Why You’re Stuck (And the Science to Move Forward)

24:28So that's really valuable for people who are people pleasers. The second thing to acknowledge is that not everyone is going to like you. This is the hardest part to acknowledge, actually. Not everyone is going to like you and you have to be okay with that. And the only way to be okay with that is if you like yourself anyway. If you like yourself anyway, what other people think matters less. And it's extremely easy to say and very hard to implement, but that's why building up that sense of acceptance within ourselves, and we know that self-acceptance is a habit. It is the result of habitual ways of thinking and habitual behaviors that allow us to feel a greater sense of, hey, I'm okay as I am.

25:09I accept myself. That doesn't mean I don't still need to learn and grow and develop myself, but I'm being compassionate on that journey because I owe it to myself. And that is, again, a really powerful place to start. I'm picking up what you put down. But somebody is like, accept myself. Like here again, I'm sure it's very complex. And there's another golf ball ping pong analogy here. And I'm like, oh my gosh, is there anything, a step? So on the show, my goal every single time is, can one person do one thing to make a change? And so if we got them to this point where they're doing a deep dive diagnostic of people-pleasing tendencies, of putting other people before themselves, which is inadvertently keeping them from stepping into the next version of themselves, but then they ask themselves, Do I accept myself?

25:53And if the question is, I am not sure or flat out no, what do they do? So there's a few things when we look at the literature and they're unusual. I like to look at what does the evidence tell us as opposed to what did the person down the street do that worked? Thank you. Because I think everyone has a different experience and we need to be looking at actually what does the evidence say and not just one paper, meta-analyses. So let's look at 10 papers, 20 papers, 100 papers. Let's do some research. Yes. Okay. Oh, and the other thing on research that I actually have never shared before, but people need to be aware, there are pay-for-published studies, which means anyone off the street can pay to get their paper published.

26:27So even if someone says, research says, don't always immediately believe it. You need to determine whether that is a reputable journal, whether it is peer-reviewed, whether it has the kind of academic and scientific rigor for that person to be able to claim what it is they're claiming. Thank you, Doctor. Thank you, Doctor. Let's go. Honestly, I didn't even know this. Before I did my PhD, anything that I found that was published, I assumed all publications were equal. So all research is equal. And there are things that I said back there that I now realize, whoa, okay, that was not a reputable paper.

27:01That was not a reputable journal. I'm not going to refer to that again. So the meta-analysis of finding ways to accept ourselves. Yes. What does the larger body of research show about that? Okay, so it's an unusual one. Okay. Get a hobby. What? I know. it's really odd and you'd think it would be something around cultivating compassion every morning or the positive affirmation. No, actually a really pragmatic tip here is to go and get a hobby. Now, why? When we're engaged in a hobby, something that we enjoy, something that we do, not because someone else expects us to, or because we need to be perfect, or because we're performing or setting a goal, we're just enjoying the messiness and the creativity of it.

27:39It has been proven to increase self-esteem. And self-esteem is the personality element that underscores self-acceptance. So there was a study that was done with, I think, 93 ,000 people in 16 different countries. It was a longitudinal study over a long period of time. This is fully global, so we know it's cross-culturally relevant. They found that people that had hobbies had higher levels of self-esteem. They accepted themselves more. They were more creative. They were more happy. And it can be anything. Joining a cooking class, some kind of dancing, some kind of music, painting, drama, pickleball.

28:16It can be a physical hobby as well. It can be anything because what you're doing is reminding yourself that when you're engaging in that hobby, because you enjoy it, you're not less of a person. You don't need people's approval. And again, it reminds you that your life doesn't depend on other people being okay with you and your opinions and your views. It gives you something else to almost like a positive form of distraction from the negative thinking and the I, me, my constant focus that we have. So getting a hobby is the first thing that I would recommend. I experienced this myself when I entered the banking world.

28:52I had just come out of the legal industry where I had so much self-doubt. I was making myself physically sick. I was going to specialist after specialist. No one could diagnose it. They thought it was just intense lactose intolerance, but then I cut out lactose and I was still very sick. And then it was diagnosed as stress-related, anxiety-related. So I left law, went into banking, probably not the best career swap, come to think of it. And I genuinely thought that new environment, I can leave the self-doubt behind. That's not how it works. You do not leave self-doubt behind. It comes and it becomes amplified in every new environment that you're in.

29:28So suddenly I'm now in this new space with new terms and new people. And it was looming so loud in my head. So what did I do? I went and started Latin dance classes. And Latin dance classes became an outlet for me. So when I had a really bad day at work, I was able to go and devote myself to learning a new spin pattern or a new routine or competing on a stage. And for me, that reminded me that my worth is not determined by how much people like me at work. My worth is my own. And I'm able to tap into that when I'm doing this other fun, creative thing. And then through that fun, creative thing, I started feeling a lot more confident about myself, which then I found translated back into the workplace.

30:11So there was this cross benefit that was happening. And then it just so happened that I became a national dance champion in Australia. We won three national titles. so you know there are some benefits that can come from from your you know your hobbies so that yeah fun little side note is I also have a background in competitive and professional dancing what was the style of dance it was salsa and bachata bachata girl see I knew you were my sister from another mister I am telling you I was like okay oh my gosh I had no idea good on you thanks okay so one of the things in the book there was there was a part of the book where explain the story around the facial scar.

30:51And one of the notes that I wrote for me is we carry a mental blueprint of ourselves. So when you're talking about self-acceptance and when you're talking about getting a hobby that offers cross-discipline and cross-benefits to other things in your life, the mental blueprint that we take into that as well, I think that there was a nice part there. Absolutely. Wonderful. I love this study. I think it's so powerful. I read it and I was like, this is so good. And now I can't unthink it. It's the best example. It's almost the basis of everything that is in the book. And I'll explain why. And I actually need to touch on that confidence link as well.

31:21So in the 1970s, a psychology researcher by the name of Robert Kleck conducted a series of fascinating experiments. He was at UC Berkeley. What he did is he brought people together into the lab or into the university, wherever they did their studies, and he split them into a number of groups. Now, the idea was that they were going to go and have conversations with strangers. But before he sent them into conversations, with one of the groups, he drew a large, ugly scar on their face, spanning from the right side of their ear all the way down to their mouth. He also let them have a look at themselves in a hand mirror, so they could confirm, yes, I now have this disfigurement on my face.

31:58Then he sent everyone into conversations. Remember, there's a group that doesn't have a scar. Now, after the conversations, they all come back in. No, I don't think you said that part. Oh, okay. Okay, so he divided the group. He divided the groups and with one group, he gave them a scar. There's no scar on the other groups. Okay. So he sends them into these conversations. They have their conversations with strangers. Out in public? I think it was, they were not necessarily in public. These strangers were still part of the experiment. Okay. And then brought them all back in. And the idea was that they had to report on how they felt the conversations went.

32:30The group with the scar overwhelmingly reported that they felt that they were treated differently because they had the scar. They were judged. it was tense, it was cold, it was uncomfortable. The group without the scar didn't notice anything. They enjoyed the conversations. Now, that in itself is interesting, but that's not the point of the study. If I take you back to before the groups went in to have these conversations, the scarred participants, they were told, okay, we're going to apply some moisturizing cream to the scar so that it sets and doesn't crack. So that's what they did. But what they also did, without telling the participants is remove the scar entirely.

33:10They had no scar when they were going into these conversations. And yet, because they expected that they would be treated differently, that is what they experienced. And this is called expectation bias. We don't experience the world as it is. We experience the world as we expect it to be, as we expect it to respond to us. and this idea of these scars that we carry this comes down to our self-image how do we see ourselves because all of us are carrying scars throughout our lives some people are better at hiding them than others some people have just learned to push through but we all have these scars and whatever scars we have will keep showing up in every interaction every meeting every opportunity we're deciding whether to take or not every piece of feedback or criticism will re-irritate these scars or reveal these scars, and then we want to hide them.

34:05So this idea of how you see yourself and the scars that you carry is really at the foundation of what Big Trust is about, because you will never rise above your opinion of yourself. Ooh. You will never rise above your opinion of yourself. What do I mean by that? There is this concept developed by William Swan, and the idea is that it's called self-verification. We are subconsciously driven to verify the belief that we have about ourselves. In every single interaction, conversation, how we show up in the world, we want other people to see us how we see ourselves, even if that is as unworthy, unlovable, uncapable.

34:47This is not something that we're consciously aware of either. This is something that is happening beneath the surface. These scars want to be seen. And so we will find ourselves repeating bad habits in relationships. We will find ourselves continually showing up in a way that sabotages us. So that a part of us can say, see, I told you, you're not worthy. See, you're not capable. And so we're living these lives continually verifying the beliefs that we have. So imagine then if we could fundamentally change that image that we have of ourselves. What if we could fundamentally upgrade how we see ourselves, understand the scars that we have, and heal them?

35:28and change at a personality level who we are. And you might say, oh, Sade, that's outlandish. You can't do that. And we have a lot of people who do say that. This is just who I am. Because they're trying to grip onto something because that gives them a sense of control. And that for them is comforting. But again, that's because of self-verification. We want to be verifying this view that we have of ourselves because then we can feel like we have some degree of certainty. But there is no certainty in life. And so what my own studies have found is that you can fundamentally change your personality.

36:01It does stay the same. It's very stable throughout your lifespan unless you choose to intervene. So what does that mean? Unless you actively choose what you're focusing on and then implement proven strategies to actually change that personality trait. Okay, give me a story or example. Okay, well, the entirety of big trust is essentially this, but let me give you the example of, okay, who am I going to share? Let's share, I'll share rashes. or Rashida as she likes to go by. So Rashida was a leader and she was, she just started a new job. And as she was starting that new job, she came to me for help because she needed some guidance in terms of how do I navigate this new environment?

36:43How do I set up a team? You know, the usual things that people will often reach out to us for. And when she was introducing herself to me, she said, I'm a mother. I play pickleball. I love this. I love that. I'm in this industry and And I'm intense. But the way that she said intense really stood out to me. It wasn't a positive thing. Her face wrinkled when she said it. And so I said, tell me about that intense label, because there's something there. I can sense it. And so she shared with me that when she was leaving her last job, her boss said to her, we'll sure miss you. You can be intense, but we'll sure miss you.

37:19And so, you know, it's kind of a double handed compliment. And she internalized that. Rashida completely internalized that intense label. And then she shared it's because when she was a child, she was part of a big Egyptian family. I think she was the youngest of eight kids. and so she felt like she had to constantly earn people's attention by being loud and being out there and dancing on the tables because it was a very big busy family but then she was constantly told that she's too much calm down stop being so out there so this idea of intense reminded her of what her siblings used to call her and how they used to tease her and it'll come back this is a result of the scar that had been created so early on that she had tried so hard to overcome and ignore and it came back in a really key moment so we had to work together because we had to determine how are we going to intervene here and for this essentially how are we going to change your personality yeah how we fundamentally because it reflected a lack of self-acceptance self-acceptance when we look at the personality component it's self-esteem self-esteem so how do you change self-esteem well one way to do it is to start to change the labels that you've attached to yourself and so her label was i'm intense and when i asked her how do you feel about intense And she's like, it's bad.

38:34It's really bad. It gets in the way. People don't like it. So she was focusing on all the negatives of that. And I said, Rashida, tell me about how intensity helps you at work. She was saying, well, it allows me to do my job because I have a good attention to detail and this, that and the other. And I said, well, I don't see that as intensity. I see that as passion. and she stopped and she said oh my gosh you are right it's pure passion i care about what i do so much i care about doing the right thing making the right decisions being the best leader for my team of course it's passion and she had this incredible eye-opening moment where she recognized that her scar had been attached to her because of what other people were saying about her and she'd never thought about redefining the scar and changing it into something that's actually a positive for what she was doing.

39:23So we had to go through a process of her continually reminding herself, it's not intensity, it's passion. It's not intensity, it's commitment. And every time she starts to feel, I'm intense, no, I'm passionate about this. She even started saying it out loud. So when she was feeling extremely, what she would call, intense in a meeting, she would say, thank you for bearing with me, everyone. I'm really committed to getting this right. Or thank you for being in this meeting with me right now. I'm so passionate about finding the right approach as opposed to I'm feeling really intense right now or intensity is whatever you know she would focus on that and this process of continually rewriting that particular pathway in her brain and it takes time you have to acknowledge when you have that thought popping into your head you have to acknowledge that you can catch it out and redirect it and then you have to acknowledge that you need to do that many many many times for it to start to become a default but the more you do it, the more that pathway becomes strengthened, and then eventually it becomes stronger than the old one.

40:23And because the brain is wired for neuroplasticity, we are wired to learn and grow and develop new things and new abilities, new ways of thinking. It just takes time and repetition. So in my career, I kind of have a few pivots, but when I stepped into the world of creating content specifically online, I didn't know what the label I wore, I guess my scar, I introduced myself to a mentor who I just invested a lot of money to work with for a year. And I said, oh, just bear with me. I'm slow. And he stopped. And he said, and this is after us working almost a year together. And he said, what did you say?

40:56I said, I'm just slow. And he said, I don't think at all you're slow. He's like, I'm going to invite you to put a different label to it. I was like, why? I'm just slow. I don't care that I'm slow. And he's like, I actually think you did. He's like, can you go back to a time where you were told you were slow? And I was like, well, I didn't learn how to read until I was 11. I never learned my multiplication tables. And so I'm going back to my childhood by just saying I was slow. And he said entirely differently. He's like, how about you not tell me something you can't believe? I'm a genius. It's finding something bite-sized that you might be able to say.

41:34And I said, I'm very process-oriented. I can spot patterns. And he's like, great. That's a skill set that a lot of people don't have. So because you're doing other things that most often people don't, you're saying it's slow, but what you're actually doing is going deeper, faster, deeper, but you're doing 3x what normal people are doing. And I will tell you something changed. I was like, I am not slow. I'm not slow. And so I believe that everything that you're saying right now is an experience that I have had, but now I'm looking through it the lens of what other scars, aka what other lies am I believing without even knowing that that's the case?

42:09So when somebody's listening right now and they're saying, okay, I am now learning how to redefine the labels that i'm putting on myself And then our brain has neuroplasticity and then I could choose to be conscious of the thoughts that I think and relabel them from being intense to I am passionate I am not slow. I am fixated with patterns and orientation and figuring things out And then we talked about the things that are keeping us Stuck our self-doubt failure to launch treading water destination obsessed and then you went back and then you had said, we will not be able to rise above our vision, our opinion of ourselves.

42:44Our opinion of ourselves. And so we're here at this point and you've done so much research for this book. I can't help but think of one of the things that you wrote. Self-doubt isn't about what you can or can't do. It's about what you think you can do. And I read that line a few times over because I was just like, do I agree? And of course, I'm not going to disagree with the doctor, but I was like, it's just, I'm absolutely disagree with it. Okay. I was like, wait a minute. Do I agree? Because there's some things I can't do. And then I thought to myself, it's because I think I, I can't. It's because I simply think I can't.

43:22So let's tap there. How does somebody say, well, I can't, I can't start a business. I can't grow a million dollar business. I can't do this. Like, how do we get over those things if we just think, well, I can't. So this is a great distinction to make. there are genuinely going to be some things that we cannot do. Like I will never be an Olympic gold medalist because I don't have the body. I don't have the physical endurance. It's too late. There are things, but that's not self-doubt then. Self-doubt. So if we look at it, self-doubt has two components, the self and the doubt part. If you start with the doubt part, that's just uncertainty.

43:54Like I doubt whether it's going to be raining today or whether we will have good weather. I doubt whether this will succeed. When it turns inward, I doubt whether I have what it takes. I doubt whether I am worthy, whether I can do the thing as opposed to something that is objectively not possible. That is when it's self-doubt. So if someone is saying, I can't start the business, the best place to start is with self-inquiry as to, I was going to say just now, ask yourself why, but I avoid the question why, let me tell you why. So Jasmine, if I were to say to you, why do you have that notebook on your lap?

44:29How do you feel in that moment when I've said, why are you holding your pen like that? I feel a little bit self-conscious. A little bit self-conscious, like I'm trying to interrogate you or undermine you. Or like I'm doing it wrong or it's atypical, not normal. Or I'm judging your decisions. The word why can throw us into the defensive. So a little tip for anyone listening, which isn't related to self-doubt, but is related to relationships. Try and eliminate the word why. It puts people on the defensive because when we were kids, we were never asked, why are you such a wonderful child? Why are you making us so happy?

44:58It was, why haven't you cleaned your room? Why aren't you as good as your sister? why this why didn't you eat your dinner so it's always a negative whereas and again with adults when we ask our partner why did you do that why didn't you it can trigger yes so instead use a what what are the reasons that you're telling yourself you can't do this so it allows you not to get defensive like why can't if i were to say to you well why can't you start the business you might go into defense mode to try and justify and verify the belief that you have Oh, because it's impossible. Oh, because of... But then when you say, what are the reasons?

45:33I have found, because you're not going into the defensive, which is where your threat centers are going, oh, there's a threat here, which means less activation in your prefrontal region, more activation in your emotive and your threat detection centers, you're not able to think logically. When you ask a what question, it triggers curiosity. And when you ask, what are the reasons that are leading you to think that way? You just tend to be able to access more of the ventromedial prefrontal region, you focus more on things you can control, and you generally make better decisions and have better thoughts.

46:04So I would ask somebody, they say, I can't start the business. Well, write down all the reasons that you believe are in your way of starting the business. Let's actually objectively review these. And what people typically find is that a lot of them are a result of scars. I'm not capable because I've never done it before. And if I fail, then it's going to mean my mom will say, see, I told you so. Or if I try it and then it doesn't work out, my friend who's always been better at me is going to have another reason to point out that they're better than me. There's going to be something there. Unless objectively, it's like, well, I can't start the business because in order to do that, I have to have expertise in X and I genuinely don't have expertise at X.

46:45And I can go and try and get expertise in X, but it will take me seven years. And actually, I want to do that. You know, it allows you to be a lot more objective about things. And I highly encourage objectivity because self-doubt is not objective, it's subjective. It's entirely the result of perception and interpretation and the meaning that we apply to things, about things and about us. You know, when we think about failure, a lot of people, they don't identify with, oh, I don't fear failure. But what they fear is other people seeing them fall. It's not the failure itself. It's the what will people think if I speak up in this meeting and I say the wrong thing.

47:22If I start that business and it doesn't go well, if I post on social media and no one likes it, what are people going to think about me? So they are making that failure or that misstep or that lack of whatever you're trying to achieve, they're turning it inwards and internalizing it like that heavy golf ball. As opposed to saying, that's okay, that can happen, I am still me, I can create separation. Now, if we go back to this example of the labels that we apply to ourselves, one of the things we need to be aware of is anything. I remember when I was studying, when I was doing my master's, my MBA, I went to get a coffee before class and I got stopped in my tracks by someone wearing a shirt.

48:00It was a black shirt and it had white letters and it just said, I am dot dot dot. These are two of the most powerful words because whatever comes after it shapes your identity. and I took a photo of it and I remember I think I posted it on on social at the time because it's so true as soon as we say I am something I am intense I am slow we are internalizing it and making it mean something about who we are that also makes us believe it is fixed and unchangeable this is just who I am and because of self-verification we will often seek out situations that reinforce it or tolerate behavior from other people because we secretly believe that about ourselves, which is so dangerous and damaging.

48:47So one thing that's really valuable for anyone listening is to acknowledge you are not your thoughts. You don't have to believe everything you think. You can start to observe your thoughts. What does that mean? That means next time you think, oh, I'm such a failure, I'm such a screw up, you pause and you rework that because you've just said, I am, right? You rewrite it and you say, okay, I'm noticing a thought that is telling me that I'm a failure. I'm noticing a thought that's telling me I'm going to mess this up. So you're not becoming the thought, you're noticing the thought, which allows you to take the golf ball out, turn it into a ping pong ball and put it on the top of the water.

49:26So you're seeing it up there. You don't have to accept it. Same thing applies to emotions. There is incredible research that looks at how, firstly, once we label an emotion, it can help reduce the activity in the emotion centers in the brain just by labeling it. But then the next step is de-identifying from it. So instead of saying, I'm stressed or I'm anxious, we are identifying with that emotion, I am. What this encourages us to do, it's called cognitive diffusion. You're not fusing with the emotion, you're separating from it. You'd say, I am feeling stressed. I am noticing that I'm carrying anxiety right now.

50:04And remarkably, by doing this, you're re-engaging your prefrontal regions. We see a decrease in activity in those emotion centers. It is so simple. And yet research shows just how effective it is. And a big part of that is acknowledging that if we ever want to identify the scars and start to heal the scars, we have to acknowledge that even though it feels like those scars are who we are, they're not. They've been placed there, usually by other people when we were too young to resist or know what to say in response. And so we just internalize them. But we don't have to be them. The first step is to catch out those thoughts.

50:45One other side point. If you struggle with any kind of self-doubt, whether it's related to lack of acceptance, whether it's to do with what we call agency, which is the belief that I can't do the thing, I don't have the skills. Maybe it's related to believing that even if you try, nothing's going to work out for you. That's what we call a lack of autonomy. Regardless of what kind of self-doubt you're experiencing, something that is extremely valuable to be aware of is that at any point in time, you can shift how you feel by shifting what you're focusing on. Attention is the greatest superpower that we have as humans, in my view.

51:22Because where your attention goes, that is what you pay attention to, that is what you notice, that is how you shift your state. I mean, the social media algorithms know it. And so we need to almost think of our life and our brains as like an algorithm creator. Whatever we believe or prime ourselves to think about, we will start to notice more of through selective attention, where the brain will filter out information that it thinks is important, or rather focus on what it thinks it's important, and then blur out everything else. It selectively attends to that. And then confirmation bias, where you seek out information that confirms whatever you believe and forget everything else.

51:59So the brain is wired to do this. So why don't we give our brain better inputs so that it can start to work in our favor? And one simple way, I had a situation recently where I had a really good friend of mine opt out from my life for no reason and didn't give me a reason, said, I need some space. I'll get back to you when I can, I promise. and then never got back to me. I know they're okay because I've checked in with other people, but me being the empathic, kind of considerate person that I am, I don't want to push it. I don't want to ask them why. What did I do? Could I have done anything better?

52:32The person who's chosen to leave, I'm respecting that. That's really hard for me as a people pleaser because my mind started going on overdrive. What did I do? What did I say? Was I too much? Was I not enough? And so I'm going back and overanalyzing all of these texts. I had to literally stop myself and say when that thought would come in, I'd say to myself, nope, not today, Sade. Not today. And then I would shift my attention to something else, something more valuable. And it was funny the first few times I did it because I would literally laugh because it felt like such an odd thing to say, but it worked.

53:08And now I don't have that thought that comes in anymore. I don't have that. You're not enough. This person left your life. I'm able to just move through that so a big part of it we often think again that we are our thoughts we have to become beholden to whatever they tell us also our emotions we just believe every emotion that comes not realizing that we can reinterpret emotions let me tell you how Jasmine what's your favorite band? do you have a favorite band? or someone that you'd love to see in concert? can I have seen this person? yeah Bon Iver? okay Bon Iver okay so you're sitting in the front row seat in a VIP area and you're about to see this person come on stage.

53:45Okay, say less. What are you feeling in your body? I'm excited. Okay, but in terms of physiology, so not the emotion itself. Okay, I don't know. How does one feel excitement manifested in one's body? I'm a very high logical thinker. You're looking at me like I'm foreign. I intellectualize my emotions. Oh my god, this is a whole different episode. You know what? There is actually a link between intelligence and overthinking, intellectualization and overthinking. Well, say more. Okay, so if you tend to overthink a lot and be very aware of everything that could go wrong, it could be a reflection of a high level of intelligence because...

54:17JD, my husband, business partner. I'm freaking Einstein, bro. You're a genius. I'm Einstein, I'm genius. It's comforting. Because those who tend to have higher than average IQ tend to be more aware of risk and complexity. Good Lord. And when you're more aware of risk and complexity, your mind is naturally going into all the what-ifs, what-ifs, what-ifs. Yes. And then you naturally catastrophize. this could happen that could happen and then I have a plan for everything you have a plan for everything absolutely what's different about you and most people though jasmine is you have a plan for everything and it doesn't prevent you from still taking action because I have a plan because you have a plan a lot of people will not get to the plan they just magnify everything that could go wrong okay and then it lowers their confidence increases the overthinking and then the cycle starts again it's the we call it the intelligence anxiety spiral I love that title yeah I love that And it just keeps going like this.

55:06Maybe I have intelligence anxiety. Yeah, I know it's a new term. It's like, you know, we can have T-shirts printed out. Yes, black with white letters. Yes, deal. So if this happens to you, where you're getting stuck in this, two things. The first step is to remind yourself, hey, my brain is just doing what an intelligent brain does. It's trying to protect me. Fantastic. It's working. Great. Okay. Then the next step is, but I'm physically safe. Yes. I don't need to listen to it. It's making me aware of these things. so that I can prepare, I'm going to take action anyway. And that is powerful because again, you're re-engaging.

55:41Okay, so when you're in that moment where the brain is going wild and you're catastrophizing, again, when we look at brain scans, it's because of overactivity in the risk centers, the threat detection centers, the emotion centers. Simply asking yourself a question or redirecting your thoughts re-engages the front part. And so when you're in that state saying to yourself, I'm physically safe. There's nothing here that could hurt me. Thank you, brain. But what can I do about this? And then also sometimes people can get stuck in why me? Why is this so hard for me? It's so easy for everyone else. Why does this always, we get stuck in that victim mentality.

56:18We victimize ourselves. A fantastic reframe that relates to a lack of autonomy, but a great reframe in that environment is, okay, I'm not going to go into why me? I'm going to go to what next? What next? So you acknowledge, yeah, things might be unfair. Things might be hard. Maybe other people do have it easier than you do. But what are you doing next? What is your next step? Because if you do not take that next step, nothing changes. You get stuck in rumination and regret and blame and resentment. So, okay, so that's one thing. Now, the other thing that you touched on, which is what you do, you come up with all these other plans.

56:52Yes. So a lot of people will say when it comes to things like manifestation and visualization, they say, know where you want to go. Visualize that future version of you, which is great because when you can visualize that and you can believe that you can get there, you're also changing your self-image. It's not limited to who you are right now. You're opening it up to also embody that, hey, I can be that. That is something that I can become. But that's where people get stuck. They get so, what's the word? It's like this seductive feeling of, wow, that's going to be me. They've got the vision board.

57:27They've got everything. They've got the positive affirmation every day. And they're wondering why that business success has not come. Why is that social media growth not coming? Why is that opportunity not coming? And it's because, yes, okay, great. You've got to know where you're going. But it's not going to magically come and knock at your door and be like, here you go. There's a missing step. You've got to be taking the steps to get there. But that's not all. What you did is you identified everything that could go wrong, and then you came up with a plan for all of it. This is called inversion thinking, or a pre-mortem in the project management world.

58:01So a lot of people don't want to anticipate what could go wrong because they think they might will it into existence or manifest it into existence. When we look at a lot of literature, especially in the goal implementation space, we find that that is actually a misguided approach. I mean, if you're extremely high on anxiety, Maybe. Because it'll affect how you feel and that's when you want to be getting professional help. But if you're generally okay at managing things, you want to anticipate everything that could go wrong. But then the important second step that you must not forget, which is what you do, plan.

58:35What will you do if it happens? What will you do if that terrible thing happens? And this does two things. It reminds you that no matter what happens, you can handle it. You'll be okay. So it shrinks the fear to size. It also allows you to plan so that when the thing happens, you know exactly what you do. Because when the thing happens, I can guarantee you're not going to be feeling great. You're going to be feeling disappointed or overwhelmed or anxious or stressed. And we don't think very well in those scenarios. Daniel Goleman says, out of control emotions can make smart people stupid. Amen.

59:09Amen to that. And it's because of what's going on in the brain. We don't have access to the parts of our brain that are required for intelligent thinking. Front parts. So when you do the work beforehand, it means that you've been there, you know what to do. I want to tell you the story about Michael Phelps. Michael Phelps is an amazing, incredible swimmer, world champion. He used to do this. So his coach said he used to visualize constantly, but he didn't just visualize himself succeeding. He visualized himself in situations that were really bad. Everything unexpected that could happen in a race.

59:41His goggles snapping, getting a cramp in the middle of a race, slipping on the starting block. And then he visualized what he would do if those things happened. And he had it so deeply ingrained in his nervous system so that his view was, if anything happens, I'm fine. Now, this paid off for him in a massive way in the 2008 Olympics. So he's in the finals of the 200-meter butterfly stroke. And almost as soon as he dives into the water, his goggles completely fill up. He cannot see anything. So he's 25 meters in to a 200-meter race. He cannot see a thing. But he said in an interview afterwards, he said, I swam blind for 175 meters, won gold, and broke a world record, despite not being able to see.

1:00:29Why? Because he'd been there before in his mind. When it happened, he didn't compare himself to other people. He didn't get overwhelmed. He didn't give up and quit. He had been there. So he had the agency, the self-efficacy to know what to do. and to back himself. Isn't that incredible? Let's go. Absolutely. Can I talk? This is... Can you talk? Of course. Well, I mean, I will tell like, okay, okay, okay, okay. So here's the thing. There's nothing worse. We call them one-uppers. Yeah. You just like, oh, I went on vacation. I went on vacation for two weeks. Yeah. It's called conversational narcissism.

1:01:04Oh, see, I don't want to be a podcast who's a conversational narcissist. No, it's... Okay. Like, oh my gosh, you just labeled it. I'm like, that's 100 % what I'm trying to avoid. But when the team and I at the beginning of 2025 had identified a big new initiative. It was going to be a complete new arm, a complete new subsidiary for the holding company. And I had every single one of our key stakeholders write a pre-mortem. I said, this is new. We are literally starting something that we've never done before. So each of our heads of the department, from marketing to customer success, to client fulfillment, to myself, I gave everybody a week notice.

1:01:40I said, please block some time on your calendar and I want you to list. It doesn't have to be florid. Give me a bullet point list of everything that can go wrong. And so we went around the meeting and everybody said, this can go wrong. And I thought in my mind, I was like, and then I'm going to give this riveting Roosevelt, Eisenhower style. And it was pretty shocking because I thought being the overthinker that I am, I was like, I'm going to think about every possible scenario. I'm going to come prepared. And they were things that they saw that I didn't see. So everybody was almost in a stunned silence of, oh, wow.

1:02:17And yet we all decided to move forward. I said, do we count the cost? Because now that we know the monsters we can face, are we in? And it wasn't as riveting as I anticipated. It was wildly sobering. And then it was like, dig in, let's go. Brilliant. And so when I think about that, I really do hope that our goggles don't fill with water in the next couple months. I really hope. I hope so. Or hope not, brother. Oh, actually, maybe I do. Maybe I want to swim blind. Maybe I want to build world records. Yeah. Maybe I want to win a gold. I love it. Maybe I got chills in my right arm. Okay, God, fill my goggles.

1:02:55Oh, my gosh. Now there's like lightning coming down. Oh, no, no, no. But I want to say thank you for that because I'm giving research data facts around things that are coming intuitively to me. Yeah, amazing. But one of the things that I loved at almost in the beginning part of the book, there was a quiz. Yes. And we're talking about emotions. We're talking about anxiety. And sometimes I can definitely put like a brick of anxiety or overwhelm on me. And I actually didn't even know that I was doing it until I took your stinking quiz. Wow. Okay. So I take this quiz. Okay. So here's the thing. Everybody knows I don't bring people on the podcast if I haven't read the book.

1:03:31So I read the book. I do the homework because your girl's studious. So I take this quiz and then I said, Sade, can I send this quiz to people who are watching and listening? And you're like, yes, of course. The quiz is free, SadeZerai.com forward slash big trust. So please take this quiz. It is free. And I am telling you, I felt like, okay, one, I have been consuming your content. I listened to all of your podcasts. We send social media messages back and forth. Like I'm in girl. I will slurp your content up with a silver spoon. I'm all in. I actually thought by doing this quiz and I'm like, I got it.

1:04:05I know I'm still going to do it. And there was one part of the quiz that revealed something to me that I actually had never acknowledged or even would have accepted if I didn't see it in black and white. Can we walk through the quiz as almost like a, here's what you can expect from this book. And like this nice slap across my face, wake up girl. Of course. Okay. So firstly, I love that you did the quiz. And I love that you obviously did it with sincerity, which revealed something to you, which is fantastic. That's what we want. We want it to be revealing to us. The only thing about quizzes is you have to have a level of self-awareness and honesty.

1:04:39And some people don't. It's called social desirability bias, where they are not even honest in their quizzes because they want to come across... Social desirability? Yes. It relates to that idea of sociotropy and being a people pleaser. It's fascinating. Oh my. Yes. Okay. Okay. So quiz. So essentially, let me run everybody through what the book is, what the quiz is, and then what you'll get from the quiz, because it's free. It's totally free. You can do it on the website. This book is essentially a research-backed guide to identify within yourself where self-doubt is holding you back, specifically by understanding your self-image.

1:05:14Now, how do you understand your self-image? By recognizing that there are four pillars that create your self-image. The first one is acceptance. Do you accept yourself for who you are? If you don't, you will take feedback personally. You will become self-critical when things go bad. You will fear failure because what it means about you. You will seek the validation of others because if they accept you, you accept you. And it just creates a whole lot of unnecessary stress in our lives and weight. The next one is agency. Do you believe that you can actually do the thing? Do you have the skills and abilities and resources?

1:05:46Can you learn how to do the thing? Because if you don't, you will forever feel like an imposter. You will keep comparing yourself to other people's skills and successes and feel like you're behind. You will continually wait to feel ready and then never take action. The third area is a very interesting one. This is where we call it autonomy. And it relates to what's called the locus of control. Which means, where do you place control in your life? Do you believe that you have control over some degree of what happens to you? Now, not everything. We know that not everything is within our control.

1:06:19But do you have what's called an internal locus, where you focus on your thoughts, your decisions, your actions, your responses? Or do you have an external locus, where you focus on everything you cannot control? Like what they think, what they say, what the outcome will be, what the government is doing, what the weather is doing. Because if you only ever focus there, you will feel powerless. Do you know why? Because you are powerless. You cannot change those things. That's not to say that you can't join an advocacy group or try and fight for justice. But I'm talking about constantly focusing on those things.

1:06:52And if you have low autonomy, because you don't feel personally powerful, you will complain. You will blame other people. You become resentful for other people's success, feeling like they have it easier than you do. And you also get stuck in revisiting old hurts and wounds. So anyone who will listen, you will tell them how difficult your life is. And you tend to repel people who can actually help you and attract people who reinforce what you're experiencing. Oh, that's so terrible. My life is hard too. Do you want to? And you just create this echo chamber of negativity. It becomes very toxic.

1:07:25The fourth pillar is adaptability. This is the one that Jasmine found was one that she perhaps needs to focus on or just revealing that it's an area of weakness. Oh, just say it as it is. Yeah. It's really low. Yeah, it's really low. So in the context of self-doubt and self-image, adaptability is the belief or the perception that you can handle the emotions that come with self-doubt and your ability to manage and navigate and harness what you're feeling. Now, how you land across these four creates what's called a profile. And then when you map your profile, you will determine, oh, wow, okay, so this is really the weak spot.

1:08:03That's the strong point. And we have certain archetypes. So let me share with you a very common archetype, which is someone who is very low on acceptance. So they are people pleasers. They seek the validation of others. They're also very low on adaptability. So they have this undercurrent of anxiety, this undercurrent of cortisol. They never feel like they've done enough. Their work is their worth. And that cortisol is what fuels their achievement. And they think that when they get there, they'll stop feeling so anxious, but it doesn't happen that way. but what allows them to succeed is usually because they're very strong with agency and autonomy so they believe that they have the skill and they focus on what they can control so they're able to get things done set a goal achieve it but it's these other two that sometimes fuel each other so that's a really common archetype that we see so all that to say the book is designed to help you determine where you're lacking should we talk about should we talk about my quiz results yes Because am I being the narcissist again?

1:09:01Oh. The conversational narcissist. Let's just talk about me. Hold on. No, this is great. Let's talk about my resolve. You know what it is? You are contextualizing things for people. I hope so. And I actually have heard that from other people. It's like when I can put myself in this situation because people, many people have been listening for years. It's that they understand the perspective and they apply it to their own lives even if we are very different. Okay. Completely. So these are on a scale from one to 15. Yes. 15 being the most. Superpower. Superpower. Okay. Okay, so acceptance, I am a level 12 out of 15.

1:09:29Okay. That is a hidden strength. Yes. And my agency is also a 12. Oh, okay. Mm-hmm. My autonomy is a 15. Yes. Like that, I wanted to get 15s across the board, but when I was taking the quiz, I didn't know. I want to win. I want to win. And my adaptability is an eight. Eight. Okay. So what this is telling us, you have an incredible ability to focus on what is within your control. and take action, even if things are uncertain. Again, you don't get stuck in complaining. You don't blame other people. You just ask yourself, what can I do? You don't get stuck in, why me? And you've had quite a background where it would be very easy for you to say, my life has been so much more difficult than other people's.

1:10:10It's unfair. But you have never fallen on that. You've used that to give you momentum to keep moving. So that's what high autonomy shows me. Your adaptability is eight, which means it is the biggest weak point for you right now which means that that feeling of anxiety and that cortisol and that overwhelm so it's interesting when you have high autonomy and low adaptability you're compensating for that feeling of overwhelm by just continually moving next thing next thing what else can we do oh you don't know what actually can we you don't know me so you almost try to alleviate that feeling by taking action which means you feel guilty when you take a break potentially.

1:10:48It takes a long time for you to quieten your mind. And in order to manage the quietening, you're like, what else can I do? What else can I control? What can I do to quiet my mind? Exactly. Which in itself is not a bad thing, but often you're busying yourself. Next action, next thing, let's move here. 100%. You're, okay, so you're, you were 12 on? Acceptance and agency. Okay, so they're hidden strengths, but they're at the cusp of the hidden strength, which means they could be conditional. What that means, if it's conditional, it's possible that certain environments and certain people may make you doubt your worthiness or may make you doubt your skill, or you might feel a little bit like you don't deserve some of your success if you're around certain people or certain environments.

1:11:34But generally on the whole, you're okay. You're able to just keep moving through. I wanted 15s on those. That's okay. Okay. Yeah, yeah. No, no. I mean, so the other thing to be really aware of is that anyone who gets 15 across the board is probably lying to themselves. Honestly, they probably are. Because we all carry things with us. And even when it comes to attachment styles, we're not going to go into a huge amount of detail there. But there was this belief that if you have a secure attachment style as a child, your life is set. You never doubt yourself. You have amazing relationships. You believe in your worth.

1:12:11No. Research shows that no one is 100 % securely attached all the time as adults. It changes because we're multifaceted. We're humans. We absorb the emotions and the beliefs of other people. So that's very reassuring, I think. Now, can we touch on your 15 for autonomy? Yeah. So something that is very interesting, if anyone gets a 15, a 15 is the highest score you can get. We call that a superpower. What can happen, and we didn't have space to put this in the book, but we might offer it as a bit of like a bonus chapter, is you can actually go too far with some of these attributes. So let's have a look.

1:12:45Someone who has extremely high acceptance, suddenly they don't just accept themselves. They actually think they're of greater value than other people. Oh, yeah. Oh, I get that. So it's like a shadow side of your superpower. Yes, exactly. Oh, good. And this can often come out under pressure. So suddenly I'm more important than all of you. My opinion is the one that we should go with. What's the shadow side for autonomy? So 15 is autonomy. That's my superpower. What's the shadow side? The shadow side of autonomy, which relates to focusing on what you can control, is where you start personalizing.

1:13:19What does that mean? You start taking ownership for things that are actually outside of your control. So high autonomy means you take absolute ownership and responsibility for your life, your choices, your outcomes. The shadow side of that is you suddenly start blaming yourself for things that are completely not yours to carry. And does that resonate? It can be tough. And that's why it's also really important for us to make sure that we have people in our lives that help us stay balanced, whether that's a significant other, a business partner, a trusted friend, a family member, just to help us keep an eye on those shadow sides, because we might think we're doing everything right.

1:14:02And yet it can then become something that's going to push other people away or make us worse off. So one of the things for adaptability, one of the questions you had asked in the subsequent questions in the sections was, can I manage my emotions? And it's crazy because even earlier in this conversation, I intellectualize a lot of my emotions. So when I read this, can I manage my emotions? I was like, how do I manage something I don't really have? And what I realized was that when I'm defaulting to, I'm just overwhelmed. I'm just overwhelmed. Now, the difference between when somebody says I'm overwhelmed, I don't take action, I will say I'm overwhelmed and I still take action.

1:14:38But I was repeating a narrative that just wasn't serving me. I am overwhelmed versus this is overwhelming. Yes. And that switched for me. And like literally I got the book weeks ago. And since then I even sent you like an Instagram direct message. And I was just like, this has profoundly changed how I am perceiving being overwhelmed and the feelings of anxiety. Like feelings of anxiety from just this quiz. it was instead of the brick of anxiety is on my chest. I'm like, this is the brick of anxiety. I see the anxiety. I am moving. I visualize moving the brick of anxiety to the side. The anxiety is here.

1:15:15It is not me. And I am telling you two and a half years ago when we met and we had this conversation around self-doubt and you have one of the highest viewed TED Talks during the pandemic in 2021, multiple TED Talks, one of the highest, most viewed. That changed my life. And in two and a half years later, when this book has come out and reached the world, And I am taking this quiz and my life has changed yet again. I think it's a full circle moment for the conversation. It's a full circle moment for this friendship. Thank you for doing this work. Thank you for changing my life. Thank you for taking time.

1:15:46Y 'all, she's not even from the United States and she's here in Newport. I live on an island, everybody. She lives on an island and she came here and I, y 'all, take the quiz. Take the quiz to deeply understand the four pillars. Talk to us about the four pillars once again, the four pillars. Once you understand these four pillars, then what? So once you understand these four pillars, I want to remind everybody, these are not just my ideas. This is validated in over 50 years worth of research. There's an important distinction, actually, I should mention. When we look at the literature and the research, these are described as personality traits.

1:16:18It's actually a collection of four personality traits that is called your core self-evaluation, your self-image, how you fundamentally see yourself. It's based on self-esteem, self-efficacy, locus of control, emotional stability. Now, when we were describing it to people as personality traits, we would have people saying, well, that's just who I am. You can't change your personality. They would use it as a resistance point, as a defense. Can't change. So we realize we need to change how we're defining it and show people they can develop the habits associated with increasing this. Because it's kind of hard when you think, how do I increase my self-esteem?

1:16:53Oh, it sounds really big and scary. No, it's all about understanding what habits help us get there. And so that's why we talk about self-acceptance as the habit that boosts your self-esteem. Agency is the habit that allows you to build that sense of self-efficacy. I can do this. Autonomy allows you to boost that habit of internal locus of control. And then adaptability allows you to elevate that emotional set point. Now, there is something else that I want to mention about the biggest mistake we make with confidence. So I've kind of primed you here, but imagine Jasmine that I'm meeting you on the street and I were to ask you very quickly, what is the opposite of self-doubt?

1:17:32What would you say without thinking? Confidence. We find 90 to 95 % of people will say the opposite of self-doubt, it's confidence. This is fundamentally incorrect and it's leading so many people to stay stuck in cycles of self-doubt because we're waiting for a feeling of confidence. Firstly, confidence is not an emotion. So that in itself is something to be aware of. We're waiting to feel that sense of certainty that creates the confidence. Yet when we look at decades worth of research, the confidence doesn't come first. The confidence comes after you take the action. You have to do the thing, take the step, take that action to allow your brain to see a proof point or an evidence point of, hey, I can do this.

1:18:14What happens then is you increase a degree of skill and competence, which then boosts your self-efficacy, which is the belief that I can do this because I just did it. And that is what creates that feeling of confidence. And it also creates your momentum and your motivation and all these other great things. So if confidence is actually the result, what comes first? Action. Action. And then what's before the action? Tell me. It's self-trust. It is actually believing and trusting deep down that I can do this, I am worthy, I deserve this, I can handle the uncertainty, and even if it doesn't work out, I will be okay, I will learn, I will grow, I will try again.

1:18:55And so how do you develop that self-trust? It comes down to your self-image, which is these four things. If you can focus on just improving these four things in your life, your life will fundamentally change. Because remember, the underlying principles, the personality traits that underscore these have been shown in meta-analyses to increase your earning potential, basically the amount of money that you're making, boost your job performance, increase your career satisfaction, even your relationship satisfaction and how happy you are in your life. Just these four things. Imagine how life would change if you just knew how to improve these things.

1:19:34And that's essentially why I wrote Big Trust and why I'm so dedicated to helping people get unstuck and trust themselves more, because it all comes down to self-trust. If you are looking for a manual, a guide, an inspirational and very, very practical, easy to read. It was so beautiful. The stories that she's used on the inside, the images that you drew or consulted with. It's everything about this book. I can't speak highly enough. If you are looking for a manual guide to get unstuck, to learn how to trust yourself so that you then improve all aspects of your life, shadezarai.com forward slash big trust.

1:20:12Please take the quiz. Do this. Buy the book. It will change so much about who you are. I hope you have a fundamental shift the way that I did multiple times in my life and in my career because of you. Thank you. I appreciate it. Thank you for being here. Y 'all, shadezarai.com. Thank you for watching and listening to The Jasmine Starshall.