WEBVTT
00:00:00.140 --> 00:00:01.425
In order to learn something new.
00:00:01.425 --> 00:00:02.890
What are you going to give up?
00:00:02.890 --> 00:00:21.652
And that has to be a conscious choice, and so much of that is not just a physical release of a behavior or an action, but it's actually also the emotional release of giving something up that you might experience as a loss, Whether it's time, whether it's a pattern of belief that has been holding you back.
00:00:21.652 --> 00:00:24.202
You've got to make space for something new.
00:00:31.888 --> 00:00:33.268
Hey, uncommon Leaders, welcome back.
00:00:33.268 --> 00:00:35.130
This is the Uncommon Leader Podcast.
00:00:35.130 --> 00:00:39.033
I'm your host, john Gallagher, and I've got a great guest for you today.
00:00:39.033 --> 00:00:49.250
Diverse guest for you author Michael Lopez, who's written the Amazon bestselling book Change Six Science-Backed Strategies to Transform your Brain, body and Behavior.
00:00:49.250 --> 00:00:51.868
Looking forward to having a conversation with him about that today.
00:00:51.868 --> 00:01:06.073
A little bit about him, though His career spans something that I think is really cool, from a consulting background at KPMG and at Booz Allen Hamilton, but also as an intelligence officer in the US intelligence.
00:01:06.073 --> 00:01:09.269
So maybe we can learn some cool stuff beyond that as well.
00:01:09.269 --> 00:01:23.659
And then certainly even to today, as a high school and youth coach, we'll learn a little bit about his athletic background and how he has influence on the young youth in our communities today as well.
00:01:23.659 --> 00:01:26.302
So, michael Lopez, welcome to the Uncommon Leader Podcast.
00:01:26.302 --> 00:01:27.164
Great to have you on the show.
00:01:27.164 --> 00:01:27.625
How are you doing?
00:01:28.246 --> 00:01:29.329
Thanks for having me, john.
00:01:29.329 --> 00:01:29.691
I'm great.
00:01:29.691 --> 00:01:38.186
I'm excited to talk about it and share some time with you, and certainly your podcast has just been inspiring to me, so I'm happy to contribute to it.
00:01:38.828 --> 00:01:39.129
Excellent.
00:01:39.129 --> 00:01:51.090
Well, I'm fascinated by some of the topics we're going to talk about today, but I'll still start you out with the first question I always ask my first-time guests, and that's to tell me a story from your childhood that still impacts who you are today, as a person or as a leader.
00:01:52.400 --> 00:01:56.828
Yeah, you know, I would say it was actually at my later high school time.
00:01:56.828 --> 00:01:59.421
You know, I played high school football.
00:01:59.421 --> 00:02:00.001
You mentioned this.
00:02:00.001 --> 00:02:05.233
I played college football and one of my high school head coach I played quarterback.
00:02:05.233 --> 00:02:15.567
I'm not very big, I'm like five, seven, 150 pounds in high school and uh, he told me I'd never played college football and uh, I just remember a couple of things.
00:02:15.728 --> 00:02:26.120
A that was incredibly, um, you know, hard to hear from someone who's supposed to be guiding you and encouraging you and lifting you up, but it also became incredibly motivating.
00:02:26.260 --> 00:02:31.689
And I remember just thinking to myself I'm never going to let someone else tell me what I can and can't do.
00:02:31.689 --> 00:02:35.631
And so for me, it just became a place to lean into.
00:02:35.631 --> 00:02:44.650
And you know, when I coach athletes, when I work with young people, when I work with other leaders, you know the story that you'll never do something, you can't do something.
00:02:44.650 --> 00:02:46.804
You know the story that you'll never do something, you can't do something.
00:02:46.804 --> 00:02:47.787
You know those are the words that hold us back.
00:02:47.787 --> 00:02:56.483
And so for me, you know, my whole life's been about doing a lot of things that people said I couldn't, and not to prove anyone else wrong, but to prove myself right.
00:02:56.483 --> 00:03:05.550
And you know, I think for me it's just been an ethos that I live by and you know, my responsibility as a parent is to demonstrate that to my kids.
00:03:05.550 --> 00:03:12.548
As a leader, that to demonstrate that to my teams and, you know, as a consultant, to to demonstrate that to my clients and everywhere in between.
00:03:12.548 --> 00:03:15.263
So, yeah, that's that's kind of the big one for me.
00:03:15.663 --> 00:03:23.167
Well, and it sounds like you've studied it pretty deep when we think about the book and I love you know, I love the word uh, as you get into it neuroscience, that component of it.
00:03:23.167 --> 00:03:26.151
So there are not a lot of folks that start to write about that.
00:03:26.151 --> 00:03:27.733
But let's start there with the book.
00:03:27.733 --> 00:03:34.259
Even before, neuroscience is who did?
00:03:34.280 --> 00:03:35.383
you write this book and why did you write it?
00:03:35.383 --> 00:03:36.806
Who did you write it for and why did you write it?
00:03:36.806 --> 00:03:37.867
Yeah, yeah, it really is.
00:03:37.867 --> 00:03:40.713
I started writing it because you mentioned my consulting career.
00:03:41.060 --> 00:04:04.246
I've been in and around the world of change for a long time, helping clients with a number of issues, whether it's culture or strategy or operations, or they bought something, they sold something that you know all of the reasons why you help organizations try to change in some way and I became aware of that kind of keenly that the strategies we were using to try to help companies change weren't really working.
00:04:04.246 --> 00:04:07.490
And that's the first insight.
00:04:07.490 --> 00:04:20.889
The second one was that you know, the only person you can change is yourself, and so we were doing things that I think felt good organizationally because it approximated momentum, but it wasn't really changing people.
00:04:20.889 --> 00:04:25.922
And so I really the last several years, have kind of been on a crusade to change that conversation.
00:04:25.922 --> 00:04:34.451
You know, as a coach, as an athlete, we know so much about the body and how to drive adaptation, we show up to work and we forget all those things.
00:04:34.451 --> 00:04:39.088
Right, we forget how to change behavior because the same strategies apply.
00:04:39.149 --> 00:04:40.694
So that's why I started writing it.
00:04:40.694 --> 00:04:51.012
I actually started writing about organizations first and realized about a third of the way through I needed to go back to the basic principles of the individual right.
00:04:51.012 --> 00:04:54.767
What's happening to us at the microscopic level when we try to change?
00:04:54.767 --> 00:04:56.632
What stops us from changing?
00:04:56.632 --> 00:05:00.309
And then, how do I leverage those systems to actually accomplish my goals?
00:05:00.309 --> 00:05:13.122
So you know, that's what it's all about, and it's really for anyone the CEO all the way down to the, to the parent, to the child, anyone in between who is struggling to accomplish their goals, and that's, that's.
00:05:13.122 --> 00:05:14.286
That's really what it's all about.
00:05:14.908 --> 00:05:18.464
I love the strategies, how they to your point, how they go across.
00:05:18.464 --> 00:05:21.512
If you will, it's not just about change in your work.
00:05:21.512 --> 00:05:26.586
It's about changing your home as well, in terms of some of your personal behaviors that go along with that.
00:05:26.586 --> 00:05:40.353
So many different things that go on your relationships that you have outside of your home, your faith, your finances all those things come into play and change is the primary constant, if you will, that exists inside of that space.
00:05:40.353 --> 00:05:46.615
Now you talk about some of the bad habits within your book that exists.
00:05:46.615 --> 00:05:54.564
So, as you've studied that, as you brought it about, what are some of the big barriers that you see that people run into that prevent them from changing?
00:05:55.086 --> 00:05:56.228
Yeah, yeah, it's.
00:05:56.228 --> 00:05:58.012
Uh, you know it, we're, we're, we're.
00:05:58.012 --> 00:06:04.487
Just, we're into March already, which is kind of crazy to think, but we all did the new year's resolution thing and you know, to some degree.
00:06:04.487 --> 00:06:14.024
Um, you know, one of the things that drives us into change struggles, uh, a, we try to change too many things at once, right?
00:06:14.024 --> 00:06:21.228
So we, I want to be a better parent, I want to make more money, I want to get a different job, I want to be a better spouse, I want to be more patient, I want to read more.
00:06:21.228 --> 00:06:33.665
You know, pick your list of stuff, and what I tell people is uh, at the beginning of the year, pick four goals and do one a quarter, and, and you know, we just try to do too many things at once.
00:06:33.665 --> 00:06:37.723
And uh, and that's primarily, if you read the book, we can talk about it.
00:06:37.764 --> 00:06:41.660
The way we learn as adults is very different than the way we learn as kids.
00:06:41.660 --> 00:06:47.903
It requires focus, it requires repetition, it requires unlearning some things, which is an interesting concept.
00:06:47.903 --> 00:06:50.891
So that's the first thing I'd say.
00:06:50.891 --> 00:07:01.822
B, change, by definition, requires effort, right, habits are things that we do without thinking about them, and that's efficient, right?
00:07:01.822 --> 00:07:03.545
We like efficiency in all sorts of ways.
00:07:03.545 --> 00:07:05.831
People like it, companies like it, teams like it.
00:07:06.401 --> 00:07:18.408
But in order to change something, I've got to deliver effort, and effort requires motivation and effort requires stress and struggle, and you know, most of us don't really have a strong relationship with those two concepts.
00:07:18.408 --> 00:07:24.569
When things get difficult, we tend to tap out kind of early and I'd say that's you know.
00:07:24.569 --> 00:07:25.312
See, there's others.
00:07:25.312 --> 00:07:33.384
But just to keep it to three, we give up on our goals way too soon.
00:07:33.384 --> 00:07:45.930
We always overestimate how long it will take to get to where we want to go and for most of us, having a better understanding of the time horizon that's actually going to happen and how to keep my motivation going through that right, because life is just a series of start-stop experiences.
00:07:45.930 --> 00:07:52.389
And so those are three big things that I think most people tend to get wrong when they start on their path to goal pursuit.
00:07:53.161 --> 00:07:54.466
I love that, especially that first one.
00:07:54.466 --> 00:08:00.093
Again, we have a tendency certainly to overestimate what we can do in the short term.
00:08:00.093 --> 00:08:03.531
Again, four goals for a year, that seems pretty reasonable.
00:08:03.531 --> 00:08:06.870
But to your point about taking one of those goals per quarter, I love that as approach.
00:08:06.870 --> 00:08:11.302
Start small and work your way through it, and that way maybe it will help you.
00:08:11.302 --> 00:08:18.795
Your point number three keep going so that you don't, in essence stop just before you're about to have a breakthrough and see some things happen, absolutely.
00:08:19.300 --> 00:08:22.166
Yeah, there's actually a fourth one, as you said that, about starting small.
00:08:22.166 --> 00:08:23.269
That I think is worth noting.
00:08:23.269 --> 00:08:27.000
Actually a fourth one, as you said that, about starting small, and I think it's worth noting.
00:08:30.000 --> 00:08:32.429
Most people, when they set a goal, we tend to pick the things in our life that are sort of most negatively salient right.
00:08:32.429 --> 00:08:42.307
We tend to pick the things that have the greatest source of friction in our lives right, the thing that we stare at every day and whatever way that manifests, whether it's a relationship challenge or job.
00:08:42.307 --> 00:08:43.250
I'm sick of my job.
00:08:43.250 --> 00:08:50.461
I need a new one, whatever it may be.
00:08:50.461 --> 00:08:53.607
The challenge with those things is those are the most negatively salient because they're the hardest things to change.
00:08:53.607 --> 00:09:02.153
And so I encourage people to say it's not that you don't want to make that a goal, but maybe not make that the first goal right, because change is a skill.
00:09:02.153 --> 00:09:05.065
You can learn how to change, and that's what the book is all about.
00:09:05.065 --> 00:09:18.043
And so I'd rather have someone get a couple of base hits in places where they feel like I've got an achievable goal that I just maybe need to stick with it a little bit longer before you start working on the big stuff.
00:09:18.043 --> 00:09:20.370
So don't pick the hardest thing to do right out of the gate.
00:09:21.740 --> 00:09:22.142
Love that.
00:09:22.142 --> 00:09:22.722
You know.
00:09:22.722 --> 00:09:26.091
You think about that, the, the components of change.
00:09:26.091 --> 00:09:33.831
You know we get to where we are and we feel pretty comfortable, and you gotta, you gotta expand yourself through that as well A lot of times, even whether it's on our health.
00:09:33.831 --> 00:09:44.490
You know, one of the things that you say is that willpower alone often fails, and you know, if we try to use willpower as a solution, that we're probably not going to succeed.
00:09:44.490 --> 00:09:47.566
Tell me more about that and again, the neuroscience behind that.
00:09:47.566 --> 00:09:49.610
Well, I just won't eat chocolate cake anymore.
00:09:49.672 --> 00:09:50.703
I mean, I'll have willpower.
00:09:51.225 --> 00:09:51.908
Right, right.
00:09:51.908 --> 00:09:53.817
Well, let's just use that example, right?
00:09:53.817 --> 00:09:54.900
Hey, John, don't eat the cake.
00:09:54.900 --> 00:09:57.047
What are you thinking about right now?
00:09:57.447 --> 00:09:58.250
I'm thinking about cake.
00:09:58.250 --> 00:09:59.783
I can see it it's a double layer.
00:09:59.863 --> 00:10:00.325
Absolutely.
00:10:00.325 --> 00:10:01.568
Yeah, that's right, that's right.
00:10:01.568 --> 00:10:06.826
So, so, um, there's two things about the willpower equation that I think are really important.
00:10:06.826 --> 00:10:14.120
The first one is the, the mindset that you have going into this conversation of willpower, and then the second one is kind of the science of motivation.
00:10:14.120 --> 00:10:24.029
So there's a couple of studies I referenced in the book, the, the really groundbreaking work of Carol Dweck, uh who, who is really the pioneer of the term growth mindset.
00:10:24.029 --> 00:10:29.153
There are studies done that that we know that there's two dimensions of of this idea.
00:10:29.153 --> 00:10:37.782
One is called growth mindset, which is the idea that I am a growth oriented person and I believe that I'm someone who can and will grow.
00:10:37.782 --> 00:10:42.812
That's an important first, uh, mental, uh, you know orientation to adopt.
00:10:42.812 --> 00:10:50.212
The second one is what's called a stress is enhancing mindset, which is this idea that this may not feel good but it's good.
00:10:50.212 --> 00:10:55.389
For me, Stress is positive, and I talk a lot about our relationship with stress.
00:10:55.389 --> 00:11:17.501
It is essential you will not grow unless you have a more productive relationship with stress, and so there's been really some incredible studies done about, particularly in teens, that with some pretty simple training around adopting these two mindsets, their performance actually increases quite a bit on, you know, tests and other cognitive things of that nature.
00:11:19.205 --> 00:11:25.114
The second thing around motivation is that, you know, motivation has some unique attributes to it.
00:11:25.114 --> 00:11:29.868
Most people think dopamine is the, the, the, the hormone of reward.
00:11:29.868 --> 00:11:31.051
Right, it's not.
00:11:31.051 --> 00:11:34.225
It's the hormone of pursuit, it's about striving right.
00:11:34.284 --> 00:11:53.980
Striving is a big part of our sort of, you know, neuroscience foundation in terms of goal pursuit, and so one of the things I tell people is that if we can understand how to harness this experience of you know two dimensions of where we're most motivated when we start something and when we finish right, the closer we get to a goal, the more motivated we get right.
00:11:53.980 --> 00:11:57.270
If you were, you're going to run four laps on a track for a mile, right you.
00:11:57.270 --> 00:12:00.485
You get out of the gate pretty hot with the first lap.
00:12:00.485 --> 00:12:15.916
Laps two and three are really tough, but when you get to lap four, you feel this burst of energy in terms of moving forward right, and so there's ways to rebuild your goals and your habits and your structures to leverage that experience right.
00:12:15.916 --> 00:12:26.956
So, instead of just biting down on the idea of avoiding something, if I use this idea of I'm approaching a sequence of wins, then I become much more motivated.
00:12:26.956 --> 00:12:31.543
So those are the two big pieces of kind of how to rebuild your orientation around motivation.
00:12:33.065 --> 00:12:39.249
But I love that second piece, that rewarding of stress success and I use the word stress because it was part of the question too you talk about.
00:12:39.249 --> 00:12:47.235
One of the strategies is to embrace stress as a change factor, but around a lot and there's levels to it, right?
00:13:00.445 --> 00:13:03.153
And so it's important to understand and acknowledge that.
00:13:03.153 --> 00:13:10.234
You know, long-term emotional, physical stress is absolutely 100% bad for us, and we know that.
00:13:10.234 --> 00:13:12.258
And that's not really what we're talking about.
00:13:12.258 --> 00:13:27.537
What we're talking about is really short-term, acute, particularly self-induced stress, and what that means is can I put myself in hard situations and withstand the physiological response of what comes next right?
00:13:27.576 --> 00:13:31.620
Stress is designed at its most basic level to get us to move right.
00:13:32.061 --> 00:13:43.479
It's sort of the fight or flight response to the fight or flight response, but a lot of us, when we approach that experience, tend to stop instead of move right, and movement is a big part of what keeps us motivated.
00:13:43.479 --> 00:13:55.587
And so what I talk a lot about in the book and I do this in my own life is finding ways to self-induce and harness stress for learning, and so you know whether it's a cold shower, I do that every day.
00:13:55.587 --> 00:13:57.409
Right, it's, it's, it sucks.
00:13:57.409 --> 00:14:00.812
I'm not going amazing studies that have come out in the last maybe 15 years.
00:14:00.812 --> 00:14:31.275
It's an area of the brain that when you do hard things actually gets bigger, meaning more real estate is dedicated to this, and people who live a long time have a big AMCC.
00:14:31.275 --> 00:14:45.951
Athletes tend to have the largest because they have a relationship with understanding how to do hard things, and so so you will not change unless you are able to put yourself in situations that are uncomfortable and difficult and work through those.
00:14:45.951 --> 00:14:48.177
That is, by definition, what change is all about.
00:14:49.625 --> 00:14:52.674
Hey listeners, I want to take a quick moment to share something special with you.
00:14:52.674 --> 00:15:00.657
Many of the topics and discussions we have on this podcast are areas where I provide coaching and consulting services for individuals and organizations.
00:15:00.657 --> 00:15:14.048
If you've been inspired by our conversation and are seeking a catalyst for change in your own life or within your team, I invite you to visit coachjohngallaghercom forward slash free call to sign up for a free coaching call with me.
00:15:14.048 --> 00:15:22.057
It's an opportunity for us to connect, discuss your unique challenges and explore how coaching or consulting can benefit you and your team.
00:15:22.057 --> 00:15:28.976
Okay, let's get back to the show Putting yourself into those situations.
00:15:28.976 --> 00:15:34.576
So that was one of the questions that I had too, in terms of you mentioned turning change into a habit.
00:15:34.576 --> 00:15:40.110
You've got a lot of these dichotomies that exist inside of some of those, and I can understand the neurotransmission side.
00:15:40.110 --> 00:15:42.856
So we have to turn change into a habit.
00:15:42.856 --> 00:15:44.006
Tell me more about that.
00:15:44.827 --> 00:15:50.768
Well, I think, at its most simple level, it's about what can I do that's new on a regular basis, right?
00:15:50.768 --> 00:15:53.113
I sort of have a belief.
00:15:53.113 --> 00:15:55.605
This has happened to me, probably more in the career side.
00:15:55.605 --> 00:16:02.518
But once I become comfortable with my job and I'm on autopilot, it's time to do something else.
00:16:02.518 --> 00:16:12.889
Right, it's time to pick a new thing, whatever that new thing might be, and then rinse and repeat this process of identify a new goal.
00:16:12.889 --> 00:16:15.313
Design that goal in a way that's motivating.
00:16:15.313 --> 00:16:20.750
Try it, practice it, fail, struggle, have setbacks, start again.
00:16:20.750 --> 00:16:28.971
Right, that experience of learning and iterating and failing and I don't use failure in the kind of cliched way that I mean.
00:16:28.971 --> 00:16:31.456
What I mean is failure.
00:16:31.496 --> 00:16:43.956
Mistakes are the single largest contributor to your opportunity for neuroplasticity and I use that phrase intentionally, which means a mistake is a signal to the brain that something needs to change.
00:16:43.956 --> 00:16:46.676
What happens after that is up to you, right?
00:16:46.676 --> 00:16:58.566
If you go and make an adjustment, then you're building the skill of testing, learning, restarting, failing, reorienting and that's the skill of change, right?
00:16:58.566 --> 00:17:06.351
The skill of change is the investigation of new behaviors and then the practice of those new behaviors until they become habitual.
00:17:06.351 --> 00:17:15.648
Well, once I've learned to do something, what's the next thing to go do and you know I tell people I hope you learn something new the day before they close the casket right.
00:17:15.648 --> 00:17:19.013
Like we, we have the ability to learn new things our whole life.
00:17:19.013 --> 00:17:24.230
We just don't like the experience of learning new things right, because it's uncomfortable.
00:17:25.232 --> 00:17:25.614
I love that.
00:17:25.614 --> 00:17:26.696
It reminds me of a country song.
00:17:26.696 --> 00:17:29.032
When was the last time you did something for the first time?
00:17:29.032 --> 00:17:31.625
I know there's a song, there's a song that's in that, but it is.
00:17:31.625 --> 00:17:41.531
It's trying to find something new, choosing something that's hard that keeps you on that path of continuous improvement knowing that you're going to fail, especially at the start of that journey.
00:17:42.032 --> 00:17:43.292
Yeah, I love you.
00:17:43.292 --> 00:17:46.694
Using the word like neuroplasticity, it goes over my head pretty quickly.
00:17:46.694 --> 00:17:53.420
No pun intended with regards to how that works, but when did you kind of find this interest, or and uh, and the neuroscience side of that?
00:18:06.644 --> 00:18:20.115
Yeah, you know, it really, um, right around the COVID experience, I think, started for me this under this, this questioning of like there's some things I had always been doing it, like I said, as an athlete, as a coach, as a consultant that I just sort of had intuitively adopted, but I didn't really understand why they work.
00:18:20.115 --> 00:18:29.415
And there was an interesting angle around this in terms of you know the competitive world of big consulting, you have to have a hook.
00:18:29.415 --> 00:18:32.309
You know why am I different than company A, b or C?
00:18:32.309 --> 00:18:37.888
Because there's a lot of similar solutions and frameworks and you know, everyone's trying to build a better mousetrap.
00:18:37.888 --> 00:18:45.490
And what I found was you know what I was applying on the field as a coach, with teams and with athletes?
00:18:45.490 --> 00:18:55.347
I was, I was using those same strategies in the boardroom or, you know, in the team room, and and yet I didn't really have a language for understanding why it was working.
00:18:55.788 --> 00:19:17.349
I was just kind of doing the thing I knew how to do, and so you know, of course, then, right around the COVID experience and I talk about this in the book, you know it was such a transformative shift on so many levels and and so it started the refinement of me of some of these pieces that I knew were happening that I just again didn't have a language for, so I dove into the research.
00:19:17.349 --> 00:19:23.307
Um, places like the Huberman lab podcast were groundbreaking in terms of giving you know.
00:19:23.307 --> 00:19:29.290
It was like going to med school and just listening to a three hour lecture from somebody who you know knows this stuff inside and out.
00:19:29.290 --> 00:19:42.497
And so that led to the next reading, the next study or reading the next book, and I just started building this framework around what I had been doing for years and then had a language for it, and so that's kind of how I got here.
00:19:43.786 --> 00:19:45.811
One of my favorites on that one is Jim Quick's Limitless.
00:19:45.811 --> 00:19:53.327
I've gone through that a couple of years ago and it's just really fascinating when you start to dive into some of that neuroscience there.
00:19:53.327 --> 00:19:56.535
So you've mentioned, and I had a coach.
00:19:56.535 --> 00:20:02.403
Rory Vaden from Brand Builders Group would say you're most powerfully positioned to help the person that you used to be.
00:20:02.403 --> 00:20:16.989
So you were an athlete that was overcoming, specifically, you were overcoming what would be seen as a size deficiency, let's call it in terms of 5'7 and being a quarterback in a sport where 5'7 is just not there.
00:20:16.989 --> 00:20:22.135
And now you're teaching that at the high school football level and you're teaching that with your consulting.
00:20:22.135 --> 00:20:28.317
Where do you find it more difficult to be successful with these strategies?
00:20:28.317 --> 00:20:31.171
Is it with the high school kids that you're coaching?
00:20:31.171 --> 00:20:33.636
Is it with those in industry that you're coaching?
00:20:33.636 --> 00:20:37.806
Or, frankly, is it continuously with yourself as you continue to grow?
00:20:37.846 --> 00:20:42.276
Yeah, I mean, each one has its uh, you know, um, ups and downs, right.
00:20:42.276 --> 00:21:00.028
I mean I think you know I coaching athletes, uh, is just still the among the most rewarding experiences for me as a, as a father now, as a, as a, as a, you know, over 50 guy who remembers his moments and has an opportunity to give back.
00:21:00.028 --> 00:21:04.057
Um, you know, this is going to be my last year as a coach for a while.
00:21:04.057 --> 00:21:07.152
My son will be 17 and he's graduating and I need a break.
00:21:07.152 --> 00:21:08.515
I've got a small baby too.
00:21:08.515 --> 00:21:15.634
So, uh, you know that it's just that window of time in the young mind, in the young experience.
00:21:15.634 --> 00:21:25.667
You know, the opportunity to send some of these lessons in ways that I think are really, really powerful, you know, for me is kind of really what it's all about.
00:21:26.250 --> 00:21:34.085
The challenge, of course, with young athletes they don't have the emotional wisdom or regulation that maybe a more seasoned adult has, right, their brain is still forming.
00:21:34.085 --> 00:21:37.596
So it's a great window to plant some of these seeds.
00:21:37.596 --> 00:21:39.871
But you're definitely planting seeds, right.
00:21:39.871 --> 00:21:43.287
These are things that will come about maybe 10, 15 years later.
00:21:43.287 --> 00:21:53.175
You know, with the executive folks you have kind of the opposite problem, right, you have really ingrained behaviors, and I don't mean that in a bad way, right.
00:21:53.175 --> 00:22:09.426
But we've got habits and patterns and standards, and so the idea of breaking those things and and going through the repetition of learning it's really tough for folks, but they have the wisdom and experience of understanding maybe how to get through it a little bit better.
00:22:10.087 --> 00:22:12.634
Uh, so it's kind of you know, where do you want your pain right?
00:22:12.634 --> 00:22:14.506
Do you want it on the inexperienced side?
00:22:14.506 --> 00:22:16.067
Do you want it on the emotional side?
00:22:16.067 --> 00:22:17.688
Do you want it on the frustration side?
00:22:17.688 --> 00:22:20.829
And there's joy in both of those things.
00:22:20.829 --> 00:22:26.795
For myself, my poor family I say this to them way that I have these kind of patterns.
00:22:26.795 --> 00:22:27.414
I'm a human being.
00:22:27.414 --> 00:22:45.093
I get frustrated, I get disenfranchised, I get disappointed, but I'm able to really start again.
00:22:45.093 --> 00:22:51.558
And I think that's the biggest thing of learning from what just happened to you and starting over.
00:22:51.558 --> 00:22:58.057
And that experience for me, you know, is kind of the one that I try to just lean into as much as I can.
00:22:58.077 --> 00:23:03.471
Yeah, and I think about this and I'm honoring our time just watching the clock.
00:23:03.471 --> 00:23:06.329
I want to make sure we actually get to some of the strategies as well.
00:23:06.740 --> 00:23:08.126
We haven't gone deep into that.
00:23:08.126 --> 00:23:18.480
I love the backstory into some of those things and the different areas that you're able to use, as you said, in the home, with youth sports that you're working with or high school age sports, and in the workplace.
00:23:18.480 --> 00:23:25.773
In fact, I think on the consulting side, what I've learned is that it is much like parenting an older child that's getting ready.
00:23:25.773 --> 00:23:33.428
They don't have to listen to anything that you say and complacency can be the biggest thing that gets in the way of change.
00:23:33.428 --> 00:23:35.490
Everything's okay now why do I need to get better?
00:23:35.490 --> 00:23:37.634
I mean, I'm doing okay and so overcoming that.
00:23:37.634 --> 00:23:43.550
Your six strategies, science-backed strategies to transform Is there one in there?
00:23:43.550 --> 00:23:52.546
Or tell me one of those that kind of is your favorite to talk about and maybe give an example of a success story you helping somebody implement that strategy?
00:23:54.130 --> 00:24:08.605
Yeah, you know, I think one of the strategies is around creating focus, and what that means is when we learn as adults we talked about this, so I'll get geeky for a second your brain.
00:24:08.605 --> 00:24:11.131
People use the word rewiring your brain.
00:24:11.131 --> 00:24:13.280
That's not really how it works.
