Episode 521: Dr. Shadé Zahrai, PhD: The Science of Acting Through Self-Doubt

I got his Tony Robbins you're listening to Habitson Hustle, Crescent. Today on Habitson Hustle we have Dr. Shadeza Rae, who is a behavioral researcher, an award-winning peak performance educator and a leading authority on confidence and self-doubt. She was a former corporate lawyer with an MBA and background in psychology and she has designed and delivered transformative programs for Fortune 500 giants, including Google, Microsoft, JP Morgan, McKimsey and so many more. In this episode we cover why self-doubt is often misread as a confidence problem and how that misunderstanding quietly kills your momentum. We impact why confidence is built through action, not something you wait to feel and why high-perform or still experience self-doubt and how detaching from it changes decision-making, behavior and follow-through. We also get into the ping pong ball versus golf ball analogy for self-doubt and why self-image drives behavior more than motivation ever will. You guys, this is a great episode. I hope you enjoy it as much as I loved having it. Alright you guys, today we got a big fun guest and her name is, I love this name, Shadeza Rae. Yeah. It takes me a few times. You're gonna offline, I was like practicing. So thank you for being on the show. Thanks. So Shade, Shade, why am I having such a hard time with your name? It's so crazy. She's a peak performance educator and researcher with Fortune 500 companies. I found her, I found you. Basically, doom scrolling, I think on Instagram, which I hate doing, but I don't know, I couldn't sleep one night and you're a video, one of your videos came up and I just really resonated and they went, of course, deep diving and all your stuff and you're very impressive. Thank you. You're welcome. Likewise. Oh please, now, now. But I will say that you guys are in for a treat because Shade wrote a book. It's called Big Trust. It's, Rewire Self-Doubt. Find your confidence and fuel success. These are the three things I talk about at Nazim and so now I have someone to banter with. Yay. Thank you for being here. Oh, thanks for having me. I'm so excited for this conversation. Oh my gosh, I am. Okay. Where do we begin? Okay. You said something before we started rolling about your book is really about how we think about self-doubt wrong. Yes. How do we think about it and what is the correct way of really thinking about self-doubt? So when we fundamentally ask people what is the opposite of self-doubt, they will say confidence. They think that that is the ultimate and so they're constantly waiting to feel that before they take action. They're waiting to feel ready before they take action. But when we look at decades worth of literature, we find that that feeling of confidence comes after we take action and Jen, I know you talk about this very frequently as well. You need to see yourself taking the action, which then leads you to gain that evidence point, that proof point, which is an increase in skill and an increase in competence, which then allows you to feel that sense of confidence that you crave. So confidence doesn't come first. It comes after, which means something else comes first, which is what? It is self-trust. So actually the opposite of self-doubt is not confidence. It's trusting yourself. Yeah. I always say self-efficacy. Like, we feel that we can do something that is that's really where we want to be. And then actually do the thing. And that's absolutely one of the drivers of self-trust. So when you don't have self-efficacy, you doubt whether you can do the thing, whether you have the skills, whether you have competence. I was then really curious to go, OK, is that all that there is to self-doubt? Is it just to do with doing the thing? And so when I did my own studies, I spent the last five years completing a PhD. We had a sample size of 4,000 around the world. And I was cross checking that with existing studies that had been down over the last 30, 40, 50 years. And what I came across is that self-doubt is a result of your self-image, which is how you see yourself. Because remember self-efficacy or the belief I can do this comes down to how we see ourselves, which is our self-concept, our self-image. So then what is self-image? How do you break apart the components of self-image? And this is where it gets fascinating. There are actually four dimensions to our self-image. You're called your core self-evaluations, which is how you judge yourself. And when these four things combine, it has been found in meta-analyses of over 100 studies to predict your success, your job performance, your career satisfaction, your relationship satisfaction, your happiness, even how much money you make. These four things. OK. So you're like, let's go. One of these four things are. So the very first one is acceptance, which is built on. So these four things I should mention, they're based on personality traits. They are personality dimensions. But we found that when we were referring to them as personality dimensions, people resisted because they think, well, that's my personality. That's just who I am. I can't change it, which is a fixed mindset. So through the book, what I do is help redefine them, not just as personality traits, but I talk about the trainable capacity, the trainable habit that allows you to increase or strengthen that personality trait. I love that. So let's talk about the four drivers. Yes. OK. So we're based on self-esteem, and we refer to that as the habit of acceptance, because it is defined as a habit, which means it's something we can develop. Now what is self-acceptance? When you do not accept yourself. So this is when self-dat would be attacking this dimension. When you don't accept yourself, you outsource your worth, you take feedback personally, you feel like you're constantly chasing a feeling of enoughness. So you might try to prove your value through your work, through your achievements, through your gains seeking the goodwill of other people. You want them to approve of you, so you approve of yourself. But in doing that, you also become deeply, your identity becomes deeply intertwined with what you're delivering and your job. And so we find a lot of people who say, well, I am my work. That is who I am. And they feel guilty when they try and take a break, because there's that sense of not enoughness that is leading them to think if you're not working and producing and creating, then you're falling behind, then you're inferior, then you're not enough. So that's what it looks like when you don't have a sense of acceptance. That's the kind of self-dat that is associated with that, even perfectionism, setting insanely high standards and then beating yourself up when you don't achieve them, because you internalize that. I am not enough. I am the failure. I wasn't good enough. Right. And so we see this so frequently, and this can completely block either block people from taking that step, or they take this step, but then they sabotage because they don't feel like they deserve it, and they feel like they need to protect themselves. So that is our first driver of self-doubt. Do you feel like you're enough? Yeah. And that and the acceptance part of that. Accepted. Yeah. Yeah. Fundamentally. Yes. So this is where it gets interesting, right? Because how do you, before we get to the other three drivers, how do you fundamentally accept who you are when you don't feel enough? Because, you know, and I talk about this, like I said at Nazim sometimes, that by just blankly saying an affirmation and a mirror, that doesn't really get the job done. You can say a million times, I'm enough, I'm enough, I'm enough, but if you truly don't believe you're enough, your brain knows you're lying, and it actually can do the opposite effect. Well said. And there's a lot of science to prove that. Exactly. Well said. The brain is, you know, yes, it operates on default, but it's a lot smarter than we give it credit for. Exactly. And so, you're trying to fib it and tell it something that is not true. So what do we do? Again, it's not a matter of an affirmation. The science of affirmations, it all comes down to what's called reframing cognitive shifting. Yeah. So where you would take a thought, a repeated thought that you have, I'm not enough, I'm not worthy. And when you hear that thought come in, you immediately hijack it and take it somewhere else. So you're creating a new pathway in the brain, essentially. And there is some good science that suggests that that can be really effective, but not alone. Because when we're looking at something like self acceptance, that single thing is not going to be the panacea that's going to save everything and everybody. Right. So what I go through in the book and I'll share some of them now. So if anyone listening or watching feels like, oh gosh, that's me. The first thing to acknowledge is that your sense of acceptance was developed in the earliest years of your life based on your experience with your parents, your caregivers, your early peer groups. So as a child, you felt like you didn't get the emotional validation and support that you needed. You might start to internalize a belief that I need to earn worthiness and affection and love. Maybe as a child, you only received appreciation when you were performing or you got the A on the report card or you won the swimming carnival. Or so this often happens. We see this a lot. You might have had another sibling who was really good, the golden child, and you were constantly compared to them. So you never felt like you were enough as you are. On the flip side, you might have had a sibling who was very difficult for your parents. They were challenging. They caused a lot of hardship for your folks. And you saw that and you didn't want to be that. And so you became the opposite. You became the good kid who would always please everybody and do everything right and say, yes and smile. That was me. So I'm still shaking off this, this sense of I'm not enough because of these early experiences. Now we are a product of our past, but we are not a prisoner to it. So you can fundamentally change these beliefs that we have about ourselves. I'm going to share a few of them right now. The very first thing to acknowledge is that you probably associate your sense of value to your work and what you deliver. So if these are going really well professionally, you feel great. I'm on top of the world. Something doesn't go well. Suddenly you internalize it. I am a failure. I'm not enough. I can't do this. So what do you need to do? So what the research says, it's a very odd one. Get a hobby. Now you might think what? Get a hobby. You know, I've been a study that was done looking at Nobel Prize winning scientists. So we're 500 of them. And they found that they were three times more likely than regular scientists to have a creative hobby. Not only that, they were 22 times more likely to have a hobby in the performing arts. Super interesting. Yeah. Now they also attribute those hobbies to helping them make connections that other people didn't. But also it meant that if they were having a really bad day at work or when they were doing their experiments or whatever they were doing, they had something to take their mind off it. Something fun, something that was low stakes. And when we look at other research, there was a study done with over 90,000 people across 16 different countries. And they found that having hobbies, this was a longitudinal study, having hobbies correlated with higher self-esteem, greater levels of acceptance. And this can be as simple as going to a dance class, going and learning or following a recipe in a book to cook. What are they called? Cookbook. Yeah. Cookbook. Cookbook. It can be anything. It can be gardening. It can be painting. What's the reason for it? So I would suggest one of the reasons is that it gives you an identity outside of work. It reminds you that beyond just being the podcaster, the author, the parent, the lawyer, the engineer, which we tend to identify with, you can also be the painter and the drummer and the musician and the person who buys thrift, so furniture and sells it on Etsy. Right. There are other parts to us. So there's one element. The other thing is it's a positive form of distraction. Yeah. So if things don't go well, you move into another space, which is fun and low stakes, and you don't have to be performing. Right. A positive form of distraction because there's also very negative forms of distraction. Exactly. And they tend to be the numbing kinds of distraction. The alcohol, the Netflix binges. And they numb your sense of emotion. That can be quite damaging because then you're not acknowledging what you're going to. Right. In this case, you're just moving into a, I also think though in today's time, we have just things that are kind of socially acceptable forms of distraction, like social media, doom scrolling. Yeah. You know, I laughed about at the beginning of the podcast, but honestly, that's like a really bad habit to get into. And that's a distraction when people don't want to socialize anymore. They don't want to like numb themselves from whatever they're doing. They'll just go right to their phone and just like watch other people doing whatever they're doing. That's not a great form of distraction. Not at all. Yeah. So fascinatingly, two things on that. The first thing I want to mention is in my view, I think people are seeking connection and they go online because they see other people. And so it feels like you're connecting with these other people. Exactly. But then you get to the end of it and you don't feel any better because it's not real connection. Right. The second thing which is super interesting, it's a study that I came across when I was doing the PhD research. And it found that it can be a positive source of leisure if it's time bound and if you're not mindlessly doing it. What do you mean mindlessly? So mindlessly means you're not even fully present. You're just you're stuck in the scroll. You're not even aware of what you're watching. You're not even because sometimes like my feed, if I were to show you, it's full of puppies and dogs. I know. I can imagine animals. Well, you showed me your dog the first four seconds I met you. I'm like, you know, you're like, oh, I miss my dog. I'm like, okay. Like obviously then I would put two into the gather. You're a whole lot more than exactly. Totally. And so for me, sometimes I will go, okay, I'm going to give myself five minutes right now. Yeah, that's a good one though. Yeah, it is, I think. It makes you happy. It makes me happy. But still I can get stuck in that mindlessness of it. Yeah. Where I'm not even experiencing the emotion that comes with it because as soon as you experience the emotion, the video is over and you swipe to the next one. Yes. So true. We don't even allow ourselves to feel the emotion associated with it. 100% agree. By the way, we went right into the self doubt and then we didn't even tell the audience who you are. Why you have any expertise in talking about this. Can we just, can you give us a very, and then we're going to get into more of the drivers. Yeah. But what makes you the expert of or educator on this? Like you've spent how many years kind of deep diving into this? What's your background? So I've spent the last 10 years being utterly fascinated by what holds people. Go back and what allows people to just propel forward. OK. And so the last five years have really been a full deep dive from a PhD level going deep into my own research, looking at existing literature over the past 50 years. And then also essentially cross checking and cross referencing all of that with the work that we've done in and with Fortune 500. So a big part of our company is working with big organizations, the likes of Deloitte and LVMH and Google Microsoft working with their leaders and their teams at all levels. To do what? So we do a lot of training. We develop programs to help them with behavior change, with change management, with boosting their performance, leadership, communication. So that was really what we started doing. It started during the pandemic. OK. Big way, virtually. But how are you getting these big forked? Those aren't Fortune 500. Those are like Fortune 100, Fortune 50. Yeah. How are you getting customers like that? Two ways. OK. So social media is the best form of organic marketing. I have never once promoted and sought clients online, but people will see your content and say, hey, she would be great for our next team off site. She would be great to come in. So there's that. We get just the steady flow of inquiries that come through social media, especially LinkedIn. So we're really active on LinkedIn. People don't even realize that's a platform you can be using to educate and to build a personal brand. And for us so much of what we've done because we haven't needed to promote, we just give value. We share tips, we share insights, we share, you know, here's one technique from the research that you can apply. And that's just how we've built that organically. Right. Also, you're not showing just your videos, you're showing tips. Are you speaking about here's three things to do if you feel stuck. Here's two things that you can do with your employees. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Simple communication tips, etc. Yeah. So that's been massive. And then the second one is word of mouth. It's amazing how when you build a sense of trust with people and they liked what you do, they will go and share it. And it's amazing in those environments, those organizations, how much, what's the word, a trust in an overlap. People are constantly changing roles. So with the consulting firms, we worked with one of them, one of the very big ones. And then a large portion of the team, that team was basically retrenched or made redundant. Yeah. And then they went to another firm and then they brought us to the other firm. That's how it goes. That's how it goes. And that's the beauty of, I always say, I don't like the term personal brand because it sounds very contrived and we are not companies as such. But we do have a reputation. And when you have integrity and you have values, no matter who you're dealing with, what you're doing and maintain a certain level, a standard, a high standard word spreads. And assuming you're good at what you do and you're competent. That's why I was like, what, you're competent. Yes, you're competent. Yes. What would you do though? Would you have a training module that you do? Do you do a speak? Is it more of a keynote? Like what is your process? Let's say I'm Google. I'm head of HR or whoever and I want you or of an executive there and I want you to come in. What would you do with me? What are my options? So in the past, we would basically understand what your needs are, what level of employee we're looking at supporting, whether it's leaders, whether it's everybody, whether it's both because that's really helpful. And then we would propose either a training program, a coaching program, a series of virtual workshops or in-person workshops depending on the needs of that company. Oh, excuse me. Yes. I'm not so much anymore. This is what we used to do. We're actually redefining our business model at the moment, figuring out what's best. We did have a program that was directly for the individual. It was a career program that we offered a few years ago. Now that I've just finished the PhD, which was very difficult, what was it in, by the way? It was in organizational behavior. Oh, okay. So it's the applied psychology in the world of work. Now that that's done, we're reassessing what the business is going to be and how we're going to make it work. We have some kind of a program attached to what's in the book because it's so, there's so, look, I wrote the book for me 15 years ago. I wrote the book for me because I was so consumed with self-doubt and imposter syndrome. I worked in a law firm initially. Right. You're a lawyer by training. I know. Right. Which is the weirdest, I don't know, do I come across like, I can be in the, no, exactly. No. No, no. No, it was commercial law. So it was an environment that was so foreign to what is in my heart. And I had to just make myself fit. And it was causing me so much anxiety that I was getting physically sick. And I was going from specialist to specialist to no one knew what was wrong with me. And then finally, someone just diagnosed it as anxiety related, stress related. Because the environment was not conducive to my well-being and I wasn't listening to the science. Right. And I moved into banking and finance. It was the strangest move. Again, I just needed anything other than the law. Right. It was there for seven years. But great training because I got to see an experience and witness. This is actually where my passion for what I do now came from. Because in these companies, especially in the banking and finance space where I was a little older, better able to observe what was happening at all levels, I figured that, okay, there seems to be two groups of people here. There's one group of people who really seem to succeed and achieve and perform and they are recognized and they're absolutely trailblazing. And then there was another group who wanted to do that and were not able to. But what I figured out, because a lot of leadership would reach out to me for coaching. Now this is before I was even doing any coaching. This is when I was an employee. But they saw that I enjoyed helping people and that I was good at listening. And I had some great strategies and guidance. And so they'd actually come and seek me out. And here I am thinking, I'm like in my early 30s or actually know at the time I would have been late 20s. This person is twice my age, has so much more experience. He's leading a team of a thousand. What am I going to help them with? But what it made me realize is that even those at the top levels, they experience self doubt too. Everyone does. It does. It doesn't disappear with achievement or experience. It just scales with responsibility. Totally true. The nature of that doubt evolves. Early on in your career, it's more about belonging. Do I fit in? Am I part of the group? Do they like me? And so a lot of people, and this is what I did, will use overly complex language to come across as more competent or more intelligent. And so I was using all this fancy, shmancy, unnecessarily complex jargon. I didn't realize studies have now found that that undermines your sense of competence and makes you appear less intelligent. Simplicity is where it's at. 100%. 100%. But you know what's interesting, that no matter how competent you are, if people don't like you, it doesn't matter how competent you are. Very true. So you could be competent, which leads you to being confident. But if you're unlikable, no one's going to want to do anything with you anyway. They're not going to hire you, and they're not going to root for you, and they're not going to want to work with you. So there's a big chunk here of how likability can actually really kind of throw rocket fuel on any of this stuff. And unlock a lot of this stuff. Which is beautiful. So that brings us to the second pillar. So we've just done, we've started with the first, which is acceptance. Okay. And then we've kind of gone through a little bit of my story. Oh, let me finish my story. So I observed that everyone experienced a self-doubt. And then I wanted to figure out, well, then how do the people that are really successful still experience the self-doubt and move forward anyway? And that ignited something within me, which was this fascination with figuring it out. And then that's what led to, so my last three years, Inc. corporate, I was transitioning. That's when I married my husband Faisal, who's my business partner and has an incredible background himself. He has run training companies in Korea. He has developed world-first electronics like he's phenomenal. And so we had this, I had a three-year transition plan where I started working with organizations. I was actually doing a lot of stuff for free to get experience. I would take vacation days from my day job and go and support other companies. So that's kind of how the transition happened. Then I left and then a week later, COVID lockdowns happened. So that was always fun. But that then opened up the door for me to do a PhD. Because suddenly, so that's why you did your PhD? Yes. And so, for example, this time now, I've always been fascinated about how to do research, how to interpret research, and this specific area. What is it that differentiates those who do from those who want to do but do not? And what did you find? So what I found is that the difference between those who succeed and those who don't, it's not that they don't have self-doubt, they all do. But those who succeed have something called action orientation, which means they can hear the voice and detach from the voice. So I want to show you or give you a bit of an analogy. Let's say, Jen, that I have two glasses of water right next to each other. They're full to the brim with water. And then I have a golf ball, which is quite heavy, and then a ping pong ball, which is quite light, but they're about the same size. If I take the light ping pong ball and I place it on the top of one of the glasses of water, what happens to the ping pong ball? It floats. Yeah. And what happens to the water? Nothing. Nothing. And I plop it on the other glass of water, what happens to it? It sinks. It sinks and what happens to the water. It drips. It drips. Yeah. Overflows. Exactly. This is how I came to understand self-doubt. Those who succeed have that recognition that self-doubt is like a ping pong ball. It's there. They see it. They acknowledge it, but they do not internalize it. Those who struggle with self-doubt and allow it to get in their way for them self-doubt is like a golf ball. It is dropping right to the center of who they are. They internalize it. It becomes them. They allow it to be a verdict on what they can and cannot do. On whether they feel that they are worthy, whether they feel that they're powerful. And then here's what's even more interesting. There's another part to this analogy. Imagine I get a spoon or chopsticks or something and I take out the golf ball. The heavy golf ball, which is at the bottom, I take it out very carefully. Golf ball is now no longer in the water. Does the water miraculously refill itself? No. No. When you have internalized self-doubt for so long, even if you learn the skills to start to separate yourself from the self-doubt, you've actually lost a part of yourself in that whole process. And so that's where people struggle to trust their instincts. That's where people don't know if they really can trust who they are because it's been so long that they've been internalizing this self-doubt and allowing it to hold them back. So a big part of what they have to do is fundamentally change how they see themselves. They change that perception that they have of them. Let me share with you one study. That is hugely powerful in terms of understanding the role that our self-image has in terms of the life that we lead. Okay. So this is from the 70s and 80s. Psychology professor Robert Kleck from Dartmouth. He had a group of people come together. He split them up into a number of groups. With one of the groups, he drew a scar on their face on the right side from their ear to their mouth. He took a ugly scar and he lets them see themselves in a mirror. He then sends all the groups out into conversations. So remember, there's a group that has no scar. They go out to have conversations with strangers. After the conversations, they come back into the room and they have to report how they felt about the conversations. The group that had the scar reported that they felt that they were treated differently. They were judged. It was tense. It was uncomfortable. They felt like they were treated in a way that was completely different. They were discriminated against. So here's where it gets super interesting. If we rewind a little bit, before all those people were sent into these conversations, the researcher said I'm going to apply some moisturizing cream to set the scar so it doesn't crack. But what he did without their knowledge is remove the scar entirely. There was no scar when they went into these conversations. But they believed that there was because they had seen themselves with the scar. And because of that belief, they expected they'd be treated differently and because of that expectation, that is what they saw. That is what they experienced. And it's called expectation bias. We don't experience the world as it is. We experience it as we expect it to be. And so when you think about this from the context of self-doubt and self-image, how we see ourselves, all those scars that we see, I'm not worthy, I can't do this, I'm not powerful, everyone is better than me. That is showing up. Every time we enter a room, every time we meet someone new, every time we meet someone new, every time we're thinking about taking on a new opportunity or raising our hand or saying that thing, we just create this in our reality because we have these scars that are so deeply embedded in who we are. Like I had a friend. In fact, she was a friend and a client. Her name is Taylor and I introduced her in the book. She had a deep scar related to lack of acceptance. She didn't fundamentally accept who she was. But she was doing very well in her career. She was super dependable. As you said, lack ability is important. She was really liked. She was also competent, which was good. She was dependable, reliable, people loved her. She got to a stage where one of her mentors said to her, Taylor, if you want to move ahead in your career, in leadership, you need to be more assertive. Now Taylor didn't hear, you've got potential, here's your plan. What she heard was, you're not enough. And then she started seeing everything through that lens. So if she wasn't invited to a casual meeting about something unrelated to her work, she saw that as a sign that she's not wanted. If someone commented to her after a meeting that she, the way she spoke was a little hard to follow, which would usually be feedback, she took it personally and thought, gosh, I can't communicate. Then it also spilled out into her personal life. She found that when she would send a friend a text message and they would read it and not reply immediately, she felt like she didn't matter to them. And so she was creating these stories in her head because of these scars that she had. So the power and understanding that is that we are not objective. We are entirely subjective and how we see ourselves is shaping every experience we have. Totally true. So that's acceptance. Can I just quickly share two little tips for anyone who struggles with acceptance? Because again, it's not just the single affirmation, I am enough, I am enough. The first one we had was get a hobby. It's an odd one, but it's valuable. I think it's a good one. I think it's a great one. Super pragmatic. The second one is if you tend to lack acceptance because you outsource your worth to other people, you tend to say yes before even considering what you've just said yes to, right? Because you don't want to let people down. What can help is something called intentional delay. Researchers have found that if you can delay a decision when you're under pressure by just a few milliseconds, you make a better decision. And so for us people, leaders, what that means is that we need to when someone says, hey, can you help with this or can you do that instead of sure and then having to devote an entire weekend to helping or staying late or doing something that we really don't want to do, you start with a positive first response. Thanks for thinking of me. You then create delay. I will check my schedule and get back to you by the end of the day or let me run it by my husband and make sure we're able to. And then the next step is you actually get back to them by whenever you've said you've just created space. Now the next step though, because remember if you're going through the process of removing that golf ball and then there's a gaping hole of nothing because you haven't been able to replenish the water. You need to then know what are you saying no to and what are you saying yes to when it comes to saying no to someone and declining. It's really difficult when you struggle with acceptance because you risk their disapproval which you internalize. So then what do you need to have? You need to think, okay, well, if I'm saying no to you, it's not just because I'm saying no to you, I'm then saying yes to something deeper. I have a deeper yes that I'm saying yes to. And so a deeper yes, if we use something related to well-being, let's say that your friends want to go out and have a night full of eating bad food. Right. Like a night of just like socializing, hardying, all the things, okay. But you are on a health kick right now and you know if you go out with them, you're going to eat. It'll derail your whole plan. Completely. So then if you just said now you're now awake. It's relatable. Yeah. So then rather than saying to them, look, I can't make it. Say thanks, you're thinking of me. Sounds so much fun. Let me check and see if I'm going to be able to make it. And then you ask yourself, okay, if I say no to that, what am I saying yes to? I'm saying yes to my own well-being right now. And I'm saying yes to what I need. I'm saying yes to how I'm going to feel tomorrow. I'm saying yes to how I'm going to feel in a week in a month. When you have a deeper yes burning inside, it's so much easier to say no because then you're not just saying no, you're actually saying yes to you. Totally agree. I live by that motto. Brilliant. I love it. I love it. Very. The third step is if you tend to be a people pleaser, you want to, you'll want to go above and beyond for people because you think that that's going to win more of their approval. You want to go above and beyond for clients. You want to go above and beyond for your husband or your wife or you want to go above and beyond for everybody else to the point that you might neglect yourself. So what I talk about is focus on meeting spec. What does that mean? It comes from marketing expert Seth Godin. And in the world of marketing, the idea is you meet the specification that the client provides. Not above, not below, you meet what they have asked for. Now, of course, if you have extra time, you can go a little bit above. But when it comes to us developing this sense of acceptance, we need to remind ourselves that if I meet spec, the specification, it's still okay. Now what does that mean when we're applying that to our lives? Okay. So I'm not going to try and go viral when I post this social media picture or video. I'm going to make it about meeting the specification, which is just posting. Great. I'm going to focus on the process, not the outcome. Right. That's me meeting the specification. So you shift away from outcome because when we focus on the end result, we then attach our sense of worth to the end result. It must be perfect. Otherwise I am inferior. I am not good enough. So then we don't do that. We don't have any type of expectation. Totally. So when it comes to the gym, instead of I'm going to get a six pack after a month, no, I'm just going to show up. I'm going to show up exactly. I'm going to show up. I'm going to move. And this is something you've probably heard a lot. A lot of people will say, okay, I want to go to the gym. I want to do 60 minutes. And then they come to do it and they haven't gone. And there's only 30 minutes left. And they think, well, I didn't do my 60 minutes and they give up entirely. That's 30 minutes that you could have gone to the gym. 100% you do the opposite. Exactly. You go, I'll just go for five minutes. Yes. And then if it turns into 30 minutes, you have your ex, you actually exceeded your expectation. And you feel fantastic. And you feel so much better. Exactly. That is the confidence part. Yes. Exactly. You did it. Yeah. Did you know Americans spend an average of 90% of their time indoors? But do you also know that indoor air can be up to 100 times more polluted than outdoor air? Well, you can breathe easy with air doctor. The award-winning air purifier that eliminates 99.99% of dangerous contaminants like allergens, viruses, smoke, mold spores, gases, and so much more. Air doctor was voted best air purifier by Newsweek. So it's no surprise that 98% of air doctor customers agree. Their home air feels cleaner, safer, and healthier. Unlike other purifiers, air doctor captures invisible particles 100 times smaller than standard hepophilters. So head to airdoctorpro.com and use promo code hustle 40 to get up to $300 off today. And air doctor comes with a 30-day money back guarantee plus a three-year warranty and $84 value. So get this exclusive podcast only offered now at airdoctorpro.com. Use promo code hustle 40. So the what number are we on right now? Okay. So that's one. That's still a lot. Oh my God. Now we're going to move to number one. We're going to move to two. Damn it. I got my own questions here. Okay, go on. I'll go through the rest really quickly. I'm teasing you. So the one you were referring to, so this idea of building skill and competence. The question of can I do it? Yeah. We call it agency. And it's built off the psychological principle of self-efficacy. Right. Which is what you mentioned. So self-efficacy is that belief of the difference. What is the difference? So self-efficacy is that personality trait. And agency is the habit that we develop to boost that personality and to strengthen it to improve it. Got it. So what does this look like when you don't have agency? You might feel like an imposter. Like you're undeserving of your success that other people think you're smarter or more intelligent than you really are. You also get stuck in comparison, specifically comparing where you are to where other people are. So you go to the gym for the first time and you're looking at the person that's been going every day for two years and you think, okay, this happened to me. I went to CrossFit for the first time. I've learned CrossFit is not for me. I injured myself within three or four sessions. Yeah. I mean, it's, well, actually it was. It was the first minute. I went back and then I did it again three sessions later. So not for me, but I went there and I saw people who had been going every day consistently for the last year or two years and I suddenly felt like I was behind. Oh gosh, I can't do this. I'm never going to be where they are. But hey, if I had gone every day for two years, maybe I would be where they are. Totally. So there's that whole comparison thing. Comparison is like the enemy of confidence. And it's the thief of joy. It's a thief of joy too. Completely. Yeah, it is so true. That is, I think that's a loop. That's why social media and me is a real problem too. Oh gosh. Right? Because it just bombard you with what everybody else is doing that's better than you. Yes. Terrible. But I think you're right. We got to be able to be able to not focus so much on what others are doing and focus on what we're doing. Yes. Not compare art. Yes. Art chapter one to someone else is chapter 25. Completely. Yeah. Completely. Very hard though. These are all nice and theory. How do we do it in real time? Two principles here. So the very first one is if you feel like you see someone and they make you feel inferior from a skill or competence perspective, I call it shifting from comparison to emulation. What does that mean? Yeah. Instead of comparing yourself and thinking, oh my goodness, look at how far ahead they are. I could never get there. You shift to emulation. Wow. Look at how far ahead they are. How did they get there? And how do I follow that path? And it shifts it from feeling iconned into cool. I'm going to figure it out and reminds you that hey, they have a path. I can follow that path. Right. So that's the first one you shift into emulation. So you study their path. You deconstruct it. And then you start small. The thing to be aware of there though. So we do know from research that if you find people who you see yourself as being similar to who have achieved what you want to achieve, you are more likely to believe that you can do it too. It's really powerful. It's the motivational theory of role modeling. The flip side though is if those people struggle or fail, you might then start to think, oh gosh, I'm going to struggle and fail. So you need to remember that yes, use it to inspire you to emulate. But then if it doesn't work out for them, you can still learn, okay, what did they do that didn't work and how do I learn from that? Right. Now we move into the next step. One of the things that holds people back when it comes to this comparison is when they hit a roadblock, they not only focus on them and the roadblock, they also focus on how far ahead everybody else is getting. And even if you started at the same place, so let me tell you this example from Michael Phelps. This is one of the stories that I share in the book. So we have in the book, one of the things I loved is looking at what are the analogies and the stories and the case studies that I can put in and this one is brilliant. Okay. So Michael Phelps, one of the greatest athletes of all time, swimmer. Yes, I know. Yeah, just in case anyone's listening and they know. Yeah. Because I was telling this story to my mom and she's like, who's Michael? Do I know Michael? Is this your brother's friend? No, mom. Not quite. So if my mother is listening. Yeah, so Michael Phelps. So his coach used to say that he had this amazing habit of visualization. But I became intrigued because visualization is not super amazing in the sense that most athletes do it. So what is it that Michael does differently? And his coach said he wouldn't just visualize success. He would visualize everything unexpected that could happen. All the things that could go wrong. And then he would visualize what he would do if they happened. So he had a recovery plan that he was anticipating and visualizing, which is very different to what a lot of other people do and very different to how a lot of people who talk about manifesting will embark on that journey. They don't think about what could go wrong because they don't want to will it into existence. Right. And if you only focus on what's going wrong and you have a slightly anxious overthinking mind, you will catastrophize. Yeah. So the important next step is be pragmatic. What could get in your way? And then what will you do if it happens? Right. And the other point is, OK, well, if those things could happen, how do I also prevent them from happening? Right. So it's either side. It's called a pre-mortem in the project management world or inversion thinking. Yeah. And then adding that visualization piece is so powerful because when you are visualizing something versus when you are experiencing something, it's activating the same part to the brain. Actually, 100%. The visual and the experience. I love that Michael felt story because I've heard it many times. It's so good. Have you heard the end of it? No. Oh, the end of it is. OK. So what happened with Michael felt is this technique paid off big time in 2008. So he's competing in the finals of the 200 meter butterfly in the Olympic Games. He dies into the water. And within about 25 meters, his goggles completely fill up with water. He cannot see a thing. But instead of becoming distracted, overthinking, getting stuck in anxiety or comparing how far ahead everyone else is getting while he's floundering, he relied on his mental rehearsal. And in an interview, he said, I swam blind for 175 meters, one gold and beat a world record. He was able to achieve a world record without being able to see anything. Why? Because he anticipated what could go wrong. He'd been there before. He'd practiced it. So he could rely on his training. Yeah. I love that. Powerful. So powerful. I do remember that. It's so good. It's a great one. I do remember that. Yeah. And he, yeah, that's incredible. And do you think it's interesting to what you just said? It's so true. Manifestation and people who are big manifestors, it's about not speaking of what could happen because you're putting it into the universe. But isn't that not, that's not a practical way of going through life, right? Because things can happen. So if you are, if you are, if you're trained or if you have that idea and know what to do with it, it's way more effective and beneficial. Confisional. Completely. Yeah. And visualizing so clearly where you want to go. Yeah. Because it's upgrading that self-image. It's showing you, especially when you believe that you can get there, you're upgrading that self-image and you're almost in a way demonstrating, okay, I'm not limited by who I am now, that's who I can become. And by updating that, you're going to start noticing opportunities and attracting things that align. Right. But then pragmatically speaking, when we look at literature and research, what triggered my interest in this is I came across a study that found that when you engage in what's called positive fantasies, which is this visualizing, where do you want to go? It can actually sap your energy. It saps your energy because firstly, you often then don't take steps to get there because you're so fixated on that that you forget that you have to actually do something, do the work closer to it. And then secondly, when you hit a roadblock, when something doesn't go to plan, it rattles your sense of, but that's what I thought I could get. And then you start to revert to these old scars and this old self-image. So pragmatic. Pragmatic. You're talking to the most pragmatic. Yes. What is, okay, so that's number two. Oh God. Okay, what's number three? Okay, so number three is autonomy. Now let me tell you about, or rather, let me ask you, Jen and everyone listening, do you know someone in your life who complains constantly, who is resentful, who tends to feel like life is unfair to them, who also tends to revisit the same stories of how they were hurt in the past? Do I know something like that? Very, very well. Okay, I think everyone can relate. These are the classic habits, behavioral and cognitive habits of people who are low on autonomy. Now, autonomy is the trainable capacity. What trait is this reflecting? It's called internal locus of control. Right? So locus of control, locus comes from the Latin loci, which means location. Where do you place control in your life? Right. So I believe that you are powerful in your life, that you can shape the outcome, that you have some degree of control over what happens to you, acknowledging that there are things that you cannot control. Right. That means you have an internal locus. So what are you focusing on? You're focusing on your thoughts, your actions, your interpretations, how you show up. That's what you focus on. Yes. You know you can control that. If you have an external locus, you tend to focus on things you do not have control over. Other people. What they think, what they do. And an outcome in business, sometimes outcomes are outside of our control. Only the inputs are within our control. You focus on the performance of a social media post. It's kind of out of your control. You focus on the weather or you focus on the fact that the market is changing or the economy. And what's most fascinating is for these people because they're focusing on those things, they end up feeling very, very powerless because they are powerless to do anything about them. We gain a sense of control because the brain, the fundamental function of the brain, some people will be like, it's protection. But more than that, the function of the brain is to ensure that the rest of the body does what it needs to do using the least amount of metabolic energy. And the front part of our brain, which is the prefrontal region, it uses a lot of energy. It requires a lot of energy. So the brain is actually incentivized to just operate on default and pattern and to allow the fear to take over and the anxiety to take over because if it's trying to protect you, it means you're not going to take action, which means you're not going to be in a position where you could fail or be rejected or be criticized, which will take a lot more brain energy to help you move through it. Totally. So it incentivize to do that. We also know people who tend to complain and be resentful and blame others. They have far less activity in their prefrontal region and much more activity in the emotion centers. They're more likely. So the brain is operating on default. It's operating on these catastrophizing patterns, these overthinking patterns and they're just letting it happen. So could they change it? Yes. And that's the beautiful part. So things like complaining, blame, and resentment make people feel like they have a sense of control when they don't. It's a false sense of control and you can change it. Do you know one of the simplest ways to start to reengage your prefrontal cortex? How? Changing what you think. Changing your attention. When you start to think, why me? Instantly shift to what next? What that does is acknowledges, okay, this is the situation. What am I going to do about it? So you're not trying to change the situation because often we can't change the situation and need immediately, but you can change how you perceive the situation. You can change your interpretation, which then makes you feel slightly more powerful. When you, so this is why cognitive shifting and relabeling and shifting thoughts can be so powerful by simply consciously taking control of our thoughts. We have to use the frontal regions of our brain, which results in a decrease in activity in the emotion centers. So we have more access to rationality and logic and decision making. Another really, really simple tool to use here, when you're stuck in this external locus, where fundamentally the reason why it's linked to doubt is you doubt your capacity to change things. You doubt your ability to influence an outcome. And so you focus on things you cannot control. So what you'll often think is, should I should have done that, I should have done this, I should do that. And what's interesting is if I were to say to you, Jen, you should do this. A lot of people, how do you respond when someone tells you what you should do? I don't like it. Exactly. As humans, we inherently don't like it. We want to be the causal agents of our lives. It also undermines self-efficacy, but it undermines our sense of freedom of choice. It's called reactants. I have a very strong sense of reactants where someone tells me what to do. We almost want to rebel. When we use shud on ourselves, it's kind of the same thing. Shud do not feel good. Even if you say it to yourself. Even if you say it to yourself. The language of shud can either lead you to want to resist or can make you feel guilty or full of shame. Yes. So the language of shud is not useful. What research shows is that switch to could. Switching to could overshud increases divergent thinking. It allows you to come up with more options. You're also not committing to anything yet. We have a little tool that we like to share. You grab a notebook. When you feel like you have no power, when you feel like everything is out of your control, when it's all unfair, you grab a notebook, split it into two columns. On the left, you've got your eye-could list. You write down everything that you could do. All the things, you know, I could get out of bed, but I could stay in bed. I could go to the gym. You just write it all down. This is reminding you that you have choices you can make. And then on the right side, you write, I will. This becomes your eye-will list. From everything you wrote on your could list, what is the one, two, or three things that you will commit to doing? And then you do it. And this is reinstilling a sense of autonomy. That's a great one. It's so simple and so pragmatic and research-based and powerful in those moments. That's a good one. That's so easy, right? Change shud to could. And then the other column with I will. And it just reframes how you just respond to that thing. Well, I love that one. Give me another one. For specifically for autonomy? For anything like that we just talked about. Okay. Any type of like easy trick that's actionable that people can do now to shift and change either how they think of themselves, accept themselves, their autonomy, like all the above. So I would say we want to, especially when it comes to autonomy, we will use language of always and never. This always happens. This never works. You never do that. I always write, always and never are absolutes. And they feel very fixed. And they're often not based on reality. They're often just us creating a story that makes us feel more certain about things. Yes. It always happens. It never happens. And we usually turn that inwards. Nothing ever works out for me. You always have it easier than I do. And it becomes very blame oriented, frustration oriented. So in those moments you want to make a special effort to avoid that language and instead shift to something that is more accurate and rational. So they never listen to me. They never listen to me. Would become there are times when they're not listening to what I'm communicating. How can I communicate in a way that will be better received? Right? So you shifted away. You basically, this is the reality. Okay. There are times when they're not listening to me. Then what can I do to change the situation? So again, you're giving yourself a sense of personal power. Can I change when I say it? Can I change how I say it? Can I have a chat with them individually rather than collectively? Whether this is your family members, your kids, your team, whatever it is. All the above. All the above. Right? So that's another one. It's a way, move away from those absolutes. It can really help us. That's that. Yeah. Very simple. What's the fourth one? Okay. The fourth one is, let me ask you a situation or give you a situation. Let's say that when do you get nervous or anxious? Do you have a situation like getting on a massive stage or as I hate public speaking? Okay. Really? But I do it. I don't think so. I really get nervous. But yes, I continually do it because I don't like it. I kind of feel brilliant. You're exposing yourself. I'm exposing, but it's not getting easier. I still hate it every time. But you have to do it a lot. You can do it. But also, I feel it is one of the things I hate the most. But the buy product is so good that I'll put myself through the torture. The pain. Yeah. The pain. Well, so it's so interesting because there is this concept that I talk about in the book called Earned Good Luck. So a lot of people talk about, oh, I'm so unlucky. Oh, my gosh. Jen is so lucky. She got this opportunity. She did that. She's been on the stage. And they forget that actually, yes, okay, there is a degree of luck that exists. Studies have been done that demonstrate, yes, timing and knowing the right people and being in the right place matter. But for the majority of us and majority of situations, you earn the luck. Oh, what does that mean? Let me share a story with you. Christopher Nolan. He's a movie director, phenomenal movie director of movies like Oppenheimer and Inception and Dunkirk. And the truth. And Batman. Yes, yes. So he is, people say about him that he just has such good luck with the weather because he has filmed some incredible scenes with incredible weather. And they're like, oh, he's so lucky. And you know, when they ask him about it, he resists it. He goes, no, I'm absolutely not lucky with the weather. But Mike Crew and I have just made a commitment that no matter what the weather conditions are, we will film. We don't seek the comfort or the ease of when conditions are perfect. We just film even in the discomfort. Right. And then the opportunity presents itself. We are ready. We are there. We know what to do. Yeah. And this is this concept of earned good luck. And there was a scene in Oppenheimer when they're going through the first nuclear detonation. And there was this incredible storm that was rolling in, this ominous, dark, dramatic storm. They were ready. They were there. They could capitalize on that opportunity. So I call it discoverability to opportunity. Yeah. You have to be putting yourself in uncomfortable situations. Because you said you know you have that fear of response. You don't like it, but you do it anyway, which does two things, right? So you're exposing yourself to discomfort and you're getting visibility, which means you are increasing your luck surface area. There is a tech entrepreneur. I think he's saying, is Jason Roberts and he calls it a luck surface area so that people are going to see you so that you're going to have more opportunity to reach more people. And that is not only how you're increasing your autonomy, but also how these opportunities find you. Exactly. But because of all these things, I also, I think that I've trained myself that discipline is like the keystone habit that you have to train for. And even if you don't want to do something, don't like something, I always say, like your feelings are information on instruction. Beautiful. So I don't go by what my feeling is. I go by what I know I need to do to get and create the result I need. Brilliant, which leads perfectly into this fourth pillar. So the fourth pillar is essentially, it's called adaptability, but in the context of self-doubt and self-trust, it's related to the ability to manage and harness your emotions. So that doesn't mean so some people think that in order to never have self-doubt, they have to really work on regulating all their emotions and never feel strong emotions. But as you demonstrate, Jen, you feel the very strong emotions, but you learn that they're not a verdict. You take it as data. It's information. It's telling you that you care and you take action anyway. And so what the principle or the pillar of adaptability is is exactly that. When people don't feel like they can handle, rather when they don't trust that they can handle the emotions that come with whatever they're doing, that is a driver of self-doubt. And they say, oh gosh, this thing might not work out. I'm not going to be able to deal with the emotions that come with that. Or I'm feeling so much anxiety right now, and I'm about to get on stage. This is not for me. They allow it to be a verdict on what they shouldn't do. Exactly. Exactly. And it just fuels this self-doubt. 100%. You know I'm all about finding an edge. The small daily habits that give you more energy, focus, and resilience. But that's why I am hooked on monovitality. Most people are mineral deficient. And that means low energy, brain fog, slow recovery, and dull skin. 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So when we are not fundamentally aware that self-doubt is caused by one of these four drivers or a weakness in one of these four things, it means that our approach to not fixing because we don't need to be fixed, but our approach to resolving that self-doubt is going to be wrong. We might struggle with emotions or struggle with that sense of autonomy, and yet someone told us, just repeat, I am enough every morning. And so we're wondering why it's not working. It's because that's not the pillar that you need. Right? Or we might be fine with acceptance, but we're feeling like we can't do the thing. And so we're focusing on something else, when actually if you don't believe you can do the thing, you need to start working on visualizing where you want to go, but also all the things that could get in your way and how you're going to mitigate them. So it gives you a road map, but without the road map, and personally, when I came across this from the literature, I couldn't understand why more people were not aware of it. This four-pot framework. And the reason I believe is because it is framed around personality traits. And that feels scary, because people say this is just who I am. I know. Well, that's an excuse that people use all the time. This is who I am. So take it or leave it or that's how I am. So I can't do that. It's terrible. Like that really is a limiting belief. Absolutely. Right? A couple of funny, okay, not funny, but a couple of things that I saw, and I think you spoke about this that I really liked, was about the person who won a bronze medal versus a gold medal. Like actually being grateful or happy about the bronze and what that does versus a person who wins the gold, right? Can you just talk about that? Yes. I love that you mentioned this. It's so good. It's a great story. And actually, how I first heard about it was from Jerry Seinfeld back in the 90s. He had a stand-up piece where he was talking about this. Well, that's why it resonated with me. I remember some of the stories that you talk about, like this is going to be one of them, is that I remember where the root came from, and that's why it smiled. I'm like, oh my god, that's a great one. Let's do it. Okay, yeah, let's do it. So, the whole premise is this, you would expect in the Olympics that people who receive a silver medal. So this is individual competition. We need to establish that, like swimming or running. People who get a silver medal, they play second. They theoretically should be happier than those who place third and get a bronze medal. Because they're higher up. You'd think that second place is better than third place. Yet, what studies have found, there was a study in 1995, and it was replicated in 2021, they found that bronze medalists are consistently happier and more satisfied than silver medalists. Why? And so what the researchers propose is that it's because of something called counterfactual thinking. Specifically, what silver medalists do is they're focused upwards. They're looking at the first place thinking, oh, I was so close. I almost made it. And they're fixated on what they didn't get. It's called upward counterfactual thinking. You focus on all the things you don't have. And then you discount what you do, which is you have a silver medal. Whereas bronze medalists are engaged in downward counterfactual thinking. Oh my goodness, I almost placed fourth. I almost didn't get a medal. I'm so happy that I placed. It's so true. It's so true. We do this in life all the time when we're comparing to other people. And undermining our self-efficacy and our sense of agency, all that's happening is we're fix it because think about it. We never really compare ourselves to people who are not where we are or above. It's usually people above us. And every time we scale to the next level, the next realm, we succeed. Our comparison realm also increases. Totally. We suddenly don't compare ourselves to the people we used to. We're at the next level now. And so on the one side, this might be fuel to keep you going. And if you struggle with self-doubt, if you struggle with agency and acceptance, it's going to make you feel inferior and inadequate. And that's where moving from comparison to emulation is valuable. That's where deconstructing their message is valuable, trying to determine how did they do it? How do I do it? So that's that study. And we need to think about how does that show up in our lives? Totally. When we achieve success. Yeah. What are we focusing on? Are we discounting all the beautiful, wonderful things we have? Or fixated on everything we didn't get and don't have? Those entrepreneurs, I think, or high performers, high achievers, focus on what they don't have or what they still have to struggle, like how they still have to get to that thing, which is why that kind of gives them that angst or that drive, right? Sometimes if you're too like, oh, I'm just grateful for what I have. It kind of takes away that chip on your shoulder a little bit. It must prove myself. Yes. Don't you ever notice that? Yes. So we find how these four things work together is it actually creates what's called a doubt profile, a bit like a disc or a strength finder. So people will be at different levels for each of them. Right. In fact, we have a quiz at the beginning of the book to help people determine its 12 questions, determine what their doubt profile is. And we will have for anyone listening or watching, we're going to have a free version of this online. So you can basically figure out what it is. It's bigtrustbook.com or shadaiserai.com slash bigtrust. Maybe we can put it in the show notes. Yeah, definitely. And then you can find out where you're at. So what we find is that the archetype of someone who is an entrepreneur, it's also common with some salespeople, is they tend to be lower on acceptance. So they don't really accept who they are, which means they might achieve something or do something amazing or go to IPO. And then they achieve the thing and they feel good for maybe like a minute or five minutes or an hour. And then they just set their sights on the next goal. On the next thing. And they're driven to do that because they don't feel like they're enough as they are. They need to keep proving. And they keep comparing themselves to other people at the next level. Right. They have a pretty high sense of agency, which means they believe they can do cool things because they've done it. They look at other people and they think I could do that too. Exactly. Their autonomy is very high. So they always focus on what they can control. What's next? They don't get stuck in complain. Complaining. That's why they're successful. But their adaptability is shaky. And it's that underlying cortisol and anxiety that keeps them going. And it keeps them moving. And keeps them feeling like I must keep working. I need to move to the next thing. And that fuels the lack of acceptance. Totally. It sounds so familiar. For my friend, of course. Always a friend, yeah. Exactly. And the thing with that profile. So I call the doubt profile and what we call big trust, which is the four things. So let me explain. The book is called big trust because that idea of trusting yourself across those four dimensions leads to this state of big trust where you can trust your worthiness, your capability, your power. Your capacity to manage your emotions, you can trust it and take the step. Yeah. We consider big trust to be the internal infrastructure behind every high performers' visible success. What does that mean? When you see someone successful, it is a result of whatever their doubt profile is. Now does that mean that they are strong across all four, not necessarily? Generally, a lot of successful people will be driven by very low acceptance and kind of mid-level adaptability. That keeps them going. So then someone might say, but that's my edge. That's what allows me to keep succeeding. And so what we look at is the literature. And what the literature suggests is when you accept yourself more, that doesn't mean that you lose your drive to grow or get better or keep performing. It actually means you're just more compassionate to yourself when things don't work out and when you fall short. And actually, it gives you more of an inclination to keep growing. So instead of perfectionism, I must achieve this or else I'm a failure. It moves into what's called a what we call healthy striving for excellence. Yes, I want to achieve that excellence. And if you don't get there, instead of becoming self-critical, you move into this hyperfocus of, okay, what can I do differently and how will I apply it? The other thing that we mention is that, yeah, you might have someone who's super successful. But because of the low sense of acceptance, they don't feel it inside. And so you have to ask yourself, what kind of life do you want to be leading? No, exactly. I think that's a big point, actually. The other thing is we rise to our patterns, not our potential. That's another one I love. I feel like we need that written on T-shirts and mugs. I think it's a big one. Because I think that patterns is what to find people. Completely. You're right. And you are only as good as the patterns that you allow yourself for. Yeah. And these are patterns, I mean, I call them three levels. So the first level is your cognitive patterns. Because what is a belief? It's a repeated pattern of thinking that has occurred so many times that has become default. And you enter the default as it is identity. Right? So there are cognitive patterns that you can change. You just have to be aware of them and then take the steps. Say that again, because I think that's really smart. These are default patterns that we then think that it becomes our identity, not because it is our identity, but because it's our default mode. Exactly. Exactly. Okay, so let's start with that one. Okay. How do we start changing that default mode? How do we really, like in a real way, not again, like explain how someone can really start changing their default mode? So the very first thing is you need to be aware of what's going on in your mind, which requires you to kind of de-identify from your thoughts, because people internalize their thoughts. They think that their thoughts are them, but our thoughts are just reflected patterns of our brain. So the very first step is to start to notice your thoughts. Now what does that mean? If you have a thought, oh, I'm a failure. You pause. And you do what's called, or you practice what's called cognitive diffusion. Instead of I am a failure, you'd say, I'm noticing a thought that's telling me I'm a failure. See how you've just gone from internalizing something, the Gulf full being in the water, to noticing the thought, which is the ping pong ball floating above it. I'm noticing that I'm having a thought that I'm a failure. Same thing applies with emotions. A lot of people say I'm anxious. I'm stressed. But as soon as you say I am, whatever comes after it, you're internalizing and becomes identity it seems fixed. I am anxious. I am anxiety. So you'd say I'm noticing anxiety. I'm holding a lot of stress right now. This is a process that allows you to slowly create some separation between yourself and the experience. And this psychological separation is a very first step in starting to acknowledge that hey, we can change these patterns. So that's the first thing. It's hard to do that. It's really hard to do it, especially when you're busy. So it does require you and I encourage everybody to carve out time with yourself. Okay, I'm going to share a very short story. So it's something I wrote in the book. When I was studying, I did law, which was, again, we've established the wrong thing for me. It was really difficult. And my outlet was a hobby. It was dancing. It was Latin dancing. And I loved it so much that it became professional. It was, I did it on the side. We were competing. We won three Australian Latin dance championships in the style of Bacata. Really? We're so fun. I was studying it in my early years of work. Really, really fun time. So that was my outlet. And the very, very first lesson that I ever went to. It was on a Monday night. We were all learning how to do beginner steps. And then after class, everyone would go to a local dance night at a restaurant. They'd push the chairs away, play music, and you basically dance with each other. Right. Now, I turned up this first night and the first floor was full of this chaotic energy that made me feel very unsafe. Because people are spinning and moving and there are hands and elbows going everywhere. And I was so unfamiliar with this, I froze, which is the worst thing you can do on a dance floor because you're going to become a target. Thank goodness I didn't get an elbow to the head. That came later when I was competing. But my friends told me, grabbed me by the arm, pulled me to the side. Thank goodness. And then we went up a staircase along the side of the wall up to a balcony. And so from this balcony, it was so much more calm. I could look over and see below all of these advanced dancers because downstairs was where the pros and the advanced dancers went. And I could suddenly see, oh, I can see that pattern, that person's dancing with that part. Oh, and they're doing that. It gave me this completely new perspective. It also allowed me to learn quicker because I could observe what was happening from a detached perspective. Then I would go upstairs and I would practice. And then, you know, as the weeks progressed and I got better, I'd eventually go down. And then after a dance, I'd come back up. So this analogy of having some perspective in our lives and getting out of the chaos of the everyday is a great one. Because as you said, it's really hard to detach ourselves from our thoughts. Just like how it was hard for me to get out of the chaos of all of these crazy dancers down below. We need to carve out what I call balcony time every day, every week, which is just a little time with yourself where you can start to pay more attention to those thoughts and those feelings. Even if you have to do it after the fact, you might at the end of the day before you get home after work or carve out time before dinner after dinner, whatever works for you. And you ask yourself, what did I experience today? And what was I telling myself? What thoughts did I have? How do I create that separation now? Oh, I had that thought that when I sent a text to my friend, she actually didn't reply. And I thought she must not care about me. Okay. I noticed a thought at that time that was telling me that my friend, Macy, doesn't care about me. Create the separation. And then your next step is I call it bring in a fact checker. Bring in a fact checker into your mind. This is your voice of rationality and reason. It's looking for evidence. What is the evidence? That's true. What is the evidence? That's not true. And what is something more likely to happen? So actually, Macy's really busy. She's probably cooking dinner for her kids. That's one way that you start to create that awareness that you don't have to believe everything you think. Right. You don't have to feel everything that comes to you. Right. You can acknowledge it. It can be there, but you can reinterpret the emotion. In fact, here's one other tip. A lot of the time when we're feeling anxious, we tell ourselves I'm anxious. Or rather, I'm noticing anxiety because we label it. And we know that labeling has been found to reduce activity in the motion centers of the brain just by labeling because you're taking conscious control of your attention. Because you remember the moment we take conscious control and tell ourselves, okay, I'm experiencing this or this is what it is or reinterpret it, you're re-engaging the prefrontal region just by labeling something. But there's a second step. Researchers from I believe it was Harvard. They wanted to determine whether you can change how you experience a typically negative emotion just by changing the label you give it. So what they did is they brought together a big group of people and they gave them anxiety inducing situations to be part of. So one of it was doing a maths exam with no preparation. One of it was public speaking without time and then without time to prepare. And then the third group was to sing in front of strangers. Which one would you find most anxiety inducing? Singing in front of strangers. Singing in front of strangers. Even more than public speaking. Wow. Yeah, because you're singing. You're still in public. Yes. Singing, talking. Yeah. I feel like you'd have a good voice though. No. I feel like you're wrong, honey. You'll have to prove me wrong. I'll prove it to you easily. You trust me or run before I even get to the second note. But anyway. So anxiety inducing, I would find them all equally anxiety inducing. Which one would you or you think they're all anxiety? I think the singing would be the most for me. Because it's public. Humiliation. Yeah, public humiliation. So we like that one. No way. Okay, so we've got those groups. Now she split those groups into. And one group, she said, okay, I know you're feeling anxious right now, but tell yourself and say out loud, I'm excited. I'm excited. I'm excited. And so what she found is that the group that told themselves they're excited, they ended up feeling less anxious and they performed better. So they were able to literally change their experience of an emotion by just changing the word that they used to associate with it. Which is wild because they were just telling themselves something. She didn't say feel different. She just said change the emotion. Now what's fascinating about this is that means that when we're about to go into a situation where we're feeling a lot of anxiety. We can choose to see what our body is doing as something that is designed to help us and enhance our performance rather than try to sabotage us. And in that moment, saying I'm excited can really help you show up with the energy that you need. Side note on this one. For anyone, anyone who likes to kind of go deep on this, she didn't tell them to say, I'm really calm right now. Because remember, you touched on this earlier. The brain is not stupid. Right. So if you say, I'm calm, I'm calm when you're not. No, it's going to resist it. It's going to resist it. It's going to resist it. Hold emotional incongruence. Yeah. You're in a high energy emotional state. Right. You cannot just, all of a sudden, zen your state doesn't work like that. No. But you can channel that high energy by reinterpreting it. You've got to be cognizant of this, cognizant of so many of these things, right? Like, all the time. And it can feel overwhelming because it's so much. It's so much. Right. Pick one thing. For anyone listening, anyone watching, if you're feeling overwhelmed by all the things, don't feel overwhelmed by all the things. Don't even make it about all the things. Just pick one thing. I mean, what was the question that I asked you that you gave me that example, though? We're talking about the patterns that we choose for potential. Oh, okay. And we got up to the mental patterns. We got to the mental cognitive patterns. And then you kind of didn't tell me the other stuff. I mean, second pattern. Oh, really quickly. Yeah. No, no, please do. By the way, I got these new chairs. They're fun. No, they're so uncomfortable. I'm not used to them. I'm moving around like a fidgety five-year-old in this chair because I'm not used to it. So I'm so sorry if I... I love it. You know what? Can I just say, I love that you get comfortable because it makes me feel more comfortable. Isn't that funny? Yes. How things are interpreted differently. So I actually like that you're super comfortable. Oh, but I'm not comfortable. That's my whole point. I'm like very uncomfortable. This chair is completely uncomfortable. That's why I'm moving around. I'm moving my... I'm taking this leg over to there. That's like over here. I have like, look like I have crazy ADD, which by the way, I might, but that is nothing to do with why I'm moving around in this chair right now. But all right, we talked about cognitive patterns patterns. What are some other... Yeah, you're two other ones. The second one is behavioral patterns. So these are the things that we default to. The behavioral habits brushing your teeth is a habit. To the point that sometimes I'll go to the restroom in the evening and then I'll... It's like 5 p.m. I haven't even had dinner. Because I'm not aware of what I'm doing, I'll go and brush my teeth. Now go, why did I just brush my teeth? Because I've just defaulted into a habit. I'm not even thinking about it. We just do these things. Or you're driving home from work and you're not even conscious. You're actually thinking about the kids and what you need to do tomorrow. You pull into your driveway and you think, how did I get here? Who was driving the car right now? It was me. We operate on autopilot. There are certain behavioral habits that are also keeping us stuck and reinforcing self-down. Okay, so simple way to change a behavioral habit. James Clear writes about this so beautifully in economic habits. He's deep-dived into the realm of goal intentions, goal science. One of them is let's say you want to go to the gym. Your behavioral habit is actually, well, all my clothes go back in their drawers after I do the washing and I fold everything up. Then you need to add a new behavioral habit, which is okay. Before I go to bed, I want to go to the gym in the morning. Before I go to bed, I'm going to pull out my workout gear and I'm going to put it right next to the bed. When I wake up, I see it and then I put it on. There are little things that we can do that can help from a behavioral perspective. If you want to drink more water in the morning, but you keep forgetting, what's something else that you do? It's called habit stacking. If something you do every morning is brush your teeth, go and put a glass of water next to your toothbrush. So you see it. Okay? So that's behavioral patterns. The third pattern, I call this environmental patterns. And I mean, you could say it's linked to behaviors, but this more involves other people or even things that you sit on. So if you have, let's say you have one friend that you always call to complain to and she always calls you to complain to. And so you get into this negative echo chamber of, oh my gosh, my life is so bad. You think that's bad? Guess how bad? And then you just start complaining. That is a behavioral habit that is not helping you. Sorry, an environmental habit. Also linked to a behavior. Both. But your environment is not conducive to you trusting yourself and it's keeping you stuck. It might be the people that you see because we know the people you spend the most time with, influence how you feel not only about yourself, but about the world, it's social contagion. We know that if you're around people who believe in you, who believe in your potential and your goals, you are more likely to live up to their expectations. It's called the pigmailian effect. And it's been seen in classrooms with students, with parents and their children in the military, in workplaces. So we have to be so aware, do our friendship groups, do the groups that we spend time with, genuinely believe in us. Now if they do not, that is a problem because their beliefs about us are likely to be internalized by us. And unknowingly, we live down to their expectations. It's called the golem effect. Right. Oh, that's a good one. Yes. We forget about that one. We do. It's a great one. Right. Because we're living up to the expectations of the people who have the least amount of faith in us. Exactly. Exactly. So there's something called self verification theory. And the theory of self verification, which was developed by William Swan states that we have a subconscious, unconscious desire and drive for other people to see us the way that we see ourselves. And so if we have scars, if we don't believe we're enough, don't believe we're worthy, don't believe we can, don't feel like we have power, we actually unintentionally create environments where other people see that in us, which then brings us back to the importance of self image, fundamentally changing how we see ourselves. How do you do that? It's recognizing that we have these four psychological personality traits of self esteem, self efficacy, locus of control, emotional stability, and how do we build them and strengthen them? It's through those four pillars in big trust, acceptance, agency, autonomy, adaptability. I love that. Let me share my daily routine game changer with you. It's the momentous three. I've been using their protein, their creatine, and omega-3 combo for months now, and the results are undeniable. These nutrients are key for long-term health and performance, but hard to get enough of through diet alone. The creat pure creatine boosts both physical and your mental performance. The grass-fed weight tastes great with no weird aftertaste, and the omega-3 is a must for recovery. Since adding these, my energy, my recovery, and my overall well-being has really improved, so if you want better performance, this is the way to go. Visit livemomentis.com and use my code Gen for 35% off your first subscription. Trust me, you'll be happy you did. Let's talk about the importance of who you're with, like the qualities that your partner has, because it will either drive your success or it will actually derail your success. What are some of the qualities we should be looking for in a partner for us if we want to live a successful happy life? According to the literature, it's clunky-enteousness, which translates to dependability and discipline, which is so bizarre, you would think it might just be support or love or empowering you. But there was a longitudinal study that was done with a huge number of couples, and they found that the greatest predictor of career success, not necessarily happiness, but career success was having a partner who is high on conscientiousness and is dependable and disciplined. Now why? Why are they so powerful? It's interesting though, because I also think about couples that I know, or people I know that are really successful, and then I look at their spouses, their husbands, their wives, and they do have these traits. A lot of it comes down to that balancing effect. If you have someone who is dependable and disciplined, it means that the home environment that they are creating is one of dependability. You can rely on them, you can depend on them. If they're disciplined, it means they do what they say they'll do. You can again have that sense of certainty that this person is there for me. I can trust them, which also means I can trust myself when I'm with them. And it's powerful. And I think it's valuable to know as well that even if you feel like you're in a relationship where you don't have that with the other person, these are qualities you can improve if you choose to focus on them. And if you're not in a relationship, so if someone is listening to this and they feel like they're trying to find somebody, I would encourage you to emulate as much as you can those qualities. Yeah, we'll seek out people who love those qualities. Absolutely. Because I think those are cross-suborder, the most important. Completely. Anything else that we didn't talk about? Well, there's something else I'd love to mention. All worrying. Yeah, okay. Two things. Worrying. And then what do you do when someone says, you've changed? I love this one. That's the best one. Okay, so let's talk about that. Okay. So tell us. So what happens when someone says to you or when people feel that you've changed? So generally, yeah, you've changed. So when we have been on a journey of growth, we will invariably have people in our lives. Usually those very close to us, who will say you've changed? Is there acknowledging that we're not the same person that we used to be? And when they say it, is it coming from a positive place? No. No, absolutely not. Never, actually. No, in my experience, it has never come from a positive place. So it is often shining a spotlight on all the ways they have not changed. It's making them feel insecure and uncertain of their role and your role because you've now evolved. So what do you say? A lot of people, if they struggle with self-doubt, if they have not strengthened these big-trust attributes, especially acceptance, they will try and prove that they haven't changed. I'm still the same person I promise. And then they try and bend over backwards to mold to who that person thinks they should be because they want their approval. The best response, in my opinion, is two words or other three words. Thanks for noticing. Thanks for noticing. You reaffirm your sense of acceptance because you are accepting I have changed. Yes. And you also give the other person an acknowledgement that's not a negative. It's like, yeah. Even though they meant it. Even though they meant it negatively, you flip it into a positive. Then I also encourage a second part. You say, thanks for noticing. Growth has been a priority for me. Or my physical fitness has been a priority for me. My managing my emotions has been a priority for me. Whatever it is that you've changed is associated with. Highlight that you have been focusing on that. Because again, it reaffirms, hey, I can trust myself. Look at this change that's happening because often we don't even acknowledge or notice when we've changed. Other people notice it. And so you should see that as a testament to, hey, this is all working. The other beautiful thing is when you say to them, thank you for noticing, this has been a priority for me. You're reminding them that they can do the same if they so choose to. If they choose to focus on these things, they can change positively too. Or make it a priority. Exactly. Right? So it's this beautiful reframe that means you're not feeling insecure and wanting to prove it. No, no. Yeah, thanks for noticing. I appreciate you acknowledging that. I've been really working on it. Really? Would you ever hear someone say, oh, wow, you've changed. No, I love it. Exactly. No one does that. No one does that ever. Ever. Worrying. Worrying. Yes, yes, yes. Talk about worrying. So worrying is your brain's way of trying to create a sense of certainty when there is none. Your brain craves certainty because then it means it uses less metabolic power, less energy, which is what it wants. Right? So it's going to try and worry and magnify everything that could go wrong and create a sense of certainty and predictability. And it will, because of the brain's negativity bias, it will magnify things that are negative and often catastrophes. And then we overthink. And I always say the greatest distraction in your life is what's going on up here. It's not external things. It's not people. It's not outside of us. It's these distracting thoughts. And when you're worrying, it's generally either things that have happened in the past in terms of what did that person mean when I said that, what did they do? Is that the right decision or what's happening in the future? How am I going to perform here? What are they going to say about that? So you're never being present. So what are you doing in that moment? If you're a warrior, acknowledge this is my brain doing its thing. Oh, something to bear in mind. There is a correlation between intelligence and worrying and overthinking. If you tend to be more intelligent, you tend to be more aware of complexity and risk, which means you're going to feel like there are all these things that could go wrong, which undermines your confidence and trust, which then leads to more overthinking and creates a cycle. So what do you do? Two things I recommend. The first thing is when you're worrying, literally say to yourself, I call it the spiral interrupt. Say to yourself, this is my brain doing its job. Thank you, brain. Okay, so you hijacked the thought by controlling your attention. Then your next step is to grab a notebook. I encourage a physical notebook. I'm a sucker for a physical pen and paper, but you can use your phone. Literally title it, worry list. Okay, then throughout the day when you have a worry that pops up, write it down, write down your worry. And then say to yourself, I'm not going to worry about you right now. I'm going to worry about you at the designated time. So then part two is that you need to allocate worry time every day, which might be five minutes in the afternoon. So you capture your worries in that five minutes or ten minutes or thirty minutes, set an alarm and then pull out your worry list. Allow yourself to worry. Indulge in the worrying. In a safe space, right? Just indulge in it. And the alarm goes off. Worrying is over. You then need to ask yourself, okay, what can I do? What could I do from this? Is there anything I can control? And if so, commit to doing something about it. If not, you say, brain, I've captured your worries. Thank you. Till tomorrow. Put it away. Fascinatingly, it sounds so simple, but this is called stimulus control for worry and research has consistently found it is incredibly powerful and effective at helping you manage your overthinking and your worries. I love that. I do it all the time. That's a really great tip. These are great. You've actually, this has been very, I liked you. I think you're a good, you're a good guest on the podcast. Thank you. I'm so happy. No, because you give a lot of practical things that people can do. The worst is when people like talk in these like in theory and like, well, this is what. And then there's nothing actionable that people can really do about it. But you've given a lot of great tips. I'm happy to hear that. No, I'm all about that. Like for me, so a big part of what we do is. Yeah. And then we apply it exactly because without the application, who cares what the theory is? Exactly. Just to be in complication, like think, okay, great. Now I have all the information. Some people are doing that. No, but that's the problem. I think too many people just like are in their head of like all these things and theories and information overload. But where the, you know, rubber meets the road is in like doing the thing. I agree. It's like 99% is execution. One percent is the inspiration. But what I also was going to say to you is what just about the overthinking, I did an entire TED talk on that. So I do. Link it in the show notes or in the description in case anyone's not. No, come on. I'm not my guest on my own show. I'm telling you because what I was going to say when you were speaking was that overthinking is very, very common for people who are really smart. Yeah. The smarter you are, the more you overthink because you have all that information. Yeah. That's what I was saying. I was meant to because like my whole thing is sometimes a more stupid you are, the better, the more successful you become. Completely. And I'm being honest. I mean, or like the more ignorant you are, the smarter, the more successful you become. Because you don't, you tend to like less, you underthink and you just go versus like pontificate and think about what's going to go wrong and this is going to go that. And then if this happens and that's going to happen and then it becomes analysis paralysis and then nobody does anything. Yes. Right. It's not about the person. Like that's why the most of the world is not run by a bunch of intellectual brains. It's run by a lot, a lot of people who are not that real smart. And you know, you think that they are because they've achieved such success. And they think they know everything or they think that they believe. They believe. Yes. Yes. It's like the number of the Dunning Kruger effect curve. Which one is this? I'm sorry. I have heard of this. This is the one that's related to, so researchers David Dunning and Justin Kruger. Oh, yes. And consistently that people who are less competent, yes, have more confidence because they don't know what they don't know what they don't know. That's my whole point. It's not the most confident people that win. I mean, that's what I was saying. Like when we're talking earlier about confidence and confidence, yeah, that's what does generate the confidence. But with those alone, who cares? Right. Exactly. It's also like there's so many variables. I think that we didn't talk about in this podcast, but in general, that really makes somebody go from being like a winner or a loser, right? And so that I believe that to be true. So I think that sometimes when you the overthinkers, the most, the smartest people, the people who have all the information and all the details and all the research. So no, exactly. It's knowing doing gap. Yeah. They know, but they don't know how to do. They don't know what to do. No. So for everyone listening and watching right now, don't allow that voice in your head to convince you that you are not ready, that you are not worthy, that you don't have power. Back yourself, trust yourself, take the action because I guarantee there is someone out there who is less competent than you, less deserving than you who is doing what you could be doing just because they don't doubt themselves. Absolutely. And if I can say one more thing because I've been in the room with many, many, many people who are probably in the top zero, 0.1 percent of the most successful people. And every time I leave the conversation, I'm always thinking they did that. Oh my God. That's the person who did that. This is the multi-gazillionaire that has changed the world and this way or that way. How the hell that happened? It's completely like, it has nothing to do with what you think. They just have a relentless in their ability to believe and try and try and try. Relentless. I love that term. That's true. Relentless. Relentless. I just keep going. If she wants you to pat her, she will just not stop. So we need to channel my sweet rescue dog, Bambong and Be Relentless. I'm like your dog, by the way. I'm relentless. That's my secret to success. I love it. I love it. I love it. Jen, relentless Cohen. That's exactly what I'm doing. Super persistent. I don't take no for an answer. Brilliant. Because I'm stupid. I don't have that yet. I don't overthink it. We can all do it so funny. It's called being in the peak of Mount Stupid. When you, when those people don't know a lot and they think they know everything. It's the peak of Mount Stupid. Exactly. I mean, I know it sounds bad, but you can choose to be in that state where it's like, you know what? I'm not going to allow all the things I don't yet know how to do to hold me back. Let me just go for it. Let me keep going. Let me not take no for an answer. Oh, I just think to myself if that person can do it, why not me? Exactly. My flip is why not me? If it happened to them, it can happen to me. Brilliant. I think there's enough room and space in the world for a lot of people to have success. I don't think if it happens to you, then that doesn't mean it's going to take away from my star. Yes. And the same happens. All right. All right. All right. All right. is aligned with the research. Yeah, well, listen, glad that I have some kind of science back. Yes, no, of course. Anyway, the book's called Big Trust by Dr. Shade Zahrae. Perfect. I said it. Well done. Thank you so much. I think you didn't overthink it. I just did it. Guys, follow her, get her book. She's great. And the book, well, if you're listening to this podcast, hopefully you'll already be someone who likes this information. And this kind of falls right in there. So, anyway, have a good one. Have a good one. Thanks for having me, Jen. Of course. Thank you for being here. Bye-bye. Bye.