I was curious as to: What’s the difference between kids who gave into this temptation, and ended up doing bad things—some of then went to jail—and kids like me, and other friends, who didn’t? My primitive answer, when I was seven years old, was that maybe it had to do with having a strong mother who had a moral compass saying, “This is right; this is wrong,” and also showed unconditional love. Then, when I became a psychologist I thought, well, it’s not that simple because there are three kinds of evil. There’s evil, which is dispositional in people. That’s namely bad apples. There are people who are psychopaths who don’t feel emotion, who can hurt others with no remorse. We see this in a lot of the high school shooters. Then, there’s the evil of situations. That is, there are some situations that encourage, provoke, stimulate people to do bad things, and that’s situational evil. That’s where my prison study comes in, and also the earliest study—I’ll mention briefly to your listeners—by Stanley Milgram about blind obedience to authority. But then we had to recognize a third kind of evil, which is systemic evil, namely that the evil created by legal, political, economic forces. This is the bad barrel makers. So it’s bad apples, bad barrels, and bad barrel makers. Systemic evil is: war, terrorism, slave labor, sex trafficking. So, there’s many examples. That’s evil at the top, and that’s the worst kind of evil because it’s evil to make money.

Matt:	So, is there a fixed line between good and evil, or is it permeable?

Dr. Z:	That’s a really good question. It’s very permeable, and it varies historically; it varies with different cultures, and it’s culturally relevant, so that if you are a suicide bomber in the Mid-East, in Palestine, and your job is to blow up innocent women and children with the assumption that you will then be a hero, you’ll be sitting at the right hand of Allah, that’s one definition of hero, but you are a villain to the opposition. So, really there has to be a higher order definition. It can’t be localized. It can’t be local hero, so there really has to be an international sense that nothing that destroys human life, except in a military battle of soldiers against soldiers, can qualify as heroism. 

Matt:	So, how would you define evil, or how would you define heroism?

Dr. Z:	Okay. Well, heroism is easier. Heroism is acting to help others in need, and/or acting to support a moral cause by standing up; speaking out; taking action. Doing so, aware that there could be a risk and a personal cost. So, that’s how heroism differs from altruism. In altruism there’s not personal cost. I give money to a charity; I give blood to a blood bank; it’s really not a cost, so that, heroism involves a knowing risk. In the extreme it’s loss of life or a limb, but for whistle blowers, for example, it’s often loss of a job, or loss of promotion. Evil is behaving in ways that violate human dignity; that degrade/diminish, the quality of life for other people in various ways.

Matt:	One of the landmark findings of the Stanford Prison Experiment was the power of institutions to impact human behavior. Tell me a little bit more about that.

Dr. Z:	As I said earlier, in the mid ‘60s, Stanley Milgram, when he was young professor at Yale University, did the really dramatic studies on obedience to authority in which he tested a thousand people over a number of years—mostly men, but he also showed it’s true with women—who are put in this situation where they believed they were acting as teachers to help their student improve by punishing your student when he made errors. Punishment was by delivering electric shocks on a prearranged schedule on a big electric stimulator. It started at 15 volts, and it increased by 15 volts along 30 switches. When it got in the hundreds, the student, who was actually a confederate in another room—meaning working with the experimenter—began to scream and yell, and as it got worse and worse he screamed louder and louder, and said...begged to let them stop it. In every case the subjects...the teachers...the people roleplaying teachers complained, they dissented, but the experimenter, acting as the ultimate authority in the white lab coat, kept putting pressure on them to keep going. The question is: Would you go up to 450 volts of electric shock to another person at the command of an authority? When this study was presented to 40 psychiatrists at the Yale Medical School their answer was that only 1% would do that because that’s psychopathic behavior, and in fact, what Milgram found was 2 of every 3 American citizens in his research went all the way. So, that was shocking and startling. In my analysis, it’s very rare somebody tells you to do a bad thing, other than the evil guys in the Bronx. You usually...you’re playing a role. You’re in a situation, you see what other people are doing, and then there’s always semantic distortion that is, nobody does evil, people are doing good. So again, if you’re with ISIS, you’re doing the Lord’s work, or you’re doing Allah’s...you’re doing what they believe the Quran says. 

What I wanted to do in creating the Stanford Prison Study is to ask the question: What happens when you put only good people in a really bad situation? Namely, a simulated prison, which simulates the psychology of American prison with power, and dominance, and demeaning; making prisoners feel powerless and helpless. Would the goodness of the people change the badness of the situation, or does such powerful situations even come to corrupt good people? Sadly, the answer was: Humanity 0, Evil 1. We lost that battle because almost everyone in my study, and these were college students from all over the United States recruited by an ad in the Palo Alto Newspaper: Wanted college students for study of prison life that lasts up to two weeks. 75 people answered the ad. We interviewed them; gave them personality tests. We picked two dozen. The most normal, healthy—that’s really important—and smart, educated college students. We randomly assigned them by a flip of the coin. Half would be guards, half would be prisoners. Then, we began our experiment, and what happened was initially, on day one, nothing. Remember, it’s 1971. Students are antiwar activists. Students are civil rights activists. Students hate the police because policemen came on many college campuses when students were protesting against the war in Vietnam. So, nobody wanted to be a guard, and that’s really important, but they’re in the guard uniform, they have the role, they have to do it. What happened was, on day two the prisoners revolted. That is, they didn’t want to be dehumanized. The prisoners had smocks on with...instead of a name they had they only became a number as happens in prisons. What the guards did was, call in all the guards on all the shifts. There were three guards and each of three eight hour shifts, and standby guard. They broke down the doors that the prisoners had barricaded, and at that point they said, “These are dangerous prisoners,” and suddenly everything changed. Now, the guards have to demonstrate to the prisoners that they have power and the prisoners have none. Every day thereafter, they ramped up the abuse...the degradation, and in 36 hours the first prisoner had an emotional breakdown...in an experiment, knowing it’s an experiment, and each day thereafter another prisoner broke down. So, the study was going to go for two weeks, but I ended it after six days because it was out of control. We had proved our point. Evil situations can corrupt the best and brightest of us.

Matt:	That’s fascinating, and I know that that experiment’s a landmark study in psychology.

Dr. Z:	You know, now it’s a Hollywood movie. It’s a very good Hollywood movie that just opened last year...I mean, this year. It was premiered at Sundance in 2015, last year, and it won many awards for the best science into film, best editing, best screenplay, and brilliant acting by two dozen young actors. The guy who played me, Billy Crudup, he was in the movie, ‘Almost Famous’, and he’s a very good rendition of me. A little more handsome, but otherwise a good sub.

Matt:	That’s great. We’ll definitely include in the show notes a link to that movie so everybody can check it out.

Dr. Z:	Yeah, there’s a great...there’s actually a great two minute trailer.

Matt:	Perfect. Well, we’ll link all that stuff up in the show notes. So, tell me about...looking more, kind of zooming out at the systemic causes of evil, what are some of the social processes that grease, as you call it, the slippery slope of evil?

Dr. Z:	There’s much research, not only by me, but by many other people, which outlines: What are the specific social psychological processes that can make somebody step across that line between good and evil? There’s research that shows that it’s the majority of people who can be seduced; can be corrupted. It’s really the minority who are able resist the group pressure. So, any situation you’re in where the situation makes you feel anonymous, nobody knows who you are, and really nobody cares to know, makes it easier for you to do evil if that’s a possibility: to cheat, to lie, to steal. Diffusion of responsibility: If you’re in a group and the usual personal responsibility that you feel for your action now gets diffused; gets spread thinly. So, now the group begins to, for example, not help somebody in distress. Normally, you would be a Good Samaritan, but now your responsibility is diffused and you don’t help. There are many, many situations, and as I said, it’s anonymity, diffusion of responsibility, moral disengagement. There are also times when we are very moral, but in a particular situation we say, “Well, this is different.” So, we can suspend our usual of morality or conscious. Again, being in a group where the group norm is either to do nothing, or to do things which favor your group against some other group, but dehumanization is, for me, the most extreme. Namely, thinking about...so, that’s why we say, “It’s in the imagination.” Thinking about someone else, or some other group, as less than human, as vermin, as animals, as worthless. Once you have that thought in mind. Once you put a label on other people, then there’s no limit to what you can do. Now, I think, sadly, we’re seeing this recently in all of the police shootings of black men throughout the country, where deep down it’s a threat. Deep down they believe that black men are...they...many people in society, and police especially, who are weaponized, believe that black men pose a danger. So, when any black man is in a situation where there’s any ambiguity, the policeman will err in the direction of assuming something negative. Assuming the person is armed, or assuming the person will take action against them, and therefore what they are seeing is, they are defending their life by shooting first. In many cases the black man—the African American man or boy—had no weapon, was innocent, except he was not innocent of being black in the eyes of the white policemen.

Matt:	So, we’ve touched on evil, and how a situation, or social processes, can turn somebody, a normal, healthy, smart person, into someone that’s capable of evil, especially in the context of police shootings, which you were just referencing. I know something that’s incredibly important to you, and now is a big focus, is the psychology of heroism and the idea of the heroic imagination. Tell me a little bit about that.

Dr. Z:	Yes. Well, let me help with that transition in that. After I did the Stanford Prison Study, way back in 1971, I wrote a few articles. I never wrote a book about it because, for me, it was just a nice demonstration of the power of situations, and I moved on. I began to study shyness as a self-imposed psychological prison. Nobody had studied shyness in adolescents, or adults, before I did in 1972. Then, I began to study the psychology of time perspective, because in that week all our sense of time got distorted because...for the prisoners, and for me and my staff of graduate students—Craig Haney, Curt Banks, David Jaffe—each eight hour guard shift began to feel like a full day. In our prison there were no clocks. There were no watches. There was no daylight or nightlight, and so I began to study how people lived in different time zones, and past, present, and future. It was only after I got involved in defending an American prison guard in Abu Ghraib Prison scandal that I then decided to write a book about it. I wrote a book called, ‘The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil,’ and it’s become a classic. It’s translated now in 25 different languages. So, I would put that on the reading lists of your listeners. But the other thing, in chapter 16, I raised, for the first time, the question of everyday heroes. I say that in all the evil situations—Abu Ghraib, and Stanford Study, and the Milgram Study—and then I outline all of the research done on psychology of evil, and conformity. There’s always a minority—5%, 10%, 20%, never more than 30%—who resist the power of the situation. I raised the issue: Maybe we can think of them as heroes. Not traditional heroes. Not military heroes who are willing to die in battle to save their buddies, but these are people who, in any given situation, are able to step back, identify what’s happening and make a decision not to go along with the group, and they’re willing to risk being ostracized, or dismissed, from the group. So, that’s the first time I raised the question about the nature of heroism, and shortly after I gave a Ted Talk, in 2008...a Ted Talk on my journey from evil to heroism, and many people came up afterwards, including Pier Omidyar, the guy who started eBay, and he said, “You know, you have to create a nonprofit foundation to study this concept of everyday heroism. It’s really new. Nobody’s ever thought about it.” So, I did. So, since 2008 I have a nonprofit organization in San Francisco called, ‘The Heroic Imagination Project’, short HIP, h-i-p, because the idea is it all starts in the mind...the human imagination. Thinking of yourself as evil, thinking of yourself as someone who is willing to stand up, stand out, speak out, in all the challenging situations in your life, in your family, in your school, in your work, in your community, and ultimately in your nation. So, we started doing research. Eight years ago there was almost no research on heroism, which is really curious. In fact, the word ‘hero’ and ‘heroism’ does not exist in any psychology textbook. It does not exist in the positive psychology manual because it’s not a human virtue, it’s a civic action. So, this is [INAUDIBLE:  0:20:00], so we began to do research, and then I developed, with my education team, a series of educational lessons, or modules, each organized around a social psychological theme like transforming passive bystanders into active heroes; transforming a fixed static mindset into a dynamic gross mindset; transforming prejudice and discrimination into understanding and acceptance. So, we developed six of these lessons in great detail and great length, and what’s exciting about them is really educate...revolution education. They’re organized around provocative videos. So, teachers then don’t give lectures at all. We give teachers a script. Teachers are like athletic coaches; the students are really their team, and their goal is: bring out the best in each of your team members. Now, students work in pairs, ideally a boy and a girl as a team so when the teacher asks a question it’s not that everybody raises their hand to answer, it’s that each team talks about how they would respond. Sometimes they write down their answers. Sometimes the teacher calls on the team to do this. And each lesson goes two to three hours, and their feedback is: it’s exciting for the teachers and exciting for the students, but the two most important things are: understanding these principles of social psychology and how they can be put into action. That means that we are training every student to be a potential social change agent; to use knowledge to make the world better, not simply to make you smarter. This is the feedback we’re getting around the world. So, our program is in Hungary, and Poland, and Italy, in Bali, and Geelong, Australia, and Flint, Michigan, and in many community colleges in Oregon and in Southern California. We hope to spread it even further. 

Matt:	So, for someone that’s listening to this podcast right now, what would be a way that they could apply the knowledge of psychology to make themselves better?

Dr. Z:	Well, that’s...you can go on our website, www.heroicimagination.com, and I think we have some advice, some recommendations. Reading ‘The Lucifer Effect’ would also be a start, but it’s unfortunately... I really want to build a volunteer core. I’m good at almost everything except raising money. I have not been able to raise money. I give a huge amount of money to my hero project, and I physically...I do the training, so part of our model is: in order to deliver these lessons, you license them for a fee. For let’s say, three years either a school, a city, or even a whole nation, and then I have been doing most of the training. I got to Budapest. I go to Warsaw. I go to Bali. But I’m now 83 years old and I’m not as mobile as I used to be, so I have to raise money in order to build out our team, in order to get volunteers to learn to be trained to deliver this material. I think if they’re interested in being involved, I think if you just put ‘admin’, a-d-m-i-n, @heroicimagination.com, my assistant will try to answer them and see how we can create a volunteer core. 

Matt:	That’s very exciting. You touched on this in the backstory behind how you got involved with creating the Heroic Imagination Project, tell me a little bit about the idea of time paradoxes and the different time zones that people live in.

Dr. Z:	Yeah. So, as I said, in between the Stanford Prison Study and creating Heroes, I stopped out and I started on this...trying to understand: how is it that people live in different time zones and are typically totally unaware that they do? Here, again, it started with very personal...my father, who was a brilliant man, who never had any education, second generation Sicilian, was a total, what we call, ‘present hedonist’. He lived for the present moment. He was a musician. He was a party guy. He loved to dance. He loved to gamble. This was great when he was single, but it’s not great when he has a family of four...of four kids and a wife to take care of, but he didn’t care. He was always happy. He was out of work often. We were on home relief—they used to call it in those days. He used get me crazy because I was...I realized the only way to get out of poverty is by planning, or having a program, or having an agenda to do things constructively. He live for the moment. He lived for the day. So, an amazing example is that without any education at all he made a television set from a wiring diagram in 1947. Television was invented when? 1946. A year before. He learned how to do wiring...I mean, he built it himself. Not just read the plans. He learned wiring. He learned how to read schematics from a Puerto Rican radio store man who had a radio store in the tenement building we lived in, and he built a set in 1947. I remember charging my friends, I think, 25 cents to watch the World Series. I think it was Yankees against the Dodgers, and everybody said, “We want one.” I said, “Dad, this is our break. We’ll help you. Everybody... It’s a new thing.” In fact, even more brilliantly—equally brilliant—they only had little eight inch screens, so he got a parabolic mirror, a huge mirror, so that you could expand the view of the screen. My father said, “No, I only did one. It was a challenge, I met it. That’s it. I don’t want to bother doing more.” So, here’s a case where you’re poor, you have an invention that everybody wants, you can make money on it... I’m pressing because I’m now totally future oriented, and he’s resisting because he lives in the moment. That really started me always thinking as a kid and later on: how is that people can have such different time zones and be unaware of the other? So, I developed a skill called a ‘Zimbardo Time Perspective Inventory’, a ZTPI, which was published, and it’s the most widely used scale that measures differences in time perspective. Then I wrote a book called, ‘The Time Paradox’ and if your listeners go on the web, www.thetimeparadox.com, there is this scale, and if they take it, it scores it immediately, and it tells you which of the five time zones you are in. Are you future oriented like I was? Are you a present hedonist? Or you live in the past. Do you live in a positive past, or a negative past? Are you a present fatalist? Do you believe that it doesn’t pay to plan the future? Nothing works out. Fate is against you. These are five of the scales that we have developed, and since then, again, it’s been translated in dozens of languages around the world. And people using it in research, and education, even in finance, are finding enormous benefits of using it. 

Lastly, for those in your audience who are interested in therapy, I wrote a book called, ‘The Time Cure’ where we used the ideas in ‘The Time Paradox’ as a way to treat people with PTSD—veterans, women who have been sexually abused, people who’ve been in natural disasters, or fatal car accidents. We show how our very simple didactic treatment literally can cure PTSD. The book is called, ‘The Time Cure’. So, there’s a lot of reading for your listeners.

Matt:	That’s great. We love to have lots of resources for people to dig in who want to do homework after the show and learn a lot more. One of the funny stories that I really like that you tell about time paradox is the idea, or the concept, that Sicilian dialect in Italy has no future tense. Can you tell that story?

Dr. Z:	Yes, I’m Sicilian. I am Sicilian on my grandmother’s side and my grandfather’s side. I’m third generation. My grandparents came here around the turn of the century, and again, none of them were educated, and in general, one of the sad things about Sicily is: people do not value education as much as they do in Asian countries; as much as the Jewish people do. The big problem has always been believing that you get what you want not by being smart, but by having good connections. This is the enduring curse of the Mafia, but it’s also political connections corruption. So, this is what I’ve always had to oppose. In fact, as a sidebar, I set up a foundation in Sicily, in the cities where my grandparents came from. And I have a colleague, Steve Luczo, who’s the head of Seagate Technology, whose grandmother came from Corleone; my grandparents came from Cammarata. So, together we put in money...we raised money, and every year we give 20 scholarships for high school kids in both of those towns to go to Sicilian colleges, and we’re slowly changing...the idea is that it really matters what you know even more than who you know. One of the problems then, in this culture where people live for the moment, that is they love good food, good wine, lots of babies, good sex, good lifestyle is really important—partying, dancing—that when I gave a talk recently, there was a poet in the audience who came up afterward and said, “Look, I’m a poet. I live with words, and it’s not until I heard you talk that I realized that in Sicilian dialect there is no term for the future. There’s a term ‘was’, there’s a term ‘is’, there’s no ‘will be’. It doesn’t exist.” I said, “Really?” He said, “Now I understand why things never get done, because nobody ever plans for the future, and nobody ever makes reservations for something that’s going to happen more than a few hours in the future.” I thought: this is very funny, but really, it’s funny on one side, but it also means it limits the educational growth, but also the economic growth, of a nation.

Matt:	So, how do conflicts derive from differences in people’s time perspectives?

Dr. Z:	If you don’t understand somebody else that lives in a different time zone, you make misattributions. So, the easy attribution: My father was...he’s lazy, and his attribution of me could have been: he’s excessive; he’s a nerd; he only cares about money. So, again, in every family, people live in different time zones. One of the things we argue is, it’s really important for the whole family to take our Time Scale test, as I said, online, and then begin to talk it through great conversation, knowing what your time zone is, what other people’s time...and then we also tell you what is ideal. So, an ideal balanced time zone...time profile is to be moderately high on future. Not excessively high because then you become a workaholic, but high on past positive, meaning when you think about the past you bring up all the good memories, all the good things that happened. Then, to be moderate on present hedonism, meaning that you select things that are pleasurable as a reward for when you succeed in something on your to-do list. Past negative and present fatalism always has to be low because those are...they detract from the human condition. A balanced time perspective...lots of people now are using that as a core to say, “I’m past positive, moderately high future, and moderate present hedonism, and low on past negative, present fatalism.” That’s what’s called ‘balanced time perspective, BTP. There’s now lots of research that shows people having this balanced time perspective are happier, more successful academically, more successful in business, and this what we want to strive for. 

Matt:	How do we change our time perspective?

Dr. Z:	Well, at this point, I’m going to tell you, you have to read the book. In ‘The Time Paradox’ we have whole chapters on: if you want to be more present oriented this is what you have to do. If you want to be more future oriented this is what you have to do. Right now I am running out of time. I have a lecture to prepare for tomorrow. We’re starting a Zimbardo college in China, and my China representative, Jenny Mars, is flying in today from Shanghai for us to begin to plan courses for our Zimbardo College in Shanghai. 

Matt:	Perfect. Well, I know you’ve got to go, and you’ve got a ton of fascinating projects and initiatives out there, which we will have a very detailed show notes where we go through and list everything that Dr. Z listed from books, to movies, to Ted Talks, and things about the Heroic Imagination Project. So, Dr. Z, it’s been an honor to have you on the Science of Success, and I just wanted to say, thank you so much.

Dr. Z:	Thank you. The other thing I just noticed checking out my Ted Talk: four million two hundred fifty thousand people have seen that in 8 years. That’s a staggering number. Five million...five and a quarter million people have seen that 20 minute talk.

Matt:	That’s pretty amazing. For listeners who haven’t we’ll link it in the show notes so you can check it out, but again, Dr. Z thank you so much. We’ve really enjoyed having you on here.

Dr. Z:	Any time. Take Care. Be well. Ciao.

Matt:	Ciao. 

How to Out-Think Your Competition and Become a Master Strategic Thinker with Dr. Colin Camerer

In this episode we discuss the intersection between neuroscience and game theory, ask whether you are smarter than a Chimpanzee, examine how simple mental judgements can be massively wrong, explain the basics of game theory, and dig deep into strategic thinking with Dr. Colin Camerer. 

Colin is the Robert Kirby Professor of Behavioral Finance and Economics at the California Institute of Technology. A former child prodigy Colin received his B.A in quantitative studies from John Hopkins University at the age of 17, followed by an M.B.A. in finance from the University of Chicago at the age of 19, and finally a Ph.D in behavioral decision theory from the University of Chicago at the age of 21. Colin research is focused on the interface between cognitive psychology and economics. 

We discuss: 

• How to out-think (and think one level ahead of) your competition

• How we make simple mental judgements that go wrong

• The fundamentals of game theory and how you can practically apply it to your life

• Are you smarter than a chimpanzee? (the answer may surprise you)

• The psychological limits on strategic thinking

• How game theory cuts across multiple disciplines of knowledge from evolution to corporate auctions

• The concept of a nash equilibrium and why its important

• The fascinating intersections between psychology and game theory

• The game theory behind rock paper scissors (and the optimal strategy)

• Why people don’t think strategically (and why it matters)

• Discover if you re you a level zero thinker or a “Level K” thinker

• Why working memory has a strong correlation between making strategic decisions and cognitive flexibility

• The fascinating results behind the “false belief test"

• How to make strategic inferences from the knowledge that other minds have

• And much more!

If you want to make better decisions or have always been fascinated by game theory - listen to this episode!

Thank you so much for listening!

Please SUBSCRIBE and LEAVE US A REVIEW on iTunes! (Click here for instructions on how to do that).

SHOW NOTES, LINKS, & RESEARCH

• [Website] Primate Research Institute Kyoto University

• [Book] Thinking Strategically by Avinash K. Dixit & Barry J. Nalebuff

• [Book] Games of Strategy by Avinash Dixit, Susan Skeath, & David H. Reiley Jr.

• [Book] Behavioral Game Theory by Colin F. Camerer

• [Book] Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

• [Social] Colin's Twitter

• [Ted Talk] The Strategizing Brain: Colin Camerer

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Today, we have another incredible guest on the show, Dr. Colin Camerer. Colin is the Robert Kirby Professor of Behavioral Finance and Economics at the California Institute of Technology. A former child prodigy, he received his BA in quantitative studies from Johns Hopkins University at the age of 17, followed by an MBA in finance from the University of Chicago at the age of 19, and finally a PhD in Behavioral Decision Theory from the University of Chicago at the age of 21. His research is focused on the interactions between cognitive psychology and economics. Colin, welcome to the Science of Success.

Dr. Colin Camerer:	Thanks for having me, Matt.

Matt:	We’re very excited to have you on here. Obviously, you have a fascinating background. I’d love to hear the story of how you got started.

Dr. Colin Camerer:	Okay. One of the early experiences, actually, was when I was 12, I started to go to horse races [INAUDIBLE:  0:03:28] with my dad and a friend of his who was interested in the stock market. I was fascinated by the fact that 12 horses come out on a race track, and they all look pretty physically fit, and you could buy a big newspaper called ‘The Daily Race Informant’ that tells you all about...facts about which horses had won before, and who was the trainer, and what was the sire and the dam—that’s the mom and the dad—and how well had they done. Somehow these markets were able to compress all of this information into a number, which was the odds. So, I was really interested in how that process worked. When I went to college I studied math, and physics, and psychology, and I was kind of searching around for a science that I thought had some mathematical structure, and some real scientific rigor, where it was about people. So, I ended up studying economics. 

Then, I went to graduate school at University of Chicago to get a PhD, and at that time the popular view about financial markets was that you can’t beat the market because if there’s any information that’s easy to find about the earnings of a company, or what the CEO was up to, people are highly motivated to find that, and they’ll get it, and they’ll buy and sell and move the price around until the prices are such that there’s no way to easily beat the market based on something that’s easy to find out. That’s called the efficient markets hypothesis. I was kind of skeptical about that because, well, first, a lot of people invest their funds either themselves, or with hedge funds, and what’s called active management. People are trying to beat the market, and people are quite happy to pay 1% or 2% of their money in what’s called, you know, fairly high fees. So, a lot of investors think somebody can beat the market, which the efficient markets hypothesis says shouldn’t be the case. So, I was kind of looking around for something different, and at that time there were a couple psychologists called, Hillel Einhorn and Robin Hogarth, and they were at the beginning of a wave of people who were interested in human judgement and decision making. Their approach was very related to what Tversky and Kahneman later began to study, which was called, Heuristics and Biases. The idea was: maybe instead of making extremely complicated calculations, and using all the information, weighing it just perfectly, people instead use simple shortcuts like what springs to mind in memory, or what’s visually in front of them on a computer screen. So, that was the beginning of what came to be later called Behavioral Economics. So, I got my PhD, and I was one of the first people to really get a PhD in this field of decision theory, or decision economics, and then I went to...ended up at the Wharton School, where I happen to be today—I mean right now was we’re talking not as a faculty member—and they actually were encouraging about the idea of trying to study the psychology...essentially the limits on how much information people can process effectively, and how much willpower people have, and how selfish people are, or how much they care about others. None of those things were really incorporated into economic theory at that time, so that was the beginning of what we call ‘behavioral economics’, or kind of psychologizing economic theory. That was around the mid-1980s. 

So, I was interested in a bunch of studies involving psychological shortcuts and how they might make a difference in what people do. One of the things we studied is called ‘framing effects’, which means...you know, you can describe something in two different ways, and even though they’re mathematically equivalent, it might wither evoke different emotions, or it might change people’s focus of attention so that they treat them differently. For example, the FDA, I think, at one point required salad dressings to label how much fat content they had in terms of percentages, not just on the back. So, suddenly you pick up a salad dressing, and it would say, “6% fat,” or “8% fat,” or “3% fat,” and that’s quite different than if you had said...6% fat is a lot different than 94% fat free. You know, 94% fat free sounds pretty great. 6% fat sounds more, “Ooh, yuck.” So, even though those two are mathematically equivalent statements, you know, 6% and 94% adds up to 100%, but it seemed to shift people’s focus of attention and actually affect choices. Those are the kind of things we began to study in behavioral economics.

Matt:	That’s really fascinating, and I know that you specifically focus a lot on the ideas around game theory, which to some listeners may seem sort of like an esoteric field of knowledge that doesn’t apply to their daily life, but I’m curious: Could you kind of explain some of the basics of game theory and how it could actually apply to interactions that people have every day? 

Dr. Colin Camerer:	Sure, so game theory’s a very powerful mathematical system. It’s probably most developed in economics, but also a little bit in theoretical biology and political science. So, a game, despite the frivolous name, is a mathematical object, which is: a set of players, each player’s going to choose a strategy, and given some information they have about, say, what’s going to happen in the future, or maybe what the other player thinks, or how valuable something is if they’re bargaining. The players have strategies and information. While they all choose their strategies, there are going to be outcomes. The outcomes are...it could be biological fitness like reproduction, it could be territory in a war, it could be profits for companies, it could be a status for people, or for animals, fighting for territory. Then, we assume that the only mathematics really comes in because we assume that the players can mathematically rank how much they like different outcomes. That whole system is called a specification of a game. What game theory is, is to say: if the payers have these strategies, the outcomes, which they value numerically, what are they going to actually do? The interesting thing is to what extent players can figure out what other players are likely to do by kind of guessing. I should add that the players could be animals that have strategies which are kind of innate strategies, like degrees of aggression. They could be much more deliberate. It could be how much a telecom company wants to bid for a slice of phone spectrum that’s being auctioned off by the FCC. That was an actual thing that happened, not only in the US with the FCC, but in many countries where valuable phone spectrum was auctioned off, and tens of billions of dollars were actually bet so that the companies then had to decide: What do I actually bid? They employed a bunch of game theorists to kind of tell them: given the rules for the game, should they bid this much, that much, and what do you think other people will bid? I don’t want to outbid them by too much and leave money on the table, but I don’t want to get outbid and underbid, and lose. So, there’s the kinds of things game theorists used to study. What I brought to the analysis was: the standard idea in game theory is...I should say, the standard mathematical thing that’s computed, and that’s taught in every course, and this is the homework on the final exam, is what’s called a ‘Nash equilibrium’, named after John Nash. Equilibrium is a word that’s kind of taken from physics as sort of a resting point. The idea is: equilibrium, every player has a belief of what the other players will do, and their beliefs are correct, so they’ve somehow figured out what other players will do. In addition, they’re going to choose a best response. They pick the strategy which is the best one given this belief. One way to think of an equilibrium is: suppose you played tic tac toe lots and lots of times, and if you ever made a mistake you corrected your mistake the next time, After lots of play, everyone would know the strategies of the other players, and they would be choosing the best strategy for themselves, and it would be a kind of boring game, but mathematically it would have a nice precise structure. 

So, what we started to look at was non-equilibrium, or pre-equilibrium, game theory meaning: what if people haven’t figured everything out yet? What kind of things could happen then? I’ll give you a simple example that’s not too hard to think about numerically, which we call ‘the beauty contest game’. Let me explain it first, and then I’ll say where that name comes from. In this game, which we’ve actually done in lots of experiments for money, everybody picks a number from 0 to 100, and we’re going to collect the numbers on a piece of paper, or you’re going to type them in a computer, or you’re going to send them on a postcard to the ‘Financial Times’—who actually did this a few years ago—and we’re going to collect all the numbers, 0 to 100. We’re going to compute the average number, and take 2/3 of the average. Whoever is closest to 2/3 of the average is going to win a fixed prize. So, everyone wants to be a little bit below average knowing that everyone else wants to be a little bit below average. If you figure out the mathematical equilibrium—this is the kind of thing that would be on a final exam in a course—the equilibrium is the number which is the only number which everyone, if they believed everyone else would pick it, they’d be best responding, and their beliefs would all be correct then. That’s zero. When you actually do the experiment what happens is you get a bunch of people that pick numbers anywhere from 0 to 100—60, 40, you know. Let’s say the average is around 50. There are a number of other people who seem to think: I don’t know what people will pick. It could be anywhere. So, let’s say they’ll pick 50, so I’ll pick 33 which 2/3 of 50. If you’re trying...if you think others are going to randomly choose in the interval of numbers, and you’re trying to match 2/3 of the average, you’ll pick 33. Other people do what we call ‘second level of thinking’. This is something that’s called ‘level-k model of behavior’. They’ll say, “Well, I think other people will think other people will pick 50, and those people will pick 33. I’m going to outguess them and pick 22.” You can do a couple more steps of thinking, but at some point you’re being, as the British say, too clever by half. If you actually play this game, and you pick 2/3 of 22, or 2/3 of 2/3 of 22, you’re actually picking a number that’s too low, because you don’t want to pick the lowest number, you want to pick 2/3 of the average number. So, typically what you see is an average number around 33 or 22, which is far away from the Nash equilibrium prediction, which is that everyone will somehow figure out how to pick 0. That’s an example of where psychological limits on strategic thinking gives you a better prediction of what people actual do. By the way, as you can imagine, if you play this game again and again, what happens is: the first time you’re playing in a group it might be the average is 28, and 2/3 of that is about 19. So, the winner is Matt Bodnar who picked 19, and everyone cheers that, and next time they think: Wow, people are going to...I should pick maybe 2/3 of 19, or maybe I should think other people will pick 2/3 of 19. So, if you do it over and over you do get numbers that are moving in the direction of the Nash equilibrium prediction. The idea of an equilibrium is actually often a good model for where a system in which there’s a lot of feedback, and learning from trial and error, is going to move over time, but it isn’t necessarily a good prediction of what will happen the first time you play even if it’s for very high stakes. These games had often been done with different groups of people. It doesn’t seem to make that much difference if you are really good at math, or if you played chess a lot, or anything like that. Most people will pick numbers somewhere between say, 10, or 15, or 22, or 33, the first time they play. So, we’ve developed a theory of that type of thinking called ‘level-k reasoning’, which has these kind of steps of thinking. The main idea is: the steps don’t get that far. There’s a little bit of strategic thinking, but it’s limited.

Matt:	That makes me think of a couple things. One is: when I initially heard the beauty contest game, or I guess I also coined it in my mind ‘the 0 to 100 game’, I was too clever by half because my initial guess was the number one, which as you showed in some of your research, that was a terrible guess because people don’t adjust close enough to the equilibrium to make that meaningful. The other thing is: it was a sad day in, I think it was like 7th grade for me, or whenever, when me and my buddy discovered that there’s only like three or four moves in tic-tac-toe, and basically every single game should end in cats.

Dr. Colin Camerer:	Yes. One thing that’s interesting is: some of the games that are actually really fun to play, like rock paper scissors, which is similar to tic-tac-toe—it’s a simple game and you can kind of figure it out—from the point of view of mathematical analysis are kind of boring, but they’re not that boring to actually play. Probably, it’s because people aren’t always in equilibrium, and they’re trying to chase patterns and see things that are other players are doing. If you were to design video games, or a game show on TV, it’s not clear that equilibrium game theory would be as helpful as something that would incorporate more of a concept of human nature, and fallibility, and what’s fun and engaging.

Matt:	I’m curious, actually, that makes me think of another question: Rock paper scissors, is that a game, from sort of a game theory stand point, that has an equilibrium? 

Dr. Colin Camerer:	Yes. Actually, one reason [INAUDIBLE:  0:16:10] equilibrium is very powerful—and John Nash shared the Nobel Prize for this discovery—is you can show mathematically that if a game is finite, in other words there’s not infinitely many people bidding or playing, and they only have so many strategies they can choose like rock paper scissors, or so many numerical bids in an auction, even if it’s billions, as long as it’s not infinity, that there always exists an equilibrium. In rock paper scissors: equilibrium, as well as what we call, ‘mixed strategies’. That means that if you play rock every single time that’s not a best response, because someone will figure it out and beat you with paper to cover rock. So, the only equilibrium is one in which people choose rock paper scissors about 1/3, 1/3, 1/3 of the time. Again, when people play what happens is: usually people won’t play explicitly in that random way, although you could—it wouldn’t be very interesting—and then what happens is people try to pick out patterns and, “Can I predict what you’re going to do next time?” Associated with this is the fact that, roughly speaking, when you ask people to randomize, like if I tell you: imagine flipping a coin 100 times in a row. Write down a series of what you think 100 coin flips might look like. People are actually not that good at generating a truly random sequence. The main thing is they kind of over alternate. So, if you wrote down: head, head, head, then you’d write down tails, and you would actually have too few runs. So, you’d have strings of a couple heads, and a couple tails, and in a truly random sequence of 100 you should have about 50 runs, and usually people produce about 65 runs. In my cognitive psych class I used to do this, and I’d ask half the people to actually...I’d turn around and I’d ask half them to actually flip a coin, and half of them to simulate/imagine doing it, and then I would ask them to hand in their index cards, and I would see if I could tell whether it was human-generated or truly random. So, people aren’t typically—unless there’s special training or special tools—that great at randomization. 

Let me backtrack to one other thing about game theory. Another practical application that we studied, that everyone, I think, can resonate, or appreciate, involves what’s called a ‘private information game’. So, private information is a wrinkle which you don’t have in rock paper scissors, and you don’t have it in the 0 to 100 game, which is that one person knows something the other people don’t know, but everyone knows that there’s private information. For example, the kind of game we studied—and here we go away from the simple clear games in the lab to the messy world—involved movies. The idea is: we assume that the people who produced the movie, and have watched it, and have seen the entire movie, not just a short trailer in an ad, or a short clip that you might show on a TV show for promotion, they have a better idea of the quality than movie goers. So, if people have seen it they can say, “This is, on a 0 to 100 scale, this is going to be an 82,” or, “41.” What we studied we called ‘cold opening’ which means: from about 2000 to 2009 we looked at all movies in the US that were open on a lot of screens, which is 300 or more screens, so that didn’t include some smaller, independent films, but most of the movies are in our sample, and about 10% of the time the movies were not shown to movie critics in time for them to write a review. In the early part of our sample, in 2000, this was in a newspaper like ‘The New York Times’, or ‘The LA Times’, or ‘The Chicago Tribune’. Nowadays, the newspapers have become a lot less influential because trailers leak, and Rotten Tomatoes, and lots of other websites are influential in sharing their opinions about what movies are good. During the part of our sample the newspapers were kind of a big deal. So, about 10% of the time the movies were not shown to critics so that there was a review, and the way you can tell is: if you open up the Friday newspaper—again, this is kind of historical big game theory—in Los Angeles, you would see an ad for say, “Ondine”, which was a Colin Farrell movie, and it would have a bunch of blurbs that would say, “Marvelous. Four stars,” from Manohla Dargis in ‘LA Weekly’, for example. So, the way those stars got there was that a version of the movie was sent to the critics a couple days early, and they would prepare the reviews, and then they would give it to the studios so they could put it in the print ads on Friday. So, in the Friday paper you’d see a print ad that had a...if it was flattering, that had a quote from a critic, and then in the same section of the newspaper you’d see the critic’s review that would say, “I loved this movie, Ondine.” Meanwhile, the movie, “Killers”, with Katherine Heigl and Ashton Kutcher was not shown to critics in time, so if you opened up the print ad, there’s a picture of the two stars, “Killers”, the name of the director, and it has no quotes from critics at all because critics weren’t allowed to see it. Of course the obvious intuition is: the critics are going to tell everyone how terrible the movie is and then people won’t go see it, but game theoretically, that’s actually a little bit surprising because movie goers should be able to infer: if there’s not review it’s probably because it’s really and, and they didn’t give it to the critics. In this case, no news is bad news. If you don’t see a review it’s probably because when the reviews eventually come in—usually movies are reviewed later, like on a Monday or a Sunday—they’re going to be pretty bad. In fact, empirically that’s what happens. So, we collected data from Metacritic...Metacritic is a great website, by the way, which averages from about 5 to 20 or 30 different critical reviews, and you get a beautiful little Gaussian normally distributed distribution where most movies are around a 50 on their 0 to 100 scale. If the movies are a 20 or below...a 25 or below, which included the Ashton Kutcher and Katherine Heigl movie, then the chance of not showing it to critics is much higher. So, if you don’t see a critic review, and you kind of knew about the statistics that we had gathered, you should say to yourself, “A lack of review is the same as a bad review,” basically. We took our theory of level-k thinking and the level-k theory says: some movie goers are just kind of naïve. Those are like the people who pick 50 in the 0 to 100 game. They’re just not thinking strategically: Well, wait a minute. What are other people going to pick? Because I should be responding to them.” So, the naïve movie goers say, “I didn’t see a movie review. That doesn’t mean anything. It’s probably kind of average,” and actually it’s not average. If there’s no review, statistically, it’s below average. The way we could tell that the movie goers were being naïve was: if you write down some very fancy math, and look at the statistics, your prediction is that the movies that aren’t shown to critics will earn about 10% or 15% or more than they really should, given their actual quality, because people are naively guessing the quality is much better than it is, and too many people will go to those movies. So, we looked at all the data, and did a very careful statistical analysis, and it turned out to be consistent with this theory that there’s some degree of movie goer naivety, and the result is: if you make a bad movie, don’t show it to critics and your movie will make about 10% or 15% more than it really should because you’re fooling some of the people some of the time.

Matt:	That’s fascinating. I’d love to dig in a little bit more. Explain, or kind of tell me more, about the concept of level-k thinking, or the level-k model of behavior.

Dr. Colin Camerer:	The basic idea is: we’re going to assume that whether it’s IQ, or practice playing games, or how motivated people are by an experiment, or by figuring out what the movie critiques are doing, that it looks like we can kind of sort people into people who are not very strategic. Those are what we call ‘level zero’, and that means that we think what’s going on is that they’re picking sort of a salient simple strategy. Maybe something just pops out, or they’re exhibiting naivety, like the movie goers. They open the ad, or they see an ad on TV, and the ad doesn’t have any critic information, and they don’t notice that there’s no critic information. So, they assume that no critic information is kind of like ‘average’. Then, level one players are players who think that other people are level zero. So, in the 0 to 100 game that we talked about earlier, those are people who think: ‘I think other people have no real clue. They’re going to pick numbers around 50, like lucky numbers, or their birthdays, or something like that, and “I’m going to pick 2/3 of that.” So, these players are being a little more clever because they have a concept of what others will do and then they’re responding to it. These would be something like a movie goer that says, “Gee, if the studio is smart then they’re not going to show their worst movies to critics, but I can’t tell beyond that how smart they are, or how bad the movies are.” Level two players think that they’re playing level one players. So, they’re going to pick 20 to 33, and so on. So, you can write down a kind of sequence of these types of players. The zeros choose something that’s kind of focal or random. The ones think they’re playing zeros and they respond. The twos think they’re playing ones and they respond. With just a couple of steps, usually zero, and one, and two is the only levels you need. Although conceptually, in principal, people could be doing three steps, or four steps. You might get that sometimes in a very complicated novel, or like a sci-novel, where, “I think that he thinks that she thinks,” and there’s double agents and things, but usually mentally it’s kind of overwhelming. It sort of boggles the mind to think more than two or three steps of reasoning. We’ve applied this type of framework to movies. It’s also been used to analyze some managerial decisions like when managers will adopt a new technology. It depends on how many other managers they think will adopt, and how many manager’s managers think, and so on. 

We’ve also used it to explain a lot of different experiments we’ve run in the lab where the games are much simpler. You can often see...in fact, literally we can see, say, if we put different numbers on a screen which [INAUDIBLE:  0:26:07] the payoffs from choosing different strategies. If you’re a level zero player you’ll look at certain numbers and ignore some numbers. If you’re a level one player you’ll look at what the other player’s payoffs are. If you’re a level two player you look at everything. So, the more levels of thinking you do, we can tie that directly to what you look at, at the computer screen, and we use a measurement technique called ‘eye tracking’, which is basically a tiny camera that looks at your eye. If your eye moves a little bit, like to look at the left part of the screen instead of the right part of your computer screen, the camera’s sensitive enough to see where you’re looking. It can kind of locate where your eye is looking on a computer screen within the precision of about a quarter...a quarter coin. So, if we put the payoffs on the screen in a certain way we can detect, to some extent...not perfectly, but we can roughly detect who’s doing two steps of thinking because there’s certain information they like to look at in order to figure out what to do. So, a combination of eye tracking [INAUDIBLE: 0:27:04] experiments have given us an idea of... And basically, I should add we...typically we estimate for, say, college educated student populations that something like 10% or 20% of people are level zero, they just aren’t really thinking through at all. Maybe 40% are level one, that’s the most common. And maybe 30% are level two. Sometimes you’ll see what looks like much higher level thinking—level three or level four.

Matt:	The first thing that makes me think of is poker, and longtime listeners will know that I’m a big poker player. We’ve previously had some guests on here talk about some of the psychological elements of that game. Poker’s a great example of a game where you, depending on what level of thought your opponent is at, you have to adjust your thinking and play one level ahead of them, but if you play two or three levels ahead of them you can...it can end up backfiring, and being kind of the same thing as picking 1 in the 0 to 100 game.

Dr. Colin Camerer:	Every so often I think we should try to get a grant and study poker, or just study it, because from a game theory point of view it actually hasn’t been studied very much. Although, early in the history of game theory, some of your listeners will know that the Seminal book on game theory [INAUDIBLE:  0:28:13], in the 1940s. It’s somewhat weird in social science that someone writes a book and really creates a whole field, but their book really did. There was some earlier research that they had built on, but their book really made a big splash. They actually have a chapter on poker, but it’s a super simplified version in which you basically get a high card or a low card, and there’s one round of betting. So, they picked a simple enough example that you could fully analyze it and see what’s happening. Of course what makes real poker so interesting is that, you know, there’s some mathematics. You have to kind of figure out how strong your hand is, but it also depends upon, as you said, on what strategy you think the other player is going to play. Are they going to play tight and only bet when they have great cards? Are they going to bluff more? People who play poker a lot often talk a lot about building kind of a model of the opponent, which is essentially a level...what level is this person playing? [INAUDIBLE:  0:29:11] be pointed out, much like in the 2/3 of the average game, if you kind of over play your opponent, as if they’re really...for example, if you think they won’t fall for a bluff, you may not bluff enough. So, you’re kind of leaving money on the table. It’s also a cool game from a psychological point of view because if you play face-to-face you may have all kinds of information conveyed by facial expressions, which is something that neuroscientists have studied for a long time, including with animals. Of course, there’s that evil poker face which is related to what we call ‘emotional regulation’. You know, you have really great cards, and you don’t want to show that in your face, or you have terrible cards and you don’t want to show that in your face. And the concept of tells, in other words, only a certain amount of emotions can be well-regulated by us. So, unless you’re a sociopath, or a fantastic actor, it may be hard to control your emotions fully. So, somebody can really figure out what your tell is when you have terrific cards over hours and hours of watching you, and might be able to infer your hidden information, or what we call ‘private information’ in game theory, from what’s on your face, or from your fingers tapping, or brushing your hair, or so forth. 

Matt:	I personally definitely would advocate you studying poker. I think that’d be fascinating, and I’d love to dig into that research at some point.

Dr. Colin Camerer:	Usually, and especially at places like Caltech, we have a lot of freedom to study what we're interesting in, and the nice thing about poker is I don't think we'd have any trouble getting volunteers to play. And, of course, there's lots of online data. There's no shortage of interest in and ways in which you can dig into poker as a neuroscientific, psychological kind of test bed. And, of course, probably lot of the basic processes are, you know, like bluffing or mind-reading or face-reading, happen in other kinds of things, like bargaining, and other things that are important in political science and economics and everyday life.

Matt:	I'm curious going back a little to the level-k model of behavior. Why do you think people get stuck in level one or level two of strategic thinking?

Dr. Colin Camerer:	Well, one variable that doesn't predict perfectly, but it is correlated, the correlations are around 0.3 or 0.4, where zero is no correlation at all and plus-one is perfect, and in these kind of social science type data, we rarely get plus-ones. So, 0.3 or 0.4 is not too bad. And anyway, a variable that's correlated about 0.3 or 0.4 with steps of reasoning is working memory. And so, working memory is basically, you know, I read you a list of digits--four, three, four, six, one--and then you have to quickly remember how long the list was and get the digits correct in order. And so, some people can remember five or six digits. That would be a pretty short working memory span. Can people can remember eight or nine. And working memory, how many things can you kind of keep track of, turns out to be a pretty good, solid but modest correlate of lots of types of intelligence and ability to be cognitively flexible, and also the number of steps of reasoning you took. So, people with more working memory tend to make choices that are consistent with level two reasoning. So, if I looked at the zero to 100 game, and I looked at people picking around 50 and around 33 and around 22 or lower, or someone like you picking one--which is a good guess if you're playing highly sophisticated people, but not for the first time--you probably would get a nice correlation, a modest but positive correlation between the number of things people can keep in mind like numbers and then how many steps of thinking they do when they're thinking about games. 

Matt:	Changing gears a little bit, I'm curious. One of the things you talked about, and you may have touched on this earlier, is the idea of the theory of mind circuit. Can you extrapolate on that a little bit?

Dr. Colin Camerer:	Sure. So, this is an idea that actually came originally from animal research starting in 1978. There were some beautiful but very early studies with chimpanzees, and the primatologists, called Premack and Woodruff and others, were interested in whether chimpanzees have an idea that another animal could be thinking about something differently than they are. And so, shortly after that, some philosophers actually suggested a really clever test for theory of mind, which is called the false belief test, and the idea is...often it's done with children, with a kind of storyboard, or you could make a little video. But I think I can...hopefully I can describe it well enough that people can get the idea, or they can Google and learn more. And the false belief test [INAUDIBLE 00:33:50], so you see a little cartoon storyboard. Sally-Anne goes into the kitchen and takes a cookie out of a cookie jar. She leaves. Her mom comes in and takes the cookies out of the cookie jar for some reason. Maybe they're melting because it's hot, like it is now in Philadelphia, and she puts the cookies in the refrigerator. Closes the cookie jar lid. And, of course, Sally-Anne doesn't see that, because she went outside. The mom leaves. Sally-Anne comes back. The question is, where does she look for the cookies? And so, if you follow the storyboard, you know that the cookies are in the refrigerator, but if you have theory of mind, you have the capacity to know that Sally-Anne thinks the cookies are in the cookie jar, because you saw something--the cookies being moved from the cookie jar to the refrigerator--that you know she didn't see. And it turns out when children are two or three, they will typically say, "Oh, I should look in the refrigerator." And the reason is the kids know something, which is where the cookies are, and they can't imagine that somebody else doesn't know it. So, they think the cookie goes in the refrigerator. Sally-Anne must know there are cookies in the refrigerator. So, they're not able to maintain a concept of something being true where the cookies are, and somebody else having a false belief. And, as the kids get older, typically around five years old... And this is a very solid finding from many different cultures, and it doesn't seem to matter whether the kids are illiterate or in a developing country. There's been studies in several different continents, including Africa and Australia, and at around five years of age, the kids realize, "Oh, you know, I know the cookies are in the refrigerator, but Sally-Anne thinks they're in the cookie jar." And so, that's the correct answer. So, this test, and a number of other ones, have shown that there seems to be a somewhat distinct mental circuit called mentalizing your theory of mind circuit. It involves dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, which is sort of right in the center of your forehead, maybe an inch or two above your eyebrows, temporal parietal junction, which is kind of back in the temple, and areas in what's called the medial temporal lobe, and also regions of singular cortex, which is a kind of part in the center of the brain. 

	And so, another way to student mentalizing, which is shifting to the neuroscience, is some colleagues of mine have developed what they call the why-how test. And so, you might show, for example, a picture of somebody inserting a screwdriver into a toaster oven, and the how question is, "How are they holding a screwdriver?" Well, left hand, right hand. And that doesn't really require any theory of mind. It doesn't require you to think about the intention of the person or what's in the person's head. It's just a physical activity. So, that does not require theory of mind. The why question is, "Why are they using a screwdriver in the toaster oven?" And the answer might be it's broken or they're trying to get the toast out or something like that. That requires mentalizing. It requires to think about the person's intention, why are they motivated to do things in that way. And so, if you show people a series of why questions and a series of how questions, and you ask which areas of the brain are differentially active when they're figuring out why versus how, you get a nice clear map of what's called this mentalizing network. And a few studies have linked that to game theory, so that people who are doing more strategic thinking, like picking a lower number in the zero to 100 game, or presumably other games, or people who say, "Wow, there was no movie review. That's probably bad news, because I think the studios know if it's good or not, and it's bad, they don't show it to critics." So, they're making a strategic inference about the knowledge that another mind has -- in this case, the studio. And so, there's some evidence that more activity in this mentalizing region is associated with more strategic thinking, in terms of these level-k steps. Some of your listeners, again, will know, one of the reasons people became very interested in this mentalizing circuit is that children who are autistic tend to be slower to get the right answer in the false belief tasks, and the ideas that are part of autism is that, not necessarily a full inability, but a kind of weakness, or what clinicians call a deficit, in the ability to think that other people know things or think things that are different than what you know. So, the weak theory of mind is thought to be associated with autism. That's somewhat debated, because these things are never quite that simple, but the first couple decades of research, I think, are pretty solid about the existence of theory of mind and mentalizing and where it seems to be in the brain. And some of the medical questions about autism are a little more up in the air.

Matt:	You mentioned chimpanzees. Tell me a little bit about the strategic differences between human and chimpanzee brains, and are we smarter than chimps?

Dr. Colin Camerer:	So, we've done a little bit of work on that, and first, any time you work with animals--and the same thing with children, actually--it's harder to make very solid conclusions, because we can't ask the chimpanzees questions and we're never absolutely sure that they understand what we're trying to do. And also, the chimpanzees are usually motivated to do experiments by little cubes of food. So, if they're just not hungry, they're going to look like they're dumb. But it's not that they're dumb, it's that they're not competing for a reward. So, subject to that caveat, my collaborator [INAUDIBLE 00:38:58] who works in Japan, has a theory of what he calls the cognitive trade-off hypothesis. And the idea is kind of a very simple one evolutionarily, which is in the chimpanzee's natural ecology, it's really important for them to be able to play hide and seek games and to keep track of predators and prey and to do certain kinds of rudimentary strategic thinking. So, for example, if a bunch of fruit falls from a tree, it's really helpful if they can keep track of where the different pieces of fruit might've gone and where they are. And that takes a certain kind of working memory, right? Instead of a string of digits, like we talked about earlier, one, six, seven, the working memory that the chimps need is spatial working memory. You know, where did all this stuff go? And if they can do that better than other chimps, they can run and get food more quickly. So, you need some evidence that, especially with training, the chimpanzees are really good at spatial working memory, and the way he does it experimentally is to show them a bunch of numbers on a screen, like 1, 4, 3, 2, 6, in different places of the computer screen, for 200 milliseconds, which is very quick. You can just barely see the number. And then the numbers disappear and are replaced by black blocks, and in order to get a food reward, the chimp has to press the black blocks, which correspond to the numbers in order. So, wherever the digit 1 was originally has to press that box first, and then if the next digit was 2, in order, he has to press that, and if the next digit was a 4, he has to press that. And you can see on their website at the Primate Research Institute, called PRI, you can see some videos of this. The highly-trained chimps who do this thousands and thousands of times--they get really good at it--are really good. They're really good. With 200 milliseconds' exposure and a lot of training with five or six digits in a sequence, they can get about 80 or 90 percent correct. And people actually really aren't as good, although it's a little controversial, because it's hard to get human beings to do it for 10,000 trials. So, there's very few cases where people have been as trained as the chimpanzees. Anyway, so that motivated the idea that maybe the chimps are actually just really good, better than us, at keeping track of sequences of information that resemble something like fruits falling in the forest that's useful for them and their adaptation. And, by the way, the cognitive trade-off part comes in in the following way. So, the chimps are basically kind of like kids up until age two or three, and so a lot of the play they do among...the chimps playing, with chimps, kids with kids, is, you know, play that's kind of like practicing for strategic interactions or games that probably had some adaptive value as they were growing up. So, they play hide and seek, or the chimps are often...status dominance is very important for them, so we'll kind of wrestle and play fight to see who's stronger. And the difference in humans is, once children start to talk, a lot of their mental attention and probably brain matter is now solely devoted to this amazing tool which is called language. And also, children will shift over at age two or three or four to what's called group play. So, kids who were little would just play by themselves. Like, you get a bunch of kids in a room, and they're all sitting and playing completely independently, like little assembly line workers. When they start to talk, then they can start to play much more interesting games that involve talking to one another and bluffing and things like that. But the chimps never advance to that next stage. So, in a way, they get a lot more practice in their playtime in games that may require a certain kind of working memory, like hide and seek. "Where did that person run off to? I'm going to go look for them there." Or, "Where did somebody hide last time? I'm going to switch to a different location so that they'll go to the old location and not the new one." 

And so, [INAUDIBLE 00:42:41] hypothesis is that the chimps get this kind of endless childhood of practice in games that involve working memory and hide and seek. And so, we actually did some experiments with chimpanzees where they don't actually play hide and seek, but they see a little computer screen. It's basically an iPad with gorilla glass, or chimpanzee glass, so they can't smash it, and a little light comes up and you either press on the left or the right. And there are two chimpanzees actually next to each other in a glass cubicle, and for different various reasons, we used mother and sibling pairs, so it's like a mother and a little son, a mother, little son, one mother, a little girl, chimpanzees. And one of the chimpanzees is the hider, which means they want to pick left when the other person picks right. And so, they both see two separate screens, and they're picking at the same time. And so, the hider gets a food reward if they mismatch. "If I hide, I pick left, you pick right. Ha, as if you didn't catch me." The seeker gets a food reward if they match. You know, so if they both choose left, food reward for the seeker. The hider gets nothing. And, when they play this game hundreds and hundreds of time for food, two things happen which are interesting. One is that their choices, they seem to do a better job of keeping track of what the other chimpanzee has done in the past and then respond to that. So, if you're a seeker and you see the other guy has picked left, left, left, they switch to left more quickly. They're kind of learning and they're recognizing patterns. And the other thing is that when you plot the percentage of times they can choose left and right, remember from rock paper scissors, in these games, if you alter how much food you get for different combinations. Like, if I'm a seeker and I choose left and you choose left, ha, now I get three apple cubes. If I choose right and you choose right, I still get food, but I only get one apple cube. If you move around how much, from these different configurations of choices, you can change the mathematical predictions of the Nash equilibrium game theory. And it turns out that if you make a graph, the chimpanzees as a group, if you average across the six different chimps, there's three pairs, one playing hide or one playing the seeker, the chimpanzees are incredibly close to theory. I mean, I claim... I know a lot about this, but maybe not everything. I'm sure not everything, and there's always new studies coming along. But I've said this to several game theory audiences, and no one has ever said, "I've found an interesting exception to your claim," that the chimpanzees, as a group of just the six chimps, come about as close to these predictions of the Nash equilibrium, the balance of left and right play, as any group we've ever seen. And it might be just a fluke, because there's only six. It might be that they're trained a lot. They do this for hundreds of times and they're very motivated. They do it when they're a little bit hungry, so they're motivated to eat. Or maybe they have this special skill, so maybe that the chimps are actually a little better than us at this special type of game that involves hiding and seeking and, most importantly, keeping track of what your opponent has done the last few times.

Matt:	So, in that study, you had some human groups also either compete against them or just measure their activity, and they were further away from the game theoretical Nash equilibrium than the chimps.

Dr. Colin Camerer:	That's correct. And, in fact, for robustness, we did with a group of people in Japan, and they actually used the exact same image. So, they used the same type of iPad and pressing. So, it's not that we give them instructions that are a little bit different. The chimps, we don't really tell them anything verbally. They just have to learn it by trial and error. But we also have a group of African people who worked at a chimpanzee reserve in West Africa, and the difference with them was, well, first of all, we didn't use the computers there. We didn't have them. But we had them play with kind of bottle caps, and they could play with the bottle cap up or down, and that represented kind of like left or right, and one of them wanted to match the other person's bottle cap and one of them wanted to mismatch. And the advantage of Africa was people are poor, and so we could pay them what was a typical amount of money for Americans, but in terms of purchasing power, it's a lot of money. So, sometimes with these experiments, we would prefer that whoever's participating in an experiment is motivated by money so that they're paying attention and they continue to think. And so, the Africans made the equivalent of, in half an hour, 45 minutes of playing a couple hundred times with each other, they made the equivalent in U.S. purchasing power of maybe $150. So, you know, and you could tell by watching them, they were kind or really into this. This is sort of pretty important. But even then, their patterns and their data looked very much like the Japanese people, even though the literacy levels are different and they're from two different continents and their genetic material's probably a little bit different, and their incentives were quite different. But, if you plot the human groups, the two human groups, Japanese and Africans look quite similar, and then the chimps are just off in this land of their own, within 1% of where the mathematical prediction says they should be.

Matt:	So, for listeners who want to dig into not only that, but just game theory more generally, and some of the things we've talked about today, what resources would you recommend that they check out? Books, websites, etc.

Dr. Colin Camerer:	I think one that's sometimes used as an undergraduate text, so it's not too technical and it's well-written, is by Avinash Dixit -- D-I-X-I-T. He actually has a book with Barry Nalebuff, so I'll just give you his last name, since it's easier to spell it. Remember, it's Avinash Dixit -- D-I-X-I-T. So, he actually wrote a kind of popular book, and he also has a textbook, which is often used to teach undergraduates that are kind of not... You can teach game theory, as you might imagine, and it's sometimes taught this way in economics and even computer science and engineering in an extremely mathematical way, but it's really a sort of storytelling about human behavior with some mathematical structure on it. So, the Dixit book with Nalebuff is kind of a chatty, fun introduction with lots of examples. And he has another book. I believe it's with Skeath--S-K-E-A-T-H--that's more like a textbook you would use in a class, but not too mathematical. There are lots of very mathematical books, one by Roger Myerson, who is a Nobel laureate. And I have a book called Behavioral Game Theory, which, again, is not meant for a popular audience, but a lot of people have read it and told me they like parts of it. And it's called Behavioral Game Theory, and that's aimed at, say, advanced undergrads who know a little bit about game theory, but they're mostly just interested in how do people, and sometimes children or chimpanzees, actually play these games, and other principles like this, level-k thinking, besides equilibrium thinking. What are the different kinds of mathematical ways we approach this. And so, I hope... My book, unfortunately, is not a trade book. It's a university press book, so it's not very cheap, but there probably are used copies on Amazon that are not as highly-priced as textbooks usually are. And, again, it's not written... I didn't make a big effort like with Dixit's books to reach a big audience, but I hope at least some of your listeners who are willing to put with a little bit more math would find it interesting. Anyway, there are a bunch of books, although there isn't... Unlike Daniel Kahneman's book, Thinking Fast and Slow, there hasn't been a really great, fun game theory book written with lots of cool stories. Maybe I'll write one someday or somebody else will. But so far, Avinash Dixit's book, I think, is the best one.

Matt:	And what is one piece of homework that you would give listeners?

Dr. Colin Camerer:	Well, I think, you know... Abraham Lincoln, I think, said, "Think twice as much about the other fellow as about yourself." And so, the usual kind of mistake people make is to think about what they can get out of something and not to sufficiently think, what motivates the other person? What are they likely to do? If I'm very tough on negotiation, will I walk away? Yes or no. If I'm really easy in negotiation, something could happen. And so, the level zero players that we're talking about, by definition, are not doing anything strategically thinking. They're not saying, "Why is somebody doing this? What is their motive? What do they know that I don't know?" And so, often, a little bit of analysis like that goes a pretty long way.

Matt:	Where can people find you online?

Dr. Colin Camerer:	On Twitter, my Twitter is CFCamerer. C-F-C-A-M-E-R-E-R. And I do have a website, although it's not up to date particularly recently, and I haven't written... I'm on Facebook, but I don't post very regularly. Twitter, I usually comment on certain things, and I also try to... If I come across a recent research paper, sometimes they're quite technical and sometimes they're more...you know, there's a fun, really instant, interesting takeaway. I'll kind of use it to advertise, sometimes, my own research and other papers I think that people who are kind of interested in science at the level of your listeners might find fun to read.

Matt:	Well, Colin, this has been a fascinating conversation, and I just wanted to say thank you so much for being on The Science of Success.

Dr. Colin Camerer:	My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck with Mark Manson

In this episode we discuss how to escape the feedback loop from hell, the paradoxical idea of embracing negative experiences, why struggle creates meaning, how discover the false values underpinning your worldview, and how to cultivate the ability to sustain and handle adversity with Mark Manson.

Mark is a blogger, author and entrepreneur. Most well-known for his site markmanson.net, where he writes personal development advice that doesn't suck. He also wrote a book called The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck. It doesn't suck, either.

We discuss:

• Alan Watt’s Backwards Law (and why its so important)

• How to escape the Feedback Loop From Hell

• The paradoxical idea of embracing negative experiences

• How your mind invents problems for you every day

• Why Mark gives the advice “don’t try"

• How to release the judgement of your own emotions

• The difference between indifference and “not giving a f*ck"

• The biggest “false values” you cling to that create unhappiness in your life

• Why "entitlement" is the idea that you deserve happiness and don’t have to struggle for it (and how that causes suffering)

• How to cultivate the ability to sustain and handle adversity

• Why the key question to living a better life is NOT “what do I want out of life?"

• Why struggle creates meaning and its important to feel bad sometimes

• What champions and world class performers focus on every day

• Why you should listen to Disappointment Panda

• Why pain is required for growth

• And much more!

If you are dealing with a challenge and can't figure out what to do next - listen to this episode! 
Warning this episode has some profanity!

Thank you so much for listening!

Please SUBSCRIBE and LEAVE US A REVIEW on iTunes! (Click here for instructions on how to do that).

SHOW NOTES, LINKS, & RESEARCH

• [Book] The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson

• [Mark’s Website] markmanson.net

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Matt:	Today, we have another awesome guest on the show: Mark Manson. Mark is a blogger, author, and entrepreneur, most well-known for his site markmanson.net, where he writes about personal development advice that doesn’t suck. He also recently wrote a book called The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck. It doesn’t suck either. Mark, welcome to The Science of Success.

Mark:	Thanks for having me, Matt. It’s good to be here.

Matt:	Well, we’re very excited to have you on. So, tell us a little bit about your background. 

Mark:	So, I started in 2008, I believe. I started a couple internet businesses, internet projects, and at the time I was, back in 2008, 2009, blogs were all the rage, so if you wanted to have a website and you wanted to get traffic, everybody was always screaming at you to start a blog. Blogs were the way of the future. So, I started some blogs, and it turned out it took me about two years to figure out that I wasn’t actually very good at internet businesses, but I was really good at blogging, and so I just kept writing. And I soon kind of found myself in this weird situation where lots of people would email me for questions and advice. So, I started just kind of writing about life advice and tried to bring a little bit of a new take... I wanted to be a self-help site that wasn’t self-help, and that was always a weird, interesting challenge. But things started to take off around 2012, 2013, and here I am today, what I’m still doing.

Matt:	Well, I really enjoyed almost the irreverence of your book, and I started laughing immediately. Even the very first chapter, I believe, is called “Don’t Try”.

Mark:	[Laughs] Yeah.

Matt:	Tell the listeners that story.

Mark:	So, the “Don’t try”, it’s actually a reference to Charles Bukowski, and I open up the book with him because he’s basically...he’s, like, the worst life example you would ever want to give anybody. The guy was a total alcoholic. He wasted all of his money. He was constantly getting arrested and doing inappropriate things. He would famously get drunk at his own poetry readings and just start insulting people in the crowd. But it’s funny because he actually, after struggling as a writer for 30 years, he made it big. He sold millions of copies of his books and he because a quote-unquote “success”. So, I always found it interesting that kind of... His story has always fascinated me in that on paper, he’s this huge literary success, but as a person, he’s like... You probably wouldn’t even want to get coffee with him, because you would just be so repelled by his personality. But the interesting thing about him is despite this kind of classic American dream story of him persisting for 30 years and writing poem, poem, and poem and stories and stories and stories and finally breaking through in his fifties and becoming a huge success, his last message—and actually, it’s engraved on his tombstone—is “Don’t try”. And I wanted to put that out there in the book because one of the central points I try to make is that if you’re always trying to be happier, that simple act of trying is just reminding yourself that you’re not good enough already, and if you’re always trying to be more confident or you’re always trying to be more liked by people, then the simple act of trying is going to reinforce the idea that you’re not already. And so, there’s this weird paradox with self-help stuff where the more people chase a result, in many ways, the more they prevent their own psychology from achieving it. And so, I wanted to lay that out in the first chapter and basically introduce to people the idea that this book is going to be a self-help book that basically tells you, “Don’t go after more, but rather give a fuck about less. Let go of things. Stop trying so hard, and just focus on the few most crucial and important things.

Matt:	I love the idea, and I’m curious to kind of hear more about it, the concept that focusing on the positive reinforces the negative. Tell me a little bit more.

Mark:	So, there’s this idea. I originally heard about it from Alan Watts. He called it the Backwards Law, but you see it pop up in a lot of places, which is the more you pursue some sort of positive experience, that very act of pursuing it is itself a negative experience. So, if you’re always trying to be richer, like, make more money, then what you’re doing is you’re creating a state in yourself of always feeling like you don’t have enough. If you’re trying to be more beautiful or better looking all the time, then you’re always creating this state within yourself where you feel like you’re not beautiful or good looking enough. Conversely, the acceptance of a negative experience, like accepting some sort of pain and struggle in your life, is itself a very liberating and positive experience. So, that moment when you kind of realize, like, you know what? Maybe I’m not going to be the next billionaire, but that’s okay. I don’t need to be a billionaire to have a happy and successful life. That thought in and of itself, even though a big portion of our cultural narrative would call that failure or giving up, that is a very liberating experience, and it’s actually far more emotionally healthy, I think, than the alternative. And so, the whole book kind of starts out with this idea of a negative approach to improving your life. You don’t want to improve your life by gaining more positive experience. You improve your life through becoming okay with negative experience.

Matt:	I’m a huge Alan Watts fan, by the way, and longtime listeners will know that. So, changing directions a little bit, I’m curious: What is the feedback loop from hell, and how would you describe it and how can you possibly sort of short-circuit it or break out of it?

Mark:	So, the feedback loop from hell is... It’s this idea where... It essentially stems from when we judge our own emotions. So, let’s say you’re a person that gets anxious very often and you would like to be less anxious. Well, what often starts to happen with people who desperately want to be less anxious is they start to become anxious about being anxious. So, they start worrying about the fact that they worry so much. Or you’ll see a lot of people who...they’ll get angry at the fact that they’re always so angry, or they’ll start to feel guilty because they feel guilty all the time. And because we judge these emotions as bad and unacceptable, we start entering into this spiral where we keep just reinforcing that emotion over and over. And then, of course, modern society, it doesn’t really help in the fact that if you’re feeling a little bit insecure about your life or you feel like maybe you’re not living up to your potential or whatever, the second you go on Facebook or the second you go on YouTube, you’re just bombarded with all these people getting married and buying a new car and getting a new house. So, there’s this constant kind of reminder of “you’re not good enough” or “it’s not okay for things to suck sometimes”. And I jokingly say, I say, you know, the feedback loop from hell, I think it’s kind of reaching a fever pitch in our culture. There’s this constant focus on living up to these unrealistic expectations all the time that is really harming us and harming our emotional health. And I say that not giving a fuck, it’s going to save everybody. That’s the only way out of the feedback loop from hell. The only way out of the feedback loop from hell is being like, “You know, I’m feeling really anxious today, but I don’t really give a fuck. Being anxious, it happens. That’s just part of life and I’m going to go on and do the things I need to do anyway. It’s releasing that judgment of your own emotions so that you don’t fall into this spiral of just experiencing it more and more.

Matt:	So, the idea of not giving a fuck, there’s different ways that you can sort of interpret that. Some people listening might have a totally opposite opinion in the sense that, you know, well, no, I really think that you should give a fuck, that you should care deeply. You make a really important distinction in the book between the idea of indifference, being indifferent to everything, versus not giving a fuck. Can you explain that distinction?

Mark:	Yeah. The first impression people always have when they hear not giving a fuck is that it’s basically this really cool guy or girl who’s just kicking back, day drinking at work or something, it’s like, no fucks given. And it’s a cultural reference. You know, not giving a fuck, it’s a funny kind of linguistic term that is thrown around a lot these days. But one of the first things I try to point out in the book is I say, like, “Look. What we’re really talking about here is we’re talking about values and meaning.” I mean, I’ve been jokingly telling people that I really wanted to write a book about values and what people choose to care about and how that matters, but nobody would buy a book on values, so I decided to call it...to write a book about not giving a fuck. But it’s basically... It’s kind of like a trick. It’s like a Trojan horse to get the reader to start thinking about these deeper questions of, like, what am I choosing...what am I giving a fuck about in my life, and why am I choosing to care so much about that? One of the first things I’d point out in the first chapter is I say, you know, it’s impossible to not give a fuck about anything. We all have to care about something. The problem is that most of us are either not fully aware of what we’re caring about or where we’re finding meaning, or we’re not consciously... Like, we didn’t choose... Like, our values were given to us. They were just picked up from pop culture or whatever. We’re not consciously choosing what’s actually important in our lives. We’re just going along with what everybody’s always told us. So, the real meat of the book is actually...it’s a question of what do you value and how did you come to your values and are your values helping you or are they hurting you. Are they bringing more happiness and joy to your life or are they creating more misery?

Matt:	So, for somebody who’s listening out here and they’re unsure maybe even what their values are or how to discover them, what would be a way to kind of take the first step on embarking down that path?

Mark:	The first step is to always look at what you emotionally react to. Your emotions are essentially just feedback mechanisms for what you decide is important in life. So, if you are getting blindingly angry that, you know, your pizza came with the wrong toppings, that is a reflection of what you are choosing to find important in life, and perhaps that’s something that you should reevaluate and decide maybe, you know what? Maybe my pizza’s not that important. Or often, you know, what I talk about is that people who are extremely emotionally volatile around really superficial things, the problem is not that they’re superficial people. The problem is that they simply don’t have something more important to give a fuck about. I have a joke in the book about an old woman who screams at a cashier because they won’t accept her coupons, and that’s a true story, by the way. I know of the woman that that was based on. But I remember when I saw that, I was like... What really made an impression on me wasn’t the fact that this woman is just being really mean over some coupons. It was that this woman probably doesn’t have anything else going on in her life, and that is actually the problem. So, the first step is always look at what you’re responding to emotionally, and the intensity of the emotion is always proportional to basically how many fucks you’re giving or how important the thing is to you.

Matt:	So, from what you’ve seen, what are some examples of negative values that people cling to that might end up causing self-sabotage or unhappiness or whatever we’re looking to avoid?

Mark:	You know, there’s a couple big and obvious ones that everybody’s probably going to be familiar with. You know, so one of them is impressing other people. Like, we’ve all learned from many different places that if you’re trying to impress other people all the time, it’s just not going to... Things are not going to go well. Even if you do impress them, you’re not really generating any sort of significant meaning or happiness in your life. So, that’s a bad value that a lot of people adopt. Another one is chasing material success. We all know... We’ve all seen time and time again that being fixated on just earning a lot of money for the sake of earning a lot of money doesn’t necessarily bring a lot of joy and happiness to your life. There are a couple others maybe that aren’t as obvious that I tackle in the book. One is feeling good or pleasure or avoiding pain. I try to make a strong argument in the book that this constant needing to be distracted or pleased, whether it’s by just opening 20 tabs on the internet and looking at cat GIFs, or having a waiter at the restaurant who does absolutely everything you say. I think our culture is getting a little bit caught in a trap where we’re starting to feel very entitled and pampered, and this is a pretty harmful value to hold onto, this idea that you need to experience pleasure...like, feel good all the time. I think it’s important to feel bad. Like, feeling bad has...it has an evolutionary purpose, it has an emotional purpose, it has... Meaning and importance in our life requires there to be some sort of struggle or a sense of challenge. And so, if we avoid that struggle and challenge, then we’re always just going to feel a lack of meaning and purpose.

Matt:	The idea that it’s important to feel bad, tell me more about that and the concept that struggle creates meaning.

Mark:	So, when people think about happiness, there’s two things that they’re talking about, and these two things get confused a lot. You have pleasure and then you have fulfillment, and I believe that in positive psychology they refer to it as pleasure and fulfillment. And pleasure is just stuff that immediately feels good. So, if you want to experience pleasure, it’s actually very easy. You can just go buy a bunch of heroin and go crazy. But just because you’re feeling that pleasure, doesn’t mean you’re actually bringing any sort of lasting fulfillment or happiness into your life. In fact, oftentimes, chasing pleasure does the opposite. You bring short-term enjoyment but you sacrifice your long-term health and emotional health. Fulfillment, on the other hand, is not always pleasurable. So, fulfillment comes from a sense that you’re doing something that’s important, you’re doing something that is a really significant use of your time on this world. And so, a good example of something that’s fulfilling but not pleasurable is, say, something like raising kids. You know, if you ask any parents of a newborn child, like, how they’re feeling lately, they’re under-slept, they’re constantly stressed out, their whole life has been thrown into disarray. It’s not very pleasurable, but at the same time, it’s one of the most fulfilling and meaningful experiences of their life. And so, you get this kind of weird tension or this weird kind of feeling both things at the same time. The interesting thing is that pleasure comes and goes no matter what you do. You can always find pleasure very easily. It’s the fulfillment and meaning that’s very hard to find, and that’s what sustains us over the long term. That’s what keeps us feeling good about ourselves, feeling good about the world, waking up with a sense of purpose. But, to achieve that fulfillment, you need to be willing to feel bad. You need to be willing to struggle. There’s no such thing as a meaningful thing that is just given to you. For something to feel meaningful and important, there has to be some sense of sacrifice or that you went through something or that you overcame some sort of adversity. And so, that’s why I harp so much in the book about personal growth shouldn’t be about overcoming your struggles or getting rid of your struggles. It should be choosing the struggles that matter to you. Life is always going to be full of problems, so you should just choose the problems that feel meaningful and important to you. Because once they’re meaningful and important, you’re actually glad you have those problems. Like, you’re actually glad to take on them and work on them and do something about them. You’re not trying to avoid them all the time.

Matt:	I think that’s such an important insight, the idea that there’s no such thing as a meaningful thing that is given to you. In order to create meaning, you have to go through some sort of struggle, you have to go through some sort of challenge, you have to overcome some kind of problem or obstacle in order for something to truly be meaningful. If it’s given to you, then it essentially...you don’t really care about it. It doesn’t have any true meaning to you.

Mark:	Yeah. You take it for granted.

Matt:	So, going back to the example you used earlier of the old lady with the coupons, one of the concepts you talk about that I really enjoyed in the book was the idea that the mind invents problems when it doesn’t have any real problems or real struggles to deal with. Tell me a little bit more about that.

Mark:	That was actually... I heard this idea. It was from an artist who said that... And it was funny because I think he was giving an interview that had nothing to do with life or happiness. He was talking about something completely unrelated, but just as an aside he was like, “Yeah, when you don’t have any problems to deal with, usually your mind creates some for you.” And I think that is... It’s such a profound insight into our own psychology, and I think that’s something that we’re experiencing a lot today. We all kind of make fun of our parents’ generation or our grandparents’ generation that was like, “Oh, when I was your age I used to walk seven miles to school,” and all this stuff. But it really is a natural facet of human psychology to... We adapt very quickly to what makes us comfortable and we begin to expect it, and when we don’t receive it, we get cranky and we start feeling entitled to it. I think it’s an important thing to understand about ourselves, that we will always look... I mean, it’s part of our innate desire to have that meaning in our lives, so that if we don’t actually have anything meaningful to struggle for, we’ll go around and start looking for struggles to give us that sense of meaning. And if we haven’t picked something that is actually worthwhile, like, I don’t know, saving kids in Africa or something, we’ll start picking struggles like not being able to cash coupons at the grocery store or whatever. And so, this comes back to this whole idea of you have a limited amount of fucks to give in your life, and one of the most important questions you can ever ask yourself is, “Where are you going to allot those fucks? Where are you going to... You have limited energy to care about something, so what are you going to care about? Are you going to care about the coupons or are you going to care about something greater, more significant, more important?” And that kind of is the... I don’t want to say the ultimate question of life, but I just think that it’s... People don’t realize how much that questioning of their own values affects all this other stuff. It affects how you determine whether you’re successful or not. It affects, like, where you seek happiness. It affects your relationships. That was kind of rambly, but... [Laughs] I hope it came through there. 

Matt:	No, definitely. I think that makes a lot of sense.

Mark:	Okay.

Matt:	So, you’ve touched a couple different times on the concept of entitlement. Tell me about how people become entitled and what entitlement means to you.

Mark:	I believe that entitlement... So, I have a very broad definition of entitlement in the book. You know, when you hear the word entitlement, you think of, like, spoiled brats who have never had to deal with anything in their lives and they expect everything to be handed to them. That is certainly one type of entitlement, but what I see as entitlement and kind of the way I describe it in the book is the sense that you deserve to feel good, you deserve happiness without actually having to struggle for it. And this is one of the things that kind of worries me and I touch upon in different places throughout the book, about conventional self-help and the culture at large, is that we’re constantly being sold this idea that we all deserve to be happy without having to work for it, and that plays out in a bunch of different ways. It’s not necessarily just the spoiled brat. You get a lot of entitled people who start to fashion themselves as victims of everything around them, and so you kind of get this victimhood entitlement. You get a little bit of... You get entitlement in people who start exhibiting a lot of addictive behaviors. You know, maybe they get addicted to partying five nights a week, and the way they rationalize it to themselves is, “Oh, well, I deserve to be happy. I deserve to do this,” even though they’re losing their jobs over and over and they’re not able to pay rent. And entitlement, really, it just comes from this deep-seated inability to handle adversity. It’s the most important skill in life, is really just to be able to sustain adversity and move on despite it. And if people are being taught over and over that adversity’s not their fault, they don’t deserve to have to deal with adversity, they deserve to feel good, then they never develop this skill, and so when it happens, they’re just unprepared.

Matt:	So, how do you cultivate the ability to handle adversity?

Mark:	I mean, adversity is going to happen to matter what you do, so I think the first step is to just accept that. Like, shit happens. Things are going to suck sometimes no matter what you do, no matter... Like, one of my lines from the book is “A starving kid in Africa has money problems. Warren Buffet also has money problems. It’s just that Warren Buffet’s money problems are much better than the starving kid in Africa.” And that’s just true. The problems in your life will never stop, will never go away, and so I think the first step is accepting that. The second step is then to take responsibility for those problems, regardless of whether they’re your fault or if it’s unfair or if it’s unjust. We’re all victims at times. We all get screwed over at times, and we all deal with adversity at times, and there needs to be kind of a radical sense of personal responsibility in those situations.

Matt:	I love both pieces of advice, and they’re both ones that I’ve definitely taken to heart, that, one, kind of the acceptance that setbacks and failures are inevitable, and the second is taking total responsibility for owning those problems and facing reality and figuring out what you’re going to do next, and I think those are also really, really key lessons from a couple other books that you may have read as well that listeners may want to check out. One would be The Obstacle is the Way by Ryan Holiday, and another would be Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink. Both of those are great books that kind of dig into that specific idea.

Mark:	Yeah, definitely.

Matt:	So, one of the other things you talk about is is the idea of instead of asking what do you want out of life, you suggest that we ask a different question. What would that question be?

Mark:	The question is, what pain do you want to sustain? And this comes back to the idea that struggles, difficulties, they’re always going to be present in your life. And so, the key question of living a better life, and I guess this is... The subtitle of the book is A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life, so this is that counterintuitive part. Instead of saying, “How do I get rid of my struggles? How do I get rid of my pain?” the question should be, “What pain do I want? What struggles do I want? What difficulties excite me and invigorate me?” You know, I’ve met a lot of people who...maybe they want to start writing or they want to write a book, and they come to me for advice and they say things like, “Well, I try to sit down and I write and then I get really insecure about it so I delete it, and then I hate everything I write, and then I just procrastinate and it’s been six months and I haven’t written anything,” and they look to me for advice, and I always find it difficult to answer those situations because the same problems that they’re avoiding or they don’t like with writing are the exact same problems that I love. Like, I love sitting down for hours and just meticulously picking at a paragraph I wrote or a page I wrote. I get really excited about just spewing thousands of words out onto a page and seeing what comes out. There’s something about that that invigorates me. And actually, in the book, I talk about how originally I wanted to be the musician, and I discovered the hard way that I actually didn’t want to be a musician because I didn’t want to deal with all the problems and struggle that came with being a musician. It’s like, I wanted to be on stage, but I didn’t want to have to deal with practicing and hauling my gear around and playing gigs and not getting paid for them, and so I inevitably quit. And so, I think people look at the question of what they want to do with their life too much in terms of, like, what rewards to they want. Instead they should be looking at it in terms of, like, what struggles do you enjoy, what problems are you good at solving. 

Matt:	That was one of my favorite stories in the whole book, the story of you spending your childhood envisioning being a rock star, and I think you even said it wasn’t a question of if you’d be a rock star, but it was a question of when. And then you sort of slowly had this realization that you might have loved the result, but the process you did not like at all.

Mark:	Yeah, and it was funny. It took me a long... So, I stopped playing music when I was about 20 and I still held onto that dream for years. It wasn’t until I was in my late twenties and my business was doing well and I was loving writing. Like, in the back of my mind I was always like, “Oh yeah, I’m going to do this for a while and then I’m going to go back to music and I’m going to finally start that band that I haven’t started in the last ten years.” It was this story I kept constantly telling myself, and it finally was... You know, in my late twenties I realized, like, it’s just not going to happen, and it’s not going to happen... It wasn’t like a sad realization. I mean, it was a little sad, but it didn’t feel like a failure. It felt very liberating to realize that, to realize that I actually didn’t want it. I liked the fantasy, but I didn’t like the reality, and it’s important to understand the differences between those two things.

Matt:	And you used a great analogy in the book. You talked about the idea that it’s the people who enjoy the struggle are the ones who actually end up achieving the result, and I think... You gave a number of examples, but one of them was just the example of athletes. It’s the people who obsess over practice and are constantly...you know, they want to get out on the field, they want to practice every single day, every single little nuance of their game. Those people aren’t necessarily focused on the end goal of whether it’s winning a Super Bowl or a gold medal in the Olympics or whatever it might be. They’re focused, and what they love doing, is the struggle every single day of practicing and tweaking their diet and everything else.

Mark:	Yeah, and another thing I talk about in the book is this idea of greatness, this idea that...like, to be this great person. I try to bring back humility or being ordinary. I emphasize in the book that it’s important to embrace the fact that almost all of us are pretty average and ordinary at almost everything we do, and there’s another kind of backwards law thing here, where the people who actually do become huge successes, they usually just see themselves as very ordinary. I did an interview a few weeks ago with a guy in the athletics and sports psychology world. He works with coaches and actually with a bunch of Olympic athletes. He had some athletes at the Olympics. And one thing he told me is, he said, you know what’s funny about sprinters, like, even sprinters at the Olympic level, is that they all think they’re slow, all of them. Like, he had never met a single sprinter, even world class sprinters, who was like, “Oh yeah, I’m faster than everybody.” They all think that they’re not that fast and that they need to work harder to be fast again. And I find that absolutely fascinating. And you see this in all sorts of big figures that are held up. Like, Michael Jordan, even when he was winning all these championships, every interview he was like, “Oh, yeah, I need to improve. There’s still a lot of holes in my game. I need to get better.” You look at, like, people like Bill Gates. Even when he was the richest man in the world, he was like, “Oh, Microsoft can be doing so much more. We really missed some opportunities lately.” And I find... I think the outside would just looks at that and is like, “Oh, he’s humble. That’s nice.” You know, but I think there’s something deeper going on there, and that is these people, they don’t buy into their own myths. Like, the myths that are built about them. You know, like society looks at these people and kind of builds a myth out of them. So, it’s like, oh, this was a great person. He was the greatest basketball player who ever lived, or whatever. But the people themselves, they never buy into that myth. They never buy into this idea that they are somehow extraordinary in some way. Because if they did, then they would probably sabotage themselves psychologically. They would probably start becoming entitled and take it for granted and stop working so hard and stop being so curious and innovative, and I’ve always found that really fascinating.

Matt:	And is that the concept in the book that you touch on, you call, I think, the tyranny of exceptionalism? Yeah, the tyranny of exceptionalism.

Mark:	Yeah, and I tie that back into the stuff I was talking about earlier with the internet and social media. Like, one topic I’ve been really fascinated in this year... I touch on it in the book, but I’ve been writing about it more in my blog this last year, is the fact that the internet skews... So, the internet provides so much information for so many people, but because there’s so much information, we have to sort it somehow, and the way it’s getting sorted right now is that typically, only the 0.1% most extraordinary information gets passed around. And in some ways, that’s great. Like, you want to hear about the biggest, most important events. But the problem with that is that most of us spend all day, most of our days in front of a computer, and if all day we’re just getting bombarded with the most extraordinary information, the most extraordinary news, the most extraordinary events both good and bad, it starts to create...like, warp our perception of...I guess of the world, but also, it warps our expectations for ourselves and for other people, and I see this a lot. I get a lot of emails from my readers, and I see this particularly with younger readers. I get a lot of college-age kids who email me, and they seem to have these bizarrely unrealistic expectations for themselves and for life in general, and I just find it a little bit worrying, that effect that it’s possibly having on all of us psychologically, but I think it’s something that needs to be talked about more and people need to be more aware of.

Matt:	Tell me a little bit about the concept of the Disappointment Panda.

Mark:	[Laughs] It’s a superhero, man. [Laughs] So, Disappointment Panda is the superhero I invented in the book, and his superpower is that he tells people uncomfortable truths about themselves. And he literally goes door to door like a Bible salesman and knocks on the door, and the person opens it, and Disappointment Panda’s like, “You know, if you make more money, that’s not going to make your kids love you,” and then he just walks away. [Laughs] And the person’s whole reality gets shattered right then and there. But Disappointment Panda, he’s kind of just like a metaphor for, I guess, I think what we really need these days. I feel like all the classic superheroes, like Superman and Spiderman and Captain America or whatever, they were all created in the ‘30s and ‘40s, and if you look back then, it makes sense. The world was completely falling apart economically. World War II was going on. And so, I think people needed to escape into these ideas that there are these people who could save anything and fix anything. I think today we kind of have the opposite problem going on, where everything’s amazing and easy. We all have flatscreen TVs and can get groceries delivered. But, like, we’re becoming very poor at handling our own problems or just dealing with adversity. And so I feel like if there was a superhero that should exist today, it would be somebody like Disappointment Panda, who, like, just tells people the uncomfortable things that they’re avoiding in their own life, like the problems that are not being dealt with but need to be dealt with.

Matt:	And one of the things... I think we touched on this a little bit earlier, too, but you also talk about the idea that there are sort of biological limits on happiness, and that suffering is, from an evolutionary standpoint, sort of a practical and useful tool, and not something that we should necessarily avoid.

Mark:	Yeah. I mean, pain evolved for a reason. It’s, like, you pick the wrong berry and eat it, and it makes you sick and you vomit for three days. Like, that’s a useful... [Laughs] Like, it’s a horrible experience, but it’s useful. It’s... Pain is biologically or, like, evolutionarily kind of developed. It’s a feedback mechanism that keeps up alive and keeps us healthy, and I think it still operates that way. Like, if you something hurts you, it’s not just happening for no reason. Like, it’s happening... There’s something your body is trying to protect or, like, push you into doing something else or changing something, and for that reason I think people who... I mean, this is one of the big problems I have with all this kind of like positive thinking, or what I call delusional positive thinking, which I separate from just, like... There’s, like, optimism, which is like, hey, I think things are going to go all right, and then there’s delusional positive thinking, which is people who lose their job and convince themselves that it’s because they’re too smart for all their coworkers. The problem with this kind of more delusional positive thinking is that if you just push all of your pain out of your consciousness, then you’re basically eliminating some of the most important feedback mechanisms that your body and your psychology have for informing you of how to grow and how to change, and I think that’s why growth, it just intrinsically requires some degree of pain and discomfort. You know, people talk about comfort zones, and the way to grow is to get outside of your comfort zone. I mean, that’s one way to think about it. I think about it in terms of, like, growth is painful. The way you grow a muscle is it hurts. [Laughs] Like, you go lift heavy weight until it hurts, and then the muscle grows. You know, it’s like... It’s the same for our psychology. It’s the same for our sense of purpose and self-worth. Like, it needs to hurt. You need to go stress it and it needs to hurt for it to get stronger.

Matt:	That’s such an important takeaway, and one of the things that we’ve talked about previously on the podcast is the idea of embracing discomfort. And we... I think we have a whole episode about embracing discomfort and how to sort of expand your sphere of things that are comfortable and how to push past sort of the resistance points where you feel yourself getting really uncomfortable, and why that’s such a critical skill set for growing and improving.

Mark:	Totally.

Matt:	One other question I had for you, and this is something that I personally struggle with: Tell me about how you deal with setting boundaries and the importance of saying no.

Mark:	Ah. So, there’s a chapter in the book; it’s called The Importance of Saying No and it’s actually...it’s the relationships chapter. But, basically, I define, like, a healthy relationship as two people who are both a) willing to say no to each other, and b) willing to hear no from each other. And what’s interesting is I think most people are comfortable with one or the other, they’re not comfortable with both, and I think to have healthy boundaries in a relationship, you need both people to be comfortable with both. So, there’s a lot of people that are comfortable saying no, but they can’t hear no. They flip out and get angry and start blaming the other person. Then you have other people who are comfortable hearing no, but they’re afraid to ever say no because they’re afraid to...that they’re going to impose or that they’re going to hurt the other person or whatever. And the trick is to be able to do both because a relationship is only as healthy as the two individuals that are in it, and if one of the individuals in the relationship is not able to stand up for themselves, define what they need and clearly communicate it without blame or judgment, without holding the other person responsible, then they’re not...they’re not going to get their needs met and it’s going to devolve into kind of this, like, toxic, codependent thing where each person is reliant on the other for their happiness, which is not good. Boundaries essentially... It comes down to taking responsibility for your own emotions and your own problems, and not...not making your partner responsible for them, and then your partner also taking responsibility for their own emotions and problems, and you not taking responsibility for theirs. And this sounds like...really kind of cold and unromantic on the surface, especially with all what I call the “Disney narrative” of relationships. You know, it’s like, oh, I’ll do anything for you or, like, oh, my God, I’m so in love. That is actually not very healthy — like, that level of taking on all of your partner’s emotions and taking responsibility for them as your own. What you need is you need two strong, autonomous individuals who are constantly and consciously opting in to the relationship together, who are expressing their emotions unconditionally, doing things for each other unconditionally, and honoring each other’s feeling without being responsible for them. Like, that is ultimately what creates... Like, that’s... When I talk about boundaries, that’s what I mean, that kind of like...that line of responsibility between two people, and if you can maintain that, I think most relationship problems will resolve themselves.

Matt:	And I think one of the interesting things about that concept is that... You used the example of a romantic relationship, but I think it actually can apply in a lot of contexts — friendships, business relationships, even in many ways. You think about business negotiations. There’s a ton of kind of cross-applications of that framework and that thinking.

Mark:	Yeah, you can definitely have toxic and codependent friendships; you can definitely, definitely have boundary issues in family relationships, but in business as well. I mean, I think one of the things that business does well is that...the fact that you have contracts, is that is essentially, like, a boundary negotiation. It’s like when you enter into a business deal with somebody, you sit down and hammer out the contract, and it’s clear. It’s like this is this person’s responsibility, this is this person’s responsibility, and that is clear. Unfortunately, we’re human, so a lot of times we get lazy or cut corners or just don’t pay attention to agreements because we’re emotional and base a lot of what we say and do on our emotions. And so it doesn’t always play out that way, and so you do get a lot of these kind of, like, toxic situations where people are, like, forfeiting their own responsibility or forcing...blaming somebody else for their own emotions or their own sense of failure.

Matt:	So, what is one piece of homework that you would give to people listening to this episode in terms of sort of concrete steps that they could take to implement some of these ideas in their lives?

Mark:	One thing would be sit down and write down all of the painful things that you enjoy, [Chuckles] which that, like, scrambles a lot of people’s heads, but if you can sit with that and actually come up with some things, it’s pretty illuminating what you... And the funny thing is is that a lot of...a lot of what people enjoy, like, they don’t even realize that it’s painful. Like, they don’t even realize that most people... You know, take, like... It’s like one of my best friends. He’s an amateur bodybuilder and he’ll go spend three hours in the gym just wrecking his body lifting weights. And to him it’s very therapeutic and it... I imagine for him it doesn’t even really occur to him that what he’s going through is a lot of pain, but it is. It is. It’s a pain that he enjoys. And I think we all have something like that in our lives or, if we don’t, then that’s probably a red flag as well. 

Matt:	Where can people find you online?

Mark:	My site’s markmanson.net. Check out... There’s a link at the top for best articles, so you can start there. And the book is called The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life. It’s at all stores, retailers, Amazon, Barnes & Noble — everything. Check it out.

Matt:	And I can definitely say the book is awesome. I really, really enjoyed reading it. There’s a ton of great lessons in there, so I’d definitely recommend listeners check that out. We’ll also have a link to Mark’s website and the book on the show notes page, so you can get that as well. Well, Mark, thank you so much. This has been a fascinating interview and I loved having you on here. Thank you for being on the Science of Success.

Mark:	Thanks, Matt. Great being here.

Master Your Mental Game Like a World Champion with Performance Coach Jared Tendler

In this episode we explore the mental game of world champion performers, examine the emotional issues preventing you from achieving what you want to achieve, how those issues happen in predictable patterns that you can discover and solve, look at why people choke under pressure, and discuss how to build mental toughness with mental game coach Jared Tendler.

Jared is an internationally recognized mental game coach. His clients include world champion poker players, the #1 ranked pool player in the world, professional golfers and financial traders. He is the author of two highly acclaimed books, The Mental Game of Poker 1 & 2, and host of the popular podcast “The Mental Game.”

We discuss:
-The emotional issues preventing you from achieving what you want are happening in predictable patterns, and you can discover them! 
-Why people choke (and what to do about it)
-How to cultivate mental toughness over time
-Why the typical sports psychology advice doesn’t work
-Lessons from 500+ of the best poker players in the world of dealing with mental game
-How high expectations create self sabotage
-Why emotions are the messengers and not the root cause of performance issues
-Why mistakes are an inevitable and important part of the learning process
-The yin and yang of performance and learning
-The characteristics of peak mental performers
-How to deal with “tilt" in poker and the different kinds of “tilt"
-How to use confidence intervals to deal with uncertainty
-And much more!

If you want to improve your mental game - listen to this episode!

Thank you so much for listening!

Please SUBSCRIBE and LEAVE US A REVIEW on iTunes! (Click here for instructions on how to do that).

SHOW NOTES, LINKS, & RESEARCH

• [Book] The Mental Game of Poker by Jared Tendler and Barry Carter

• [Book] The Mental Game of Poker 2 by Jared Tendler and Barry Carter

• [Book] The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg

• [Book] Deep Work by Cal Newport

• [Book] The Feeling of What Happens by Antonio Damasio

• [Book] Fooled by Randomness by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Matt:	In this episode, we explore the mental game of world champion performers; examine the emotional issues preventing you from achieving what you want to achieve; how those issues happen in predictable patterns that you can discover and solve; look at why people choke under pressure; and discuss how to build mental toughness with mental game coach, Jared Tendler. In our previous episode, we explored one of the biggest things disrupting your sleep; examined strategies for getting a better night’s rest; dug into sleep cycles; talked about the 30-day no alcohol challenge; and broke down how to read books more effectively with James Swanwick. If you want to sleep better and be more productive, listen to that episode. Today we have another amazing guest on the show, Jared Tendler. Jared is an internationally recognized mental game coach. His clients include world champion poker players, the number one ranked pool player in the world, professional golfers, and financial traders. He’s the author of two highly acclaimed books: The Mental Game of Poker 1 and 2. And host of the popular podcast, The Mental Game. Jared, welcome of the show.

Jared:	Thanks, man. Good to be here.

Matt:	So, for listeners who may not be familiar with you, tell us a little bit about kind of your story and your background.

Jared:	I was an aspiring professional golfer. I was a kid. Kind of got a little bit of a later start, you know, around 13 to 14 is when I started really asking it seriously. This is kind of pre-Tiger in his heyday. I kind of grew up maybe three to four years behind him in terms of amateur golf, so I’m 38 now. I’m saying that, in part, because if you got started as an aspiring golfer at 13 years old right now, you’re severely behind the eight ball. The game has just become so, so highly competitive. So, I was behind the eight ball 25 years ago, and today it would be even worse. But, got to college, and was able to become a three-time all-American. Played some big national events, and in particular, the US Open qualifier, and was finding myself choking. So, I was having a lot of success in sort of the smaller events, more regional events, but when I was getting to the big stage, I was choking. And, you know, it was really on the cusp of being able to break through, but it was sort of my mental and emotional issues that was blocking me. So, rather than become a professional golfer, I’m not one to just try something just for the sake of trying it, I needed to feel like I actually had a chance of being successful. I went to get a master’s degree in counseling psychology. And then, subsequently got licensed as a traditional therapist. Really, to better understand the reasons why I was choking, and the reasons why I think a lot of athletes, in particular, golfers, that their game doesn’t perform under that kind of pressure as well as they’d like. And the reason I did that is because, what I felt like was the predominant mode of sports psychology at the time, was very, sort of, surface-level. It was, “You’re not focused, you’re losing confidence, you're  getting too anxious. We’re going to teach you how to focus, how to be confident, how to relax in those environments.” It didn't really understand the “Why?” Why was I not confident? Why was my focus elsewhere? Why was I thinking about the future or the past? And I think... To me, that was the, I think the essential question to ask in order to find the real cause of the problem, so that sustainable improvements could be made. So, I made a lot of improvements using the typical sports psychology advice. My game got better, I was certainly performing better by the time I was a senior than I was a freshman, but the essential pattern of really breaking down under that big-time stress hadn’t changed. And I felt like there was something deeper that had be found. And so, after I got my Master’s degree and felt like I had kind of understood the problem solving methodology of a therapist, I flew to Arizona and started up my golf psychology practice and was kind of cold-calling and knocking on country club doors, trying to find some swinging structures for me to partner with. I felt like, you know, if I could have some kind of strong relationship between another instructor that the two of us could kind of create a well-rounded team for, especially professional golfers, but even really serious amateurs or junior players. That's what I did, and so I was working with golfers for about three and a half years. Before poker came bout, which, you know, kind of defined my career for the last eight years.

Matt:	So, how did you get into the world of poker?

Jared:	So, poker was somewhat spontaneous. I had actually begun playing some professional golf myself. I was... It felt like I had solved a lot of the issues that I had needed to, and was playing some of the best golf in my life. Got hooked up with a group of guys that...one of which was a former professional golfer, and he, unfortunately had to stop playing golf because he had a heart attack at 22. Was not drug induced. It was some genetic mutation that caused his heart to...the arteries to spasm. And so, he ended up going into professional online poker. And it was an interesting transition. The guy was an incredibly hard worker, with his golf. Growing up, was the guy that spent hours and hours hitting balls and was kind of just the equivalent of a gym rat in golf. He actually broke Tiger Woods’ record for most tournament victories in the state of California in one summer. I think he won 35 events, had a lot of competence in working and obviously as a player, and then saw online poker back in 2004, or 2005 is when he started. This was during the online poker boom, prior to when the government stepped in. There was a lot of money to be made, and he was making around $20,000 to $30,000 per month when he and I met. He ended up seeking my advice for psychologically, was because he was getting so angry that he was literally, like, taking his desktop computer and ripping it out of the wall and smashing it, and breaking monitors and mice and keyboards. And poker, there’s a lot of short-term luck. Imagine a golfer hitting a perfect drive down the middle of the fairway, and it hitting a sprinkler head and going straight out of bounds. And then doing that five times in a row. You’re in a professional golf tournament, and you make a 15 on a hole, 9 or 10 over par, and you don’t even hit a bad shot. In poker, that happens every single day. The better players lose a lot because of the short-term luck. And that’s important as a professional poker player, because that’s where a lot of their money is made. Not necessarily just the differential in skill, but the differential in the perception of skill. Bad players need to win in order to think that they’re good, in order to play against players who are the equivalent of a 15-handicapped golfer, or playing up against a PGA tour player and not getting any strokes to even out the match. There’s never a scenario where that PGA tour player is going to lose to that player. Or, imagine the New York Yankees playing up against a high school baseball team. There’s never scenario where the Yankees are losing. But in poker, that dynamic happens every single day. The best players in the world lose to some of the worst players in the world, and that’s a reality. So, for him, dealing with that reality was incredibly difficult, especially coming from golf where he had a lot more control over his results. So, our interactions began with me kind of doing a typical dissection of my clients. I have them fill out a very detailed questionnaire to try to understand what their issues are, and then we get to work. Within a few months, the results were almost too obvious to note. I mean, it was... He went from, as I said making from $20,000-$30,000 a month, to making $150,000-$200,000 a month. And yes, there certainly can be some good luck involved in that, but for the most part, being able to remain calm, remain focused, be in the zone more, was a big part of his success. So, he happened to be part, being able to remain calm, remain focused, be in the zone more, was a big part of his success, so he happened to be part owner in an online-training site that taught people how to play poker, which was a new phenomenon at the time. And because it was new and there wasn’t really anybody doing sports psychology in poker, it gave me sort of a big avenue for me to take my job. You know, as I said, I started playing some professional golf and so it became a difficult choice point. Do I pursue my dream? Or do I take on this seemingly risky thing to just hop into poker? And I decided that it was going to cost about $250,000 over two or three years to try to make it as a professional golfer. You know, I was getting older at this point, I was 27. So, it was a risk. I decided that poker was the safer bet, and I would just dive into it, continue to play some tournaments and see where it went. And it just sort of took off. I just had a large influx of clients very quickly, and really just saw a huge opportunity within that field. It gave me a chance, really, to work with players longer term. The golfers seemingly were a lot more fickle. They wanted results quickly. They’re the people who buy clubs regularly, thinking that’s the solution. Even the professionals, they wanted things faster than the process would kind of allow for. But for some reason, poker players, maybe because it’s the money, the money was happening every day. It was like working with an employee, or just somebody's who's working a business. Golfers don’t play tournaments every single day, the poker players just seem to be committed to it. Really, it was a lot of fun to me to work with a lot of people who are committed to doing that kind of work. That was eight years ago, 2007 to 2008 when I got started with that website. At this point, I’ve worked with well over 500 poker players, some of the best players in the world, as you mentioned the books that I’ve written. It’s been a very enjoyable ride going through poker.

Matt:	So, I definitely want to dig into smashing computers and dealing with guilt and all of that, but before we do, tell me why do people choke?

Jared:	There are lots of reasons. One reason can be that their expectations are too high relative to their actual capacity. There, sometimes can be some traumatic experiences, and then, you know, those traumatic experiences then continued to get replayed. The mind has the ability to imprint a memory. So, then in a physical capacity, that motor pattern gets replayed, gets triggered when the circumstances cause a lot of stress. From a decision making standpoint, the mind has the ability... Or the brain, I should say. The brain has the ability to shut down higher brain function. People often are familiar with what’s called the flight or fight mechanism. So, if you are in a blind rage, that is the equivalent of choking. Except, we’re talking about the difference between anger and pressure. But, both circumstances are caused by the same tripping of the wiring in your brain where higher brain function gets shut off. If you’re feeling euphoric on your wedding day, or your child gets born, there’s this rush of emotion and it shuts down higher brain function. My daughter is two years old now, if I was told right after she was born, that I had to make some very complex calculations, or I had to help somebody with a very severe problem, there’s no way that I could do that. The emotions are too intense. And that mechanism goes back to your primitive processes in the brain, and I’m sure you’ve talked a lot about this in your podcast. The key in my mind is that we have to understand what creates that tripping. What’s causing that excessive emotion in more normal circumstances, marriage and baby aside. When we’re able to understand what that is, then we can decrease the neurological activity in the emotional center, so that the higher brain functions can actually click back in and you’re able to make decisions, or as an athlete you’re able to think through and see and perceive the environment around you to know what to do. As a golfer, you need your sense to be able to perceive the environment to have your body react to that particular shot. The same is true with a lot of athletes, right? If you lose that perception, then your capacity as an athlete is severely diminished. But what often remains is those exception that you should be able to perform at levels that would be the case without that severe emotion present. And that is what causes, or is a big cause of people choking, is that differential. In their minds, not being able to reconcile that difference. It’s basically like, if you were to... If I were to put you on the edge of the cliff, and it was, let’s say, 30 feet wide. And I would say, “Matt, I want you to jump across that.” You should choke at attempting to do that. You should not do it, because it’s an impossible thing to do. But when players are faced with a similar kind of chasm, they don’t realize how big the gap is between what they’re normally expecting of themselves, and what they’re actually capable of in that moment. And that causes predictable paralysis, and causes people to choke.

Matt:	What creates the tripping or kind of trips the wire of excessive emotion? I know there may be many different causes, but have you seen some commonalities among what triggers that in people? 

Jared:	Yeah, it’s... So, the tripping, I would call a trigger. I think that comes from cognitive psychology, or cognitive behavioral psychology and therapy. So, it’s not a new term. But these triggers, these things that spark the emotion can be... There’s almost like an infinite amount of things it could be. The commonalities would be: Losing, making mistakes, seeing somebody else successful — that might spark judgment, or some jealousy. Actually, winning, can actually cause excessive emotion to tend to. But, you know, it’s the dynamics of the game are varied, right? So, we sort of extrapolate within poker, within golf, within trading — What does winning and losing look like? What do mistakes look like? Those are going to be, by and large, a lot of things that people are going to be triggered by. The reaction that they have is going to be varied, right? Some people are going to feel like losing causes a sense of injustice. Some people are going to feel like they deserve not to get bad luck, or they deserve to win. Some people are going to feel like their sense of competitive balance is off, and they’re going to feel like they’re fighting for their goals, and so they’re going to be triggered in that way. Other people are going to have some wishes that they could win more. They’re going to lose some confidence and have difficulty not being able to control the outcome or believing that when they win, that that means they should always win. There’s a lot of reactions that happen that can cause more of the chaotic array of emotional issues that come about, but I think that’s a lot of it.

Matt:	And what do you advise people to do to, kind of in the moment, decrease that neurological activity that is caused by excess emotions?

Jared:	There’s a few things. Number one, you have to understand the cause of that excessive emotional activity. So, the things that I’ve mentioned so far, you know, they may or may not necessarily get to the root of it, right? So, if you don’t have a sense of the root cause, then your attempts in the moment to control the emotion, which is really all you can do, is minimized. So, for example, we take somebody who has a sense of entitlement, right? That sense of entitlement causes them to get angry at situations where they think the outcome should be different, and they get very pissed off at that, right? A sense of entitlement often comes as a result of a weakness in confidence, right? And some over-confidence. Well, that over-confidence may be caused by an illusion of control. So, they believe they’re in more control of the outcome than is real. So, the reaction that is entitlement, that in the moment frustration that they’re not getting the results that they want requires a reminder that speaks to that illusion of control. So, you might have a statement that says something like, “I can’t control all of the results.” You know, no one can. There’s short-terms luck, there’s short-term things that I can’t control, like the actions of other players or competitors, and so all I can control are XYZ, or all I can control is how well I am focused, how well I’m prepared, how well I’m playing. Whatever might be specific to that person, and they’re using that statement as a way of correcting that deeper flaw, which is critical to long-term resolution of the issue. And in the short-term, it creates some control so that they’re able to decrease a little of that emotion and actually continue to make good decisions, or perform well. But the process I use requires several steps to get to that point. Number one is recognition early on. The longer that it takes for you to recognize that your emotions are rising, the harder it is for you to use that logic, to use that statement, to gain control of the emotion. And it should make sense, right? The bigger the emotion, the more strength is required to control it. The faster you can identify it, when it’s small, the more of an effect it will have. Because that same dynamic is at play. Which is when the emotions rise too high, they shut down higher brain function proportionally to that size of the emotion. So, the bigger the emotion is, the weaker your mind is, and the weaker that statement will have as you say it in those moments. And I actually think this is one of the biggest mistakes that cognitive behavioral therapists have made. Cognitive behavioral therapy is one of the most effective treatments, for a whole range of issues, both clinical, personal, as well as within the sphere of performance and sports and whatnot. But they might a big mistake in not emphasizing this point that I’m making now, which is that you have to use that cognition, use that thought process, at a time when your thoughts are the most powerful. Which is when the emotions are small. So, what I advise people to do is create very detailed mappings of the escalation of their emotions. Right. People in business, or in sports, in poker, in trading, the issues that we experience happen in very predictable patterns. And it’s our job to become aware of that pattern so that we can apply corrections, at times, where the mind can actually receive it. So, it takes a little bit of studying, and so I advise my clients to spend a week or two weeks taking detailed notes of the situations in which they’re looking for control. One of the cool things about online poker is that there’s a high frequency of emotional reactions, and so they may have a bad reaction to losing, happen five times within a particular day. And certain businesses, you may not be faced with those situations. Might have happened several times a year, but when they do happen, your reaction is so severe that it is really impairing your functioning as an employee or as a business owner. So, you’ve got to do your best to, in those situations, go back into your memory bank, and think about how you’ve reacted in similar situations in the past. But you don’t want to do that just once. I mean, you don’t want to spend one day or one hour thinking about it. You want to spend 15 to 20 minutes, five times a week for several weeks really thinking about it. Make it a habit where you’re trying to uncover and articulate this pattern. It is such an important principle I can’t overestimate it. That recognition is the X factor. If you can’t recognize the emotion prior to it becoming to the point where it’s going to shut down our brain function, you have little to no change of actually gaining control. And, in fact, actually, people with very high expectations, really just go completely mental in spots where they’re expecting to be in control, but the emotions are so high. Very often, when the emotions are high, you... It doesn’t mean your brain is completely gone. You still have the ability to think. And you might even know this logic statement. You might know what is logical to correct that emotion. But you’re doing it at a time when emotions are so high that it doesn't have an impact. It’s so... The emotions are so powerful and so strong, that what cognition you have is very weak. But if you have the expectations that what little cognition you have should be able to control that emotion, then your mind is just going to boil up. You’re going to become so angry, like my friend Dusty, my first poker player, who was ripping his desktop computer out of the wall. So, again, first step is to recognize, and then in the moment, once you’ve recognized it and it’s small, then you’re taking a couple deep breaths. Very, very quickly, very, well... I say quickly, more up to the point is efficiency. You don’t have to take these long, drawn out, deep breaths like a meditative kind of thing. The purpose is more about creating separation between the reaction and the correction, which is the third step. The deep breath is the equivalent of stepping out of the room when you’re having a heated argument with a friend or a spouse. If you just keep fighting, or you keep arguing, there doesn’t become any chance of coming to some conclusion or some reconciliation of the issue, right? When you both step out of the room, cooler heads are able to prevail, you’re able to get some perspective, and that’s the idea. The deep breaths give you some space, and some separation from that reaction, to then be able to apply the logic. Now if you’re in an environment where your decision making allows you the opportunity to take some longer, deeper breaths to calm down, then take that opportunity, it's not going to hurt you. But if you’re a poker player, if you’re a day trader, if you're a golfer, you may not have the time or the luxury to be able to spend a minute actually doing some deep breathing to prepare yourself for the logic. That third step is injecting that logic, right? The cognitive behavioral strategy of having that correction to that root flaw. Then the fourth step is what I call a strategic reminder. The reason this is important is because, just because we’ve stabilized or controlled our emotions in that moment, it doesn’t automatically mean that our performance is going to be as high as we want it to be. For poker players, they're being reminded of the common mistakes that they might make. They’re thinking about their decision making process and kind of filling in some of the holes that might typically be there when they’re upset. So, they're forcing their attention to correct those mistakes. A golfer might, you know, focus on a particular part of their technique, or a particular part of their decision making. They might forget to calculate the impact of the wind, and so they’ve got to make sure and force themselves to consider that. Because, just because they’re calm again, doesn’t mean they’re going to automatically think about that part of their decision making, or their performance. So, while you’re competing, you’ve got to go through that cycle of those four steps over, and over again. And that to me is really how you build mental strength. It’s the force that is required to apply these corrections in these moments, and repeating them time, and time again as they happen throughout your day, throughout your performance. And it’s a bit like going to the gym and working out, right? That’s where the strength comes from, it’s pushing yourself at a time that’s very difficult. And this is, you know, less so for athletes that are competing in kind of time dependent scenarios. You don’t want to keep pushing yourself beyond the point where you need to quit, right? You can’t just lift a certain amount of weight at the gym a hundred times, when you can only do it ten times. You want to push yourself to be able to do twelve, not a hundred. A hundred is not doable. So, quitting, taking breaks, resting, is very, very important to the strengthening of the mind, much like it is the body. So, quitting at an appropriate time where you don’t risk rein jury is an important part of the overall whole. We’re creating containment and then day after day, that containment ought to get stronger and stronger, if you’re allowing your mind to recover.

Matt:	So, what are some strategies to boost recognition and train people to more effectively recognize the beginning of an emotional reaction?

Jared:	The first thing is to start with what’s obvious, right. Even if it’s at the point past where the emotions have kind of shut down your thinking. You just start writing it down. There’s a very simple framework that I use which is called the spectrum of emotion, and you just sort of scale it 1 to 10 or 10 to 1--however you want to describe it--one being when the emotion is at its lowest, ten being when it’s at its highest. And you just start to take notes in each of those ten spaces, about what it’s like when your emotional reaction is at its lowest point or at its highest point or somewhere in between. Somewhere around your emotional system is shutting down higher brain function. And you’re also paying attention to the changes in your decision making, the changes in your tactical performance, and so you’re trying to create a map. This is the map. What does the pattern look like, right? So, when it’s very small, the anger issue might appear as some minor irritation, like some kind of extra noise in your head where you’re like “Agghhh!” Or you kind of sigh deeply, or maybe even pound the desk a little bit. Not that serious, but you’re like, “Goddammit!” And so you’re writing down the physical changes, you’re writing down the specific thoughts that you have in your head, like, “I can’t believe I was such an idiot!” If you’re reacting to a mistake. So, it’s physical reactions, emotional signs, the specific thoughts that you have or the things that you say out loud, and any of the technical, sort of specific to your area of performance that changes at each of those different levels. So, your reaction to a mistake might begin with some, just kind of like tension in your head, or you’re like, “Dammit, I can’t believe I did that.” But when it’s at a ten and you’re just in a blind rage about the mistake that you’ve made, or you just can’t possibly even think. It’s like, you feel like you’re just the dumbest person in the world, and can’t comprehend how you’ve made such a bone-headed obvious mistake. And whatever is going on in your mind at the time is what you’re writing down.

Matt:	What do you do if you’re in the heat of the moment and you apply, or try to apply, a correction and it doesn’t work?

Jared:	In that particular moment, it depends on the scenario. If you’re a golfer, a poker player, a trader who’s performance is so time dependent that you don’t really have the ability to take a bigger step backwards, then there’s not much you can do. The only thing you really can do, and this is true for sort of other people as well, is to better understand the pattern. If control at that point is gone, then your option is to better understand the pattern. It is going to happen again, and the reason it happened this time is because you didn’t understand the pattern to begin with. Or, at least understand the cause of it. So, let’s assume that you knew the pattern well but you couldn’t gain control of it. It means that your injecting logic didn’t work. It means that your understanding of the pattern was not strong enough. Or it means that there is an accumulation of emotion that is rapidly overwhelming your mind. It is possible for people in a particular moment to get triggered by something so severely, that their emotions rise so high so quick, that it bypasses our ability to have any option to inject logic or to inject some cognitive correction. In which case, we’re dealing with a much deeper issue, a much more long lasting issue that is not going to be corrected in that moment, and you have to do some real, much, much deeper work to uncover the cause of that and start to break apart that accumulated emotion, and give yourself the option to have some mental control.

Matt:	So, the creation of the map of this pattern, is that the primary tool that you recommend for, let’s say, off the felt or when you’re not actually in the heat of the moment, building that understanding of the root cause?

Jared:	It’s a building of an understanding of what’s going on, but it’s only sort of the beginnings of being able to understand the root cause. So the pattern that you’re writing about is really like the symptom pattern, and then the root cause is the cause of that symptom. So, me thinking I’m an idiot would be the symptom of, let’s say low-confidence caused by high expectations. This is a common phenomenon around a lot of the people that I work with. Perhaps a lot of people that listen to this podcast, who believe that high expectations are a good thing. I’m not saying they’re a bad thing; high expectations have led to a lot of successes. But what happens is that they can often also add to a reduced sense of confidence. Because and expectation implies a guarantee. And goals imply learning a development required to achieve the same end outcome. So you might think that your expectations are goals, but if you think what you’re aiming for is, in essence, guaranteed. Even if you don’t necessarily have the capacity right now to reach that goal. If you assume that you’re going to, then it’s still an expectation. What that does is it makes the learning process more chaotic. You might still end up achieving the same goal, but you’re going to have a feeling like you’re an idiot sometimes. Rather than seeing that the mistakes you’re making today are way, way, less severe than the mistakes you make five years ago. So, how could you really be an idiot if you are already that much more capable, you know? You’re not an idiot, it’s just that you’re overreacting to a mistake because you believe you shouldn’t make them, and so the root cause right here is the flaw in mistaking goals for expectations. So, we take this sort of symptom pattern and then we drill down and figure out what is at the root of it, then you start correcting the root. Over time, that symptom pattern starts to dissipate and disappear. and that is true resolution. That is when you’ve actually defused the bomb. You’ve taken the trigger and made it... It no longer is going to spark, so no I can make mistakes. And I’m not saying I’m happy about it, but I’m at least dealing with the mistake in a much more objective, rational way towards reaching my end goals, which is ultimately... Solving this mistake is an essential part of that. 

Matt:	So, how do we drill down and really kind of get to and understand what that root cause is?

Jared:	That is the most complex part of the whole process. I think at this point probably what is my greatest expertise as a coach is being able to kind of work with my clients to be able to do deduce what’s going on behind the scenes. This is the unearthing of the unconscious processes behind our emotional reactions. There’s a process I use, and it’s in the first book, actually it’s in both books now that I think of it. That helps players to break down their symptoms, their issues, to try to identify that root cause. And these are the steps: The first step is to describe the problem in as much detail as you can. So, you can certainly build off of that map, that spectrum of emotion, to create and articulate the description of the problem. The second step is to describe why it makes sense that you would think, feel, or react this way. Now, this is I think one of the most important steps for many, many people. Because they often think that their emotional reactions are illogical, or irrational, and so if you think that your emotions are irrational, then there’s really no way to solve it. The fundamental flaw is the emotion itself. The anger is the problem. in my opinion, the anger, the fear, the loss of confidence, the loss of motivation, the boredom, the distraction. All of those are symptoms, they’re never the actual problem. They’re sort of like the messenger trying to highlight what’s going on beneath the surface. So, you have to change your mentality about problem solving by acknowledging the reality that everything that is occurring is very logical and predictable. I just don’t know the reason yet. It appears, to me, to be irrational, because I don’t know why it is. So, rationality is that second step. I’m not saying that step is without flaw, I’m not saying it’s correct long-term, but there is a reason why you’re thinking that way. So, my step one description might be, I have very, very strong reactions to mistakes. I really hate making mistakes. Well, why does it make sense that I would feel that way? It makes sense because I have high expectations of myself, because I hold myself to a really high standard and I really want to avoid these mistakes. I think that they shouldn’t be happening. Step three: Why is that logic flawed? And this is where we start to get to the root cause. In the example that I gave before, it’s my high expectations. I’m equating the learning process, the process of accomplishing my goals is occurring without making mistakes. So, my expectations are just excessive. They’re not realistic. So, what is the correct? The correction is: I need to be aggressive in my pursuit of my goal, and I need to look at mistakes as the opportunities to grow and improve, and as really is the essential things to be able to accomplish my things. Because if, and this is something I tell a lot of my clients, if you are pursuing a goal where you’re not going to make mistakes, then it’s not really something that’s worth chasing. It’s too basic. You’re not really pushing yourself. You’re not really trying. Anything that you’ve got to try and really push yourself to accomplish, you have to make mistakes. It’s inevitable. So, that step four, what is the correction, often times becomes the injecting logic statement. Step five is: Why is that correction correct? And this just sort of looks to get at a little more of the theory behind it. It’s correct because the learning process isn’t predictable. I can’t always know the mistakes I’m going to make. That would require me to be a psychic, and I’m not psychic, so I have to make these mistakes. That theory becomes extra footing helping to root the correction in our minds, because I kind of vision the root system to a bush or to a tree, kind of like the interactions or the intricacies of the neurons in our mind. It kind of has a visual that is similar, there’s a lot of these off-shoots. It’s not just about implanting this very simple idea of mistakes are predictable, it’s about the complex idea that you’re trying to firmly root, which will then automatically change how you react to them in the future.

Matt:	I love the concept that emotions are the messenger, and not the root cause of performance issues. 

Jared:	It’s the only thing that seems logical to me. I mean, I think, in large measure they’ve been downgraded for a long time but they have particular messaging when you pay attention to it. Anger is the emotion of conflict, right? That conflict can exist between people, that conflict can exist within ourselves. Fear or anxiety is the messenger for uncertainty. There’s a lot of uncertainty in the world, certainly in business if you’re making an investment where there is 100% certainty, well, then there’s probably not much reward for that investment. You’re buying US Treasury bonds that are paying next to nothing. The more uncertainty that exists, the greater the reward is. The greater the investment will pay off, and that’s true with poker players, with golfers, with athletes as well. Confidence, the emotion of confidence — I think that’s an important distinction because I think people very often are not thinking about confidence as an emotion. Confidence is a reflection of skill and competence, but more importantly, it’s our perception of our skill and our competence. So, it’s not just a pure reflection of our confidence. If that were the case, my God, poker would not be profitable. The world would be a much more simple place. But we have our own biases, our own perceptions of our skill and competence that plays into our feelings of confidence. So, when you’re looking at dissecting what the messenger of confidence is saying, it’s a measurement of your perception of skill, and a measurement of your actual skill. Motivation is a byproduct of your goals, and so it’s going to reflect conflict between goals. It’s going to reflect inconsistencies, or goal that are too high or too low, and your motivation is going to be affected based on those flaws.

Matt:	So, let’s flip this on its head a little bit. I’m curious: What are some common traits you see among people who have incredible mental strength, or really peak mental performers?

Jared:	They have, I think, an almost intuitive or innate understanding of the learning process. The learning process is something that many people get wrong and don’t realize how much emotional chaos gets created as a result of it. My example of mistakes is a perfect example of that. So, they have a very intuitive process or innate process for understanding the learning. They have a great ability to be objective with themselves, so that their performance is evaluated without as much emotionality towards it. It doesn’t mean they’re any less driven to excel, it means that when they fall short, or when they excel, they’re equally as objective, and it’s a form of feedback. When you go and compete, it’s a test. And being able to grade that test is essential, good or bad, because then it helps to guide the next steps. So, they’re also... They’re long-term thinkers. They’re long-term performers, they’re not just seeing today in isolation, they’re seeing today in the bigger picture. Again, that doesn’t take away from their desire to excel today, because they know that when they excel today, they’re going to also be learning at a very high level. This is a relationship that I talk a lot about in my second book that performance and learning are intimately tied. They’re kind of like yin and yang. So when you’re performing at a very high level, you’re also learning at a very high level. So they’re driven to excel because of what it allows them to accomplish today, and what it’s also going to lead towards tomorrow. They’re constantly seeking the advice and counsel of other people They understand their own biases or their own limitations in their thinking, and they’re looking for other people to shed light on their weak spots. To shed light on their blind spots, but they’re also not going to do so blindly. They have a sense of their skill set and so when there are things that are brought to their attention that seem irrelevant, they’re not going to give it a second thought. Maybe down the line they will again, but that relevancy for them is very temporal. It’s relevant today, they’re not going to say, they’re not going to focus too much on the thing that’s going to be very relevant two years from now. They might note it so they don’t forget it, but they’re not going to over-emphasize it today. I think those are a lot of the big ones. Mental toughness and having the right temperament and the right personality... Those are things I think that are very personal. I try not to get into the personal characteristics or dynamics that make up the ideal, because I think there’s a lot of ways to accomplish it, and if you have some of the more basic essential elements, however your personality allows you to materialize it is kind of the fun of it. Kind of the diversity of it. 

Matt:	I think one of the most critical things you’ve mentioned is the importance of feedback and actively seeking out your weaknesses and your flaws, but also in a way that you’re aware of... You have to be very cognizant of what is the source of the feedback, and is this particular piece of advice or whatever it might be, relevant to where I am now and what I’m trying to do.

Jared:	Yeah. It’s very easy... I’ll say it this way. It’s easy for people to get caught up in taking advice for many, many different people. But when that happens, it’s evidence of a weakness in confidence. And that weakness in confidence might be because you don’t understand your skill set well enough. So, there is a perceptual weakness, not an actual weakness. So, the perception gets strengthen when you have a more clear understanding of what your skills actually are. Then you get to take that understanding and match it with the feedback that you're getting rather than getting pulled in many, many different directions because you’re allowing it to happen, because you don’t have that centering, that grounding that comes from being the one who is in control of your performance. As the athlete, you’re the one that has to do it. There’s no one who can actually do it for you. The people around you are supporting your ability to do that, and if you’re getting pulled in many directions, it means that they’re just some inner knowledge that’s lacking.

Matt:	Long time listeners will know that I’m an avid poker player. I’d love to dig in a little bit to some poker-specific stuff. I’m sure we’ve touched on some of the conceptual framework behind this, but let’s get back into smashing computers and ripping mice from the wall. How do you recommend, or what are some strategies specifically for things like tilt control. For those who may not know, would you briefly explain what tilt is?

Jared:	Yeah. So, tilt... I’ll actually say it in two ways. Tilt, before I came into poker was a poker player’s way of saying that any reason they would play less than their best would be called “tilt”. Tilt, as I define it, is about anger. When I studied poker players for years—and I’m not really a very good poker player myself; I’m kind of the outsider that came in and observed what was going on—well over 80% of the conversations that players are having are the descriptions they were giving about tilt, meant that they got angry, and they were doing stupid stuff, and they were losing. Very rarely are players tilting and winning. They’re usually tilting because they’re losing, and or their tilt is causing them to lose. So, the strategies for correcting tilt are identical to the things we’ve already mapped out in terms of the framework. What I’ve done in my first book is to map out seven different types of tilt that I’ve just observed. To date, my first book came over five years ago, no one has yet been able to come up with another type of tilt that could explain a situation at the poker table where someone would get pissed off. So, I continue to have that challenge out there and certainly welcome anybody that can find another one. And the reason is because each of these seven types of tilt are focused on that root cause. There are hundreds of reasons why poker players tilt. The triggers that we’re talking about earlier. Hundreds of reasons why players have their tilt triggered. But they’re only a handful of them when you dig down beneath the surface and see what’s going on. So, the first step... So, when we’re talking about solving tilt, you’ve got to understand what’s causing it and by mapping these out in seven... I think that’s helped a lot of player be able to narrow down their focus so they could actually solve their tilt problem. The first one is called “running bad tilt.” Running bad tilt in poker means that you’re losing a lot in short of succession, and a bad run of cards, basically means you’re just getting a lot of bad luck in short succession. So, if you were flipping coins, you should... The mass says that half the time you’re going to flip heads, half the time you’re going to flip tails. What about when you flip a coin and ten times in a row it comes up tails. You’re betting on heads, right? So now you’ve had a bad run, so that’s a very simple example for those who don’t play poker to understand that there’s a lot of math involved in poker, and you get into situations where the bad luck is just against you. There’s literally nothing you can do other than to continue to play a very strong, strategically long-term strategy. But obviously that’s not what happens to a lot of players. They handle that bad run by getting angry and then play worse. They try to recapture their money, they try to force the action, they try to be more aggressive and make more money. Of course, the good players are waiting for that to happen, because that’s what bad players do. So, a good player can turn into a bad player very quickly when they’re on tilt. So, running bad tilt is one. The second one is called injustice tilt. The name should imply it, right. This is a feeling like what’s happening is unfair, unjust, as if the poker Gods are against them. Entitlement tilt is the next one. Entitlement tilt and injustice tilt are very similar in terms of the language, but with entitlement tilt, it’s more of a sense of deserving. It’s a more personal feeling, as I mentioned earlier, it’s over confidence. Injustice is kind of outwardly. It’s more about, like what the poker Gods, or what poker’s not giving to you, you’re not getting what you deserve, whereas with entitlement, it’s a feeling of superiority over other players, right? You’re better than this player, so you deserve to win, not like you’re getting bad cards and feeling a sense of injustice. Hate losing tilt, otherwise known as competitive tilt. These are the highly competitive people who just hate losing, and that losing causes a lot of anger. Mistake tilt is the next one, we talked about that already. Revenge tilt, one of my always favorites just because players get so crazy and they start attacking others. It’s amusing for me. Desperation tilt is the last one, and desperation tilt is not necessarily a unique type of tilt, any of the other types of tilt that I’ve mentioned can cause desperation tilt, but I specifically carve out desperation tilt because it is the line between a poker player who is successful, who is profitable, that is having a very, very difficult time controlling themselves with a player who actually has a gambling problem. Desperation tilt is a performance issue; a gambling problem is somebody who can’t handle the losses, doesn’t have actual skill in the game, and needs clinical help. I am trained as therapist, but I’m not practicing as one. I am a coach working in performance, and yes I do get into personal issues because inevitably they're part of a player’s performance. But that’s not my primary issue of focus and I refer anybody that I believe that has a gambling problem to therapist who are specialized in that. So, desperation tilt, you know, oftentimes includes players jumping up in stakes. So, they start playing for a lot more money than their bank roll can support. They’re basically playing for all of their money, right? As a poker player, you have to have the ability to tolerate a lot of losses. And if you don’t have the cash to support the fluctuations and profitability, then you can go bust, and that’s what ends up happening to a lot of poker players. They end up playing for all of their bank roll. They’ve got $20,000, and they really should only be playing for $200 or $400 at a time, and they go play against a very skilled player for 20 grand. Most likely they’re going to lose it. Of course they can get lucky in that spot, but that’s not going to solve their desperation tilt problem. 

Matt:	The funny thing about a lot of these forms of tilt, especially things like injustice tilt, entitlement tilt, mistake tilt, you see this same exact thing sabotaging many people in all kinds of different areas in life. So, somebody who’s listening that thinks these mistakes that apply to poker players, I think you’re sorely mistaken. 

Jared:	I completely agree.

Matt:	One other concept I wanted to dig into, and we touched on this earlier, is the concept of the idea of, specifically in poker and I think in many areas in life like trading, investing, a lot of business decisions, there’s a huge gap between making the correct decision and seeing the results that you would like. How do you help people cope with that? 

Jared:	We’re talking about uncertainty. And so, in all of those fears, we’re trying to narrow in on this idea of what happened. You hit a poor golf shot, you make an investment that doesn’t pay off, you open up a business that doesn’t work out, and you want to know why. And very often, you can’t get an answer that satisfies you to 100%. But, as it turns out, psychological research doesn’t have that standard. And I’m saying that particularly because in statistics there’s what’s called a confidence interval. And so in psychological research, the research that gets published has over a 95% reliability that the data is representing the effect that they’re seeing. So, what you can do, is you can start to create confidence intervals, right. I’m 30% sure, I’m 50% sure, I’m 70% sure that what happened was X, and what that does is it keeps you open minded, so as you go and make other investments, open other businesses, talk to other people who have opened businesses or you know, hit other golf shots, play more poker, that you can start to gather more information that’s going to raise your confidence interval, to the point that you might eventually know what happened two years ago, but it might take you two years to know for sure. But you’re not stopping everything to find out what happened to 100% because you might have to go and continue to play the game, whatever game it is that you're  playing, in order to have that confidence interval rise. And I think that’s a mistake that a lot of people make. They end up getting paralyzed after some big things happen, and that paralysis makes them a little bit gun shy to take additional steps, and they want to be more right. They want to avoid having another misstep. I think, to a degree, that can be evidence of a confidence problem. At a deeper level, they don’t have the confidence to be able to learn from it to be able to absorb it, their expectations might be too high, they might think that they ought to be in more control of the outcome, they might think that the success they had early on meant that they were guaranteed to have success, so they got a little bit lazy, staying sharp and reevaluating the investment, maybe had they re-looked at it three months before things went belly-up, the writing was on the wall but they were kind of blinded by it. Same thing with a business, same thing as a golfer. Golfers who might get on a good run, things are going really well, might not be taking care of their bodies as well so they start not sleeping as much, and their performance can start to dissipate as a result of that. So, the point is you're trying to gain information that will help you to become certain, but you’re not doing so by just staying on the sidelines. You have to keep getting back in the game, and gaining more information, because that’s generally the only place you can do that.

Matt:	So what is one piece of homework that you would give people listening to this podcast?

Jared:	Map your problems, like I spoke a lot about early on. They happen in predictable patterns, very often people are blind to them. They happen, and sometimes when they happen, like “Eh, it was a one-off, that’s so unlike me, I’ll never do that again.” You know, two days later it happens again. Month later, it happens again. So, you kind of have to take away the irrationality of it, you have to take away the unpredictability of it, and assume that all of the emotional issues that are getting in the way of you performing or succeeding at the level that you want are happening in very predictable patterns, and your job is to uncover that prediction. The data is there, and like a lot of things, as you pay more attention to it, as you learn more, you develop more skill. And in this particular case, you actually create vision for yourself. It’s like you’re wearing a very dark pair of glasses, and then over time as you gain greater clarity and recognition, those glasses become less dark and become clear. You see the pattern and it’s not enough to be able to see the pattern off the felt, out of the action, you have to be able to see it in real time. So, if, right now you can see the pattern, but in the moment you can’t, then it’s about training. Or it’s about recognizing the accumulative emotion that’s rapidly overwhelming your ability to see. But yeah, mapping is the number-one priority. That’s why I have all of my clients fill out a very detailed questionnaire before we even get started. Because that helps them and me to gain a sense of what is going on and, you know, when I come across players... There’s been a handful of times where I’ve attempted to sell my services to people who weren’t ready. And when that happens, it fails. I’ve had almost zero success selling myself to somebody who wasn’t ready, and at this point I’ve stopped trying. And in large measure it’s because they don’t see it. I can’t force them to see something that they’re not ready to see. So, if you are ready to see, start doing the mapping and paying very close attention to what’s getting in your way, because you can’t get it out of your way, you can’t solve it until you can see it. 

Matt:	What are some resources that you would recommend for listeners who want to do more research on some of the stuff we’ve talked about today?

Jared:	That’s a good question. Obviously my books are helpful resources. They’re written in the language of poker. There may be very few poker players that are listening which I understand. I think The Power of Habit is a great book. I guess I’m giving more sort of general resources, not necessarily particular to what we’re discussing here. Deep Work by Cal Newport, I think is a fantastic book. The Feeling of What Happens by Antonio Damasio, it’s been around for I think 10 to 15 years now, but it’s a great book as well. Fooled by Randomness I think is a must-read, by most people. You don’t necessarily have to read the entire thing to get the basic premises of it. Those are the big ones that come to mind.

Matt:	And where can people find you online?

Jared:	JaredTendler.com, JaredTendlerPoker.com. They can also follow me on Twitter — @JaredTendler. 

Matt:	Awesome. Well, Jared, thank you so much. This has been incredibly insightful.

Jared:	Happy to hear that, Matt. Thanks for having me.

Improving Sleep, Giving Up Alcohol, and Reading a Book a Day with James Swanwick

In this episode we explore one of the biggest things disrupting your sleep, examine strategies for getting a better night’s rest, dig into sleep cycles, talk about the 30 Day No Alcohol Challenge and break down how to read books more effectively with James Swanwick.

James is an Australian-American entrepreneur, former SportsCenter anchor on ESPN and host of The James Swanwick Show podcast. He is the creator of the 30 Day No Alcohol Challenge, which helps people reduce or quit alcohol; and creator of blue-blocking glasses Swannies which improve your sleep. Forbes magazine voted him one of Top 25 Networking Experts. Swanwick has interviewed celebrities including Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, George Clooney and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

We discuss: 
-The #1 reason you don’t get a good night’s sleep
-Melatonin and your sleep cycle
-The importance of a good night’s sleep
-Why you shouldn’t read your smartphone in bed
-The 30 Day No Alcohol Challenge
-How to build rapport and have a conversation with anyone
-How to read a book in 15 minutes
-Why you retain only 10% of what you read (and what to do about it)
-The 3 main lessons in radical honesty
-How to build a framework to retain everything you learn
-Why knowledge is NOT power
-We discuss "social skydiving" and how you can do it
-And Much More! 

If you want to get a better night’s sleep - check out this episode! 

Thank you so much for listening!

Please SUBSCRIBE and LEAVE US A REVIEW on iTunes! (Click here for instructions on how to do that).

SHOW NOTES, LINKS, & RESEARCH

• Radical Honesty: How to Transform Your Life by Telling the Truth by Brad Blanton

• Calm App

• F.LUX app for computer

• Social Skydiving: The Art of Talking to Strangers by Brad Bollenbach

• Swannie's Glasses

• The 30 Day No Alcohol Challenge

• jamesswanwick.com

• Find James on Snapchat, Instagram & Twitter: @jamesswanwick

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Matt:	Today we have another awesome guest on the show, James Swanwick. James is an Australian-American entrepreneur, former Sports Center anchor on ESPN, and the host of the James Swanwick Show podcast. He is the creator of the 30-day no alcohol challenge, which helps people reduce or quit alcohol, and creator of blue-blocking glasses Swannies, which improve your sleep. Forbes magazine voted him one of the top 25 networking experts. James has interviewed celebrities, including Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, George Clooney, and Arnold Schwarzenegger. James, welcome to The Science of Success.

James:	Matt, so awesome to be here! Let’s do it!

Matt:	Well, we’re very excited to have you on the show. So, for listeners who may not be familiar with you, can you kind of start out and tell us a little bit about you and your story?

James:	Yeah. Well, I am Australian. I’m from Brisbane, Australia, and I moved to the U.S. in 2003, so I’ve been here about 16 years now. I started off as a newspaper journalist, started off right out of high school when I was 17, did that for six years, moved over to London, became a sports reporter for Sky Sports, did something really stupid and fell in love with a British woman who broke my heart, Matt. That was pretty awful. So, I was so heartbroken I said, “I’ve got to get out of this country.” So, I said, “You know what? I’m just going to go to America.” I got on a plane, I flew into Los Angeles Airport, didn’t really know if I was going to go left or right out of the airport, ended up living in a hostel for 90 days, the Hermosa Beach Hostel, and then started interviewing movie stars. I just phoned Sony Pictures, Warner Brothers, Fox, and said, “Hey, I want to interview movie stars. How do I do it?” One of the movie studios called me back, was Sony Pictures, and said, “Yeah, I’ll tell you how to do it.” And then two weeks later, I was interviewing Jack Nicholson in the Armitage Hotel in Beverley Hills. He was promoting that Adam Sandler movie Anger Management. And then two weeks later I interviewed Arnold Schwarzenegger for Terminator 3, and then I built a whole business around it. Lost a lot of money in 2008, 2009 when the financial crisis hit, quit alcohol in 2010, and now I create these blue light blocking glasses which help people sleep as well as, you know, the 30-day no alcohol challenge, which helps people reduce or quit alcohol. That’s pretty much my story, yeah.

Matt:	Very exciting. Well, you obviously have a very diverse background. One of the things, as you mentioned, with Swannies is you’re an expert in sleep and how to help people get better sleep. I feel like sleep’s often very misunderstood. What do you typically see are some of the common reasons that people don’t get a good night’s sleep?

James:	Well, the main reason today, in 2016, as we’re recording this, is the overuse of electronics. So, we have people sitting in bed at nighttime with the lights off checking their Instagram or their email or their Facebook, or they’re sitting at nighttime watching a TV show or they’re on their computer working late at night. Now, every single electronic display... Well, not every single one, but most of them, they admit this blue light, and blue light is why you can see the screen on your computer, why you can see the screen on your iPhone, or whatever smartphone you have. The problem is that that blue light at nighttime suppresses your body’s creation of the hormone melatonin, and melatonin is what we humans need to be able to prepare for sleep, fall asleep, and go into that deep, restorative sleep. So, the biggest problem I see today is there’s too much night at night. We’re looking at car lights, street lights, kitchen lights, bedside table lamps, and then we’re looking at our smartphone and our computer and our iPads and our TV screens, and that is harming our ability to sleep well.

Matt:	And I think I’m definitely guilty of that. I look at my smartphone before I go to sleep pretty much every night, just kind of sitting in bed, whether it’s checking Instagram or whatever it might be. I’m curious. Melatonin’s obviously a critical part of getting a good night’s sleep. Can you talk a little bit about why that is the case?

James:	Yeah. Well, melatonin is basically your body’s natural hormone which makes you sleepy, and then it enables you to get into that deep restorative sleep. So, if you think back to cavemen days, back before we invented the lightbulb, so think about it. When the sun goes down, what would happen? The cavemen would start to get sleepy. They’d sit around a fire and then they’d go to sleep. But now, as soon as we invented that lightbulb 100 or so years ago, all of a sudden now we’re sitting in this night light all the time, which is suppressing our melatonin. So, naturally, our body wants to go to sleep when the sun goes down, but, in today’s modern world, we’re sitting in light for four, five hours, and it’s just preventing our body from naturally creating melatonin. Now, you may still be able to fall asleep quickly even looking at an electronic device or being out in light or underneath your kitchen light, but unfortunately, your body takes 90 minutes to start producing melatonin, which means you need to trick your body and your brain into thinking that it’s nighttime, which is why if you were a pair of blue light-blocking glasses like the ones that I’ve created, or you use f.lux, the app on your computer, or you just don’t look at your electronics 90 minutes before you go to sleep and you don’t sit underneath these fluorescent lights, then your body can start creating melatonin, you start to get sleepy, you go into that deep REM restorative sleep, you spend longer in that REM sleep, and then that way you wake up feeling refreshed and energized and clear-headed.

Matt:	So, have you ever taken melatonin supplements or do you know if those are effective or not?

James:	You know what? I have. I have a good friend of mine called Ben Greenfield, who’s one of America’s top personal trainers and health experts, and he told me that melatonin, like taking a whole bunch of melatonin, isn’t actually the best thing for you. You’re actually better off taking more magnesium than you are melatonin. So, I always bow to his good judgment on that. I can tell you this. When my sleep was not great, I tried everything. I mean, I was trying Xanax and Valium, all these prescription pills, and yes, it knocks you out and you go to sleep, but the side effects of those things are just awful. So, to answer your question, a little bit of melatonin is fine, but melatonin supplements in actual fact are not as effective than if you just take a supplement with a little bit of melatonin in it. So, too much can actually have an adverse effect.

Matt:	Very interesting. I was just curious about that because I’ve seen before sleep strips and that sort of thing that are made out of melatonin. You put them on your tongue and you’re supposed to fall asleep. So, I’m curious. How many hours a night do you sleep?

James:	I always get between, at the least amount, seven hours, and most of the nighttime it’s about eight, eight and a half hours. So, everyone is different, they say generally speaking if everyone gets eight hours of quality sleep, you’re going to be healthy, or that’s as healthy as you can be. You know, I met Arnold Schwarzenegger at his home about four weeks ago in Los Angeles, and I was talking to him about his sleep. He only sleeps six hours a night. He said that he goes to sleep at ten p.m. every night and he wakes up at four a.m. every morning, goes and does a workout, comes back, rides his bike, and then he starts the day, and then he says that he has a little 15-minute powernap at mid-afternoon. So, some people only need six hours. He says, “You know what? I only need six hours. That’s good enough for me.” I’m like, “Okay. That’s good enough for Arnold Schwarzenegger, that’s fine.” But, for the most part, eight hours is what our bodies need to repair itself, and for me, it’s anywhere between seven and eight and a half hours.

Matt:	I’m always curious about that, because I feel like there’s sort of an ongoing debate between people who say you’re more effective if you spend the time and get high-quality sleep versus the people who say, you know, sleep is for the weak and you can sleep when you’re dead and I’m going to sleep for four or five hours a night.

James:	Well, look. Everyone is different, and people who say “I’ll sleep when I’m dead” probably don’t realize that they’re actually causing a lot of damage to themselves for the most part, generally speaking. Like I said, it’s important to really always use the disclaimer that everybody is different. You should sleep as much as your body needs. Some people need ten hours. Some people can get by just on six hours. But if someone’s all bravado and showing off and going, “Yeah, I only need four hours sleep a night. I’m so clever,” well, I would question that. I would look at what is that costing you. Like, you might be having four hours sleep a night and thinking that you’re okay, but your body is not. It’s possible that your body is not able to restore itself. Because what is sleep, Matt? I’ll tell you what sleep is. It’s your body restoring itself. It means you’ve used up glucose in your brain throughout the day, you’re thinking, you’re working. You need to sleep to repair and build back up those glucose levels in your brain. You go to the gym, you’re walking, you’re exercising, you’re lifting weights. Well, what is sleep? Sleep is where your body restores the broken muscles, or it replenishes your body from the exercise or the exertion that you put it through. So, the duration of time, the longer that you can sleep and the longer that it’s deep REM sleep, as opposed to just broken sleep, the more your body’s going to be able to repair itself.

Matt:	And, you know, I’m definitely in the camp as well. I try to get seven or eight at least hours of sleep a night, and there’s a lot of research as well, kind of on the cognitive side, in terms of the negative impact of lack of sleep and the long-term importance to things like creativity, memory function, et cetera, when you don’t get enough sleep.

James:	Yeah. I mean, you think about it. If your sleep isn’t great and you wake up feeling tired and irritable, then maybe you snap at your kids or your friends or your boss or your colleagues, and maybe because you snap at your friends and your colleagues, then your relationships are suffering. And when your relationships are suffering, you find refuge in food or alcohol. And when you find refuge in food and alcohol to make yourself feel better, you start to put on a few more pounds. And when you start to put on a few more pounds, your self-confidence goes. And when your self-confidence goes, you start to stay up a little bit later, eating crappy food, trying to make things work, and then you don’t sleep as well, because now you’re stressed. And because you don’t sleep as well, you wake up feeling tired and lethargic the next day. So, people don’t really understand how critical sleep is. If you’re waking up feeling tired, irritable, lethargic, maybe it’s because you’ve been using your electronics too much at nighttime, maybe it’s because you’re stressed, that just has this spin-off effect that can just perpetuate over time. And I’ll tell you the main thing...well, not the main thing, but one of the things that it does do to you, a lack of sleep. It really harms your looks. You get so much better looking when you sleep. In fact, they did this study that said people who don’t get enough sleep have 45% more wrinkles in their face from people who slept perfectly. They did a study in the U.K. And what is your skin? Your skin is your outward nervous system, right? So, whatever’s going on inside your body, you wear on your skin. So, if you’ve got wrinkles, you’ve got bags under your eyes, you know, a lot of times it’s just to do with poor quality of sleep.

Matt:	So, aside from Swannies or some sort of blue-blocking glasses, what are some of the other things that you’ve seen that can help people get better sleep?

James:	Yeah, well, definitely getting morning sunshine. Like, the first thing when you wake up in the morning, go outside and get some sunlight. And the reason for this is it sets your circadian rhythm to the right time. So, your circadian rhythm is your internal body clock, and your internal body clock wants to know when it’s daytime, just like it wants to know when it’s nighttime. So, if you can get up when you wake up and go outside and just get sunlight on your skin, get it on your face, the receptors in your skin is going to tell your internal body clock, “Guess what? It’s daytime.” Now, why is this important? Because that way, it then knows in about 12 hours’ time that it’s going to be nighttime, because your body knows how much sunlight there is, how much nighttime it should have. So, even though it sounds peculiar, it’s like, well, you want to sleep better? Make sure you get out in the sun early first thing in the morning. It’s absolutely what you should do. So, what I like to do now is... I live in a two-bedroom apartment in West Hollywood, just a block north of Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles, and I have a little balcony out the front of my apartment. So, when I wake up in the morning, even though I might be like, eh, just slow to get up, I deliberately go outside onto my balcony for just two minutes and I just stand there in the sun, and creating that habit of just getting two minutes in the sun is making sure my circadian rhythm, my internal body clock, knows that it’s morning, so then fast-forward to ten p.m. at night, my body knows that it’s time to start shutting down. My body knows that it’s time to start getting sleepy, because I gave it sunlight first thing in the morning.

Matt:	So, for listeners that may not be familiar with what the circadian rhythm is, can you just explain that concept briefly?

James:	Yeah. Circadian rhythm really is just your internal body clock. It’s just like your body knowing that it’s daytime and your body knowing that it’s nighttime. So, when you expose your body to sunlight in the morning, your circadian rhythm is saying, “Okay, I got it. It’s daytime. Right. Time to start raising my cortisol levels. It’s time to start getting energetic. It’s time to start being awake. It’s time to start moving.” And then at nighttime, when the sun goes down, when the sun literally sets and all of a sudden it’s dark, and maybe the moon comes up, your internal body clock is noticing that. Your internal body clock is going, “Oh, okay. There’s no sunlight. Right. It’s nighttime. Therefore, it’s time for me to start producing melatonin,” which we talked about. “It’s time for me to start getting sleepy. It’s time for me to get ready to restore itself from all the things that I’ve been doing during the daylight hours.” So, your circadian rhythm is simply your internal body clock that knows whether it’s daytime or whether it’s nighttime.

Matt:	Got it. So, changing gears a little bit away from sleep, I’d love to dig into the 30-day no alcohol challenge. Can you tell me a little bit about that?

James:	Yeah. Well, I was always just a social drinker. I used to drink a few beers during the week and on the weekends I might have a glass of wine with some beers and maybe a gin and tonic. Sometimes I got drunk. Sometimes I went a little crazy, but never anything troublesome. I was never an alcoholic. I was just a good, solid social drinker. But I got tired of waking up every morning...not every morning, but on the mornings after I was drinking, I got tired of feeling tired and lethargic. So, I remember in 2010 I was in Austin, Texas at the South by Southwest festival, and I woke up with a hangover, and I’d only had a couple of gin and tonics the night before, but I just had this splitting headache. And I went into an IHOP, an International House of Pancakes, to have a hangover breakfast, and I’m sitting there, I’m about to eat these pancakes, and I’m looking around at all these people eating pancakes with whipped cream, and I was just like, ugh, I feel like death here. This is not good. So, I said to myself, James, enough. Just take a 30-day break. See if you can go 30 days without drinking and let’s see what happens. And so, I did. I went 30 days without drinking. I lost 13 pounds of fat. I lost my beer belly. My skin got better. My wrinkles disappeared. I slept better. I got more productive. I started attracting a hire caliber of person into my life. And I felt so good that I went, you know what? I’ll just see if I can keep going. And I did. I haven’t drunk since 2010.

Matt:	That’s amazing. That’s really, really cool. You know, I think the reality is, if you really think about it, alcohol is essentially poison, right? And you’re just taking real small doses of poison to kind of trick your nervous system into feeling more relaxed or loose or whatever the feeling is that you’re looking for.

James:	Yeah. I mean, it’s a poison. It’s a toxin. And here’s the thing. It takes seven to ten days for the poison to leave your system. So, you have a glass of wine tonight or you have a beer tonight, the toxins from that drink are still going to be in your system a week to ten days from now. So, imagine how that’s just holding you back. And look, I want to be really clear. I’m not telling people to quit alcohol forever. I mean, I designed and created this program called “30-Day No Alcohol Challenge”, and it’s really designed to just have people quit for 30 days. Because what happens is that after 30 days, people realize. They go, oh my God. All this drinking, it’s costing me a lot of money, it’s costing me my sleep, it’s costing me my looks, it’s costing me lost opportunities. And when people do that and they go through my 30-Day No Alcohol Challenge program and they come out the other side, a lot of them will go back to drinking, but they’ll do it at a far reduced rate than compared to when they began, and a lot of people also just stay quit, just like I did. They just never go back, because all of a sudden they’re feeling energized and clearheaded and productive, and if they were single beforehand, all of a sudden these amazing partners start walking into their lives. Why? Because people who don’t drink or who drink very little and drinking isn’t a necessity for them tend to be more health conscious, tend to be more happy...tend to be happier, I should say, tend to be more open, tend to smile more. And so, like attracts like, right? You start attracting those types of people into your life. So, yeah, when I created the 30-Day No Alcohol Challenge, it wasn’t to say alcohol is the devil, don’t drink it ever again. It was, let’s just quit drinking for 30 days, re-explore our relationship with alcohol, see how we feel, and then from there, drink at whatever rate you want or quite drinking entirely.

Matt:	So, I’m sure a lot of people listening to this would think that either they can’t for social reasons or they wouldn’t be able to have fun if they quit drinking. What do you say to somebody who’s thinking that?

James:	Yeah. Well, it’s the most asked question I get from who are thinking about drinking. In fact, I just finished writing a book called 30-Day No Alcohol Challenge and dedicated a whole chapter to it. Most people think, oh my God, I’m going to be a social recluse if I don’t drink alcohol, but what I teach in my book and in the program is how to socialize without alcohol and still have fun, still have the most fun of anyone. So, what I attempted to do is, before I go out and I’m not drinking, I’ll just say to myself, I’ll make a commitment: “James, I’m going to have the most fun tonight. I’m going to meet the most people. I’m going to be the most engaged. I’m going to be genuinely interested in everyone that I speak to. When people challenge me about not drinking and people say, ‘Go on, just have one,’ I’m going to laugh and joke. I’m going to make a joke like, ‘Yeah, I’m just going to get drunk on this soda water tonight,’ and I do it with a cheeky little grin. Or, ‘Yeah, I’m gonna get drunk on this water tonight! I’m going to dance on the tables! I’m going to crazy!’ Or, ‘Nah, I’m not drinking tonight. I’m too strong in mind.’“ And I just say it with a grin. I say it in a cheeky manner. And when I do that, nobody cares. Like, nobody cares that I’m not drinking. Some people may still go, “Go on, just have one, just have one,” but I just smile and I just say, “No, I’m okay. I’m just going to get drunk on this water.” Or, “No, I’m good. I’m good. I’m going to go crazy. I’m already drunk. I’m already drunk on this soda water I’m drinking. Ha ha ha ha ha.” Just make a little joke about it. And when you do that, people just leave you alone. People don’t care. So, commit to having the most fun, be genuinely interested in other people, dance, laugh, joke, do all those things, and do it while sitting on water, ice, and a piece of lime.

Matt:	You know, I don’t think I quite did exactly sort of the 30-day no alcohol challenge, but I have sort of paused my drinking for several-week periods a couple of different times, and one of the tricks that I’ve always used is whenever I’m out with people and they complain or try to make comments about, “Oh, you know, you’re being lame, you’re not drinking,” whatever it is, typically what I’ll say is, “Whatever energy level... If you ever call me out and say that my energy level isn’t the highest energy level person here, I’ll immediately ramp up to whatever that energy level is.”

James:	I like that. That’s good. So, you’ve almost, like, got accountability from a friend of years.

Matt:	Exactly, yeah. And I basically say, that’s sort of my stop gap in the sense of, you know, if anybody calls me out, I’m happy to jump up, dance around, get crazy if... You know, whatever the energy level of the top person there is, I’ll match that energy level or exceed it. That’s my commitment if I’m not drinking.

James:	That’s awesome. Yeah, I love that. That’s great. I mean, I do a lot of those videos on my Snapchat. I have a Snapchat and thousands of people around the world follow me, and when I’m out and about with friends or socializing, I’m always taking videos of me having fun without drinking, and just the fact that I’ve got people watching holds me accountable, almost. I mean, I’m never tempted to drink, it’s just I want to... It holds me accountable to making sure I’m having the most fun of anyone in my group, and some of them may be drinking. So, I like your strategy. It’s great. It’s got accountability and it’s like a fun little challenge, and then it just kind of wakes you up out of whatever mental slumber you may be in during your night out.

Matt:	Definitely. You know, the other thing that... Are you familiar with a term called “social skydiving”? Have you ever heard of that?

James:	No, I haven’t. Tell me about it.

Matt:	So, I think I talked about this in a previous episode of the show where we talked about embracing discomfort, but basically, social skydiving is the concept of, in any social context... It’s sort of pulled from this sort of pick-up artist community or whatever, that whole world, but it’s the idea that basically, when you’re out or when you’re in an uncomfortable situation or a situation where you don’t really know anybody, you basically pick the most intimidating looking group of people, and you immediately walk into their conversation with nothing, no plan of what you’re going to do other than just saying, like, “Hey, what’s up?” And you just keep doing that over and over again, and it’s very scary to do it the first couple times, but you realize pretty quickly that you don’t have to have a plan, you don’t have to come in and be cool or whatever it is. You can kind of just learn how to interact with people and push yourself out of your comfort zone and the fear that you’re not going to be able to talk to people.

James:	Yeah, I love that. That’s awesome. Social skydiving. So, yeah, if someone’s listening right now and they know that they want to reduce alcohol because it costs a lot of money or they’re tired or they’re lethargic or they’re carrying a few extra pounds or you feel like you rely on alcohol as a social crutch, do what Matt’s suggesting there. Do the social skydiving. Just go out one night, don’t drink, commit to not drinking, commit to only drinking water or soda water, and then just go and put yourself in groups of people in social situations and see what happens. A lot of times, you feel like there’s going to be some kind of awkwardness happening, but it actually isn’t. It’s like, you go in there and you say, “Hey, I’m James. How you doing?” And people go, “Oh, hi. I’m Steve,” and blah blah blah. And you go, “What’s your story?” And then people start having a conversation and then, before you know it, you’re off on different conversational tangents, you’re making new friends, people respect you because you’re the one who opened the conversation first. Yeah, it’s cool. I mean, Forbes magazine put me in the top 25 networkers, which was very nice of them, in 2015, and part of that reason was because I’ve taught so many people how to just walk into any social situation and just engage people right away and be the most popular person in the group or in the room. But I’ve never heard social skydiving before. I like it, Matt. Thank you for introducing me to that phrase.

Matt:	Definitely, and for listeners who are curious, I read probably a year or two ago a really good blog post about the concept, so I’ll throw that in the show notes. And I’m curious. I’d love to drill down on the idea of engaging people in any social situation. You said you’ve taught a lot of people how to do that. What are some of the tips or secrets that you teach people?

James:	Well, I’ll tell you what not to do. Don’t say when you meet someone, “Oh, what do you do?” It’s just such a boring, dull question, and it implies that you don’t really care about who the person is. You really only care about what they do for a living so you can see whether they can help you or not. A far better question is, “Tell me your story. What’s your story?” Because that’s such an open-ended question, because then the person that you’ve asked the question to might say, “Oh, yeah, you know, I just moved here from such-and-such and it’s awesome,” or, “Yeah, I’m friends with John who’s event this is,” and blah blah blah. And asking that question shows the person that you’re asking the question to that you’re actually genuinely interested in them as a person, rather than what they do for a living. So, what I like to do is I’ll go into any group and I’ll be like, “Hey, I’m James. How you doing? Oh, yeah, nice to meet you. Yeah. What’s your story? Tell me what you’re passionate about right now. What’s going on your world right now?” They’re great questions, and they spark interest in conversations. And not only do they spark interest in conversations, but the person who is interested in other people makes other people super interested in them. So, you want to walk into a room and be the most popular person, have everyone going, “Who’s that guy? I want to hang out with that guy,” be genuinely interested in the people that you talk to. I don’t mean be interested because you heard a podcast with James Swanwick on Matt’s podcast at one time and he said, “Oh, be interested.” No, I said be genuinely interested, which means be curious about people. If someone starts to tell you about their life, listen. Find commonality with which you can talk to them about. If someone says, “I’m going skydiving this weekend,” then you can say to them, “Oh, I remember when I went skydiving. It was great,” or, “I could never do that. I really admiring you for jumping out of a plane and skydiving,” or, “Tell me more.” I tell you what, the best thing that you can say to anyone, really, is, “Wow. You’re really interesting. Tell me more.” Who wouldn’t love to hear that? But the only way that you can deliver that phrase is if you’re genuinely interested in what the other person has to say, and that person can see and feel you being genuinely interested.

Matt:	And I think there’s a bunch of research about the field of rapport building and communication where they actually discover basically that the most effective way, or one of the most effective ways, to build rapport with someone is to ask them questions about themselves, and that actually makes them like you more.

James:	Absolutely. People’s favorite topic is themselves, so invite them to talk about themselves. And don’t be doing it just because that’s what the studies say. Do it and listen intently and find curiosity and find enjoyment in listening to people talk about themselves, because people are interesting and fascinating if you just ask them enough questions. You might be on a bus and you might look at people on the bus and just go, “I don’t want to know those people.” Maybe you don’t like the look of someone. Maybe someone just doesn’t look like your type of person. Strike up a conversation with that person anyway and ask them questions. I bet that you find something fascinating and interesting about them.

Matt:	So, shifting directions a little bit, I’m curious... I’ve heard that you read a book a day. Can you tell me a little bit about that?

James:	Yeah. I learned how to speed read. I learned how to read an entire book in anywhere between 20 minutes and an hour, I can do it. Most of the time it’s an hour because I like to take my time. [Chuckles] Some people are probably thinking, wow, that’s crazy! But I actually... I’ll tell you how I do it verbally, but if you want to just watch a longer version of it, on my YouTube channel—which is just my name, James Swanwick—if you type in “how I read a book a day”, there’s actually a lengthier, 51-minute video where I actually show people reading an entire book. But, yeah, what I do is I buy books all the time now. I look at... I read the back of the book. I read the chapters. I scan... I skim through the book for five minutes initially, and I’m looking at the first sentence of each of the paragraphs. I’m getting an idea in my head what the main point of the books...the book is, and then I’ll go back again and then I’ll go through and sort of systematically take my time a little bit more. So, I’m not reading every single word of the book. I’m just picking up two or three main lessons from the book, because studies have shown that seven days after people read a book, they’ve only retained 10% of what the book taught. So, with that in mind, I’m not going to spend a month reading a book when I can spend one hour reading a book. I’m just going to retain what I can. I’m going to write it down. I’m going to get the lesson or the main lessons from the book, and I’m going to go and use it in my own life. So, I have a bookshelf here. I don’t have a television in my apartment. My living room faces a bookshelf and I have a bookshelf filled with books, and so when I sit down on the living room sofa at the end of a day, my mind...my eyes see the books. I go and pick up a book and I can read, you know, a book in 15 minutes to an hour.

Matt:	I think that’s a really important point. And if anybody listening thinks back about a book you’ve read, typically you can...you know, even longer than a week past, right, you sort of have maybe at most four or five core concepts that you sort of pulled away from that book that were the really big takeaways.

James:	Less. I’d reckon one or two.

Matt:	Yeah, exactly, you know what I’m saying? Best case scenario. And so the reality is, instead of... What you’re saying is basically instead of spending all that time to only harvest the two to three key things you’re actually going to remember, just short-circuit that process and only pull those things out to begin with.

James:	I mean, it’s so true. And what I do now is I underline key parts of the book with a pen. A lot of people are like, oh, don’t damage the book! I’m like, well, what’s the point of the book in the first place? It’s to, like...to get knowledge from it. So, underline key points, and then when I finish a book, towards the back, in the back...you know, within the back part, I’ll just write out the three main notes that I got. So, I’m showing this to Matt now on the video as we’re recording this. You can see my notes. I’ve got a book here called Radical Honesty: How to Transform Your Life by Telling the Truth. So, I read that book in an hour. There you go! That’s cool! So, you’ve got some great notes, too, Matt. And I read that book in an hour, and at the end I’ve written down the three main lessons that I got from it, and here... I’ll just read them to you. Number one: to be radically honest. Number one: reveal the facts. Two: honestly express current feelings and thoughts. Three: expose your fiction. That’s all I gotta know! That’s all I gotta know from the entire book, which is basically be honest as much as you can, and when you’re going to be radically honest and have awkward conversations with people, step one: reveal the facts; step two: honestly express your feelings and thoughts; and step three: expose the fiction. So, that’s a... That is a 275-page book. I didn’t need to read every single damn word of the book to understand that to tell...understand how to tell the truth. So, I just skimmed through it. I took my time in certain chapters. I took the main points in my head. And I’ll tell you: Just because I jumped on this call with you, Matt, I had a conversation with one of my staff who helps me with 30-day no alcohol challenge and with my Swannies glasses. And I had a very, very honest conversation with him, where I...I didn’t fire him, but I...I certainly left him in no uncertain terms that his performance needs to be...to be better. And it was an awkward conversation, but because I had expressed to him that I was doing it for part of this radical honesty thing and I asked the same for him in return, it was a wonderfully professional conversation, and now we have a strategy and a plan to move forward. So, again, I didn’t need to read every single word of the book. I just needed to, like, read it in 15 minutes to an hour, got the main point, and now I’m utilizing it in my life.

Matt:	I’m also a huge fan of taking notes within a book and I very deeply underline and put notes in the margins and create my own index and all kinds of stuff, and I showed you that a second ago on the video of one of the books I have that has a bunch of notes in it. And listeners actually email in all the time asking, you know, “How do you store all this knowledge? How do you read all these books and pull information from them?” I’m curious. If you’re reading a book a day or four or five books a week, whatever it might be, how do you actually retain and utilize all of that knowledge on an ongoing basis.

James:	Well, like I said, I write down the three main points in the back of the book, and then I actually have a whole week scheduled in my calendar, one week out of every month, I go back and look at books that I’ve already read and I read over it again. So, for example, I’m looking at my bookshelf now. I have a book by Oprah Winfrey that she wrote called What I Know for Sure. Now, I don’t remember the three things that I wrote in the back of the book, but I remember one of them, and one of those things is never say a bad word about anyone else. Like, avoid saying bad things about other people. And I remembered that because I wrote it in the back of the book and because one week every month I go back and I quickly read the back of those books to retain the information. So, there’s another book there, Tony Robbins, Money: Master the Game, which came out about two years ago. It’s a big, thick, huge book. And that book actually took me an entire afternoon to read. It was a little bit more specific, but I did read it in about three or four hours. I’m looking at it right now. Let me tell you something. The main thing that I got out of that book that I wrote in the back of the book when I first read it was, “Get a fiduciary.” A fiduciary is an independent account, someone who can give you financial advice without them taking a commission or without them pushing certain financial products on you. Guess what? I have a fiduciary. I have a fiduciary in Omaha, Nebraska. His name is Patrick, and he helps me with my wealth management. I wouldn’t have done that if I hadn’t had read Tony Robbins’ book, Money: Master the Game. I didn’t even know what the word “fiduciary” meant when I read it. So, that’s an example of you read a book, you write notes, or one or two or three notes inside the back page, you go back one week out of every month and you just look at the back pages or look at your notes of all the books that you’ve done, and it reminds you, it refreshes you, it keeps you on track.

Matt:	I think that’s a great tool, is to basically have sort of scheduled time where you specifically are going back and reviewing whether it’s book notes or, really, any sort of critical piece of information that you’ve studied in the past.

James:	Yeah.

Matt:	And that’s something that... Personally, I create a lot of sort of like almost my own version of CliffsNotes or whatever whenever I read a book. It’s more lengthy than the three-word...the three kind of idea summary, but probably that’s a bad thing because it’s harder for me to go back and review them, and oftentimes I feel like I want to do that, but don’t schedule the time. So, I think I’m going to start trying to just concretely schedule review time, and that’s a good takeaway personally, for me, from that advice.

James:	Yeah. I mean, I’m looking at my calendar now—I have Google Calendar—and I have...on the first of every month I have “financial life overview”. So, every...on the first day or two of every month, I do a complete analysis of my finances. And then I have this week here where it’s like “review books”. Here it is here. It’s on the 22nd. It says, “Review previously read book week.” [Chuckles] It’s right there. So, it’s big and I’ve set the settings in my Google Calendar for it to pop up monthly. “Review previously read book week” is exactly what I call it. So, yeah. And then when you do that, it just keeps reminding you. It keeps reinforcing it. It keeps pushing. Because the danger is people are like, oh, yeah, I read a lot of books. I go to a lot of seminars. I go to a lot of conferences. And that’s great, but knowledge isn’t power; applied knowledge is power, which means you actually have to take action based on knowledge that you’re getting. So, the way that I do it is I write down the main point—one or two points, or three points—of a book; I go back, I review it every three or four weeks; and then I take action.

Matt:	So, just to clarify, when you say you sort of have the 22nd as the review book week...

James:	Mm-hmm.

Matt:	...how much time within those...within that week are you spending reviewing books, like, on a given day?

James:	So, it can be as little as seven minutes. I like to do this thing called “four by seven”. So, when I wake up in the morning, I’ll do seven minutes reading a book or reviewing previously read books; I’ll do seven minutes writing in my five-minute journal about things that I’m grateful four; I’ll do seven minutes just freestyle writing in a diary that I have about my goals; and then the other seven minutes might be meditation. I might put on the Calm app—C-A-L-M—and just do seven minutes of meditation. That takes 30 minutes. I mean, it takes 28 minutes, but, like, taking a little break in between each seven-minute block, you know, makes it come out to about 30. And if you do that consistently every day, that is a lot better than if you, like, only once a month are you reading books or only once a month are you meditating. Just I try to make it so easy, like, so manageable that I can do it as a habit, and when I do that, everything just progresses. So, to answer your initial question, seven minutes sometimes is all I’ll need to just review three or four books because I’ve got my notes in the back of the book. Like, let’s do... We’ll do another example right now — Radical Honesty. Okay, let’s time me. Ready? Put the stopwatch on and tell me how long this takes for me to review this book. Ready?

Matt:	All right. Timing you.

James:	Go! All right. Let me look at the back. Number one: Reveal the facts. Two: Honestly express current feelings and thoughts. Three: Exposing the fiction. Okay. When am I having an awkward conversation this week? All right, I’ve gotta have a conversation with John about that, so when I do that I’m going to tell him the facts. All right. Then I’m going to tell him what I feel and what my thoughts are around those facts, and then I’m going to, three, expose the fiction. Okay. Great. So, reveal the facts, express current feelings and thoughts, and expose the fiction. Okay, cool. I’ll use that in my conversation with John later this week. Awesome. Okay. Let’s grab another book. What book we got here? Oh, look! It’s James’ 30-day no alcohol challenge book! Awesome! Let’s have a look at this. And then I’ll just do the same thing. I’ll go back over the books and I’ll just keep doing it. I’m looking at another book here called Wealth Warrior by Steve Chandler. I’ve got notes in the back of that book, so I might go back there and go, oh, look. When I read that book six months ago when I was on the plane from New York to Los Angeles, I wrote in there such and such. Did I implement that? Oh, I didn’t. Okay, I gotta implement that. And so forth. Rinse and repeat.

Matt:	So, I think it was, like, just over 30 seconds that it took you to review that, for vigilant listeners that were curious, unless I mistimed it, but...

James:	There you go. So, that’s all it takes. Like, that’s all it takes. And now I’ve got a... Like I said, before I jumped on this interview call, I had that awkward conversation, but it wasn’t...it was awkward and professional at the same time because I’d read the book Radical Honesty; because I’d reviewed my notes beforehand; because I knew how to have the conversation which didn’t make my staff member feel threatened or upset. It was done in a way that I learned how to do it from a book.

Matt:	Fair enough. So, for people who are listening in, what are some additional resources kind of aside from the stuff we’ve talked about so far that you might recommend digging into or checking out, whether it’s books or websites or whatever it might be?

James:	Yeah, well, I like... I’m not really one for meditation, but I do force myself... I use the word “force” in a liberal kind of way. I like Calm — C-A-L-M. You download that app and you can choose, like, a two-minute meditation. Even a two-minute meditation for people with ADD like me is actually enough to really calm your mind down and stay focused and get clear, and you can do that a few times during the day. I really like to do that. The other thing is just a little habit hack that I have. So I stay consistent with my exercise, what I do is I get my exercise clothes ready the night before and then I’ll lay them out on the floor right where I get out of bed each morning, so when I wake up in the morning I see the exercise clothes, I have the visual cue, I’ll put the clothes on; therefore, it’s very easy for me to then continue walking out the door and go to the gym and do some exercise. What most people do is, unfortunately, they go to bed not having prepared their clothes and they say, oh, I’m going to go to the gym in the morning! Then they wake up and they’re like, eh, it’s too much of a pain to try and find my shorts and get my shoes together and all that kind of stuff, and they don’t...they don’t go. It’s just, oh, I’ll go to the gym tomorrow. So, little things like that where you make it super easy, and even like me with having a bookshelf where my TV would ordinarily be makes me pick up books rather than watch television. Little things like that can really be a huge help to transforming your life and improving your productivity.

Matt:	So, what would one piece of homework be that you would give somebody listening to this episode?

James:	If sleep is important to you, which it should be, I would definitely download the free app. It’s called f.lux — F-period-L-U-X. Download that onto your computer screen, and what that does is that it reduces the brightness level of your computer screen as the sun goes down. And as it moves into the nighttime, it just reduces the brightness level. Now, that helps a lot. If you have an iPhone and you’ve downloaded the latest software update, use... it’s called Nigh Shift. It’s the Night Shift feature and it’s the same thing. Towards, you know, like seven, eight, nine, ten o’clock at night, it starts to reduce the brightness levels so you’re not exposing yourself to as much blue light. Having said that, neither of those two things help you block out the blue light from your kitchen light or your TV screen or your bedside table, so if you... I would definitely recommend getting a pair of blue light-blocking glasses. You don’t have to get mine. I have a brand that I created called Swannies. I would definitely wear your Swannies about an hour before you go to sleep so you’re blocking the blue light from your cell phone; you’re blocking the blue light from your overhead lights; you’re blocking the blue light from the traffic and the street lights. And if you do that, you’re going to create more melatonin; you’re going to get sleepier; your sleep will likely improve. Just on that sleep thing: If you do want to... I did write a book called 7 Ways to Sleep Better, and if you want to just get that book and read up a little bit more on that, and you’re in the U.S. and you’re listening to this, if you text the number 44222 right now and put in the word “sleeptips”—one word—I’ll text you back details on where you can get that free book, which is just called 7 Ways to Sleep Better. It only really works if you’re in the U.S., by the way. If you’re outside of the U.S., just go to swanniesglasses.com—S-W-A-N-N-I-E-Sglasses.com—and you can get the free book, 7 Ways to Sleep Better, there.

Matt:	Awesome. Well, James, thank you very much for being on the Science of Success and I’m sure the listeners are really going to get a lot out of this interview and have some great tips to be able to improve their sleep.

James:	You’re welcome, Matt. Thank you for having me. And just a reminder: If you want to send me a message or ask me any more questions about sleep, then you can just find me at jamesswanwick.com, or even just send me a direct snap on my Snapchat or Instagram, which is just my name, @jamesswanwick.

How To Double Your Creative Output in Fifteen Minutes with Tom Corson-Knowles

In this episode we explore strategies to jumpstart your creativity, how to think about the definition of success, how to retain the knowledge from all of the books you read, and how to be a better writer with best-selling author and publishing expert Tom Corson-Knowles.

Tom is a serial entrepreneur, blogger and international bestselling author. He started his first business at age 13 and is the founder of TCK Publishing whose mission is to help every client earn a full-time income as an author. Tom’s bestselling books include Secrets of the Six-Figure Author, The Kindle Publishing Bible, and The Kindle Writing Bible, among others.

In this episode we discuss:

• Why creativity is a learned skill and not an innate talent

• Why creativity is important for everyone, not just “starving artists"

• 3 simple strategies you can use to improve you creativity right now

• The incredible importance of “thinking time"

• The two parts of the creative process

• How to improve your writing skills

• How you can double your creative output in 15 minutes per day

• How to stop yourself from pressing the gas and the brakes at the same time when trying to create

• And much more!

If you want to boost your creativity - check out this episode! 

Thank you so much for listening!

Please SUBSCRIBE and LEAVE US A REVIEW on iTunes! (Click here for instructions on how to do that!). 

SHOW NOTES, LINKS, & RESEARCH

• [Book] 2k to 10k by Rachel Aaron (see here).

• [Book] The Art of Learning by Josh Waitzkin (see here).

• [Book] Unlimited Memory by Kevin Horsley (see here).

• [Book] Moonwalking With Einstein by Joshua Foer (see here).

• [SOS Episode] The Neuroscience Behind Einstein and Isaac Newton’s Biggest Breakthroughs (see here).

• [SOS Episode] How You Can Memorize a Shuffled Deck of Cards in Under A Minute - The Science Behind Memory (see here).

• If you want to learn more about self publishing, get Tom's free self-publishing course (see here).

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Matt:	In our last episode we went deep into limiting beliefs. We looked at how random childhood experiences can shape your worldview for decades; discussed how your outer world is created by your inner world; examined how to reverse engineer bad behavior, and much more with our special guest, Catherine Plano. If you feel like something’s been holding you back, but you can’t figure out what it is, listen to that episode. Today, we have another great guest on the show, Tom Corson-Knowles. Tom is a serial entrepreneur, blogger, and international bestselling author. He started his first business at age 13, and is the founder of TCK Publishing, whose mission is to help every client earn a fulltime income as an author. Tom’s bestselling books include, Secrets of the Six Figure Author, The Kindle Publishing Bible, and The Kindle Writing Bible, among many others. Tom, welcome to The Science of Success.

Tom:	Thanks for having me, Matt. It’s great to be here.

Matt:	Well, we’re very excited to have you on. Tom, to kind of get started, tell us a little bit about your story, and how you got into the world of publishing and writing.

Tom:	Yeah, sure. I kind of started my writing journey... Well, actually when I was 12 years old I would just write poetry on my computer. I had no idea what I was doing, and I had this really old Word processor. No one I knew wrote poetry. No one in my family wrote poetry. It was just this weird thing I did, but I never really thought about it until years later when I was in college—I was a freshman in college—and I was in business school, and all of my classmates, their dream in business school was to go to Wall Street, and become an investment banker, earn six figures right out of the gate, and work like 100 hours a week on Wall Street in investment banking. That, to me, was an absolute nightmare. So, the dream of everyone around me in business school was my nightmare, and I was freaking out. Like, I had to find something else to do because I didn’t want to end up in that career path. It didn’t fit for me, for my personality, for sure. So, I started studying entrepreneurship, I started side business, anything I could do to earn extra money, and one of the projects I started was this random thing. I just opened up a Word document on my computer and just started writing. It was never meant to be a book, really, it was just meant to be my personal manifesto of my personal beliefs of what I thought it meant to live a successful life beyond just having money. For me it was more about freedom, and having great relationships, and being able to go wherever I want, whenever I want; wherever I want with whoever I want in my life. So, I started writing this manifesto, and shared it with a few people, and they loved it, and recommended I actually get it published. So, I started trying to get a traditional book deal, trying to find an agent, trying to find a publisher, and just completely failed miserably. Six years and didn’t get anywhere. Banging my head against the wall, basically. Then about four or five years ago a friend mentioned a comment, “Why don’t you just self-publish your book on Kindle?” I had a Kindle since the day it came out so I knew about how amazing eBooks were. I loved eBooks, I loved my Kindle Reader, but I had no idea you could self-publish because when I first started writing my first book, I looked into self-publishing and it was like, the business model was, you needed at least $25,000 investment to buy 5,000 books to have them all shipped to your garage so you could store them there. And every time you wanted to sell a book, you had to collect the money from the customer, you had to put it in an envelope, stamp it, seal it, send it to the customer; it was just this crazy business model. I didn’t have the money to invest the time, let alone the time and inclination to store 25,000 book...or 5,000 books in my garage. So, when I heard about eBook publishing I was like, “That’s amazing.” I just studied everything I could, and long story short, my first year, I had my first $12,000 month just from eBook royalties alone on Amazon Kindle. That’s when I kind of knew that I had made it, so to speak, in the publishing world, just by myself.

Matt:	That’s fascinating. What was the name of that book?

Tom:	My very first book, it’s now called, Rules of the Rich. It had a different name back then, but I’ve since rebranded it. That’s my personal manifesto of what I think it takes to live a successful life.

Matt:	What are some of the things that you shared in there in terms of success beyond traditional monetary success?

Tom:	A big thing for me was freedom, because a lot people might have a lot of money, and I knew a lot of people in my life, especially when I was growing up, who had a lot of money, but they did not like the work that they did. They didn’t like their family, they didn’t like their wife, they didn’t like so many things about their life. Growing up I observed these older people in my life, family friends and so forth, because my parents were doctors so they had a bunch of friends who were doctors. Doctors are actually one of the professions that have the highest suicide rates, which is crazy. So, I’d see these people who were millionaires. I mean, so much money; they had yachts, they had all kinds of great things, and they hated their life. They were stressed out, they were overweight, they weren’t taking care of their body, and all these different things. I learned really quickly, that’s important to me. I don’t want to end up being 50 being overweight, being sick all the time, hating my family, hating my life, hating my work. I wanted the opposite of that. I wanted the money, right? I’ll take that, but if I have to also have the freedom, the health, the relationships. That to me, were the related keys to a successful life. That’s what I’ve tried to strive for since then.

Matt:	That’s great. I think that’s a really great way to think about it and look at it. Shifting directions a little bit, one of the things that I really wanted to discuss with you is the idea of creativity, and obviously creativity is a huge part of the writing process, and something we’ve talked about before on the show. We actually did a whole episode on some of the neuroscience behind creativity and how to spark it, but I’d love to hear some of your insights about what you’ve learned, and how people can jumpstart their creativity and harness it.

Tom:	Absolutely. For me, creativity is everything, whether you’re in business, whether you’re writing a book, any kind of project, you’re creating something new. That’s going to require creativity. One of the issues I have with the word ‘creativity’ is that it becomes a stereotype like, if you’re a creative person you’re like a starving artist. Most people think that, right? We think that either you have creativity or you don’t, but that’s just not true. It’s a learned skill. Like everything in life, it’s a learned skill. You can learn to be really, really creative. We all have creative faculties, we all have the creative ability in our minds, we just have to learn how to actually harness that. That was actually one of my big challenges as a budding writer, because in school I was really good at math. I was that math guy; I was the analytical guy; I was very left brain. No one would ever say that I was a creative person when I was in school because I didn’t appear that way, and I didn’t have the skills, but now everyone thinks I’m a creative genius; all the books I’ve written and things I’ve done, but it’s not because I was born this way, or because I was born with special skills, it’s because I learned habits and strategies that actually helped me be creative. One of my favorite creative strategies, Matt, that is hugely impactful in my life and many of my students, is something called thinking time. Just scheduling thinking time. Essentially what it is, is that I’ll actually schedule my calendar like, 11 AM to 11:30—thinking time. So, I’ll lock myself in the room: no distractions, no cell phones, no interruptions whatsoever, and I just sit down with a pen and paper and I write down some questions. Questions could be anything from, how can I improve my health? How can I improve my relationship with my wife? How can I improve my finances? How can I earn more income? How can I grow my business? How can I better serve my clients? Just asking basic questions about how I can actually improve my life. What I’ve noticed is just by writing down a question and writing whatever comes to mind—any idea that comes to my mind—writing that down on paper, I have had the most incredible ideas. I’ve had some terrible ideas, for sure, we all have that, but I found some of the biggest leaps in my personal success have come just from asking myself questions. One of the things I’ve noticed is, for example, Matt, we’re in the Mastermind group together, and in our Mastermind sessions someone will ask a question, and other guys in that group will give their answers, their feedback, on how they would deal with that situation or problem, but you don’t need a Mastermind group. You don’t need a mentor to tell you what to do. A lot of times in life, if you just ask yourself, you already know that answer. You ask someone who’s overweight what they could do to lose weight, they already know the answer; the thing is they’re just not doing it. They aren’t focused on it. It’s very easy to ignore things in life. It’s very easy to get stuck in old habits. For me, creativity is about more than just coming up with the idea, but it’s also changing the focus of your mind to the solution rather than the problem, and actually admitting to yourself that there is a problem, and that you’re willing to fix it. That’s what creativity is about is really getting the ideas first of all, but then also changing your focus and your attention.

Matt:	You made a bunch of really good points there. Just kind of starting off, for listeners who might be unaware, could you describe, basically, for them, what a Mastermind group is?

Tom:	Yeah, absolutely. A Mastermind group is a group of people who come together to support each other in a common mission. I know there’s a lot of Mastermind groups for business. That’s probably the most common one I know of. Basically, you might have five, or ten, or more people come together in a meeting in Skype, or in a personal meeting, or at an event, and people will ask questions and get advice from other members of the group. A lot of people have read, Think and Grow Rich, by Napoleon Hill, and he talks about Mastermind groups and how important they were to Henry Ford, and some of the most successful entrepreneurs in our history, but he also talks about how he had his own mastermind groups in his head just by thinking about it. Just by, what would Henry Ford do in this situation? What would Rockefeller do in this situation? I think you can do... That’s very similar to what I’ve done with my thinking time process is, instead of asking, what would someone else do? What would I do? How could I improve my life? There’s all kinds of questions you can ask; there’s all kinds of things you can think about, but what I’ve noticed is if I don’t schedule it in my calendar, Matt, if I don’t actually spend the time thinking, I’m not going to think. I’m just going to go by habit. I’m going to wake up, I’m going to go to work, I’m going to do the same thing I did yesterday, and that’s the habit we’re all in. So, I think you have to break yourself out of that habit and have that alone time by yourself without distractions where you can really focus and think new ideas rather than just doing the same thing day after day after day.

Matt:	I think one of the other really important points that you made is the idea that creativity is not just for the starving artists, and that a lot of people hear the word ‘creativity’ and step back and think, I’m not a quote-unquote creative; I’m not an artist. When in reality, creativity is a skill that can be applied to literally any field that you’re interacting with. Whether it’s business, physics, whatever it might be.

Tom:	Absolutely. Business is a great example. Every entrepreneur is an artist. They are a creative person. They’ve come up with new solutions, and new products, and new services that no one thought of before. Maybe they had the same product and the same service, but they’re doing things in ways that no one has thought of before. That’s all creativity. For me, if you look at life, a simple way to look at life is, it’s just a series of problems; problem after problem after problem. The key is just focus on the solution. How do you find the solution? You want to increase your income? Okay, what’s the solution? You want to find a happy marriage? Well, what is the solution? Creativity is really the process of coming up with those ideas and testing them, and seeing if each potential solution will actually work to improve your life. 

Matt:	The concept of, what’s the solution? You touched on something a few minutes ago, which is the example of losing weight, which is basically, a vast majority of the time—maybe not in every case but often—deep down you know what you need to do, and sometimes you just have to develop, or cultivate, the self-awareness to say, “It’s not rocket science. I don’t need some sort of epiphany. I really just need to start executing on the basic fundamental of what I want to achieve.”

Tom:	Absolutely. I’ve noticed that too, time and time again, people want...a lot of times we want a fancy solution. We want something complex. We want a diet plan to follow, but you don’t need a diet plan to follow. It’s not that they don’t work, it’s just that... Why not just add an apple a day to your diet right now? Why not just do the most simple, easy, obvious thing right in front of you? A lot of people—we step over the obvious stuff to find something fancy, and new, and different, when really just doing the obvious thing could make a huge difference over time. We all make changes slowly. I’ve never seen someone go from broke to billionaire overnight. It doesn’t happen. I’ve never seen someone go from 200 pounds to 140, and their fit, ideal weight, in 2 days. It just doesn’t happen. Rather than trying to get mega results instantly, why not see, what can I do today to improve my situation right now? That’s how you make progress; otherwise you’re just going to put it off. You’re going to put it off for a day, and then a week, then a month, then a year, then 10 years, and you’re going to look back at your life like: Why didn’t I ever eat that apple? Why didn’t I ever take that walk? Why didn’t I ever go to that conference? Why didn’t I start that business? Why didn’t I write that book? Well, it’s because you made it into such a big thing that you could never really do instead of focusing on the next step. If all you do is focus on the next step, you’ll constantly be making progress.

Matt:	That is super important. I try to distill...any project that I’m working on, I always try to distill it down to this sort of, what is the next action item, the next thing I can do, to make some sort of progress on that?

Tom:	Exactly. That’s where your focus has to go because it’s so easy to get overwhelmed. Our minds are our biggest enemies sometimes. If you think, for example...books are a great example. When I first had the idea to write a book, it seemed like this monumental task that would take years and years to accomplish. The truth is it’s not. It’s not really that complicated. It’s not really that difficult if you know what to do, and if you just focus on the next step. Literally, sit your butt down in a chair, open up Microsoft Word, and start writing. Anyone can do that right now. Anyone can start writing a book this very instant. They don’t need a guru to tell them what to do or how to do it; you just start right now. For me, likewise, I’m always focused on: Okay, what is the next step? So I don’t get overwhelmed, so I don’t get stuck, so I don’t procrastinate, and I think that’s crucial to anything in life, for me personally, is just focusing on what is the next step.

Matt:	Going back to the idea of thinking time, one of the things that I’m a huge fan of, and it’s a very similar process, is just basically kind of a daily ritual developed by a guy named, Josh Waitzkin. Are you familiar with Josh at all?

Tom:	Absolutely. He has a fantastic book on learning. I think it’s called, The Art of Learning, or something.

Matt:	Yes, The Art of Learning. Exactly. Great book. He recommends a very similar process which is essentially the idea of structuring your morning around having an uninterrupted period of time before you check email, before the day disrupts you, to just brainstorm on a particular problem or challenge that you’re having, and harnessing the subconscious mind, and the powers of the subconscious mind, to tackle that issue. There’s a whole framework that he goes through to feed ideas into the subconscious and sort of pull them out, which we actually did a whole episode on. I’ll link that in the show notes for people that want to check that out. I think that that... You’ve definitely hit the nail on the head, and that’s a huge piece of developing creativity is scheduling that time, and having it be uninterrupted time, that you can really think, and sort of force, your mind to be creative.

Tom:	Absolutely. I think another big key to creativity a lot of people miss out on, especially writers and introverts, is connecting with other people. Mastermind groups are a great way to do it, but you don’t need to be a part of some formal group to do it. You can just go and find someone in your field, find someone in your industry, find customers, find your audience members, find your fans, and talk to them about your passion. Talk to them about what you’re working on. Talk to them about your problems, and your products, and services. Talk to them about what you’re doing, and just listen and get feedback, and you’ll be amazed at how that will spark your own creativity by connecting with other people. We have this idea that the super creative scientists, like Albert Einstein, just sit in their office, just daydreaming, coming up with brilliant game-changing, world-changing ideas, and that’s not really how it works. All successful people that I know, who you would think of as really creative and geniuses, they always connect with other people. They always talk to other people. They’re always learning. Whether they’re learning from a janitor, or someone who you think might not have any good ideas, or whether they’re talking to Nobel Prize winners, they’re always open to new ideas, and to sharing, and to communicating. I think that’s a big part of creating is connecting with other human beings and sharing ideas rather than just thinking you can do it all on your own.

Matt:	Very insightful. Dovetailing with that, I’m curious, in terms of...specifically within the context of writing, I know one of the biggest challenges is writer’s block; writer creative block, or whatever you want to call it. What are some of the ways that you overcome that?

Tom:	It’s super easy. First of all, you can do that same writing time exercise, but instead of thinking about income, or whatever, just think about, what are the ideas I want to share in my writing today? What are the main ideas that I really want to share? If you’re writing nonfiction, or a how to guide, or something like that, you want to help your audience solve a problem. Just ask: What is the problem I’m solving and how can I help my reader solve that problem? Just really hone in on: What are the major ideas you want to share? Just write that down; jot down your little list. Essentially what that does is kind of warms up your mind. It gets your mind focused on the big ideas you want to share. So, when you sit down to write you’re not just staring at a blank screen wondering, “What the heck do I do?” You actually, “Okay, here is the list of ideas,” so you just get in that flow and start writing. Another big thing that is a really bad habit a lot of writers have, and if you break this habit it will double, triple your productivity, is the habit of editing while you write. There are really two parts to the writing process. There’s the creative writing side where you’re just in the flow; you’re just writing words on paper or on your processor, on your computer, and you’re not thinking about anything else. Some people say it’s like channeling. It’s like from God, or a divine spirit, or whatever. You’re totally in the flow. You’re not thinking about it, you’re just doing it. Words are appearing on the page. Then there’s the left brain part of it, which is the analytical editing part of your brain. That’s when you’re fixing typos and grammatical errors, and you’re fact-checking, and you’re doing research and stuff, and if you try to do both of those things at one time you’re not going to get in the flow. If you do get in the flow, you’re not going to stay in the flow because going to be constantly editing yourself. So, if you separate those two processes... So, you say, “This is creative writing time,” and just focus on getting words on paper, and just getting the flow, you’ll write so much faster. Then get up, take a walk, do something else, and then come back and actually edit it. If you separate those two processes, you’ll be amazed how much more productive you’ll be. I’ve seen writers, they’ll complain that they worked for like, four hours and couldn’t write more than a couple pages, and it’s because they’re just constant... it’s like having one foot on the brake and one foot on the gas. They’re writing a little bit, and they’re editing, and they’re writing a little bit, and they’re editing, and they never get in the flow, and they’re never going to be productive that way.

Matt:	That makes a ton of sense. I think I’ve read somewhere about the creative process being split into two phases, which you described. Basically, the ideation or generation phase, and then the selection phase. Even in a business context, if you’re having a marketing meeting, or a brainstorm, where you’re trying to come up with new ideas, or whatever it might be, you’re going to be a lot more productive if you spend one part of the meeting just generating ideas, and not judging them. Then after you’ve generated a ton of ideas, then you come in with a critical lens and start sort of parsing them down and saying, “No, this one doesn’t make sense,” or, “Maybe we should combine these two,” or whatever it is. It’s really hard to create new, wacky combinations when you have that mindset of judging your ideas in real-time. 

Tom:	Yeah. I remember learning in business school about this idea of brainstorming, and why you should never judge in the brainstorming phase. I always thought that was nonsense. Like, that’s silly if someone gives you these horrible ideas, but I think what I’ve noticed from my personal experience is the problem with judging those ideas right away, especially if you’re in a group setting, is that... Let’s say, we’re talking with business ideas, and you say, “Hotdogs,” and I’m like, “Matt, that’s an idiotic idea. Hotdogs are a horrible business model.” So, what’s that going to do to you emotionally? It’s going to totally take you out of flow. You’re no longer going to be inspired. You’re probably going to be hurt, or resentful, or angry, and you’re not going to have your most creative ideas come up after that. You’re going to be afraid to share. So, your second idea might be an amazing idea, but you won’t share it because that relationship has been harmed. That’s one of the reasons why, in my experience, judging ideas too soon can really hurt, especially in a group setting. Even for yourself, it’s the same thing. If you write down five ideas on a piece of paper and you’re like, “These ideas are horrible,” you just get in this negative mind frame rather than just focusing on coming up with more ideas, which is a numbers game. Everything in life is a numbers game. A person who has one idea versus a person who has a hundred ideas, the person with a hundred ideas is eventually going to be more successful if they can figure out how to find the good ones in there.

Matt:	That reminds me of, in a similar context, whenever I’m trying to create something, whether it’s a PowerPoint presentation, or an email, or whatever it is, I always try to treat the first version as a rough draft. If you set out—at least this is my personal experience—and say, “I need to craft this perfect, everything has to be exactly right, presentation,” or whatever it is, it’s really daunting, but if I set out and say, “I’m just going to create the very rough draft, basic 1.0 version,” what I’ll do is just get flowing and starting and create it, and actually do a pretty good job. Then I’ll look back and be like, “You know what? That’s pretty good. I probably could just use this, and maybe make a few tweaks, and it’s going to end up being fine.”

Tom:	Absolutely. That’s how it works when you’re writing a book. You just want to get the first draft done as quickly as possible because that’s when the real work starts of doing your fact-checking, and proof reading, and editing, and rewriting. A lot of people never even get the first draft done because now they’ve got bad habits, or they’re constantly self-editing, they’re never really getting in the flow; whatever it is. Get the first draft done, and it’s all easier from there, but if you’re constantly fighting yourself with one foot on the brake, one foot on the gas, it’s going to be a struggle the whole way, and you’re never going to get the first draft done. 

Matt:	That segways into the idea of writing as a skill set. I think we both probably would agree that writing is a critically important skill. Not just for authors, but for anybody in life. If you want to communicate with people effectively, if you want your ideas to be structured, and really clear, and understandable, it’s important to master the skill of writing. What would you say, from all of the books you’ve written, and all of the work you’ve done in the publishing space, what are some of the key lessons that you’ve found that can help people improve as writers?

Tom:	That’s a good question. There’s one book called, 2k to 10k, by Rachel Aaron, and she talks a lot in the book about plotting. It’s actually a book on writing fiction, but I found it to be one of the best books I’ve read on writing, ever. I write nonfiction, I don’t write fiction, but a lot of my clients do. Even just for my writing nonfiction, it’s helped so much. Her basic premise is kind of what we covered before. It’s just planning ahead of time. Doing all of your plotting, planning out your scenes, planning out how everything’s going to go in your mind, so you have a crystal clear picture of where the book is heading, and where everything is going. So, when you actually sit down to write you already know what’s going to happen. It just comes down to filling in the sentences, basically, and filling out the explanations, and the details, and the hyperlinks that people need to see, and the research people need to see, and all that. That has been hugely valuable for me, and for a lot of my clients. When they read that book it’s like a game changer for them because they realize, rather than spending two years of their life writing a 300 page book, and then finding out the plotting was wrong, and the structure is wrong, the organization is wrong, they can spend a day, or two, or three just planning out the entire book. So, not only is the writing process so much faster, but they don’t waste time creating something that at the end they find out is just garbage because they didn’t plan it out properly.

Matt:	So, 2k to 10k, is that the idea of zooming out to 10,000 feet?

Tom:	No, it’s actually her word count. Her word count went from 2,000 words a day to 10,000 words a day, which is massive for a writer. It’s kind of her process of how she achieved that. It’s her whole system for it, and it’s actually the same system I use today, essentially, with a few tweaks, and it’s very valuable.

Matt:	That’s great advice, and I think that a lot of people don’t really think about planning out what they’re going to write before they actually do it.

Tom:	It’s the same thing with everything, right, Matt? It’s like, if you’re going to do a business, don’t you want to plan it out? You don’t have to have an official business plan to pitch to venture capitalists if that’s not what you’re doing, but you should at least have some idea what you’re doing. You should at least kind of know where you’re going. For example, I see people who want to start a business, and let’s say they want to sell a supplement, or something, and they’ll just call up one supplement manufacturer and get one quote, and then they’re like, “Okay, we’ll go with them,” and they don’t do any research, and they don’t do any preparation. They don’t plan it out. To me, that’s a lazy way to get through life. I used to be that way. I used to be so lazy. I made so many mistakes in business from not doing my research, and not doing my homework, and not planning things out, but if you just spend the extra time to do that, you’ll be amazed how far you can go, and how many mistakes you can avoid. That’s really what holds most people back is not that they can’t figure out how to be successful, it’s that they make these mistakes that just cost them so much because they weren’t planning. They weren’t planning ahead. They didn’t ask other people for advice, and they just jumped into something, which is ridiculous. You see so many entrepreneurs today—especially where I live—someone will open a restaurant and three months later they’re out of business. Why? They didn’t do any research. They didn’t do any research at all into the audience; who their customers were; marketing; finances; how much money they needed to raise. They didn’t do any research. They just thought, it’d be a great idea to open a restaurant, so they did it. That’s just not the way to be successful long-term. 

Matt:	Yeah, I think a focus on—specifically within a business context—risk mitigation, and really trying to—for the least amount of time, least amount of money, least amount of energy possible—figure out if it makes sense, and if it’s possible to do something, or if it works, is something that a lot of people don’t really consider before they launch into a venture, and often those are the ventures that don’t pan out.

Tom:	Definitely. It’s the same thing in pretty much any area of life. Like, in a relationship, if you go on a date with someone and you’re like, “Let’s get married right now,” you haven’t really done your research with that person. You don’t really know if it’s going to work. So, it’s like anything life. You want to invest the time to learn as much as you can, so you’re educated, so you can make good decisions, rather than just thinking that... It’s just kind of arrogant to think that you now all the answers when you haven’t done the research.

Matt:	Changing directions a little bit, for listeners who are listening to this, and maybe they’re looking to...they’ve thought about publishing a book, or they’re looking to build credibility, or establish an audience, or whatever it might be—one of your expertise is in the world of self-publishing—what advice would you have for those listeners, and what would you say about pursuing that strategy?

Tom:	Self-publishing, today, is amazing. It’s the most profitable way to publish a book, and that’s just true. There’s basically no way you can argue with that if you look at the numbers. The reason is, when you traditionally publish a book, you’re going to get 10-15% royalties, and when you self-publish you can get 70% royalties, or so. For example, if you self-publish an eBook at $2.99, you earn about $2.00 in royalties, when you self-publish it, every time you sell the eBook. As a traditionally published author, you sell a $25 hardcover book, you’re going to earn a little less than $2 on the royalties. So, you’ll earn more selling a $3 eBook, self-published, than selling a $25 hardcover book, traditionally published. The question is, do you think it’s going to be easier to sell more $3 eBooks, or more $25 hardcover books in an industry where print sales are declining? If you do the market research and really understand it, self-publishing just makes so much sense financially, but it’s like any business you get involved in, you should do your research, you should do your homework, you should figure out, how big is the market where the opportunities is right now? The biggest opportunities, right now, are really with eBooks for most markets. Digital audio books are booming right now. Print books are great for a lot of markets, but for most self-publish authors, you’re going to earn 3, 4, 5 times as much from your eBook as from your print book. Again, it totally depends on the market, and the author, as well. If you’re doing a lot of public speaking, you might sell a lot of books in the back of the room, you might make a lot more money from print books, but generally speaking that’s kind of how it’s going to turn out. I would say, do your research and really get educated before jumping in. A big mistake I see a lot of people make in self-publishing is they won’t get several quotes for work. So, if they want to hire an editor, they’ll hire their neighbor’s best friend, and pay 5, or 10, or 20 thousand dollars for an editor, when they could have gotten much better work done for a much lower price. The same with book covers, and marketing services, and so forth. I have a rule in business, I call it my rule of three, if at any time I’m going to invest a significant amount of money in a project, and I’m going to hire someone to do a job, I want at least a minimum of three quotes. Bare minimum I need to have three quotes. Again, it just stops you from making an emotional decision that you’re later going to regret because you just didn’t do your research.

Matt:	That’s a great rule. I think I might borrow that from you.

Tom:	Absolutely. Please do.

Matt:	In terms of some of the topics we’ve talking about today: writing, creativity, improving your writing skills, etcetera; are there any specific resources, whether they’re books, websites, whatever, that you would recommend listeners check out if they wanted to dig down and understand some of these topics more deeply?

Tom:	There’s a lot. It really... I would say, you can find books on pretty much anything today, and I think... I’m and avid reader. I love reading. I’ve read, on average, five books a week for the past ten years, so I’ve read thousands of books. Mostly personal development stuff and nonfiction, and one of the things I’ve learned is, it sounds impressive that I’ve read so many books, but a lot of those books were not totally a waste, but somewhat of a waste. For example, I’ve read books on real estate investing, but it was at a time in my life where I didn’t even have the capital to actually invest in real estate, so I’ve forgotten 90% of what I learned since then. So, I would recommend for most people, if you really want to study something, study what you need to know right now. Like, what do you need right now? Then go find the book on that that you need to learn right now. So, if you’re going to write a book, go study books on writing. If you’re going to publish books, study books on publishing. If you’re going to market something, study books on marketing. If you’re having trouble in your marriage or relationships, study books on relationships. There’s so many amazing books out, and I can send some of my top books, and you can post them in the show notes, but I don’t want to make blanket recommendations for everyone because I think it’s even better if you really just do that couple seconds of thinking of what problems that you’re having right now, what challenges that you’re having right now, and then find the books that will help you with those problems you’re having right now. 

Matt:	It’s all about planning before you execute, right?

Tom:	Absolutely. It’s a lot of investment to read a book, and it’s not that it’s not useful, but if you can read a book right now that you can actually implement right now in your life, it’s going to make much more of difference than reading something that you won’t use for a couple more years.

Matt:	How do you retain all of the knowledge from all of the books you read? Do you have some kind of system?

Tom:	I do take notes. Notes are amazing. I think it helps a lot. I like to talk too. So, find a book group, or a Mastermind group, or a partner, or a friend, or a colleague; someone you can talk to about the ideas you’re learning. That helps a ton because by explaining the ideas you get to share them again, yourself, and you’ll get to clarify and make sure you actually understand. If you can’t explain to someone else, you don’t really understand it completely. That helps a ton. Actually, one of my clients published a book recently called, Unlimited Memory—actually a couple years ago—it’s a huge bestseller now. It’s like the number one book on Amazon in memory. So, I’m actually studying his system right now on how to improve my memory, and it’s pretty fantastic. He is actually... When he grew up he had learning disabilities, he had dyslexia, he was told he was an idiot, and he taught himself how to improve his memory, and he since broke world records on memory. He memorized pi to 10,000 digits and broke the world record for that memorization test by 14 minutes. It’s not because he was born a genius, it’s because he...there’s simple things you can do if you practice it. It’s basically about using your imagination to remember things better. So, I’m studying that right now. I would recommend that to anyone if you want to improve your memory, that book is amazing.

Matt:	That sounds awesome. That reminds me of two things. One, I don’t know if you’ve ever read the book, Moonwalking with Einstein, but it’s kind of a look into memory champions, and those memory competitions, and actually, the journalist who wrote the book started out just examining that community, and then ended up getting involved, and then, I think, winning the National Memory Championship at one point. 

Tom:	Yeah, that’s a great book. 

Matt:	Which just demonstrates how learnable a lot of these memory skills are. The other piece, for listeners who are curious about that, we also have an episode about memory where we actually talk about the strategy you can use to memorize a deck of 52 cards that have been totally randomized. I’ll put that link in the show notes as well, and we’ll get a list from Tom about some of his top picks that we’ll include in there. So, definitely check the show notes out and you can get all those resources. So Tom, is there anything else that we haven’t touched on that you want to share with our listeners?

Tom:	Absolutely. There’s one more thing with creativity, and this is actually... I’m big into science and research, but I don’t necessarily follow it for everything. For example, like creativity, I think a lot of my lessons on that are totally experiential—what I’ve learned from experience, and talking to other really brilliant minds, but this one is actually backed by research. There’s all kinds of studies that have been published recently on walking, and how walking actually improves your creativity, and you can actually double the amount of creative ideas you can come up with just by walking for 15 minutes. So, if you’re ever feeling stuck; you need ideas, but they’re not coming; you’re working but you’re not being productive and it’s frustrating; get up, take a 15 minute walk, or a 5 minute walk, and you’ll be amazed. I noticed that as well. I actually noticed this in my own life before the studies came out, and then I saw a study and I was like, “That makes so much sense.” You’d be amazed by how much a short walk in nature, on a treadmill even, can just help you clear your mind and improve your creativity. 

Matt:	Great piece of advice. That might dovetail into the next thing I was going to ask you, which is: What is one piece of homework you have for our listeners?

Tom:	The homework I would have people do is, schedule in your calendar—right now—time to be creative. Time to come up with new ideas. Time to think. It’s so easy to get stuck in the day-to-day life, and the old habits, and if you really want a change, that’s going to come from new ideas, and applying those new ideas. So, if you schedule this 30 minutes in your calendar right now for the next week, to just be alone to write down questions to think, that will make a huge difference in your life. You’ll be amazed at the ideas you’ll come up with, and how that will affect you and the trajectory of your life.

Matt:	That is something simple and easy that anybody listening right now can do. Take 30 minutes, schedule some time on your calendar in the next seven days, and just set aside some thinking time. If you wanted to dig in more about some of the science behind that, which even though Tom said it’s been sort of an experiential learning from him, it’s actually rooted in a lot of neuroscience why that thinking time is effective, check out the link in the show notes, or listen to our episode about creative breakthroughs. Tom, that wraps up the questions I had for you, so I wanted to just say, thank you very much for being a guest on The Science of Success. It’s been a joy to have you on here.

Tom:	Thanks much for having me, Matt. It’s been a pleasure.

Are You Being Held Back By Childhood Limiting Beliefs? With Guest Catherine Plano

In this episode we discuss how you have multiple limiting beliefs that you have yet to discover that, if uncovered, could radically transform your life. We go deep into limiting beliefs, look at how random childhood experiences can shape your worldview for decades, discuss how your outer world is created by your inner world, examine how to reverse engineer bad behavior and much more with our guest Catherine Plano.

Catherine is the founder of the I Am Woman Project and an International Executive Coach with more than two decades of experience working with top companies, having impacted more than 100,000 lives and whose mission is to aid companies and individuals in becoming aware of their limitless potential and in using their extraordinary abilities to achieve their desired outcomes. Catherine is also a certified Life Coach and a certified Master Trainer of NLP.  Catherine focuses on changing lives daily through her coaching and motivation speaking. She has also just recently released her new book Getting to the Heart of the Matter: The No-Nonsense Guide to Professional & Personal Transformation.

We discuss:

• How simple, innocuous things in our environment plant seeds that can dramatically change of our lives

• How we give meaning to situations without fully understanding them

• How your parents programmed many of your behaviors

• How limiting beliefs get planted into your mind from childhood

• How your memories can be completely false

• How your outer world is a reflect of your inner world

• Why your thoughts become self fulfilling prophecies

• Why 95% of your behaviors are not “who" you are, they are “learned behaviors"programmed by your environment

• And Much More!

If you feel like something is holding you back, but you can’t figure out what it is - Listen to this episode! 

Thank you so much for listening!

Please SUBSCRIBE and LEAVE US A REVIEW on iTunes! (Click here for instructions on how to do that!). 

SHOW NOTES, LINKS, & RESEARCH

• [Book] The Super Mental Training Book by Robert K. Stevenson (see here).

• [Book] The Biology of Belief by Bruce H. Lipton (see here).

• [Book] Evolve Your Brain by Joe Dispenza (see here).

• [SOS Episode] How You Can Memorize a Shuffled Deck of Cards in Under A Minute - The Science Behind Memory (see here).

• [SOS Episode] Limiting Beliefs (see here).

• Catherine Plano (see here).

• Rise & Thrive Course (see here).

• Heart of the Matter Book

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Today we have another great guest on the show, Catherine Plano. Catherine is the founder of the I AM WOMAN project and an international executive coach with more than two decades of experience working with top companies, having impacted more than 100,000 lives, and whose mission is to aid companies and individuals in becoming aware of their limitless potential and in using their extraordinary abilities to achieve their desired outcomes. Catherine is also a certified life coach and a certified master practitioner of NLP. Catherine focuses on changing lives daily through her coaching and motivational speaking. Catherine, welcome to the Science of Success.

Catherine:	Thank you very much. Thank you for a great introduction. Thank you, Matt.

Matt:	Well, we’re super excited to have you on here today.

Catherine:	I’m super excited.

Matt:	That’s awesome. And you’re coming in all the way from Australia, is that right?

Catherine:	That’s correct. In Melbourne.

Matt:	Great. Well, to get started, kind of tell me a little bit about your background and sort of share your story with our listeners.

Catherine:	Sure. My background goes way, way back -- maybe about 25, 30 years ago. I really got into the whole spiritual side of things, the energy. I was doing a lot of that kind of work, which, back then--say, 25 years ago--was probably looked upon as a bit woo woo. But, you know, what I did -- I actually used to have my own center, and what had happened is I had an epiphany one day. It was, you know, all these people coming in and very dependent on me, and I was thinking, this is not how you empower people! People have those abilities and those resources themselves. I just need to show them how they can tap into that. So, that’s when everything changed for me. I got into coaching neurolinguistics, neuroscience, and brain science, and hence why I’m here today -- to help people, empower them, and transform them.

Matt:	That’s fascinating. So, I’d love to kind of dive right in to some of the meat. Tell me about the concept. And we’ve talked a little bit about this in previous episodes of the podcast, but tell me a little bit about the concept of limiting beliefs -- you know, kind of what they are, how to identify them, and maybe even digging into how to combat them.

Catherine:	Oh, I love this one. Limiting beliefs. I think, limiting beliefs, we all have them, and because they’re unconscious, sometimes they’re hard to identify because we live them out and we play them out every single day. You know, 95% of the time we play them out. And so for an example, a limiting belief might be--and this comes up a lot in my clients--is the value of money, for example. So, if you grew up... And I know with my family, we... I was born in France. We came to Australia; started a family in a new country; didn’t know how to speak the language. You know, obviously money, all of that stuff. So, we saw our parents argue over money, and I’m sure lots of people see their parents argue over money. So, as we grow up and we see this happen in our environment and we see that it causes conflict... Or it could be as simple as, you know, your parent might say “Money doesn’t grow on trees,” or “This is too expensive! Why do you have to buy this brand?” So, we start having these beliefs that money creates arguments or money creates conflict. So, as you can see, these are learned behaviors. They’re not really our own beliefs. It’s the meaning we have given a situation without really understanding it. And so how this plays out when we get older is... For example, this is one of mine that I had to hack into -- was that I believed that I had to work really hard to make money because that’s how I saw my parents. They worked really hard to make money. And, you know, you’re working crazy hours and still chasing your tail. Or it could be as simple as when you do have money coming your way, you give it away because in your unconscious mind, you believe that money creates arguments or conflict, so "I don’t want any part of that." So, and you find that quite often people are saying "You know, I work really hard. I mean, what is it? I'm not making the money." And so we deep dive into those limiting beliefs. And how we find them out, it could be as simple as, you know, I ask them, like, “What beliefs do you see in yourself that come from your parents?”, for example. Or “What beliefs do you see in yourself that come from an authority figure?” And this is a great way because we are... You know, can’t blame our parents. They did the best they could with the information they had at the time. But there is this thing called parent programming. And even I know when I was growing up, I used to say, “There is no way I’m anything like my mum!” And over Christmas, I spent almost three weeks away with my mum. I am so much like my mum. So, limiting beliefs come from our past. 

Matt:	I think you said something really, really important, which is the idea that sort of simple, innocuous things that happened almost in the background of our childhoods can plant these seeds that can dramatically change huge portions of our lives.

Catherine:	Absolutely. And, you know, I think, too, it’s a matter of being more conscious in our mind and being the observer of our thought. And when I get this belief--it might be a silly belief--I just go, where does this belief come from and what does it really mean? Just by probing myself with a couple of questions, I’m actually activating the prefrontal cortex, which is that thinking part of the brain. And if you want to create change, this is what you need to do all the time, which takes practice. I nowhere near have perfected it, but I am still practicing it daily.

Matt:	And that’s so funny because, you know, I’m somebody that... I’ve been kind of digging into the concept and trying to understand how to uncover and remove limiting beliefs for a number of years. And still, to this day, I have a list of probably 20 or 30 limiting beliefs that I’ve uncovered in the last, you know, let’s call it two or three months that I’m still working through. And so, at least for me, personally, it’s been a journey where you never really find or remove all of them, but you just have to constantly kind of cultivate the awareness of, you know, what’s that thought that just crept into my mind? And, hey, that seems like a limiting belief, and that could be something that’s holding me back or preventing me from achieving what I want to achieve. 

Catherine:	Absolutely, because sometimes they do. They have consequences. Certain limiting beliefs do carry consequences. If I hang onto this belief for as long as I live, what are the consequences? Just even asking that question, you know. And I think that, too, it's... I call it "diffuse my beliefs". When they come up, I’m looking at it. I exhaust myself by saying “What else could it mean? What else could this mean? What else could this mean?” until I run out of different meanings. And it removes the boundaries of a limiting belief as well by just finding different meanings to it. 

Matt:	So, would you say sort of asking against and again “What could this mean?”, is that a method for diffusing limiting beliefs or is that a method for kind of breaking them down?

Catherine:	I think both. I think that unpacking it, so what else could this mean is you’re unpacking your limiting belief. You’re bringing light to it, and I think then you’ll actually break it down because then you’ll realize how a) it’s not yours. It may be a really silly one, and it could be something that happened a long time ago that you gave it a particular meaning that serves you no purpose any longer, won’t serve a purpose any longer.

Matt:	I think that’s a really important distinction, is that it’s not yours, right? It’s something that came from the environment. It's something that came from maybe a parent or somebody that you looked up to, or even a time before you can even remember, and it was planted in there by potentially sort of a random occurrence in your life.

Catherine:	Absolutely, and I call them “learned memories”. They pop up every now and then. Yes, when there’s little triggers or a stimulus in our environment that triggers us back to that memory, that’s when it comes up.

Matt:	That’s a great phrase. And it’s funny, kind of circling back to the idea of, specifically, limiting beliefs around money. We had Vishen Lakhiani on the podcast previously--who’s sort of a teacher of meditation and an entrepreneur--and he tells a story about how he struggled for years to make money with his company, and found out he had this sort of core limiting belief about teaching people -- that you always had to struggle as a teacher, financially. And when he finally uncovered that, his company radically transformed within 18 months. 

Catherine:	It’s amazing, isn’t it? And that's the same with me, that realization that I had to work hard to make money. As soon as... And it was a matter of tweaking the word. It was just working smarter. And it just changed. Just the fact that I said, "I've got to work smarter to make my money, not harder," everything started changing. New ideas came into mind and I became more savvy with the things that I was doing and I pulled everything online. It just changed everything.

Matt:	And so, when you’re talking about limiting beliefs, you mentioned kind of the idea of parental programming. What are some of the other sources of limiting beliefs or some of the other ways that limiting beliefs can kind of seep into your mind?

Catherine:	Oh, God, it could be so many things. From some of your experiences. It could be as we were growing up. We all go through a development phase, and the first phase is the imprinting phase, right up to the age of seven. So, anything that happened in your environment then, whether it was something you saw on TV; a book you read; stuff that happened at school; stuff that friends said to you; whatever that may be, it could be...you’re just downloading that information into your mind. It’s like downloading software into the computer. And then when you move into another phase from the age of seven to 14, this is called your muddling phase. And this is where we try to identify "Who am I?" and we seek externally of ourselves as to who do we aspire to be? So, this is the time when we start. I know back in my days, Duran Duran was quite big, with the big funky hairdos and the frilly shirts. And, you know, it’s really about who do I want to be and who do I aspire to be? And then it’s those people around you that have an impact in some way, shape, or form. So, these beliefs not just come from your parents; they come from our environment. They come from people that you looked up to or you aspired to be. They come from... It could be a TV show or a superhero that you were in love with at the age of ten. These beliefs come from all over the place -- very much from environment.

Matt:	So, to make this kind of concrete and to drill this home for people that are listening--and I think this is really important because it’s easy to talk about limiting beliefs in the abstract--but would you say that it’s a fair statement that every person listening to this episode right now has multiple limiting beliefs that they have yet to discover, that if they were to uncover them could have a radical impact on their lives?

Catherine:	Absolutely. Absolutely. And from an energy perspective, I look at it this way: As soon as you get to the source of your limiting belief, it’s almost like... I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of Gestalt Theory, but if you have a look at a pearl necklace, for example, and if you go back to that core or that root cause of that limiting belief, and you, with your adult eyes or with your understanding of and all the knowledge you have today, when you go back to that core belief and you actually give it a different meaning, it’s almost like pulling that bead away and you’re allowing all of these pearls to just fall apart. So, it’s like a domino effect. As soon as... It’s like you take that limiting, you pluck it out of your timeline of your memory--because we all have memories and they’re all in a timeline format--it just changes everything. It changes how you not just think, but how you behave and how you act. 

Matt:	That makes me think of two things. One, on the subject of memory, we’ve actually done a previous episode all about kind of digging into memory and what it means and what memories are. And one of the things we talked about is the idea that your memories can literally be false, and every single time you drag a memory back up, every single time you think about something, you’re reconstructing that memory and putting it back, and you’re changing it and tweaking it and modifying it to where literally what you remember... And we read from a study where a number of neuroscientists literally say, point blank, that what you remember could be completely false about something that’s happened in your life.

Catherine:	So true! Very true. Because it’s... You know, you have all this knowledge now. So, you know, for me, if I was to go back to a time when I was seven, when I first came to Australia, I have fond memories of what that was like. But obviously every time I go back to that memory, I might add more color; I might add more story to it; I might add more feeling to it. It can change it completely. And you hear this, you know... And I hear this even amongst my friends and my partner and so forth, you know. You might hear a story over dinner with your friends, for example, and it just always changes slightly. Have you ever experienced that? Like, the story just...

Matt:	Yeah, definitely.

Catherine:	...gets better and more funnier. That’s what a memory is. People just add to it all the time. So, when you’re trying to connect with the actual root cause of that memory, it’s altered so many times depending on how many times you’ve plucked it out and revisited that memory.

Matt:	And touching back on one of the things you said a moment ago -- the idea of kind of the pearls falling off of the string. The analogy that I’ve always loved is--and I love analogies about water and how water flow and energy flow and all of that relates--but the idea of water flowing through a hose. Basically, if you imagine a limiting belief as basically a kink or a bend in the hose, and every time you...if you have multiple bends, every time you break one bend, the water flow gets stronger and stronger and stronger. So, if you take more and more of these kinks out, take more and more of these bends out of the hose, the energy flow gets more concentrated, more focused, and gets even stronger every time.

Catherine:	Oh, I love your analogy. That's perfect. That's a perfect way of saying it. Because, you know, limiting beliefs are like little blocks and they sometimes stop us doing the very thing we want to do. So, it’s perfect what you’re saying because it’s exactly what you’re saying -- the kink in the hose or the block. And as soon as you remove those, everything just flows smoothly.

Matt:	And it’s really funny, even kind of tangentially related. For example, if your environment is really messy and you just spend a little bit of time cleaning up your environment, those little, tiny things can snowball into more and more kind of a positive focus and positive energy throughout your day.

Catherine:	Yeah, I agree. I’m like that with everything around me, whether it’s my wardrobe or my office. It has to... I know a little bit about Feng shui, but, just intuitively, it has to feel right for my work to flow through. And when it’s not, I just...I might stand up and tidy things up again, and just the fact that I’ve done that, I feel like I’ve cleaned my space and I’m ready to work with it.

Matt:	So, shifting gears a little bit, I'd love to talk about the concept of visualization and how you can use visualization to achieve your goals and how you've used visualization in the past in some of the work that you’ve done.

Catherine:	I’m big on visualization and I think if you look at how we speak and if we were to speak the language of the unconscious mind--which is 95% who we are--it speaks the language of pictures. So, visualization, it's very much tied in with the vision boards as well. When you’re creating goals, I always encourage the people I work with to actually create a vision board. And it might be just a simple vision board, but just so that they see it. But it’s not just about seeing it; you have to have emotion attached to it. So, visualization, you’ve actually got to be associated in your visualization because the mind cannot tell the difference between what is real and what is not real. And so if you can actually see yourself as if in that moment, then your mind will believe it. And if you keep practicing it over and over again, you will create it or manifest it. And there’s this great book--it’s called The Super Mental Training Book--and there's lots of stories. There are hundreds of stories in there about, you know, different people using the technique of visualization. So, it talks about there’s a gentleman who was in jail for many years and he visualized playing golf, and he got out of prison and was a professional. There’s another story in there where there’s these Russian athletes and it was during the winter Olympics in something like 1986, and they did an experiment with visualization and they separated the athletes into four groups. The first group had to train physically 100%; the second group had to train physically 80% and visualize 20%; the third group was 50% physical and 50% visualization; and the last group had to visualize 80%, but 20% physical. And who do you think did the best?
 
Matt:	The group that visualized the most?

Catherine:	That’s correct, yep. The group that visualized the most. So it just explains to us that A. We’re tapping into that deeper part of our mind. And if we practice visualization, and it can be as simple as working on a goal, you know and I do this a lot with people with public speaking. Visualize yourself standing there on the public stage. Visualize the people in front of you. Have a really - get involved in your emotion, how your feeling, all of that stuff really build it. It’s almost like visualization is like starting with a blank canvas and then you’re painting it - adding color to it, adding sound to it, adding feelings to it. To make it come to life. 

Matt:	And I think a really key point that you made is that you have to anchor the emotion to what you’re visualization.

Catherine:	Absolutely. The feeling is that they always say the feeling or emotion is the field to your thought. So if you want to create a strong visualization and you need to give it that drive so that to make it - to manifest, you need to have as much emotion as possible. 

Matt:	So, for somebody who’s listening now, how could they sort of as a simple first step start practicing some form of visualization?

Catherine:	I think the best way is to understand first what you want to visualize. So plan first. What is it that I want to visualize? And it could be as simple as you might aspire to be a certain way. It could be public speaking is another one. It could be that you want to achieve a great relationship for example. As long as you know what it is you want to visualize to manifest. That’s the first thing - plan it. Then I would ask you to do is obviously - what kind of picture do you - what kind of emotions do you want to bring out in this visualization? So for example, if it was public speaking, it’d obviously be confidence. And if it was something to do with bringing or manifesting a relationship, it would be love. So, really, one strong emotion and focus on that. And you can suck on other emotions. And then what I would do is then start your visualization. You’re very clear about what you want to do, and you know why you want to do it, and then the how is you’re painting a picture. So, I would then spend my time almost visualizing my picture. So I would visualize, for example, public speaking, I would visualize the room, I would visualize the audience, I would visualize what the stage would look like. I would visualize myself walking onto the stage. I would stand there and listen to what’s going on around me, what do I see, what do I feel, really connect with it. And then what I would do is I would associated - I would be as if I was looking through my own eyes. And I would stack those emotions on you know, I’m feeling confident, I’m feeling proud, I’m feeling happy. I feel inspired. Just keep feeling those. Then once you’re done with your visualization, move away, dissociate it from yourself. And you know, I even like to you know if I like to add a bit of specific time to when I want to achieve my visualization. So, for example, if I want to say I want to be in a relationship in six month time. I would have a date. So what I would do is once I’ve created this massive visualization, when I stand away, I actually have it - you can visualize whatever you like, but I like to visualize it as in sitting, my visualization, in that balloon, going forward in time to that date, and a balloon pops and drops into that time. And so what I do is every time I keep doing that, I’m reinforcing my visualization but also I’m giving it a specific time to when I want it to manifest. 

Matt:	And so for somebody that maybe, and I mean I’ve done a lot of work on positive visualization, and sometimes I feel like I struggle with making images feel real, or being able to tap into them or kind of feel them fully. What’s a way to kind of breakthrough that or if you’re struggling with visualizing the image, what would you recommend doing?

Catherine:	I have had some people say “well I can’t visualize.” I believe, this is my belief, that everyone can visualize. And I think that if you say you can’t, you’re just not allowing that to flow through. Then I say, find some pictures on the internet that are inspiring for you to manifest, whatever that might be. So, if it’s public speaking, find someone that you really look up to. What is it that you want to create? So create like a mini-vision board, so that when you are actually physically manifesting your visualization, and then what I would do is have it - you’re sitting in front of it, then I would look at it, stare into it, and you can connect with it that way once again. You can - What am I hearing? - Close your eyes as if now. What am I seeing? What am I feeling? All of that stuff. So you can do it that way as well if you feel you can’t paint that visualization in that mind. 

Matt:	Got it. So, another concept I wanted to talk about is the notion of the outer-world versus the inner-world. That’s something I’ve heard you talk about before. Can you share that idea?

Catherine:	Yeah. I always talk about it. I always say that our outer-world is a reflection of our inner-world. And it’s the way that we perceive things for example. So if I hear people saying they’re not happy with their work environment, they’re not happy with their relationship, they’re not happy with blah blah blah, whatever that may be. Then that gives me a hint that there’s something going on inside of them. So, you know, our outer-world is a reflection of what’s going on inside. So if we want to change our environment, then we need to change inside. And inside meaning our inner-world. How we’re thinking. How we’re seeing things. What are our perceptions? What are we projecting with our perceptions? What are interpretations of the environment? So, it’s, to me, we are everything around us we reflect because of what’s going on in our inner-world. 

Matt:	That’s fascinating. Can you give me maybe an example from some of the people you’ve worked with or some things you’ve experience and how you’ve kind of seen that take place?

Catherine:	You might say—and I actually have had this actually happen—I was boarding as a mediator for two women, two executives, they were at heads with one another and neither of them were going to leave because both of them had a really good job, cushy job, great money, and they loved their job. Just couldn’t stand one another. So, really, the thing that was going on was one particular lady that I worked with. I said to her, “You know, all I’m asking you to do is find one positive thing towards this person.” And she’s like “No. There’s no way I could find anything positive about this person.” And this took us about three weeks. So I said “Okay. Let’s nip this in the bud. And let’s really chunk this all the way. Let’s have a look. You’re both women. Yes. You’re both mothers. Yes.  Now let’s have a look at that. When you’re at home with your children, how do you behave? Are you the same person as you are at work?” She goes “Oh no, of course not! When I’m at home I’m on the ground with my children, I’m playing with their toys, spend some quality time with them before they have dinner and go to bed.” And I said - “Do you think there’s a possibility that this lady does the same thing in her own environment?” She went “Oh, yes.” I said “Okay, just focus on that. That one thing, just focus on that one thing that she is a mother.” So, for her, unconsciously, she was seeing this woman as being whatever that label she wants to call it. And therefore she was behaving that way, and was getting those results. The moment she changed the way she was seeing that women, started seeing this woman as a mother, nine days later, I got a phone call. She said, “You know what? She’s actually really good with numbers.” So basically what was starting to happen, and this is why I say shifts do happen, it’s a shift of mindset. She started seeing this woman in a positive light, and therefore what was happening is she was behaving differently because she was seeing her in a different light, and getting those results. They are now really good friends. So that’s an example of what the whole outer-world, inner-world stuff. So, she changed her inner-world the way she was seeing or thinking about this person, and therefore changed her outer-world.

Matt:	So, in many ways, our thoughts and our beliefs are self-fulfilling prophecies in the sense that the way we feel or react to someone actually may be creating the exact kind of belief or feeling that we have about them.

Catherine:	Absolutely. We are the creator of our inner-environment. We are the creator of our domain. And I know sometimes it’s really hard for people to accept that, because it’s like, “No way! I haven’t created this bad relationship! No way! I haven’t created this horrible boss!” It’s - if you want to believe that, it’s fine. Anyone can believe anything they want to believe. But I believe that I do create these things. And you know when things happen in my environment, it’s so much more empowering for me to go “How did I create this? And how did I manifest this?” Rather than blame. That way I know I can work with it. 

Matt:	I think that’s so important, to take responsibility for our environment in the world around you, as opposed to just being a victim. 

Catherine:	Absolutely. Accountability is key. Absolutely.

Matt:	Another thing that I’ve heard you talk about that I really enjoyed was the idea of - and this ties into what we’ve been talking about - the idea of reverse engineering that behavior. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Catherine:	Yes, absolutely. So, we are not our behavior. And I love this one because quite often, especially in working with lots of corporates, the talk about - they get you to come in and they say “this person has bad behavior, we need to change this behavior.” If we’re looking at the whole mindset and our behaviors it’s 95% of our behaviors is actually not who are, they’re learned behaviors. We are a byproduct of our past experience, parenting programming, environment, other people’s fees, limiting beliefs, decisions - you name it. And quite often, these behaviors have no purpose and actually sabotage the things that we want. So, as long as we understand the behavior is not the person, we can work with that. The behavior is the meaning they have given a situation. So, for example, if I have a look at the difference between attitude and behavior, the attitude is the way that we think, and the behavior - so once we think a certain way or go through the whole process to maybe help understand it, if we have an event happen in our environment, we think of it a certain way, we might see it a certain way, and what happens is we create what we call an internal representation. A picture of that event. And in that, what happens then, we create a state. Which is our emotions or feelings. This plays out in our physiology, which is our behavior. So, a lot of the times if we want to reverse engineer our behavior, it’s about going back and understanding what is this person thinking about this environment, or this event, or this person? To change the thinking and therefore change the way they see it, change the way they feel about it, and the behaviors will be completely different. So, the behavior is the meaning of the communication or situation at hand. And we can change that by being more conscious - and it takes 21 days - now there’s neuroscience that says it takes 21 days to create neural pathways and we can actually, and neuroplasticity is change our brain. So, if we say, just for the next 21 days, I’m going to be conscious of my thoughts. We can change our behavior. 

Matt:	And for listeners who are curious about digging in more to the science of neuroplasticity, we’ve previously had Dr. Rick Hanson, the author of a number of books about that, but specifically kind of digs in to sort of happiness and productivity and everything else, so that’s a great episode to check out if you want to dig in more to that science. But, Catherine, for the people who are listening here, is there one piece of homework or something simple you would ask them to do?

Catherine:	I think that - I always say that we can reinvent ourselves. That’s the exciting part. It’s like - what do you want to create for yourself? Life isn’t about finding yourself, it’s about creating yourself. So, I think that piece of a big piece. Just, I think it - it doesn’t mean like, it doesn’t have to be reinvent the whole self, it could be tweaking. But I think to be more conscious is the thing. Because if we’re looking at - and you hear about it all the time, that we only use 10% of our brains. Well neuroscience says it’s actually 5% of our conscious brain. Which means that 95% are learned behaviors, past, parenting program - all of those things that some way, shape, or form, stop us from doing those very things that we want. So when we talk about even unconscious bias - the things we really want and desire, are they the things we need? Are they things really are going to line up with where we want to go? When we’re talking about that 5%, that conscious mind, when we want to manifest and create new things. We need to start - really - stop to think what we’re thinking about. Think about it, how often do we do it? Never. Well. I’m not saying never. But it’s a practice, you have to practice it. Even 5 minutes a day, just sit there with your thoughts. “What was I thinking today? What was I feeling like today?

Matt:	I think cultivating that awareness is such an important step.

Catherine:	Absolutely. I believe that too.

Matt:	So, for somebody who wants to kind of dig in, do some more research about some of the things we’ve talked about today, what would you recommend as other books or resources for them to check out?

Catherine:	Ugh, geez, so many books. I love, The Biology of Belief with Dr. Bruce Lipton. I love also Dr. Joe DeSpencer, he talks about how you can change your brain. There’s so many great authors, but those are the two that come to mind.

Matt:	Awesome, we’ll put links to both of those notes in the show notes. Catherine, where can people find you online?

Catherine:	Sure. They can find me under CatherinePlano.com And you can have a look at that, or I Am Woman project is the project that I work on and we’ve also just launched Rise and Thrive which is all online. So basically as I was saying, I’ve become more savvy - working smarter is putting things online. So, I have this mission of helping as many people as I can to empower themselves and the planet, and so I’ve put all my work online, which is a 12-week online course for 19.95 a week. Which, when you think about it, I don’t know what it’s like in your side of the world. But in Australia, they charge anything from 300-500 dollars an hour for coaching. And not everyone’s got that kind of money. So I’ve put these programs online for teenagers and leaders as well to work through some of the stuff we’ve been talking about.

Matt:	Great, well, Catherine, thank you so much for being a guest on the show. I know the listeners are going to get a lot out of this interview.

Catherine:	Thank you so much, Matt, for having me. It’s been an amazing time, thank you.

How to Master the Superpower that Builds All Other Powers with Dr. Rick Hanson

In this episode – we go deep on mastering the superpower that underpins all other powers, how your brain’s automatic survival mechanism tilts you towards unhappiness, growing the mental resources to deal with the biggest challenges of your life, and down the rabbit hole of exploring the idea of the self, ego, and much more with Dr. Rick Hanson. This was one of the most profound conversations we have had on this podcast.

Dr. Hanson is a psychologist, Senior Fellow of the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley, and New York Times best-selling author. His books include Hardwiring Happiness, Buddha’s Brain, Just One Thing, and Mother Nurture. He’s also the Founder of the Wellspring Institute for Neuroscience and Contemplative Wisdom, he’s been an invited speaker at NASA, Oxford, Stanford, Harvard, and other major universities.

We discuss:

-How to master the SUPERPOWER that BUILDS ALL OTHER POWERS
-How to grow the mental resources inside yourself to deal with the biggest challenges in your life
-We reverse engineer the olympic athletes of the mind to learn their secrets
-We discuss how your thoughts change the physical structure of your brain
-How your brains 5 core survival strategies create suffering in your life
-How reality is continually constructed by the underlying hardware of the brain
-How to disengage from stress and suffering
-How to let go of attachment to your ego
-How to stop being defensive and taking things personally
-Why your “self” doesn't have an independent existence outside of the totality of the universe
-And MUCH more!

If you want to wire your brain to be happier - you can’t miss this episode!

Thank you so much for listening!

Please SUBSCRIBE and LEAVE US A REVIEW on iTunes! (Click here for instructions how to do that!).  

SHOW NOTES, LINKS, & RESEARCH

• [Book] Buddha’s Brain by Rick Hanson (see here).

• [Book] Hardwiring Happiness by Rick Hanson (see here).

• [Poem] Late Fragment by Raymond Carver (see here).

• [Book] The Dhammapada by Eknath Easwaran (see here).

• Rick Hanson’s Website (see here).

• Foundations of Wellbeing Website (see here).

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Matt:	Today, we have another incredible guest on the show, Dr. Rick Hanson. Rick is a psychologist, senior fellow The Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkley, and a New York Times bestselling author. His books include Hardwiring Happiness, Buddha's Brain, Just One Thing, and Mother Nature. He's also the founder of the Wellspring Institute for Neuroscience and Contemplative Wisdom. He's been an invited speaker at NASA, Oxford, Stanford, Harvard, and many other major universities. Rick, welcome to The Science of Success.

Rick:	Matt, it's a pleasure to be here. Thank you.

Matt:	Well, we're very excited to have you on today. So, to kind of kick things off, tell the audience a little bit about your background and how you kind of became fascinated with the connection between neuroscience, psychology, and some of the Eastern religions like Buddhism.

Rick:	Well, I think what got me into it... So, I'm a psychologist and I've been around the block for a while, so I got interested in this stuff actually in the beginning of the '70s, and it just seemed to me logical, I guess, that if you've worked at the intersection of brain science, psychology, and the great contemplative traditions of the world, where those three circles overlap had to be where the coolest stuff was, right? You know, you understand the hardware of the brain, then you're tapping into 100-plus years of good research on psychology, and then you're bringing to bear thousands of years of people doing really hardcore practice training their minds, really exploring the upper reaches of human potential. And just to finish here, it's like if you... I've done a lot of rock climbing, and if I want to get better at rock climbing, I want to watch people who are better than me, right? So, I want to kind of tune in to what are those people doing who are moving like human geckos over the cliffs, and then internalize that, at least my next step in their direction. Well, in the same way, the people who have really explored what it is to be deeply resilient, happy, peaceful, and loving, even in really tough conditions, those are the great contemplative traditions of the world. So, I do a lot of reverse engineering. I try to imagine plausibly what could be the underlying neuropsychological foundations of people who are deeply strong, happy, successful, creative, and so forth, and then work backwards to how can I use the mind alone, no medication, no surgery, the mind alone, to stimulate and therefore strengthen those circuits in the brain, building up muscles, in effect, inside yourself that then you can draw upon everywhere you go, because even though it's certainly good to improve the external environment and improve your own body, you know, those tend to change a lot. But you take your mind with you wherever you are, and by being committed to skillful, self-directed neuroplasticity, I call it, you have an amazing capacity, no matter how tough your life is or what the past has been, to actually build inner resources inside yourself for the future.

Matt:	And you touched on something, which is a phrase or a word that people often kind of use interchangeably, which is mind and brain. But you make a really important distinction between the two of those. Can you share that?

Rick:	Sure. If you think about it, so we're all having experiences, right? You know, squirrels are having experiences. I think lizards are having experiences. I know my cat is having experiences. I'm having experiences. You're having experiences. We're hearing, tasting, touching, and smelling, thinking, remembering, and so forth. That realm of experience, if you look at it, is immaterial. You cannot hold a sound. You cannot measure a piece of information. Well, so, we live in this world of phenomenology, if you will. It's a virtual reality, and it is continually constructed by the underlying hardware of the brain embedded in the nervous system, embedded in the whole body, embedded in life altogether. So, the point is that when we use a word like "mind" or "mental" or "cognition" or "psyche" or similar kinds of words, they all refer to the realm of immaterial information processing in the nervous system. And that might sound kind of weird to think about, but that's actually the real bottom line. The function of the nervous system is to represent information, including very basic signals like a sound landing on your eardrum, a cascade of changes proliferated through your nervous system, carrying the information of the sound of a car honking or a bell ringing or a baby crying or, you know, your lover murmuring in your ear, whatever it might be. And so, we have then two process happening simultaneously, and this has practical implications. We have mental activity unfolding; conscious experience, which is inherently intangible; and then we have very tangible cushy, molecular, neurotransmitter-based synaptic neural circuitry-based process underlying that flow of immaterial experience. So, the two are going together. There might be supernatural or transcendental factors at work. Personally, I think there is spooky stuff outside the natural frame of science. But that's it. Just inside the natural frame of science, there's an utterly tight correlation, a co-relating, a co-arising of mental and neural activity, and the practical takeaway of that is by shifting or altering what you pay attention to and then what you do with what you're resting your attention upon. By doing that, you can deliberately use mental activity to stimulating the underlying neural activity in various skillful ways we'll probably get into, so that you can grow and internalize more inside yourself, more confidence, more commitment to exercise, more understanding of other people, more skills with other people, more healing from your last--fill in the blank--job, relationship, childhood. You really can't do that from the inside out, which I think is extremely important for just ordinary coping, healing, and wellbeing, but also in terms of adapting to a future that is very dynamic, very changing, very uncertain in which we need to deal with all kinds of new things. Being able to maximize your learning curve from the inside out, through everyday life experiences, is the superpower, in effect, that builds all other powers. And by drawing upon that superpower through learning how to learn... And when I mean "learn", I really refer to social, emotional, motivational, attitudinal, even spiritual kinds of learning, learning how to learn those good things, not just learning your multiplication tables. If you've learned how to learn, that's your superpower, because then you can learn how to learn anything that matters to you.

Matt:	And you touched on this, but dig a little deeper into the idea that what happens in your mind can actually change the physical structure of your brain.

Rick:	Yeah. It's because neural activity is required for mental activity, and repeated patterns of neural activity change neural structure and function. You know, the classic saying from the Canadian psychologist Donald Hebb is, "Neurons that fire together wire together." And on non-human animals, you know, just acknowledging the ethical issues in that territory -- that said, research on non-human animals that can be extremely invasive has really drilled down literally to the molecular or epigenetic processes, which are also molecular, going on inside individual neurons, all the way up to large scale structures. And then related human studies have shown that repeated patterns of thought or feeling, for better or worse... And one of the things you know about my work is that I have really explored the implications of what scientists call the negativity bias of the brain, the ways that, as I put it, it's like Velcro for the bad but Teflon for the good. We have a brain that's designed to be changed by the experiences flowing through it, especially negative experiences, especially especially when we were young. So, the point being, or kind of the takeaway, is that research has shown that if people more positively, let's say, practice mindfulness routinely or tune into their bodies routinely or do some kind of practice that helps them become happier or more compassionate or more loving or more self-compassionate, then, let's say eight weeks after some program and that, you can see changes in the brain down at the cellular, even synaptic level with MRIs and so forth. And, if people do things over the long haul, for better or worse, you can see major structural changes. Like, literally, people who meditate routinely tend to have measurably thicker cortex, the outer layer of the brain, in regions that regulate attention or help people become self-aware of themselves. It makes sense, you know. You work that muscle, it gets bigger, it gets stronger, and because it's bigger and stronger, making the analogy here for building up tissue and circuitry and functionality in your brain, you then become more able to do various important things like remain mindful, even when the oatmeal's flying all around you. And there are many examples of this, what's called experience-dependent neuroplasticity, including funny things like London taxicab drivers who, at the end of their training, memorizing those spaghetti swirl streets, have a measurably thicker cortex in parts of the brain--in this case, the hippocampus--that are involved in visual-spatial memory. So, they're working the function of some part of the brain, building up structure there. So, a lot of people, it's really jaw-dropping to appreciate that, to update a traditional term, your mind takes this shape from it routinely rests upon. And people can just feel this in their everyday life. Are you ruminating about what's irritating, what worries you, how you feel hurt or let down, or are you really caught up in a feeling of stressful driven-ness? You know, gotta get all this stuff done, tense and uptight? Or, is your moment to moment experience much more dominated by feelings of calm strength, feeling already connected to other people, already fundamentally contented, even as you dream big dreams and aspire without attachment, I put it, or feel, even though you're grappling with challenges and even threats, that deep in your core, you're not being touched by this stuff that's happening. You know, where is your attention resting, and how deeply can you take into yourself those beneficial experiences, knowing that your brain is designed to fast-track irritating, stressful, hurtful, anxiety-provoking experiences, deep into your neural structure? I mean, that's the negativity bias of the brain. That's the Velcro for the bad of the brain. And one of the, finishing up here, things that I really work on, and people can check out my freely-offered resources on my website, rickhanson.net, one of the things I’m really interested in is helping people, number one, learn how to learn, right? That's the superpower. And then apply that superpower to growing those particular inner strengths, those psychological resources, mental resources inside themselves that will help them deal with whatever they've got to deal with. Maybe they're trying to really rise in their job. Maybe they're really trying to find out what do they need to develop inside themselves to be happier in their intimate relationships or more successful there. What do they need to grow inside themselves to compensate for feelings of hurt or mistreatment from their childhood or past as an adult, let's say? If you think right now, listening to this, what, if it were more present in your mind routinely, would really help you these days? What would help you be more effective, happier, more healed, more able to contribute to other people? And then, you know, I use my methods for helping people grow that particular muscle, as it were, inside their nervous system, that then they can draw upon any way they want.

Matt:	I love that description, and I think that... I love the phrase "Neurons that fire together wire together". It gives people a very concrete and kind of simple way to understand that in a very physical, biological, real sense, your thoughts shape and change your brain.

Rick:	Yeah, that's right. And don't underestimate. I mean, a lot of the major research is on how chronic stress changes the brain, right? Or depressed mood or irritation or holding onto grievance with other people or feeling helpless or defeated. You know, we're very designed to be very affected neurologically by those kinds of experiences. And, to be clear, nothing here is about denying what's bad or rose-colored glasses as a way to look at the world or positive thinking. I don't believe in positive thinking. I believe in realistic thinking. I want to see everything. But, you know, honestly, even though I'm a little bit of a touchy-feely kind of guy as a longtime therapist, I'm kind of tough as nails. I really feel like, number one, life is often challenging, and the whole fundamental thing is help is probably not coming from the outside very often, you know. We've got to deal from the inside out with our own life. And the question of it comes, how do you be self-reliant? How do you really autonomously develop inner strengths of various kinds to deal with your own real life? And then, second piece of hard-headedness in my part is about this negativity bias. It's really gutting that what matters most in life is learning, is growing, developing, healing, figuring stuff out and so forth. Because you can't do anything about the past. The only question is, are you growing, learning, developing, improving from this point going forward? And when you really, really kind of get from the inside out that it's on you, no one can make you learn, right? Only you, whoever you are--in this case, me, Rick Hanson--only oneself can help oneself learn from life's experiences. And we have a brain that's designed to cling to the negative or chase the positive, you know, or this sense of internal driven-ness and discontent, you know, is where we come from. And it's really profound to realize that in your day-to-day, five, ten times over the course of the day, ten, 20 seconds at a time, there will be opportunities to really register beneficial experiences and, therefore, heighten the encoding process and the consolidation process that converts in your body, converts that beneficial experience into some kind of lasting change of neural structure and function. And most people blow right by those moments. They waste them. I certainly have, you know. They're nice in the moment, you know. A feeling of accomplishment, let's say a work or hanging out in the lunch room, kicking back with people, nice sense of camaraderie, maybe, or you step outside and, you know, there's something that beautiful that catches your eye, or you remember someone who cares about you, or you feel caring yourself. Whatever it is, we're having these moments. But are they making any difference? Or are they flowing through the brain like water through a sieve, which is what routinely happens, while negative material gets caught in that sieve every time. And five, ten times a day, people have an opportunity to take into themselves, to accept the good that's potentially available here, take it into themselves. They have that opportunity multiple times a day, and one of the, for me, most practical, grounded in science, and positive things a person can do is to look for those five, ten moments a day, usually a dozen or two dozen seconds long at a time, not a big deal, but then use them. You know, bring a big spoon. Bring a vacuum cleaner. Suck them into yourself as a way to fill yourself up from the inside out. And that's a phenomenal opportunity to have, especially at a time when so many of us feel pushed around by external forces. At least inside our own heads, we're the boss, and there are things that we can do.

Matt:	So, going back to the idea of what creates this negativity bias, can you touch on how the brain's survival strategies kind of lead us to suffering?

Rick:	Yeah, starting with a practical example. You know, you're in a relationship, let's say. 19 things happen in a day, or 20 things happen in a day. 19 are positive, one's negative. What's the one you kind of think about as you're falling asleep? Or your boss gives you a performance review, right? Ten items of feedback. Nine are positive, one is room for improvement. What's the one you think about? It's that negative piece of information. So, you know, we all have a feeling for that from the inside out. You know, we're in a meeting, we make ten points, right, and nine of them are really good and one of them we use the word incorrectly. What's the one we obsess about as we're going down the elevator, you know, after that meeting? It's the negative thing. So, we're designed to do that. It's not personal. It's not a character flaw. We're designed to do that because negative experiences, over the 600 million year evolution of the nervous system, you know, negative experiences of predators or pain or natural hazards or aggression inside your band or between bands, those negative experiences usually had more urgency and impact for raw survival than positive experiences did of finding food or hanging out with your little rat family or your little monkey family or caveman family. They're nice, but they don't matter as much for our survival. So, we have a brain today that's designed to do five things. I'll just go through them fast. One: Scan for bad news. You can watch that in yourself. You're always kind of looking. What's the threat? What's the thing that I've got that I might lose? What's uneasy or unsettled in my relationships? Scan for threat. Second: When we find that threat, when we identify that one tile in the mosaic of reality or our experience, that one tile that's flashing yellow or orange or red, whoosh! The brain over-focuses down upon it, losing sight of the big picture, to deal with the immediate reality. Friend or foe, right? And then the third thing that happens: The brain's designed to overreact to negative stimuli. If you play sounds for people or pictures for people that are equally intense, equally loud or bright, et cetera, the brain reacts more to the negative content, because again, that's what we're designed to do. And then fourth: Now that we've scanned for bad news, over-focused upon it, and overreacted to it, whoosh! That whole package, number four, is fast-tracked into emotional memory. Never forget. Once burned, twice shy. Lots of examples of that. For example, in relationships, negative interactions are more memorable than positive ones. Thus, attack ads in politics, negative advertising, people remember bad information about others more than positive information or good information about others. It's really easy for people to be trained in helplessness. You need many, many counter experiences to feel like a hammer instead of a nail. So, that's the fourth thing that happens, that fast-tracking, new emotional memory, while positive experiences, which tend to predominate in the lives of most people--unfortunate exceptions, of course--those are nice. There's a quantity effect for positive experiences but a quality effect for negative ones. So, that's number four. And then last, number five: The brain is designed to be sensitized to the negative through the stress hormone cortisol that's released when we're super stressed, running for our lives from saber-toothed tigers. But also, cortisol's released when we're stuck in traffic late for a meeting, or trying to get something done and the emails keep landing in our inbox, or someone is giving us that weird look across a dinner table, or dissed us in some ways, or we're worried about something. Hormones are released like cortisol, and then cortisol goes up in the brain, sensitizes the alarm bell of the brain, the amygdala, so now we're more reactive to the negative, and cortisol overstimulates and gradual kills neurons in a nearby part of the brain, the hippocampus, that puts things in perspective, inhibits the amygdala, calms down the alarm bell--the hippocampus does--and the hippocampus also inhibits the hypothalamus, a nearby region of the brain, that calls for stress hormones. So, in effect, the hippocampus tells the hypothalamus, "Enough stress hormones already. We don't need any more of that stuff." Well, that creates a vicious cycle, because stress today, releasing cortisol, sensitizes the brain to the negative and weakens our capacity to bounce back to become resilient in the face of the negative, which makes us more prone to negative experiences tomorrow, which sensitizes us further and makes us even more vulnerable to negative experiences the day after tomorrow and the day after that, and so forth. And there's no comparable process of neurohormonal sensitization to the positive. We have to work more at it. And you can kind of watch those five things happening inside you.

	Now, the key, of course, is to be able to watch them, to be able to observe them, and help yourself on three things. One: observe it when it's happening and step back from the process of being upset, irritated, frazzled, anxious, hurt, or blue; two, disengage from that process as fast as you can. Don't suppress it. If you go negative on negative, you just have more negative. But the trick is to step back from it and quite putting fuel on that fire. Quit looping through that resentful case against other people. Quit looping through that self-critical pounding on yourself, in part internalized from maybe your childhood. Stop doing that. And then third, you know, relatively quickly, pull out of this negative crud storm and start looking for, okay, all that negative stuff is true. Whatever's true about it is true about it. And also what's true... What are the positive things that are also true in the world around me, inside of my own character, inside of my own heart, the positive opportunities in the next moment? What can I do about this situation? What can I recognize in the bigger picture? What can I be grateful for? How can I feel loved and loving, even no matter what has happened for me today at work? You know, and then turn to those beneficial things, which are usually enjoyable, and really, really take a minute. For me, that's just a way to practice multiple times a day, any single time you do those three things, you know. Observe the upset, step back from it, second, disengage from it and stop fueling it, and third, replace the negative that you're releasing with some positive alternative to it that's authentic and legitimate. You know, every single time you do that, you know, it might take 30 seconds or three minutes, usually, or less at a time, it's not going to change your life. But the gradual accumulation of those moments of practice a few times a day, a handful of times a day, day by day by day, rather than doing what is typical for people, which is just marinating in the acid bath, if you do what I'm describing a handful of times every day, you'll feel different at the end of that particular day and you'll feel really different at the end of a week, and definitely different at the end of months of this kind of practice.

Matt:	So, changing gears a little bit, but I think this ties into what you were just talking about, share with me the concept of these two wolves.

Rick:	Oh, sure. This is a metaphor borrowed from a Native American teaching story, and it really speaks to the importance of what we do each day. I think people tend to focus on macro stuff, giant, you know, winning the lottery, getting the big promotion, like the huge stuff. But most of what life's about is the little stuff. So, in this teaching story, a woman is asked toward the end of your life, grandmother, "How did you become so happy? What did you do? How did you become so successful, so loved, and so wise? What did you do?" She paused and reflected and she said, "You know, I think it's because when I was young like you, I realized that in my heart were two wolves -- one of love and one of hate. And then, most important of all, I realized that everything depended upon which one I fed each day." That's the story, you know, and it speaks, of course, to the presence of the capacity, or even inclination toward, metaphorically speaking, the wolf of hate. You know, resentment, envy, ill will, aggression, even war, right? And what it also speaks to, though, more generally important, is the power of little things. In other words, we're constantly feeding the brain, in effect, one experience or another, right? And the question is, where do we rest our attention? Because neurons that fire together, that wire together, are absolutely turbocharged for what is in the field of focused attention, you know, in the larger background of conscious experience. There's lots of information processing in the nervous system that's unconscious, outside of awareness by its very nature, such as, you know, the deep software, as it were, for moving your arm to reach and pick up a cup of coffee, bring it to your lips without spilling it instead of down again. You know, we have no direct access to that underlying sensory motor software, as it were. But there's not much learning that happens, not much change, not much development or healing or growth in terms of the information flows in the nervous system that are outside of awareness. But we're designed to learn, as other animals are designed, we're designed to learn from our experiences, especially the experiences we bring focused attention to. That's, in part, one reason why it's so important to get regulation over attention, you know, rather than letting others around us grab it and pull it one way or another, or letting our attention be controlled by our habits. You know, if you think about it, the primary puppet masters in our life live inside our ears, you know, right between our ears, live inside our head, and that's where we're being controlled, you know, dragging our attention in one direction or another, much of which is negative, in terms of negative preoccupation. So, instead, I think it's really important to disengage from feeding and fueling the wolves of hate or hurt or anxiety or irrational worry or feelings of inadequacy or woulda-coulda-shoulda, second-guessing oneself, Monday morning quarterback. You know, stop feeding those wolves. If you attack those wolves, you just feed them, right? It's not about attacking them or suppressing them. It's about just not feeding them anymore, or stopping feeding them when you catch yourself feeding them. And in particular, feed the wolf pack of love or the wolf pack of resilience, grit, determination, feelings of self-worth, happiness, well-being, feelings of meaning and purpose in life, you know, taking the big picture of life into account. At the end of the lifespan, as others have pointed out, very few people think to themselves, "Damn, I should have worked more hours", "Darn, I should have improved my quarterly metrics." You know, that's not what people are thinking in the last years of their life. They're thinking about the people they've loved and the people that have loved them and the contributions that they've made and the good times that they've had and the meaning that they've been able to cultivate inside themselves, the meaning of life, sense of fulfillment in life altogether. That's what really, really matters most. So, let's feed those wolves and let's also feed the factors inside ourselves, the psychological, mental resources inside ourselves that help us feed those wolves and help us, you know, accomplish big things, helping ourselves and our career and our personal life, and helping the larger world as a result.

Matt:	I think that's such an important statement, that it's not about attacking or suppressing necessarily the negative feelings or the wolf of hate, but it's about kind of... What would you say? Acknolwedging them or just accepting them? 

Rick:	Yeah, that's right. That's that first thing I was saying of the three practices, you know. The first one is to be with what's there, but not identify with it -- in other words, not glued to the horror show on the movie screen, but popped back 20 rows, eating popcorn, sympathetically going "Whoa, that sucks!" But just that alone! Popping out of the movie, stepping back from it, observing it mindfully, being able to name it to yourself. "Wow, I'm so irritated right now. Wow, you know, I'm obsessing about this stupid little thing. Wow." You know, knowing for yourself what's really going on. That's critically important. And then stop fueling that fire, you know. It's not about fighting it or suppressing it. You gotta feel the feelings. You gotta experience the experience, you know, including the deeper, more vulnerable, often younger layers. But that's not enough. That's not enough. A lot of people overvalue just witnessing their experience, you know. They could give you a master's thesis on their neurosis, but they're as unhappy as ever. We also need to not fuel the negative and we just need to release it, and then, in particular, grow the positive. Yeah, I find that path to be one that I walk multiple times a day. Recognize that I'm irritated or contracted or driven or feeling "ugh", glum in some way; and then, second, not fueling it any further; and then, third, as appropriate and authentic, shifting, shifting into, turning toward the positive alternative, which is where I really want to sink my roots and make my home.

Matt:	Shifting the direction a little bit, Buddha's Brain...your book Buddha's Brain has an amazing and fascinating discussion of the concept of the self and whether it exists...

Rick:	Uh-huh. Going hardcore, Matt! This is good!

Matt:	[Laughs]

Rick:	You're not messing around here.

Matt:	Oh, definitely not. We like to dig deep on the Science of Success.

Rick:	Yeah.

Matt:	But, you know, kind of the concept of the self, whether it exists, and what its true nature is. I'd love to hear your thoughts on that.

Rick:	That's a profound topic, obviously, and one that philosophers, mystics, psychologists have been really preoccupied with. I'll just say that... Maybe I'll just offer sort of the short version because it's huge. You know what I mean?

Matt:	Yeah, absolutely.

Rick:	For me, the short version is to, first of all, like a lot of thorny topics, get real clear about what the words mean. What do we mean by that deceptively short and simple, four-letter and one-syllable word "self", right? And I think, basically, there are two meanings of it, and it's very important to draw this distinction. The first meaning is the person altogether. You're a person, Matt. I'm a person. We're distinct from each other, you know? You're... The totality of your body-mind over time -- that's the person. It exists. It's real. It has duties. It has rights. It has responsibilities. It has moral standing. We're persons. There's no question about that. The other way, though, that the word "self" is defined is, in effect, to refer to a kind of entity inside us; a somebody looking out through our eyes; the agent of actions and owner of experiences; the "eye" behind the eyes, right? And then the question really becomes... There's no question about what the person is and the fact that persons are separate from each other, they have continuity and so forth. But is there actually such a being inside us looking through the eyes? That's a deep question. And in ordinary life, in Western...predominantly Western culture, there's an ongoing assumption that, yeah, there really is that little homunculus inside, that little entity inside. And yet if you look really closely at it in your own experience, you'll never find the complete package of the presumed eye. You will find many experiences in which there is a presumption implicit in the experience or the litte movies running inside your mind, the little inner chatter, that there is such an entity inside. You'll find presumptions of that entity and you'll often encounter a kind of sense of an eye, a sense of a subject; an intact, unified, enduring, independently arising subject somewhere inside yourself. You have a sense of it, but the sense of it is really different from it itself, and if you look closely, you'll never find the complete package. And if you look at the brain, neurologically, well, you can find a lot of localization of function for many, many things, you know, like moving your left little finger or recognizing the face of a friend or being able to comprehend language or, in other regions, produce language. There's a lot of localization of function for all kinds of things. There's no localization of function for that...for an eye inside ourselves. It's widely distributed, the neuroprocessing that supports the sense of eye, and you can do different...give people different things to do inside MRIs. And, you know, there's a lot of research literature about this. The basis for the sense of self is widely distributed in the brain and, second, it's throughout parts of the brain that do all kinds of other things, too. In order words, there's nothing special about the sense of eye, even though we feel we're so special, right?

So, what's the practical takeaway from all this? It really helps you take life less personally and move out of a contracted sense of being an ego and defending yourself or trying to glorify yourself or, you know, hold on to the status of this "me" inside, this eye inside; and instead of being so attached to the eye inside or defensive about it, taking things personally, you know, ruminating about, oh, how could you do that to me? What do you think about me? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And instead of doing that, just relax more, lighten up more, come into the fullness of your process as a person, person-ing over time, while, yeah, for sure, standing up for yourself, standing up for your person, yeah, taking responsibility as a person for your impact on others and inheriting the results of the stuff you did, good or bad, back in the day, yesterday or a year ago or when you were in college as a person, living with the results of your own actions as a person, sure. But meanwhile, you know... This is kind of summarized--I'll finish on this point--in a Southeast Aisan monk. It kind of makes more sense when you see it in writing, but you can get it just hearing it. He says, "Love yourself; just don't love your self." In other words, that's two words. And I think that summarizes a lot of teaching here. You know, stand up for yourself, but don't take life so personally.

Matt:	And one of my favorite concepts relating to the self that you discuss, and I know Alan Watts has talked tremendously about this concept as well, but it's the idea that the self does not have an independent existence.

Rick:	Yeah. Oh, yeah. Well, you know, if you think about it, everything inside ordinary reality arises due to causes. Now, maybe those causes can be traced back to arbitrary quantum-level processes in the first trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second of the Big Bang, right? Okay. But at that point, after the Big Bang-ed, you know, it's been causal and deterministic inside of ordinary reality ever since. So, you know, your body arises due to causes, and those causes are, you know, embedded in 600 million years of the evolution of the nervous system, embedded in another prior three billion years of life on this planet, you know, and in a universe that's about 13.7 billion years old.

So, the takeaway from that for some people can be a sense of despair. You know, like, there's no independence. Everything is interdependently arising. And yet what seems to happen... And this goes back to what I said in the very beginning about reverse engineering awakened mind or working backwards from very, very high levels of self-actualization and trying to understand what in the world is going on in the brain of somebody who's a peak performer at work and who also has a lot of inner peace, or is deeply realized in some remarkable sense. Enlightenment is more rare than an Olympic gold medal as best we can tell throughout history, certainly over the last hundred years, and yet it's clear that there are some people who really are enlightened. And they're different, but they still have bodies, right? They still have a reptilian nervous system...brain stem. What's going on in those brains?

So, my point about all this is that as people in their own movement down the path of awakening or personal growth over time... And definitely it's a report of people, ordinary human beings like us who are awakened or close to it, that as you come more and more into the felt recognition that your person-ing over time is a local ripple in a vast network of causes, you know. You are definitely... You, the person, are a unique wave in the middle of the Pacific Ocean to be sure, and yet what's happening in your life over your life span--you know, three score and ten years or hopefully even more than 70 years altogether--your local wave of livingness, Rick-ness over time, Matt-ness over time is just a local expression of a vast ocean of causes. And when people really get that in a felt way, it often starts intellectually. You realize, yeah, that is true.

But what's the feeling of it being true? As you come more and more into the feeling of it being true, you don't get despairing and depressed; you actually get kind of ecstatic, and it's really interesting. It's joyful and peaceful and you realize, wow, man, what's happening here locally is almost entirely outside of my control. I'm just doing the best I can in this moment of waving, right, of being a wave in the middle of the ocean; trying not to hurt other waves as best I can; trying to learn and grow from the currents moving through me in this moment; trying to help useful residues stick around; you know, keep some foamy lace, keep some seaweed that's really useful for me and this wave that I am in this moment. But what happens generally is people lighten up enormously. I certainly have. People start to feel when they relax this sense of being a brick somehow in life, you know, struggling with other bricks, [INAUDIBLE 00:43:12] as they go through their days, and instead realize, wow, we're all in this together. We're all waves in a vast ocean of causes. Yeah, I'm going to take care of my wave. Yeah, I want your wave to quit stealing my parking place or mistreating me in my relationship or my job. You know, there's a place for that. But when you start to hold on to this bigger picture... My expression is: Love the wave; be the ocean. You know, when you start experiencing more and more life as the whole tapestry of causes, as the whole ocean of causes, honestly, you get less stressed. You lighten up. You get less irritated with other people, and you start getting taken more and more profoundly into an underlying, unconditional inner peace. You're not... That's the observation, clearly, of people who have deepend in this form of practice over time, and it's clearly the case of people who are reporting back to us what it's like for them to feel completely identified with the ocean altogether while also recognizing that they have a body, they have a unique personhood and personal life, but it's embedded in the felt sense of being the whole ocean.

Matt:	That's so powerful and I really, really enjoy hearing that wisdom.

Rick:	That's great. Well, a little bit of it's my own. Most of it's not. Most of it is stuff I'm just passing along through me. But you're right. Maybe we're finishing up here, Matt, and I'll just say that I think that it's important to deal, obviously, with the needs, the demands, the ambitions of everyday life, the situations, the issues and so forth. Okay. But then the question becomes: Are we just treading water? Or are we using these experiences to learn and grow along the way? Are we exercising our superpower, as it were, of learning along the way? And, really, the super superpower is learning how to learn along the way. Are we applying those lessons as we go? And, really, along the way, treating yourself like you matter, you know. This life is rare and precious. As best most people know, this is the only life they're ever going to have. What's the line from Mary Oliver, the poet? Tell me, what shall you do with your own wild and precious life, right? And, you know, I think... Also, I was at a commencement recently and the dean was quoting from a poet who was quoted in the memorial service for a roommate of his in college who died young, and the poem comes from Raymond Carver, who also wrote detective stories, I learned. But anyway, I think the poem is very short. It goes: Did you get what you wanted from this life even so? I did. What was it? To call myself beloved, beloved on this Earth. That's an almost exact quote, and the opening question is so profound. Did you get what you wanted from this life even so? Right? And I think it's important to do that, to not just mark time, but to actually look for opportunities to feed yourself and grow yourself from the inside out along the way.

Matt:	Thank you for sharing that. That was amazing. And we'll include a link to that poem in the show notes as well.

Rick:	Oh, great. It's called... I think it's called "Late Fragment". Well, hey, maybe I can finish by quoting the Buddha or...

Matt:	Yeah, absolutely!

Rick:	...[INAUDIBLE 00:46:55] what the Buddha said, and it was very short and sweet. I think about this a lot and it's very central to our conversation about feeding the wolf of love and turning lots of ordinary, little experiences--you know, half a dozen of them or so over the course of the day--turning those into some kind of lasting value woven into the fabric of your nervous system. The quotation from the Buddha from the Dhammapada is: Think not lightly of good, saying, "It will not come to me." Drop by drop is the water pot filled. Likewise, the wise one, gathering it little by litte, fills oneself with good.

Matt:	That's awesome. As we wrap up, one last time, where can people find you online if they want to learn more, if they want to find out more about everything that you've written and all the things that you've shared?

Rick:	Sure, my pleasure. Yeah, rickhanson.net. That's S-O-N, rickhanson.net. It's just a big treasure chest, honestly, of tons of freely-offered resources of various kinds. Talks, videos, slide sets and workshops, both short and long that I've taught, links to really good scientific papers in the public domain that are kind of like greatest hits, tons and tons of practical stuff. Also, I do a program online that is offered for free to anyone with financial need. Obviously, of course, if people can afford it, I'd love for them to pay for it, but it's an online program called The Foundations of Wellbeing, that is really about the fundamentals of applying positive neuroplasticity, the superpower, the "how" of self-help, applying those to growing 12 key inner strengths inside you that you can draw upon every day, hardwired into your own nervous system. So, check it out. Rickhanson--S-O-N--.net. And particularly check out this program, The Foundations of Wellbeing, that anyone can do online from anywhere in the world.

Matt:	Well, Rick, this has been a fascinating interview, and I know personally, I've learned a ton, and I've really enjoyed hearing from you, so I just wanted to say thank you so much for being on the show.

Rick:	Matt, it's been a pleasure and an honor, and hopefully what we've talked about will be of some use to people.

How To Put Your Body In Relaxation Mode, Reduce Stress, and Develop Body Awareness with International Yoga Expert Tiffany Cruikshank

In this episode we explore the boundary where eastern and western medicine meet with international yoga expert Tiffany Cruikshank – we discuss how cultivating body awareness can put your nervous system in “Relaxation mode,” how meditation impacts your metabolism, the lessons Tiffany has learned from more than 25k patient visits, and how to jump in and start yoga TODAY as we demystify and examine some of the science behind the practices of Yoga!

Tiffany is an international yoga teacher who has been teaching for over 20 years, an author, health and wellness expert, the founder of Yoga Medicine, and she is internationally known for her focus on fusing the two worlds of eastern and western medicine together and apply it to the practice of yoga in an accessible and relevant way. We discuss:

• How to put your body in "relaxation mode"

• The science behind the parasympathetic nervous system (and why its so important)

• How to cultivate a mind-body connection and develop body awareness

• How to get started simply and easily with yoga today

• The impact meditation has on your metabolism

• The differences between yoga and meditation

• The lessons Tiffany has learned in more than 25,000 patient visits

• And more!

If Yoga has interested you and you don’t know where to start - or you just want to learn how to become more relaxed - listen to this episode! 

Thank you so much for listening!

Please SUBSCRIBE and LEAVE US A REVIEW on iTunes! (Click here for instructions how to do that!). 

SHOW NOTES, LINKS, & RESEARCH

• Tiffany Cruikshank's page on YogaGlo (see here).

• Tiffany Cruikshank's website, "Yoga Medicine" (see here).

• [Book] Autobiography of a Yogi (Self-Realization Fellowship) by Paramahansa Yogananda (see here).

• [Book] Yoga as Medicine: The Yogic Prescription for Health and Healing by Yoga Journal and Timothy McCall (see here).

• [Science of Success Episode] Unleash The Power of Meditation (see here).

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Today we have another awesome guest on the show, Tiffany Crookshank. Tiffany’s an international Yoga teacher who has been teaching for over 20 years. An author, health and wellness expert, and the founder of Yoga Medicine. She’s also internationally known for her focus on fusing the two worlds of Eastern and Western medicine together, and applying it to the practice of Yoga in an accessible and relevant way.  Tiffany, welcome to The Science of Success.
Tiffany:	Thanks for having me, Matt.
Matt: 	Well, we’re super excited to have you on here. To kind of kick things off, I’m curious, tell me: How did you get started in the field of Yoga?
Tiffany:	I was actually really young. I was a little bit of trouble maker in my early teens and my parents sent me off to a wilderness rehab program, kind of to get me back into shape. It was a really empowering experience for me; learning how to survive, and there were herbalists out there that took me on plant walks and kind of taught me how to use the plants around me, and it kind of began my investigation into holistic health and really wanting to help others in health and wellness.
As soon as I got home I saw this little sign that said “Yoga” and a phone number. At the time there weren’t really any Yoga studios, and eventually I remembered, and I went. And, being an athlete- growing up and being really athletic- the physicality was really interesting to me, but there was always something kind of “more” that I don’t really know that I knew, or was really even conscious of at the time, but there was something really intriguing to me. And, as a fourteen-year-old girl at the time, it was these moments of also just being comfortable in my skin, but also being able to explore with my background. 
And in healthcare, as well, is kind of this intermingling of how Yoga can also be really an adjunct to our healthcare. 
Matt:	And, kind of dove-tailing off of that, tell me a little about how your unique blend of sort of Western science and Eastern medicine helps inform your study of Yoga.
Tiffany:	Once I got really interested in Yoga and herbal medicine, I quickly finished up my high school and started college at sixteen, and went off to college and did my premed in nutrition, and then went off to Chinese medicine school. I was really intrigued by how the art of Chinese medicine, and this kind of ideal balance and health; and did my Chinese medicine and then went off to do a specialty in sports medicine and orthopedics.
When I started seeing patients, one thing I noticed really quickly was that the people, the patients who came and saw me- I had many of them who were Yoga students as well- got better so much quicker than my patients who weren’t Yoga students. And so one day, finally, a light went off and I was like, “Well, maybe I should start giving some- what I called at the time- Yoga prescriptions to my patients who were not Yoga students”. And I did, and it was usually only one to three poses that they would do each day on their own for a few minutes, and found that their response was really great. Their response to my treatments improved and things seemed to be going a lot easier. So I… over time, over the past twelve years or so of running teacher trainings, I’ve slowly integrated that into what I do training other teachers.
One thing that I’ve always enjoyed as a healthcare practitioner, as well as a Yoga teacher, is for me what’s really important is people understanding how things work. We know now the power of the mind and how important it is in health and healing, and then being able to bring that into our work, whether as patients or students, just in this understanding in how East and West meet. How we can kind of look at this Eastern philosophy of Yoga, or Chinese medicine, in a Western mental context, and kind of bring in anatomy and physiology. Not only to make it more effective, potentially, but also really so that our students and patients are- or my students and patients at the time could really make sense of it. I really think that’s an important part of your body’s ability to integrate, and also respond to treatments. 
Matt:	So, I’m a total novice about this. I’ve taken like one Yoga class in my entire life. What kind of differentiates Yoga from other forms of exercise?
Tiffany:	You know, I’d say the biggest thing is… especially now because Yoga’s changing and there’s so much that’s getting pulled into this modernized Yoga, which is great, but I think the big over-arching theme is this “mindfulness”. You know, that it’s not just calisthenics or cross training- which we do see a lot of cross training stuff in Yoga now, and Pilates and calisthenics- and it really is a mindfulness that’s over-arching it. There’s a purposeful awareness of the body and the breath. And, this kind of “orchestration” of how the mind and the body connect, and reconnecting that awareness in the body. And, as a healthcare practitioner, I think it’s really big part of using Yoga in the medical sci- kind of, communities, because it’s, for me, the foundation of working with patients. You know, it’s really difficult, as a healthcare provider, to work with people who have no body awareness. Right? To come in and be like, “I don’t know, my shoulder just hurts,” and not be able to answer any questions. One of the great things, if nothing more- and I think there’s a lot more to it than this- that Yoga just gives you this body awareness that I think is helpful both within your context of your relationship with your doctors, but also as kind of like an owner’s manual to your unique body. Whether that’s finding a diet that works for you, or finding an exercise protocol that works for you, or so many other things, you know? So that we can really notice, “What is this mindful awareness that is Yoga?” in some context, outside of our Yoga practice as well. 
Matt:	Tell me more about the concept of body awareness.
Tiffany:	Yeah, I mean, it’s just a general phrase that we use to talk about really becoming intimate with the experience of sensations that happen under your skin. Which, really isn’t very different form meditation. I’m a huge fan of meditation, and I think meditation can be- it is a part of Yoga, it is a branch of Yoga as well, but it’s this ability to translate that into movement; into how we are in our world and our relationships; to be able to feel the sensations in my feet when I’m standing or hanging out in the grocery line; or to be able to feel this experience in maybe my back even, while I’m sitting at my desk. And, you know, body awareness to me also implies a lack of judgement. Yes, you know, obviously we want to be able to take these cues in Yoga and be able to move away from pain, and stay safe in our world and our lives, but there’s also this ability just to observe and to notice how these things influence us. 
One of the pillars of Yoga philosophy is this ability to kind of… what we talk about is soften the fluctuations of the mind. These ups and downs. You know, the high points and the low points, so that we can find some place in the middle where we can really just be reflective and be able to notice. Whether that’s body sensations, or meditating, or playing with our family.
Matt:	So, meditation is something that I’m a huge advocate of, and we’ve had a number of episodes and guests in the past talk about meditation. One of the questions- or one of the things I’m really curious about- and you just touched on it is: How does Yoga sort of relate to meditation? And also, how is it different from meditation.
Tiffany:	Well, I think, first off, most people in the Yoga world would agree that meditation is a part of Yoga; is a type of Yoga. Though, now-a-days meditation can kind of live in its own world sometimes, as well. I don’t think you have to- many people think of Yoga as the Asanas, or the physical postures that we put our bodies into, but meditation is, to most people in the Yoga world, considered a branch of Yoga. 
In really traditional Yoga, the way it’s been taught in the past, is that the first step is really learning the Asanas. These physical postures: downward facing dog, or upward facing dog, or triangle pose. With Yoga medicine we do a lot of training our teachers of how to apply this as more… not physical therapy per say, but more of a physical practice to be able to tune the body in a way that’s more therapeutic. The whole purpose of the Yoga then was to create this sense of body awareness, but also comfort in our bodies. Which, you know, is a constant fine-tuning process as our bodies change depending on the circumstances we put them in, but it allows us to kind of train the body to be able to sit. And, the next step would be the breathing practices. So, the breathing practices are made to train the nervous system so that eventually the final practice is meditation. 
Traditionally the Asanas, the physical postures, are really kind of like… you could think of them like the gateway to mediation. Some traditionalists might say, “If you’re able to meditate and sit, great! Maybe you don’t need the physical postures. Maybe you don’t need the Yoga.” I think, in our modern world, that all of it has different important things. You know, this was back in a time when the purpose of Yoga was to become enlightened. I think there’s many translations of what that might mean in a modern day context as well, but I think the different branches of Yoga- the physical, the breathing, and the meditation- all provide us with very different things that all feed off of each other as well. 
Matt:	And that reminds me of the book, Autobiography of a Yogi, which he kind of talks about the concept of Yoga, which was written many, many years ago and really today seems more like he’s talking about meditation than Yoga. I guess I’d never really conceived of it as that meditation’s essentially a type of Yoga. In which case, then I practice every day. 
Tiffany:	Yeah, that’s an old school text. I mean, there’s some far out stuff in there. My first [00:13:03] was actually from the yogananda lineage, which is “Autobiography of a Yogi”, and I think a lot of it’s still very relevant as well, but it is looking at the meditation, and a lot of the older practices. The oldest practice of Yoga they can find really is around meditation. Before they started to see the Asanas- the physical postures- coming about.
Matt:	So, focusing a little bit on the Asana side of the equation, what are some of the health benefits that you see from people who practice Yoga on a regular basis?
Tiffany:	Well, I think in a modern context the physical practice is really relevant because… one big thing, I think many of us are sitting in desks for long periods, or maybe in cars, or maybe that’s carrying babies around, or kids around. We have very awkward scenarios that we do, and maybe your job is very different from that, but we have repetitive movements that we have to create, whether you’re an athlete or a desk worker, that have our bodies really changing to accommodate this. And you know, this experience in our body, the sensations, really change how we see the world around us. They change our perspective. They change how we both interact with ourselves as well as the people around us. So, I think just the physical postures themselves, if nothing more than to just feel more comfortable in your body, is a really important part of that.
We look at this ability to have balance of both elasticity of the soft tissues. The ability to be pliable and have the right amount of range of motion, but also strength in the tissues to stabilize and support the joints for the integrity of the long-term health of the joints. To me, I think Yoga for most people, because whether they’re an athlete or a desk worker, we have very repetitive movement that we do, or stationary postures that we take, that Yoga kind of challenges us to move in new ways. Which, when we look at it from a physical medicine standpoint is really important. That our bodies are moved and challenged and stretched and strengthened in different ways so that the deeper structures of the joint aren’t getting worn, or irritated, over time from constant movement in the same patterns. I think there’s a lot more to it, but I think that’s one big part of it for the physical practice.
Again, I’m sure as a meditator yourself, there’s this sense of when you can sit more comfortably, and a lot of the Yoga postures are focused around hip openings so that there’s this ability to sit comfortably so that you can meditate. So that you’re mind’s not constantly going, “Ah my back! My back! My back!” There’s these moments of just being able to sit comfortably.
Matt:	And I think that… going back to the idea of many people today are sort of knowledge workers, or desk workers, there’s a phrase that gets thrown around that “sitting is the new smoking”. So, it seems like Yoga may be a really beneficial tool to help your body recover from the fact that you’re sort of have these repeated stresses again and again of sort of sitting, typing, that kind of thing. 
Tiffany:	Absolutely. One of the things we really love- I love to teach our teachers, and we really specialize in with Yoga medicine, is really fine-tuning it for the individual. So if there are physical injuries, or repetitive motions, or illnesses, that the practice really should be applied in a very different way for each person. That really not only helps with the physical therapy side of things, but also really this mind-body connection.
The breath, the nervous system, the ability to kind of retrain how the nervous system perceives both stimulus, as well as our awareness of ourselves in our bodies, and our awareness of ourselves in the world around us. And this regulation of parasympathetic tone, which is so- I mean, gosh we could talk another hour just on that- and how important that is in the Yoga, both in the effects we see so much in the research now in Yoga- a lot of it is really looking at how it affects the parasympathetic nervous system.  We know that the parasympathetic nervous system really has effects on this global system of the body, whether we’re talking organs, or muscles, or cognitive function. And, so we see pretty potent effects from that work as well.
Matt:	Dig in a little bit more about the concept of the parasympathetic nervous system. That’s not something that we’ve talked about before on the podcast, and I’m sure listeners would love to kind of understand that concept fundamentally. And also, maybe some of the research behind how that’s related to Yoga. 
Tiffany:	Yeah, it’s actually something we’ve known for a long time, and many people probably have taken anatomy and physiology in college, or otherwise probably have learned about it at some point. These simple such systems of the nervous system. The autonomic nervous system is broken down into parasympathetic and sympathetic. It’s getting a lot more hype in the media, on the internet now, but this idea, the sympathetic is really more of the fight-or-flight, and the parasympathetic is this relaxation mode. What’s important though, is the fight-or-flight was really designed to get us out of trouble. When there was a bear coming we would run really quickly, or maybe in a modern day context lifting a car off of someone, potentially. These really serious significant situations where our body releases stress hormones to really help us respond to significant situations by putting more energy and blood in our muscles. By taking it out of the organs to really deal with this acute stressor. What that means though is that all of the other functions of the body are really put off for a while; they’re put on hold. So, it’s really helpful at the time, but when our bodies need to slow down and do things like digest our food, extract nutrients, sleep at night, heal, repair, detoxify. All these really important processes that happen inside the organs, inside the body that we don’t see, that we don’t really feel so much, need to happen in that parasympathetic mode, and do happen during that parasympathetic mode. 
So, it’s an interesting conundrum, I think, because in our modern world we’re so focused on our to-do list, right? We all are. I am the same. We’ve got things we’re trying to accomplish each day, or maybe our goals even potentially for the year, or our lifetime. We’re constantly checking off what we’ve done, and it’s really difficult to check off- who puts on their to-do list, “Today I did nothing?”; “Today I just sat and relaxed”, but  the reality is that time when we slow down, that time when we’re relaxing a little bit more- whether that’s still doing a little bit of work on our computer or not- but those times when we can find that relaxation mode is when our bodies can actually take care of themselves and start to process, not only nourishment, but also elimination of waste or toxins in the body that you need to get rid of. So it’s a really malleable part of our bodies that happen internally that we don’t see, and so it’s hard to put a value on them. You know, it’s hard to say, “Gosh, I really need to spend more time just relaxing.” I think many of us are getting that now as we start to understand how important stress is, but when we look at the nervous system and this parasympathetic versus sympathetic, being able to relax is really important. I like to think of it like a light switch, it should be something where our bodies can flip back and forth just like flipping a light switch from going and doing and creating, which is also a very important mode- sympathetic mode is still also significant- but then we should be able to flip right back into parasympathetic. That’s where we often run into trouble is we lose what we call “parasympathetic tone”, which is just like a muscle in the body that needs to be built up through learning, and training, and really experiencing this relaxation mode over and over again so that our bodies can flip back and forth from our worktime day, to being able to sleep at night, to slowing down to eat, to slowing down during our day for those moments of relaxation where the body can really nourish itself. Just a simple Yoga practice can be great at that, it doesn’t really need to be anything fancy.
Matt:	So, Yoga is a potential tool that you can use to kind of build that parasympathetic muscle…
Tiffany:	Absolutely, and I think just having body awareness. It starts to tune the nervous system in to what’s happening inside of the body versus all of these external stimulus. Which is part of the traditional path of Yoga is to take your mind away from all these distracting stimulus to be able to draw it to one point so that whether you’re trying to focus on your work and improve cognitive function, you’re able to focus on the one thing at hand, or be able to relax and allow your body to digest. There’s this sense of pulling our body awareness into itself so that our bodies can focus on what’s important. 
The body awareness within a Yoga practice of just being able to show up to Yoga class- whatever class that might be. Or, maybe you’re working with a teacher and lie on your back and go from- maybe you’ve gone from a long day at work and you lie on your back and all of a sudden you notice it: “Wow, I was really tense.” It’s not so much about having to relax, but part of it is just noticing those sensations, “Wow, I really hold a lot of tension here all day long.” Before the nervous system can change it has to notice that there’s something wrong. So, the body awareness is the foundation of that, and then learning what it feels like to relax; learning this parasympathetic response-this relaxation response- through even just gentle Yoga practices, restorative poses, yin practices, breathing practices. Meditation, obviously, is a part of retraining the parasympathetic nervous system. However, for people who are maybe more tense, or stressed out, or unable to relax, it can be much harder to start in meditation, for many people. 
Matt:	So, that dovetails into another question I had about the different types of Yoga, and I’ve done a single bikram Yoga class before, for example. I’ve done one or two sort of regular Yoga classes. What are the different sorts of Yoga practices, and are there different benefits from the different types? Or, I guess, could you kind of go into that a little bit? 
Tiffany:	Absolutely, I mean there’s a lot of difference from one style to another. There’s the more vigorous styles of “bikram” or “hot Yoga”, “vinyasa Yoga”, “power Yoga”, ashtanga Yoga, which are really more movement based, definitely more strength based and, and more active, I guess, then some of the other forms. Definitely within those they’re going to have different attributes. I’d say, for someone who’s looking for more active practice, who feels like movement is really helpful for them… I like to teach my teachers a brainy understanding of why and how to use things, but with my patients and my students, and my teachers as well, I think one thing is really important- of utmost importance- is that you recognize how your body feels both during and after these practices to know how to apply it. 
So, if you go to an ashtanga or a vinyasa class, or one of these more vigorous classes; bikram class; and you feel really tired afterwards, it might be that your body really just needs something more mellow. People who need to move, who’ve got to let some energy out and need to exercise, often feel really invigorated after a really vigorous movement based practice. But, obviously there’s differences between teachers and levels, and each one of those. So, if you’re new to Yoga and you just want to start with it, find a place that offers some beginner’s classes to help you learn the proper alignment and form and things… and just trying one out to find one that you like. 
There’s the other side of it, which is more the relaxation side of it, which is more mellow practices for people who need to destress, who need to relax, who need, in many ways, more of the parasympathetic stuff that we talked about. Restorative Yoga is one where you’re using a lot of props to support the body so that you can really relax and notice the breath; notice the sensations. Yin Yoga is a type of Yoga where poses are held for three to five minutes in order to really affect the connective tissue. Which is really great for range of motion; for people who are really tight. And then there’s pranayama practices that really focus on the breathing. And then all sorts of combinations in between there. 
There’s many different styles. Iyengar’s a great one; Iyengar’s also very alignment based. Kind of more of a set system developed by a man named “Iyengar”, and is very alignment focused. Hatha Yoga is kind of a general term for really any of the Asana practices, but also can be used as a term for more moderately paced that have some movement, and also some relaxation and body awareness, which can be like a nice middle ground if you’re not sure where to begin. But, I really recommend that people sample out; not only teachers because every teachers going to be slightly different, as well as styles. And if you’re new, to try and find beginner friendly classes because it is helpful to get a little extra insight. There’s so many people practicing Yoga now days that the intermediate classes often skip over a lot of the beginning stuff assuming that people know that and have heard it. Then you ever really feel like you understand it. It’s nice to kind of understand what you’re doing first in a beginner class, or even just working one-on-one with a teacher for a little while, but there’s a lot of variation out there within those as well. 
Matt:	And that’s something personally, I’ve felt a little bit of… almost “overwhelm” of being interested in Yoga, but also being like, “Well, I don’t know if this class, or that class, is the class I should take.” I’m curious, for someone who’s listening… or someone like me, even, who maybe wants to get started, but hasn’t really ever done it, what is the best first step for somebody to take?
Tiffany:	I would say just to be really simple. If you’re looking for something more active, I’d look for something that’s vinyasa based; that’s kind of a very big category of Yoga that you can find in most places. If you’re looking for something more mellow, looking for more restorative or yin. Then just searching Yoga in your area and reading the descriptions. I think you learn a lot from someone’s bio. The beauty of Yoga now days is in most places there’s a lot of options, so you can find a teacher who sounds interesting to you. But, it should be enjoyable to some extent, though it might be more difficult and challenging, whether that’s to relax or to,  in the more vigorous classes too; in a physical sense.
Find something that feels helpful to you, which is going to be very different from one person to another, and to kind of let your gut guide you on that one.
Matt:	In terms of other exercise styles; other types of exercise; would you say there’s certain things that maybe work well in conjunction with Yoga? Or certain things that you might want to gravitate towards?
Tiffany:	There’s a lot of different takes on that. I think, you know, I do a lot with athletes and training teachers to work with athletes. I think it’s – for any sport- can be a really great adjunct because most sports have repetitive motions, or injuries associated with them, and working through different ranges of motion, restoring range of motion, as well as working the smaller-maybe deeper-muscles that really help to stabilize a joint in a different way than they would in their sport-kind of like a cross training mentality- can be really helpful. We see a lot of help with Yoga as cross training for athletes.
You know, if you have a specific sport, especially if you’re high caliber athlete, or you have a really specific injury, I think you really should be working one-on-one with a teacher so that it can really be accommodated to your unique body. If you can find someone who can work with you one-on-one that’s always preferred, especially for specific things, but you get a lot out of a group class as well. Being able to just go through a general practice; that can be helpful too. 
As far as specific exercise, I think it’s nice to find what you like. Something I really believe in as a healthcare provider is that I always encourage my patients to find something they enjoy. I think exercise is more valuable, in a health sense, if you can enjoy doing it. The benefits of it will be much more than if you’re one of those people that just feels like they’ve got to go pound the pavement for however any miles a day, and they feel like that’s just what they have to do to lose weight. But, there is some benefit from the enjoyment of something. Whatever that exercise might be. 
Matt:	As an experienced Yoga instructor, when you see people starting out, what do you typically see people struggle the most with?
Tiffany:	I think the hardest thing is the unfamiliarity with it. Most people come and do Yoga class, and especially nowadays that Yoga has become so popular and common; most people, when they’re new, they go into Yoga class-and maybe even a beginner class-and they’re surrounded by people who know the words; they know the names; they’re comfortable. They have their Yoga clothes on and they’re comfortable. Someone who’s new might come in in shorts and a tee shirt and not really be able to move so well. It’s finding clothes that are comfortable to move around in, which doesn’t really necessarily have to be spandex, but something that’s comfortable for you to move around in. You know, it’s getting comfortable. 
If it’s a vigorous class-sweating-not everyone loves sweating. And then most people who come to Yoga are a little bit tighter, and though it’s really not about being flexible, it’s kind of being okay with not being the best in the room, and not having to touch your toes. Not having to do the pose this perfect way, but being able to just kind of not worry about what the people are doing around you, and listen and tune in to your body, and breathe, and be in the experience rather than be distracted by all of the things around you. To just allow yourself to enjoy it as it is; to not have to be able to do the poses a certain way, but be able to really appreciate the experience for whatever that might be as a beginner. Whether that’s even just starting to understand what they’re saying and looking around and kind of figuring it out, and then getting more comfortable with it. That takes, for some people, a few classes, for some people, many classes. For most people, though, even just after one or two classes they’re starting to get the hang of it and feel more comfortable there. 
Matt:	Tell me a little bit about the concept of Yoga medicine.
Tiffany:	For me, as a healthcare provider, I saw a really big gap. I really wanted to- I saw a lot of other healthcare providers wanting to provide Yoga to their patients. I think it’s a great adjunct to so much. I think our medical system is so overwhelmed by people with pain, in particular, but also ongoing care. People, even with a physical therapist, often only go for four to ten visits, and that’s a lot more than they go to their doctors or anyone else they see, potentially. Even as an acupuncturist, there’s something really great about having continuous care with people as a Yoga teacher, or sending them off to have continuous care with a Yoga teacher- with someone who can check in with them on knowing that Yoga is really great because our health is not an endpoint, it’s a constant state of fluctuation depending on the circumstances we’re in, our environment, our work, our families; emotionally. So it’s a nice kind of ability to have these tune-ups for our lives; for our health.
As a healthcare provider I saw the biggest missing link there was for people to be able to find Yoga teachers that they could refer to. In the Yoga world, it’s fantastic now, we have so many different types of Yoga and so many great things out there, but as a healthcare provider I’ve always wanted to send my patients to someone who could talk to them on a- in a Western sense. Who understood the anatomy and the physiology, and was going to be able to work with their unique body rather than- maybe as a doctor you might send someone to a Yoga teacher, they might end up going and chanting. Which could be great too, could be very helpful, but I think as a doctor you want to have some idea of who you’re sending them to.
My whole purpose with Yoga medicine was to create some kind of continuity; of reliability; for a resource for doctors to be able to refer their patients to; to work with them on an ongoing sense. Especially now that we have so much research around the effects of Yoga on the nervous system, on disease and illness and injuries, and the body in general. For me, the really big missing link was them being able to have a referral source. 
So, on our website we’ve got our “find a teacher” site where people can go and type in their zip code, and it’s really transparent. They can see all the teachers around them; they can see exactly the training they’ve completed with us so that if they have a shoulder injury, or their patient has a shoulder injury, they can find a teacher who’s done the shoulder module. They can see exactly what they’ve studied and how much they’ve trained with us, and where they are, and how to get ahold of them. We’ve got over a thousand teachers on there, or so now, all over the world. So, o it’s a really great resource for people to connect with teachers more one-on-one. Which, in a medical sense, as a healthcare provider, it’s really difficult to be like, “Just go to a Yoga class”, because as you know now, from this talk so far, there’s a huge expanse of differentiation between different types of Yoga practices, and one might be really helpful for your patient, and one might be not helpful- it might even make things worse, potentially. I think for the most part Yoga’s going to help many people in a general sense, but when you have a significant injuries or illnesses, or high caliber athletes really wanting results and needing help, I think it’s really important to have someone you can work with one-on-one who also is really familiar with the body from both an Eastern and a Western perspective.
Matt:	Within your practice, what results- or maybe some specific examples, or stories, of things that you’ve seen- from prescribing people Yoga, for lack of a better term?
Tiffany:	I’ve used it for a lot of different things. Most of my specialty is in sports medicine, so most of what I’ve worked with has been injuries. I was at the Nike World Headquarters for six years or so and started their acupuncture program there, and taught Yoga there. So a lot of it has been with orthopedic injuries, physical injuries, but definitely seen people with long-term sleep problems; I’ve worked with people with fertility issues; athletes. I lived in New York for a while and saw all sorts of interesting celebrities and things. I would say 70% of my practice, though, is orthopedics. People with back pain is a big part. Anything from herniated discs, to chronic lower back pain that’s been undiagnosed; hip issues; surgical patients who have had a lot of surgeries and not been able to find any relief there. I’ve seen, I think, 25,000 or so patient visits over the past 12 years or so.
Matt:	Wow!
Tiffany:	Yeah. It’s been a big mix.
Matt:	You also touched on-a moment ago- the research, and some of the science behind the effects of Yoga on the body. I was wondering if you could share a few of the findings, or some of your favorite examples that you’ve seen…
Tiffany:	A lot of my current res- the work that I’ve been doing really looking at research lately has been really around meditation; because of my latest book on meditation. Really, to be honest, the research that we see around the actual physical practice is actually much less. Most of the research is around really simple things like breathing practices and meditation, and really its effects on anything from eating disorders, to people’s experience going through cancer protocols- really more of the side effects, to  eating disorders-bulimic, bulimia- anxiety, depression… there’s a lot of them. 
I think recently I’ve been looking-and really interested in- a lot of the research around how meditation really affects our relationship, both to food and to metabolism. My book, “Meditate Your Weight”, is really about how meditation affects the metabolism, and not just the obvious one. I think the big part is looking at how it affects the nervous system for the parasympathetic mode. That stress response is a big part of the cortisol release, and really intimately influences the metabolism and how our bodies hold on to fat, or release fat, in the body. But also, a lot of the research that we’ve seen around people’s relationship to food and how we eat, and how we feed ourselves. Looking at research around people who have eating disorders like bulimia and their ability to do a really simple practice like meditation, where they’re just simply noticing, without judgement, without any desire to fix or change. Just starting to notice our natural tendencies. Research around people’s food choices and how having the regular meditation practice can really influence that.
There’s a lot around meditation. In fact, you’re probably familiar with it. I definitely would say there’s less around the physical practice, which is coming. We’re actually starting. We’ve just hired someone at Yoga Medicine from Brown University who is leading our own research branch within Yoga medicine where we’re running our own research experiments looking at more the physical practice of Yoga because that is definitely an area where research is lacking comparatively to meditation. I think it’s time for it to come of age.
Matt:	For listeners who are curious about meditation, we have done a very in depth episode on it in a podcast in the past so that’s definitely something to check out. We also had a great interview with a meditation teacher and entrepreneur, Vishen Lakhiani. So, if those are things that you’re interested in, I highly recommend checking both of those episodes out.
I’m also curious, Tiffany, tell me a little bit about how meditation impacts metabolism. That’s something I’m fascinated with. 
Tiffany:	The first part was what I was just mentioning around the connection to the parasympathetic response, and the stress response, and the cortisol release. You would see a lot around the cortisol and insulin response, and how our holds on to fat. How it really tells our body how to process the food that we take in. There’s a big part of it around that simple response that I’ve already talked quite a bit around, the parasympathetic response, which is really tied into that stress response, and the cortisol, and the hormonal response of stress, in both an acute and a chronic sense. As we start to get into more of that stress response, which is the sympathetic response, the fight-or-flight mode that I talked about before, we see this release of cortisol, this release of insulin, and how our body then starts to hoard fat and hold onto fat. It has a very difficult time releasing fat. And by fat, I’m talking about adipose tissue, not to be confused with the fat that we eat, but also how we process the fat that we eat. So, by really teaching the body to kind of steer clear of that stress response; that chronic stress response. I found for myself- my first book was on optimal health, it was called “Optimal Health for a Vibrant Life” and it was really looking at Yoga and nutrition home remedies, and a lot of the things I’d used with my patients, and one thing I found afterwards-after working with people for a while with that- was that there was a pretty good segment of people who were seeming to really do all the right things. With the internet, and media now, we have so much access to eating well and exercising, but that weren’t really changing; that weren’t able to lose weight; weren’t able to feel healthy. I think, for me what I noticed was that a big part of it, in my experience was one, the stress- there was this common theme of stress in many of those people- with most of those people- and their ability of then to kind of slow down and relax and integrate this parasympathetic response.
The beauty of meditation for me is that it’s not just that. There’s this very physical, chemical component to it of looking at the regulation of the nervous system and the stress response, and cortisol and insulin, but what we’re looking at, really primarily, is not just that but really how we relate to food. How we nourish ourselves. This mindfulness that meditation allows us to really examine, “Why am I eating this?” You know, to even just to take a second before you sit down for a meal and notice how you feel. Notice what you need in your body. It sounds kind of esoteric and vague, but to be able to check in and notice, “Do I need to eat this plate of sugar or bread”, or whatever it might be? “Is this going to feel good?” “How do I feel after I eat?” Again, the key is really without judgement. They have actually done a lot of research around this ability to slow down and savor food, and feel more satisfied connected with a meditation practice, and helping us understand what real physical hunger and fullness feel like. Dealing with things like cravings; helping us just look at those cravings that come up and notice what it is our body is actually needing.
To me, meditation also really helps people- there’s so many diets out there, and it really helps people understand for themselves what’s really helping. This concept of eating the right diet is really more of a brainy mentality versus actually experiencing what feels best in my body, because there’s a diet that works for everyone. Knowing which one to choose can be a lot. So, really understanding not only that, but our relationship to food, our relationship to our body image; how we see ourselves. This concept pf people that have been really overweight for a long time, and lose weight. Maybe they had to shift to go through a doorway or move differently in their day, and they still move in those patterns. The counter side of that is people who can’t lose weight, who can’t wrap their head around this new concept of change; this concept of them in a different body weight. So, looking at our self-concept, how we see ourselves, what we expect of ourselves… and it’s very different than going through counseling- which is fantastic; I think very helpful; but it’s this common thread of being able to observe without judgement, without having to fix. Without even having to change, but being able to see how our habits- how they reflect on our bodies and our minds, and our spirit. To have the option to change if we want, or not, if it feels like it’s something we don’t want to change, or isn’t helpful. But, the option just to be able to observe.
I think there’s multiple layers to how meditation really influences us. Not only for our metabolism, but for health in general, which is always to me of the utmost importance. More important than anything is just: How do we feel better? How do we allow ourselves to be healthier and more functional, and more connected to the people around us?
Matt:	Really insightful, thank you so much for sharing that. I think that was an amazing description of not only the power of meditation, but also specifically in the context of health, and body image, and eating.
What would one piece of homework be that you would give to somebody listening to this episode? 
Tiffany:	I think, with our understanding, we’ve talked a lot about the nervous system on this call. With our understanding of the nervous system that we’ve talked about- with the parasympathetic mode and the sympathetic- one of the most important things we start to learn now with this concept of neuroplasticity-which is simply the concept that the brain and the nervous system can change. We used to think that once they were created- the neural connections were created in the body that was it. Now we know that they can change, what’s really important to that, whether you’re practicing Yoga, or meditation, or just starting to be more mindful in your day, is that we do it really regularly. So, whether you find a Yoga pose that you like, or a meditation practice that you like, the small things that you do really regularly- meaning every day, even if that’s for three or five minutes a day- are going to be much more significant, much more powerful in whatever kind of change or transformation you’re looking for, or healing process you’re looking for, or health, will be much more impactful than the things that you do for long periods of time infrequently. So, whether it’s something really simple like lying on you back for a few minutes every evening when you get home from work, and just taking a few minutes to just breathe deeply. To maybe count inhale for four counts and exhale for four counts, and just take a moment to relax and allow your body to kind of slow down.  Maybe it’ll help with your sleep, or just your ability to relax, or how you feel in your body; or maybe that’s meditating. But, to find just a few minutes that you can tap into that a day will be much more helpful than just going to one Yoga class a week or a month. But, the Yoga class once a week or a month can be a great way for you to learn that process, as well. So, small things done regularly make a big impact. Finding something that you can daily is really helpful.
Matt:	And what are some other books and resources you’d recommend listeners check out who want to dig in and do some more homework about this topic?
Tiffany:	There’s one that’s a really great book called Yoga as Medicine, which is a great book. There’s an orthopedic doctor who talks about using Yoga for different remedies. There’s- gosh, there’s so many Yoga books, I’m not really sure even where to begin, but that’s probably a good one that comes to mind. One of the things I really like to reinforce with people is that there can be this barrier of feeling like you have to learn a lot, or know a lot, before you start things. I’m such a big fan of the “just do it”-not just cause I worked at Nike- like, jump in and start trying it and see what works for you. I wouldn’t say there’s any specific books that stand out. There’s so many now, I’d kind of go and kind of graze through the shelves and see what you like, but more importantly I would go and experience the classes and find something you like so that you get out of the brainy mentality and really into your body.
Matt:	It’s all about that body awareness.
Tiffany: 	Yeah, I think its key. We spend a lot of time at our computers, and in our brains, and I’m such a huge fan of books and reading- I’ve got so many- but, I think for many people in the modern day world, getting away from that and just getting into your body can be more helpful. 
Matt:	Where can people find you online?
Tiffany:	All of my information is on justtheyogamedicine.com website. Most of our social media’s under Yoga Medicine as well. They can follow us on Instagram, or Facebook, or… mostly those two, I guess. On the Yoga Medicine website we’ve got a “find a teacher” tool there for patients, or students, or doctors, as a reference, and all sorts of information on there as well… articles and things for people.
Matt:	Awesome! Well, Tiffany, thank you so much for being a guest on the show, and I know listeners are going to have a ton of really informative takeaways about Yoga and meditation from this interview.
Tiffany:	Thank you, Matt. It was great to chat.

How a Judge Literally Rolling Dice Could Get You Double The Jail Time - The Anchoring Effect

In this episode we are going to talk about how random dice rolls can influence judges to give people longer jail sentences, how so-called experts are massively influenced by completely random numbers – even when they explicitly deny it – and how you can better understand this crazy phenomenon – the Anchoring Effect.

As Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman puts it in his book Thinking Fast and Slow: 
"The main moral of priming research is that our thoughts and our behavior are influenced, much more than we know or want, by the environment of the moment."

Arbitrary numbers and anchors can have huge implications for your decisions without you even realizing it and this all operates at a subconscious level beyond your conscious experience.
 
This episode is going to focus on drilling down and understanding a specific cognitive bias – a mental model – to help you start building a toolkit of mental models that will enable you to better understand reality.
 
Anchoring bias – along with Priming and Framing, which we have covered in previous episodes – are all cognitive biases that you want to know, understand, and be aware of – so that you can add them to your mental toolbox and make better decisions.

Thank you so much for listening!

Please SUBSCRIBE and LEAVE US A REVIEW on iTunes! (Click here for instructions how to do that!).  

SHOW NOTES, LINKS, & RESEARCH

The specific research studies we cite are located within the book Thinking Fast & Slow.

• [Book] Thinking, Fast and Slow Paperback by Daniel Kahneman (see here).

• [Book] Think Twice: Harnessing the Power of Counterintuition by Michael J. Mauboussin (see here).

• [Science of Success Episode] How This Simple Change In Wording Made 50% of Doctors Choose a More Dangerous Medical Procedure (see here).

• [Science of Success Episode] This Powerful Factor Controls Your Decisions And 86% of People Have No Idea It Exists (see here).

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

In this episode, we’re going to drill down and understand a specific cognitive bias to help you start building a mental toolkit. Remember that concept we talked about in the interviews with Shane Parish of Farnham Street, and the author and global financial strategist Michael Knobison [?] Both of them are experts in human thinking and decision making, and they both shared the same concept, the same idea. That what we should focus on to become smarter, to build better minds and make better decisions it to build a toolkit of mental models. Of models of reality that we can use to understand ourselves, understand our thinking, and understand the world around us. If you want to dig around more in that concept, check out those two interviews. They’re great interviews - tons of great information in there. But today we’re going to focus on a specific mental model. A specific cognitive bias. The anchoring bias. 

Along with priming and framing, which we’ve covered in previous episodes. These are all ways in which the environment can substantially shape your decision making at a subconscious level. It’s a cognitive bias that you want to be aware of to know, to understand, so that you can add it to your mental toolbox so that you can make better decisions and so that you don’t fall prey, like so many people do, to these dangerous cognitive biases. 

I wanted to open up with a quote from the book Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. We’ve cited this in a number of other episodes, it’s an amazing book, highly recommend getting into it. But, before you do, there’s other, better books to start with because it’s such a dense book. Amazing information in there. But we talked about in the priming episode some other books that are better to start with if you really want to kind of begin to get a grasp of psychology and how it controls and rules the world around us. Anyway, here’s the quote. 

QUOTE: “The phenomenon we were studying is so common and so important in the everyday world that you should know its name. It is an anchoring effect. It occurs when people consider a particular value from an unknown quality, before estimating that quantity. What happens is one of the most reliable and robust results of experimental psychology. The estimates stay close to the number that people considered, hence the image of an anchor. If you were asked whether Ghandi was more than 114 years old when he died, you will end up with a much higher estimate of is age at death than you would if the anchoring question referred to his death at age 35.” End quote. 

Let’s dig into that a little bit.

Anchoring is the phenomenon where totally random or arbitrary numbers can substantially impact our decision making. Can substantially change the values that we assign to things, and the numbers that we select. He cites the example of Gandhi. If you - and they conducted this research study. They asked people whether Gandhi was more than 114 years old when he died. They also asked people whether Gandhi was younger than age 35 when he died. If you ask that question, what happens - and you’re probably already doing this yourself. What happens is you take that number, which is called the anchor, and then you start adjusting back from that number to something that is more reasonable. We all know that Gandhi was not 114. We also know that he was older than 35 when he died. But people who start adjusting, and this is the crux of the anchoring bias, typically people will move away from the anchor until they get to a point of uncertainty. Until they get to a point or a place where they’re not sure if they should keep moving the anchor any further. The problem is - that’s where they stop. That’s where they kind of place their guess. But typically they don’t go far enough. So the anchor has a substantial impact on their guess, or on the number, or on the value they associate to this. And we’ll get into some real world implications of this.

To give you another illustration of the anchoring effect. Amos Tversky conducted a study where they had a rigged Wheel of Fortune. It would only ever either go to 10, or 65. Now, it had zero to 100 on there, but it was rigged to only ever stop at one of those two numbers. What they would do is stand in front of a small group of people, ask them to write down the number when the wheel stopped. Again, the number would either be 10 or 65. Then they asked them two specific questions. Is the percentage of African nations among UN members larger or smaller than the number you just wrote. The next question: What is your best guess of the percentage of African nations in the United Nations? Now, as they point out, spinning that Wheel of Fortune has no impact on the number of African nations in the United Nations, it provides no valuable information. But it had a substantial impact on respondents and how they felt and how they thought about the second question that they were asked. Specifically, the average estimate of those who saw the number 10, was the 25% of the United Nations were African Nations. However, those who saw the number 65 estimated that 45% of the United Nations were comprised with African Nations. The key point here is that this totally innocuous, totally random number, created a substantial difference in the way that people perceived and tried to understand this phenomenon. We’re going to look at some other examples of how the anchoring bias can dramatically shape our decisions. 

But before we dig into that, I wanted to talk about a couple other features of the anchoring bias. A couple other ways to think about and understand how the anchoring bias functions. There’s a study conducted by Nick Epley and Tom Gilovich that found evidence that when they expose people to an anchor and have them shake their heads, they were less likely to have the anchor influence them. It was almost as if, at a subconscious level, they were rejecting the anchor. So they moved further away from the anchor and made better and more accurate decisions than either people who did nothing, or people who nodded their head in agreement which actually showed an enhance anchoring effect. But the more fascinating finding of the Epley and Gilovich study is that they confirmed that adjusting away from an anchor is an effortful process. It’s something that depletes our mental resources. And we’ve talked about this before. We’ve talked about willpower, we’ve talked about decision fatigue. And we go in-depth in that in our interview with Peter Shallard about success predictors. It’s a great episode if you haven’t listened to it. I would highly recommend listening to that episode because we really talk a lot about replenish willpower, how it works, how decision fatigue functions, and much more. But one of the fascinating things is that conscious adjustments away from an actor take willpower and take decision-making power. So, if we’re in a state of mental fatigue, we’re more likely to be influenced by anchors. They’re more likely to shape our decisions and make us make poor decisions.

The next fascinating thing about the anchoring bias is that it can actually be measured, unlike many psychological phenomenon, the anchoring bias because it deals with numbers, has a measurable effect and can often be quite literally, quantified. As Kahneman puts it, QUOTE: “Many psychological phenomena can be demonstrated experimentally. But few can actually be measured. The effect of anchors is an exception. Anchoring can be measured, and it is an impressively large effect.” End quote. And there’s a really good study demonstrates how they measure the anchoring effect, and it also shows us how even experts can be influenced substantially by anchors, and how anchors can influence us at a subconscious level, even when we’re not aware of them. Even to the point where experts will literally deny that the anchor had any impact on their decision making. And in an experience that was conducted with real estate agents. The agents were given an opportunity to assess the value of a house that was actually on the market. They visited the house and studied comprehensive amount of information that included an asking price. The trick here is that half of the agents saw an asking price that was substantially higher than the list price. The other half saw an asking price that was substantially lower. Each agent was asked to give an opinion about a reasonable buying price for the house, and the lowest possible price they’d be willing to sell the house if they were the owner. What they found out is, and again, anchoring is a measurable effect. Agents who were shown the low price, were 41% lower than the actual price of the house. Agents who had been shown a high price, were 41% higher. Again, this is average. So the average anchoring effect was 41%. The interesting thing is that agents who asked for the list price had any impact on their judgement. The vast majority of them took pride in their ability to ignore the list price and determine the value the home based on other factors. 

So, not only was there a substantial anchoring effect for these experts, but they were consciously unaware of the impact that anchoring had on them. They then conducted a follow-up study with business school students where they did the same thing. The fascinating outcome was that business school students also had a 48% anchoring effect. The crazy thing is that the difference between how the anchor affected the experts, influenced their decisions by a 41% margin, versus total laymen who had a 48% difference. Those are pretty close together. The detailed expertise that these agents had was not enough to overcome the anchoring bias. The fact that they said it had no impact on their decision, despite the fact that a group of totally uneducated people about the real estate space specifically had almost the same margin of error as the real estate agents. The only difference between the two studies was that the business school students conceded the fact that the anchor price substantially impacted their decision making. 

So, in many ways, expertise was more dangerous in this context because the business school students, knowing they were not experts, were willing to admit that the anchor had influenced their pricing. But the experts themselves were not willing to admit that. And it’s not even that they were trying to hide that fact. They were not consciously aware of the fact that the anchor had influenced them. That’s why anchoring can be so dangerous. It’s something that we’re often not aware of at a conscious level. It’s just like the priming effect. It’s just like the framing effect. These cognitive biases take place subconsciously. We have to try really hard - we have to focus in. We have to understand them deeply. We have to understand our own thinking and be aware of all of them so that we can catch ourselves, and so that we can stop having things like anchoring influence our decision making. 

Another fascinating component of the anchoring bias is that totally random anchors can have a substantial impact on people’s perceptions. We talked about that when we talked about the number of African nations in the United Nations. But this is even more staggering. There’s a study about judges sentencing people. And I’m going to quote from Kahneman here, because he perfectly describes this experiment. 

QUOTE: “The power of random anchors has been demonstrated in some unsettling ways. German judges with an average of more than 15 years of experience on the bench, first read a description of a women who had been caught shoplifting. Then, rolled a pair of dice that were loaded so every role resulted in either a three, or a nine. As soon as the dice came to a stop, the judges were asked whether they would sentence the woman to a term in prison greater or lesser in months than the exact number showing on the dice. Finally, the judges were instructed to specify the exact prison sentence they would give to the shoplifter. On average, those who rolled a nine said they would sentence her to eight months. Those who rolled a three, said they would sentence her to five months. The anchoring effect was 50%.” 

Think about that. Judges with more than 15 years’ experience on average, were influenced by something as trivial as a dice role in determining how long somebody would be sent to prison. There’s a 50% anchoring effect on these highly trained, highly experiences experts. People who we think of as totally unbiased. And we’ve talked before about in a number of the “Weapons of Influence” episodes on the podcast about how other factors can substantially influence judges in their decision making. But it’s really scary sometimes when you think about the fact that our judicial system can be influenced by such random and arbitrary things. But it further underscores the importance of the anchoring effect, and understanding it. And really grasping it so that we can become better decision makers. So that we don’t fall prey to these same mistakes. Because in your life, when you see a random number, it can impact your decision. The date, the time, your social security number. All of these things can change your decision making. Can change the way you value things. Can change the way you make quantitative decisions. So it’s something we have to be very aware of. Something we have to constantly cultivate an awareness of so that we don’t fall prey to this. So that we don’t get trapped. So that we don’t make bad decisions.

Kahneman has a phenomenal quote about the anchoring bias that I think sums this up really nicely. This is from, again, Thinking Fast and Slow. 

QUOTE: “The main goal of priming research is that our thoughts and our behavior are influenced much more than we know or want, by the environment of the moment. Many people find the priming results unbelievable because they do not correspond with subjective experience. Many others find the results upsetting. Because they threaten the subjective sense of agency autonomy. If the content of a screensaver on an irrelevant computer can affect your willingness to help strangers without your being aware of it. How free are you? Anchoring effects are threatening in a similar way. You’re always aware of the anchor and even pay attention to it. But you do not know how it guides and constrains your thinking. Because you cannot imagine how you would have thought if the anchor had been different or absent. However, you should assume that any number that is on the table has had an anchoring effect on you, and if the stakes are high you should mobilize your System Two combat the effect.” End quote.

He talks about a couple different things in there. One, he touched on priming, and I think - I wanted to loop priming back into this because if you haven’t listened yet to the priming episode, or the episode about framing. All three of these are environmental effects in ways your environment can massively shape your decision making at a subconscious level, even if you’re totally not aware of it. So, all of these effects are interrelated in many ways. And the ways that you combat them, the way you think about them, are all interrelated. He also mentioned a study that we haven’t talked about where a screensaver impacted people’s willingness to help strangers. That’s a study he talks about - digs into, in Thinking Fast and Slow. 

Again, there’s a lot more research behind every single one of these topics. I tried to cherry-pick a few stark and powerful examples for you on the podcast to really drive the point home. But there’s dozens more research studies that share and show all of these findings. The last thing to touch on briefly, is he talks about system two. We’ve touched on this in some of the other episodes, but System One and System Two are two different descriptions for parts of your brain that Kahneman uses in the book, Thinking Fast and Slow. System Two is essentially your sort of willful processing power. Willful conscious attention. If you think about it, System One is how you read, how you process language, how you process images, and have emotional reactions. System Two is how you do things like long division. So, Kahneman digs much more deeply into both of those the book Thinking Fast and Slow, but suffice it to say, for the effects of this quote, mobilize your conscious attention. Become aware of it. That’s how you combat things like the anchoring effect. That’s how you combat things like the priming effect and the framing effect.

All three of these are very very influential phenomenon. Things that you want to be aware of, mental models that you want to have in your mental toolkit. So, whenever you see a number thrown out there, understand that that could be influencing your decision making, especially if you’re making quantitive decisions. This has a ton of implications, whether it’s buying a house, whether it’s in business negotiations, whether you’re talking about the value of something, buying a car. People will try to use the anchoring bias on you all the time in your life. And sometimes it’ll happen by accident, sometimes it’ll happen consciously. But it’s something you want to really press pause, think about, and be aware of.

On the flip-side, you can also harness anchoring to your benefit if you’re presenting something, you want to frame something in a certain way. Remember, the previous episode we talked a ton about how important simple turns of phrase are, in shaping the way that things are framed and shaping people’s emotional reactions and decisions in the way that things are phrased. So if you haven’t yet listened to the framing episode, I highly recommend checking that out. But if you want to influence people’s decision making, get people to make the decisions that you think are the best possible decisions, anchoring can be another tool in that toolbox that can help you shape those decisions in a more proactive and effective way. 

How This Simple Change In Wording Made 50% of Doctors Choose a More Dangerous Medical Procedure

Do you think that your doctor makes their decisions based on data or on trivial factors such as how a sentence is worded?

Do you think that your decisions are typically rational and based on the facts?

In this episode we discuss how a twist of phrase made 50% of doctors choose a more dangerous medical procedure, what explains an 88% difference in organ donations in two similar countries, and how experts can make vastly different choices based on the same exact data as we explore the Framing Bias.

As Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman puts it in his book Thinking Fast and Slow: 
"It is somewhat worrying that the officials who make decisions that affect everyone’s health can be swayed by such a superficial manipulation."

The way things are presented can have huge implications for your decisions without you even realizing it and this all operates at a subconscious level beyond your conscious experience.
 
Behavioral economist Richard Thaler explains it this way: “The false assumption is that almost all people, almost all of the time, make choices that are in their best interest."

This episode is going to focus on drilling down and understanding a specific cognitive bias – a mental model – to help you start building a toolkit of mental models that will enable you to better understand reality.
 
Framing bias – along with Priming, which we covered in the last episode, and Anchoring – which we will cover in a future episode – are all cognitive biases that you want to know, understand, and be aware of – so that you can add them to your mental toolbox.

Thank you so much for listening!

Please SUBSCRIBE and LEAVE US A REVIEW on iTunes! (Click here for instructions how to do that!).  

SHOW NOTES, LINKS, & RESEARCH

The specific research studies we cite are located within the book Thinking Fast & Slow (Cancer Treatment, Asian Disease Problem, and Organ Donation Problem).

• [Book] Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness by Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein (see here)

• [Book] Think Twice: Harnessing the Power of Counterintuition by Michael J. Mauboussin (see here).

• [Book] Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman (see here).

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Today, we’re going to explore how the way things are presented can have huge implications for our decisions. Without us every realizing it. How a simple change of wording can dramatically influence multiple different medical outcomes. What accounts for an 82% difference in organ donation rates, and how much of this operates at a subconscious level beyond our conscious experience. This episode is going to focus on drilling down and understanding a specific cognitive bias. A mental model. To help you start building that mental toolkit that we’ve talked about in previous episodes. When we did the interview with Shane Parish, when we did the interview with Michael Mauboussin, both of those episodes dig down and drill in and explain the concept of making better decisions by building a toolkit of mental models. Of different ways of understanding the world. Ways of understanding reality. And if you want to drill down and get to the fundamentals of why you should build that toolkit, and how it’s important, I highly recommend checking out both of those interviews. The mental model that we’re going to focus on today is framing bias. Framing bias, along with priming which we covered in the last episode, and anchoring which we’re going to cover in the next episode. Are all cognitive biases that you want to know, understand, and be aware of, so that you can add them to your mental toolbox, so that you can be a more effective decision maker, and so that you can understand reality more effectively. I wanted to start out with a quote from the book Nudge by Richard Thaler. Great book, very focused on framing and describing framing and its implications. 

QUOTE: “The false assumption is what almost all people, almost all the time, make choices that are in their best interest, or at the very least are better than the choices than would be made by someone else.” End quote.

One of the things we’re going to discover about the framing bias is that often, when we make choices, we think that we’re making choices based on logic, based on morality, based on rationality. But in many cases, the entire basis for why we made the decision is the frame. And by the frame, I mean the entire basis for the reason that we made that decision, is simply the way the question was worded. The framing effect, or the framing bias, is a cognitive bias in which people react to a particular chose in a different way, depending on how that choice is presented. There are three particular books that I really like that talk about framing, explain it and drill down into it. The first is Nudge by Thaler and Sunstein. And I quoted from Nudge a moment ago. The second is a book that we’ve talked about in the past, Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. Again, that book is very dense, very technical, but also incredibly rich in information. Not the best starter book if you want to go down this path and learn about a lot of these topics, but unquestionably a book you must read if you ever want to have a deep understanding of how some of these biases work. Lastly, Think Twice  by Michael Mauboussin. Again, previous podcast guest, someone we’ve talked about. If you want to get a slice or a view of how Michael thinks about the world, definitely listen to the interview that we did with him. But Think Twice by Michael is an amazing book that really covers a number of different cognitive biases and especially drills down and explains very effectively the framing bias.

So, we’re going to look at a few different examples of how the framing bias can shape and impact our decision making. Or, shape an impact the decision making of people that we often consider experts. And remember in the podcast episode in the past we talked about the authority bias when we went through the “Weapons of Influence” series. The authority bias, many times we think that people in authority have a special view on the world. That they know more than we do, that they make better choices than we do. In reality, authority, many times, doesn’t matter. It doesn’t make that big of a difference. Authority gives us a sense of confidence, gives us a sense of certainty, but it’s often falsely placed confidence, falsely placed certainty. And you’ll see that in a number of these examples. Let’s drill into the first example.

The first example was a study conducted by Kahneman and Tvirksy in conjunction with Harvard Medical School. We’re talking about serious experts here. This study was a classic example of the concept of emotional framing. The participants in this study were physicians, so they’re not students. These were doctors, these were practicing physicians. They were given statistics about two different treatments for lung cancer. One option was surgery, the other option was radiation. The statistics that were given the five-year survival rate clearly favored surgery. But there was a little bit of a twist. Surgery is slightly riskier than radiation in the short-term. So, the actual statistics were that they one month survival rate for surgery is 90%. Or if you look at that another way, there’s 10% mortality in the first month of surgery. But going back to the data, thinking about, looking at the data. Remember, the data that the doctors were given clearly showed that surgery was the better option long-term, for all of the patients. The results, 84% of the physicians chose surgery as the option when they were told that the one-month survival rate for surgery was 90%. When the physicians were told instead that surgery has a 10% mortality rate in the first month - again, these are the same sides of the coin, right? One is 90% survival, obviously implies a 10% mortality rate. But the doctors were only told one of those two sentences. The doctors that were told not that survey had a 90% survival rate but rather that surgery has a 10% mortality rate in the first month, those doctors, only 50% of them chose surgery. A 34% difference in the outcome. Surgery was clearly the optimal procedure, clearly the best choice in all instances. But just a slight tweak of the frame, a slight tweak of the wording, resulted in the doctors in the second case, the doctors that were presented with the fact that surgery has a 10% mortality rate in the first month, 34% fewer of those doctors made the recommendation of surgery. 

So, from 84% down to 50%. That’s a massive change in something that seems so obvious. Right? If there’s a 90% survival rate, clearly that means there’s a 10% mortality rate. But the way that our brains are wired, the way that the human mind is structured, is that presenting something, or as we would say - framing something - remember, we’re talking about the concept of framing. Framing something a different way, even though logically they’re equivalent, logically they’re exactly the same thing. But framing them in a different way, this procedure has a 90% survival rate, versus this procedure has a 10% mortality rate, you know - it even sounds better, it sounds safer. I’d rather have a procedure with a 90% survival rate. But they’re the same thing. And these doctors at the Harvard Medical School were influenced simply by that framing. Only 50% chose the optimal procedure when they were presented with that procedure only having a 10% mortality rate. Whereas, 84% chose the procedure when they were presented that it had 90% survival rate. As Kahneman says, QUOTE: “Medical training is evidently no defense against the power of framing.” Unquote. The scary implication here is that most of us passively accept the way that problems are framed, and therefore we don’t often have the opportunity to discover that our decisions and our preferences are what Kahneman and Tvirksy call frame-bound rather than reality-bound. I.e., the way the question is framed and presented, changes the way we feel about it. Changes the ultimate decision we make. 

This is not the only example of framing having a major implication in the way that experts feel and think about life and death outcomes. Another example is what Kahneman and Tvirksy call the Asian disease problem. In this study, Kahneman and Tvirksy had respondents look at an imaginary disease outbreak which is expected to kill 600 people. They were proposed with two alternative solutions which were phrased slightly differently. And this gets into the concept of one of the poor tenants of something called prospect theory which we’ll talk about in detail in a future episode on the podcast. But it’s something that Kahneman and Tvirksy created and discovered and are in many ways one of the things they’re best known for. There’s a disease that threatens the lives of 600 people. The first frame, the first option that was presented, was a choice between A and B. In program A, 200 people’s lives will be saved. In program B, there’s a 1/3 probability that 600 people will be saved and a 2/3 probability that no one would be saved. Okay. So, program A guaranteed saving 200 lives. Program B, 1/3 chance of saving 200 lives, 2/3 chance of killing everybody. A substantial majority of a respondents chose program A. They chose this certainty of saving 200 lives. Now it’s important to note here that statistically, those outcomes are identical, right. The expected value is identical between the two. 200 is 1/3 of 600. So, really, we’re looking at do people prefer a safe choice? Or do people prefer the gamble, right? 

And this will come into play when we look at the second frame. The second way that the same decision was proposed is that if program A is adopted, 400 people will die. If program B is adopted, there’s a 1/3 probability that nobody will die, and a 2/3 probability that 600 people will die. If you think about it, program A and program A are identical, and so are the consequence of program B and program B. In the second frame, a large majority of people chose to gamble. They chose program B, right. This ties back to the same concept, the same idea of framing. But it gets at something else. When people are faced with dangerous outcomes, they prefer the sure thing over the gamble when the outcome is a good outcome. I.e., this is also known as being risk adverse. That’s why people, when the frame is presented as saving 200 lives, or gambling to save 600, people prefer the sure thing. They’re risk averse, they want to just lock in the 200 lives they can save. However, when outcomes are negative, people are risk-seeking. They tend to reject the sure thing and accept the gamble. When the same exact question is phrased as option A, 400 people die, option B a 1/3 chance of saving 600 people or a 2/3 probability of all of them dying. People vastly prefer the gamble. 

Previously, these same exact conclusions have been discovered in a number of different contexts, looking at money - looking at how people behave in the financial markets. This is tied to the concept of loss aversion, which we touched on in the interview with Michael Mauboussin. The fascinating thing about this, is this also demonstrates the same tendency takes place when we’re talking about health outcomes, when we’re talking about people’s lives. As Kahneman says, QUOTE: “It is somewhat waring that officials that make decisions that affect everyone’s health can be swayed by such a superficial manipulation, but we must get used to the idea that even important decisions are influenced, if not governed by system one.” End quote. Again, System One we talked about this in the last episode, but System One, this isn’t a perfect description, but roughly speaking, System One, think of it as your subconscious sort of rapid decision making mind. So the Asian Disease Problem is a great example of looking at how the same exact outcome can be framed in two separate ways. It almost seems silly talking about it, because logically it’s so obvious that if you save 200, the other 400 will die. Or even thinking about the experiment with the Harvard Medical School. Somebody has a 90% survival rate, it’s the exact same thing as a 10% mortality rate. But just explaining it in a different way. Changing the frame substantially changes the way that people act. And it’s a very important thing to remember and to consider that when people are facing good outcomes, they’d rather be risk-adverse. They’d rather lock in the sure thing, right, they’d rather save those 200 people. But when it’s framed as a negative outcome, even when it’s the same situation, when it’s framed as condemning 400 people to die, they prefer the gamble of trying to save everyone. So, in both of those scenarios, the situations were actually identically. But changing the frame changed the way a substantial majority of respondents selected the outcome that they preferred.

Now we’re going to look at another example. This one you may have heard of this. It’s a very often-sited, very common example, of how framing can have a substantial impact on another medical outcome. 

A study that was originally published in 2003 looked at the rates of organ donation in a number of different countries. Countries that they tried to compare was demographically and culturally similar to see why they had these massive gaps. And the two they looked at specifically, they looked at comparing Austria and Germany. Two very cultural similar nations and they looked at comparing Sweden and Denmark. The organ donation rate in Austria is near almost 100%. But the organ donation in neighboring Germany was only at 12%. What factor could explain the 88% gap between those two outcomes? The 88% gap in organ donation rates in two countries that, by and large, are very similar. And the inhabitants of each country behave very similarly, live very similar lives, have very traditions, morals, standards, cultural practices etc. Similarly, Sweden had an 86% organ donation rate. Denmark’s? 4%. These massive gaps - and these are life-changing outcomes here. Imagine if you have an entire population of organ donors, versus a population where only 4% donate their organs. This is something that’s a life-and-death thing for many, many people. This is changing people’s lives, people who are looking for organ donations. The thing that was causing this was so, so simple. It was a framing effect. Again. These enormous differences are caused simply by the fact that in Austria and Sweden, the countries with extremely high organ donation rates, everyone is opted in to organ donating. And you have to - it’s very simple, all you have to do is check a box and say “I no longer want to be an organ donor.” Vice versa, in the countries Germany, Denmark, you have to opt in to being an organ donor. That’s it. That’s the only difference. A simple checkbox. Whether people are opted in by default to donating their organs or not. 

As Kahneman puts it in Thinking Fast and Slow, QUOTE: “that is all. The single best predictor of whether or not people will donate their organs is the designation of the default option that will be adopted without having to check a box.” End quote. 

It’s that simple. That’s the crazy thing about the framing bias. These totally obvious, totally transparent, if you think about them logically, situations, people make crazy decisions, or society makes vastly different decisions based on something as simple as taking two seconds to check a box. These outcomes have huge, dramatic changes for the societies that they’re in. Or, if you’re looking at or thinking about these medical outcomes. Simply the way that something is phrased can change the way somebody makes a decision that can impact their life therein materially. That’s why framing is so dangerous sometimes, because we often don’t understand how the frame is impacting the way we think about the problem. Here is another great quote where Kahneman really sums this up nicely, from Thinking Fast and Slow. 

QUOTE: “Your moral feelings are attached to frames. To descriptions of reality, rather than to reality itself. The message about the nature of framing is stark. Framing should not be viewed as an intervention that masks or distorts and underlying preference. At least in this instance, and also in the problems of Asian Disease and in surgery versus radiation for lung cancer, there is no underlying presence that is masked or distorted by the frame. Our preferences are about framed problems and our moral intuitions are about descriptions, not about substance.” End quote.

That’s very important the way that’s he’s phrased that. Our moral intuitions are about descriptions, not about substance. The way we viscerally feel about the option of saving 200 lives versus condemning 400 people, despite the fact that they’re the same thing, our emotional, our moral preferences, are about the frames themselves as opposed to the underlying reality. Thinking about the ways this might impact our lives on a day-to-day basis. Thaler, in the book Nudge, has another great quote.

QUOTE: “The verses that seemingly small features of social institutions can have massive effects on people’s behavior. Nudges are everywhere, even if we do not see them. Choice architecture both good and bad is pervasive and unavoidable, and it greatly effects our decisions.”

He uses a few phrases in there that we haven’t touched on before. Nudges are what Thaler and Sunstein use in the book Nudge to describe some of these frames, to describe another thing he calls choice architectures. The interesting thing is you can structure choice architectures in your own life in a way that can make you better decisions. You can think about, and be consciously aware of the frame. The sooner you become aware of it, the sooner you boil it down to the logic behind it - you can see through the illusion of the frame. You can see through the false choices that the frame creates, and make much more and effective and better decisions. Similarly there are many, many ways that you can think about how can you frame things more effectively to achieve what you want to achieve? If you’re presenting information to people, if you’re trying to convince someone to do something. Think very carefully about how you have framed the situation because the frame itself, just the wording of the situation, can have a dramatic impact on how people will react to it on the decision that people will make, and on the way that they’re going to feel about making that decision.

Think back to the example of the Harvard Medical School. Just a simple twist of the phrase - I think this project has an 80% chance of making it, or there’s a 20% chance this project is going to end in failure. If you’re sending an e-mail to your boss, if you’re proposing something, if you’re pitching investors, if you’re teaching students. Whatever it may be, think very carefully about the frames that you're using, because the frames can have a serious impact on how people react and the decision they ultimately make down the road. 

This Powerful Factor Controls Your Decisions And 86% of People Have No Idea It Exists

Do you think you’re in control of your thoughts and actions?
 
What if things totally out of your conscious experience of reality actually controlled your decisions?
 
What if random phenomenon – like the music you just heard, or the words on a billboard, changed the way you thought, moved, and the decisions you made?
 
The power of your subconscious mind is much greater than you realize.
 
As Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman puts it in his book Thinking Fast and Slow: “You cannot know this from conscious experience, of course, but you must accept the alien idea that your actions and your emotions can be primed by events of which you are not even aware.”
 
In this episode of the Science of Success Podcast we dig deep into the Priming Effect – the way that your environment can shape your decisions, actions, and thoughts without you ever even realizing it.
 
We discuss:
-The powerful factor shaping peoples decisions that 86% of people were totally unaware of
-What caused voters to care more than children’s parents about funding the school system
- How “like ripples on a pond” primed effects can shape and define our behavior in huge ways
-How the word Florida makes people behave like the elderly
-Another mental model to add to your tool-kit
-And much more!
 
Do you want to get smarter and make better decisions? Listen to this episode!

Thank you so much for listening!

Please SUBSCRIBE and LEAVE US A REVIEW on iTunes! (Click here for instructions how to do that!).  

SHOW NOTES, LINKS, & RESEARCH

• Automaticity of social behavior: Direct effects of trait construct and stereotype activation on action. (see here)

• Contextual priming: Where people vote affects how they vote (see here)

• The influence of in-store music on wine selections. (see here)

• [Book] Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman (see here)

• [Science of Success Episode] The Psychology Behind Making Better Decisions with Global Financial Strategist Michael J. Mauboussin (see here)

• [Science of Success Episode] How To Stop Living Your Life On Autopilot, Take Control, and Build a Toolbox of Mental Models to Understand Reality with Farnam Street’s Shane Parrish (see here)

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Today, we're going to explore how our environment can shape our decisions without us ever even realizing it, how a change of music can dramatically shift your buying preferences, how the smells around you can change your behavior, and how this all operates at a subconscious level beyond your conscious experience. This episode is going to focus on drilling down and understanding a specific cognitive bias, a mental model to help you start building the mental toolkit that we talked about in previous interviews with Shane Paris and with Michael Mauboussin. In both of those episodes, both of them are fantastic thinkers, experts in human decision making, and they both recommended building a toolkit of mental models so that we can better understand reality.

This episode is one of those tools that you're going to put in your toolkit. This episode focuses on the specific cognitive bias known as priming or the Priming Effect. Along with framing and anchoring, which we're going to cover in upcoming episodes of the podcast, priming is a strong, subconscious tendency where your environment can shape your decisions and shape your behavior without you ever being conscious of it happening. Priming is a phenomenon that can have a major impact on our actions, on the way that we perceive the world, on the things that we do, but many times, one of the things that people don't realize about priming is that it often takes place at a completely subconscious level, and I wanted to share a quote from Daniel Kahneman in his book, Thinking Fast and Slow, which I've recommended before in the podcast. Thinking Fast and Slow is a phenomenal book, very, very dense, very, very information-rich. If you're new to this topic, I would not recommend starting with Thinking Fast and Slow. I would say start with Influence by Robert Cialdini. Start with even some of our episodes. The entire Weapons of Influence series that we've done on the Science of Success is a great place to dig in. But I wanted to share this quote with you from Daniel Kahneman in Thinking Fast and Slow about priming.

Quote: "Primed ideas have some ability to prime other ideas, like ripples on a pond. Activation spreads through a small part of the vast network of associated ideas. The mapping of these ripples is now one of the most exciting pursuits in psychological research. Another major advance in our understanding of memory was the discovery that priming is not restricted to concepts and words. You cannot know this from conscious experience, of course, but you must accept the alien idea that your actions and your emotions can be primed by events of which you are not even aware." End quote. That last part is essential; the understanding that events of which you are consciously not even aware of can prime and change your behavior. It's one of the ways that your environment, the things around you that you can't control or that you don't control, can transform or shape or change your behavior, and we're going to look at a few different examples of that.

The first example is something that's known as the Florida Effect. This is a classic experimental psychology study. There's a psychologist named John Bargh, and they conducted an experiment at New York University. They took a group of 18- to 22-year-olds and they had them assemble four-word sentences from a set of five words. They split the students into two separate groups. One group was given neutral words -- just random words. You know, table, apple. Things that had no association exactly with what they were testing for. The other half of the group received words that were associated with the elderly. Words such as Florida, forgetful, bald, gray, wrinkle, et cetera. The key point is that at no point was the word "old" or the words "elderly" actually mentioned in this word scramble. What they did after that, they had the students finish conducting this exercise and then they had them walk down a hallway to another room, and this is actually where the experiment really took place. The students that had been given words that were indirectly associated with old age walked down the hallway 13% slower than the students who had been given neutral words. In the next room, they asked the students if they had noticed a common theme about the words. None of the respondents said that there was any commonality, anything connecting the words. So, they were consciously unaware of the impact of the words. Their subconscious picked up on the fact that these words were associated with the elderly. And, again, going back to the quote from Kahneman a moment ago, it's like ripples in a pond. The fact that these words like "Florida" or "wrinkle" were associated with old age -- what else is associated with old age? Walking slowly, moving slowly. At a completely subconscious level, these students walked 13% slower than their comparison group, simply because they had subconsciously been primed that words related to the elderly--again, the word "slow" was not used, the word "old", the word "elderly", those were not used; they were things like "Florida"--slowed their walking speed through an indirect association of something they were never conscious of.

The key thing that you want to understand and take away from the Florida Effect study is that they were consciously unaware, and that the thing that they were primed to do, to walk more slowly, was an indirect association of something that was never mentioned. So, again, priming effects can have a number of chain reactions, ideas connecting to other ideas like ripples in a pond, that can impact and change your behavior in a way which you're never conscious of. 

Another example of the Priming Effect is in school voting patterns. In Arizona in the year 2000, they looked at a number of different propositions to increase school funding. What they found was that when they had the polling station located inside of a school, the voters were substantially more likely to vote in favor of the proposition increasing school funding. The funny thing about that: the effect of just locating the polling station inside of a school was greater than the differential between average voters and parents. So, the Priming Effect of just changing the surroundings of where people are voting, changing their environment, had a bigger influence on voters than whether or not they were parents in desire to vote in favor of a proposition -- increasing school funding. 

Another great example is a study about music and music's subconscious influence on you. A 2007 study published in the journal Nature examined the impact of music on people's purchasing choices. Specifically, they set up an experiment in a wine store. They put bottles of French wine and bottles of German wine next to each other on a shelf. Over the next two weeks, they then alternated playing French music and German music. What they found in their experiment was that when French music was playing, French wines represented 77% of sales. When German music was playing, German wine represented 73% of sales. Now, that finding alone is pretty fascinating: the notion that just by playing a certain kind of music you can have that dramatic of a shift in consumer preference, that dramatic of an impact on people's buying behaviors. But the most fascinating finding of the music study was actually when asked about their purchase choices, what do you think people said? What do you think the customers said when they asked them, after they had purchased, "Did the music have an impact on your purchase decision?" 86% of people denied that the music had any influence over their purchase decision. 86%. Let that sink in for a second. Just like the Florida Effect, these priming effects take place at a subconscious level. Many of the people may not have even noticed what music was playing, but it clearly had a powerful impact. When French music was playing, 77% of the sales were French wine. When German music was playing, 73% of the sales were German wine. And yet when they were asked, 86% of people said that the music had no influence on their purchasing decisions. 

The real takeaway from this: The environment can prime you to make certain decisions, can change the behavior of your body at a subconscious level, and, in almost every instance, you're totally unaware of it. We simply don't realize that it's happening. And the reason that it's so hard to understand this, the reason it's so hard to see these priming effects is because they take place at a subconscious level. It's not something that's part of our conscious experience. It's something that we don't see and understand every day. Our conscious experience is one of often the illusion of control, the illusion that we're making logical, rational choices, that the reason we do things is based in thoughtful decision-making, that we have control over our environment. The reality is that, oftentimes, our subconscious makes a decision that we're never consciously aware of, and we create justifications or reasons why we made that decision, or we're not even aware of it. In the example of the Florida Effect, the students, the participants, were not even conscious of the fact that they had been walking more slowly, and they were not even conscious of the fact that the words were associated with the elderly to begin with.

Priming effects can also take place or be triggered by a number of different phenomenon. Priming can be triggered by music, by smell, by sight, by words, by images. There's another experiment conducted in 2005, published in the journal Psychological Science, that explored the impact of smell and how smells can create priming effects. They exposed people to the scent of an all-purpose cleaner and had them eat a crumbly biscuit. What they discovered was that participants who had been exposed to the scent of the all-purpose cleaner were substantially less messy. The people who had been exposed to the all-purpose cleaner kept their area neater, tidied up more, and generally made less of a mess. Again, they were never consciously aware that they had even been exposed to this smell. It's something that subconsciously changed and impacted their behavior. 

There are lots of influences throughout your life, things in your environment, things that happen to you, around you -- music, smells, images that impact your behavior, impact your thinking, impact your thoughts at a subconscious level. I wanted to share another quote from Daniel Kahneman's book Thinking Fast and Slow that sums this up very nicely.

Quote: "The results are not made up, nor are they statistical flukes. You have no choice but to accept that the major conclusions of these studies are true. More important, you must accept that they are true about you. You do not believe that these results apply to you because they correspond to nothing in your subjective experience, but your subjective experience consists largely of the story that your System 2 tells itself about what's going on. Priming phenomenon arise in System 1 and you have no conscious access to them." End quote. 

And Kahneman uses some terminology there. He uses the phrase "System 1" and "System 2". That's a concept that he talks about and discusses throughout Thinking Fast and Slow. For the purposes of understanding this, essentially, System 1 is your subconscious processing power. It's the automatic subconscious portion of the mind that does things like read words, process images, hear sounds, make conclusions. System 2 is your conscious effort, that deliberate focus on something. System 2 is what you use when you want to do long division. System 2 is what you use when you're planning and thinking deeply. And he dives very deep into that topic in his book, and that's a subject in a rabbit hole for a future episode of the podcast. But, just putting that quote into context, the crazy part about priming effects is that you never experience them consciously. You don't have any memory or any examples of how priming has impacted your behavior, because it takes place at a subconscious level. But, as Kahneman notes, this impacts you. It impacts your behavior. It changes your decisions. It's cognitive bias that you have to be aware of and you have to understand, because once you understand it, you can start to leverage it and use it to shape your behavior in positive ways. You can start to combat it and start to be aware of it. Remember: Awareness is the first step to uncovering and understanding a lot of these cognitive biases. 

And we've actually talked about the Priming Effect in previous episodes of the podcast. When we interviewed Scott Halford, the author of Activate Your Brain, he and Josh Davis, the author of Two Awesome Hours, in both of those podcast episodes we talked about ways to harness priming to your benefit. We talk about and dig into how you can leverage the priming effect, the power of music, the power of your environment, to become more productive, to become more creative, to become more effective, to accomplish whatever it is that you want to accomplish. So, it's very possible to harness the Priming Effect to your benefit, but you have to be aware of it first. You have to understand its influences. Both of those episodes are great episodes to go back to and listen to now that you're aware of priming, if you want to think about and understand ways to positively use the Priming Effect to change your behavior for the better.

On the flipside, being aware of the Priming Effect helps you combat your environment priming you, changing your behavior, changing your beliefs and actions without your conscious input and awareness. And, if you want to be more aware of priming effects, another amazing tool for doing that is meditation, which we've also talked about in a previous episode and we share a great framework for meditation that's simple and easy and you can implement tomorrow in 15 minutes.

That concludes our discussion of the Priming Effect. It's something that operates at a completely subconscious level, that often we're not aware of, but can have substantial impacts on our lives. It can change our behavior; it can change the way we think, feel, and act in the world; and it's something that you need to be aware of. It's one of those cognitive biases that you need to have on your list. It's one of those mental models--remember, we talked about that--that you want to have in your toolkit. In the episodes with Shane Parish and Michael Mauboussin, previous episodes of the podcast, both of them are phenomenal thinkers about how to make better decisions, and they both harped on the concept of building a toolbox of mental models so that you can more effectively understand reality. Both of those episodes are great if you haven't listened to them, and this episode is all about one of those specific tools: the Priming Effect, how to understand it, how to leverage it to your benefit, and how to be aware of it so that it doesn't trip you up and cause you to make bad decisions.

How to Get Rocket Fuel for Your Success, Bend Reality, and Achieve Happiness, With Vishen Lakhiani, Founder of Mindvalley

Learn to think like some of the greatest creative minds of our time - to question, challenge, and create new rules for your ideas of success, happiness, and much more with Vishen Lakhiani. Vishen shares incredible strategies to redefine your life and success on your own terms in this episode of The Science of Success.

Vishen is an entrepreneur, best-selling author and speaker. He is the founder and CEO of Mindvalley, a learning experience company serving three million students, subscribers and followers worldwide.

His book, The Code of The Extraordinary Mind, a New York and LA Times best seller, blends evolutionary biology and computational thinking, providing a new framework for identifying, questioning and redefining beliefs to understand and enhance the human self. The book also draws knowledge from the world's leading thinkers such as Elon Musk, Richard Branson, Peter Diamandis, Ken Wilber, Arianna Huffington and more.

If you’re looking for something to take yourself to the next level, break through barriers, and achieve your dreams, listen to this episode immediately.

Vishen and I discuss:
-How language shapes reality and controls your understanding of the world
-How to uncover the “bullshit rules” making you unhappy in life
-How to set “ends goals” instead of “means goals"
-How to cultivate “rocket fuel” for your success
-How to live a life of “Blissipline” (and why that’s important)
-How to set and accomplish huge goals without having you happiness anchored to them
-How to combat the fear that “I Am Not Enough"
-How to live life as though everything is rigged in your favor
-And Much More!

Thank you so much for listening!

Please SUBSCRIBE and LEAVE US A REVIEW on iTunes! (Click here for instructions how to do that!).  

SHOW NOTES, LINKS, & RESEARCH

• The Code of the Extraordinary Mind: 10 Unconventional Laws to Redefine Your Life and Succeed On Your Own Terms by Vishen Lakhiani (Amazon Link here).

• Free Lessons From The Code of the Extraordinary Mind (see here).

• If you want to learn more about discovering and breaking down Limiting Beliefs, listen to that episode below or click here.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Today, we have another amazing guest on this show: Vishen Lakhiani. Vishen is an entrepreneur, bestselling author, and speaker. He's the founder and CEO of Mindvalley, a learning experience company that publishes ideas and teachings by the best authors in personal growth, health and fitness, spirituality, productivity, mindfulness, and more, serving three million students, subscribers, and followers worldwide. His book, The Code of the Extraordinary Mind, which is a New York Times and L.A. Times bestseller, blends evolutionary biology, computational thinking, and provides a new framework for identifying questioning and redefining beliefs to understand and enhance the human self. The book also draws on knowledge from the world's leading thinkers, such as Elon Musk, Richard Branson, Peter Diamandis, Ken Wilber, Arianna Huffington, and more. It's an incredible book. I recently read it. Huge fan. And I just wanted to say, Vishen, welcome to The Science of Success.

Vishen:	Thank you, Matt. I'm honored to be here.

Matt:	Well, we're super excited to have you on. I'm a huge fan of you, Mindvalley, the six-phase meditation, and love the new book, which I have sitting right here. So, you know, to kind of start out, I think most people are probably familiar with your background and who you are, so I wanted to dive right into the meat of some of the cool topics from the book that I really found fascinating.

Vishen:	Thanks good. I think that's a great idea. Let's dive straight into the meat.

Matt:	Let's do it. All right. So, tell me the story of the tribe that could not see the color blue, the sort of thing with the blue squares and the green squares. I found that totally fascinating.

Vishen:	So, in this book, I like to bring in information from a wide range of different media out there, right, and so one of the things I absolutely love listening to are podcasts. And there was a particular podcast. It was called Radiolab. It's a wonderful podcast. I recommend it highly. And Radiolab had an episode that spoke about the Himba tribe. The Himba tribe are a tribe in Namibia, and one thing that's unique about them is that they have 19 words for the color green but no word for the color blue. So, this Radiolab episode was exploring the idea that what language delineates, we can see. In other words, when you don't have a word for something, we cannot see it. It doesn't exist in our frame of reference. So, the speakers in that episode were citing a book that spoke about how when historians go back to ancient cultures, the ancient Chinese, the ancient Greeks, they find that there is no mention of the word blue. There's no mention of the color blue. Even in Homer's Iliad, he refers to the Aegean Sea as the wine dark sea. To us, it's not wine dark; it's blue. It's clearly blue. But they refer to it as the wine dark sea. Go back to ancient Chinese texts. No mention of the color blue. Red, green, yes, but no blue. And so, this Radiolab episode wanted to investigate, could it be that the word blue did not exist until just several thousand years ago and, prior to that, people couldn't see blue? So, again, to explore this theme, what language delineates, we can see, they went to Namibia and an anthropologist there studied the Himba tribe, and she showed them a series of squares, green squares, and one of these squares was clearly blue. The rest were all green. And she asked them, "Pick out the square that's different," and they could not. They really could not see the blue square. To any of us it's obvious. Then she tried a different experiment. She showed them a circle of squares. All of them were green, but one was a slightly different shade of green. Most of us cannot pick that out, but the Himba people, it was obvious. So, the question here is, what is it about language that gives us the ability to perceive certain things? Now, I used this in the book. I coined different words to allow people to see different structures in the world around them, in terms of how they're functioning in the world so that we can remove ourselves from structures that are no longer serving us. So, I used this analogy to coin the term the "culturescape". The culturescape is that tangled web of human rituals, beliefs, habits, that come together and define how we see the world. You see, we simultaneously exist in two worlds. There's a world, the physical world of absolute truth. This is a cup. It's white, and in it I have tea, which is hot. But then there's the world of relative truth. When you think of words such as happiness, success, meditation, religion, God, none of these things are absolute truth. Different cultures define them in different ways. And so, what I'm trying to teach people is to not place too much legitimacy on singular words, because so much of our communication in so many ways, we misunderstand ourselves. We get into dumb political arguments or fights because words mean different things to many people. And, at the same time, words and these constructs can shackle us, can hold us, confined to who we are. Think about the word "marriage", right? What exactly is it? From culture to culture, it's completely different, yet we have these ridiculous, pointless political fights over concepts such as gay marriage. So, I coined another word called "brule" to help us see the ridiculousness of all of this, and a brule is simply a bullshit rule. So, we live in a culturescape filled with brules, and when you can learn to identify which rules are lifting you up versus which rules are restricting you, you gain ability to free yourself from that tangled mess of useless constructs in the culturescape that keep so many people trapped in an ordinary life.

Matt:	I love the concept that language shapes reality, and I think that's something that you hear about sometimes in philosophy textbooks or whatever it might be, but the fact that there's this incredible research study that literally... You know, people can't see a color that, to us, is so obvious. It's amazing how we often really don't understand how language truly does underpin the way we perceive the world. And limiting beliefs is something I know you talk a lot about and we've talked about in previous episodes of the podcast, but I'd love to dig in specifically to one word that you created that I love and has actually helped me reshape my daily architecture in many ways, and that's the concept of blissipline. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Vishen:	Sure. Sure. So, blissipline is a word that has been used by many different people, including Reverend Michael Beckwith, Brian Johnson of PhilosophersNotes, so I wouldn't say I coined a word, but it's not in the English language yet and I thought it was a cool word. Blissipline's the discipline of daily bliss. It is the idea that the number one discipline you can have on a day-to-day basis is to put yourself in a state of bliss. Happiness, you see, science is now showing, happiness is rocket fuel towards your success. We grow up in a world where we're told to chase certain goals, that it's about the career ladder. And, again, all of these are just words. Really, what you want to seek are feelings. We chase words to get to feelings. We chase the nine to five. We chase the safe corporate job. We chase money. We chase being an entrepreneur, whatever the hell that means, because we're actually pursuing a feeling. Feelings of freedom, feelings of being happy with yourself, feelings of being able to contribute. Now, blissipline is simply the idea that, look, stop the chase. Get to the feeling first. And those feelings are typically feelings of bliss, of joy, of happiness, hence the word blissipline. Now, we can hack those feelings. You do not need, for example, to grow your salary 25% or to have 25% more sex to be 25% happier. Studies have shown that the simple practice of morning gratitude 30 days in a row, science says, will make you 25% happier. So, blissipline is looking at the simple mental hacks to get to the feelings that you want to get to for which more people are taking a really long, painful, brule-based thought. And that's what it's about. It's about understanding how to hack joy, bliss, happiness to get you there now.

Matt:	I think that's so important, and I'm curious. Obviously a daily gratitude practice is one tactic that listeners might be able to employ to integrate blissipline into their lives. What are some other examples or strategies that you implement?

Vishen:	Well, there's a whole ton, right. So, I invented something called the six-phase meditation. Okay, so when I was a kid, I loved computer games, probably like any one of our generation. And I used to play this game called Rings of Zilfin, where the hero, Reese, would travel to this horrible land filled with ogres and weird dinosaur-like creatures, and he had to gain certain skills to battle these creatures so that he could kill the evil lord and save the princess and free up the land. So, I was 14, so those kinds of things appealed to me. So, Reese had to up-level and, like many video games, he had to up-level his amount of gold, his amount of endurance, his amount of charisma, his amount of skill in archery. And life is often like that in a certain way. There are certain core areas in which we need to up-level. And I identified six, and I believe that if you can up-level yourself in these six areas, everything else you want in life starts coming to you really easily. So, I looked at these six areas and I found that there was a lot of research behind it. The first is connectedness. It's a feeling of connectedness or compassion with your family, but also beyond your family, beyond your tribe, with the world around you. It's an ability to have empathy for other people. When you build this connectedness, you move from nationalism to the idea of seeing the world as a unified whole. You see beyond race, beyond religion, beyond culture, and you realize that we are all human beings having human experiences in our own way. So, that first skill is connectedness. It creates a feeling of love and appreciation for the world around you. It's a really powerful feeling. So, I created a meditation called the six phase, where the first phase is about applying certain practices from Zen Buddhism to create feelings of compassion. Now, the second phase is happiness. It's bringing happiness into your life immediately. That is obviously. Gratitude, one of the biggest hacks for happiness. That third feeling, that third thing that we have to up-level, is actually forgiveness. A lot of people don't get this, but forgiveness improves your physical body. Studies now show that forgiveness can reduce back pain. Forgiveness can increase your vertical jump. Forgiveness can increase your insurance. It's insane that forgiveness does so many different things to your body. I've done experiments where I've seen that forgiveness can improve dramatically my alpha brainwave amplitude and brain coherence, which is a powerful skill that people get to with years and years and years and years of meditation, but you can do it with forgiveness much, much, much faster. So, forgiveness is that third thing, but it's not just forgiving other people. It's forgiving yourself from past shame, from past guilt, from past mistakes. It's a process of self-healing. Now, those three initial phases are all on the idea of bliss, on the idea of blissipline. I do this every morning. So, I woke up this morning. That was the first three things I did. 

But then, while still in my meditation, I do an additional three things. You see, I believe we need a certain balance in life. You need to be happy now. We need to be fully immersed in the present. But that's not the entire thing. We do live in a world where we are encouraged to go out there, to build things, to be a success, and that's important, too. It's a game that we enjoy playing, and it's a game that pushes the human race forward. So, the next three things are about getting out of this passive state of meditation and actually using your mind to do things. And so, phase number four is about visualizing your life three years into the future. You could call this future vision, and I recommend exercises people can do. Phase number five is crafting your perfect day internally in your head before you start the day, and phase six is basically creating a sense of internal support. It's creating this sense of inner drive and stability where you know that whatever higher power you believe in or whatever inner mechanism you have is there to support you in your quest for the day. When you put all of these together, you have a really powerful meditation practice. A lot of entrepreneurs who say they cannot do meditation, a lot of people who say, "Oh, I'm too ADD to do meditation; I can't clear my mind," well, that's the wrong kind of meditation for you. This is designed, the six-phase is designed specifically for these kinds of people, and this is how I spend my time every single day.

Matt:	And longtime listeners of the podcast will know that I'm personally a huge fan of the six-phase, and I do it every day as well. I did it this morning.

Vishen:	Matt, sorry, I just want to say, the meditation is completely free. You can download the app Ombana--o-m-b-a-n-a--and the app, you can get it on Google Play or the Android store, the IOS app store, and on the app it comes with the meditation pre-loaded.

Matt:	Awesome. That's perfect. So anyway, what I was going to say is you touched on the idea of the balance between happiness in the now and setting goals or striving to achieve things in the future, and could you talk a little bit about something you mentioned in the book, the notion of the intention paradox? It's sort of, you know, how can we have goals in the future but also still be focused on just happiness in the present.

Vishen:	Well, it's because we accidentally mesh the two, don't we? We say we'll be happy when... I call it the "if-then" model of happiness. If I get this, I will be happy. If I get that, I will be happy. Problem is, if you are placing that condition for happiness on a future, as soon as you hit that future, what happens? You're not really happy. You're just thinking about the next future and the next future and the next future. Happiness always stays on the horizon. As you keep running towards the horizon, it just gets further and further and further away. That's what happens you have an if-then model of happiness: you never catch the horizon. And so, people waste all their time chasing things, thinking it's going to make them happy. That's why so many people wake up at the age of 40 one day going, "Holy shit, I can't imagine. How did I get my life to this level? I'm miserable." And that really is what you want to avoid.

Matt:	And that ties into the concept that you talk a lot about in the book, sort of the distinction between a means goal and an end goal.

Vishen:	Yeah. The way to really understand if you're chasing the right goal is to know the difference between a means goal and an end goal. Now, means goals are what the culturescape tell you that you have to chase. Means goals are often brules, okay. So, a means goal might be six pack abs. A means goal might be a job where I get to go to work every day and earn a living paycheck. A means goal might be marriage. A means goal might be "I need to lose five kg". A means goal might be "I need to get to a certain salary level". Problem is, many of these means goals we chase because society makes us believe it is important, and then when we get to the goal we realize we don't really have that feeling that we initially wanted. You see, you want to go from goals to feelings. The thing is to ask yourself, "If I got this goal, then what? If I got that goal, then what? If I got that goal, then what?" And you keep asking yourself this question, you start to arrive at what I call end goals. End goals are those things that your soul really, really, really craves. End goals are things that truly bring you happiness. You see, you want that six-pack abs? No. You want that six-pack abs so you can feel healthy. But there are better ways to do it. You don't want that nine to five job with a steady salary. No, you want security, and there are better ways to do it. You don't want to be an entrepreneur, because most entrepreneurs are facing anxiety, stressed out, and simply bought themselves a new nine to five job. What you want is freedom. So, when you aim for those feelings, when you identify what are those feelings that you crave, you start to understand that you can hack life to get you those feelings much, much faster. And when you do that, you don't fall into the means goals trap. Here's a classic example of the means goal trap. So many Americans decide that they want to become lawyers because it's one of the highest-paying professions when the average American kid graduates from college, yet... And so people spend all of this time getting student loans, studying hard, taking their LSAT, joining a firm, becoming a lawyer, but I used to work in the legal industry and studies show that 50% of lawyers are clinically depressed, especially female lawyers. 50% clinically depressed. And it's crazy people make this their goal, but a big reason is they were following the rules of the culturescape. They were chasing a means goal. Why did they become a lawyer? And I asked this to a couple of my friends who are lawyers and who had quit, and they became a lawyer because, really, what they were seeking was "I wanted a good income so I could have a good home, so I could raise a family, so I could be happy. I wanted to do something to contribute to the world." And the point is, don't follow what the herd tells you to do. Understand what is it that your soul craves and chase that. That is the end goal. It gets you off the hamster wheel. So, here's the thing. End goals fall into three buckets. The first bucket is experiences; the second bucket is growth; the third bucket is contribution. All end goals fall into these three buckets, so you start by identifying what are the experiences you want to have in the world. These are things such as waking up next to the man or woman I love, being able to backpack across Southeast Asia. Then you ask yourself, to have these experiences, who is the man or woman I need to be? And this might be, well, I need to be really fit. I want to speak this extra language. I want to be able to be confident in the way I carry myself. And this is good. Growth is a goal in itself. Now, the third bucket is, if I had those experiences, if I evolved to be this incredible man or woman, how can I give back to the world? And here you come up with your list of how you can contribute to your fellow man. Now, when you chase these three things--experiences, growth, and contribution--it is a much surer path to happiness. Experiences bring us happiness because they let us experience all the wonders of the world. Growth is one of the surest parts to happiness. As Tony Robbins said, as souls, we crave two things: growth and contribution. And that brings us to contribution. Contribution is, according to the Dalai Lama, you want to be happy? Make other people happy. Contribution is one of the quickest ways to hack your levels of happiness. So, when I teach people goal setting, I ask them to toss away the goal setting models of past generations and instead aim for experiences, growth, and contribution. This, I believe, is a much, much, much better path to a life that's wonderful, that's full of meaning, that actually gives you what your soul craves.

Matt:	And this kind of duality between present happiness and end goals and kind of blissipline, how does that tie into another concept you talk about, which is the idea of bending reality?

Vishen:	Ha. So, firstly, in the book I lay out ten different laws, right. Ten different laws that I think really help us advance in terms of our scale of human evolution, and bending reality is one of those laws. It's an understanding that our consciousness, to some degree, shapes what we experience. And that's what I mean by bending reality. There are certain people out there--I'm sure you've met people--who feel really lucky, who talk about coincidences and synchronicities entering their lives. I can't explain it, don't know how it works, but I believe it's real. And what I suggest in this book are a couple of models that help you get there, a couple of mental constructs that help you get there. And again. I'm not talking about that mumbo-jumbo stuff from The Secret, which I don't buy into. I'm talking about something quite different and a process that is quite different.

Matt:	You know, it's really funny. In our previous episode, actually, we had a neuroscientist on here and we were talking about how to create an upward spiral to escape from anxiety and depression, and he talked about the fact that beliefs shape reality and that truly, you know, your conscious experience can remap your brain, can change your neurochemistry and literally shape what happens in the world around you. And so, it's not mumbo-jumbo. It's not hokey. And for listeners that are skeptical, if you check out that episode, you'll hear a neuroscientist explain the process behind how and why this takes place.

Vishen:	Right. And what I say is, "Look. Is it the mystical law of attraction? Maybe. Is it our brains reticular activating system where our thoughts help our brain recognize objects in the world that help facilitate those thoughts? Maybe. But the fact is we don't have to know how it works to let it work for ourselves."

Matt:	That's totally true, and I think that dovetails a little bit with another concept, even maybe just a phrase that you kind of mention in the book which I love, which is the idea that live life as though everything is rigged in your favor.

Vishen:	Right. I love that model of functioning in the world.

Matt:	I think it fundamentally kind of shifts your perception and the way you experience events, and I think it's something Tony Robbins talks about, too, sort of the notion that shift your perception to think that everything in life is happening for you, the notion that I think you also use the phrase, or I maybe quote somebody, that the world sent you nothing but angels, right.

Vishen:	Right, right. That's Neale Donald Walsch who said that. 

Matt:	Well, I'd love to talk a little bit about the concept of digging into a sort of... going back to brules and limiting beliefs, one of the most kind of damaging and insidious limiting beliefs that almost everyone suffers from is the belief that I am not enough, right. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Vishen:	Right. So, one of the interesting things... We were just talking about how our thoughts create our reality. That's not true. Your thoughts do not create your reality. Your thoughts are constantly changing and shifting. It is your beliefs that create your reality. People get this mixed up, and that's why...

Matt:	Very good point.

Vishen:	Yep, because your beliefs run your thoughts. If you believe you are not enough, you will have thoughts related to that thing. If you believe that you are smart, that you are intelligent, that you are powerful, you have thoughts that relate to that. Your beliefs shape your thoughts, which create and craft your reality. So, the idea here is how can we adjust our beliefs? How can we make sure that we have the right beliefs? And it's really a process called belief hacking. It's maybe a little bit too complex to explain in the short timeframe we have, but it's understanding that your beliefs, like hardware in a computer, are swappable. If you want your computer to function better, well, you can swap out an outdated hard drive and swap in a better hard drive. You can upgrade your monitor. You can change certain things about your computer. You can go from an old mouse to a more modern, sleek Apple magic mouse, too. Just like that, your beliefs are also swappable, and people don't get that. People cling to their beliefs and believe that their beliefs are them. They are not you. You feel that your religion is holding you back? You can swap that out. You feel that have a negative belief about a certain way of functioning in the world? You can swap that out. Now, I learned about this through a phenomenal teacher called Marissa Peer, who I mention in my book, and she's the hypnotherapist for many successful famous people, including the U.K. royal family, the who's who in Hollywood, and so on. I did this hypnotherapy session with Marissa once. She's also a Mindvalley author, so you can check her out on mindvalleyacademy.com. And I was trying to wonder, why is it that I had this big ed tech company, but I never seemed to have as much money as I wanted. And she regressed me into my past, and I had this memory of this school teacher whom I really, really, really adored. He was my favorite teacher. And I adored him, I loved his classes, at the age of 13 I wanted to be like him, but the thing is he was always broke. His wife had left him. He just led a really sad life. He was a great teacher but a sad life. And in that moment, while under hypnotic regression, the belief popped up. I was carrying the belief internally within me that said, "To be a great teacher, you have to suffer". And I realized that the belief had been holding me back, and so when I cleared that belief, so many things instantly shifted in my life. It was unbelievable how fast these shifts happen, but that's the thing about how our heads work. We carry with us beliefs that we do not know we're carrying with us. Think of this little circle. This is the amount of beliefs that you know you have. But this is the amount of beliefs, this giant circle over here, that you're carrying with you that you do not know you have, and life is that process of discovery where you discover these beliefs and you uninstall them as you go on. The six-phase is a great way to do it. As you meditate more, as you practice mindfulness, realizations come to you, and many of the realizations come in the form of new beliefs that push out outdated ones.

Matt:	And the thing is, everybody has these limiting beliefs, right. Even if you're not aware of them, even if you're listening and you think, oh, I don't have any beliefs holding me back, the reality is, just like that regression, that something that happened 15 years ago is still shaping and having a very material impact on your life. And for listeners who are curious or want to kind of dig into how to root out and uncover limiting beliefs, we have an earlier episode on The Science of Success where we kind of dig into the whole process of how to kind of uncover and break those down. But, you know, as we're wrapping up I'm curious: What is one piece of homework that you would give to somebody listening to this episode?

Vishen:	Sure. Well, what I'd say is go to mindvalley.com/extraordinary, and there you can sign up for a free course that takes you through many of these ideas. Now, if you buy the book, that's phenomenal, because the book helps you understand the free course and vice-versa, but if you don't buy the book because you can't afford the 13 bucks, just go and sign up for that anyway. Because in that course, I take you through a whole process of identifying your goals in different dimensions of your life, and to move past the rules into true end goals. And the process is really interesting.

Matt:	And for anybody out there listening, you know, personally I've read The Code of the Extraordinary Mind. I think it's an amazing book. I highly recommend everybody checking it out. I read it and literally--I'm not even joking--I changed my entire daily architecture. I was already doing the six-phase, but I added on some other kind of exercises and strategies that have already, in the few weeks that I've been implementing them, I've seen dramatic changes in my happiness, in my excitement, and it sounds kind of woo-woo but, you know, even in the way that the universe suddenly sort of... you know, things start to go your way. You start kind of experiencing luck and bending reality and shaping the outcomes around you. It's pretty amazing.

Vishen:	Thank you. That's really good. I'm glad that's working out for you.

Matt:	Absolutely. Well, Vishen, thank you so much for being on the Science of Success. We're so glad to have had you on.

Vishen:	Thanks. Likewise. I'm honored to be on your show. So, good luck there, Matt. Thank you so much.

How To Break Free From Depression & Anxiety By Changing Your Brain Chemistry with Neuroscientist Dr. Alex Korb

In this episode we discuss how you can battle depression and anxiety and break out of a vicious downward spiral by literally changing the chemistry of your brain using very simple and straightforward tactics that you can start applying right now. 

If you've struggled with depression or anxiety, or you want to understand how we can reshape our brains with our actions, listen to this episode immediately!

Dr. Alex Korb is a neuroscientist at UCLA, is the author of The Upward Spiral: Using Neuroscience to Reverse the Course of Depression, One Small Change at a Time, and author of the Prefrontal Nudity Blog on Psychology Today.

Alex and I discuss:

• How people get stuck in a loop of anxiety or depression

• How to strengthen and grow new neurons to literally change the structure of your brain

• Why nothing is wrong with your brain when you get stuck in a loop of depression or anxiety

• How the same action can have an entirely different impact on your brain at a different time

• How your own choices and actions change your brain in real time

• The difference between depression and anxiety

• How 10 mins of exercise can dramatically change your brain chemistry (and the study that shows it)

• How your actions can determine your perception and shape your reality

• The Neuroscience behind “The Secret” and why it really works

• And much more!

Learn more about Alex at http://alexkorbphd.com/ and his blog https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/prefrontal-nudity.

Thank you so much for listening!

Please SUBSCRIBE and LEAVE US A REVIEW on iTunes! (Click here for instructions how to do that!).  

SHOW NOTES, LINKS, & RESEARCH

[Book] The Upward Spiral: Using Neuroscience to Reverse the Course of Depression, One Small Change at a Time by Alex Korb (see here).

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Today we’ve got another awesome guest on the show, Dr. Alex Korb. Alex is a neuroscientist at UCLA, and the author of The Upward Spiral: Using Neuroscience to Reverse the Course of Depression, One Small Change at a Time. He’s also the author of Pre-Frontal Nudity, a blog on Psychology Today. Alex, welcome to the Science of Success.

Dr. Korb:	Great to be here, thanks for having me.

Matt:	We’re super excited to have you on. To kind of kick things off, tell us a little bit about your background, and how specifically you got kind of fascinated with people who struggle with depression and anxiety.

Dr. Korb:	Well, I’ve always been interested in Neuroscience. I majored in neuroscience at Brown as an undergrad, and perhaps that originally came from my own examination of myself wondering why I was very emotional sometimes, or why I could be productive at sometimes and found it very difficult to get things done at other times. That probably drove my initial interest in neuroscience. Then I started working at UCLA at the brain mapping center and saw a lot of the great work they were doing there, and that really expanded my interested into neuroscience. At the same time, I was coaching the UCLA women’s ultimate Frisbee team on the side. I really enjoyed that, trying to figure out how to motivate people and unlock their peak potential. Unfortunately, one of the girls that I coached suffered from major depression and had been depressed for three years ever since she was in middle school I think. She was a freshman at the time. And, so, she went through a lot of attempts to get better. She was in therapy, she was on medication, she was getting the best treatment. At the beginning of the sophomore year she ended up committing suicide. And it was extremely tragic, but that really led me to try and want to understand what exactly is happening in the brain in someone with depression that could lead them down that path. So, I decided to pursue a degree in neuroscience, get my PhD at UCLA, and try to figure out what's happening in the brain in depression and what we can do about it. 

Matt:	Wow. That’s - that definitely hits home. So one of the things you talk about, one of the kind of key components of Upward Spiral is the idea that somebody with depression and somebody with anxiety, can literally remap and sort of change the neurochemistry of their brain. One of the underpinnings of that is kind of the idea of neuroplasticity. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Dr. Korb:	Yeah. Well, your brain is constantly being reshaped by the actions that you take and the environment around you, and the degree to which it’s being reshaped varies from time to time. As you’re growing up, it’s very what we would call plastic. Meaning plastic in the sense that something that is easily shaped, or molded. And that process continues as you get older, although a lot of aspects settle and harden and become more rigid. That’s why you say “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks”, but it turns out, the brain is continuing to grow and be reshaped throughout your life. So, through key changes or even unintentional changes in the activities you do or the interactions you have, or the environment that surrounds you, can cause changes in the regions and the chemicals that contribute to either happiness or depression. 

Matt:	So, can you describe how someone can sort of get stuck in a loop of anxiety or depression?

Dr. Korb:	Yeah. Well, it can happen in a bunch of different ways. Like, asking that question is similar to saying “how do traffic jams start?” Anxiety and depression happen in the brain because the brain is a complex dynamic system, like traffic flowing down a busy set of freeways. Now, that analogy I like to use because there’s no one cause for depression. There are many causes that can interact with each other. And that also exposes - there’s no really one big solution, though oftentimes we would like there to be. There are often many small solutions. So, if all you know that someone is depressed, that doesn’t necessarily tell you how they got there, OR what the path forward is. Just says, if you know that there is a traffic jam, that doesn’t tell you how to solve the traffic jam. Because one traffic jam could be caused primarily by weather, whereas another traffic jam could be caused primarily by an accident. So we know the key thing to keep in mind is - what are the forces that are shaping this traffic jam, this pattern of cars being stuck in this certain ways. And what are the different ways to influence the system and get it out of there? In depression or anxiety, it’s this dynamic system of the brain is stuck in this sort of particular pattern of activity and reactivity that it can’t quite get out of. And there’s a whole bunch of different reasons for why it could get stuck, and it’s a whole bunch of small little life changes or medical approaches that we can enact in order to break up that pattern and get people better.

Matt:	And in the book you use this amazing analogy which is kind of like - essentially describing how a microphone can get caught with feedback and it just gets loud and louder and louder. Can you elaborate on that idea?

Dr. Korb:	Yeah, well, when I was talking about the brain getting stuck in this pattern of activity and reactivity, that’s sort of abstract. And sometimes the traffic analogy works well with people, particularly if they live in place like LA where they have a lot of experience with things like that. But the microphone and speaker analogy because it simplifies it to one simple circuit. So, your brain is composed of dozens and more of circuits that control each aspect of your life. You have a circuit that's devoted to decision-making, and planning, and habits, and every other aspect of your life. Hundreds of different circuits that are often overlapping. Now, if you look at any individual circuit, that’s sort of like a microphone and a speaker that are connected to each other. Because circuits in the brain are dynamic and they have feedback with each other. And we can look at the microphone and speaker and say “oh those are each different independent components”, but when you put them and connect them together, they create this feedback circuit. And if the microphone is oriented in just a particular way, or the speaker is turned up a little too loudly, then just even a soft whisper or a slight tap of the microphone could create this screeching feedback. And that’s important to understand, because a lot of times when people find out I study depression they ask me “ugh, so what’s wrong with the brain and depression?” or they're depressed and they ask me “What’s wrong with my brain?” they want to know what’s wrong. And I don’t think that’s quite the right way to think about it. Because if you look at the analogy of the microphone and a speaker, yes, you’re getting this output, this screeching feedback that’s terrible and undesirable and nobody wanted that intentionally. But there’s nothing wrong with the microphone. There’s nothing wrong with the speaker. Both are working exactly as they're supposed to. It’s just in the dynamic interaction, the elements of that circuit, that it gets caught in this runaway activity. And we might, even though it’s a terrible outcome that’s hard to bare, the solution could be starting with very small changes of moving, reorienting the microphone just a little bit. Or turning down the volume, just a tad on the speaker. And this big problem suddenly disappears.

Matt:	You describe the brain as a complex, adaptive system. Which basically, you know, one of the concepts you mention in Upwards Spiral is the idea that the same stimulus can actually have a  completely different effect on the brain, based on sort of the kind of mental state, and the kind of place that you’re in. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Dr. Korb:	Yeah. It’s relayed to you - this notion of “you can’t step in the same river twice”. All of the actions that you take are causing different changes in the brain, and as you’re moving forward in your life, your brain is constantly shifting and adapting to the previous choices that you made and your current life circumstances. So, a good example is thinking about how setbacks or frustrations can affect us differently at different times in our lives, for a whole number of reasons. That could be including the environment that surrounds you, or the goals that you’re working towards, or the support, the social support that you have. So, for example, if you make a mistake or fail a test in college, where you still have a clear path towards graduation or and you still are living with a bunch of your friends. Then, maybe that wouldn’t have quite the same effect as if you made a big mistake at work when you are in your late 20s, and living by yourself. Because how your brain reacts to that failure is different as your brain chemistry changes with age, it can be different based on you social relationships, the environment around you, the different habits that you’ve continued to develop or strengthen over the time that you’ve been living. So, just because something wasn’t enough to push you into depression early on, doesn't mean that it couldn’t be the reason now, or the primary reason because the reasons are always complex. And similarly, just because you are depressed, one attempt at a solution didn’t work the first time, doesn’t mean it won’t work at another time. And here’s where the analogy to traffic works well. Something that could be used to ease traffic such as a traffic light, or something. Might be very effective, sometimes actually slows people down. But it wouldn't be effective at other times during the day when there are too many cars or things like that. I don't know if that made any sense.

Matt:	That makes a lot of sense. Basically the idea that, you know, if you’re struggling - for example. Someone who’s struggling now with depression or anxiety, that just because something hasn’t worked in the past, it may actually be effective now because the brain is so complex and constantly changing that the stimulus might have a completely different effect. It took, to use the traffic analogy, basically the same idea is if you take a route at some time in the day, it might take you five minutes to get somewhere. And if you take it at the wrong time of the day it might take you half an hour. 

Dr. Korb:	Yes. That’s definitely true. And the thing that’s different from traffic, which makes it even more dynamic, is the fact that your own choices and actions change the actual activity in those brain circuits. So, just because something didn’t work the first time, well, when you do it the second time, the actions you made the first time already had an effect on the brain, so the context in which you’re attempting at the second time, is a totally different context where those brain circuits are now being activated for a second time. Instead of for the first time. And so, that might be enough to be the difference.

Matt:	So, for listeners who might not kind of grasp the difference, can you explain the difference between depression and anxiety?

Dr. Korb:	Yeah, well, depression and anxiety are very related in terms of their neurocircuitry, but they can have very different effects and appear very differently, and they’re very different syndromes even though they oftentimes occur together. What’s a more common question is I think what people wonder what the difference is between depression and just general sadness, or what the difference is between anxiety and just normal worrying. And it’s not just a matter of degree, because I think a lot of times people think of depression as just being really sad all the time, or anxiety as just worrying a lot. But they both involve a lot more symptoms than that. And I really focus on depression a lot, and it’s, I think it’s even more complex than most people grasp. And so that’s why I like to explain things from that perspective. For example, a lot of times people with depression don’t necessarily feel sad all the time. They can often have an emptiness where emotion should be. They feel like nothing is enjoyable, they don’t have any energy, they have trouble sleeping, often anxiety is a symptom, things feel like they lack meaning and oftentimes it appears like it’s not worth living. And it’s very difficult to understand from the outside because you could look at someone’s life and think “Oh! They have so much going on in their life, what do they have to be depressed about?” But really, the problem with depression is that it robs the brain, it robs the person of their ability to connect or feel a close connection with the people around them, or to enjoy the things that maybe they used to enjoy. And this symptom of anxiety which is often included in depression is a terrible disorder, even when it’s experienced on its own because it’s a lot more than just simple worrying. In fact, worrying and anxiety, they’re sort of related concepts, but worry is thinking about problems, whereas anxiety is much more feeling them. Anxiety is like a trigger of the brain’s fear response, and it includes a lot of physical symptoms that people don’t quite realize. For example, a racing heart, or a queasy stomach, or tense muscles. A lot of times people have these feelings of anxiety, but they’re not even consciously aware that that’s what they’re feeling. 

Matt:	One of the things you talk about related to that, is kind of the idea that sometimes you can be worried about something or a number of things, but that worry is sort of a surface-level symptom of a much deeper anxiety that may be about something completely different. And that’s something that personally, I found or when I’m feeling really stressed out, when I’m feeling really worried. I’ll often kind of pull back and ask myself ”what’s really stressing me out, what’s really the cause of this anxiety?” and sometimes you have to go to very core fundamental things in your life that are happening as opposed to sort of that surface level thing that it seems like “Oh, I’m stressed out about X”, When really it’s something much deeper that maybe happened, even months ago that you’ve never really dealt with. 

Dr. Korb:	Right, yeah. I’ve actually experienced this early on in my life. And perhaps it’s useful that my mom is a psychiatrist so she sort of pointed these things out. Not in any mean way. But I realized that I had a lot of stomachaches as a kid, particularly when I was in line at an amusement park for like a scary rollercoaster. My older brother would be like “Ha, you’re scared of going on this rollercoaster?!” and I’m like, “No, I’m not scared! I have a stomachache, I have to go to the bathroom.” I didn’t see a connection between the two. And at another point, when I was learning long division, I just started crying because I couldn’t get it. I just didn’t understand why I couldn’t get it. My mom asked if I was feeling overwhelmed. And it was a strange situation because it didn’t make sense to me why I was crying because I wasn’t sad about anything. I just couldn’t get this mathematical concept. And usually, math had been quite easy for me. And when she asked if I was feeling frustrated or overwhelmed. It took her asking that to have me actually look inside myself and ask myself, “Oh! How am I feeling?” and that’s a very important skill. And I started to realize, “OH! Yes, because I can’t quite grasp this concept, that’s what’s making me upset. It’s not this math problem per-se, it’s this larger problem.” I didn’t fully realize that at the time, but it wasn’t that particular math problem that was making me upset, it was the larger concept of feeling competent in - I was taking a more advanced math class, and feeling like I was able to succeed at it. And you know, that’s an example from childhood, but we have these things going on all the time. For example, you might be worrying about one aspect of a party. I use this example in my book of - for example, when you go through a wedding. Sometimes you obsess over the invitations and all these different aspects of the wedding. But what you’re really worried about at heart, is the social approval of your friends, and they’re about much deeper issues, or any worries that you express about the wedding ceremony per-se, may be reflections of a deeper anxiety that you have about the relationship with the person you’re getting married. So, just because our mind focuses on one aspect of, and thinking “oh this is the problem”, oftentimes that is because dealing with the deeper problem, or acknowledging the deeper problem is more difficult. And so we prefer to focus on these superficial aspects that are actually stand-ins for the deeper problem.

Matt:	And that’s something that really hit home for me. In the last six months or so I actually lost both of my remaining grandparents. I found myself struggling and experiencing huge amounts of anxiety with these that were totally normal, totally kind of not an issue for me at all before that. And it really took me a little while to kind of figure out, “Hey this is something that, maybe I haven’t really dealt with, that I need to really think about and kind of go back and drill down a little bit more on.” And so that really resonated with me and hit home deeply, and was the most poignant parts of Upward Spiral. 

Dr. Korb:	Thank you, yeah. I think a lot of times when certain events happen like that, then we find ourselves at work and we’re trying to finish a report that we’ve done quarterly for the last five years, and just can’t quite seem to finish it or having a lot more difficulties - we realize “oh! Once I finish this, then I’ll have to deal with whether I’m going to get that promotion, and am I really at a job that I value because my grandparents worked at the same job that they valued for all this time”, we don’t like dealing with thinking about those deeper issues but when we, ignoring them doesn’t necessarily make them go away. It just means that we can’t appropriately deal with them. 

Matt:	Absolutely, yeah. It’s like burying your head in the sand isn’t going to fix the problem. 

Dr. Korb:	Right.

Matt:	We actually have a whole previous episode we did about kind of accepting reality and sort of, you know, really kind of being present and mindful and accepting the way things are. So, for listeners who might be struggling with that, that’d be a good episode to go back and potentially check out.

Dr. Korb:	Yeah. And what’s interesting is the very act of introspection, of just asking yourself how you feel and trying to figure out what it is that’s really bothering you. That can actually help reduce its emotional impact. There’s a great study, neuro-imaging study, on people where they were shown emotional pictures and you’re brain has an automatic emotional response when it sees different emotional pictures. But if they ask the people “Name the emotion that you’re seeing”, or “Name the emotion that you’re feeling”, that simple act of introspection actually decreases the brain’s emotional response. 

Matt:	That’s fascinating. And I think that’s a great segue into some of the strategies for kind of breaking out of that cycle. For somebody that is sort of trapped in a situation of depression or anxiety and they feel like there’s no way out. What are some of the things that you would recommend? I know there’s obviously a broad list that you talk about in Upwards Spiral, but maybe as an initial starting point, or an initial step to sort of make the first shift, or kind of get that upwards spiral started to where they can kind of slowly pull themselves out of it.

Dr. Korb:	Well, one of the first things is to recognize that there’s nothing quote-unquote “wrong” with you. A lot of times when people feel stuck in depression or anxiety they spend all this mental effort, chastising themselves for that they’re- or they feel like they can’t address it because there’s something wrong with them, or wrong with their brain. And it’s really just simply recognizing that, now you have different regions of your brain that are supposed to feel anxious, or they’re supposed to make you question your decisions and be indecisive. Those regions are working exactly as they’re supposed to, just as with the microphone and the speaker analogy. Or, there are regions of our brain that are supposed to notice your mistakes and we just need to tweak the activity in those regions a little bit, or change your environment a little bit to tone it down, but there’s nothing inherently wrong with having any of those traits on an individual level or there’s nothing wrong with your brain. And the second thing to realize is that, through intentional action, through - making small life changes in the actions you take, or  the interactions you have or the environment around you. You can actually start to shape and change the activity and chemistry in the brain - in the very brain regions that are contributing to you being stuck. And the number of life changes that you can make fall into a whole bunch of different categories. And I’m happy to expand on any of them. But they include small things like, just exercising more, going for a little walk outside because not only does the exercise help, the sunlight absorbed through your skin has benefits, the sunlight absorbed through your eyes has different benefits on a different pathway. Changing some of your habits around sleep can help make it even more restful. Reaching out to people close to you, or even talking to strangers, or getting a massage. These are all small little life changes that have measurable effects in the brain and they can start to change the dynamics i.e., turn down the volume of the speaker of that particular circuit a little bit and push you towards more positive emotions, and feeling more in control. 

Matt:	So let’s drill down a little bit. One of the first things you recommend is exercise. And I’d love to kind of share with the listeners how exercise can both change your neurochemistry and produce more BDNF, I forget what that stands for but I’m sure you know

Dr. Korb:	Neurotropic factor.

Matt:	Exactly. So tell us a little bit about that and drill into how exercise can literally change the chemistry of your brain to wire you to be happier.

Dr. Korb:	Yeah, well, I’ll start with BDNF since you brought it up. That is a chemical that is sort of like steroids are for your muscles. It helps strengthen and grow new neurons. In a particularly vulnerable part of the brain called the hippocampus which is important in forming new memories, and it’s also part of the emotional circuity of the brain. If you have depression, that can actually start to decrease cell production and kill neurons in the hippocampus. But if you take anti-depressant medication it can increase this chemical BDNF which helps strengthen neurons, keeps them from dying, and grows new neurons. And it turns out that exercise has a lot of the same effects as anti-depressant medication specifically on BDNF because it can actually start to grow new neurons in this key emotional circuit.

Matt:	Some of the other neurochemicals that it helps produce are things like norepinephrine, and endorphins, etc. Talk a little bit about why those are important and how those can be mutually reinforcing in terms of improving your brain strength.

Dr. Korb:	yeah, so, the three main neurotransmitter systems targeted by anti-depressant medications are serotonin, norepinephrine, and dopamine. And exercise can modulate the activity in all three of those neurotransmitter systems. It can increase the production of serotonin which helps improve willpower and managing your emotions and connecting your present actions to future goals and rewards. The norepinephrine system can help manage stress and help focus. And the dopamine system helps with habits and overriding bad habits and maintaining good habits, and it also is important in a certain spark of joy in life; the enjoyment that you get from eating a chocolate bar, or giving someone a hug. Well, the hug has a lot of other neurochemical effects as well, but, anything - anything that’s naturally pleasing releases dopamine in the brain, which is what makes it rewarding, such as eating or sex, or things like that. Exercise can modulate the dopamine system as well. In fact, a great example of that they took a study of smokers. And one of the reasons smoking is so addicting is because it activates that dopamine system. But they took people who are smokers, they didn’t let them smoke for a day, so they’re really on edge, really wanted that cigarette. One group exercised on a stationary bike for just ten minutes. And then they scanned their brain and see how their brains responded to pictures of cigarettes. And the people who hadn’t exercised had a much bigger drive in their brain for wanting that cigarette. They had a much bigger dopamine response. Whereas the people who had just exercised, that exercised had provided some more dopamine, it modulated the dopamine response so that they didn’t crave the cigarette quite as much.

Matt:	So, just ten minutes of stationary bike was able to kind of create some of those changes. So when you talk about exercise, it’s not necessarily going out and running four or five miles. This is something that, you know, can be relatively easy to implement in your life.

Dr. Korb:	As I say to a lot of people. The exercise that you do is infinitely more valuable to you than the exercise that you don’t do. And it doesn’t always take a lot because it’s really compared to - well what were you doing in the first place? If you’re feeling depressed and you’re just laying on the couch all day and someone says “Ok! Well run a 5K!” That’s not really going to seem possible. And if that means then you’re not going to do anything, then you’re not going to be able to start to turn things around. So, it really depends on where you are. If you’re just sitting around not doing anything, well, just standing up and walking outside, or walking around the block, that’s going to put you off in a better position than doing nothing at all. And that small amount of exercise will start to put your brain in a better position to make better choices, or it makes it easier to exercise more. That’s why I call my book The Upward Spiral, because these small little life changes, these small little actions, cause changes in the brain which make further positive life changes more possible.

Matt:	That’s great. And one of the other topics you talk a lot about is the idea of making decisions, and how making decisions can create sort of some other “upward spirals” and change your neurochemistry. I love the example that you used of - it’s more about making a good decision than making the best decision. This is something that I’ve insistently been trying to teach my wife. I’m sure she doesn’t want to hear that on the podcast. But can you,

Dr. Korb:	You should try writing a book about neuroscience then trying to teach your wife every chapter of it. That doesn’t go over as well either.

Matt:	Oh I’m sure, I’m sure there was a lot of struggles there.

Dr. Korb:	I’d say “You should just read chapter 7 again!”

Matt:	yeah, exactly. Well, can you talk a little bit about how decision making can change neurochemistry and specifically why it’s important to sort of settle for a good decision quote-unquote?

Dr. Korb:	Well, that has a lot of different aspects to it. One, this notion of trying to pick the best decision causes problems because oftentimes there isn’t a best decision, or you certainly don’t have enough information given where you are right now to be able to decide what that best decision is. And so, we can often feel paralyzed because we don’t actually move forward in any direction, and when you’re given - when you’re not actually moving in a direction, moving in ANY direction feels equally plausible and we can just sit there and do nothing and then gain no more information and therefore we’re not accomplishing anything. Whereas if you just start to move in a particular direction, for example, there’s a study on people who couldn’t decide what job they wanted. What career path they wanted to take, and that can feel very overwhelming. If they just started to research any job, that reduced their anxiety and make it easier for them to move forward. And it didn’t have to be the job that they ended up wanting to take. They just had to start - pick something to start reading about, and then that would give more guidance and more information because now they could say either “oh yes!” from learning about it, “I think that’s a better decision, so I’m going to keep moving in that direction”, or from learning about it, “I realize, eh, that’s the wrong way, I’m going to do something else.” But moving in one direction realizing it’s the wrong thing and coming back to where you started, that is much better for you than sitting there and doing nothing at all. The other aspect of your question that’s important for people to realize is that having a goal, and making one small step or intention towards that goal actually changes the way your brain perceives the world, and is going to start creating opportunities for your brain to just notice solutions all on its own. And that can maybe sound abstract, but think of the feature on your camera that maybe highlights faces when you hold it up to a group of people. It knows that you’re trying to take pictures of faces, so it puts a little box around the faces and it focuses on them. And your brain has that same capability to focus on the parts of your environment, or the parts of your life that are actually important to you and ignore all the rest of the irrelevant details. But in order for your brain to rely on your brain’s automatic processing to do that, you just have to create an intention or a goal and take one little step in that direction, and then that - you start to get the benefits of that brain circuitry.

	So the study that’s related to that that’s really interesting, I think, is they asked a group of people to get ready to either point or grab a certain figure, they’re going to show them. Then when they flash an image up on the screen of things that were either easier to point to or to grab, the activity in their visual cortex was actually different based on what their intended action was. Now, the visual cortex, that’s a very low-level thing. That’s the kind of thing that you would think - oh, that should just automatically process the image of whatever is coming in. But based on your intentional and the goals of these people were setting out, the region of their brain that controlled the goals are actually increasing the game sort of in the visual cortex to look for things that were relevant to the goal that they were doing. So, once you start having this idea, once you commit to a particular goal or moving down a certain path and having a specific intention, then these lower level unconscious parts of your brain will start changing your perception of the world to help accomplishing, to make accomplishing that goal easier.

Matt:	So one of the things you mentioned is taking that small step, and you talk about a little bit in the book the idea that following through is a critical component and actually has a different impact on your neurochemistry than just sort of deciding you’re going to do something.

Dr. Korb:	Yeah, actions speak louder than words. Your brain knows and interprets your goals based on your thoughts, but also on your actions. I experience this myself the first time I signed up for online dating. When I was in my early 20s I felt like “Ah, I don’t have — there’s no one to meet, I can’t get a date with anyone” So I signed up for online dating, and I immediately started going on more dates. But the interesting thing was that the dates that I was going on, wasn’t necessarily through the online dating. But through the act of signing up for the website and paying the money, I sent a signal to myself saying that, “yes, this is something I’m actually interested in”, and that starts to change your perception of the world, and awareness, and the parts of your brain that sees opportunities in everyday situations. On the bus, I would see, make smile with the girl sitting next to me. Then I’d strike up a conversation, and by taking a certain action down the path and committing myself at least somewhat down this path of “oh yes, I’m actually going to try to meet someone”, I was starting to see possibilities in everyday life. And the actual truth is that those possibilities had already been there, but since I hadn’t made a concerted action and to tell myself that “yes, this is, I want to try to meet someone, this is something that’s important to me”, then I’d been missing all of the signs that were around me all along. 

Matt:	I think that’s so important, it’s one of the reasons that visualization is such a powerful tool as well. 

Dr. Korb:	And yeah, the problem is it can sound very hokey, I think a lot of that sounds like “The Secret”. Like you send your thoughts out to the university and you change what comes back. But your prefrontal context is responsible for goal-directed actions. And another deeper region, the anterior cingulate cortex, sits as sort of the intersection between your prefrontal cortex and your emotional brain regions. And one of its jobs is to notice goal-relevant stimuli in the world. So, if you don’t have a particular goal, your brain has to spend most of its time ignoring most of the stimuli around in the world, because there’s a million more things than you can ever consciously process. But, if you have a particular goal, then those two brain regions are communicating with each other so the they know, “okay what are the kinds of things I should be looking for”, so when something happens in the world that is close to something that could benefit you, then - boom - the anterior cingulate fires and brings your attention to it, saying “oh this is important, we should pay attention to this”, and by creating those goals and intentions, and moving down that path in a particular path, we’re giving our brain the opportunity to be able to focus on these parts of the world that are important to us. We can’t naturally change the world, per-se, but we can start to change our perception of it and that’s just as important. You can think of the police chief - he can give orders to the lower level officers on patrol, like, ignore drug dealers and start focusing on speeding tickets. And boom, the number of speeding tickets is going to increase. There were just as many people speeding before, but the police department wasn’t paying as much attention to them. And that’s the way a lot of these perceptual systems in the brain work. Your pre-frontal cortex is that police chief that can give the orders to the lower level officers to say “Okay, this is the things that we want to pay attention to, and go out there and look for them.”

Matt:	So, everybody who’s listening out there, you heard it from the neuroscientist. That what you perceive in reality can change based on what you tell yourself, and the beliefs that you put into your mind, right? That’s actually something we did a previous episode on as well. About the reality of perception and how literally the world and your world can shift. It’s kind of the same idea that like you said, it sort of sounds like “The Secret”, but the reality is actually rooted in neuroscience, and it’s rooted in the way that your brain is structured.

Dr. Korb:	Yeah, and I think, though, starting to take action - even if it’s a small action. Shows that you’re actually committed to that idea as real. Rather than just - you can’t completely change your perception of the world simply by thinking about it. But by taking action as if this thing were true or to show yourself that this is the goal that you are pursuing, then that’s sending feedback to your brain that “oh yes, actually I do believe this is true!” and that’s going to start to have a bigger effect because your thoughts are one thing, and your actions are another thing, and those ideally should be able to support each other. But if you’re trying to have one thought but your actions don’t reflect the thought that you’re having, then they’re going to compete with each other, and you’re not necessarily going to get the same benefit. To continue, very simple actions in your body, in your posture, can have effects on your feelings and your thoughts. You could tell yourself that you’re happy and everything is fine. But if you’re have an anxious facial expression and a sad withdrawn posture, and you’re sitting on your couch not doing anything. Then your brain isn’t going to fully believe those thoughts. Whereas if you tell yourself that everything is fine and you sit up straight and relax your face and you put on a little hint of a smile, take a deep breath and go outside, well then those actions are feeding into those thoughts and those are going to support each other and actually start to make you believe yourself. 

Matt:	I think that’s incredible piece of advice and wisdom, and something that everybody listening should really take to heart. Changing gears slightly, and something that I’m incredibly passionate about - something that I frequently advocate, is the power of gratitude. I know that’s something you talk about in the book, can you expand on that a little bit, and maybe share some of the research about why gratitude is so powerful?

Dr. Korb:	Yeah. Gratitude can actually help improve the quality of your sleep, for example. And that’s a big one because I have a whole chapter in my book on sleep and how important it is, and so many people say to me “Yeah yeah I know, I should get more sleep, I don’t have time for that, give me something else that I can do that doesn’t take up more time.” And the important thing to understand there is - if you just take a couple of minutes before you go to sleep and just write a journal of the things you’re happy for that day, or maybe the things that you’re excited for tomorrow, the things in your life that you’re grateful for, it actually improves the quality of your sleep and makes it more restful, even if you can’t necessarily get more sleep. And focusing on the positive parts of your life can actually, and particularly happy memories, can actually increase the production of serotonin in key regions of the brain such as the anterior cingulate cortex that I mentioned before, which sits at the intersection of the sort of rational and emotional brain. And serotonin as I said before is one of the key system targeted by anti-depressant medications. So, thinking happy memories can actually boost that system. And there are other studies, there was one study that looked at people who underwent psychotherapy. If prior to their psychotherapy they wrote a “thank you” letter to someone they’d been meaning to thank but hadn’t gotten around to yet, then the therapy was actually more effective and there were regions of the brain that had included this anterior cingulate cortex that had changes many weeks later, even from this small act of gratitude. 

Matt:	That’s amazing. And I know there’s a few other studies too that just demonstrate the incredible power of gratitude.

Dr. Korb:	And part of it is because your brain only has a limited ability to focus on things. There’s - the world is so complex that you have to filter out 99% of the things that are floating around you bombarding you every day. And intentional act of gratitude is important, because it tells yourself, it tells your brain that, “Yes, I want to focus more on the things that make me happy”, because evolution didn’t necessarily - wasn’t designed to make you happy. It was designed to make you live and have sex and reproduce. That’s what got us here in the first place. But now that we’re here and we have consciousness, most of us realize that “Oh I actually prefer to be happier”, so evolution didn’t actually design your brain to be the happiest it could be, but through intentional action you can start to shift your perception towards focusing on more positive aspects and therefore increase your happiness.

Matt:	Can you elaborate a little bit on the concept of biofeedback? What it is, how it’s important in combating depression and anxiety?

Dr. Korb:	Yeah. Biofeedback is simply the idea that the brain changes it’s activity based on what the body is doing. So, I referenced it before, I just didn’t use that name. There’s, for example, when you are feeling anxious, you may have fast breathing, and tense muscles, and a racing heart, if you can slow down your breathing, and stretch out your muscles, then your breathing will not only slow down but deep breathing can also slow down your heart as well. Then that will send different signals back to the brain. We often think of emotion as a one way street, “oh I have this anxiety, and that’s why I’m having all these sensations in my body” such as the breathing, muscle tension, and so forth, but your brain is constantly monitoring your body for how it should feel. So, yes, maybe you felt anxiety, or you had a worried thought or whatever that triggered this anxiety and that caused these bodily symptoms. But now those bodily symptoms are feeding back and making you feel more anxious. And if you can disrupt that feedback cycle by decreasing the body’s anxious response, then you can make yourself feel calmer. Now, it won't necessarily eliminate all of the anxiety, but it’ll keep you from making it worse. And that’s why deep breathing can be so powerful if you’re feeling depressed if sad, if you’re having withdrawn posture and stooped over posture, that can be a feedback signal to your brain saying “oh yes, I’m feeling sad”, or if you have a worried facial expression. You can improve your posture, sit up straight, open your chest to the world, take a deep breath and smile, then that’s going to be sending different signals back to the brain where it’s going to think “oh! Maybe things aren’t quite so bad, because the body is behaving as if I’m happy.”

Matt:	So, for listeners out there that might be struggling with depressions or anxiety, or maybe even listeners who aren’t. What would be one piece of homework that you would give them? 

Dr. Korb:	I think one of the simplest things that I recommend is just going for a walk in the morning, ideally with a friend. That captures a lot of aspects of the upwards spiral including sunlight at the right time, and exercise, and making a habit, and possibly some social inputs as well. And that’s just a very small change that most people feel capable of making. Other simple changes include, the act of introspection. Just, momentarily throughout the day, checking in with yourself and noticing how you’re feeling. Not necessarily making a judgment about it that it’s good or bad, just saying “oh, okay, this is where I’m at”, and that act of introspection can help you feel - can help reduce the emotional impact of your emotions. And, lastly, I would say be present. Whatever you’re doing, just do that at 100%. Pay attention to the things you’re doing, and don’t pay attention to the things you’re not doing. And that - the introspection that I mentioned previously is actually related to that. Because if you’re feeling anxious or if you’re feeling sad, that’s part of who you are at that moment. And being present includes recognizing “Oh, I’m feeling anxious, okay, I’m going to continue to work on this, or focus on that, even though I’m anxious.” 

Matt:	Where can people find you online for people that want to learn more or do some more research about this?

Dr. Korb:	I have a website, AlexKorbPhD.com. I’m including a lot of my blog articles and I offer personal coaching and consultations for people who are interested learning how - more about the brain, or how better to apply it to their life.

Matt:	Well, for anybody out there who’s listening that struggles with depression or anxiety, I highly recommend checking out The Upward Spiral. There’s so many different tactics and strategies in the book, we only barely scratched the surface. And we could talk for hours and hours about all the different things that you can do that are often very simple, very easy steps to take to kind of break out of that vicious cycle, break out of that downward spiral and, you know, get into an upward spiral. So, Alex, thank you so much for being a guest on the show. This has been some great feedback and conversation and I really appreciate having you on here. 

Dr. Korb:	Thanks, it was great to be here and hopefully we reached some people that could use it.

The Psychology Behind Making Better Decisions with Global Financial Strategist Michael J. Mauboussin

Do you want to improve your decision-making a build a better mental toolkit? In this episode we explore the psychology behind making better decisions with Michael J. Mauboussin. 

Michael is the Head of Global Financial Strategies at Credit Suisse. He is the author of three books, including More Than You Know: Finding Financial Wisdom in Unconventional Places, named in the The 100 Best Business Books of All Time. Michael also serves as an adjunct professor of finance at Columbia Business School.

We discuss the following topics:

• The interconnectedness of knowledge across many different disciplines

• How to switch to the “outside view” to make better predictions and decisions

• How to improve your results without being any smarter or better trained

• A fascinating psychology study that demonstrates how we deceive ourselves

• The biggest biases that cause investors to make bad decisions (and how to combat them)

• Why the right tools aren’t enough to make you a successful investor

• Concrete steps to start down the path of better decision-making

• How to understand the difference between luck and skill in complex fields like business, investing, and entrepreneurship

• How to become “numerate” and understand the physics and mathematics of misjudgment

• What statistical base-rates are and how they can improve your decisions

• How reversion to the mean really works and why you’ve been misunderstanding it

• The power of checklists and other decision-making tools

• And much more!

Thank you so much for listening!

Please SUBSCRIBE and LEAVE US A REVIEW on iTunes! (Click here for instructions how to do that!).  

SHOW NOTES, LINKS, & RESEARCH

• [Book] Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise by Anders Ericsson (see here).

• [Book] Tales from Both Sides of the Brain: A Life in Neuroscience by Michael S. Gazzaniga (see here).

• [Book] A Curious Mind: The Secret to a Bigger Life by Brian Grazer and Charles Fishman (see here).

• Michael Mauboussin Articles on Value Walk (see here)

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Today we have another awesome guest on the show: Michael Mauboussin. Michael is the head of Global Financial Strategies at Credit Suisse. He is one of my favorite authors and the author of three books, including, More Than You Know: Finding Financial Wisdom in Unconventional Places, which was named one of the 100 best business books of all time. Michael also serves as an adjunct professor of finance at Columbia Business School and is an expert in decision making, behavioral psychology, and all of those fields applied to the financial markets, especially. Michael, welcome to The Science of Success.

Michael:	Thanks, Matt. Great to be with you today.

Matt:	We are super excited to have you on here. So, to kind of kick things off and get started, tell us a little bit about... For listeners who might not be familiar with some of your books, tell us a little bit about your background, and how did you become so fascinated with the psychological aspects of human decision making, specifically within the context of investing, which you're obviously an expert at, but also, you know, even more broadly.

Michael:	You know, Matt, I think part of it is you mention my association with Columbia Business School, and I started teaching there in the early 1990s and I was thinking a lot about what I was talking about with the students, effectively giving them tools to try to make them successful investors, and sort of had this growing feeling that what made for great investing had less to do with the tools--you know, accounting and financial statement analysis and valuation, although those things are obviously really important--and much more to do with decision making and temperament, especially under stressful situations. So, probably in the mid-1990s, I started to just open up my reading quite a bit. A lot more science, a lot more in the world of psychology, and sort of being exposed to this world as a lightning bolt of recognition that probably what makes for great... not just great investors, but really great in any field, is awareness of a lot of these psychological factors that improves the quality of decision. So, it sort of changed my whole tenor, recognizing that a lot of things we teach, for example, in business schools or actually any kind of school, are just the ante to the game, but the real success has to do with this whole other field of decision making. So, that was sort of my epiphany, was that recognition of where value comes from. The other thing I'll just mention is I was reading widely... You know, I was one of those  guys who was... You know, I'd read something and I'd be like, oh, here's a connection to this, or here's a connection to that, and just sort of this recognition that we live in an extremely rich world, and that there are a lot of interesting connections between different things that may not be superficially obvious but that I think could really make... that could be some really fascinating connections, and I think really helpful connections to allow people to think about the world more effectively.

Matt:	And that's essentially the concept of the idea of multi-disciplinary thinking, that Charlie Munger is a huge proponent of, and I know you're a huge proponent of, and something actually we touched on a little bit with one of our previous guests, Shane Parrish of Farnam Street. Can you explain a little bit more about, and maybe even provide some examples of, how different disciplines can impact each other or how maybe psychology can underpin finance, or something like that?

Michael:	Yeah, absolutely. The way I like to think about this is that it's like a toolbox, the metaphor of a toolbox, right. You might have the best hammer or the best screwdriver of anybody, but what you really want to do when you're thinking about the world is to have the right tool to apply to the right problem. And so, I think the Munger approach... And I do. I give huge credit for my thinking to Charlie Munger, who I think is the most articulate. I'd also mention another book, which many of your listeners may be aware of, by E.O. Wilson called Consilience, and these ideas that many of the vexing problems in our worlds are at the intersection of disciplines and we need a sort of full toolbox to try to tackle them. So, to me, this is the way to think about the world. The other thing I'll just say is another quick comment, is that we've made huge strides in science over the last, let's say, 400, 500 years through reductionism, which is to say basically breaking things down into its fundamental components, and it's been extraordinary, and I think a lot of the things we take for granted in life, advancements, are the result of that amazing work. But I think increasingly, we're bumping into areas where we're dealing with systems that are complex, where reductionism really doesn't work, where, in a very real sense, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. And that requires a very different way of thinking about the world. Now, if you think about academia in general, you get paid for specialization. You get paid for being narrow. But a lot of the problems in the world are kind of going the opposite direction, where it's important to think about things from different perspectives. So, one example I would give you, and I think is also a very powerful mental model in and of itself, and for me was another big eye-opening moment, is just thinking about markets as complex, adaptive systems. The stock market, right. So, if you say to an academic or a really traditional economist, "How should we think about how people behave?" they'll typically say, "Well, we've got these models of agents who are rational and they understand their different... They have information that comes in and they understand their preferences and they have utility functions, and then they make decisions on the basis of this. You know, we've known for a long time that empirically, that's not how the world works. So, if you try to extrapolate that into a model of markets, it just doesn't fit the facts all that well. Complex adaptive systems, by contrast, come at the world as thinking about the interaction of heterogeneous parts or agents, right, and you can think about other examples like ants in an ant colony, right? Absolutely fascinating, because the colony itself is almost an organism. It has a life cycle and is sometimes aggressive, sometimes passive, but every individual ant is really basically clueless. They're sort of bumbling little agents within this total. So, I think that's a much, much richer way... And by the way, your consciousness, for example, neurons in your brain, you can think about example after example, people that live in New York City are components of a complex system. And when we take that sort of set of tools and that way of thinking to the world of markets, it just opens up, again, new ways of thinking about things gives you good reason to understand why markets are generally hard to beat, but it also gives you some insight as to why markets go periodically haywire. So, to me, this whole mental models thing is just a really, really powerful way to think about the world. Now, let's talk about the pros and cons. The pros is, I think, that if you do understand big concepts from various disciplines, gives you a huge leg up in life. The con is it requires constant--basically--reading and thinking and learning. So, if you're going to get into this world, it ends up being sort of a commitment to perpetual learning. Now, that's not everybody's cup of tea, but if it is, I just think it's a really fun, exciting, and I think ultimately a great way to find success.

Matt:	I love the idea that the traditional education or business school or whatever it might be is sort of the ante to get into the game, but if you really want to win, if you really want to compete at the highest level, you need to have a much richer and much deeper toolkit to really understand reality.

Michael:	Yeah, and I really think that's the case. The other thing I'll just say is that's certainly true. I also think that there are gaps now in our education. Especially, for example, in high school and college students. I'll give you one example, and I don't mean... This is sort of a negative example, but I don't mean to be too negative. One of my sons went to a really terrific high school and they decided to develop a leadership center for the kids, which is great, right. So, they were working on things communication, cultural awareness, a lot of things you would say are really important. But what struck me as fascinating about it is there was actually no segment or module on decision making or on psychology. So, I went to the guy that ran the program and I said, "This is really interesting, because at the end of the day, our future leaders are really people that need to be equipped in understanding how to make decisions, understanding being [INAUDIBLE 00:10:39], or understanding the scientific method and what science tells us. These are actually very essential elements in the future, and we're just basically not teaching those things. So, that, to me, is another area that we should be spending... And by the way, I'm about to go back to one of my college reunions, and when I went to college, the kinds of things, the decision making courses--they're now much more common--didn't exist at all. So, if you're someone of my age and you're in your forties or fifties, chances are you didn't have any access to it in school. So, there's more of it now, but certainly not enough of it, in my opinion. So, yeah, I think you have to supplement a lot of what your curriculum has been in order to become a more well-rounded individual.

Matt:	So, if you're somebody that's listening to this podcast, what are some easy steps or maybe some first steps they could take on the path towards starting to build this toolkit or starting to maybe understand human decision making more effectively, or make better decisions?

Michael:	Yeah, Matt, and I think that you know my answer, which is probably to start, whether you can read or certainly listen to audiobooks or something, but there are a handful of books that'll probably get you off and running. One book that I always loved, and I'm sure you're fan of as well, is Bob Cialdini's book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. It's an easy book to read. It's got six big models about how you could influence people and their decision making, or you can also see or reflect how those things influence you and your decision making. So, that's a great starting point. Another great one, of course, is Danny Kahneman's book, Thinking, Fast and Slow. It's probably a little bit more of a challenge, but so rich in terms of its content. So, that would be another thing I would say, is people reading that and just really, I mean, the degree to which you're willing to wade into the, for example, the psychology literature is fantastic. So, that's one set of things. The second set of things is if you have an appetite to do so, it's really great to try to hang out with people who are different than you. And that might be if you're a finance person, hang out with artists or people who are into literature. You know, there was a very famous essay many years ago about the two cultures, sort of the literary culture and the scientific culture, and the argument was these cultures really didn't meld with one another, and I think those people who really tried to reach out, to understand different points of view, have diverse thoughts, I think that really just forces you into being actively open-minded about the world and, I think, really gives you a leg up in a lot of circumstances. So, I don't know if that's a gentle entry in, but probably the first thing I would say is to start to read some of these things and think about, be introspective about how they're influencing you or how your decision making processes work, and then just make an effort to reach out to people who are different. You know, is Brian Grazer the guy who wrote a book on creativity recently? Do you know that book?

Matt:	I do not.

Michael:	The Hollywood guy. So, the Hollywood guy.

Matt:	We'll put it in the show notes.

Michael:	[Laughs] Yeah, exactly. So, we'll track down the exact book, but I think it's just called Creativity. And he had this sort of extraordinary story, which I absolutely love, and he said he just made a point, is when he read an article... He's a pretty famous producer now, but he'd read an article about somebody, he would just say, "I want to meet that person," and he would call them up out of nowhere and say, "I'd love to have a cup of coffee with you. Can we make that happen?" And he'd reach out to people where it'd take six months, 12 months, 18 months to schedule something, but he was just reaching, going all over the place. One week he'd be talking to a lead athlete. Next week he'd be talking to an astronaut. Then he'd be talking to a Navy SEAL. Then he'd talk to a police commissioner. I mean, this incredible, fascinating array of people, and he just made it part of what he was about, and I think he argues that really helped stoke his own personal creativity and mindset.

Matt:	That's fascinating. And that makes me think of two kind of quick notes for people who are listening. One is we actually did a whole... We did a six part series called Weapons of Influence where we basically... On the podcast, where we basically broke down each of the major pillars of influence and kind of dove deep into the research studies and the findings behind it. So, for people who want to kind of take that first step that Michael's recommending, that's a great way to get started. And the other thing, briefly, we also did a really cool episode recently on creativity, so, to kind of drill into some of this neuroscience behind that and how to spark your own creativity, for people who are listening.

Michael:	Super cool. Super cool.

Matt:	So, one of the things you touched on briefly was the idea of being numerate, and another way that I think Peter Bevelin called that in the book Seeking Wisdom is the physics and mathematics of misjudgment, and I know Munger did an amazing job in his speech about human misjudgment, kind of nailing all the different psychological factors. But two of the things I think that you've done an incredible job of really studying and explaining, Michael, are the concept of base rates and the concept of reversion to the mean, and I'd love to drill into talking about both of those, and I know there's a lot to unpack in each one of those, but in a way that we could kind of explain them to a layperson that's never heard of either of those concepts why they're important and what they are.

Michael:	Yeah. So, great. Great question. The base rate, it really comes from the work of Kahneman and Tversky, so Danny Kahneman, Amos Tversky. They were examining how people... Well, actually, the ideas precede that by many decades, but they sort of codified this to some degree. And the idea is that there are two ways of making forecasts of the world, what they called the inside versus the outside view. So, the inside view--and Matt, this is how you and I typically operate, right. You know, if I give you a problem, you give me a problem, our classic way to solve it is to gather a bunch of information, right, combine it with our own inputs, and then project into the future, right. So, if you go to a college student and you say, "Hey, when will you be done with your term paper?" they sort of think about what their calendar looks like, how hard the paper is, and so forth, and they make some sort of projection. So, that's the natural way to think. The outside view, by contrast, we're calling the base rates, says, you know what? I'm going to think about my problem as an instance of a larger reference class. Basically, in plain words, I'm going to ask the question, what happened when other people were in this situation? Right, and it's a very unnatural way to think for two reasons. Number one is you have to leave aside your own information, this cherished information that you have, and second is you have to find and ultimately appeal to this base rate. So, for example, in our term paper example, instead of saying, "Hey, when will you finish your term paper?" and the student thinking about their own schedule and the difficulty of the paper, you basically ask a question of all the students who had a term paper due a certain day, when did they actually complete it? It's a very different question, and it turns out that what we see in the decision making literature is the introduction of base rates actually massively sharpens the quality of forecasts. So, we've applied it very specifically, for example, in the world of business to things like sales growth rates for companies. So, you might say, you know, hey, here's a company that has 10 billion dollars in sales. What's the sales growth rate going to be for the next three years or five years or ten years? So, you could model it. Again, bottom up. Sort of say, "Here's what they do. Here's how many new units they'll sell," and so forth. Or you can ask the question of companies of that same size over time, "What's the distribution of growth rate?" So, they're not mutually exclusive. Both of them go together, but that's the idea of base rates. And so, once you start to think about base rates, you start to see them, they're basically everywhere. But certainly realms like sports, realms like business, we have really good data on base rates and I think they can be really, really helpful. Reversion to the mean is another concept that is really important, and I think very, actually, quite tricky. So, reversion to the mean formally says that outcomes that are far from average will be followed by outcomes with an expected value closer to the average. So, the classic example of that is heights of people, right. Heights of fathers and sons, for example, specifically. So, what we know is that very tall fathers have tall sons, but the heights of the sons are closer to the average of all the sons. And likewise, short fathers have short sons, but again, the heights of the sons are closer to the average. So, there's sort of a squishing back toward the middle. So, that's an effect that happens, right, and it's just a statistical artifact. By the way, on the height thing, for instance, that sort of has to be true, if you think about it for a second, because otherwise there'd be people walking around who are 20 feet tall and two feet tall. That doesn't happen, right. So, here's an interesting way to think about the reversion to the mean, how powerful the force will be. So, if the correlation from one event to the next event is basically zero, then you should expect very, very rapid reversion to the mean. Let me give you one really concrete example from the markets. It turns out if you look at the standard [INAUDIBLE 00:19:52]500s. They're the most popular index in the U.S., and you look at the results from year to year. So, you take on X axis t=0, like what it did last year, and then on the Y axis, t plus one, what it does in the subsequent year, and you plot that going back to the 1920s. The correlation is basically zero. In other words, what happened last year tells you absolutely nothing about what's going to happen the subsequent year. So, as a result, the best estimate of what's going to happen next is some measure of the average, right. Reversion to the mean. And so, your best estimate for the market is basically the historical average. On the other extreme, if the correlation is perfect, very high, you expect no reversion to the mean at all. So, Matt, if you and I ran a sprint against Usain Bolt, he's going to win, right. And when we run again, he's going to win again. It's going to be perfectly correlated that he's going to win every single time, and there is no reversion to the mean. So, how we finished in prior races or how he finished in prior races doesn't really make a difference. He's going to win every single time. So, this idea of reversion to the mean, you can think about how correlated outcomes are over time. That also gives you an idea of how rapidly that idea of reversion to the mean takes effect. So, super powerful, super important, and often really overlooked. Even people who do this for a living--for example, sports executives--somehow get tripped up and don't fully take into account reversion to the mean.

Matt:	And one of the things that I really struggled with, and I've read your chapters, and a bunch of Kahneman's stuff over and over again. I've read your chapters in The Success Equation five or six times, trying to really drill that concept into my head as the relationship between correlation and reversion to the mean. And also, you know, kind of going back to the simplest example is flipping a coin, and when people think about reversion to the mean, sometimes if a coin comes up heads four times in a row, people think, oh, I'm due a tails, right. But that's actually a completely incorrect way to think about and really understand how reversion to the mean actually functions.

Michael:	Yeah, exactly, and I think that... Look, one of the reasons it's so challenging is because we have intuitions about how all this stuff works, but if we want to be slightly more formal, exactly what you said. So, when correlations are low, reversion to the mean is very, very powerful, and that's my stock market example. When correlation is very high, reversion to the mean is not a powerful force. In other words, what had happened before is, for the most part, a pretty good estimate of what's going to happen next. And yeah, no. By the way, that little heuristic, that's one of our tools in our toolbox. That's a mental model. It's an incredibly powerful mental model and, remarkably, very few people get it. The other thing, you know, Kahneman talks about this, but one of the other reasons that reversion to the mean is difficult is because our minds are wired to seek causality. If I give you an effect, some sort of an outcome, your mind is going to try to come up with a cause to explain it. And reversion to the mean is a concept that really has no cause and effect. And I'll give you an example that I always find to be fascinating. It turns out I mentioned before that the heights of fathers and sons, tall fathers have tall sons, but the heights are closer to the average of all the sons. But it turns out, and this is somewhat counter-intuitive, that if you plot the heights of the sons, it turns out very tall sons have tall fathers, but the heights of the fathers are closer to the average of all the fathers. And we know that sons don't cause father's, right. So, it gives you pause. You sort of say... So, in other words, the reversion to the mean has no arrow of time, and the notion of causality really doesn't apply. It's just it applies any time you have two series that are not perfectly correlated with one another. And by the way, the heights of fathers and sons, the correlation's almost exactly .5. So, in other words, if you're six inches above average, the best estimate of your son's height would be three inches above average, half the distance between your height and the height of everybody else. So interesting, right. So, I applaud you for going back to the concept. I did the same thing many, many times, going back to it, and there are some other people besides Kahneman who talked about it effectively. I just think it's a really hard concept to get your head wrapped around and it also is worthy of a lot of study.

Matt:	I think the trickiest part is the very counter-intuitive notion that there's no cause and effect. That's what people think that it means, that there's some kind of cause that it's going to happen, cause something to happen, when in reality there's no arrow of time, there's no causality at all.

Michael:	Yeah. So, I would say, Matt, to be a little bit more careful about it, it doesn't mean the causality isn't part of it. It just doesn't require causality, right.

Matt:	Yeah, that's definitely a better way to say it.

Michael:	So, the example I give that also... Well, I'll give you a quick story on this. I was presenting to... it was actually an academic conference, and it was on behavioral strategy. Super interesting. So, these are professors of strategy, corporate strategy, who have a behavioral bend. Super interesting topic. So, I was doing a presentation a little bit on luck and skill stuff, and I showed them a very classic, well-known picture where, if you take, say, 100--I'm just making this up--take 100 companies and you rank them in quintiles, so from top to bottom, and then you follow those cohorts, the highest returns on capital I'd say specifically to lowest returns on capital, and you follow those cohorts over time. What you'll see is the high return on capital returns go down and the low ones go up, which is exactly what reversion to the mean would indicate. So, I show that slide, and everyone's sort of, you know, amening and hi-fiving, and they all get that, right. But then I flip the data and I started with 2014 and I went backwards. So, I went from 2014 back to 2005. And again, what you do is you rank the companies on 2014 return on capital, again, highest to lowest, and then you follow those cohorts back in time. And what you find is the same picture. 

Matt:	That's wow.

Michael:	So, it's clear for example that competition... So, you say, why would returns on capital go down over time? And the classic answer in economics is competition, right. So, if you're earning very high returns, maybe I'll come in and try to take part of your business away. That makes total sense. But clearly, competition can't work backward, right. So, it's the same idea that it's flummoxing, right, because competition is such a satisfactory answer as to why returns go down, but it doesn't really explain what we're after. Only partially explains what we're after. It's a really interesting point.

Matt:	And I think that the mind invents the reasons why it's happening. Often it's just a statistical artifact.

Michael:	Yeah. And that's the work... And that's another thing I would recommend. I find this to be almost infinitely fascinating, but the work by Michael Gazzaniga, who is famous for his work on split brain patients, so these are people that have suffered typically epilepsy and, to address these severe seizures, they sever the corpus callosum, the bundle of nerves between the two hemispheres of the brain. And what that opened up for Gazzaniga, Roger Sperry before him, was this opportunity to study modularity in the brain, and what Gazzaniga found was in the left hemisphere, where our language resides for most people, that there's a module they've now dubbed the interpreter, and the primary job of the interpreter is to find causes for every effect. So, it's a sort of cause and effect closing machine. And to your point, often in life, cause and effect are clear. You throw the rock at the window and it smashes. That's cause and effect, right. But the point is that if there's randomness, there's luck, going back to your coin tossing example, there's some sort of stochastic process, your mind is just going to make up a cause. It's fabricated, right, because it wants to close the cause and effect loop, and what Gazzaniga was able to show so brilliantly and so poignantly is that, with these experiments with these split brain patients, they could really isolate where this is happening and come up with these really fascinating results. And Gazzaniga wrote a book last year and he makes this point where... quite powerful, where he sort of makes this claim where he thinks that that module, that cause and effect connection, is the thing that distinguishes humans from other species most fundamentally, which is really interesting if it's true. So, I think that's a really important thing to keep in mind, too, is that our minds are constantly closing the cause and effect loops and it's not above any of us. We all do it and we just have to be very, very mindful of the stories that we're telling ourselves, because sometimes they're true and sometimes they're not.

Matt:	And I don't know the specifics of those studies, but essentially, what they were doing, they had them open a door or something, right, and then the other hemisphere of the brain would invent a reason why they had done it or something, right?

Michael:	Yeah, totally. Exactly. So, I mean, there are lots of different examples. They would show pictures or whatever it is, but one simple example, yeah, would be something just like that. They would flash some words to the left visual field, where it goes to the right hemisphere. Something that'll say, the patient sitting down will say "Stand up." So, the left visual hemisphere sees it. Right hemisphere connects. The patient stands up. So, it's interesting. Of course, the left hemisphere, the person knows that they're standing up. They have no access to that cue, but now the researcher will say, you know, "Patient, why are you standing up?" And the research is almost humorous. It's because these people would fabricate these sort of elaborate, crazy stories. You know, my left knee is sore and I want a stretch, or something like that, right. They would fabricate something that would sort of hold the whole thing together. But obviously, it was completely contrived. So, again, you get these chuckles as you see these things that these people are saying, but the more serious and fundamental point is that we're all doing it all the time and we're just not mindful of it. So, this is just shining a spotlight on something that we're all doing all the time. So, it's a really hard thing to do, but it's discipline to say, am I fabricating a narrative here or is this a luck-laden activity or a luck-laden field? Am I simply just capturing luck here and I'm making up a story to try to make for a cohesive world?

Matt:	I think that's the critical point, is that just because... It's happening in the research, but the reality is it's happening every single day to everyone who's listened to this podcast, and both of us.

Michael:	Precisely. Absolutely.

Matt:	Well, I think that's a good segue into the idea of cognitive biases, and I know that's something you're very knowledgeable about. What are some of the most insidious or even some of the most common cognitive biases that you see people suffering from? And maybe specifically in the context of investing, or even broadly?

Michael:	Yeah. So, there are really two things that I would mention in investing. There are many more. One of them, which is extremely difficult to sidestep, is confirmation bias. This is this idea that even if you struggle to make a decision--let's say buy an investment, buy a stock or what have you--even if you sort of struggle to come to that conclusion, once you've made a decision, we all have a natural tendency to seek information that confirms out point of view and to dismiss or disavow or discount disconfirming points of view. And one of the things we've learned, you know, certainly, and I think a lot of what we've been seeing in computer science the last 25 or 30 years has been strongly reinforcing, is this idea of updating information as new information comes in. So, it's a Bayes' theorem. So, you have a prior... you have a point of view of how the world works. New information comes in and, really, if you're doing your job properly, you should be updating your view, updating your prior, given this new information. And, unfortunately, the confirmation bias is this sort of huge brick wall that prevents new information from finding its way into your mind or finding its way into your decision making. So, that's the first one that's a really big one. The second one is probably overconfidence, and this is very trivial to demonstrate if you get a group of people. People tend to be very overconfident about topics that are a little bit away from their own bailiwick. So, if I give you questions that you know a lot about, you'll do fine, but things that are just a little bit on the margin from that, you'll tend to be overconfident. And the way that tends to manifest in an investing setting, for sure, is people tend to project ranges of outcomes that are too narrow. In other words, they think they understand the future better than they actually do, and they fail to consider possibilities, whether they're really good possibilities or really bad possibilities, and that's, I think, the more pernicious component of overconfidence. So, those are two that come to mind, but boy, you know, things like... We could go on and on. Loss aversion. So, we suffer losses more than we enjoy comparable-sized gains. That's a really big one that looms large in a lot of our decisions. So, there's a long list of them, but those two probably, confirmation bias and overconfidence, are probably the one-two that I would list first.

Matt:	And what do you think are some ways that people can combat each of those?

Michael:	So, confirmation bias is just really, the key is to be as open-minded as possible. Jonathan Baron at University of Pennsylvania's got this beautiful phrase. He called it actively open-minded, and this idea of really, truly trying to be as open as you can to new information or new input. And the second thing, I think it's very few people are going to be formal about doing something like Bayes' theorem, but understanding behind Bayes' theorem, which is, you have a point of view. New information comes in. Are you revising your view, both directionally the correct amount and the magnitude of the correct amount? So, those would be some ways to try to do that. Overconfidence, the key is to just... and we can go back to our discussion a few moments ago about Bayes rates, is just to continue to compel yourself to think about alternatives, right. I'll give you one example that's a very simple one. I joke with my students at Columbia Business School, often when there are stock recommendations, you know, you see someone on CNBC or something, or they recommend a stock for purchase, they'll often say, "Well, the upside is 30% and the downside is 10%." Something like that, so it sounds like three to one. Pretty good, right? But if you think about, just statistically for a moment, the standard deviation of the stock market, right, so how fat the bell shape is of the distribution of returns. It's about 20% standard deviation in the last 85 years or so. So, that's a diverse five portfolio, of course. So, the standard deviation of an individual stock is going to be higher than that. Let me just pick 30% just to make the numbers easy. So, the average stock, let's say roughly speaking, would be up about 10%, mean return, average, with a 30 standard deviation. So, just translate that into statistics. That would say that about 68% of the time, it's going to be between up 40%, right, 10% mean plus 30 standard deviation, to down 20%. So, 10% mean minus 30%. So, 40 to -20. So, I just joked about this 10 to 30 percent upside, 10% down. You know, just one standard deviation is wider than most analysts are willing to accept, and certainly going on two standard deviations, it's vastly wider. So, imposing this discipline on yourself to understand what the underlying distributions look like and to recognize, try to think about having ranges of the future that are wide enough. And then there are other techniques, which we could talk about, and I think you probably have covered some of these in some of your prior podcasts, but things like pre-mortems. So, these sort of structured ways to get people to think about different points of view are also some nice techniques to allow to do that.

Matt:	You know, we actually use pre-mortems in our business, but it's not something that I've talked about at all on the podcast. I'd love for you to kind of extrapolate on that concept.

Michael:	Sure. I mean, so most people know about post-mortems, right? So, in other words, the patient has died or something adverse has happened to the patient and we sit around as a medical community and say, given the facts that we had at the time and our technology, what could we or should we have done differently to get to a better outcome? And we're also very familiar with scenario forecasting. So, we sit here in the present. We peer into the future and say, "Here are the possibilities we should consider as we make a decision." A pre-mortem, as you've already gathered from the name, is a very different exercise. It actually effectively launches yourself into the future and you look back to the present. So, now it's June, for example, 2017 and we look back to today, June 2016. This was developed by a social psychologist named Gary Klein, and so, just to give props to him, he's the guy that developed this. And so, we can tie together two ideas here. So, here's the classic way to do this. You say, "Let's sit down. We'll meet in our conference room." I suspect this is what you guys do in your business. And you say, "We're going to think about making a particular decision." Let's say it's an investment decision or a business decision to expand or what have you. And what we're going to imagine, then, each of us, is that this decision turned out to be a fiasco. Total disaster. We're all embarrassed about it. But now it's June 2017, so it's a year from now. So, each of us is going to write a little narrative, write a little 200-word essay about why this decision turned south. And it's very important to do it independently, and it's very important to do it from the point of view of the future looking back to today, right. So, you might say, and then you combine the different inputs, and it turns out that that exercise tends to generate substantially more alternatives or scenarios than simply standing in the present looking to the future. And by the way, is that consistent, Matt, with your own experience in your own company?

Matt:	Oh, yeah. Absolutely.

Michael:	Yeah. And so, let's tie this back to the idea of the interpreter. You might say, "Well, hey, I'm looking at scenarios. I'm thinking about this already. Why is a pre-mortem adding value?" And the answer, I believe, is by launching yourself into the future, assuming that this particular outcome has occurred, what that does is it wakes up your interpreter, right. This little module in your brain, you've now given it a fact and you're saying, "Hey, interpreter, why did this go bad?" And the interpreter's like, "I'm up to this task," and starts generating particular causes for it, right? So, in a sense, your scenario planning, standing in the present, future, the thing isn't done. So, you're not really thinking about causes in a very rich sense. And the second, the pre-mortem, you're basically recruiting your interpreter, in a sense, to help you understand scenarios more richly. Isn't that cool? So, I think that's part of the psychological reason why pre-mortems, I think, can be more effective than simply scenarios. And, you know, my experience is very consistent with yours, that organizations that have adopted, embraced pre-mortems tend to report that they have much richer discussions, much more heated debates, and ultimately probably make better decisions as a consequence of going through the exercise.

Matt:	Another related concept that we've used a number of times is something from the military called a Red Team. Have you ever heard of that?

Michael:	Yep, absolutely. So, we wrote a piece about decision making, and we talked about different things. So, we talk about Red Team, Blue Team very specifically. And, you know, you may have mentioned this before, but red team typically is attacker, blue team is defender. I think today, one of the good... it's from military strategy, of course, but today, one great example, very relevant example is cybersecurity. So, you might say, "Hey, chief technology officer, are we protected from cyber-threats?" And he or she may say yes, but you might hire a hacker to be your red team, so to challenge yourself to see where your vulnerabilities lie. And so, red team... And, by the way, this was my prior job. If we had a particular investment that wasn't working out well or a thesis that didn't seem to be unfolding, we actually would do this, that you'd assign some people to go off and develop the counter case, the devil's advocate case. You'd have people defending the point of view of the firm and we just let people sit across from each other at a conference room, and everybody else would be judge and jury and we'd let them go at it, which was great. I'll tell you the one thing that I learned. A couple of things that I would just add onto that. One is that in Red Team, Blue Team, I think it's really important to distinguish between facts and opinion, and I think a lot of our discussions in general, by the way, we tend to not distinguish as carefully as we should or could between facts and opinion. So, this is a really interesting exercise I'd recommend all the listeners to do, if they have a few minutes, is to pull out an article. For example, something you either really agree with or something you really disagree with, right. So, something that's really polarizing for you. And then take two different color highlighters, say blue and yellow, and with one color, highlight what you would deem to be facts and then another color what you would deem to be opinion, and then simply step back from the document, and whether you agree with it or disagree with it, try to have a balanced assessment as to whether you're being persuaded or not persuaded by fact or opinion. That's super cool. The second thing I'll mention, which was a new thing for me, is that Adam Grant's a great professor at University of Pennsylvania, and he wrote a book called The Originals. I don't know if you guys talked about that. There's some stuff on creativity in there, as well.

Matt:	Have not.

Michael:	But Adam talked about Red Team, Blue Team, and he actually made a point that I didn't appreciate fully until I read it. And he said, "If you're assigning red team responsibility in your organization, what you want to find is someone who really doesn't believe in the thesis." You don't want to just say, "Hey, can you be the devil's advocate?" You want someone who actually doesn't believe in the thesis, someone who really is the devil's advocate, and he just says that enriches the dialogue greatly, versus having someone that's sort of an innocent bystander, grab them by the collar and say, "Go tell us why you're against this." So, that was another little wrinkle that I just learned about, which I think could add a little value in the process. 

Matt:	And another tool that I know you're a big advocate of our checklists. Can you talk a little bit about that, how important they are and how they can improve decision making?

Michael:	Yeah, absolutely. You know, I was really inspired, and I think many others, originally, by Atul Gawande's article in The New Yorker, which ended up being a book, The Checklist Manifesto. But the protagonist of that original New Yorker article, and to a large degree, the book, is a guy named Peter Pronovost, who's a doctor at Johns Hopkins. And, actually, we had a conference a number of years ago where he invited Pronovost to come in. And the story's nothing less than astounding, where Pronovost basically... And by the way, he had lost his father to a medical error, so it was very real and very personal for him. Where Pronovost basically introduced a very simple five-step checklist for putting tubes in, intravenous tubes, and found that they could massively reduce infection rates, saved lots and lots of lies, and I think Gawande in the book argues that Pronovost may have saved more lives in the United States than any other person in the last ten years or so. So, this sort of informs us that... By the way, doctors, if you ask them what they need to do before putting a tube in, they know what to do. It's not like their lack of knowledge. It's really a lack of execution. And so, I think the point that Gawande makes in the book that I think is so powerful is that in every field where this has been studied, be it aviation, medicine, construction, a faithful... First of all, coming up with a good checklist and a faithful use of the checklist has led to better results, and this is without making the underlying users any smarter or any better trained. So, it's just hewing to the process more accurately, which is really fascinating. So, I think a lot about this in the context of investing. Now, investing is a little bit of art and a little bit of science, and I think where the checklists really do apply very effectively is in a lot of the process-oriented stuff. So, how to do certain types of calculations. Basically, it's sort of the fundamental components of investing analysis. Now, the art part comes into some other elements of interpretation, but I would just say if you have components of whatever job you do, and I think almost all of us do have components that are somewhat algorithmic, where consistency and accuracy are really, really helpful, you should be thinking about, if you're not doing it already, developing and applying checklists. Gawande's book is fantastic. Pronovost, by the way, himself, wrote a book about this topic, and maybe the last thing I'll say that came out of Pronovost's book, which I think is very important, is that he said one of the keys to checklists succeeding is actually gathering and analyzing data. In other words, being scientific about this, not sort of just a nice idea of having a checklist, and I think that was one of the keys to Pronovost's original wild success as a Johns Hopkins, was not just that they developed a proper checklist but they figured out ways to get the doctors to use it, and then they really kept track of it and gave the doctors feedback. And so, this idea of data collection and feedback is also a really, really key element to this whole thing.

Matt:	Changing directions a little bit, I'd love to dig into some of the stuff you talked about in The Success Equation, kind of untangling luck from skill and the concept of the luck-skill continuum. One of the tools or mental models that you use to describe that phenomenon was the two jars model, which I found to be extremely helpful. I'd love for you to kind of explain that a little bit.

Michael:	Sure. So, you know, and by the way, luck, skill, the whole topic of The Success Equation, it had been sort of lurking in the shadows for me for many, many years. I played sports in college and high school and a sports fan. Clearly a big deal in the world of investing, and also if you look at corporate performance, it's almost everywhere you look, this idea of luck was sort of there, but hard to pin down. And I read Fooled by Randomness by Nassim Taleb in 2001. That certainly got me thinking more about that, and I think Taleb does an incredibly effective job in that book of sort of underscoring the role of luck, but didn't really do much to help us quantify a lot of this. So, the cornerstone of the book, as you point out, is called the luck-skill continuum, and the way to think about this is that you just draw a line and on the far left you put activities that are pure luck, right. So, roulette wheels or lotteries, where really, there's no skill whatsoever. And on the far right, you might put pure skill activities. And things like maybe... a lot of things. Pure skill, but running races, or chess is probably over there. And then, just thinking about arraying activities between those two extremes. So, where does a basketball game fit on that? Where does bowling? Whatever it is, right. So, that in and of itself, the methodological approaches to trying to do that was really, really interesting. But, as I got into this, as you point out, I was trying to think about conceptualized the so-called two jar model. So, the idea is that your outcome for whatever activity is going to be the result of drawing a number from a jar filled with numbers for skill, and then drawing a number from a jar that's got luck. Right, so you're going to pull two numbers out, add them together, and that'll be your outcome. Now, if you're on the pure luck side of the continuum, for example, you'll have a luck distribution. You can envision it as a bell-shaped distribution, is fine. And your skill jar is filled with zeroes, right. So, only luck will make a different. If it's on the pure skill side, you know, you have a skill distribution and you're drawing zeroes from luck, so only skill matters, but almost everything in life is sort of these two rich distributions colliding with one another. And the question is, how much is each contributing? So, I just think that's... And by the way, one of the really nice things about the two jar model is it allows us to understand to some degree things like reversion to the mean, which we spoke about before. It allows us to appreciate the fact that great outliers--for example, streaks in sports of consecutive hits in a baseball game or consecutive shots made by a basketball player--are always, and almost by definition, going to combine great skill and great luck. Because, if you think about it for a second, that has to be true, right. Not all skillful players have the streaks in sports, but all the streaks are held by skillful players, right, because skill is the prerequisite and luck comes on top. So, to me, it's just a very, very vibrant way to think about a lot of things in life, and the key point of The Success Equation is not just thinking about these topics, but hopefully providing some people with some ways to think about the concrete, how they have to deal with the world differently concretely, as a consequence of understanding the role of luck.

Matt:	And one of the things that I'm really fascinated with is the concept of deliberate practice, and you touch on that and how it relates to and applies more specifically in skill-dominated systems. But I'm curious, you know, how would you think about applying something like deliberate practice, or maybe the core lessons behind deliberate practice, to a field like investing or business or entrepreneurship?

Michael:	Yeah. Super interesting. And so, deliberate... I don't know if you've... There's a brand new book by Anders Eriksson called Peak, on this...

Matt:	I have not heard of it. I'll have to read that.

Michael:	Okay, yeah. Check it out. So, Anders Eriksson just wrote a book called Peak, just as it sounds, which I just read a couple of weeks ago. So, that is his... you know, talking about deliberate practice, just to reiterate for all the listeners, deliberate practice is this idea of practicing that is at the cusp of your ability, so a little bit at or right beyond your ability, often where you have a teacher or coach, someone who can give you instruction, and you're getting quality feedback. So, you're proving at the cusp of your skill level. So, as he points out, a lot of us practice things, or we do things that's like we practice. We do things over and over, or even we practice but we don't really satisfy the requirements of deliberate practice. It's usually not beyond our or at the edge of our capability. We often don't have coaches. We often don't get the quality feedback. And, as Eriksson expresses it, deliberate practice is not a whole lot of fun, right. It's actually very tiring, because you're constantly pressing yourself. So, I wrote a piece about this actual topic of deliberate practice and 10,000 hours back in 2004. It came before Gladwell's book and so forth, and I've struggled since that moment of writing that piece about what deliberate practice means. What is this idea of working beyond our boundaries and getting feedback and so forth? So, I don't know that there's a perfectly good example of that, so maybe I can make two points. One is what I argued in The Success Equation, is skill improvement or skill development through deliberate practice is absolutely valid in fields where your output is an accurate reflection of your skill. So, what kinds of things would that be true? It would be, you know, music, if you're a musician. Athletics, it would be true. Chess playing, it would be true. So, there's certain fields where the output is an accurate indicator. There's very little luck that's filtering out the outcomes, right. So, that's where deliberate practice really is good. As you slide over to the luck side of the continuum, what happens is the connection between your skill and the outcome is colored greatly by luck. So, for the example I gave Matt that's a trivial one is, if you're a blackjack player and you enjoy playing blackjack and you go to Atlantic City, you may play properly with standard strategy and lose badly for a few hands, or you may play very foolishly and win for a few hands, right? So, this connection between your skill and the outcome are broken. And when that's the case, what I argue is you should focus almost exclusively on process. And process, it's got elements of deliberate practice, but process is going to have three components, as I would argue for it. One is an analytical component. That is both trying to find situations where you have an advantage and also how do you bet, given your advantage. I'm going to call the second component behavioral, and this covers a lot of what we've been talking about today, but are you aware of managing and mitigating the behavioral biases that we all fall prey to? And the third I'm going to call organizational, which is we all work for companies or parts of organizations or parts of teams. None of them are perfect. Agency cost can be a very big deal. What are we all doing collectively to minimize those organizational drags, right. So, to me, it becomes very process-oriented, and I think if you look at the elite performers, whether it is in sports betting or even sports team management or investing, you get a very common thread, that those folks are almost always and almost exclusively focused on process in the faith, the full faith that a good process leads to good outcomes over time.

Matt:	I think that's great advice and that's something that I've struggled with a lot, is kind of how to reconcile that or how to deal with the challenge of getting whether it's accurate feedback or whatever else it might be in systems where there's a very fuzzy relationship between skill and outcome.

Michael:	Exactly.

Matt:	So, you've touched on this a little bit, but if you had to kind of distill it, what would one piece of homework be that you would give to the listeners of this episode?

Michael:	Read. [Laughs] Read is probably the main thing, is to... And I actually say that I think working with people like you or following people like you is a great place to help curate some of this stuff, but I think it probably helps to have some thoughtful people. Shane Parrish, you mentioned, was fantastic.

Matt:	He's great.

Michael:	And Shane's another guy who can help you curate that stuff. But I think starting to just...making sure that you commit a substantial percent of your day to learning, continual learning, and, again, being diverse in what you're reading and thinking about; and forcing yourself, compelling yourself to have the stance of being actively open-minded, so making sure that you're considering different points of view, you're exposing yourself to different types of people. So, that maybe not. That's maybe a tall order, but, to me, that would be the first thing I would say. And, you know, I do find a lot of people struggle to find time--or at least they perceive they struggle to find time--to read, and the main thing I would just say is that life is about tradeoffs. So, the question is: Are there things that you're doing today in your moment to moment that you could trade off, that you could do less of, that would allow you to do more reading? Because I do think the return on investment is really, really... The return on time and the return on investment is really high for reading.

Matt:	You know, there's a really funny study that Zig Ziglar talks about in some of his old speeches. And I think the study was in the '50s or '60s, but they basically looked at...they looked at a factory and they started with everybody from the factory workers up to the line managers, up to the office managers, up to the president, and they looked at how many hours a week they each spent watching TV. And there was sort of a relationship where, you know, it's like the factory worker spent 20 hours a week watching TV, all the way up to where the president spent half an hour a week watching TV or something. So, that's a great point, is that there's always a way to find time to read if you make it a priority.

Michael:	That's right. Exactly. And I love that. And, again, it's maybe not everybody's cup of tea, but for people who are probably listening to this, it is going to be something that they'll find interesting and I would just jump in. And I would also encourage... Especially for young people it's a great thing to get going on. When you can work it into your habits when you're young, it's just a huge leg up through the years, for sure.

Matt:	I mean, obviously you're a very active reader. Do you have any kind of methodology that you use to keep track of all of your kind of book notes or to keep...to sort of categorize everything that you've read and all the knowledge that you've accumulated?

Michael:	[Laughs] So, Matt, I wish I had a good answer to this question. The answer is no, not so much. But I guess I...

Matt:	I struggle with that, too. That's why I'm asking -- for myself, in this case.

Michael:	[Laughs] But I benefit from a couple things, which are sort of offshoots of the way my career works. So, I have the fortune of being able to write a fair bit for my job and not just book stuff or just day-to-day stuff, and so that allows me to weave in a lot of the stuff that I read and implement it, and I think teaching and writing are two really powerful mechanisms to help consolidate thinking and consolidate ideas. So, that helps a lot. And, beyond that, it's just... Now, a lot of it is cumulative, right? So, it's just trying to make sure that whatever I'm reading clicks into place. I mentioned this Anders Ericsson book and, you know, I've been reading about... I think I have probably a half dozen books or more on expertise. Many of them were edited by Anders Ericsson. So, that was just adding onto something that I had a little bit of a foundation in. So, yeah, there's not much method to my madness, but I'm not sure that... Yeah, I'm not sure... I think just jumping in is probably the first and foremost thing to do.

Matt:	Where can people find you and some of your works online?

Michael:	So, probably the easiest thing to do is go to michaelmauboussin.com. So, that's a website that mostly highlights the books that you mentioned at the outset. The Success Equation, our skill lookbook, also has its own website, which is success-equation.com. Success-equation.com is also kind of fun because there are some interesting little simulations that you can play around with, including the two jar model you talked about. There's also some fun stuff on the Colonel Blotto game, which is a game theory model, and a little mind reader algorithm. So, there are some fun things to do there as well. And then it's harder... My professional writing is difficult to get access to through formal channels, but if you've got some fingers in Google, you can tend to find a lot of the stuff on there. So, I would just google it. [Laughs]

Matt:	And I think valuewalk.com has a great list of a lot of your...a lot of your pieces.

Michael:	Yeah. So, ValueWalk's a good example. Yeah, exactly. And Hurricane Capital's done a great job. So, a couple of these sites, those guys do a nice job of recapturing a lot of the stuff we do.

Matt:	Well, Michael, thank you so much for being on The Science of Success. It's been great to have you and it's been an enlightening conversation.

Michael:	Matt, it's been my pleasure the whole time, so thank you for having me.

How To Stop Living Your Life On Autopilot, Take Control, and Build a Toolbox of Mental Models to Understand Reality with Farnam Street’s Shane Parrish

Do you feel like your life is on auto-pilot? Do you want to take control and build a better and deeper understanding of reality? In this episode we discuss mental models, cognitive biases, go deep on decision-making and how to improve and build a smarter decision-making framework and we look at a number of key mental models that you can add to your mental toolbox.

If you want to dramatically improve your decision making with a few short steps - listen to this episode! 

Shane Parrish is the founder and author of the Farnam Street blog, which has been featured in Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, and much more, its one of my personal favorite blogs and an incredible resource dedicated to making you smarter every day by mastering the best of what other’s have already figured out.

We discuss the following topics:
-Why you should focus on mastering things that change slowly or don’t change at all
-Why reading “pop” books and news doesn’t make you smarter
-How to pattern interrupt yourself when you get focused on the wrong things
-What “mental models” are and how you can use them to your advantage
-Why you should focus on your “circle of competence"
-How to reduce your blindspots and make better decisions
-Simple steps you can take right now to improve your decision-making
-How to think about the world like Charlie Munger
-How you can avoid becoming “a man with a hammer"
-Why you should focus on avoiding stupidity instead of trying to be smart
-Why its so important that you should keep a decision journal (how to do it)
-And much more! 

Learn more and visit Shane at https://www.farnamstreetblog.com/

Thank you so much for listening!

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Shane Parrish is the founder and author of the Farnam Street blog, which has been featured in Forbes, the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, and much more. It's one of my personal favorite blogs and an incredible resource dedicated to making you smarter every day by mastering the best of what others have already figured out. Shane, welcome to The Science of Success.

Shane:	Thanks for having me, Matt. I'm excited to be on.

Matt:	We're super excited to have you on here. So, for listeners who might not be familiar, tell us a little bit about what is Farnam Street and what do you talk about on the blog.

Shane:	Oh, there's so many ways to describe it, but a friend of mine put it best when they said it was an online intellectual hub for people who are rediscovering their curiosity and want to be better, in a non-self help-y way, but want to be better at solving problems, removing blind spots, exploring life. I think that about encapsulates the blog. We talk about everything from art and philosophy to the science of decision making to what it means to live a meaningful life to what it means to be a good friend, and how you can go about doing that and how you can learn from other people, and not only learn from other people but learn from their mistakes. I'm very open about some of the mistakes that I've made about being a good friend, and some of the decisions I've made have factored into how we think about decision making. So, I think that it's just an online intellectual resource for people who are consistently looking to gain an edge over somebody else.

Matt:	And how did you initially become interested in this subject?

Shane:	Oh, it started back with my MBA, and it wasn't really anything that I thought would turn into what it has become today. Originally, when I started my MBA, I was focused on doing my homework and passing and all of this stuff and getting good grades, and all of a sudden it became pretty apparent to me that a lot of the schools—and I won't mention names—have become check cashing institutes, where somebody, usually a corporate sponsor, sponsors an employees to go get an MBA, and the schools have a large incentive to allow those people to get MBAs. So, what happens in between is almost irrelevant, as long as those people get MBAs and the school gets a big check. The learning became secondary, and so I took it upon myself originally to start learning on my own, and then this is the manifestation of that. Like I said, it was never intended to be what it is today. It's a lot of luck, a lot of happenstance, a passionate group of 80,000 readers, and it's kind of taken off from there.

Matt:	So, kind of the tagline of the subheading for the blog is Mastering the Best of What Other People Have Figured out.

Shane:	Yeah. I mean, I'm not smart enough to figure out everything myself, so how do we learn? We learn a lot through reading. We learn a lot through experience. But there's only so many things that I can experience in life, so I want to try to learn from mistakes of others, the epiphanies of others, the insights of others, and that'll give me kind of a cumulative advantage over a long period of time, in terms of the knowledge that I can accumulate and how I apply that to problems.

Matt:	You know, that's an interesting... When you say cumulative knowledge, I've heard an analogy before that it's almost like compound interest. You know, when you start to read, you kind of build this knowledge base and this framework that you can continually sort of layer knew knowledge into. It's like, someone can't just read two or three books that you read recently and catch up to where you were before.

Shane:	Yeah, definitely, and it depends on what you're learning and what you're reading, right? I mean, all of that factors in. There's almost a half life to knowledge, and you want to learn if you're going to apply yourself, and you have an opportunity cost to your time. You want to start learning things that either change slowly over time or don't change at all. Unless you're in a niche field where you have to keep up with the latest neuroscience or research in a particular field, it makes more sense to apply yourself broadly to things that change slowly over time, and then use those tools to reduce your blind spots when making decisions, when connecting new things for creativity and innovation and solving problems, and then also for how to live a meaningful life.

Matt:	That's a great point. The idea of mastering or focusing on things that change slowly or don't change at all. What would you say are some kind of types of knowledge that would fall into that category?

Shane:	Well, I mean, if you look back in history, we have this big bucket of time, right? We have psychology, which everybody thinks is this great knowledge to have, but it's fairly recent that we've discovered these heuristics and biases. But physics has been around for a long time and chemistry's been around for a long time, and these laws don't change much over time. I mean, our heuristics and biases are important to understand, but you also want to merge them with other ideas. And I think that where people go astray is when you go to the bookstore and you pick up the bestselling book, and we have every incentive to pick up... I call them pop psychology books, but the pop psychology book of the day, because we feel educated, we feel like we're learning something, we feel like we're moving forward, and it's on a subject that's usually topical, that's in the news, and then what happens inevitably over time is those books disappear and the study either gets disproven or there's contrary evidence. It doesn't end up being knowledge, so you end up spending your time, whether you believe it or not, you spend your time entertaining yourself. And I think it's great to entertain yourself. You just need to be aware of when you're reading for entertainment, when you're reading for knowledge, when you're reading for information, and the way that you approach those subjects should differ. And your goals, in terms of how you get better throughout your career or what you want to do is also... will lead you to different sources of information. 

Matt:	I love the idea of focusing on kind of going back to the hard sciences, and that's something that someone who I know you're a big fan of and I'm a big fan of, Charlie Munger, talks about a lot. Kind of, you know, focusing or thinking about biology, physics, really those core fundamentals, and then branching out more and more into kind of the things that are built on top of that.

Shane:	Yeah. Munger is the source of a lot of inspiration for me, in terms of just the way that he approaches problems, and when you think about the world, it is multi-disciplinary. So, if you don't understand the big ideas from other disciplines, how can you synthesize reality? How can you remove your blind spots and how can you gain an edge or make better decisions that other people miss if you don't understand those big ideas from different disciplines? And these ideas are understood at different levels and you hone them over time. It's not something that you just conceptually grab. You write a chapter on physics one night and you understand gravity. It's something that you develop over a long period of time, and you hone those ideas. And I think that when you encounter new information, you start mapping it to what you already know, and this is where Munger's concept of the latticework of mental models comes in, where you start saying, "Oh..." You start seeing people make decision making errors and you can say, oh, that's confirmation bias, oh, that's anchoring bias. That's great. It gives you insight. But those are heuristics. Those are great. But it also gives you insight into, oh, well, they're operating outside their circle of competence. I'm operating in a complex adapted system. There's supply and demand effects here, and then when you kind of go through this mental list of models that you have in your head from other disciplines, including ecology, investing business, heuristics in terms of psychology and mathematics, statistics, chemistry, physics, you can usually gather in your mind mentally the variables that will control the situation. Right? Momentum is an incredible variable that people underestimate a lot of the time. That's a concept from physics. Statistics, in terms of sample size and distribution and mean and medium, and understanding the difference between those things enables you to make better decisions, and it enables you... More importantly, it enables you to reduce your blind spots, which I guess, in the end, is how we make better decisions. We all have a certain aperture onto the world, and that aperture is not a 360 degree, almost holographic view of what the problem is. But by reducing our blind spots, we come to a more complete knowledge of the situation, and that knowledge enables us to make better decisions, avoid stupidity, which is also an important outcome, and then go forward. 

Matt:	So, backing up slightly, can you kind of define or dig in a little bit more on the concept of mental models? It's something that we've mentioned briefly on the podcast, but some listeners may not be familiar with it.

Shane:	So, in my mind, I mean, there's two types of mental models. There's the psychological mental models, which are how we deceive ourselves, and those would be kind of like the heuristics that are popular today. There's availability. There's confirmation bias. There's anchoring bias, hindsight, overconfidence, and so on and so forth. And then there's kind of like the time simulations, and these are also heuristics, which are important to understand in some senses, right, where there's gravity. If I drop a pen, I know what's going to happen, but I'm simulating time. So, understanding that and understanding feedback loops and redundancies and margin of safety and the prisoner's dilemma and understanding how these things play out over time enables us to fast forward through time and see the most probably outcome when we're making a decision. Doesn't mean it's a guaranteed outcome. I mean, there are some things that are pretty guaranteed, like gravity, but it gives us a better aperture into the problem that we're trying to solve and also enables us to recognize intuitively that there's other outcomes that are maybe less probably but still possible. 

Matt:	So, can you think of an example of applying some of these mental models in a challenge or problem that you've faced recently?

Shane:	Well, one of the mental models that we use a lot if circle of competence, and circle of competence enables you to, just knowing where you're competent and where you incompetent enables you to make a better decision. I'll give you a kind of high level overview of how that works. If you're accurate in your circle of competence and you keep, say, a decision journal or something like that, you'll be able to hone that over time and you'll be like, well, when this type of decision comes up, like an investment decision in an airline company, I have a really high batting average. I would say that's within my circle of competence. But we all can't sit back like Charlie Munger or Warren Buffet and basically for the fat pitch that's within our circle of competence. Most of us have this pragmatic reality where we have to make decisions outside of our circle of competence. But if you recognize that you're outside of your circle of competence, you approach the decision in a different way. What I mean by that is now you start, instead of becoming overconfident, you start recognizing that other people's opinions may be valuable. Instead of thinking that you have all the information, you start seeking disconfirming evidence to the belief that you hold because you know you're not operating within the circle of competence. So, just a knowledge of a circle of competence and where you make good decisions and where that boundary is enables you to proceed in an area outside of your circle of competence and still make better decisions than you would have otherwise.

Matt:	And in that example, circle of competence is essentially one quote-unquote "mental model" in the toolbox, right? The goal is essentially to build a toolbox of tens, if not hundreds, of potential models that you have kind of deeply internalized in a way that it's almost intuitive, so that when you encounter a problem, you can naturally kind of pluck the four or five most appropriate models for understanding that particular situation.

Shane:	So, I think about it like you're a craftsman, right, and you show up to the job, and if you have a hammer, there's a limited set of problems you can solve. There's a limited amount of creativity that you can have with raw materials. The more tools you have, and the tools and the knowledge industry happen to be sometimes mental models, and sometimes they're very niche, you don't always need to be a broad, generalist thinker. Oftentimes, the most rewarding professions, like neurosurgery or lawyers, tend to be very niche in terms of how they think about the world and the problems that they try to solve. The rest of us have to operate in a lot of ambiguity in the sense of, we're solving problems that may not be as narrowly defined. We may not be in such a niche where we studied it for 15 or 16 years and we have to get on this treadmill to kind of keep up with it, but we're solving general business problems, and then the problem becomes how do you solve those problems better? How do I become better at my job? How do I become more valuable as an employee, as a knowledge worker? And I think the answer to that is acquiring more tools to solve different problems, but, more importantly, by solving different problems, you're often avoiding different problems. We teach a course on productivity, and one of the biggest sources of productivity that really not a lot of people think about and is very counter-intuitive is that the best way to be more productive is actually to make better decisions, because when you think about how most of us spend our days, we're spending so much time just fixing mistakes and solving problems that we've created by rushing our decisions, by not thinking about them, by not doing something that we could have done to change the outcome. So, the best way to get free time is to make better initial decisions. And when you think about that, it makes a lot of sense, but most people don't frame it that way. So, if you want to start making better decisions, one of the best ways to go about that is to understand the problem, and one of the best ways to understand the problem and understand reality is to be able to synthesize it. You want to be able to look at the problem from a three dimensional point of view. And if reality isn't multi-disciplinary, then I don't know what it is.

Matt:	And when you say reality is multi-disciplinary, can you elaborate on that so that listeners who might not be as familiar with Munger and his conception of worldly wisdom know what you're talking about?

Shane:	Yeah. I think you can't just look at one background. Like, if you have a psychology degree, the world isn't only psychology, right? It's also physics. It's also ma. It's biology. All of these things factor into most of the problems that we look at, and our goal, as a decision maker in an organization, not only do we want to make more effective decisions, we want to recognize when we're making decisions outside of our circle of competence, or that multiple disciplines might factor into. Psychology's great in terms of corporate decision making, but it may underplay supply and demand. It may underplay switching costs. If you don't have a grasp of these concepts and you don't have an intuitive mature about how to handle them or how to structure them in your mind, then you become what Munger says is the one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest. You're handicapped in life. And then people will run circles around you, and that may be fine and that may not be fine, and that all depends on your makeup and what you kind of want to achieve and how you want to live your life.

Matt:	And I think in many ways, economics is a field that's often criticized for failing to understand or take into account the implications of other disciplines, with the example I know... I think there's a psychology book where they talk about the difference between econs and people, where it's what an economist would say how someone would behave and how they actually behave in the real world.

Shane:	Yeah. I don't think I know enough about the discipline of economics on that level to comment on what the economists think. I think there are economists out there who think in a very multi-disciplinary manner. Greg Mankiw from Harvard, I think, would be one of those people who think that way, and Munger has pointed out that his textbook thinks about economic problems in a multi-disciplinary way. I think his criticism was he doesn't actually point out that he's thinking about them in a multi-disciplinary way, and I think there's a lot of lessons that the rest of us, especially those of us who operate in mid- to large-sized corporations, can learn from business, about the time value of money and investment returns and marginal costs, and most importantly, probably, opportunity costs, which is a lesson that all of us can learn in the sense of you life one life and you can trade time for money and that's fine, and you can also trade money for time, and Buffet has a great quote where he said the rich... I forget the exact words, but the rich are always trading money for time, whereas the poor are trading time for money. And when we think about that, that comes down to opportunity cost, and most of us... Say, for example, you live in the suburbs or you live somewhere where you have a long commute. Most of us view that as a cheaper way to live. But do we factor in—and the important question is, do you think about—the time it takes to commute? Do you think about the two, maybe the two and a half hours a day you're spending in the car, and how do you value that time? And when you start factoring that in, it kind of changes the dynamics of what you're thinking about in terms of cost and value. Example would be reading. If you're reading something, you're not reading something else. So, if you're reading Gawker, whatever, Buzzfeed... I don't even follow most of the media today, but if you're reading the latest news, that's great. It's keeping you up to date on current events but it means you're not reading something that's enduring that doesn't change. So, there is an opportunity cost to everything we do. If you go to lunch with a friend, maybe you value that a lot, which I do, personally, and if you sit and do nothing but read the newspaper, you value that, and it becomes just knowing what's valuable to you and knowing how it helps you achieve the goals that you're trying to achieve or how it entertains you or gives you some sort of down time, which is also an important cost. But there is an opportunity cost to everything, and I think people underestimate how important that concept is to grasp, right. While you're watching Netflix, you're not doing something else. And if somebody else is doing something else that makes them better, more valuable, or more knowledgeable, eventually, over time, you're going to lose the edge that you have. And I think that's important to realize.

Matt:	I definitely have the same sort of perspective about most news, most current events. I barely read any sort of news sources. Mostly what I read are blogs like Farnam Street or things that really talk much more deeply about, to use the phrase that you use, things that don't change over time, right? You know, you can fill your head with a bunch of news. Six months later, most of that stuff is irrelevant. Whereas if you fill your head with these mental models...

Shane:	When you think about how we consume information, most people—and I'm generalizing here—are consuming articles, like ten ways to get promoted at work or whatever the clickbait headline of the day is. And what's really funny is I've talked to some of my friends who are like this, and they love it. They do it for entertainment. That's great. But they're often, like, "You know what's really interesting is I click on the same article two days in a row and it's just got a different headline, but I don't really recognize that I'm reading the same article until the last paragraph, when something kind of jumps out at me." So, they're going through these 800 to 1,500 word articles and they're not actually remembering that they read it yesterday. So, what are they doing? I mean, that's just a form of entertainment at that point. And then anybody who's promising the world is not going to deliver that. There's now four steps you can take to guarantee your employment. There's no six ways to negotiate with your boss to get a raise. I mean, there's tips and there's tricks and there's probability involved, in terms of, well, if you employ this, and I know one person who teaches about how to get a raise at work, and one of the main factors that he's giving people is the courage to ask for a raise. But he's not actually giving them a tool that they develop, right? He's basically saying you need to ask for a raise, and a lot of them get a raise when they go and ask for a raise. And that's fine, but what is he teaching them, long-term? Maybe it's self-sufficiency and maybe it's that I can ask for things I want. We want to teach people things that don't change over time that apply to a wide variety of problems, from everything from innovation to decision making. I mean, we factor into corporate mergers and acquisitions. We can set it in SEC filings. There's a whole bunch of stuff that we want Farnam Street to be, but it really boils down to giving you more tools that you can use over a year, over two years, over three years that enable you to be better at whatever it is you want to be better at, and part of that is just recognizing when you're reading things for entertainment or information and when you're reading things for knowledge, and when you're reading things for knowledge, you want to slow down. When you're reading things for entertainment, you might want to speed up. But it's not to say that one is better than the other. I don't think we're making that decision for people. We're just giving them an alternative. 

Matt:	You know, it's funny you mentioned the story about somebody reading the same article and not realizing it. One of the things that we talk a lot about on the podcast and that I'm a big fan of is meditation, and it may not be for everyone, but one of the beautiful things about meditation is that it kind of gives you that inner dialogue to sort of check your thoughts and be like, hey, what's happening, right? So, if you start... Sometimes I'll get sucked into a loop of reading a bunch of stuff on Reddit or something like that, and then my mind will kick and be like, what are you doing? Pull out of this dopamine loop. And I'll pull out and be like, all right, I gotta stop doing that.

Shane:	Yeah, but that comes back to a feedback loop, which is also an important concept from engineering, right. So, the mental model is that you've created this either intentional or unintentional feedback loop that enables you when you go astray or do something you're not wanting to be doing to just check in and be present, right? We all make decisions. It's whether we make them consciously or unconsciously, and a lot of us just spend that time, I would say, unconsciously, which is fine. But you've enabled yourself to kind of be like, oh, is this how I want to spend my time? And that feedback loop enables you to make different decisions about consuming information. It might mean that you go back to Reddit and you start reading more, and it might mean that you're like, what the hell am I doing? I want to do something else and I want to spend my time differently. But just that in and of itself, that feedback loop, that mechanism to kind of switch from unconscious to conscious is one of the most incredibly valuable things you can have. And I would say meditation probably is the foundation for much of what I do. I don't meditate every day, but I do meditate on a regular basis, and it enables me to structure my time better and it enables me to clear my mind and have moments in my mind that are device-free, that are quiet, that are calm, that are soothing, and it's made me respond to situations in a different manner than I would have in the past, where I might have made more anxiety or stress about a certain situation. Now it's enabled me, I would say, to become more stoic about it and just accept the world for the way that it is, instead of pushing back against things that I think are unfair or unjust and just accepting that that's the way it is, and that is unproductive energy and my mind would get clouded with some of the stuff like that, before I started meditating, before I started yoga, and now it's become a lot more clear in terms of the path that works for me.

Matt:	It's funny that you mentioned stoicism, because we have a whole episode about the idea of accepting reality. The same concept of, it doesn't matter if it's fair, it doesn't matter if it's just. It's all about accept things the way they are so that you can move beyond them. 

Shane:	Yeah. I mean, Joseph Tussman has this amazing quote, and I think it becomes about this. He says, "What the pupil must learn if he learns anything at all is that the world will do most of the work for you, provided you cooperate with it by identifying how it really works and then aligning with those realities. If we do not let the world teach us, it teaches us a lesson." And I think that's one of the most profound things I've come across in a long time, and I think that enables us to think about, am I confronting the world or am I accepting it? And if I'm accepting how it works, that's a bit of a feedback loop into checking what I think and checking my approach to life, and that feedback loop over a long period of time should compound and enable us to better align with reality. It's not something like... You don't go to bed Thursday night and wake up Friday morning and be like, I'm going to align myself with the world. You just start opening your eyes to how the world really works, how it operates, the different outcomes, and understanding that outcomes are not necessarily guaranteed and they're a function of probability, and we all have periods of bad luck, and then you enable that over time to slowly learn to roll with the punches.

Matt:	It's amazing that once you've kind of gone down the road of internalizing and really starting to understand many of these different mental models, it's almost like, you know, I'm thinking about... I was in a meeting last week in kind of a sales meeting, and it's amazing how I can just immediately see it's like they're using this bias and they're doing this thing, and it's like you start to kind of build this framework where you can subconsciously just capture that stuff.

Shane:	Yeah, totally. And I mean, the flip side to that is biases are biases for a reason. I mean, they work most of the time. They're heuristics because they work 99% of the time. Our goal is to kind of recognize when they're leading us astray, which is why there's frameworks for decision making that enable you to just check and balance that. One of the questions that you should ask yourself is where am I leading myself astray, where am I... I'd be fooling myself. And that's when you kind of check your biases and your heuristics yourself and start thinking about, oh, well, it's a really small sample size. Should I be basing a $500 million merger on two years of track record from this other person? And then just enabling those questions usually generates a better outcome, but not always, right. I mean, you really have to think about this stuff. And when you think about how we structure our days, how we structure our time, most people don't take the time to make good decisions. And what I mean by that is they're not making a conscious choice to make bad decisions. So, just setting themselves up for failure. Think about the... Generalizing again. Think about the modern office worker. They work... Let's say for the sake of argument, they work nine to five. They show up. They've got to drop off the kids first. It's a hectic morning. They get in a little later than they want. It's 8:35. They open up their email. They have a nine o'clock meeting but they've got to go through 30 emails before then, because some people have shown up earlier and they've redirected their time, and then they realize that it's 8:55 and they have a nine o'clock meeting, and they're supposed to make a decision on something, so they pull up the document that's the briefing on the decision they're supposed to make, and they have five minutes. So, what do they do? They read the executive summary and they go to the meeting and they base their decision on the executive summary, which most times will work. It's another kind of heuristic, right? But often it leads us astray, because we don't do the work behind the scenes to understand the decision to understand the dynamics of the problem, to understand things. So, one of the other ways that you can increase productivity, and I guess it leads into making better decisions, is to schedule time to think about the decision. I mean, that's very counter-intuitive. We mention it in our productivity course, which is bewaymoreproductive.com, but it's incredible to me the amount of people who show up to work and just let email dictate their day. And they rely on, I guess, their wits or their spur of the moment judgment to make decisions. And, you know, 90% of the time that's going to work for you, but the 10% of the time it doesn't work for you is going to consume most of your time going forward.

Matt:	So, for somebody who's listening right now, what would you say are some concrete things they might be able to do to kind of immediately start improving their ability to make smarter decisions?

Shane:	Well, I think one of the things that you can do is, if you're unsure of the path forward, is to invert the problem, right. And to invert the problem means think about what you want to avoid and if you're avoiding those outcomes, you've already come to a better conclusion than you would probably otherwise have. But that's not the best way to make better decisions. I mean, the best way to make decisions is really to understand the problem and understand the dynamics, and part of that is recognizing when you're operating within your circle of competence and when you're not. And if you're the head of an organization, then it's understanding how people learn from each other. You might have... Say you have 100 people in your organization. Somebody's got a circle of competence in X. Somebody's got a circle of competence in Y. Often, the way that we facilitate decision making is in a way that X doesn't learn from Y and Y doesn't learn from X. But eventually, X or Y quits and retires and then the other has to make a decision. But they haven't learned. Even though they worked with the same person for ten or 15 years, they haven't actually learned how they structure decisions, how they think about the variables that govern the decision, what the range of outcomes could be, and how to hone that attention. This becomes really fascinating to me, because I know a lot of investors who, you know, they read everything about a company, which I get. I mean, it makes a lot of sense. But when you really know the variables that you're looking for, you're able to filter the information a lot quicker. When you understand the situation, you know, they could put out 6,000 pages of press releases and documents a year. You don't necessarily need to read every word of it. What you want to look for is, do the variables that I know; what are they; what are they saying; are they indicating that we're on the right track; if yes, all things are probably good. And yeah, you want to see disconfirming evidence. Most of us consume media. This is another interesting and possibly important point about how we consume media. We consume things that tend to reaffirm what we already think instead of consuming things that disconfirm what we think, and if you go back to Charles Darwin, he wasn't... He had this amazing discovery, which is probably some degree of luck and some degree of him being able to disprove himself. So, one of the tools or tricks that he had in his toolkit was, every time something disagreed with him, instead of glossing over it, he paid attention to it. And think about the way that we consume media today. We don't consume media like Charles Darwin. We consume media like, oh, well, if I'm a pro-Trump supporter I'm going to read pro-Trump articles. If I'm a pro-Hillary supporter, I tend to be inundated with pro-Hillary articles or anti-Trump articles, which is really just reinforcing my view. What we really want to do is slow down and come across things that, oh, well, I thought these five variables matter, but this person's saying a different variable matters. Why does that matter? Does it conflict with my view of the world? How does it conflict? Are they right? And then kind of dropping our assumption that we know what's best or dropping the feel-good nature of the media we consume, which is, I agree with you. And, I mean, that feels great. We get probably a dopamine rush from that. We're not alone. Everybody agrees with us. But at the end of the day, as a knowledge worker, you're paid to be right. So, it's not about paid to be feel good. It's paid to be, when am I wrong, recognizing you're wrong, and there's a lot to be said out of scrambling out of problems, right, and recognizing that you're right early and taking course correction, instead of waiting till it's too late. 

Matt:	So, how would somebody listening to this start acquiring a lot of these different tools and mental models?

Shane:	Reading Farnam Street would be a great example of how to go about it, but I mean, most people go back to reality. Most people aren't going to set aside an hour a day and start going through physics textbooks. They're not going to set aside an hour a day of going through biology textbooks. And most people don't have the time, with kids and family and work, to set aside time to learn on a regular basis, consistent basis. So, the way that you go about it is becoming more open-minded, and one of the ways to become more open-minded is just to read things that disagree with you, and not read them in a critical sense of, oh, that's hogwash, but read them in a sense of, oh, that kind of makes sense. Right? I really want to take a different approach, or, oh, I was wrong, and admitting you're wrong. And you don't have to admit to the world you're wrong, but admitting to yourself you're wrong is a big step in terms of getting better at recognizing the keys to the world. And then recognizing how you consume media. Are you consuming it for opinion? Which I think a lot of people do, right. We want to show up at the water cooler, and we live in a culture where you have to have an opinion on every subject, otherwise you're ignorant and uninformed, which is just ridiculous when you think about it. But in that culture, what it creates is this environment where we read these op-eds, or we read this headline, and that becomes our opinion. We haven't read the article. We haven't thought critically about it. We haven't spent the time doing the work, and yet we formed an opinion on it. And I think that that is contrary to the approach that we want to take, where maybe the way to consume most of the mass media we get is for information. I'm not going to let somebody else do the thinking for me, but they can provide me with the statistics that I need to form my own opinion, or they can provide me a structure for an argument that I will then refute or think about critically, but not one that I will regurgitate without having thought about it. It's okay to say I don't know. And then if you really want a fun exercise and you work in an organization of, I would say, more than ten people, I mean, just keep a tally pad in the last page of your notebook about how many times people say, "I don't know." I mean, I've consulted with organizations big and small, and it almost never comes up. There's almost nobody who's ever said, I have no idea. And that can vary between, "How do you think IBM's doing in their cloud computing space?" to "How do we design this part better?" Everybody has an answer to everything, and once you recognize that, you're like, that's not possible. How can that be the case? There's no way you can understand all of these different things. And then when you recognize that in yourself, it enables you to be more open-minded about other people's opinions, but it's important to probe them. Why are they thinking that? What variables matter to them? Why do those variables matter to them? What would cause them to change their mind? And then when you start thinking about it from another person's point of view, it inevitably creeps into your point of view, and then you start thinking about, what would cause me to change my mind? Why do I think what I do? Where does that information come from that I think this? Is it a headline I read on Twitter? Do I really want to base a decision on that? Do I really want to state an opinion on that? And I think that when you start thinking at that level and that, that enables you to move forward in a way that you're more conscious about what you're consuming, how you're consuming it, and the types of decisions and models that you're adding to your life.

Matt:	Going back to the comment you made about how few people say "I don't know", I think it's something that Munger touches on, kind of the idea... It ties in many ways to overconfidence bias. But the fact that often the most wise or the smartest people are the ones who typically are like, "I don't know," and the least informed, most over-confident person is the one who barges in with a very concrete opinion about XYZ.

Shane:	Yeah, but when you think about how that manifests itself in an organization, often the organizational psychology is the one that promotes the person who has an opinion and is right, versus... It's not because they're right because they've thought about it necessarily. I mean, they could be right just based on odds. They could be right for the wrong reasons. And the person who says, "I don't know," gets left behind. What I mean by that is saying "I don't know" is an important trait to recognizing and understanding knowledge. That doesn't necessarily make it an important trait to getting promoted, and I think when people start distinguishing, you know, I want to be smarter because I just want to understand the world better and I think that's going to help me live a better life, and that, in and of itself, should, over a long period of time, obviously, aggregate into disproportionate rewards in terms of what you value. Maybe that's promotion. Maybe it's level. Maybe it's quality of life, spending time with your family. And maybe it's other things, and that's fine, and everybody has their own kind of utility value associated with all of this stuff. The flip side is the person who goes in, and let's say it's a coin toss and just says heads four times in a row. Well, they're going to be wrong a lot, but they'll also be right every now and then, and if they get promoted because they're right but for the wrong reasons, you can kind of accept that and it doesn't become this, oh, they're better than I am. It becomes, oh, well, that's just luck, right. They're right for the wrong reasons. That'll eventually catch up to them. And then you also need a feedback loop. Like, when am I right for the wrong reasons and how do I learn from that? And it's that learning and that feedback loop that enables you to compound over time, and most people aren't conscious about learning. They're not conscious about their decisions. They're not conscious about their feedback loop that they employ, so they're not actually getting better at what they're doing. And when you think about driving, driving would be a perfect example. We learn how to drive when we're, you know... It's 16 in Canada. We learn how to drive when we're 16. We probably stopped getting better at driving for all effective purposes when we're, like, 19. And then we spend all this time driving but we're not practicing. We're not getting the feedback we need to be better. We're just kind of recognizing the cues that we've already learned. And I think we do that with decision making. We do it with organizations. We do it with new jobs. We spend maybe the first year, we're getting better at our new job, we're learning about different things, and then all of a sudden we kind of get the hang of it and we stop getting better. We stop the compounding. And when you stop the compounding, that's a really bad thing. What you want to constantly be doing is, like, how can we get better, and challenging yourself. And one of the ways to do that is decision journals and to seek outside feedback. It's to ask people how you can be doing better. It's to ask people to coach you, right. Like, a lot of people have mentors in organizations. How do you think about this? What should I be thinking about? What are the variables that I should be thinking about? How do I structure this? How do I approach this problem? And if you're really open to it and you're not just asking to kind of be a kiss-ass or something like that, then that enables you to get better over time. 

Matt:	There's so many questions I want to ask after that. One of the things that comes to mind immediately, talking about the concept of being right for the wrong reasons, I'm a very avid poker player, and one of the biggest lessons that poker taught me was the difference between winning a hand because you made the right decision or losing a hand even though you made the right decision, and kind of what I think often in poker is called positive expected value thinking, in terms of make the right decision based on the math and then whatever the outcome is, it's irrelevant at that point.

Shane:	Yeah. It's not always going to work for you, but you also need to be able to tally that, right, to check your view of the world. So, if you think I made the right decision but I lost and I should have won 80% of the time, you need some sort of feedback that you're not making that same decision and losing all of the time, right. You need some sort of check-in balance that, yeah, 80% of the time I do win when I make that decision. So, yes, it's a good decision, and not just that you have this comfort in, oh, this is what I believe and it was just bad luck. So, you need to actually go a little bit deeper than kind of thinking that way, and poker would be a great example where the odds are pretty well-known and you can go through that structure, but most of the world isn't as structured. It's not as refined as that. So, it becomes more of a, like, where was I off, where was I wrong, and that becomes a very humbling exercise for people, and that humbling-ness is what often creates... or what often leads them to stop the feedback loop, because there's no CEO who wants to admit that he was right for the wrong reasons or she was right for the wrong reasons. But internally, you need that check-in balance in terms of getting better over time, so that you can calibrate yourself, calibrate your circle of competence, and calibrate your decisions and better understand how the world works. It's the only way I know of to improve your ability to make decisions. 

Matt:	So, going back to the driving example that you used earlier, one of the things that I'm fascinated with and I know you've talked about is the concept of deliberate practice and how you can drive for thousands of hours and never improve versus if you sort of concentrate and do deliberate practice, you can grow and achieve and become better.

Shane:	Yeah. I mean, deliberate practice is so important, right. It's about getting better at little things and seeking feedback that's usually immediate, in terms of how you're getting better. One of the best ways to do that—I mean, again, I'll apply it generically to people who work in an organization—is don't just send the report your boss asked you for, but seek feedback and specific feedback, and kind of corner them and be like, "Hey, where could I have done better? Where did I do wrong?" And if they can't give you that feedback, then you're never going to get better at the job that you're in, and if you can get that feedback, it doesn't necessarily make you better at your job, but it makes you better in your boss's eyes. So, it's also filtering that feedback and going, oh, this is what he or she wants versus how I think the world works, but you also want to calibrate that. Why does he or she want that? How do I get better at doing what I'm doing every day? How do I get better at sending emails? I mean, how many of us, just for an example, send an email to schedule an event or a meeting with somebody or a coffee, and we need 30 emails to do that, and we need 30 emails all the time to do that. Why is that? Well, part of the reason is we don't do something simple like, "Hey, here's some proposed dates. Do any of these work for you?" in the first message. Usually, that reduces the number of emails that you need to do that. Well, that's a great feedback mechanism, in terms of getting better. And if you deliberately try different things when you're proposing something that you do commonly throughout the day, like, ten or 20 times, then you can start to get feedback on what works and what doesn't work, and you're almost kind of AB testing things. It's like, it's almost [INAUDIBLE 00:45:58], right. Like, here's my best idea today, but does this other idea work? Does it change my understanding of how people will respond to this? Does it enable me to get to the outcome I want quicker and better and in a win-win way? And, if yes, then let's adopt that. And if not, then I can revert to my old one. 

Matt:	I think feedback is such an important idea, and one of the ways that people often get tripped up—and, I mean, again, this loops back into a lot of the different cognitive biases—is ego, right, and kind of denying reality or getting caught up in their egos.

Shane:	Oh, man. Yeah. I mean, we all have egos. That's incredibly important to recognize. I mean, I don't know a person in the world who doesn't have some sort of ego, especially wrapped up in their opinion on a controversial subject. Adapting to that reality is incredibly important, and recognizing sometimes it serves you and sometimes it doesn't, and it's the same as mental models, right. Sometimes they work and they serve you and they enable you to make better decisions, and sometimes they're wrong, but often we're just coding things into our head that, oh, well, when this happens, do this. But we're not actually saying, well, here are the reasons this happened. Do they exist in this situation? So, applying that mental model won't necessarily work. Ego can become this incredible enemy of seeking wisdom, and I don't have any good ideas, I guess, for how to avoid that from creeping in. I mean, I know people who are naturally very egotistical. I know people who are very naturally the averse to that, but they both have egos. And they're both sensitive in different ways and they both approach the world in different ways. And I think part of it is, if I was forced to comment on it, would be understanding where you are and meeting the world at that place, and then understanding where you want to be and recognizing the path towards that. And ego can be something as small as, I need to give other people on my team a voice, and I'm not always right, and part of that comes back to calibration and feedback loops, and that helps check your ego and helps humble you, in a way, and part of that comes back to saying, sometimes I do need to be the egotistical leader, and by egotistical I mean not that you think you're right, but projecting confidence, and by projecting a path forward. In uncertainty, people will naturally gravitate towards people who take risks, who seem to know what to do, and your job is to not only grasp those risks and those situations and those opportunities and move forward and galvanize your team and kind of push forward, but it's to recognize that you may be wrong. Even if you're not projecting that, it's to recognize that maybe it's wrong, but here's how I will know I'm wrong and here's how I will course correct if I am wrong. You don't necessarily have to tell your team that, but you have to recognize it internally if you want to be the best version of yourself. 

Matt:	So, one of the tools you touched on earlier was the idea of a decision journal. Can you explain that a little bit and sort of demonstrate or talk about how maybe you use that, or how someone listening could potentially use a decision journal to help improve their decision making?

Shane:	Most people make decisions and they don't get better at making those decisions, and so when you think of an organization, you think about how they're going to go about making decisions. They'll make the same decisions. They'll make them by committee. Nobody's learning from anybody else. Nobody's really accountable for the decision, and nobody's getting better, right. So, you end up reaping... And when people think about, well, why do we keep making the same mistake over and over again? That would be one of the reasons. Nobody wants to be humbled, right. So, nobody really wants to keep an accurate decision journal, and by decision journal... We have a conference called Rethink Decision Making, and we talk about this extensively in there. But what you really want to catalogue, and we've created physical decision journals for participants at our conferences, what we go through is individual decisions. So, you can either share them or not, but what you really want to do is start calibrating yourself, and you want to talk about the situation or context of the decision, the problem that you're facing, or what about it is different. Why is it a problem? The variables that you think will govern the situation. So, there's never one. There's usually multiple. The complications or complexity as you see it, why do you have to think about this? What are the factors that you're considering today as you're making the decisions? You want to talk about the alternatives that were considered and why you didn't choose them, right. There's never one path, and I mean, we've kind of nailed into this view of, oh, you know, the corporate PowerPoint presentation. I can't tell you the amount of boardrooms I've been in where it's like you have these three options or these two options, and it becomes a false duality. I mean, there's way more options than that. We just narrowed them down for simplicity. We need to recognize that that simplicity isn't always what we want, and we do want to dive into these other options. And then you want to kind of explain to yourself the range of outcomes that you see possible in the situation. And the reason that you want to do that is often you're going to have an outcome that is something that you don't see. And you want to assign a probability to those outcomes so that you can start to hone your ability to understand yourself, where you make your decisions, where you make bad decisions, and what type of probability you assigned to the different outcomes. Then you want to talk about what you expect to happen. Like, what is the most probably event, or maybe not the most probable, but there's an intervening factor that you think will lead to a different outcome. But you really want to talk about the reasoning behind it. So, you want to get into your own kind of self-dialogue about why you think this would happen, when you think it'll happen, and the variables, again, tying it back to the variables that you think will govern the situation. And then you also want to keep track of things like the time of day you're making the decision, and the mood you're in when you're making the decision, because you're not always going to be happy and you'll probably recognize that most people make better decisions when they're in a certain type of mood, and that mood might vary by the person. But what I've learned through implementing decision journals at various organizations and with hundreds of people is that the time of day often affects the quality of decision that you're making. We tend to... Again, generalizing, but we tend to make better decisions in the morning than in the afternoon, right, and you can use that for decision theory or depletion of cognitive resources or whatever. We tend to be more mentally alert at the front of the day than at the back of the day, so one of the ways that you can take advantage of that is to structure decisions at the beginning of the day, not the end of the day. That simple fact alone will enable you to make an incremental improvement to the quality of decisions that you're doing. And then importantly, it's not about just keeping track of this. You want to review it, right? You want to go back in six months and be like, how did this decision play out? How did I think it was going to play out? How did it actually play out? And what can I learn from this? Do I need to calibrate myself differently? Did I think I was within my circle of competence and clearly I'm not because something way outside of the probability that I expected happened, or do I think that I'm reasonably right but now I can learn or hone my understanding of this situation differently? And when you think about that on an individual level, you start learning a lot, right. You don't want to use vague or ambiguous wording. You don't want to talk in abstractions. You really want to use concrete wording that you can't deceive yourself with later. You don't want to talk about strategies. You want to be specific about what strategy. You want to be specific about what variables. Because that enables you to learn. But when you think about it, learning on an individual basis is great, but the real value to a corporation is when a CEO or a vice president or somebody high up in the organization enables organizational learning, so that I'm not only learning from myself, now I'm learning from you. If I had access to your decision journal, now all of a sudden I don't necessarily need to make the decisions you're making, but if I had to, I bet you it would be a better decision than if I didn't have access to your thoughts and the variables that you thought, and knowing the outcomes that you achieved with those thoughts. And that will enable us slowly, over time, to make better decisions. Now, better decisions alone aren't enough. The world is always changing, so we need to make better decisions on a relative and absolute basis, but we also need to make slightly better decisions than our competition, and if we can do that and we can do it over a long period of time, well, then eventually we're going to own the industry. 

Matt:	I love the concept of handicapping all the probabilities and then coming back and reviewing how accurate was my prediction that this was a 20% likelihood, this was an 80% likelihood.

Shane:	Oh, yeah. That where most people stop doing it, though, right? So, they'll get an outcome. If they get an outcome they thought would happen, and then at, like, 5% of the time, and it's a decision they've made repeatedly over the last six months, like, say, buying a stock, for example. They'll give up, right. Or, if they get outcomes that they didn't expect, they'll give up. Or, if they get the answer right for the wrong reasons, they'll give up. And by give up, I mean they just stop keeping a decision journal, because it becomes humiliating. And when you think about decisions in corporations, one of my favorite things to do when I'm in a corporation and consulting or helping them is to listen to the people involved in the situation and how everything is always right, right? And how they predicted it. You know, if I work with you for a year, I can quickly figure out that you didn't predict that for the right reasons. You got lucky. And then, just understanding when people are right for the right reasons and when people are right for the wrong reasons, and when people have bad outcomes but they're for the right process, that enables you to surround yourself with people who can challenge you, who will help you make better decisions over a long period of time, and those are the people you really want to work for, right?

Matt:	So, changing gears a little bit, what's one kind of piece of homework that you would give to our listeners?

Shane:	Oh, become self-reflection, right. One thing that I work with people a lot on is just take stock of your day. And I don't mean, you know, a typical Saturday or something. I mean, how do you spend your day? How are you matching your energy to the task? Are you reading newspapers in the morning and matching your best time of the day to a task that may be a low value add for you? Newspapers aren't something to avoid. I mean, everybody works in a different industry. They have different constraints. But if reading the newspaper at 6:00 p.m is going to not make a difference, then reading the newspaper at 7:00 a.m., I would advocate that you maybe need to think about why am I reading it at 7:00 a.m. Is that a habit? What is the most productive use of my time at 7:00 a.m. in the morning? I want to be thinking about something deep, something strategic. I want big chunks of time in terms of how I approach that problem. And I think that that enables you to switch out of automatic mode and it enables you to switch into something conscious, and I don't care about what choices people make. Within reason, obviously. I mean, if they're conscious about those choices. But we usually get into this autopilot and that's how we live our lives, and then we wake up at the end and we recognize that, you know, maybe that wasn't the best approach, or maybe that wasn't the approach that I wanted personally, and those are the decisions where we want to take a different path. Being conscious about those decisions and inserting a moment in the day on a regular basis where you just do five minutes of self-reflection. You can call it meditation. You can call it whatever you want. You can go sit on the toilet, but what you really want to do is just think about, like, what did I do today? What could have been better about today? Where did I waste my time? How do I waste less time in the future? Where could I have been more productive? Where should I have invested more of my time, my thinking energy? And then being aware of how these things interact over a long period of time, so also taking that and thinking about, well, I spent my time on X today. Why was I dealing with X? Not, like, how did I deal with X? And what is the path forward? But why is X an issue? Is it because I made a poor decision in the past? Why did I make a poor decision in the past? Does my environment play a role in that? And start asking yourself questions like that. And then just being open to the response about it. I mean, it's not a dialogue with a friend. You don't have to admit you were wrong to anybody else. You just want to be open to yourself in getting better over time so you're spending less time doing stuff like that, more time doing what you want to do. I don't know if that helps.

Matt:	No, that's great. That's super helpful. And I think everybody could take five minutes at the end of their day and kind of reflect on what to place and why.

Shane:	Yeah, but nobody does that. Well, I don't mean nobody, but very few people do that on their own volition, and the people that I've helped start it, we do it in an organized and structured way. They almost always continue, and they say it's one of the most helpful things they've ever done.

Matt:	What are some books or other resources that you'd recommend for people who want to kind of follow up or dig down on some of the topics we've talked about today?

Shane:	I think Peter Bevelin's book Seeking Wisdom is amazing. 

Matt:	One of my favorite books of all time, by the way. Seeking Wisdom.

Shane:	Yeah. Porcelli's Almanac. I mean, we want to get less out of this... and, I mean, I fall into this trap on occasion. Less out of this, I need to read more, and what we want is more about what am I reading and do I understand it and is it worth reading to a level of understanding. I mean, I've met so many people who tell me that they've read Seeking Wisdom or Porcelli's Almanac, but then they do things that would definitely contravene the wisdom in those books. So, reading and understanding are two different things, and we want to apply ourselves to understanding. And if you just read the same book, you know, the people who say... And, I mean, I was one of them back in 2013. I think I read... Or 2014, it was. I read 150 books. I must have started 300. But at the end, I mean, one of the biggest lessons, one of the biggest failings I had, one of the biggest lessons I learned, and this is almost like a big secret, right, is that it's not the number of books you read. I could have read five books over the course of the year and actually improved myself more than reading those 152, because you start losing... When your goal is to read more books, you start losing track of what it is that matters and the understanding that matters and where does that come from. And then reading Porcelli's Almanac, that's not a book you read once and you kind of chuck on a shelf. And reading Seeking Wisdom, you don't read it once and then be like, oh, I got it. It's something that you read, you digest, you try to apply, you read again, you digest, you try to apply. And then through that, you hone your understanding of those ideas, and then you start consuming other information. And you map it and you translate it in your mind to the ideas that you've learned, the structure that you've decided to go for. And I think that, aside from that, I mean, I've moved almost materially to older books. We do a lot fewer newer books than we ever used to, a lot more of the books that have been around a long period of time, because that's usually an indication that they contain some sort of wisdom that's enduring, or they hit on some point that helps us hone our understanding of a topic that is still relevant. Less about the bestsellers, less about the Gawkers, less about the "What is the trend of the day?", more about what changes slowly over time, more about what am I really interested in, more about do I understand my circle of competence, how can I improve that? I think that that is all individual based. There's no ten books I can give everybody to read and they'll walk away satisfied. It's kind of a [INAUDIBLE 01:02:14], right. If you like white wine and I offer a red, that doesn't make a good [INAUDIBLE 01:02:20]. It's all individual-based and customized to you and what you're trying to achieve and where you are.

Matt:	I think... I mean, Seeking Wisdom is probably one of the best books I've ever read, and my copy, I think every single page has multiple notes, underlines, highlights. You know, somebody could probably spend a year just digesting that book, or more, easily. 

Shane:	Oh, totally. I have friend who reread that on a regular basis. You know, honestly, I would say that's a large portion of their success, is that not only do they reread it, but they understand it and they understand the dynamics at play, and then they apply it to life and they become incredibly successful by doing that. 

Matt:	Well, where can people find you online?

Shane:	So, we're at farnhamstreetblog.com. F-A-R-N-A-M Streetblog.com. We do three to four posts a week, covering everything from art and history all the way to philosophy and psychology, and I'm also on Twitter, which is @FarnamStreet. @ F-A-R-N-A-M-S-T-R-E-E-T, and we're on Facebook as well. Or, you can just Google Shane Parrish and Farnam Street crops up as, I think, the number one link on that. And that would be a great way for you to follow along with what we're doing and build your toolkit over time. I would encourage you that if you see an article and you're like, oh, well, I don't agree with this, or I don't want to learn about art, that you give it a week or two. I can't tell you the number of times I've had people go, you know, "A friend of mine sent me your link and I read it for a day and I was like, oh my God, what is this, and then I read it for a week and I was like, oh, this is really interesting, and then I read it for a month and I'm like, oh, I'm addicted to this. I can't actually get away from it. I've started going back and reading all their old posts." Because the topic of the day is not necessarily... I mean, our approach is to give you a broad range of solutions, or tools, if you will, so that you can build better products or solve different problems. Inevitably, we're going to come across something that you don't agree with or that you think is useless, or something you already know. And often, we contradict ourselves, right, and part of that is getting the reader to do the work of understanding that contradiction, and we're not giving you... We're giving you 90% of the solution. We want you to do the 10% on your own. And that 10% is where most of the value comes from, because if I give it to you, you don't actually understand it. It doesn't become part of your life. By you doing the work, then it becomes embedded in what you're doing and how you're approaching things.

Matt:	Well, Shane, this has been a great interview, and I really want to say thank you very much for being on here, and I know the listeners are going to love a lot of the stuff that we talked about today.

Shane:	Thanks, Matt. Really appreciate it. I'm looking forward to it.

Are You Oblivious to the Secret Game Being Played Around You? with Art of Charm Host Jordan Harbinger

You may be oblivious to the secret relationship rules around you - and in this episode with Art of Charm host Jordan Harbinger we dig into what you can do to avoid the biggest mistakes and pitfalls when building relationships with influential people, looking at many different examples and stories.

If you want to take your relationships to the next level - listen to this episode!

Jordan is the co-founder and host of The Art of Charm - one of the top 50 podcasts on iTunes with more than two million downloads per month, he was named by Forbes as one of the 50 best relationship builders anywhere, and Inc Magazine called him the "Charlie Rose of Podcasting.”

We discuss the following topics:
-How you might be oblivious to the secret game being played around you
-The major networking mistakes you’re making
-How to build relationships with influential people
-How you might be sabotaging your relationships
-Why you should focus on providing value to others first
-How to create a scalable way to provide value to your network
-The “double-opt in” tactic
-Why it's a bad idea to ask “how can I help you?"
-And much more!

Thank you so much for listening!

Please SUBSCRIBE and LEAVE US A REVIEW on iTunes! (Click here for instructions how to do that!).  

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Today we have another incredible guest on the show, Jordan Harbinger. Jordan is the co-founder and host of the Art of Charm, one of the top 50 podcasts on iTunes with more than two million downloads per month. He was named by Forbes as one of the 50 best relationship builders anywhere. Ink Magazine called him the Charlie Rose of podcasting. And he's been kidnapped not once but twice while traveling overseas through a war zone. Jordan, welcome to The Science of Success.

Jordan:	Hey. Thanks for having me on, man. I appreciate it.

Matt:	Well, we're super excited to have you on here.

Jordan:	Yeah. I mean, for me, I rarely get a chance to discuss a lot of these topics. I mean, people... Don't get me wrong, I get invited a lot, but it's hard to find shows where I actually can make a little bit of a difference, and I know you have an audience, so I'm excited to take part.

Matt:	So, tell me a little bit about your background and how you became interested in the field of relationship development.

Jordan:	Sure. So, I used to be an attorney on Wall Street, and I got hired by this guy named Dave, who's one of the major partners at this big firm. And I thought, hey, we're lawyers. We bill hours in six minute increments, and Dave was never in the office, and a lot of the other partners were. So, one day he took me out for coffee because H.R. kind of made him do that, and it was really interesting. He told me, "Ask me anything," because he was banging away on his Blackberry, and for me, I thought, all right, this is my chance to really dig in, and he thought I was going to ask him about real estate finance and all that good stuff, but instead I said, "Look. How come we're supposed to bill hours but you're never in the office?" And he kind of put down his Blackberry, and this point I think I'm probably getting fired in front of all these people at this crappy Starbucks in an office building. He said, "Well, look, I bring in a lot of the deals. I have a lot of relationships that the firm needs, and so I am able to kind of write my own ticket on that," and that changed the way that I look at work forever, because for me, I was getting outworked by a lot of people in this firm, simply because there were people there who left their families in India or Russia to take this job, and no matter how much you think you've got the idea that you want to get ahead, you're probably never going to be as hungry as somebody like that. And, in addition, there were really brilliant people there, and as you know, it's hard to make yourself smarter and it's hard to feign interest in a topic that you don't care about. So, there were people that were just somehow passionate about real estate finance and these kinds of deals. So, for me, I thought, I'm never going to be able to motivate like these folks and work as much as these folks, despite good work ethic and habits. And so, I found this sort of secret, hidden path--third path, I should say--to the top, and I had previously thought, okay, you work your way to the top, put in your time, and then you get introduced along the way to all these high level people and you start hanging out and throwing each other deals, and it turns out it kind of happens the other way around. You make the connections first very consciously, or you can wait for it to happen, and for many people it simply never does. And, if you actively, proactively go after this, you're going to have a much easier time, because Dave was indispensible. I mean, he was a dude from Brooklyn with a tan, so he knew something other people did not, and that was that you can write your own ticket. If people need you, of course, you become more valuable. And the way to do that is to not just be another drone working 2,000 hour years, billing 2,000 hour years, working God knows how many hours to get that in your billing docket, but being able to create those relationships and maintain those relationships that get the company work at the firm deals. That's the key, and most people can't do it, because people are willing to work hard. It's a matter of putting in hours. People are willing to study the material. It's a matter of motivation. But developing relationships is a whole different skill set that's a lot harder for a lot of bookish people, and so it makes it harder for people like that, often for people like that to make these connections. So, I figured I had a really good competitive advantage, and I just learned about it right in the beginning of my career, whereas at the Art of Charm, what I'm finding now, since we've been teaching this skill set for the better part of a decade, most people find out they need this skill set somewhere where they're hitting middle to upper management, and they go, oh, wait a minute. I'm not getting promoted because I don't have the connections. I'm not making the connections that other people are making. I'm not getting it done. And that was really interesting for me, because I thought, okay, well, everybody knows this skill set. Everybody knows how to do this. At some point they learn it along the way. But, as I told you, I figured this out early enough, and now I see the guys coming through the AOC boot camp, and some of them are 50 and they're like, "Look, I'm never going to be a partner unless I get this handled. It's just never going to happen."

Matt:	That's a fascinating story. So, what do you think some of the things... Like, why do people struggle with... whether you call it networking or relationship building or whatever it might be?

Jordan:	I think a lot of people don't want to do it, and I don't blame them, because it can be really awful and annoying. And I think also, a lot of people don't have the aptitude for it. It doesn't mean they can't learn it. It just means that it hasn't come by them naturally. Especially smart, high performers. A lot of them deprioritized social skills for their whole life, and then they get in the working world and they're thinking, ha, I win, all you jocks! I'm the guy who knows how to program the computer. I'm the guy who knows how to work the machinery. I'm the guy who worked his butt off in law school or medical school, but then you get to the point where the soft skills matter a lot more. And you go, uh, okay, and then you try to learn it or you try to think about learning it, but the fact is you can't just pack in a lifetime of social skills in a couple of weeks of book reading. So, this is a skill set that's learned in a completely different way than people are used to, and it takes an entirely different path than most of hte people who got to where they are now are used to. There's a book called... I think it's called What Got You Here Won't Get You There. Have you ever heard of this? 

Matt:	Yeah.

Jordan:	And that's a perfect analogy or a perfect way of describing what this phenomenon looks like, because what got you into the Wall Street firm is not necessarily going to get you to the top. What got you into the top medical school or to whatever medical school, it's not necessarily what's going to get you to become chief of surgery. It's two totally different skill sets, and I used to, when I was younger, I would meet guys occasionally who were like, oh, chief of surgery, U of M hospital, and I'm thinking, this guy's like this pretty cool, outgoing, charismatic dude. You must learn how to do that at some point before you become chief of surgery. And the truth is, that guy was probably always outgoing and charismatic and magnetic, and he went to medical school, and then he got promoted way up the ladder because he was a leader and he was able to forge alliances. Most of us, we never learn this stuff, and that's what holds us back eventually. And a lot of folks right now might even be going, well, I don't know about that. If you are ignorant of this, willfully or otherwise, you're simply voluntarily becoming oblivious to the secret game being played around you, and that's what a lot of professionals find out really late in the game.

Matt:	That's great advice. So, I can already hear somebody listening to this saying, "Oh, I'm not that kind of person." Do you think that this is a learnable skill set? Is it trainable?

Jordan:	I know it's trainable, yeah. It absolutely is very trainable, and I know that because I do it every single week at the Art of Charm, and we've seen some results of it. It's not just like, oh, I tell people I can teach them this stuff. I mean, we teach this to not only AOC clients that come in who are in college or in a regular profession, but we've had intelligence agents come through from various countries. We've had special forces come through from the United States and from special air service and other countries in the Commonwealth, and in the five eyes, if you will. We've had a lot of people come in who are already very high performing and we've had people come in who are in need of a little bit of scraping off some of the rust, and we see everybody go back with major, major results. Of course, you can't necessarily get 100% with everybody, but the people who come in and actually want to learn and are willing to do the work after they come in as well as the prep work we give before have huge shifts. The only time we ever see where it's like, ugh, that didn't work out so well for them, is when people come in, they haven't done the prep work, and they're simply not willing to do the follow up, and they kind of expected a magic pill that was going to happen over the five days they were here, and that's unrealistic. So, those people's results are obviously not as good.

Matt:	Changing gears a little bit, one of the things you talk about is the idea of giving value first instead of having sort of a transactional mindset when you think about relationships. Can you extrapolate on that a little bit?

Jordan:	Sure. I think most people--and reasonably so, understandably so--focus on what they can get from other people, and that's why you see a lot of the common networking mistakes, and these mistakes include things like... and we can go over these in depth, as well. Actually, you know, let me back up a little bit. We can illustrate this concept by using networking mistakes, but I want to sort of define it a little better. A lot of people look at what they can get out of an interaction instead of what they can give, and that's reasonable because we're, at the end of the day, trying to survive or thrive or grow our own business or whatever. We're looking out for ourselves, completely, totally human and very rational process of thought. And you end up making a lot of serious mistakes with networking because you fail to think about how this looks from other people's perspectives and you fail to, as another book title states, you fail to dig the well before you're thirsty. So, that leads us to the first mistake or sin of networking, which is not digging the well before you're thirsty. I know a ton of people early on in the Art of Charm, the history of the company, who made the mistake--now retrospectively big mistake--of doing things like... Well, here's a great example, and I won't throw this person under the bus by using their name, but I originally started the show in 2007 and nobody knew what a podcast was, and I didn't really know how to promote things online. I mean, that wasn't something I was good at. I didn't understand how it worked. And so I would text friends and I would post things on people's Facebook walls, like, "Hey, I started this new show. Let me know what you think." And I got a lot of semi-negative feedback from friends, not about the show itself but people saying, "Hey, I haven't talked to you in, like, three months and then you just randomly post this thing on my wall. I wasn't sure if it was spam." And I'm like, "Sorry. I'm in law school and I was working on this side project. Yeah, I do feel bad. I do think about you wand wonder about you," and stuff like that, and they're like, "Oh, cool. Yeah. Let me have a listen to your show and I'll let you know what I think." So, we had a lot of that in the beginning, and I sort of learned that lesson really early on. Like, oh yeah, duh. I'm being really selfish here. But where it really hit me, and where I really started to notice it, wasn't the candid feedback from friends, but when other people did it to me, and I remember reaching out and asking this guy who was my friend, "Hey, would you be interviewed on my podcast? It's really going to be super helpful and I know you like to help people out, or at least I hope you'd like to help people out, and you wrote this book on..." I don't know. It was something to do with sex, I think it was, back in the time, and I thought it would be cool and fun and controversial, and he texted back, "Lose my number. Don't ask me for crap again." And I was like, what the hell? And so, I emailed him an apology and I was like, "Hey, sorry about that," and he was like, "You know, this is something that I get paid for." And I was like, "Oh, wait a minute. I didn't go out of line by asking you to do this. You're just an a-hole who thinks you should be compensated for every time you fart, and that's ridiculous. You should be thankful for the opportunity to speak to an audience." I mean, this is a person who would give lectures to rooms with 12 guys in it. Now, I'm offering... At that time we were new, probably only a few hundred people listening to the show, but when have you ever packed a room with that many people? Never. But, you know, to reply with, like, "Lose my number," that was just a ridiculous... Well, fast forward a few years later. His PR people emailed me a request for him to come on the show, because a lot of people had heard of us and we were... At that point, we had really snowballed into something in our little niche, which, at the time, was dating-focused. And I found the conversation. You know iTunes and iPhones, they just keep everything frigging forever? I just did a search for his name and I did a screenshot, and I wrote, "Here's why I will not have him on the show." And his PR person was like, "Oh my gosh. I don't blame you." And this is a person who works for him, right, who's just like, "I got nothing. If you reconsider, that would be great. Maybe he was stressed out." And I was like, "No, I emailed him about this. He had plenty of time to cool down. And then he replied that he needed to be paid for it." And I go, "So, how much is he..." and I didn't even consider this for real, but I said, "How much is he willing to pay to be on the show?" And the PR person was like, "Let me get back to you." And he did offer to pay to be on the show, and I said, "Nah, we're worth a little bit more than that." I can't remember what it was. He would have had to offer me, like, the price of a car to get on the show at that point. And, you know, looking back, it was kind of a petty thing to do. This was probably six, seven years ago now that I did that. It was a little bit petty and I wouldn't respond in that same way, but I will tell you what. I don't care how enlightened someone is. If you act that way towards them, they're going to probably want to do that. They just might not have done it. I did this when I was probably 27, right. Now I'm 36, so I'd like to think I'm a little bit more mature. But I will tell you that even though I went through and did it back then, there's a lot of people who would think about doing it and would instead just say, "You know what? I'm going to pass for now," or something along those lines. And the reason is, look, you've got to dig your well before you're thirsty. This isn't just about him blowing us off in a rude way earlier. Perhaps a better example are the people that launch a book, and this is something we're all familiar with as thought leaders now, whether you've written a book or whether you're a show host like you are now, Matt, you know those people that launch a book. You haven't heard from this schmo in your years. You've never heard from this person, and then they reach out personally or their PR person reaches out and it's like, "Hey, saw your show on the top of iTunes. Would love to get schmopity-schmope on your show now that her book is launching in September," and you're thinking, who the hell are you and why? What's in it for me? I emailed so-and-so a long time ago and they never replied, or I've never heard of this person. Why are they suddenly reaching out? I mean, I get that they're doing a launch. PR is a fact of life. It's a real thing. But there's not that much value in me having the same guest as 87,000 other freaking podcasts, and this person never reached out to me before. So, the reason I'm doing your show and I'm spending an hour with you is, and I know you've got a great platform that you've just told me about five seconds before we started recording, but I did it because we have mutual connections and you and I had had an exchange before, an email, which was, and I looked at it just recently after I asked you how we knew each other before, oh yeah, this person. This is Matt. Okay, got it. Now all is well, right, because you didn't just email me out of freaking nowhere and go, "Hey, can I have you on my podcast? It's new."

Matt:	Yeah.

Jordan:	We had a previous connection, and, had I said no, I know from watching interactions with you and other mutual friends that you wouldn't be like, "Jordan's such a dick. I'm going to treat him like crap now." You know, it was like, "Oh, I'm just reaching out in order to get something. There's no outcome dependency on this." And that leads to the second networking mistake. So, first of all, that's what we call dig the well before you're thirsty. You have to be out there helping people get what they want, helping people out, creating relationships before there's an agenda on the table, otherwise the default thought that I have is, what do you want from me? whenever you reach out. And that's what I have, no matter what, and that's what most people have. So, if you reach out and I say, "What can I do to help you?" and you go, "Actually, nothing right now, but I saw that you were looking for guests for your show and I happened to be friends with so-and-so. Are they interesting to you?" If I'm like, wow, okay, that's cool. So your whole agenda for this email is to help me? And then later on, you know, maybe you'll need something but maybe not, but it doesn't matter because we're not even talking about that right now? That's digging the well before you're thirsty. But it leads to the second networking mistake, which is keeping score. So, what a lot of people do is they do this weird tit for tat, and there's kind of a fine line here when it comes to dig you well before you're thirsty and don't keep score, and we can get into that in a second, but a lot of people, they do the following: "Hey, Jordan. I would love to introduce you to Tom Cruise. It would be great if he were on your show." And then I go, "Cool. You know him?" "Well, know, but my friend's friend's cousin's friend's uncle's buddy does, so let me see if that can happen. And then you try and it doesn't pan out, and then I go, oh well, and you go, "Well, now that I've got you here, can I ask you to come speak at my event for free?" Or even more likely, "Hey, look, I've got this thing that you don't really want," and you cold email it to me. "Here's a copy of a book." Great. And then, you know, "Can you come on and do this other thing for me?" And then I start to realize, since the proximity of the give and the ask is so close together, I start to think, oh, I get it. Matt--to put you in the devil's seat--Matt only gave me that introduction because he wanted me to do something in return. And that's the first nuance of keeping score, and it leaves a really sour taste in someone's mouth. Like, suppose after this interview, you're like... And people do this to me all the time, Matt, and it's super annoying. They'll say, "Hey, can I have you on the show?" And I go, "Okay, cool. Yeah, why not?" And then right after we're done, probably haven't even flicked off the record switch yet, they go, "So, just let me know. When should I come on your show? I'd love to talk about my skincare line," or whatever, and I'm thinking, "Oh, I get it. I get it. You had me on your show not because there's value in this for your audience, but because you wanted some sort of BS give so that you could then come on my platform, so now I get to look and feel like crap when I say no. And I have since become a little bit inoculated to that, where I now just say, "Yeah, I don't really see that as a fit, but you can talk to my producer, who I've specifically delegated the task of viciously vetting any hosts that come on the show. So, even if you, at the end of this, did say, 'Hey, look, I've got this thing. I think it would be great for Art of Charm,' I would say, 'Great. Here's a pitch form that you can everyone else uses and my producer gets it and he will reply in three months with a yes or a no and then go from there, and that's a beautiful thing, but I've literally had to build that around myself because of the frequency with which this happens, and I get why people do it. Because it seems logical, right? Like, instead of just asking for what we want, which seems really one-sided, we decide to do some sort of give, but the give isn't real. It's kind of a bait and switch. Even if it's a great give, like, look, you know, my friend has a lake house you can use in Tahoe, and I show up and then afterwards they go, "Hey, can I come on your show?" That's kind of unfair, right, because I do owe you one, but I don't owe you a big chunk of my business, or I don't owe you 100,000 people's time, which is the audience of the Art of Charm. I don't owe you their time, right. I don't think it's a fit, so you're literally asking me to waste all of their time and my time and resources doing that. That's not really a fair trade, because it's a covert contract. You're waiting for me to accept what I think is a favor, and then you bait and switch and go, "Just kidding! It's a trade." And now I have to deal with that on my end, and that's sort of the first part of keeping score. Does that make sense?

Matt:	Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. The concept of using an intermediary to say no is something that I use even with a virtual assistant to schedule my meetings. So, she has ruthless parameters about when I'll meet and what I'll meet on, and I'm just like, "Great, thanks for connecting. She's going to book a meeting." And then, you know, she always... She's the bad guy in that situation. 

Jordan:	You know, it's funny, because I had to use the same thing. I had to actually undo that with... I think you rescheduled this time for whatever. It was probably...

Matt:	I did.

Jordan:	And Jenny goes, "Matt Bodnar has to reschedule." And I remember this now very clearly. I said, "Oh. Can you make sure it's not, like, four months down the line?" Because the default parameter is, if somebody reschedules and it's not for a great reason or I don't know them or whatever, they just go to the absolute back of the line. And that line is now really long, because it's not like, oh, I'm just so busy. It's just that I devote such a small amount of time to doing things like this generally, and I said, "No, no, no. Just let him pick something and move stuff around, as long as it's not another appointment." And she did that, as far as I understand, or at least made that available to you somehow. 

Matt:	Yeah. No, it was super smooth, and honestly, the reason I rescheduled is I had an epic case of food poisoning and I couldn't even get out of bed.

Jordan:	She said something like... Because I remember being like, "Why?" and she said, oh, well, you know... I think she told me that you weren't feeling well and I thought, okay, that's probably real. I don't remember exactly now what it was, but I remember making sure that happened. But look, had you been anyone else, I would have simply said, "Sure. Whatever." And there are people that I talked to recently. Last week I talked to somebody, and I remember thinking, like, this guy's name sounds so familiar. They scheduled it in January. And I thought, holy cow, that's ridiculous. But it's fine for me, because otherwise, when I didn't have these parameters in place, there was one week where I did 20 hours of other people's shows.

Matt:	That's incredible. That's crazy.

Jordan:	It sounds great when you're trying to promote something, but when it's literally just there's no filter for whose crap you're doing, because you're on a PR... I was just like, I will do any show. This is probably two years ago, three years ago now, because I wanted to see what the effect would be. The effect was I lost a lot of time doing shows that had nine people listening, but I got a lot of practice being interviewed. That was not good ROI over the long term. But anyway, going back to the keeping score thing, that's the first part of keeping score. The second part of keeping score is on the other end of the equation, which is people hoard their connections, and what it means... It looks a little something like this. There's a woman that I knew from a long ago and I helped her out with a bunch of different things, and then, as it turned out, she knew somebody that I really wanted to interview, and I can't even remember who it was now. It's probably not that big of a deal compared to where we are now, but back then I was like, this is such-and-such person! It was some Hollywood person, like an actor. I thought, this is going to be super cool. I'm just going to ask Kathleen for this introduction and it should be a no-brainer. I mean, I've helped her a lot. And on the one hand, I was keeping score. So, I said to her, "Hey, Kathleen. I would love to be introduced to so-and-so." And she said, "Sorry. I'm eventually going to have to use that connection for something myself one day." And so, looking back, we both made a mistake, because I was annoyed with her for not making that intro, but that's because I was keeping score. I thought, I've helped you so much. Why aren't you going to help me? And her reason for not doing it was also really bad, because your network is like a muscle. It atrophies when you don't use it, and when you work it out well, when you make good intros, it strengthens that connection. If I introduced you, Matt, to a bunch of really awesome guests, you're going to be like, "That's awesome. Thanks, Jordan. I really appreciate it." Of course, if I introduce you to a bunch of junk food guests that waste your time and have nothing to offer, that connection between you and I sours a little bit, because you're not mad at me. You just think I have crap judgment and introductions and you won't take them anymore. Now, with Kathleen, she was being stingy because she thought, well, I don't want to email this person because if I do, they might eventually not want to take my email anymore, which is a ridiculous thought. That's not how relationships work, generally. You're not asking that person for a favor. You're having them meet somebody who's got mutual value. It's completely different, right? So, we were both keeping score, and that didn't work. I learned the lesson, though, and decided not to be mad when people wouldn't do things, and I still help them anyway, up to a point at which I think I'm being used, which is actually very rare. And she kept doing that. I remember years later, there were other things that I had asked her to help out with or introductions to be made, and this is somebody who I thought was my friend, and it was always, "Well, I don't know. I have to think about it, because I might want to ask them for the..." And it was always like this farfetched idea, and eventually she lost her position in Hollywood, and I would imagine that it had a lot to do with the fact that she wasn't developing relationships properly, because that town is all about relationships. So, if you're hoarding everybody that you come across and you're not strengthening that network, well, if you treat everybody like I got treated, then yeah, there's a lot of people who won't want to deal with you anymore. And so, she eventually had to move back home to the Midwest, which sucks. And a lot of people do this keeping score thing. They do it a whole lot. And again, it creates covert contracts, right, where, "Well, hey, Matt. I'm going to introduce you to a bunch of guests," and then I do that and you're like, "Hey, if I can ever help with anything..." and I'm like, "Funny you should ask. I'd love to bring my family to your lake house in Lake Tahoe." And you're thinking, uh, wow. I really don't want to do that, because I don't know you that well, or I don't want your dumb kids in my swimming pool, or whatever. But now you feel like you have to say yes. If you say no, right, which is normal in other relationships, the question is, if I'm not keeping score, I just think, that's fine. Totally reasonable. But if I'm keeping score, I get angry at you, right. Secretly, usually. Because few of us have... We know when we're doing this. Few of us have the audacity to go, "But I introduced you to this guy and that guy and that woman and this other person. How dare you say no to my totally unrelated request?" That's when you know you're keeping score. So, the way to tell if you're doing this, if you're not really that self-aware with it yet, is if you do a lot to help other people and they don't help you, how much do you care? Do you just think, oh, that's kind of strange they wouldn't do it but they must have their reasons? Or do you think, that son of a bitch. I've done so much for him. Because if it's that, you're keeping score and you should stop doing that right away.

Matt:	That's great advice, and I think a lot of people fall prey to keeping score, even sometimes at a subconscious level. 

Jordan:	It usually happens subconsciously. Most of us aren't like... Actually, I shouldn't say that. A lot of people are subconscious with it, but you're right. There's a lot of people who have designs that sound like, all right, here's my plan. I'm going to help Matt get a bunch of guests and then I'm going to ask him for a bunch of his products for free, and he'll probably say yes because I hooked him up. That's a good plan. And, you know, I get it, kind of, and it sounds okay on its face. Like, we're just making a trade. But the problem is, one, you end up with that resentment on both sides of the equation, and two, I don't want the... you really don't want the calculation in your head to be "Should I help this person, because what will I get in return?" Because you cannot plan for this. Actually, I have a really good example of this, if you still have time for another nail in this coffin of keeping score.

Matt:	Let's hear it.

Jordan:	So, when I first moved to L.A., I had a toothache. I just got one out of the blue. Never had one before and I was like, ugh, this is... I don't know if you ever had a toothache. It's the worst frigging pain ever. It's annoying. It's inside your freaking brain, you know. It's awful and invasive, and so I kept calling dentists, like, "Can you see me tomorrow? I got a toothache." "Well, actually, we're booked." "Oh, we don't take new patients." "Well, yeah, but we're super uber far away and you don't have a car yet because you moved here yesterday and it's going to be a $90,000 cab ride and we'll see you between 1:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m. So, all these dentists kept saying, "Go to the ER." And I thought, there's no frigging way I'm doing that. They're just going to tie a string to it and slam the door. That's not going to work. And so, I posted on Facebook in desperation, "Look, I have a toothache. I'm in this part of L.A. Does anybody have a dentist they can recommend? And some guy I don't even know, because I have my settings set to public, he said, "Yeah. My aunt's a dentist and she works in XYZ neighborhood. Is that close to you?" "Yes, it is." He goes, "Yeah. Let me know. What's your phone number? I'll call and I'll ask her for a favor," and I was like, "This may or may not work," gave my info. He called me back right away and said, "Look. She's going to see you tomorrow at eight. Is that cool? It's pretty early. She's got a full docket. She's just going to show up early and help you." And I thought, that's amazing. Yeah, I love you right now. I could kiss you. So, I went there, got my tooth fixed, got a fair price for it, and wrote the guy back, "Hey, look. Anything that I can ever do to help you, just let me know. This was huge for me." And it would be really convenient if that guy needed something from me that I could actually provide, and it didn't happen that way. What happened was he said, "I've got a graphic design portfolio. I know you've got a website and stuff. Please keep me in mind for any jobs." That's not how it shook out, but what happened was I said, "Yeah, sure, I'll keep my ear to the ground," which, you know, I'm not going to go looking for jobs for him, but I will keep my ear to the ground. It was an unrelated thing. He wasn't keeping score. He just thought, well, sure, since you're asking. At least, that's the way it came across, and so I didn't feel super obligated to help him with this totally random thing, but I thought, he's a great guy. I would love to help him if I could. Four days later, I get an email from someone that says, "Who does your website? Mine needs redoing and I can't find anybody to do it." I emailed that guy and said, "Look, I know you're graphic design and not web design, but do you think you can help this person?" And he said, "Actually, I can totally do web design. I just don't like it as much as graphic design." So, he ended up with what later turned out and evolved into an $80,000 a year full-time job managing a portfolio of websites, and he got that because he gave me a connection to his aunt, who was a dentist in L.A. Now, you can't plan for that. You can't plan to hook up somebody with a dentist that doesn't even run a company in which you're looking for work and you're not even sure if you're looking for work in that area, and then magically find a job four days later. You can't plan for that, but if you're keeping score, if you're agenda is, I'm helping people that can give me things that I want, he would have missed that opportunity, right. It wasn't even remotely on the horizon. It wasn't on the radar at all. It happened through chance, and the reason that the chance ever happened at all was because he helped me without expecting anything theoretically in return, and I gave him something in return that I didn't even realize was going to be exactly what he wanted. But if you're keeping score, that's completely off the table. There's no way you can plan for it, and therefore you would say, "I could help him, but I don't really feel like it," and then that's the end of the transaction, because it's transactional instead of being relationship based. 

Matt:	Yeah. There are so many examples that I can think of in my own life of people that I've connected to each other that somehow ended up... You know, somebody gets a job offer, finds a new career, or whatever it might be. But you can never foresee that ahead of time.

Jordan:	Think about how most people meet their wife. It's very rarely like, "Well, I was at this one dating event where we were talking with other single people and she happened to be a match." That happens more now because of the internet, but back in the day, look at anybody who's your parents age, and even our age, the vast majority of people, they still meet people through their circle of friends. They're not going out with their friends every day like, "Hey, Melissa. Can you introduce me to all the single females that you think might be available to me?" That doesn't happen. You just go out with your friends and one day Melissa brings her cousin and you guys hit it off. You don't do that, you don't go out with Melissa merely because she always has... And maybe you do have this female friend, but you're not going out with her, chances are, because she has attractive friends that one day you might be able to meet and get married to. That's pretty fricking rare, right. You don't really plan for that. And yet, we do that all the time in our personal lives, but man, try doing it for business. It's like people have never heard this concept before. And I understand it. I had to learn it myself the hard way.

Matt:	So, changing gears again, are there any other networking mistakes that people should avoid?

Jordan:	Man, there are tons, but I think keeping score and not digging the well before you're thirsty are really the two sort of top that I see. There are other mistakes that I see. Being very transactional, as I hinted at before, instead of being relationship-based where things have to be tit for tat, which does dovetail into keeping score, or where people really often only think about what's in it for me and they don't actually... they're not looking at the other side of the equation. You've heard always be closing, right? ABC, always be closing. What we say at Art of Charm is always be giving, ABG. Not quite the same ring to it, but a better message in my opinion. What that means is always be looking for ways to help other people without worrying about what you're going to get in return, and when you constantly make that the practice instead of angling on how to get things from other people, you inevitably end up getting things back because of, one, the law of reciprocity, which is a real psychological concept, a la Cialdini. And two, the idea is, look, if I keep helping people get what they want, even if some people become more takers, the people who are giving all of that help, they tend to be happier, they tend to make relationships better, and also, it's very scalable, right. Because a lot of times... Well, here's a third/fourth networking mistake: thinking you're the one that has to deliver the product. And what I mean by product is you're the one that has to help everyone. For example, the guy who gave me the dentist in L.A., he didn't get hired by Art of Charm as a graphic designer. I merely made an introduction to someone else. So, if you're thinking, oh, well, I can't get anything from this person, or I can't help this person, if you're looking at ABG, right, and you're thinking, ugh, I can't help Matt because I don't know any good guests for his podcast, and that's what he's looking for, hypothetically. I can't really help him, so I guess I won't really try. It doesn't matter. You might know someone else who can provide that service and is looking to provide that service, whether for free or it's their job. So, if I say something along the lines of, "Man, you know, my house is such a dump. It's such a bachelor pad..." It's not. I live with my girlfriend, but hypothetically, and somebody goes, "Oh, man, I wish I could help Jordan but I'm not a decorator and I don't really know any good cleaners and I don't really have any good artist... I'm not an artist, so I can't help him out." Well, you're out of luck, and even if you are that person, you have to then do it yourself. Very time consuming. It's going to be very tough to help more than a couple of people every month, right, because you got ish to do. You got life. But if we're looking at it in a scalable way, you might say, "Oh. I know a great cleaning service if that's of use to you. I got a great interior decorator that might be able to provide something really cool for your studio. My friend is an artist." You make those intros via email and then we do the rest. You just helped me out in three ways in 13 minutes. All you did was connect people inside your own network, and a lot of people don't think about it like that. They think, hmm, well, if I can't help them directly, I'm out of luck. That's a problem, because even if you have a really great skill set like, oh, you're a marketer, you can help pretty much anybody. Well, that's great, but here's the problem: it's not scalable. It is scalable if you continually connect people in your network with each other, because as you do that, your network grows and those relationships grow. So, instead of you owing one to the guy who helped you out, those two people who you connected to each other, now they feel reciprocal value towards you, and so, you end up being able to really connect a lot of different strings on the web together, and those people all have good will towards you. You can do that every day. You can make introductions every single day. You can make ten every single day if you have the time. And so, what we recommend people do is, look, start out doing one a week, and actually, eventually, people start finding it hard to only do one a week. They end up doing three a week because stuff just keeps falling to them as they become known as the guy who knows everybody, guy or girl who knows everybody, and that's a great place to be because it takes you 30 seconds to think, "Ah, you need a new website? I know a great guy for that. Oh, you need a new marketer? I know a great guy for that. Oh, you know what? This thing on your site is broken? I actually have a guy who runs a product. Just came out, nobody knows about it. It fixes this problem for entrepreneurs. Do you want an introduction and free trial?" I mean, that stuff happens to me all the time now, but it took years to build it up. I never could've seen that coming, though. I just kind of gave this an experimental try, and I recommend that everybody listening do the same. 

Matt:	Yeah. Introducing people is such an easy way to provide value. And, you know, when I sit down with somebody new that I've never met, I usually leave with a list of five or six people that I want to introduce them to.

Jordan:	One caveat/technique before we wrap here is when you're making introductions or when you're going to, do what's called the double opt-in. I don't know if you've heard this before or talked about it. We talk about it a lot at Art of Charm, especially when we teach networking. The double opt-in is you might have that list of 10 or 20 and you're like, I got to introduce Matt to Jonathan! That would be such a great match! Well, you need to ask Jonathan first and I want to reach back out to Matt--you--and ask, "Hey, would you be open to meeting this guy Jonathan? He does x, y, and z," because of three or four small reasons, a few of which I'll explain here. One, you might already know each other. I don't know about you, but, for me, I feel like people look kind of dumb when they introduce me to somebody that I already know and they just didn't ask me. And I realize it's an innocent mistake, but it's kind of a dumb, awkward situation that's super avoidable.

Matt:	Yeah.

Jordan:	I guess I should... Maybe I'm judgy, but I feel like it's kind of a silly thing. It would be like if you and I were standing near each other at a party and someone comes up and goes, "Hey, Matt. This is Jordan." You're like, "Yeah, I know. We're eating right now, together, at the same table." But in the virtual world, you can't really tell that. So, it's just kind of a time waster for all three parties when you do something like that. And then I have to, what, reply and be like, "Hey, Matt! What's up, dude?" The other reason is that what if you don't like me, right? What if you get introduced to me or to Jonathan... Whatever. I just blew the analogy of the story. What if you get introduced to me and I'm like, oh, yeah, great. Another [INAUDIBLE 00:40:58] to Matt! And you're like, oh, frah, Jordan again? Oh, I was so avoiding this guy. I've avoided him for three years. I've successfully avoided him for three years and now suddenly Mitchell over here decides you should meet Jordan. Great. Now I got... And I'm all, "Hey, Matt, when are we going to do your show again?" or whatever annoying thing that I did that caused you not to like me in the first place. Now you've got to play that off again, and I've got to get...and I might even get offended by that. Like, oh, you introduced me to Matt and he didn't reply, or you introduced me to Matt and it wasn't fruitful. You look bad either way doing that because now I'm annoyed that I got introduced and nothing came out of it, and you're annoyed because you had to sort of bat me away yet again or humor me or whatever because of that person's unauthorized, unsolicited introduction. So, those are two really good reasons not to do that. And the third reason is just what if I'm really busy right now? Or there's some other reason why now's not a good time? And this happens to me a lot, much more than the first two, because I don't mind most people and it's usually not a big deal, but a lot of times people do the following: "Hey, Jordan! Was just talking with my friend Alex and he'd be a great fit for Art of Charm. Alex, Jordan is cc'd on this email." And then Alex replies 13 seconds later: "Thanks, buddy! Hey, Jordan, great to meet you. Really love what you're doing of The Art of Charm. Here's my ebook that's published on Amazon. I have no audience and I wrote it in two days and didn't spell check, but here it is. Let me know when to book your show!" And now I have to go, "Yeah, right now we've got a pretty full roster," and insert excuse here about why I can't book somebody, and it goes back to why I have an entire production staff whose job it is to go, "Hey, Alex. Looked at your big. Not a great fit for what we're doing. Good luck in the future!" and all this other stuff. But now I look kind of like a jerk because I had to go through that funnel, and Alex goes, "Thanks for the useless introduction," right? So, there's a lot of really fine points that can...and little barbs that can completely be filed off and avoided if you just ask me and you just ask the other person. You'll find out if we know each other; you'll find out if one of us doesn't like each other; you'll find out if the timing is good or not. And there are other reasons, too, but most people never bother doing this even though it takes about 30 extra seconds to send an email to each one of us: "Hey, would you be interested in an intro to this person?" And the only time it gets tricky is when one person says yes and the other person says no, but it's lucky when that happens before you make the introduction because now the monkey isn't on my back to say, hey, now's not a good time. If I reply no to the intro that you were going to make with somebody else, all you need to do is then say, "No problem. I got it," and then you reply to the other person who you offered an intro. And either you can ask the person who you think is most likely to say no first--that's a good one--but barring that, you can also say, "Hey, reached out to Jordan. He's slammed right now, but I'll circle back in a few months." And then you just let it go. And the other person might follow up in a few months, and you can try to repeat the process or you can even be honest and say, "Jordan doesn't want any new intros right now. He's a really busy guy. But we can try again later, maybe (smiley face)." That's completely understandable. If anybody gets angry with you for that, they're being unreasonable, in my opinion. So, the double opt-in is huge. It's key. It shows you know what you're doing. If I see the double opt-in, I'm so much more likely to trust your taste in the future simply because it's sort of that little kind of, like, wink and a nudge, that you get what...the value of my time and you get the value of the other person's time; and you also understand that you're doing us a favor and you're willing to take on the burden of kind of making...facilitating it, rather than just "I want to look good by making an introduction!" and then you take a steaming pile on the living room floor and then run away, which is what a non-double opt-in intro can look like when things go bad.

Matt:	Yeah. The double opt-in is a critical tool, for sure. Circling back to something you said earlier--the idea of kind of building scalable relationships--one of the things, personally, that I struggle with is: How do you keep up and kind of manage so many different relationships in a way that you can still be authentic and not have it be sort of too robotic and kind of automated?

Jordan:	Yeah. So, a lot of people ask me this question, or something along the lines of: Hey, how do I systemize a lot of this so that I remember to keep up with people? Like, after this interview--I'll be perfectly honest--there's a really good chance we won't talk again or see each other unless one of us randomly comes across something, until we have one of the hangouts for a group that we're in, right, or some online interaction. It's unlikely that I'll be sitting around one Sunday or that you'll be sitting around one Sunday and you're like, "I'm just going to send Jordan a quick text and see what's up." It's just... There's too much stuff going on. And, also, it's not that necessary, in my opinion, and I find that people at our level... You know, I'm friends with a lot of different I guess you'd call them online influencers -- guys like Tucker Max, for example. And maybe he's not the epitome of manners that we want to mention on a show like this, but, frankly, him and I talk pretty regularly, but usually it's when one of us has a question for the other person, a request, or something like that. And I don't think less of him or our interactions because there's always an agenda on one side or the other because it's not a negative agenda, right? It's not like, "I want to get this thing from him, but I don't want him to know." It's like, "Hey, Jordan. Can you introduce me to this person?" Or, "Do you have any ideas about how this might work? Because you're good at this." And I might say, "Hey, Tucker. Can you introduce me to this author? I emailed him and I didn't get a reply." It's fine. It's okay to do that. I don't really want a lot of small talk, generally. Don't get me wrong: If I go to an event and Tucker's there, I'll sit next to him for three meals in a row and chat. It's cool. I enjoy that. But that's what that's for. I don't need to use email and phone and all those other things like that. It's actually just... It's not required to keep that friendship going. It's just not. And so I do use automation tools, like the CRM that I have. I recommend things like Contactually for people who really have a problem keeping in touch. But, honestly, I don't love the idea of automating everything because then it gets to be a little sticky, where you start to see these patterns the more you use these tools where it's like, yeah, so-and-so's quarterly check-in. "Hey, let me know if there's anything I can do for you!" "Okay, I will. I know that your CRM software sent this out and you didn't even know. I know that you programmed this eight months ago when we first spoke." You know, and it's less authentic and, quite frankly, I don't remember ever replying to anything like that. And it's almost like a waste of time to say, "Hey, I'm good right now, but thanks." It's just... It's not useful. And so I prefer just the much more organic approach, and I don't mind if somebody pops out of the woodwork and says, "Jordan, it's been a really long time. We haven't spoken. I was thinking about you the other day because my friend started a podcast and I was wondering if there was a resource that you recommend." I don't have a problem with that. I'd much rather that than that person checks in every three months just to say what's up, unless we're actually really close, personal friends and we have some other bond. You know what I mean? I just don't require that kind of maintenance, and I know some people do, but I'm not one of those people and I don't know a lot of online influencers that are hurt that I don't tweet at them or email them regularly just to say hi. It just... It doesn't make sense. If I find something of value... Here's my guideline. If I find something of value for that person, I will say, "Hey, Clay. Random thing here, but I just thought of you." Or if someone on a social media outlet says, "How do I do this thing?" and I think, oh, I know the guy for that, I'll tag them in it. That's fine. I'm offering a value. I'm not just posting on their Facebook wall, "What's up, buddy? Haven't heard from you in a while!" It's just not that valuable, and if you're doing it for business, just do it when there's something in it for the other person. Don't do it just to "just pinging you to touch base!" I don't know why that's a little bit irritating, but I think it's the... I don't think it's one occasion; I think it's the frequency with which it happens and the scale in which it happens. Guys like Tim Ferriss, for example -- can you imagine how many people just ping him out of nowhere, that he's never met in his whole life and they're just like, "Just wanted to say what's up. Good work"?

Matt:	[Chuckles] Yeah, that's so true.

Jordan:	And it's cool. Don't get me wrong; I love when people say, "Hey, I love the show. Just wanted to drop you a note and let you know you changed my life." That's different than "Hey! Let me know if I can ever do anything for you!" Because I'm like, who are you? Why would... I don't know what you can do. I'm not going to think of something that you can do. You know, offer me something and I'll do the same for you. But if you're just reaching out for general "let me know if I can ever help with anything", it's like, well, I guess. [Scoffs] Sure. But I'm not going to take action on that.

Matt:	Yeah. That makes a lot of sense.

Jordan:	Like, if the next time you and I talk is in eight months and you say, "Hey, look. I wonder if you could recommend some other guests for my show," I will not be annoyed by that. It's fine if that's the next time you and I have contact, right. It's not going to be a big deal. I'm not going to think, oh, this guy doesn't reach out all year? He forgot my anniversary, and yet here he is, wanting an introduction? I mean, it's completely legitimate to do things that way, in my opinion. It probably sounds a little bit contra to dig your well before you're thirsty, but, as far as I'm concerned, we've already established some value here, so it's fine. And I think a lot of people get obsessed with "I want to make everybody think that we're really personal friends so that when I do need something, it's not weird," but that's not what you're doing. It's inauthentic. You're just sending me an automated thing so that I think we're personal friends so that then you can ask me for something later. It's still keeping score, but it's just kind of painted with this nice veneer of BS on it. I think that's why I find it irritating. Does that make sense?

Matt:	Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. I mean, you're such an expert in this field that it's great to hear your insights into what a lot of people might consider kind of a common practice.

Jordan:	It is. And don't get me wrong. Look, if your practice is to say happy birthday to people on Facebook to see if they're still alive, that's totally fine and that's totally legitimate. But I think the one thing that irritates me is just when it's fake and it's for the purposes of "maintaining the relationship", but, really, you're not behind it. It's just a system. If you think of me randomly and go, "Hey, dude, I saw this hilarious, random meme that reminded me of you because of that random conversation we had two years ago," there's a little bit of value there because there's a laugh in there or something. It's not just "Hey! How are you? Please reply to me and spend time when you get a chance so that I can not read it, so that we seem like friends." It's just... That happens so often that when it starts to happen with hundreds of people, you start to see those people in a separate category as you would genuine folks.

Matt:	Yeah. Well, wrapping up, what would one piece of homework be that you would give our listeners?

Jordan:	For me, I think, start introducing people in your network to each other. And if you don't know what kind of network you have, make a list of everybody that you met at the most recent event and start reaching out to them; thank them for being cool or whatever; say that you're glad to have met them; find out what they might need so you can keep your ear to the ground or what they're working on; and start introducing them to each other. If you know somebody who's new in town, introduce that person to your friggin' barber. Tell them about good restaurants in the area. I mean, these are... There's not a lot of rocket science here. It's just a matter of finding out where you can be valuable, and the answer is not asking them how you can be valuable because the reply to that is: I don't know, but thanks for the offer, because you're putting the monkey on their back. So, start looking and figuring out for yourself where you can be valuable to other people and start giving it without solicitation.

Matt:	That's a great piece of advice. One of the things that I always...that kind of annoys me is when people are like, "Oh, what can I do? What can I help you with?" You know what I mean? It's like...

Jordan:	Yeah, because the answer is: I don't friggin' know what you can do and it's not my job to go to your website, figure out what you're good at, request that of you, and then you go, "Meh." Oh, gosh. Here's something... I'm sorry. We're, like, ranting away on your show, but here's a perfect illustration of that point. I got an email from somebody who was like, "Hey, I would love to intern for Art of Charm. What positions do you have open?" And I said, "We don't have anything open. What do you have in mind to do?" And he sent me this outline of "Here's this project I'd like to do. I'd love to be able to read books and then write reviews about them." And I said, "Sure, you can send those along, and if they're great we'll publish them." And he goes, "Well, no, I'd need you to fly me out there and give me room and board and pay me for this."

Jordan:	And he goes, "Well, no, I'd need you to fly me out there and give me room and board and pay me for this." And I'm thinking, nah, I don't really need that, because that's a ridiculous request. First of all, I can hire anybody to do this bit of content, which, by the way, doesn't fit into any marketing plan that I have. You thought of it and emailed it to me. And I gave them another chance because they were ex-military, which usually those guys know better, but I gave them another chance and I said, "Here's what I actually need done." And he goes, "Nah, I feel like that would be a waste of my time. Let me know if you reconsider my project."

Matt:	Wow.

Jordan:	And I was like, "Are you kidding me? I'm not hiring you. I'm so double, triple not hiring you now. You don't want to do the work that I send you. You only want to do the work that you want to do, which I told you was not that valuable, and then not only do you insist on that, but you insist on doing it at absolutely ridiculous terms that are completely unreasonable." And it was just like, people do this all the time because they're not thinking about it, and I guarantee you that guy's having trouble finding employment. I would imagine there's just no way that you can write anybody and talk to them like that and expect a good result. And you're putting the monkey on someone else's back if you ask how you can help them. It sounds kind on its face, but you're doing exactly what that guy did, which is, "Read my mind and find something that I will want to do to help you, and then maybe I'll do it." That's not my job. I hire people when I need stuff done and I hire the best. So, if you've got an idea, not only should you present that idea to me, but you should present that idea, do a massive outline of what it'll look like, and ideally, if I reply with a yes, you should reply with the first couple of steps done and they should be just home runs. That's how you get hired at a company that hires high performers. You've got to kill it. Because otherwise, why am I trying to figure out how you can do your job that I don't even know exists yet? That's ridiculous. Yet people do that all the time. 

Matt:	Well, Jordan, thank you very much. This has been a fascinating conversation about networking mistakes and pitfalls, and I'm sure the listeners have learned a tremendous amount about things that you shouldn't do and some great stories about why you shouldn't necessarily pursue a lot of networking strategies that people might think are the right path forward, or think that they're chugging along and doing the right thing when really they could be completely self-sabotaging their networking efforts.

Jordan:	Totally. Yeah. Thank you very much for the opportunity.

Matt:	Well, thanks for being on The Science of Success.

Why Everything You Know About Time Management is Wrong with Best Selling Author Rory Vaden

In this episode - we dig into the truth about time management, uncover the reason that most time management thinking is wrong, and learn how we can give ourselves permission to multiply our time with our guest Rory Vaden. 

If you feel like you never have enough time and your todo-list just keeps growing, listen to this episode!

Rory is the best-selling author of Take The Stairs and Procrastinate On Purpose, an award winning entrepreneur and business leader, a self discipline strategist, and co-founder of Southwestern Consulting. 

We discuss the following topics:
-Why everything you’ve heard about time management is wrong
-The one calculation that changes everything in your time managemnet
-How to do things today to create more time tomorrow
-How to tell people “no” in a kind way
-How to create "compound interest" for your time
-How to overcome the fear of delegation
-How to overcome the emotional barriers preventing you from multiplying your time
-Why time is NOT money
-And more! 

Thank you so much for listening!

Please SUBSCRIBE and LEAVE US A REVIEW on iTunes! (Click here for instructions how to do that!).  

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

This episode, we have another incredible guest on the show, Rory Vaden. Rory is the bestselling author of Take the Stairs and Procrastinate on Purpose, an award-winning entrepreneur and business leader, a self-disciplined strategist, co-founder of Southwestern Consulting and—bonus points—a Nashvillian.

Rory:	Boom!

Matt:	Rory, welcome to The Science of Success.

Rory:	Hey, thanks, Matt. It's good to be here. 

Matt:	We're very excited to have you on. So, Rory, tell us a little bit about your background and how you became fascinated with self-discipline and self-improvement.

Rory:	Yeah. Well, I grew up around... A lot of my story I talk about I was raised by a single mom who sold Mary Kay cosmetics. So, I grew up around success and sales and leadership principles, and it means I know more about makeup than I do about cars. So, I kind of had that exposure when I was little, and then when I was in college, I worked for a company called Southwestern Advantage and ran my own business selling educational children's reference books, 14 hours a day, six days a week on straight commission, paying all my expenses all the way through college door-to-door. Did that for five summers and made about a quarter million dollars in the five summers in college and graduate school doing that, and then entered into the world of business and entrepreneurship, and then started Southwest Consulting. Actually, I did a thing called the World Championship of Public Speaking for Toastmasters, and that launched my speaking career, and then started Southwestern Consulting with some business partners. Just had our ten year anniversary, and we started with four of us and we now have 115 team members that make everything happen. Moved to Nashville six years ago and dreamed one day of being on The Science of Success podcast with Matt Bodnar, and here we are!

Matt:	Nice. Well, that's awesome. That's an amazing story. That's quite a few reference books to sell door-to-door.

Rory:	Yeah. Yeah, well, it was, and it was amazing training, and that's really where I got exposed to a lot of the principles of success and self-discipline and just really what it takes to make a business successful, and I'm very grateful for that opportunity, and I'm actually speaking tonight at an event where there will be several hundred students who are about to go sell. It's the new class of this summer's students and I'm going to go talk to them a little bit, so it'll be fun.

Matt:	That's awesome. Well, one of the things that I'm a huge fan of, and I know you've talked a lot about, is sort of the distinction between effectiveness and efficiency. Can you tell us a little bit about... A lot of people might think those are kind of the same thing. What's the difference and why is that difference important?

Rory:	Well, actually, yeah. So, efficiency, as I think Dr. Stephen Covey said, is doing things right. Effectiveness is doing the right things. And Procrastinating on Purpose, the first sentence of the book says "Everything you know about time management is wrong." And one of the things that we challenge... Effectiveness is kind of around the idea of prioritizing and focusing first on what matters most, but what we have found in recent years is there's this emergence of a new type of thinker that we call a multiplier, and multipliers don't care so much about efficiency or effectiveness as they do about efficacy, and efficacy is different. Because if efficiency is doing things right, effectiveness is doing the right things, efficacy is simply about producing results. And multipliers don't even care so much... It's not so much about the right way or the wrong way. It's about what is the way that produces results, and that is what they really care about. So, it's not about quantity of time or even quality of activity. It's simply about what produces the maximum result, and that word is efficacy.

Matt:	Fascinating. So, when you say that everything we know about time management is wrong, could you extrapolate on that a little bit more?

Rory:	Yeah. So, there's two major differences that we have discovered, and Southwestern Consulting, so what we do is one-on-one coaching, and we have about 1,600 active clients right now that we work with one-on-one, you know, talk through the daily challenges of their lives, and helping them get to the next level, particularly in sales, sales leadership, and time management. There's two major differences in the way that multipliers think, compared to everybody else. The first one is that... I was actually with my business partner on a Saturday morning, and he has this... at the time, this little two and a half-year-old girl, baby girl named Haven, and we were having an International Leaders Planning Retreat, and it was like a big meeting day, and so we're leaving Dustin's house early in the morning or whatever, and Haven comes running down the hallway and she runs and she grabs ahold of Dustin's leg, and she looks at him and she says, "Daddy, where are we going?" And he looks at her and says, "Oh, you know, I'm sorry, baby Haven. Daddy actually has to go to work today." And her eyes well up with tears and she says, "No work today, Daddy. Please no work." And, in that moment, Matt, I realized two things. The first is that I'm not ready for children quite just yet. [Laughs] But the second one is that everything I had ever been taught about time management was all tips and tricks, tools and technology, calendars and checklists. It was all logical. But looking at Haven in that moment, I realized that today, time management is no longer just logical. Today, time management is emotional, and our feelings of guilt and fear and worry and anxiety and our desire to feel successful and valued, important, those things actually dictate what we actually spend our time doing, as much as anything in our email list or in our to-do list or on our calendar, and yet most of us have never had any formal training on managing those emotions, and most of us aren't even cognitive or consciously aware that emotions are driving our decision making. And so, that's the first major difference, is that today, time management isn't just logical. It's emotional, and Procrastinating on Purpose is really the first book that focuses on that emotional aspect of managing your time.

Matt:	I think that's critically important, and we've talked a lot on the podcast about looking at limiting beliefs and fears and that kind of stuff. What are some of the big fears that hold people back from being able to multiply their time?

Rory:	Yeah. Well, the subtitle of the book is actually The Five Permissions to Multiply Your Time. It very easily could have been called The Five Fears that Prevent People from Multiplying Their Time. And there's more than five, but one example is guilt. The first of the five strategies is in the focus funnel, which is the framework for the book, is eliminate. And we call it the permission to ignore. It's giving yourself the permission to develop the confidence to say no to things, because most of us try to go through life never saying no, and I was one of those people. I like to say yes. I'm a people pleaser. I want to make everybody happy. Until one of the multipliers said, "Rory, that is the stupidest thing I have ever heard," and I was like, "Okay, jerkface." But they explained and they said, "You have to realize that you're always saying no to something. Any time you say yes to one thing, you are simultaneously saying no to an infinite number of others," and that was a huge breakthrough for me. That's something that we call the significance calculation, which is the second major difference, and we can talk about that in a minute. But the fear is the fear of missing out or feeling guilty, and so we get asked to do things and we pressure ourselves, or we allow other people to pressure us into doing them when we don't really want to do them but we feel like we have to or we should, or we're afraid of missing out. And so, that fear causes us to take on things and accept things and overcommit in a way that has a negative long-term impact, both on our emotional stability and our psychology, as well as our productivity and our ability to get results.

Matt:	And I think that's something that, personally, I definitely struggle with, is, you know, when to say no and how to say no. What are some ways that you can say no to people in a way that you're not being rude to them or disrespectful or disruptive? Or is that just a fear that you just have to get over and be confident in your ability to say no to things?

Rory:	Yeah. Well, mostly it's a fear. Mostly we associate telling people no with being mean and we don't want to be mean, so half of the battle there is the realization that you can say no but still be nice. And so, you make a game out of it. We do it. We try to make a game out of being the nicest no that anybody ever got. A big part of what I do these days is I speak, and over the years, my speaking fee has gone up pretty dramatically, and so now we get people who are... you know, it's just awesome, because they'll come to us. They invite us to come speak but maybe they don't have the budget to afford it, so we only have a certain number of dates that we can take to be out-speaking, and so we can't take all of them, and if we have to tell somebody no, we put together a little care package. You know, it's like, thank you so much for the compliment of requesting us. Sorry it's not able to work. Here's some things... We put quote books in there and some magnets and some different things, and then we always try to point them in the direction of, "If you were looking for a message like me, here's maybe some other speakers that you should check out that you might like, and they might still help you accomplish that objective." So, you know, it can be that, or it can just simply be with language. One of the phrases that I love, and I don't know when I started using it, is just, "Thank you so much for the compliment of asking me." It's flattering to be asked. I want to able to say yes to you. Unfortunately I have a stack of previous commitments that are not going to allow me to do this with the appropriate level of focus and dedication it really deserves, so for that reason I'm going to have to decline, but I really wish you the best and here's a couple ideas. Or, you know, we try to always give people some resource or direction to the extent that we can for whatever their next step might be. But it's not so much about the tactical part of it as it is the mental realization that you can say no and still be nice.

Matt:	That was great. I think that's a very, very good way to phrase it, and that's something I think I'll definitely be using. I think that there's a lot of advice out there, too, that you should say yes to everything and take every meeting and blah blah blah, and I think that on the road to success, there's a flipping point where you switch from needing to say yes to everything needing to say no to more and more and more things so that you can really focus in on the highest value, biggest impact things.

Rory:	Yeah. It absolutely is. It's very often a case of what got you here won't get you there. It's an example, though, of how everything about time management is wrong, because we hear that very thing, right, that you have to be saying yes, you have to be out there always taking on everything, and, according to multipliers, what's more important than having a to-do list in the next generation is having a not-to-do list. So, it's having clear clarity about the things that you do not do, and that becomes more important, because as you become more and more successful, as your star rises, whether that's inside of an organization or inside of an industry or just kind of in general with public popularity and influence, more and more opportunities come your way and you have to be really clear about the things that make sense and the things that don't, which ties in to multiplying time. For us, we actually have created a scoring system, basically, or a new way of thinking that helps people evaluate what tasks they should do and they shouldn't do, based on a calculation we called the significance calculation.

Matt:	So, tell me a little bit more. What is the significance calculation? 

Rory:	Yeah. So, it's based upon the history of time management theory, and early time management thought, which we call era one thinking, was very one-dimensional. It was all about efficiency. It was managing your time by doing things faster. Well, then a book came out called Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. Amazing book written by the brilliant late Dr. Stephen Covey, and he changed the world. The book sold 25 million copies and it was just a game-changer, and Dr. Covey introduced era two time management thinking, which is prioritizing your time. And he taught us, rather than just trying to do things quickly, is that you should focus first on what matters most, and you should prioritize certain activities, and he created this two-dimensional scoring system that he called the Time Management Matrix. Well, in the Time Management Matrix, the Y axis was importance and the X axis was urgency, and importance... you used those two criteria to help you score and you realized not all tasks are created equal. And it was so powerful. It was huge for all of us, because it helped you realize that, hey, item number seven on your to-do list should actually be bumped up to number one, and that concept is really powerful. The limitation of that, as the world has evolved, and a lot of people don't realize this. That book was written in 1989.

Matt:	Wow.

Rory:	Think about how different the world was in 1989.

Matt:	Seriously.

Rory:	Right. I mean, there's no cell phones, no internet, no Google, no Facebook, no social media, none of that. None of the stuff that we have today. Well, you can't solve today's time management problems using yesterday's time management thinking. The next level of results always requires the next level of thinking, and so, what we noticed is that these multipliers, these top one-percenters, these ultra-performers, that we call them in Take the Stairs, which was our first book. Their thinking has evolved to something where they include the significance calculation. And while importance is how much does something matter, and urgency is how soon does something matter, significance is how long is this going to matter. In other words, how is this going to play out over time? And the significance calculation changes everything. Absent the significance calculation, we tend to live in a world of urgency. Significance is the natural counterbalancing force to urgency, and what I mean by urgency as a practical example is most of us live with a 24-hour paradigm. Most of us wake up and we say, what's the most important thing I have to do today? But that is not the question that multipliers ask. Multipliers, when you make the significance calculation, you break free of that one day, 24-hour paradigm, and they instead are thinking about tomorrow and the next day and the next day. So, while most people ask the question, 
"What's the most important thing I can do today?" multipliers are asking the question, "How can I use my time in a way today that creates more time tomorrow? What are the things I can do right now to create more time or more results in the future?" And, based on that question, they choose a different set of tasks than most people would. Again, let me give you a practical example of this, Matt. So, if I ask the average person off the street, I say, "Hey, do you have two hours open in your calendar today where you could set up online bill pay?" People would be like, "No. Are you kidding? I don't have two hours open in my calendar. I don't remember the last time in my life when I had two hours open in my calendar." So, they would say, "No, I don't have time to do that. I have more important..." They would say, right, "I have more important things to do." Well, a multiplier would look at that and go, well, wait a minute. If I spend two hours today setting up online bill pay, and I don't really have the two hours. Of course, there's other things I could be doing with that two hours. But, if I take two hours and I set up online bill pay and that saves me 30 minutes every month from paying my bills, then that means in just four months' time, I will have broken even on that investment and every month thereafter I will be getting something that we introduce, a concept in the book, called ROTI, which is return on time invested. So, every month for the rest of your life, you're getting this ROTI. It's creating time in the future that you wouldn't otherwise have. I mentioned there's five permissions in the book. The first is eliminate. The second one is kind of related to what we're talking about here, which is automate the permission to invest. And what we realize is that automation is to your time exactly what compounding interest is to your money. So, just like compounding interest takes money and turns it into more money, automation takes time and it turns it into more time. None of us have time to set up a better system today. None of us have time to create a better technology. None of us have time to migrate over to completely different software than we've been using. It's never convenient to do that. But the people who have explosive growth are the ones who are constantly doing that. Not constantly, but they're regularly evolving in that fashion because they know that those things create more time in the future. So, the way that rich people think about money is almost exactly the same way that multipliers think about time.

Matt:	I love that analogy and the comparison to compound interest. Compound interest is such a powerful phenomenon and it really translates into a way of thinking about, you know, if you apply the same principle to your time, you'll be able to multiply it. 

Rory:	Yeah. Absolutely. And it's a new way of thinking, and you have to give yourself permission, because if you don't give yourself the permission to invest the time and the money to set up that system, you will always fall victim to whatever's latest and loudest. You will always be victim to the urgent, and there's a term that we coined in the Take the Stairs book that really captures this, and it's part of what really popularized our work in the media, was this phrase that we call priority dilution. And so, priority dilution is the new procrastination, because priority dilution, even though it has nothing to do with being lazy or apathetic or disengaged like classic or traditional procrastination, it's the same net result as a procrastinator, which is that we leave the office at the end of the day with our most significant priorities left unchecked, not because we're lazy but because we allow our attention to shift to less important but perhaps more urgent tasks. We're constantly fighting fires, and the result is we only have linear growth for the company versus exponential growth. Multipliers are the people who make that significance calculation. They're willing to take the hit in the short term, the same way that wealthy person is going, "You know what? I'm not going to buy a new car this year. I'm instead going to invest that money, and ten years from now I'll buy a car that's ten times as nice." It's the exact same mode of thinking. It's just that instead of about money, it's about time. And what Procrastinating on Purpose does, you know, I think the idea isn't really novel. It's just the power is bringing it into your consciousness and having a nomenclature and semantics and a visual, which we use this thing called the focus funnel, to codify the way that this thinking happens, because even multipliers themselves do most of this on an unconscious level. They don't know they're doing it. What we do, because we're around them all the time, and I interview them on my podcast—I do a weekly podcast also and I share the stage with a lot of these authors and thinkers and amazing people or whatever—is I started to realize there's these certain patterns that were shared. So, we put that together in a book and that's making a big impact.

Matt:	So, you've mentioned the five permissions, and we've talked about a couple of them already. What are the others?

Rory:	Well, yeah. That's a lot to get into in a short period of time.

Matt:	Fair enough.

Rory:	And, in fact, if you go to procrastinateonpurpose.com, you can watch a free webinar. It's a one-hour webinar and it's completely free, and it walks you through the entire framework. It shows you the visual of the focus funnel, explains how these multipliers think. But basically, at the top of the funnel, if you have all your tasks coming in, the first question is, "Can this be eliminated?", which is the permission to ignore. If it can't be eliminated, then it drops down into the middle of the focus funnel, which is automate, the permission to invest. So, can this be automated? If it can't be automated, then it drops down to the bottom of the funnel, which is, "Can this be delegated?" And delegation is a really core focus because, at that point, you know a task must be done. The question is, must it be done by you? And if it can be done by somebody else, then you should have them do it. The problem is that most of us... Like, if you asked the average small business owner, you say, "Hey, are there tasks that you're doing every day that you could train someone else to do?" Most people would say, "Well, yeah, of course there are." And you say, "Well, why haven't you trained them to do it?" And they'd say... well, one or two things. They would say, "I either don't have the time to do it, like, it's just faster for me to do it myself," or, "They won't be able to do it as well as I can." Again, those are actual emotional rationalizations that we make in a split decision, like an instant. And if you actually break those down and you look, so let's look at the one about... You know, it's faster for me to do it myself. And one of the things, Matt, that we encourage and we try to teach our coaching clients is what we call the 30x role. So, the 30x role suggests that you should spend 30 times the amount of time it takes you to do a task once on training someone else to do that task for you. So, let's just say you have a task that takes five minutes, as an example. The 30x rule suggests, then, that you should spend 150 minutes... So, 30 times five. 150 minutes training someone how to do the task. And this is where I lose people sometimes, because they go, "Rory, that is so stupid. Why would I spend 150 minutes—that's two and a half hours—training somebody to do a task that I could just do myself in five minutes?" Well, the answer is, it never makes sense to do that unless you make the significance calculation. In a world of urgency, in a 24-hour paradigm, it never makes sense to trade two and a half hours for five minutes. It just doesn't. However, if you make a significance calculation and you look at this over just one year worth of time, you'll realize that if you spend five minutes a day on the task, well, if there's 250 working days in just one year, then over the course of one year, you're going to spend 1,250 minutes on that task. So, now the question is a little bit different. The question isn't, "Should I spend 150 minutes to save five?" It's, "Should I spend 150 minutes to save 1,250?" Well, the answer is just as obvious, but it's the complete opposite of what you originally thought. The only thing that has changed is your perspective, what we call the significance calculation. And if you were to evaluate that investment of time the way that you would evaluate a financial investment, so now I'm investing 150 minutes, I'm saving 1,250, so really, that's a net gain of 1,100 because I have to spend the 150 training, so the net gain is 1,100. So, I invested 150 minutes. The net gain was 1,100. If you divide 150 into 1,100, that's a 733% ROTI, return on time invested. And we think the next generation of cost savings for companies is not going to be about saving money. It's going to be about saving time, because people say time is money. Time is not money. Time is worth way more than money is. So, when you look at delegating, most of us don't have time to train someone to do it for us, right? Because we're living in a world of urgency. Well, multipliers go, "Well, I don't care how urgent it is. I'm going to take the time to train this person to do this right, and then I'll never have to worry about it again," and that longer calculation changes everything. So, what it really comes down to with delegate is not that you don't have time to do it. What it comes down to is the more emotional thing, you don't think they'll be able to do it as well as you can. Again, though, if you make the significance calculation, you realize that might be true once. Like, the first time they do it, yeah, it's not going to be as well you could do it. Maybe the second time, maybe the third time, maybe the fifth time, maybe the hundredth time, but at some point in the future, they're going to be able to master that task just like you were, and they'll probably be able to do it even better because they're going to have a higher level of specialization and focus, because they're not pulled in as many directions as you are. So, delegation. The third permission is the permission of imperfect. You have to give yourself permission to say, "Yeah, this is going to be a little bit messed up for a while, for a short term, but the value in the long term is worth it," and it's the significance calculation that provides the foundation and the basis for being willing to accept that short-term permission of imperfect.

Matt:	That's so critical. I see so many people struggle with an inability to delegate, primarily because of a fear tied to they're not going to be able to do it as well as I can.

Rory:	Yeah, and that's an emotional thing. Like, it's a perfectionism fear. Like, it won't be good enough. That is emotion at the subconscious level dictating you that you're going to do it. And not only dictating you, but trapping you. It's trapping you into doing that all the time, which means that you're restricting your ability to grow individually, and certainly to grow your organization or whatever your cause is, because you're imprisoned, you're handicapped by this idea that you have to do everything. And if you're talking about entrepreneurs, until an entrepreneur gets past that thought that I have to do everything, they're going to inhibit the growth and the possibility and the potential for everyone around them.

Matt:	So, what is one piece of homework that you would give our listeners to kind of implement some of these ideas into their lives?

Rory:	Well, so, there's two things. So, first of all, I would say don't be silly. Like, give yourself permission to spend an hour and watch. Go to procrastinateonpurpose.com and watch this and get the education. We're making it available for free for people, so go and do that. That one hour will have a return, I am sure, of thousands, if not tens of thousands of your time. But the other practical thing to do is, okay... The whole premise here—make sure that we're clear—is very simple. You multiply time by giving yourself the emotional permission to spend time on things today that give you more time tomorrow. That's the whole premise. So, what I would say is, make a list, because you probably have had these ideas kicking around in your head. You're like, yeah, you know what, I probably should reorganize that thing, or we probably need to update this software, or we really need a tool that does this, or this process needs to be improved. You know, we should really create a series of talking points for that customer service issue. I really should hire a person to do this. I find that I'm doing this one thing over and over and over again. And that's a great place to look, by the way, is things that you keep doing over and over and over again. Make a list of those things and ask yourself, okay, what are the things that I could do today that would create more time tomorrow? How can I eliminate, automate, delegate, and then there's two other permissions, which you can get into in the webinar. And just develop clarity around those things, and that's half the battle is just bringing it into your consciousness, the power of this idea. 

Matt:	Well, Rory, this has been fascinating, and I'm sure the listeners are going to have some very actionable insights here, especially if they check out that webinar. That will let them multiply their time. So, I wanted to say thank you very much for being on The Science of Success and sharing all of these insights.

Rory:	Oh, yeah. It's my pleasure, Matt. Thank you so much for having me and remember, success is never owned. Success is only rented, and the rent is due every day.

How You Are Sabotaging Yourself By Setting The Wrong Goals - And What To Do About It - With Emmy Winner & Bestselling Author Scott Halford

In this episode we dive into how to activate your brain, create and sustain momentum to make your goals a reality, how goals can often be self-sabotaging, and the neurochemistry behind how and why all of this happens with our guest Scott Halford.

If you are feeling stuck or want to make progress on a goal but can’t figure out why you’re not – listen to this episode!

Scott is an Emmy Award winning writer and producer, acclaimed public speaker, and the author of Activate Your Brain. Scott is also a long-time educator of Fortune 500 executive teams on topics including achievement psychology, brain-based behavioral science, and more.

We cover some incredible topics including:

• How long term goals can self sabotage by triggering a “disgust” response in your brain (and what to do about it)

• The ways to “erase” cortisol and other stress inducing neurochemicals

• How to create momentum towards your goals and put yourself in an achievement state

• Simple strategies to “activate” your brain

• The “three brains” inside your head and what each of them is responsible for

• The truth about multi-tasking and why its impossible

• And Much More!

Thank you so much for listening!

Please SUBSCRIBE and LEAVE US A REVIEW on iTunes! (Click here for instructions how to do that!).  

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Welcome back to The Science of Success. Today, we have an exciting new guest on the show, Scott Halford. Scott is an Emmy Award-winning writer and producer, acclaimed public speaker, and author of Activate Your Brain: How Understanding Your Brain Can Improve your Work and your Life. Scott is also a long time educator of Fortune 500 executive teams on topics including achievement psychology, brain-based behavioral science, emotional intelligence, and the principles of influence. Scott, welcome to The Science of Success. 

Scott:	Thanks, Matt. Great to be here.

Matt:	Well, we're excited to have you on. 

Scott:	I'm thrilled. You guys do all this psychology stuff. It's pretty interesting, huh?

Matt:	Absolutely. So, to start out, Scott, tell me a little bit about how did you kind of get into this field and start doing some research and kind of talking and writing about neuroscience and psychology?

Scott:	Yeah, I think I've been interested in what makes people tick for a long, long time. Never from a disease state, but mostly from an achievement state, which is a very different kind of path, and when I was in television... I had a TV career, as you intimated in my introduction. When I was in television, I had the opportunity to do a number of different documentaries on a number of different topics, and met some people in really very, very difficult and trying situations, all the way from people on death row for capital punishment to people who were burned on 90% of their bodies and lived and just the kind of trauma and drama that ensued after that and the kind of life that they had to deal with. And, you know, just meeting them, following them, understanding their plights, really just kind of always resonated with me, and as I got into the corporate world, I really wanted to kind of apply some of the lessons that I learned and to really help them to understand, you know, what is it... We know a lot about what makes people not work well. We even have a huge diagnostic manual on it called the DSM, that tells us all about the mental normalities, but we don't have that much out there that is actually published and rigorous and specific about achievement states. And so, I just got really interested in it and worked in corporations with executives and began just speaking a lot about it, writing a lot about it, and that brings me to kind of where I am.

Matt:	So, when you say achievement state, what does that mean?

Scott:	Well, so, when you look at... For instance, let's go back to disease states. When you look at paranoid schizophrenia or any kind of neuroticism or any other kind of psychopathology, you're typically trying to bring people to homeostasis, or normal. You're trying to fix something that they have that doesn't fit into the typical nomenclature of an average, normal human being, because of either brain chemistry or brain architecture that's gone wrong or, sometimes, substance abuse and physical and emotional abuse that creates that. So, there's all that work around that, and the achievement state is, if you're taking someone who's basically got kind of a normal profile, what is it that they can do to be exceptional, to push themselves, to drive harder than the typical person would, to stick with things longer than the typical person would, and to achieve kind of extraordinary results by the habits that they create and the kind of thinking that they have and the way that they go about paying attention to the world.

Matt:	Fascinating. So, is that sort of the same thing as positive psychology, or is there a difference there?

Scott:	Yeah. So, positive psychology, for sure, is a big piece of it. I actually did a semester of the Authentic Happiness with Martin Seligman, who is considered the father of positive psychology, now offers the master's in applied positive psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. And yet, you know, what they're really looking at are things like happiness and things like flourishing and really taking a look at the things that allow us to have a higher sense of wellbeing and applying it to counseling, applying it to coaching, applying it to just everyday kind of work. It's the same. I'm really interested in achievement states through the lens of the brain. So, I love being able to see it proven through science, and to see that gives it teeth. A lot of the executives I worked with, as well as I do a lot of physician leadership programs, and these doctors and highly analytical and cynical executives, quite frankly, they'll listen to it and they'll understand the emotional intelligence. They'll understand that's an important thing. I get that. I read that. It makes sense that it's important. But they're kind of like, well, it's really secondary to my business acumen or my understanding of financial spreadsheets, and so on and so forth. So, it doesn't always feel like they have teeth because there's no data. Well, neuroscience gives it data, and all of a sudden they can see it in the brain. They can see that their ability to make decisions is impaired by their stressors. They can see that their ability to interact with people in a positive light that actually brings out positive outcomes is predicated on how they manage themselves on a moment-by-moment basis throughout the day, and that you can actually see that in the brain. So, there are a variety of other examples. So, that's where I just get very switched on about the whole thing, is to be able to say, you know, take that cynical person and kind of show them a picture of what's happening in the neuroarchitecture and, with the endocrinology in the brain, the hormones, and say to them, "There's your data. There's the teeth. This is not soft skills. These are the hardest skills you will ever learn." The softer skills are business acumen and financial acumen. You can learn that in a book. You can go through a course, semester, go through an MBA in two years and get all that done and then go out there and experience it, but understanding humans is a lifelong process that has so many variables that we'll never, ever achieve that state. We'll just always be on the journey of it.

Matt:	That's such a great point. One of the things that set me on that journey many years ago was a speech by Charlie Munger. I don't know if you're familiar with him or not.

Scott:	Mm-mm.

Matt:	But he has this amazing speech. He's Warren Buffet's business partner.

Scott:	Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, yep.

Matt:	And he's a fascinating guy. He has this incredible speech called... I forget how many exactly, but it's like the 21 standard causes of human misjudgment, and he basically goes through all these things that cause people's decision making to go haywire. And that kind of got me on this rabbit hole of digging into all these different pieces of the puzzle.

Scott:	Fantastic. So, why did you... Why are you so interested in it?

Matt:	Like I said, I mean, I think it started with that speech and I really just wanted to figure out, you know, what drives people to make decisions, and I think in many ways, and I get a lot of listeners, actually, who send me questions sometimes that kind of fall into this category. I think a lot of people's interest in psychology, understanding humans, understanding decision making, all of that sort of stems from initially almost like a very naive place of, you know, I want to figure out how I can influence someone to do what I want, right. It's like, I want A plus B equals them doing what I want them to do, basically.

Scott:	Right, right.

Matt:	And once you kind of get into it, you know... I mean, I started in that place. There's nothing wrong with being in that framework or that kind of thinking about things that way, but once you actually dig into it, there's so many more layers deeper than that, and you really have to kind of start understanding the building blocks and the fundamentals and how those fit together, and then once you understand a lot of that and you really start to build that deeper framework, then these sort of surface level tactical applications of everything from "Why am I making a bad decision?" to "What is this other person making this particular decision and what are the factors going into that and how can I potentially influence them in a more positive way?" Those sort of flow naturally from a deeper understanding of it.

Scott:	Mhm. Yeah. And the variables become really difficult, not to understand but to maneuver around, and so when people have relatively good principles that work, they can work most of the time. Where the A plus B equals C falls apart is that A has a variable, B has a variable, and then the environment affects C as well, and so mood affects it, the timing of the day, positive or negative effect, what you ate, you know, prior decisions, the environment, so many different things. And so, I get that a lot from executives. Just tell me, what's the one line that will get everybody to do what I want them to do?" Like, wow. If it was that easy, I'd be out of business, but it's not that easy. And so, I think that it's so incredibly cool to be able to think about it from a not only personal perspective, but in helping other people. And for me, a lot of people will think because I teach it that I have all my stuff together, and nothing could be further from the truth. I just teach it. And again, we're all on that journey as unfinished human beings trying to figure out how do we go about in the world with high well-being, being effective, feeling successful, feeling meaningful, all of those things that allow us to be who we are. And I think the other thing, too, is that at our very basest, I think a lot of people are interested in psychology because they want to understand their own, number one, and I think when we look at our species, again, through brain architecture, we have brain architecture that allows us to contemplate about ourselves and reflect on how we fit in with the person sitting across from us. So, if you'd go to an airport and you sit around and you're not buried in your iPhone or other device and you just watch people, you watch people watching people. Not very many other species are as interested in each other as we are, because we have so many variables. And so, that's why people watching is so incredibly fascinating, because we can be stunned by each other every single day throughout the day, and I think that that's kind of at the crux of it all, in terms of why people are interested. We inherently should be interested in our own species.

Matt:	You know, one of the things that it took me a little while to realize was that understanding your own decision making and why that can go haywire, why that can go wrong, and understanding other people's decision making, are essentially two sides of the same coin. And so, once you kind of dig into either one of those, you really start to get to those core principles.

Scott:	Yeah. Yeah. I agree. And I think that, you know, we become better when we watch other people, and it's typically not in a book. You know, none of this is... It's all written about. We all ponder it, but no one's ever pronounced the truth just yet. I think that we do our best when we are aware, and not just of ourselves but of other people, and I meet countless executive after executive. And I mostly work in corporations, and I meet countless person after person who can't figure out why all the bad stuff in their life keeps happening, but when I ask them deeper questions and they come to a realization that they're just not looking up. They're not paying attention to the people sitting across from them. They're not interacting, and then understanding their own impact in that relationship. They don't question it. They don't take responsibility for their piece in it. They just kind of have a sense that something went wrong. Huh, what did they do wrong out there, you know? So, the successful ones are looking up and they're watching and they're interacting.

Matt:	That makes a lot of sense. So, kind of changing gears slightly, one of the core concepts that you talk about in Activate Your Brain is the idea of activation. What does it mean to activate, and how does that tie into kind of what we were just discussing?

Scott:	Well, so, from a neurophysiological standpoint, you can actually see activation in the brain. It's what we look at when we're looking at PET scans and we're looking at fMRIs, which is a functional magnetic resonance image. Allows us to look in your brain as things activate while you're doing something. And when we activate, in the book when we're looking at activation, we're talking, really literally, about activating momentum around doing what it is that you want to do that pushes you toward more what you believe to be your own successful state and your own state of wellbeing. And activation is a place in the brain. It's in the medial orbital frontal cortex, so in the middle. So, if you put your finger in the middle of your forehead and just to the left of that middle, you're on that left side of the medial orbital frontal cortex, orbital meaning around your eye, and right under there is a place that, when it activates by you doing something, and typically it has to do with something that you've accomplished... You know, like you just got something done on your to-do list and you cross it off. When you do the crossing off, that literally activates that left medial orbital frontal cortex. We'll just call it LMOFC for short. It activates it, and what it does is it energizes the reward systems in the brain, and the reward systems include a neurotransmitter called dopamine, and dopamine makes you feel like you want to do something again and makes you feel excited and gives you pleasure, and it says, "Do it again, do it again, do it again." So, when you activate, activation preceeds motivation. Motivation is a psychological construct that really looks into and determines on why are... Really, the why. Why do you want to do something? And looks at desire. We all have those things that we don't desire to do but we have to do, and we have to be the one to do them. And we don't ever get motivation around them, and so what we have to do is activate around them. You just do it. You just begin. Start small but start now is a mantra throughout the book. And once you start and you get that one little cross off, you go again. I mean, we've all had that, where we're like, oh, you know. You're looking at your emails and you've got in your inbox, even though you've looked at them, you just haven't cleaned it out. I have this going on right now. I've got 3,000 emails that they're all dealt with, but it really needs to be cleaned out. And you go, okay, I'm going to spend some time. I'll just do a few. Well, once you start doing it and you start kind of checking off, either mentally or physically, around it, and you activate around it, pretty soon you've cleaned out the whole thing. You've done it with your office. You've cleaned your house, right. We've all done that.

Matt:	That's totally true.

Scott:	Yeah. That's the activation. You know, and to be certain, the activation portion of the brain is also implicated in addiction at all, because it's within the same neurotransmitter and receptors as addiction does. But it's a great message to understand. That's the achievement side, is that you can become addicted to positive things. So, that's what that's all about, and really, it's the dance between that right side, which is on the orbital frontal cortex on the right side, is your no button. The left side's your go button. The no and the go. And the right side says, you know, when you wake up in the morning and you're supposed to go work out and you lay there and you think, oh, no, I just want to sleep, and the sleep wins, the no button won. And so, that's the part that keeps you on the couch. But, as with the left side being both positive and negative, having the positive attributes, the right side does, too. So, the right side, says, "No, stay on the couch," but it also says, "Don't eat that food. Don't go and gamble again." So, it's the dance between that left and right side that actually help us to navigate and negotiate our conscience, our guilt, our morals, our values, our ethics and beliefs. And that drives our behavior and really allows us to achieve what we want to achieve in the world, and that dance back and forth is what we're really looking at.

Matt:	That's fascinating. It reminds me of, I think, Josh Waitzkin. I don't know if you're familiar with him, but he's a world champion martial artist, a national chess champion who's now kind of a performance coach, but he talks about the idea of unkinking your energy flow, and it's kind of like a hose that has a bunch of kinks in it, and you know every time you move one kink, the flow through the hose gets stronger and stronger and stronger. And it's the same thing. You know, when you activate one thing, then that sort of cascades into multiple different activations of doing and executing all kinds of different things. You know, you start with your one email and then you've cleaned your inbox, cleaned your office, et cetera.

Scott:	Yeah. I 100% agree with that, and that would be exactly what our goal is. Because when you look at drivers, you know, Hertzberg studied drivers in the 1960s when he created hygiene therapy. I don't know if you know about that, but... Hygiene theory, rather, not therapy. Hygiene theory basically says that the things that demotivate us are not the same things that motivate us, so the things that demotivate us are pay, the environment, fairness, that kind of thing. Well, when all those are taken care of, if you feel like you are being paid well enough, it's not consider a motivator. So, it will demotivate you if you're not paid well enough but, once you're paid well enough, it's not the motivator. The things that drive you to motivate are things like achievement, personal growth, the job itself, earn recognition, so on, so forth. And really kind of unkinking, to your point, unkinking to get to those places and making sure that those demotivator things are taken care of, are really kind of what it's all about and really important, and I think that when people pick up my book, or any other kind of book like that, what they're really looking for are the tactics and the ways to get out of the way of themselves and to unkink and to... You know, most people are looking for an easy kind of way to go. I think success is never easy. It's always rewarding, but you have to make sacrifices. You've got to get up early. You have to work harder than you typically might want to. But, you know, when you look at a pathway that says, "All right, so what do I do to kind of feel excited about doing this hard stuff?" part of it is just the awareness of, number one, what it is that you're going after, number two, what's in your way. Those are the kinks. And number three, having the gumption to get rid of them, and actually, not only get rid of them but to create things that keep you activated, keep you excited, keep that energy going and making sure that you stay on that achievement side, as opposed to falling back into what Hertzberg would call the maintenance side, which is the demotivators. So, you know, again, it's not a destination. It's just always the journey. That's what you will do for the rest of your life if you want to be successful.

Matt:	So, I'm sure it's a lengthy and complex answer, but how would you say people should go about keeping themselves activated, or even starting, kind of jump-starting, activation?

Scott:	Well, you know, it really kind of boils down to a couple of things. First off, really kind of beginning to live under the adage, getting away from the old, you know, do more with less. What a crappy adage that was. I mean, what a bad theory. And we're discovering now how bad it was. In the '80s, '90s, even... you know, some organizations still live with it. Do more with less, right. Why should I multitask? We know that actually is such a bad idea. It's not only a bad idea, we physiologically cannot do it, number one. Number two, we also know that it degrades the gray matter of your brain over time, so it's hard on your head. But we know that people do better when they do fewer things. They just pick fewer things. They do them better. And so, first off, it's figuring out what you want and not having... You know, you can have anything you want. You just can't have it all right now. And the thing that people get really overwhelmed with is when they put too much on their plate. I know I do. I've done that several times where I just get too much on my plate, got to accomplish things around them, and now what I'm just doing is just maintaining them, just getting them done, not having enjoyment going toward them. So, if I have something I really want to go toward and I figure out what those are, two or three things, and I'm going toward them, I don't become overwhelmed. I can activate around them and I can start small but start now. Just start, you know, doing a little bit around each one and allowing the activation momentum to kind of take over and just rely on myself to push myself. I also think we all need people who help us be accountable, whether it's a coach or a mentor or a good friend, significant order, who, when you say, "All right, so I want to accomplish this and I need you to help make sure that I'm sticking to my goal here, and so I want you to hold up the mirror every once in a while and say, 'Hey, you know, you said you wanted to...' da-da-da-da, 'but you just didn't do this this time. You said you wanted to lose weight, but look at that big old triple-decker cheeseburger in your mouth.'" Whatever it is, right, that we have somebody who we're willing to listen to, to kind of hold us on the path. You know, my philosophy... And I don't have any data around this, but I do have a lot of experience. I've been in my... I've had my company, Complete Intelligence, for 26 years. I've watched people for a long time, and I think about 75% of the people I meet are not self-starters. Only about 25% are self-starters. About 75% are kickstarters. They need a little kick in the butt. I'm one of them. I mean, I self-start on some things and I kickstart on others. I need somebody to go, "Okay, come on. Come with me." Like, all right. I'll go. We need that, and really getting an awareness around that allows us to get into the activation. It's a habit, you know, and I think people get really hung up on the whole idea of, you know, am I accomplishing everything I want to accomplish and am I doing it fast enough? And look at what... You know, we have these yardsticks that are crazy, quite frankly. You know, we look at... I'm looking at a picture of you and you look really young.

Matt:	I have a very young face.

Scott:	You do? You look pretty young. And people... In my business, you know, the speaking world, we have an award that is the National Speaker's Hall of Fame. Well, people get it at different times in their lives, but you know what people brag about? Is how young they got it. And I think that's a ridiculous yardstick. Okay, so you got it when you were 30 as opposed to when you were 50. Is that the goal? Is the goal to get it done fast? And then what? And what does it get you? What does it bring you? So, I think we fall into this trap of saying, I need it all, I need it fast, and if I do it fast then that's... wow, yay. And I ask people... I have a really good friend. When he was inducted into the National Speaker's Hall of Fame—and he really, really, really wanted it bad for a long time, many years—and he started kind of getting bitter about it. And he's a great performer and an awesome speaker. Well, once he got it, we were having a beer, and we were just chatting about it. It was a couple of years afterwards. I'm like, "So..." I'll just call him John. That's not his name. "So, John, so has your life changed since you got inducted?" He goes, "No, not really." So, "Did it change how you feel about you?" He said, "For a small amount of time it did, but I needed to get it checked off and I needed it now," kind of thing. So, I think, you know, when people look at what they want to accomplish in their lives, I think being measured about it, understanding that, you know, obviously we're not living forever, so there is that time element to it, but this whole idea of "I want to make $30 million by the time I'm 40 years old." I know people like that. It's like, why? But, you know, it's different whys for different people, for sure. I just think that when we put ourselves on the journey that says we have to have it all right now, we create an anxiety that actually causes us to not perform as well, increases our anxiety, increases our stress state, our wellbeing is reduced, and then they accomplish it and it's kind of like, wow. You aged yourself. Your brain is worse off. You got what you wanted. It didn't change anything. You're not healthier because of it, right? So, my own little soapbox. Pardon me.

Matt:	Oh, no. It's all good. That was very interesting. So, kind of circling back a little bit, what are some things that someone listening to this podcast could do...? Let's say they have kind of a challenge or a goal. I think, one, the idea of addition by subtraction, i.e. cut down, focus on fewer, more high-impact things, I think that's a great piece of advice. What are some other things they could do to maybe create that momentum or to take that small step right now to get started, if they're struggling or they can't quite get the momentum they want and they feel like they're not motivated?

Scott:	Yeah. Well, you know what? I always like to use the weight metaphor. Weight. A lot of people relate to the idea of losing or gaining weight, or getting fit. And, you know, you're not going to lose 50 pounds between now and tomorrow, and when you put that as your goal and you lay that out, it's a great goal. You know, if you have 50 pounds to lose, it's a fantastic goal to have. But your brain doesn't see you as losing 50 pounds between now and tomorrow, and so what we typically do is we put it off. And there's some research that shows, actually, in an fMRI, that shows that the part of our brain that lights up that registers disgust is the same place in our brain that registers when we have a goal that is longer than 90 days out.

Matt:	Wow.

Scott:	Yeah. So, it's kind of fascinating to see that when we have this long-term goal, what we see is that... You don't see yourself as accomplishing it. You see it as somebody else's thing. It's an out there kind of thing. Because if you think about a goal that you have, like if I say to your listeners now, think about something that you have to accomplish between now and next week. So, just think about that right now, and whether it's your email or getting your proposal done—whatever it is, right—you think about that. The part of your brain that lights up is called the ventral medial prefrontal cortex, almost near that orbital frontal cortex on the left side. It's right in the middle of your forehead and right behind it, and it's the place where you see yourself. It's the place where you self-reflect. And that lights up when you think of short-term goals. And, again, it is a reward radiator and it allows you to kind of create momentum. So, all of that architecture's interconnected. But, when I say, all right. So, Matt, think of... It's right now May. What do you want to accomplish by December? What's one goal that you don't have going right now but you know you want to accomplish by December? You think about it and then you might write it down. If I looked in your brain and had you think about it, the part of your brain that would light up would not be the ventral medial prefrontal cortex. It would likely a part called the medial parietal lobe, and what happens there is it does radiate to discuss and it does begin to become something where we push it off. So, that's the science behind it, which says it's real. So, what we need to do is take a larger goal, that 50 pounds, and bring it down to, I'm not losing 50 pounds between now and tomorrow. Not even now and the end of the month. Not even now and the end of two or three or four months. However, what I can do is I can lose about eight ounces a day and keep it off. Or, if you want to look at it in terms of a week, a pound a week or something like that, or maybe two, but it needs to be sustainable and reasonable. And then what would I do every single day...? So, you would have the piece that would be... Okay, what's the big goal. Then what would I do to bring it down to a manageable goal? What would be the amount I could actually lose? And then ask yourself, there's the goal. Now I have to have two other things. I have to have a how and why. And they're two separate operations in the brain. So, the how is, what would I do? I would exercise more. I would take the stairs. I wouldn't eat carbohydrates after seven o'clock, cut out bread, don't drink wine and beer as much, and so on and so forth. Those are all the hows. The why needs to be all the benefits. Well, I'll feel better about myself. I'll look. I'll have better self-image, my self-confidence, so on and so forth. Those two networks in the brain are two different networks, but you need them both in order to accomplish motivation, if you will. So, it really is... Kind of reducing it down is this, is: go ahead and have a big goal. Understand that it could take you a year or longer to accomplish. And, if you really want to accomplish it, you really want to be able to break it down into bite-sized pieces that you can check off to get that dopamine bump, if you will, check off at least a few times a week, if not every day, and then have a why. Why are you doing it? And that's the big thing that a lot of people are missing. I have a good friend who was a client. He was joking that it was the $40 million by the time he was 40. And he did it, but I kept asking him, why? I mean, it sounds ridiculous. We'd all love to have $40 million by the time we're 40. But it doesn't take disease away. It doesn't make people happier. We've seen the research around that. You know, how many cars can you have? How many houses can you have? And, as a matter of fact, achieving those in a state where you don't have to really work hard to earn it, there's not as much happiness. When you go buy your first house, that's huge. It's so exciting, because you work at it, and it's a lot of bump. But when you can just do it any time, it's not as exciting. So, you know, the why. Why is so huge, and really figuring out what's the benefit to yourself. And earning $40 million, you could have a fantastic why, but if you don't articulate it, kind of the wellbeing part of it kind of gets compromised.

Matt:	That was great. That's super helpful. I love the idea of really breaking things down into bite sized kind of weekly or even daily activities towards that longer-term vision. I think that's super important. 

Scott:	Yeah. And you want to make sure, for sure, that it's got some frequency to it. When I was writing my book, when I was writing Activate Your Brain, it's an evidence-based book, so it's a harder book to write than... Like, my first book, Be a Shortcut, which is more... You know, there's evidence in it, but it was more me expounding on my philosophy about things, right, or my influence in emotional intelligence. So, when I had to write that book, I would stare at it and go, oh, God, I just don't want to. I was on a deadline and I didn't want to write it, and so I would just take my own advice and literally take out an old chapter that I'd already written and just kind of read through it. That was my activation, was just to get out a chapter I'd already written and read it, and you know, what do you think would happen from that? Well, I would start editing it, and I'd add to it, and pretty soon I had written 15 or 20 pages. And that's what it looks like. It literally is... I'm not writing the whole chapter. I'm not writing the whole book. I'm actually not going to even write. That wasn't even my activation. My activation was to get out an old chapter and read it and, knowing exactly what would happen, is that I would begin to edit it, add on, think of new things, and then just bam, just go.

Matt:	That's awesome. So, you've touched on, in some of that extrapolation, kind of the ideas of brain structure, neural networks and everything. One of the things we've talked about in the past on the podcast are kind of the biological limits of the mind and how biology constrains and sort of structures our thinking. One of the topics I know you've talked about in past is the idea of the three different brains and how that ties into neuroscience and sort of our brains themselves. Would you talk a little bit about that?

Scott:	Yeah. So, it's kind of a simplistic way to look at the brain, but when you look at kind of architecture in a larger, macro format, and you look at what developed when in the brain, the first thing that came online was the reptilian brain. It's ancient. And it's kind of at the base of the brain. It's what we call the pons or the brain stem. [INAUDIBLE 00:35:28] is also in there, and it's really the ancient part. It's implicated... You know, the whole brain interacts with each other, but this one is on 24 hours a day, seven days a week, reptilian, pays attention to things that are automatic and autonomic, that they just have to happen and they need... Like, body temperature, perspiration, respiration, aspiration, salivation, any of the -ations it's doing for you. And basically, it turns those on and off. You don't really have a choice about it. And it also helps to activate around certain motivations, as well. The medulla, that is at the very base of the brain that kind of looks like a second brain, that's where we lock all of our consolidated behaviors like riding a bike, brushing your teeth, buttoning a shirt, tying your shoes, things that were really hard when you were a two-year-old and spent a lot of sugar to be able to do, a lot of glucose, because that's what the brain uses to energize itself, and it used to take you lots and lots of energy, and that's why kids have meltdowns if you push them too hard. But over time, what happens through repetition, those behaviors consolidate, and now the glucose expenditure reduces, and that's all in the medulla. And so, it allows you to operate in the world without having to spend a lot of sugar. We want to use that for other things. Then the second brain is what we call the mammal brain, and that's kind of locked right in the middle of the brain. It's the mid-brain. We call it the limbic system and it harbors lots of architecture. We store behaviors, we consolidate and store behaviors, in that part. It's also where we harbor our memory, most of it, in a place called the hippocampus, and the emotional danger-detecting architecture is there, as well, and we have several times, about seven times more danger detecting architecture in our brain than we do for a reward. It allowed us to survive the world. And that's the emotional part of the brain. It's what puts you on high alert. It's what makes you kind of pay attention to things in the environment. And we put rewarding things on the bottom and we put dangerous things on top, and it gives you a lot of clue about behavior. You know, people who are constantly seeing the negative are in their danger-threat response quite a lot. And that mammal part of the brain si 24 hours a day, seven days a week, scanning the environment for danger and threat in the environment about three to five times per second, even while you're asleep. So, it's a busy, busy, busy brain. The problem with it is it has no logic. It's messy and it's the part that says, you know, if you hit me, I'm going to hit you back. It's that part that says, you know... If all we had was our mammal brain and we were executives sitting across from each other and I vehemently disagreed with you and I wanted to choke you, I actually would. And so, we have to bring online the human part of the brain, which is the prefrontal cortex, and that's the last part to have been added to the brain, about 30,000 years ago. That's the part that is the executive reasoning, thinking, innovating part of the brain, and so it gives intelligence to our emotions, thus emotional intelligence. It's the dance between the prefrontal cortex and the limbic system. That's emotional intelligence. Because, again, if we acted on all of our impulses, all of our emotional impulses, especially the stronger ones—to hit, to bite, to scratch, to yell, to scream—we wouldn't be very effective as a species. We'd be effective as other animals is what we'd be. And the intelligence, that prefrontal cortex, says, no, no, no. Let's modulate that. You might be really angry right now, but is that anger going to help you get what you want, or do you need to just slow it down, take a deep breath, and restate and reframe your needs in a way that's not going to cause somebody else to become defensive and not get what you want? So, that's the emotional intelligence piece, and those are the three parts and pieces that kind of interact. So, that's what they look like right there.

Matt:	And I think that... We've talked about this in a previous episode. It's fascinating that the brain is sort of geared towards it via the process of evolution, focusing more on threats and danger and, in many ways, that's kind of maladapted to modern day society where, oftentimes, the threats that you're facing are not an animal jumping out of the bushes that's going to eat you, but it's somebody across the table or in a board room or whatever it might be that is not actually a physical threat to your life, necessarily, and so our response is often inappropriate or wrong, kind of rooted in these biological nature and structure of the brain itself.

Scott:	Yeah. And, you know, exactly. The architecture is the same. The dangers have evolved. And you're right. It's no longer the saber-toothed tiger or the poisonous plant. It's the missed deadline. It's you disagreeing with me. It's you telling me that my baby's ugly, right. It's that back and forth. That's the danger in the environment. And the architecture is still useful. We just have to manage it, and when our prefrontal cortex... You know, before that prefrontal cortex became fully developed, we were still a pretty nasty species. All you have to do is look back at the history of our species, especially in the last 5,000 years. We've been pretty mean to each other in a lot of different ways. When you add language and some of the sophistication that comes with a prefrontal cortex, wow, that's another layer that you have to deal with, right? I mean, confusion really became part of who we are and how we interact. When you add language in... Because we've all had that, you know, when you say to someone, "Hey, you want to go have Mexican food?" and they look at you like, oh, sure. You know, you can't see my face right now, but if you saw it you'd be like... you'd look at it and go, he really doesn't want to go. Well, because we play games with each other, we might be passive-aggressive, if you will. I might look at you and see your face saying no but decide not to pay attention and say, "Well, you said yes, so okay. Great. Let's go have Mexican food." And now you have conflict, right, and so we're constantly dealing with these little teeny papercuts of dangers. Cortisol is your stressor hormone that is activated when you're paying attention to all those dangers. So, as we look at the health of the aging brain, we look at cortisol and the implications of it, in terms of the integrity of that brain, because we're all shrinking after we're 25, 25 to 30 years old. You're either shrinking or you're growing. You're not going to stand in place, your brain. And, in order for it to grow, you have to proactive. It's going to just shrink on its own, and if you are paying attention to all of the dangerous threats that you interpret as a danger in the environment, something tardy, an email that you get that is upsetting, and myriad of things, if your lens is always about danger and you can't reframe it, which is what the prefrontal cortex allows you to do, then your brain health is... you're going down a nasty path. And you feel bad, and other disease happens because now your immune system, your immune function is battered from all that cortisol in your system. So, it's a circular kind of thing that happens. Our danger detection system is there for a very good reason. It's just that because we have evolved into a modern world, we need to kind of say to our danger response, really, that email, it didn't make me rageful. It made me frustrated. That's a different set of neurohormones, but we keep telling ourselves that, oh gosh, we get really mad when it really requires not such an outsized emotion that is filled with all kinds of... not only negativity from a feeling sense, but also from a neurochemical sense to the brain.

Matt:	So, along with cortisol and dopamine, which we've touched on, what are some of the other key neurochemicals, and how do we control or manage their impact on our behavior?

Scott:	So, fun with neurochemistry is what we're talking about. Yes. [Laughs] So, there's a set of catecholamines that include dopamine and epinephrine, and then you add oxytocin into it, and those are the three I like to focus on, along with cortisol. And again, cortisol's not all bad. You don't want to get rid of it. It's actually a very positive thing as you're learning something. It focuses you. That along with norepinephrine. Norepinephrine's your focuser. That's the thing that actually causes you to pay high alert and attention. In a positive state, it's exciting, and when you're learning something... Say you're going to go out and learn to play golf or any other thing, and you go out and you start playing and you start getting positive feedback. Well, norepinephrine plus the cortisol, which is, again, focusing you, those two things cause you to learn rapidly. It's just that when you're pushed too hard and somebody starts to criticize and then the danger becomes danger, you know, the threat response becomes dangerous as opposed to positive, then we crumble, because we're spending way too much glucose. Cortisol doesn't travel alone. It travels with glucose, because glucose and cortisol, along with adrenaline, come together to make you fight, flight, or freeze. Well, you know, you just don't want to be in that space all day. It's exhausting. And that's what happens when you're in a state of learning where you've been pushed too far. So, on the positive side, norepinephrine focuses you, makes you interested, makes you engaged, makes you excited, and we know that things that actually activate it are things like novelty, learning something new like I just explained. You know, a new language, a musical instrument, going and learning something you've never done before. Paint a painting. Do mosaics. Do something you've never done, and it's not about achieving mastery but just about... and not only about exciting your brain, but when you are in novelty, you're actually in neurogenesis as well as neuroplasticity. You're causing your brain to grow. You're binding neural pathways that are there that have never talked before and now they are, and you're creating new growth in your brain, and then neurogenesis, which is brand new neurons in the memory center of your brain as well as the motor center of your brain, the medulla and the hippocampus. So, those... norepinephrine is really positive that way, so learning something new, getting hobbies, and that kind of thing. Dopamine comes from winning. It comes from accomplishing things, that check mark. It comes from achieving mastery and feeling like, somewhere in your world, you have some chiefdom, some little corner of the world that you know you do really well, and that sense of wellbeing is part of what happens with dopamine. And then there's oxytocin, which is your bonding hormone, and that is that state of feeling like you're part of a social group. It's pro-social. It makes you feel included. It makes you feel loved and it makes you feel liked, as well. And things like collaboration, laughter. So, if you're laughing a lot. We love people who we laugh with, and that's an oxytocin bump. If you like somebody, you're just hanging out with them, going and having a coffee with them or a beer, whatever, and you just feel simpatico. That's an oxytocin. That's that feeling. When you fall in love with someone, you're going to get a bunch of oxytocin. And then being generous. You know, being benevolent and going out in society and doing something for people that you don't have to do something for. That creates oxytocin. We know that, actually, to that end that volunteering and helping people, where you don't have to do it, right, but doing something for other people has about the same palliative effect on your depression, mild to moderate depression, as an anti-depressant does. So, volunteering's a really great kind of therapy for yourself, if you will. And so those three, dopamine, norepinephrine, and oxytocin, kind of combine to give you that overall sense of peace, wellbeing, excitement, mastery, control. All the positive things in your world. We kind of dive deeply in the book into, you know, what are the things you want to put in your place that create those, and I just mentioned some of them.

Matt:	Yeah. No, those were some great examples. So, for example, if somebody has too much cortisol or they're constantly in that fight or flight danger response place, what are some of the things that they might be able to do to calm themselves down or to reduce their cortisol levels or to kind rebalance some of their neurochemicals?

Scott:	Yeah. I call them erasers. I call these things erasers. They erase the cortisol. They rebalance it, set it to homeostasis. And they're everything we all know about, and yet you've got to do them. And here's the thing: got to do them every day. And not all of them, but some of them you have to do every day. Some of them, you just do it when you're starting to feel stressed out. The everyday things are, number one, and by a long shot, is sleep. We are so under-slept, and we're seeing inflammation in the brain, which is a bad thing. It's making the brain stickier. We're seeing that being implicated in Alzheimer's, where the beta amyloids can't be flushed because of the inflamed brain, and the lack of sleep will inflame your brain. It's why you can't think. You gotta get your seven to nine hours, and on average, that's where we are as an adult human being. So, sleep. If you're having frenetic sleep because you're so anxious, you've got to go figure that out. Go work with a sleep doctor. Work with somebody, but read the chapter in the book on sleep. You've really just got to pay attention to this. So many people: "Oh, I don't like to sleep. It's a waste of time." It is the most important time you have all day. If you're not sleeping, you're not consolidating, and that's where we consolidate our memories. It's not happening while you're awake. While you're awake, you gather. While you sleep, you learn. And so, you might think it's a waste of time. It's the most productive time your brain has, and if you're not doing it, you're headed for an early grave. Just really pay attention to that. That's number one every day. Number two is exercise every day. Gotta walk, faster than a typical walk. 30 minutes a day is what's being recommended. About 150 minutes a week. Cardiovascular's where we see both neurogenesis and neuroplasticity be affected in a positive light. Plus, BDNF, the brain-derived neurotropic factor, which is like Miracle-Gro to the brain, causes the brain to have the neural pathways to connect, as well as neurogenesis. So, it's a brain grower. Sense of wellbeing happens, brings down the cortisol levels, brings up endorphin, which is your natural painkiller. So, exercise, you know, and cardiovascular's the big thing. For those of you out there just lifting weights and not doing any cardiovascular, we're not seeing the same kind of positive implication in the brain. It's great for your bones. Gotta have that, right. So, it's great for the pressure on the bones, but I really want you to get out there and do some cardiovascular stuff. It doesn't have to be crazy. Just get a Fitbit and get 10,000 steps in a day. You know, Fitbit or something else that's a step counter, and make 30 minutes of those a day something that are faster than walk and make you breathe a little heavier and maybe get you a little sweaty above the lip. So, that's exercise. The third thing every day: your brain needs downtime that is not asleep. We call it a wake rest in neuroscience, and that means mindfulness. It means meditation. It means just wandering, mentally wandering. Sit in your office, sit in your home. Just look out the window and untether yourself from electronics. Literally untether from electronics. And give yourself ten minutes of that three times a day. The recent research shows that your brain is best from a work, productive, and quality standpoint, best at sprinting for a maximum of about 57 minutes with a 17 minute break, and in that break you're doing downtime things. You're laughing. Maybe you go and do a deliberate distraction. Maybe you just mentally wander. Maybe you do some mindfulness where you just think about a thing. There's lots of stuff out there, Headspace and other kinds of apps out there that you can really just take that cortisol level down. So, sprint 57. In my book I call it 50-10, because I like even numbers. So, sprint for 50, take ten off. Also during that ten minutes, by the way, is to hydrate. An under-hydrated brain doesn't think as well. Your brain needs about ten times more water than the rest of the cells in your body. So, during your ten minutes, go... You know, every time you hit that ten minute mark, go get a glass of water and drink it. So, 50-10, 50-10, throughout the day, to the degree you can. Obviously, nobody's on that exact schedule, but you want to introduce it at least three times a day, and during that ten minutes, during at least three of those, really have that downtime awake rest. Not where you're sleeping, but awake rest. If you want to take a nap in your office for ten or 15 minutes, awesome. Awesome, awesome. Really, those reset everything in your head, and if you can do it and close your door and figure out how to accomplish that, it's highly encouraged. Lots of research around the benefits of napping. Laughter is... We talked about that, but laughing, finding lightness, going to websites that make you laugh and make you giggle, and don't discard all those things that your friends are sending to you. Put them in a file, and when you're feeling a little in energy, get them out and giggle. Watch what happens. You feel awake. It's not an accident. Gives you stamina. And then the final thing is being moved. Tears of joy or just being moved, feeling emotionally positive. You know, the underdog videos or movies. One of the websites I love is values.com, and it's a non-religious, non-political website, and you can't give it money. It's a great of entrepreneurs and philanthropists who came together and created a thing called the foundation for a better life, and it's literally public service announcements that are 30, 60, and 90 second long videos about doing the right thing. It's anti-bullying and it's just about doing the right things, and if you watch those and don't feel something, you've got ice in your veins. You need to go do something about that. And that sense of... That's where we feel that oxytocin and that towardness toward our own species, where we feel like, oh, look at that. See, how cool is that? So, we've all seen all those videos, and you want to see those a few times a week. I just encourage you to sit down and find those things in your world that make you laugh, make you feel, make you feel energized, and the five things I just outlined for you are the great erasers for that.

Matt:	Those are some excellent things, and we've talked a bunch about the importance of sleep, meditation, and several other of these topics on previous episodes, so I think you're echoing what our listeners have heard before, but it bears repeating, definitely, that these are absolutely critical things to be doing every single day.

Scott:	100% every day. And you know, the thing is people get all into a regimen. For me, mine is like, okay, when am I going to get this in? It's like I'm going to go work out right after we're done. And I have a personal trainer, by the way, and I put that person in my life because I know I won't go push myself like he will, right? So, it's that accountability. It's that person and, you know, I look at that and I'm like, okay, a few times a week I'm going to go work with him when I'm in town. Not in town a lot, but and then in the off time, I'm going to go get on a treadmill. Don't love it, but I'm going to do it, not necessarily for my body but definitely for my brain.

Matt:	So, what is one piece of homework that you would give to our listeners?

Scott:	Well, I would have your listeners take stock of their open order list, what I call an open order list. What are all the things that you've told yourself that you will do that, you know... kind of think a month out. What are all the open orders that you have? Gotta get this anniversary gift. Have to finish this email. Got to get this proposal out. Have to go look for venture capital money. Got to finish the basement. Got to do yard work. All those go on there, because it's what you're asking your brain to pay attention to. I would detail them out, write them down, and think as many as you possibly can. It's kind of like a to-do list, but it's even bigger, because you wouldn't put "Call Mom" on your to-do list, usually. Maybe not. But I want you to look at everything that you're telling your brain to pay attention to, and then what I would like for you to do is start to discard stuff. Get rid of the things that you know you're not going to do. Stop telling yourself you are. When you're ready, you will. And start focusing on a few things, big chunky things. I would really look at what is putting you in a towards state. What are you moving toward? And that typically has to do with a goal. We know that people who are moving toward a larger goal and, breaking it down into the smaller, bite-sized pieces, start small but start now, they have better wellbeing overall. And they accomplished their goals. They just have more effectiveness in their lives. So, it's really about cleaning out the attic of your life, and get rid of the mental boxes that you're not going to do anything with and just discard them. Start to discard. Really look at that list. That would be from a piece of homework I would have people start with.

Matt:	That's great advice. So, what are some other books and resources, obviously other than Activate Your Brain, that you would recommend people check out if they want to learn more or dig into some of these concepts?

Scott:	Yeah. I really like Flourish, as well as Authentic Happiness by Martin Seligman. Positivity by Barbara Fredrickson. I like Charles Duhigg's book on habit. I like Shawn Achor, A-C-H-O-R, on happiness, the Happiness Factor. I think he's great. Written some really cool things on that. You know, there are so many tomes and books out there that really... Oh, here's one that I really love, is a book that kind of got me really deeply interested in some of the intricacies. It's called Rewire Your Brain. I don't have it in front of my right now and I would misquote the author's last name, but Rewire Your Brain is the name of the book, and a really great... Written by a PTSD neuropsychologist who really understands the intricacies of bringing the science down to a place where people can eat it, consume it, and do something with it. Really great book.

Matt:	And where can people find you online?

Scott:	They just go to www.completeintelligence.com, and that's my website. You can find my book there. Both my books are on Amazon.com, Activate Your Brain and Be a Shortcut. Activate Your Brain was the one that came out about ten months ago, and it hit the Wall Street Journal Bestseller list in September, so I'm proud of that. 

Matt:	Congrats.

Scott:	Thank you.

Matt:	Well, Scott, this has been great, and I'm sure the listeners are going to love a number of the insights and tactics that you've shared here. So, I wanted to say thank you very much for being on The Science of Success.

Scott:	Great to be here.

How You Can Memorize a Shuffled Deck of Cards in Under A Minute - The Science Behind Memory

In this episode we explore the fascinating enigma of human memory – how memories are created and stored, why we remember certain things but not others, and how to improve your memory long term – as well as an incredible tool to “hack” your short-term memory used by national memory champions:

You will learn about:

• The weird trick that national memory champions use to memorize decks of cards, huge strings of numbers, and much more

• Why your memories aren’t accurate representations of reality

• The science behind how your memories can be manipulated

• The positive memory benefits of playing video games

• How memories are created and stored in your brain

• What you need to do to protect and preserve your memory for the long term

• And much more!

Thank you so much for listening!

Please SUBSCRIBE and LEAVE US A REVIEW on iTunes! (Click here for instructions how to do that!).  

SHOW NOTES, LINKS & RESEARCH

• [Book] Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything (see here)

• [Book] The Guardian of All Things: The Epic Story of Human Memory (see here)

• Aerobic exercise increases hippocampal volume in older women with probable mild cognitive impairment: a 6-month randomised controlled trial (see here)

• The association between aerobic fitness and cognitive function in older men mediated by frontal lateralization (see here)

• Association of Crossword Puzzle Participation with Memory Decline in Persons Who Develop Dementia (see here)

• Reading and solving arithmetic problems improves cognitive functions of normal aged people: a randomized controlled study (see here)

• Reading aloud and arithmetic calculation improve frontal function of people with dementia. (see here)

• Gaming for Health: A Systematic Review of the Physical and Cognitive Effects of Interactive Computer Games in Older Adults (see here)

• Computerized and Virtual Reality Cognitive Training for Individuals at High Risk of Cognitive Decline: Systematic Review of the Literature (see here)

• Sleep deprivation and hippocampal vulnerability: changes in neuronal plasticity, neurogenesis and cognitive function (see here)

• Sleep, cognition, and normal aging: integrating a half century of multidisciplinary research. (see here)

• What are the differences between long-term, short-term, and working memory? (see here)

• Meditation’s Effects on Emotion Shown to Persist (see here)

• Regular exercise improves cognitive function and decreases oxidative damage in rat brain. (see here)

• Sleep to remember. (see here)

• Mindfulness meditation improves cognition: Evidence of brief mental training (see here)

• Mindfulness practice leads to increases in regional brain gray matter density (see here)

• Computerized training of working memory in a group of patients suffering from acquired brain injury (see here)

• A pilot study of an online cognitive rehabilitation program for executive function skills in children with cancer-related brain injury (see here)

• A cognitive training program based on principles of brain plasticity: results from the Improvement in Memory with Plasticity-based Adaptive Cognitive Training (IMPACT) study. (see here)

• Exercise training increases size of hippocampus and improves memory (see here)

• A neuroimaging investigation of the association between aerobic fitness, hippocampal volume, and memory performance in preadolescent children (see here)

• Hippocampal Binding of Novel Information with Dominant Memory Traces Can Support Both Memory Stability and Change (see here)

• [Peak End] Patients’ memories of painful medical treatments: real-time and retrospective evaluations of two minimally invasive procedures (see here)

• [Daniel Kahneman Ted Talk] The riddle of experience vs. memory (see here)

• [Memory Palace] Improve Your Memory by Speaking Your Mind’s Language (see here)

• [Joshua Foer Ted Talk] Feats of memory anyone can do (see here)

• [Memorizing a Deck of Cards] How to Memorize a Shuffled Deck of Cards in Less Than 60 Seconds (Plus: $10,000 Challenge) (see here)

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

In this episode, we're exploring the fascinating enigma of human memory; how memories are created and stored; why we remember certain things but not others; and how to improve your memory long-term; as well as an incredible tool to hack your short-term memory used by national memory champions; and much more.
Memory is something that is both incredibly powerful and not very well understood. How is your memory? Do you have a good memory? Do you have a bad memory? Do you forget things all the time? Memory is something that's vitally important. In many ways, our memories shape who we think we are. But memory is also something that's not well understood in many ways by the scientific community. In fact, I wanted to open with a quote from a fascinating book on memory, titled The Guardian of All Things by Michael S. Malone. Here's how he describes it. "What we do know is that a quarter million years after mankind inherited this remarkable organ called the brain, even with all the tools available to modern science, human memory remains a stunning enigma." Today, we're going to dig into memory a little bit. We're going to talk about how memories are formed. We're going to talk about the way your memory works; what happens when you recall a memory; and the difference between the experiencing self--the you who is experiencing this moment right now, who's listening to this podcast--and the remembering self--the image that you have of your life, of the experiences and the things that have taken place; and we're going to talk about and dig into how you can improve your memory both from a sort of long-term, sustainable standpoint, but also ways that you can trick your memory or use memory hacks to remember things like a deck of cards or pi to the 20th digit or whatever it might be, and these are often tricks that are used by national memory champions and people who compete in these memory competitions. So, we're going to really dive deep into memory today and I'm really excited about this topic. It's something that I've always been fascinated by and I can't wait to share some of these findings with you.
How Memory is Defined
Let's start out. I want to talk about how memory is organized to really define and understand memory, and I think there's another great quote from Michael Malone to give you some context about this. "Architecturally, the organization of memory in the brain is a lot more slippery to get one's hand around, so to speak. Different perspectives all seem to deliver useful insights. For example, one popular way to look at brain memory is to see it as taking two forms: explicit and implicit. Explicit, or "declarative", memory is all the information in our brains that we can consciously bring to the surface. Curiously, despite its huge importance in making us human, we don't really know where this memory is located. Scientists have, however, divided explicit memory into two forms: episodic, or memories that occurred at specific points in time; and semantic, or understandings (via science, technology, experience, and so on) of how the world works. Implicit, or "procedural", memory, on the other hand, stores skills and memories of how to physically function in the natural world. Holding a fork, driving a car, getting dressed--and, most famously, riding a bicycle--are all nuanced activities that modern humans do without really giving them much thought, and they are skills, in all their complexity, that we can call up and perform decades after last using them." Now, there's a lot of information in that quote. There's a lot to really unpack and I know it was a long quote, but it's something that I wanted to share because I think it explains very clearly the different components and the different structures of how our memories are sort of categorized, stored in the brain; what is understood; what's not understood; and the different components of memory itself.
Let's take a look at how memories are created, how memories are stored. They're stored using a process called encoding. It's a biological phenomenon. It's rooted in the senses and it begins with perception. We've talked before about how biology underpins and constrains and defines our minds in many ways. In fact, the first episode ever on The Science of Success was a podcast called The Biological Limits of the Human Mind, and if you haven't listened to that, it's a great primer on sort of the topic of biology and how it factors into psychology and neuroscience and how it controls the brain. But the encoding process is fundamentally rooted in biology and it begins with the process of perception. So, the hippocampus, which is a part of the brain, along with another part of the brain called the frontal cortex are responsible for analyzing all of our different sensory inputs and deciding whether or not they're worth remembering. This sort of filtering idea, this process of filtering out the mass amounts of information that fly in and hit you from every single instance of conscious experience is something we talked about in the episode about the reality of perception. We talked about how our belief structures are the filters that our mind uses to determine whether or not we should remember something, whether or not something was important or useful to remember.

But to be able to properly encode a memory, you have to be paying attention. You have to be focused on that event or that thing consciously. And constantly, every day, we filter things out or we never encode them to begin with, and so our memories don't exist. The simplest way to think about this is the example of lost keys. I'm sure everybody's had a moment where they came home, they misplaced their keys, and they don't know where they are. Or, you know, you walk through the door, you set your keys down somewhere, you're on the phone, you don't...you're not really paying attention, and then 20 minutes later you have no idea what happened to them. The crazy thing about this--and the way that encoding factors into this idea--is that many times when you've misplaced something, when you've lost your keys, even if you were just thinking about it, you've often not technically forgotten where your keys were placed, which is the sort of language that we use to describe that. And we talked about how language can shape our perceptions of reality when we talked about NLP in one of the previous episodes. But the language we use--say, oh, I forgot where my keys are--that language isn't really appropriate because what actually happened is that your encoding process, your conscious attention, was not focused on that, so you didn't forget where the keys were -- it never got into your memory to begin with. It was filtered out, and so you can't find, mentally, where they were placed. It's not a question of you forgetting something; it's a question of the encoding process in your mind never recording the keys' location to begin with.

So, one of the themes you're starting to see that's going to continue to emerge as we explore memory more deeply is that almost every piece of the process of both storing, recalling, understanding memory is fraught with sort of processing errors, is fraught with places where our memories aren't necessarily true or real or don't necessarily describe reality accurately. And we'll get into that more, but we also went in-depth on the implications of that idea in the episode about perceiving reality. So, if you haven't listened to that podcast, it really talks about once you understand the premise that memory is falsifiable, that memory isn't really true or real in many very physical and scientific ways, it starts to ripple through your life and you can really think about your beliefs, your world structure, the things that are happening around you. But I won't go too far into that. Again, there's an episode about that--perceiving reality--that we've already talked about it. But you're going to see a number of different instances of how what we call "memory" isn't something that's set in stone, that's a perfect definition of what happened in the past that we're recalling. It's often something that's very fluid, changing, and dynamic, and even when it's being recorded on the front end with encoding, processing errors can happen, things can be left out, and our memories themselves may not reflect what actually happened or things might be left out of her memories to begin with.

We hear a lot about the distinction between short-term memory and long-term memory, so I wanted to just address that, talk about it, and give you some simple working definitions of each of those so that you would have them and sort of have a deeper understanding of how each of them works. Short-term memory, very simply, can hold roughly seven items for about 20 or 30 seconds. And your short-term memory, it swings up and down a little bit. The actual sort of range is really about between five and nine items, depending on a number of different factors, for roughly 20 or 30 seconds. And one of the caveats to that is that if you have a deep network of long-term memories or information that's mapped in your neural network, if you see something, it can actually very quickly be taken from your short-term memory and placed and plugged into a specific slot or component of that larger long-term memory neural network about whatever that topic is. And so things can, especially if you're an expert or you have a very detailed understanding of something, something can immediately sort of jump from your short-term memory into your long-term memory if it's plugged into the right piece of that mental network. And that's something that Charlie Munger, who we've talked about before on the podcast and are huge fans of, really digs into when he talks about the idea of sort of an interconnected or interlaced network of mental models that is self-reinforcing.

When you have deep knowledge of something, when you have a lot of myelin in your brain around the neural networks or around the patterns of understanding something very deeply, it can more quickly be placed from the short-term memory into the long-term memory. But there are really two fundamental distinctions between short-term memory and long-term memory. One is the concept of temporal decay, i.e. the idea that things fall out of your short-term memory after about 20 or 30 seconds. And the second is that your short-term memory has capacity limits, right. Your short-term memory, it can only hold a certain amount of information, whereas your long-term memory can hold vast amounts of information and, despite sort of the challenges with encoding and recalling memories, in many ways is relatively permanent. And, again, we talked about at the top how it's not fully understand or totally known how and where all of our memories are stored, but it's believed that short-term memory is the primary function of the prefrontal cortex of the brain.

To look at and describe long-term memory, I'll share another quote from Malone. "Chemically, we have a pretty good idea of how memories are encoded and retained in brain neurons. As with short-term memory, the storage of information is made possible by the synthesis of certain proteins in the cell. What differentiates long-term memory in neurons is that frequent repetition of signals causes magnesium to be released, which opens the door for the attachment of calcium, which in turn makes the record stable and permanent. But, as we all know from experience, memory can still fade over time. For that, the brain has chemical processes, called long-term potentiation, that regularly enhances the strength of the connections, or synapses, between the neurons and creates an enzyme protein that also strengthens the signal -- in other words, the memory inside the neuron." So, getting a little bit deeper into the science and really talking about the physical processes, remember, memory fundamentally is a biological process rooted in your mind and that's how memories are physically encoded into cells. But, take that with a grain of salt because we don't fully understand exactly how memory works.

Now, let's examine how to recall a memory. This is a critical point in something that is very interesting. There's a 2013 study in the Journal of Neuroscience by Donna Bridges, and the study shows that when we recall a memory, it actually makes...every time we recall a memory, it makes the memory less accurate. Think about that. Let that sink in for a moment. The reason that's the case is because when you pull up a memory and then you put it back, your brain makes tiny changes to the memory every single time that happens. And if you think about it almost like the game of telephone, where you whisper something down the line into somebody's ear and they whisper it to the next person, et cetera, the message often gets completely distorted after it's been passed through a number of different people. The same thing can happen to our memories. Every time we recall something, we're putting it back with slight tweaks, slight changes, and, over time, again and again and again, we can completely distort or create memories that never existed to begin with. Here's how Donna Bridges describes it in her study. "A memory is not simply an image produced by time traveling back to the original event. It can be an image that is somewhat distorted because of the prior times you have remembered it. Your memory of an event can grow less precise, even to the point of being totally false with each retrieval." That's a pretty clear statement. That's a pretty clear distinction. Point blank, the researcher in this study is saying that your memories can be totally false. Really let that sink in for a minute. And, again, we talked about a lot of the implications of what happens when we realize that our memories are false in a prior episode about the reality of perception, so if you want to dig into that topic or that's something that you're sitting in your chair thinking, wow, that's crazy; I can't believe that my memories literally can be false, check that episode out because we talk about what that means and how that can impact your reality and a way that you can really use that your advantage in many ways.
The next idea is something that ties into the notion of how our memories can be false or how our memories can be manipulated. This is something called the peak-end phenomenon. You may have heard of it. The peak-end phenomenon essentially states that every memory you have of any experience is sort of shortened down to two, fundamental things. One is the peak--either the emotional high or the emotional low of that experience--and the end. Your mind essentially takes both of those things, kind of merges them together, and says, okay, this is what the memory of this experience or this event is. And in a 1993 study, Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman, the author of Thinking Fast and Slow, which is an amazing book--highly recommended and one of the books that I previously gave away to listeners as one of my favorite psychology books--they've done a number of different studies ranging from colonoscopies to waiting in line, all kinds of different things. But they have a very simple study where they had people keep their hands submerged in freezing cold water for 60 seconds. They then had the same people stick their hands in freezing cold water for 60 seconds--the same temperature--and then 30 seconds after that in a temperature that was one degree Celsius warmer, which created the effect of... It was slightly warmer to the point where it was slightly more comfortable, but, overall, it was still 30 seconds longer and still relatively uncomfortable and relatively painful. If people were totally rational and our brains were totally rational and memory was perfect, everyone would have chosen, if they had to do it again, to do the 60-second version instead of the 60- plus 30-second version, right. Nobody's going to pick basically a 50% longer period of suffering. But when they actually had people do it and gave them the choice to pick either the 60-second version or the 90-second version, 69% of the people, of the participants in this study, chose to repeat the longer version of the experience. They chose to go for the 90-second version, and the reason is simple: Their memory of the experience was skewed overall by the end of the experience. Their memory of the slightly warmer water... It was one degree Celsius warmer, which is about two and a half degrees warmer in Fahrenheit perspective. One degree warmer Celsius -- they chose that longer experience because that ending was slightly less painful than the other ending. And, again, those results have been replicated in a number of different studies looking at a number of different things, including colonoscopies, where they had people sort of rate the pain and the experience of their colonoscopies, and the people who had...even if they had a much longer colonoscopy that had much more painful, sort of high-intensity moments, at the end was better, people would rate it as shorter, people would rate it as a better experience overall because their memory of it was much better because the end had such a huge, disproportionate weighting on their total experience of it.

There are obviously huge implications to this. Not only do your memories of most of your experiences not necessarily accurately reflect the experience as a whole, but there are also ways you can use this to trick yourself or game yourself or tweak experience that you have so that you can remember them in a certain way, either positively or negatively, depending on how you want the experience to be remembered, and you can also modify experiences that other people are having that you're in control of in a way that you can have them have a more positive or more negative experience just by changing the ending of the experience. Kahneman also talks about--in a fascinating TED Talk, which we're going to link to in the show notes, titled The Riddle of Experience Versus Memory--about the distinction between what he calls the experiencing self and the remembering self. And, essentially, your experiencing self is your conscious self right now, in this moment, and the experiencing self experiences things for about three seconds. Consciousness is defined as roughly kind of a three-second interval of experience. Your remembering self is the self that looks back and says, oh, this was an amazing trip; oh, this was a fun experience; et cetera. The reality is that your experiencing self and your remembering self have very different perceptions of happiness; of events; of reality; of what they like; of what they dislike, and those can have dramatic implications for your experiences and for your memories. I'm going to talk more about the implications of the remembering self versus the experiencing self and how you can use things like the peak-end phenomenon to tip the scales in the favor or to structure your days or to structure the experiences in your life to optimize for either more positive experience or more positive memories.

Now let's dig in and talk about some of the tactics you can use to improve your memory. And, again, this is distinct from what we'll talk about after this -- more mind hacks or tips and tricks you can use to game your memory, to make it more effective, or to remember things like a memory champion. These are more science-backed strategies that are proven out in the research of ways to, in a long-term and sustainable fashion, improve the quality of your memory. The first is exercise. A 2011 study found that exercise increases the hippocampus size and improves memory. Specifically looking at just brisk walking, they found that 40 minutes a day, three days a week improved the size of people's hippocampus. We don't know the exact specifics of how memories are stored, but we do know that the hippocampus is a critical component of memories, both short-term and long-term, and so improving the size of the hippocampus via exercise is something that you can do to help yourself get a better memory. Another study in 2010 found that physically fit children performed better on a memory test and had a 12% larger hippocampus than children who were in the control group that didn't have as high quality of physical fitness. Another study found that the brains of older adults who exercised, in an MRI scan, looked more like the brains of younger adults. Additionally, there have been several other studies linking exercise, particularly aerobic exercise, to memory maintenance and improvements in cognitive function. And, in the show notes, we're going to include links to all of these research studies. So, if you want to dig, if you want to do your own homework, and you want to check some of these sources out, you can just go to scienceofsuccess.co--scienceofsuccess.co--click on the "Show Notes" button, and you'll see all of the show notes, all of the research for this episode and you can dig into every study that we've mentioned and talked about on the episode.

The next thing you can do to improve your memory is keep your brain active with things like reading and brain games. A 2008 randomized controlled study found that reading and solving simple arithmetic problems improved the cognitive function of people. There was also a 2005 study, that simply reading aloud and doing simple math problems improve the prefrontal cortex function of people that had dementia. So, even people who are having dementia or deterioration of their brain function can use something as simple as reading and doing simple math problems to improve the quality of their brain, to improve the quality of their memory. There's also a 2009 study, titled A Cognitive Training Program Based on Principles of Brain Plasticity, that showed that brain training programs and computerized brain training significantly improved memory, attention, and information processing, and that people who trained with brain-training software were twice as fast in processing information and they scored as well on memory and attention tests as people who were 10 years younger than them. A 2011 study also showed that crossword puzzles were an effective tool of warding off memory loss and of warding off the onset of dementia. So, something as simple as keeping your mind engaged with reading, with brain training, with crossword puzzles -- all of these things help keep the memory alive, help keep your memories functioning as you grow older and as your memory begins to deteriorate.

The next thing you can do, which is related to the topic we just talked about, is to play video games to improve your memory. And I love this one. You know, as longtime listeners will know, I'm an avid video gamer, so this is something that makes me very excited. But there was a 2013 study, titled Gaming for Health: A Systematic Review of Physical and Cognitive Effects of Interactive Computer Games in Older Adults, that found that the cognitive domains of attention, executive function, and memory showed consistent improvements across the board for people who played video games. So, if you need an excuse to play some extra video games, tell yourself that you're working on improving and protecting your memory. 

This next tool for improving memory shouldn't come as much of a surprise. Sleep is as an incredibly powerful tool that you can use to improve memory function. A 2015 study, titled Sleep Deprivation and Hippocampal Vulnerability: Changes in Neural Plasticity, Neurogensis, and Cognitive Function, had a number of findings about the importance of sleep for brain function and for memory function in particular. Sleep benefits neuroplasticity, which we've talked about on previous episodes how important that is, the ability of your brain to change and adapt and grow and improve. Sleep deprivation impairs the hippocampus, which we talked about earlier in this episode, about how the hippocampus plays a vital role in both storing and encoding memories and holding them for the long term. Sleep deprivation reduces hippocampal neurogenesis and hippocampal volume, so this shows that sleep deprivation has a number of negative implications for the volume and the neurogenesis in the hippocampus. And, lastly, chronic sleep disruption contributes to cognitive disorders and psychiatric diseases. I don't think it's any secret that sleep is incredibly important, but this shows you that just getting a good night's rest can be integral to keeping your mind healthy and keeping your memory healthy. And we talked about in one of our previous episodes, where we interviewed the podcaster Gregg Clunis, some of the tactics and strategies that he uses to improve the quality of his sleep. A 2015 study, titled Sleep, Cognition, and Normal Aging: Integrating a Half-Century of Multidisciplinary Research, found that maintaining a good sleep quality promoted better cognitive functioning, protected against age-related cognitive declines, and helped improve memory. And, again, we've talked about in previous episodes how important meta-analyses are. So, this was an analysis of a number of different studies, looked across correlations, looked at the results of a number of different studies and found that, across the board, high-quality sleep led to improved cognitive function and improved memory function.

And, last but not least, meditation is an incredible tool that you can use to improve your memory, your working memory, and your recall. Thiis shouldn't come as a surprise. In fact, we have a previous podcast episode about meditation where we talk about a ton of the science behind it, how important it is, and give simple and easy tools that you can use to learn how to meditate. A 2011 study found that meditation changes brain structure, improves attention span, and increases gray matter in the hippocampus specifically. People who meditated for 30 minutes a day for 8 weeks saw their hippocampal density increase as measured by an MRI scan. The control group, who did not meditate, had no changes in their brain density. So, that's a pretty clear-cut, compelling example of how meditation literally changes the structure of your brain, increases the size of your hippocampus, and improves your ability for recall and for working. memory. There was also a 2010 study that found that short, 20-minute meditation studies improved your concentration. When comparing the participants to the control group, they found that the participants who have meditated for 20 minutes a day fared much better than the control group on timed, concentration, and memory tests. And, again, encoding, when we store memories in our brain, having the ability to have a really clear focus, to be able to capture information in the present is a critical component of storing and building memories that truly reflect reality. So, meditation is not only a tool that helps grow the size of hippocampus, but it also helps you focus. It also helps you capture that information on the front end so that you can more effectively store it in your memories.

Now, let's dig into a couple memory hacks. And these aren't necessarily physical ways to improve your long-term brain health, but they're simple ways that you can remember more information. The core technique is something called a memory palace, and this an idea that I originally discovered in the book Moonwalking with Einstein. It's a book about a science journalist who goes to the U.S. National Memory Championships and he initially has the idea of learning about the event, covering it, maybe discovering some eclectic characters. But what he comes away with -- he gets kind of roped into the community and actually ends up training under Ed Cooke, who's a memory Grand Master and one of the sort of best memory competitors in the United States. He ends up training with Ed Cooke for a year, comes back, and wins the memory championship the next year. It's a great book. It's a fascinating read to begin with, but it can also really dive into some of these ideas. But the memory palace has been around since Ancient Rome. It's something that orators and speakers in Rome used to use to memorize their speeches and it's something that enabled the eight-time World Memory Champion Dominic O'Brien to memorize 54 decks of cards in sequence, which, if you look at that, that's 2,808 cards in sequence, viewing each card only a single time. So, a memory palace is an incredibly powerful technique.

A memory palace is an idea that taps into the visual-spatial components of our memory. Our minds are designed... And if you think back, again, to the biological limits of the mind, from an evolutionary standpoint, the things that we're best at remembering are spaces and places. And so a memory palace essentially takes a place that you know incredibly well and you plant in pieces of information across that space. So, the simplest way to do a memory palace, the simplest place to think about as a memory palace, is your childhood home or your current home. If you pause for a moment and think about it right now, you can probably picture in intimate detail every component of the house -- the front door when you walk in, the living room, all the different bedrooms, the bathrooms, the kitchen, et cetera. You can see all the various components of that house. And what you do is basically create a map of that memory palace, and you can do it with any location. You can do it with a number of different locations. But you create this map and then you place different components into different pieces of the memory palace, and you follow them in a predetermined path. So, essentially, you want to create sort of a visually associative story, a string of things that lets you remember a huge list of numbers, entire decks of cards, et cetera.

And there's another component to this called memory pegging. This is essentially the idea of taking a predefined concept and some sort of visual image and tying it back into something that you want to remember, whether it's a number, whether it's a playing card, whatever it might be. And that's actually where the title of the book, Moonwalking with Einstein, comes from, because these memory champions use the brain's incredible power to think in images and to think in stories, and they create a very vivid, unforgettable image for each different playing card. Each one has its own, unique, defined image, and then when you stack the playing cards together, they basically tie each image to the next image. So, for example, Moonwalking with Einstein was a technique that the author of the book had used to tie in two different concepts together because it's an unforgettable image. Similarly, you can tie any two things together. All you have to do is create ahead of time an associative framework of each of the different...whether it's numbers or playing cards or whatever it might be, and I'll give you a very simple example. If you wanted to associate numbers--let's say the numbers one through ten--with certain things, you could associate the number one with a candle because it sort of looks like a candle, and then that's something you can use when you want to remember the first thing or you want to remember something that involves a one -- you create a mental image with a candle. The second: If you wanted to create something for the number two, you could use a swan because a swan sort of looks like a number two. And we can go down. You could use a heart for number three. If you turn a three on its side, it kind of looks like a heart. We could use a sailboat for the number four. It kind of looks like a sailboat. All the way down.

You could do it with anything you wanted to associate, but let's just use those four numbers. If I wanted to remember the number 41, I could simply take the image of the sailboat, which is number four, take the image of the candle, and we could have...create some kind of ridiculous image. Let's say I wanted to remember the key code to my garage. Let's say it has a keypad and the keypad's four digits, and the number is 4331. So, if we go back to the images we've created, we've got the sailboat, which is number four; we've got the heart, which is number three; and we've got the candle, which is number one. If I wanted to lock that memory in so I could never forget it, I think about the mental image of that keypad in my garage and I think about a gigantic sailboat with two bright red hearts painted on the side of it or even carrying two giant hearts, and a candle on top that's melting wax on all these different hearts, crashing into my keypad. This huge sailboat falls out of the sky with two giant hearts on it and a candle on top, crashing into the keypad. It's a ridiculous image, it's totally over the top, but it's something...those kinds of over-the-top, insane images are something that the brain latches onto and captures. And so when you go back, the next time you see the keypad, you trigger that visual association of a giant sailboat with two big hearts on it and a huge candle on top, melting wax on top of the hearts, and you really try to tie that in. You want to feel it. You want to smell it. You want every piece of the experience. And next time you see that keypad, you think of that crazy image that you thought of and suddenly you know that the thing is, okay, we've got 4331. That's what the...That's exactly what the passcode is.

So, that's how you tie in those memories and that's the same technique that these memory experts use to memorize an entire deck of cards by looking at each card a single time, or use to memorize pi to the 50th digit, or whatever it might be. Some of the feats that these guys accomplish are incredibly ridiculous. Similarly, memory champions do the same thing by associating every single card in a deck of cards with an individual person. For example... And there's actually a matrix that you can use or create that you can kind of fill in and tag each of these associations. But, for example, you could associate Michael Jordan with the ace of diamonds and you could associate Lady Gaga with the six of spades, and so if you have those two in order, suddenly you create this crazy mental image of Michael Jordan bumping into Lady Gaga or whatever it might be. While this sounds a little bit over the top, this is a way to speak the same language as your brain. This is a way that you can communicate with your brain in a visual-spacial sense, with unforgettable visuals that let you kind of tap into and harness the power of memory. And we're going to include a couple links in the show notes where you can really dig down and go deep on both the concept of memory palaces, the concept of memory pegging, which is essentially the idea of tying specific objects--whether they're numbers, whether they're playing cards, whatever they might be--to specific, ridiculous images so that you can chain them together into these memories. And we're going to provide you with some examples of ways that you can use those things if you want to build those associations so that you can play around with creating these visually associative memory stories in your mind.

Lastly, I wanted to look at how we can sort of hack or trick our memories to change the way that we remember things, to change the way that we remember certain experiences. A good way to think about this is going back to the idea of the experiencing self versus the remembering self, and thinking back to how the peak-end phenomenon also plays into this and how our brain's visual-spatial thinking also plays into this concept. There's two really distinct ways that you can kind of play with your mind and play with your memories. One of them is if you've ever had... Let's say you had a week-long vacation where you go to the beach. Because there's not a ton of differentiation in each specific thing that happens, that memory is sort of consolidated into one memory of "week at the beach" and it feels like a certain link to your mind. But I'm sure you've also had maybe a three-day weekend where you were just packing all kinds of stuff and you were going here, you were going there, you were doing all this new, exciting, different stuff, and those three days felt like two weeks. And it just felt incredibly long and, when you remember it, it seems like...the trip seems almost longer than that week-long vacation at the beach. And that's because, to your memory, it literally is. In your mind, when you have a memory of something that there's not any variation, there's not any difference, you're going to remember that as sort of one specific experience. But if you have 20 different things that all happened, those are all specific and different memories that are all tied into the same thing.

So, how can you apply this to your life? Ed Cooke, who's a memory Grand Master, has a great example where he talks about the concept of if you have a dinner party and you have people over at your house. If everyone sits in the same room for the entire time and does the same thing, you're going to have one memory of that dinner party. It's going to be people in that room doing that thing. However, if every 30 minutes or every hour of the dinner party you move to a different room in your house, you put on different music, and you do something different, suddenly you're going to have distinct chunks of that memory. It's going to be broken out into different components, and so the memory's going to feel much more rich, it's going to feel much more detailed, and it's going to feel like you did a lot more, you accomplished a lot more things.

So, those are kind of some ways that you can think about how to modify your conscious experiences so that when you look back at them from a memory standpoint, the memories feel much more rich and much more detailed. If you just do the same thing for 12 hours straight, your memory is doing that one thing. But if you spend each of those hours doing something completely different, your memory is going to be much more rich and diverse and, when you come back to it, it's going to feel...you're going to have a lot more texture to that memory. And you can change places and spaces, and that will change and kind of trigger your memory to remember something new because novel, new, and unique things are what get flagged and what get remembered. Things that are the same or that are ubiquitous just kind of get lumped into the same memory category. So, those are a couple different techniques and tricks that you can use, kind of memory hacks that you can use to improve your memory both from a physical standpoint, from a long-term perspective, but you can also use a number of these in the short-term to be able to memorize an entire deck of cards. And we'll include... Again, we'll include a couple links in the show notes so that if that's something you're interested in doing, you can check out some of the articles and go through some the exercises that you can actually memorize pi to the 20th digit, you can memorize a deck of cards, et cetera, using the memory palace and memory pegging techniques.