Transform Fear into Success: Dr. Rebecca Heiss on Fearless Leadership and Personal Growth

0:00You look at biological processes, you see the massive evolution happen right after massive destruction. There has to be some kind of major disruptor to go, oh, we got to do things differently. Dr. Rebecca Haidt, a stress physiologist. What does she know about success? A lot. She's going to teach us the formulas, the ways to turn stress into your greatest successes. I grew up in the Wayne Gretzky, you miss 100 % of the shots you don't take era. Everybody knows that quote. Here's what I want to add as an addendum to that. Because what I needed to hear was, yeah, you miss 100 % of the shots that you don't take.

0:35And you miss most of the shots you do take. Step into your power with Dr. Rebecca Heiss. So Rebecca, your theory or your definition of success? My theory of success is waking up every day, loving what you do, having the privilege to be challenged every day, and finding new ways to fail. That's my definition of success. Finding new ways to fail, yeah. I guess that's a big part of it, isn't it? Where in life did success become like a standard for you? Was it as a kid? Where did it happen? Yes, I think this is a tricky question because, I mean, I had the privilege of growing up with parents that were very much focused on my success, right, as an academic, as an athlete, as this.

1:27And so their definition of success was passed on to me from an early age, which was like, you know, you're getting all A's and you're going to start on varsity and all. So their definition, I adopted early. I think my definition of success probably took me until the mid thirties to recognize, oh, you know, it's more than just proving yourself to everybody. It's making new mistakes. It's figuring out what actually brings you joy. And I think we only actually are successful once we have the privilege to fail a lot. Yeah. And it's interesting, you know, there's a part of life where failure is just not accepted.

2:08And it's like, but failure, well, what's your theory on failure and success? What's the relationship in your mind? I mean, so I have this coin that I keep with me all the time, right? There's a tiger on one side and there's nothing on the other. And it reminds me that the scariest things, if I don't lean into, that's what I get, right? That's what I get. I get exactly nothing. And so often I think failure and success, two sides of the same coin. The scary thing is going to give you purpose and meaning and joy in your life, but it's so easy to measure the cost of our actions. Oh, I might fail. I might screw up.

2:48I might be rejected. That we actually hold ourselves back from success, I think, by sitting in that inaction. I had a good discussion with a buddy of mine on the weekend about most people don't fail because they make a mistake. They fail because they didn't even go for it. They didn't even have a shot. That's it. That's it. I grew up in the big Wayne Gretzky, you miss 100 % of the shots you don't take era, right? Which everybody knows that quote. Here's what I want to add as an addendum to that, because what I needed to hear was, yeah, you miss 100 % of the shots that you don't take. and you miss most of the shots you do take.

3:29And I think so often, like, we just don't take that first step. We don't take the shot, not because we're afraid we're going to miss it, but actually because we will miss it. And we fear what that will mean for us rather than going, oh, cool, learning. I have a new trajectory now I can take. Yeah, I was – one of my podcasts had Cameron Hughes on. He's a cheer guy. Roger Federer had him in to cheer for him, And it's really interesting Roger's take on the whole, you know, I lose more games. Like, I'm going to lose at least 50%. You know, I only have to win 51 % of the games type thing. You go back to Gretzky.

4:10My son plays goalie in hockey, right? And even at his age, 10 and under, he saves about 80 % of the shots. Like, an NHL goalie saving 90-something percent of the shots. high 90s so yeah you're gonna miss 90 of the shots you take mr gretzky exactly exactly and the sports i mean i love using sports as an analogy for this you know as a basketball player you're hitting 44 from the field like you're in the pros you know like so really you're missing a lot that's great that's data you know and the more we can see that as data to go oh cool all next in this social media era though it looks like everyone's succeeding all the time yes and i think the idea of failure has become this like i don't know it sounds so good to be like oh yeah i failed my way to success yes but like when you paint it all pretty on an instagram filter of like look how i fail watch me fail i like it actually takes away the real deep hurt and fear and like that's where the learning happens it's not going to be pretty like i i don't want to memefy failure and i think unfortunately it's become that a little bit right like so how did how did fear become your thing like you know the the fearless how did fear become your word the the fearless leadership we'll get into that in a moment but how did it Like what did Dr.

5:42Rebecca, how did you get it on? All right. So I have this theory and I think it's not just my theory, but I think most people go into the thing that they need the most. And I was just a fearful person, right? I'd spent most of my life doing the things that I knew I was good at. So I knew I was really good at school. So I just stayed in school until I got a doctorate. Did I want the doctorate? I don't know. Not really. I was just good at it, right? So, you know, we just kind of, I fell into this pattern where I showed up, I did the thing and I looked at my life. Unfortunately, it was a phone call that came from my sister and it was a brain tumor, a year to live.

6:21And I took her diagnosis, looked at my life and was like, oh my gosh, if that had been my diagnosis, I'd be so disappointed in the entirety of my life because every decision that I've made, I've made out of fear. and so I um that month I quit my job sold my house and divorced my husband no no big choices no big choices you know just just just you know right and I'll tell your listenership like even in that moment like I'm still operating from fear right because fear says anything but fear says anything but this job this I mean that relationship was probably a good thing But this job, this relationship, this home, like anything but.

7:01But it's not a good strategist, right? It doesn't point you towards anything. And that's where I started developing and like leaning in on my own research to go, actually, you can use this, Rebecca, to work through these fears. So yeah, it was a little bit about betting on yourself and starting to point yourself towards the thing that you want rather than just going away from anything that is scary. Yeah, I remember as a kid, I was 13 and I decided I was never going to not have money because, you know, embarrassing situation at school. And I blame the fact that we couldn't afford Levi's 501s for that whole thing.

7:39It wasn't until I think I was 16, I met Jim Rohn and I learned that you can have towards goals. Like you don't have to operate from wanting to get away from something. What was that transition for you? How did that happen? How did you go from there to there? So this has to, I actually have to go back in order to go forward. When I was eight years old, I was doing some of the things that I loved the most. I was on stage. I was in theater. I had like, I was in my 4-H group and I was giving these public presentations. I'd made it all the way to my state final. And the day of the competition, I played sick.

8:19rather than going out and having the opportunity to fail, rather than embarrassing myself, rather than winning, right? Any of those outcomes were possible. I held myself back. And when I was in this year of going, okay, I just quit my job, sold my house and divorced my husband. What do I actually want to do? I kind of looked back to my eight-year-old self and looked forward to my 88-year-old self and said, all right, what constitutes the life that you're trying to build here. And, and that was my, my North star. That was my first small trajectory to, to take an action towards something, which was speaking.

8:57I think it's interesting. Like if I look at, well, actually, let me ask you, what is your formula or, or what are the ingredients of success in your mind? What are the things that have to be put there to have success? not motivation let me let me let me just take no actually not motivation I don't think motivation I think motivation is the wrong thing because I think motivation is like a hot burning thing that can wane and I think discipline is huge um motivation is a trap right discipline and habits way more important uh boredom I would add to that list for success having some boredom means that You're willing to go through these repetitive, having some comfort with boredom means you're willing to go through this repetitive, often tricky, challenging tasks again and again and again and again until you've mastered them.

9:55You know, that's part of building expertise. Other formulas for success. I think feeling the fear and leaning into it. I call it running to the roar, right? where you hear the tiger and you're like, oh, I've got all the chills. This feels really scary and making a move toward it. To me, I think we cheat ourselves often from meaning and purpose in our lives because we allow our fear to override our action forward. So yeah, running to the roar. That would be my third one. You got to be the first responder in your own life sort of thing. run towards not run away i love that yeah i love that absolutely i'm gonna steal that you're gonna hear that on stage i'll credit you perfect your own first very happy to you know it's interesting because uh in life you get moments where you learn you know and i i remember i was held up at gunpoint in mexico one time and people like how did you respond i froze i froze like a normal human being you know i am not macgyver i they were definitely you know oh totally froze handed over the watch so you know by the way very very human response right we talk about fighting and fleeing freezing we forget but like yeah that's that's your body yeah there is a third f it's not just fight or flight freeze does happen a hundred percent a hundred percent so let's go into then the whole thought of fearless leadership.

11:28Firstly, give everyone your thoughts on what that is, and then we'll dive into it in some depth. Yeah. So let me start by defining fearless, because I think a lot of people get lost in this term. They're like, well, I have a fear, so I must not be a fearless leader. I'm like, well, no. If you have a fear, but you're willing to admit it, you're willing to look at it, you're willing to examine it, that's fearing less. And so So the less really is in parentheses. It's not fearless. If you're going to jump into the cage of a hungry tiger, like that's just dumb, right? That might be fearless, but that's dumb.

12:01So I think the first step is in recognizing that you can be cognitive about your fear. You don't have to go to those primitive fight, fight, freeze responses. You can take a pause, recognize you don't have a tiger actually charging you, and then begin to sort out these fears into more cognitive spaces where you can lean into them and even run directly towards some of them. That to me is fearless leadership. So how do you have less fear? That's sort of the main question, I guess, as a leader. Yeah. And I think it's a great question. I think it's the wrong question. And I'm not trying to call you out, but this is what everybody wants.

12:43They want less fear, less stress, less. And I'm like, actually, I think what we want, because we're never getting rid of the scary things, right? You're never getting rid of change. You're never getting rid of stress. You're never getting rid of these scary things that life is going to throw at you. So I think what we want to do is actually have all of that come at us, be at gunpoint, you know, metaphysically, be in those moments of great fear and be able to react in the way that we want to react. So it's, I always say, you know, Olympic athletes don't break world records at practice. They break them at the Olympics, right, at the highest level of pressure and fear.

13:26And so it's training our bodies and our brains to perform under those high levels of pressure that I think is important. So can I reframe the question? Yeah, 100%. I think the more pressure, I mean, it just goes back to a very simple, actually, it's a law of thermonuclear dynamics. Unless there is pressure, there is no growth. I mean, if you look at perturbation, Bucky Fuller defined perturbation and took us to a point of without the pressure, there is no growth. It happens with teams. It happens with individuals. But and I've learned over the years it takes a break to create a breakthrough, a breakdown, a breakup.

14:12But, you know, something has to happen. What's your thoughts on why that's the case? OK, I really want to go. I have 16 places I want to go. I think why that's the case is it's our brain is focused on safety. Like literally the only thing your brain is concerned about is keeping you alive. And so your brain is always going to default to the, this has always worked in the past. You're alive, aren't you? You're doing fine, aren't you? Cool. If you're fine, we're just going to keep doing this pattern. So that disruption is what allows, I mean, you look at biological processes, you see the massive evolution happen right after massive destruction, right?

14:55There has to be some kind of major disruptor to go, oh, we got to do things differently. And I think the cool thing is we can generate that. We can use that. We don't have to blow up our lives necessarily. We can create little disruptions in our life. Brush your teeth with your left hand if you're right-handed or with your non-dominant hand. That's a little disruption that makes your brain go, oh, I don't like this. This is weird. Good. That's going to lead to something bigger, something bigger. And you get more comfortable with this uncertainty and these patterns that your brain doesn't recognize.

15:31So, yeah, that's and I loved your I loved your example of thermodynamics. I use a lot of science in my background because that is my background. And I often when I'm talking about stress and fear, I'm talking about the second law of thermodynamics, which is energy can't be created or destroyed, but it can be transferred. So when we recognize that fear and stress, this is just energy. right how do you want to use it do you want to use it to go oh my gosh we're all gonna die this is so scary and i don't you can use it that way or you can use it to your advantage and like point it toward a trajectory toward a goal like that that is within our um within our capabilities so yeah i think i've i'm often quoted because i i talk about you know the thermonuclea i say look the tree is either growing or dying.

16:20It can't stand still. There is no status quo. So either go into it or go away from it, but you can't just stand there. You got to get off the fence at some point. Yeah, absolutely. Stress. Let's go from fear to stress because we're doing all of the wonderful subjects today and all of those things. Yeah, yeah, let's do it. This is part of life. I sat with my wife and I sat down and we have five kids, dogs, all that sort of stuff. And we sat down and went through our life together and looked at the stresses that happen about every month. You know, what was the major stress that month? And the other day we sold one of our vacation homes and she's like, maybe we should get a lake home.

17:00I'm like, no, we just said less, you know, less is more. But yes, it's yeah. So how let's go into stress and let's talk about how we harness the power of it. Yeah, I love it. So I mean, what you just the example you just gave is brilliant for so many reasons. First of all, I don't think we often talk about how much stress people carry with them. I call it the daily strain stack, because you're carrying things from your childhood, you're carrying these cumulative stressors, you're carrying those acute stressors, you're carrying the micro stressors of being stuck in traffic, whatever, like it is all of these little straws and it's the, you know, it's the deadline that breaks your back, but it's not the deadline, right?

17:45It's all of these other things. It's the vacation home that you just sold. Like that's a good stressor, but in our brains, you know, it's all one in the same. So stress is stress is stress. Good stress, bad stress. It doesn't matter. It's just energy. So how do we begin to harness it for good? I mean, I use, I use a technique I call T minus three. That was where I was going next. Yeah, awesome. Great, great. We're on the same page. So the first step of this is recognizing that it's not a tiger. This is my favorite. This is my favorite step, right? Because our brain literally treats every stressor like it's going to kill you.

18:23That's what it's built for, right? Our stress response is built for three minutes of screaming terror across the savannah. Afterwards, it's over because you're dead. Because you got caught by the tiger. Or you outrun the tiger. Great. Either way, it's over, right? That's not the modern world. You just heard a ping come through my do not disturb and it stressed me out. And I was like, oh my gosh, I have to adjust this really quick. Thank you for editing that out. But, you know, all of these little pings and dings and things that are constantly, it's not three minutes of screaming terror. But to our brain, once we recognize, once we say, okay, listen, this isn't life and death.

18:58This isn't life and death. Me asking for a discount on a cup of coffee, getting rejected, failing. I'm alive. All right. Now, what can I do to transfer this energy? That's step two, the transfer, right? It's the second law of thermodynamics. Can I create it or destroy it? But can this be an adventure or does this have to be an ordeal? And I love using the United States Marines as an example here because they have this call called OORAH, right? OORAH! Anybody in the, right? Anybody in the armed services is going to recognize this call. OORAH! What does that mean? What does that mean? it actually is from the clucks and alarms on submarines.

19:39When they used to submerge, they'd make this aruga, right? And so it's, it's, it's a call to action, which is like, I'm excited. Let's go. Here we go. Now, I don't think any of these service men and women are going in like excited to die, but they're literally going into a life and death situation. And they're transforming this energy with a simple, I'm ready into excitement into, all right, let's go. And so often, you know, as, as people that are not going into life and death situations, it's as simple as putting on a smile, throwing back your shoulders, because our brain is actually looking to interpret this, this feeling that our body is having.

20:23So we've released all of these, these hormones, we've released cortisol and oxytocin and adrenaline. And our body is going, Oh, my gosh, is this an adventure? Is this excitement? or is this an ordeal? Do I have to prepare to die? And when we smile and throw our shoulders back and act as if we are confident and excited about something, our brain interprets this and goes, oh, you're excited. We think that we smile because we're happy, but we're happy because we smile. Yeah, exactly. So you sit around with people and as a leader, right, when you're bringing this energy, you can be stressed. You can feel anxiety and stress.

21:05That's a good thing. You should, you're carrying a lot of weight. And when you show up smiling and confident as if other people pick up that energy and reflect it back to you, right? Cause we're emotional. We're very socially contagious, emotionally. Let me say that again, because we are such social beings. Emotions are highly contagious, right? If you laugh, I laugh. And suddenly, okay, I'm not in fear of my life. I see my leader, even though I can see that maybe they're a little bit stressed. They're also excited about this opportunity, which means I can be excited. And now it changes the entire dynamic of the organization.

21:43And so then the last step is the trajectory. Cool. Now we're in alignment, right? All your butterflies are in alignment. Where do you want them to pull you? So how do you point that stress energy towards something that is meaningful and purposeful? because that's the biggest piece that people neglect to recognize about stress. They're trying to get rid of it, but in doing so, they're cheating themselves of meaning and purpose because the most meaningful and purposeful thing you do, I guarantee is riddled with stress. Dang. In fact, that's a study. We looked in 2013 across a large swath of Americans asking people like, what brings meaning and purpose to your life?

22:24And the number one correlate was their stress. Anxiety for future events, current stress, and even past events, number one correlate to meaningful life. Yeah. I remember someone said, when you're doing something that you're passionate about, it's not stressful. When you're doing something that someone else is, for someone else, it's like, that's where the stress seems to come from. It's like - Yeah. Yeah, that's it. So to you, I think this is really an individual thing. how can you make this meaningful for you? Why does it matter to you? And that's an individual. I go back to my son's goalie and I'll sit on the sidelines watching him take shots and everything.

23:04And my wife, she cannot, she can't sit. She stands. She does more stress than him. Like, I think she does it all for him type thing. So, you know, when you think about finding and you talk about finding the most powerful version of you. OK, that whole power. How do we step into our power? What's the process or what's the how do we do that? How do we step into our power?

23:35You know, I think self-awareness is is a critical skill that is often avoided. So I think I think the first step is figuring out who the heck you are. Um, because who the heck you are and your most powerful self, the difference is bridging that gap. So I think, I think the first step is recognizing who you are, how people see you ask for feedback, ask your friends and family, um, ask your, ask your colleagues and do it anonymously. So you can get the real gritty stuff. So many people avoid this because it feels like a tiger to them. It feels so scary. Oh, they're going to reject me. They're going to tell me bad things.

24:15good right like good now you have data that you can work from information's just data and if we're only hearing the good stuff and how do we idealize you know how do we step to the next idealized version of ourselves we can't so figure out where you are you know that's that's my first step you know you then talked about though deciding who you want to be and you know i i teach a course on purpose and it's really interesting the number of people i think they have to find their purpose rather than define their purpose what what's your thoughts on that i love that oh i love that i've never heard that before finding versus defining yeah that's that's powerful um yeah i think there is a lot of pressure uh put on people to like go find your purpose what is your purpose instead of looking internally, perhaps, and going, well, what causes me stress?

25:12Because I think stress is a great indicator. It's a barometer for how much you care about something. Stress, joy, they're not that far apart. I mean, it's just, as you said before, whether you smile or frown really defines the difference between stress and joy. It was interesting. I had to learn about purpose and I was chatting with a, but he was a client many years ago. He's become a good friend, and his name is Avak. And he said, Brad, sometimes you're just given your purpose. Like his son was born very, very high on the spectrum, nonverbal. And he said, you know what? Whether you like it or not, the Lord gave me my purpose sort of thing.

25:53I was given the thing I had to deal with. And he said, I'm really lucky in that I was given it. It's like, oh, it's a really cool way to look at life sort of thing. So let's go on. How do we bridge that gap then? Who we are, who we want to be. How do you start to bridge that gap and step into yourself? I mean, to me, it's the winner's cycle. So I'm a biologist. So let me just back up a little bit. This is the good to great Jim Collins, but it starts with biology. So think about two bucks fighting each other. Okay. One's going to be a winner. One's going to be a loser. What happens to the physiology of that winner?

26:33Well, their cortisol decreases, their testosterone increases. They actually become more sensitized to winning in the receptors in their brain. The loser, the exact opposite happens. So let's go with the winner to start. What that means is they're now more sensitive to winning. They're more capable of winning because their biology is actually supporting them in this cycle of winning. So you're actually getting dopamine, which is the motivation hormone as well, every time you win. The loser, exact opposite. So if we apply this to humans, and we have the exact same hormones, exact same setup, to me, you have to create a winner's cycle, which means you better not start with a really big goal.

27:20And you can have it down here. You can have it down the line. It's fine. I want to lose 100 pounds this next year. Okay, that's a big goal. What does that look like today? What does that look like in the next hour? So I think the smaller the goal you can achieve and make sure you can achieve it, when you get that, it changes your biology. It changes your underlying physiology so that you're more likely to achieve that next small goal. So these micro goals, these micro habits, I mean, they've been talked about a lot, but I do think they're absolutely key. and I have to add to that. You have to take action.

27:56You can't just set up the habits. I'm just going to do this. Well, you actually have to do it, right? That's clutch. So I think here's my idealized self. Here's my current self. If I want to write out a map to get there, that's a big goal and it can look like a tiger and it can be a huge step back for people. But if you can break it down to these really, really tiny achievable goals, you actually can set yourself up physiologically to get there. So hang on. Does that mean there's actually a biological thing about being on a roll? Like, you know, there's times in life where you're, you, the vibration you're on a roll, you feel like things you're winning.

28:35Huh? In fact, they've done this a lot in sports, like measuring the hot hands and basketball and, and those are very real and they can be supported by your your hormones so again thinking about how much this underlying physiology how you show up every day you know matters not only to the people around you but to your own biology and how your biology is going to support or actually work against you uh really really important stuff well hey there and thanks for listening i've noticed that 78 of you are brand new which means you haven't hit the subscribe button yet by subscribing you help us bring on even better guests, better quality content, and serve you better with even more podcasts.