4 Powerful Ways to Rewire Your Brain for Confidence, Overcome Self-Doubt, & Fuel Bigger Success - With Dr. Shadé Zahrai

27:11I think so. And I don't drink. So maybe that's what it was too. And we all had to draw squirrels or paint squirrels. And, you know, my squirrel looked like it was like lifting kettlebells. Do you have your squirrel or a photo of it? Because it would be great to show it on screen or a link to it. I still absolutely have it. I absolutely have it. And so again, thank you for bringing this up because that's what life is all about. Like, and I think we don't, we, we definitely undervalue giving ourselves permission to try different things for us to be able to decompress and also find that flow state where we are doing something that's challenging and giving yourself permission to suck at something.

27:45A hundred percent. When you start. We call this, so we have a practice that we talk about in the book, which actually relates to the second attribute, which we'll get to, but I call it the daily dabble, which is give yourself 10 minutes a day to do something and suck at it. Actually suck at it. Drawing, painting, playing the guitar, whatever it is. your goal is not to improve. It's just to do something that's ugly. So Ed Catmull, who's, I think he's a Pixar executive, maybe the co-founder, he was saying that when they're developing their movies, Pixar animation movies, they all suck at the beginning and they call them ugly babies.

28:19And the idea is that, you know, a baby is always, it's your baby and you don't want it to be ugly, but you just have to desensitize yourself to ugly babies. Now, apologies to parents out there, there are no ugly babies. We know that. But in this case, it's getting used to getting used to being a beginner and not being good and sucking. If you can learn how to deal with the discomfort of sucking, it gets so much easier. And if you do this 10 minutes a day, again, you're activating default mode networks. You're just giving yourself permission to play because play is incredibly, incredibly powerful to build the second attribute, which you'll get to, But it also helps you with self-acceptance because you realize that sucking in this area is not a reflection of you.

29:04It's just something you're doing. So lots to think about there. I encourage everyone to find a hobby that works for them. And as you said, Sean, if it's not working for you and if you're feeling the pressure, try something else. We have someone in our community who had read the book and said, I don't know about the hobbies thing because every time I do one, soon enough there is pressure to perform for everyone else and to get the validation. And so my response to that is, okay, the moment you feel that coming in, drop the hobby, start something new. That means the self-doubt is creeping in because something has become again habitual or it's just another part of your identity.

29:39Drop the hobby, start a new one. And again, it's that permission to start, to be a beginner, to suck. So that's our first tip for acceptance. I'm going to share just a few more because that's kind of a broader one. Another one is if you struggle with acceptance, you struggle with letting people down and saying no. So you will say yes when someone asks you something, even before you've even heard what it is, or processed if you really want to do it. So we find people in this space end up over committing themselves to everybody else without checking in whether this is actually what they want to be doing.

30:14and they overcommit to friends, to family, to co-workers. They're the ones staying late at work because they've taken on extra work to help the team. No one else is there. So here's what you can do. Intentional delay. What does that mean? We know from research that if you can just delay a decision literally by a few milliseconds, you tend to make a better decision. So instead of compulsively responding with, yes, I'll do that, you would say to the person who's asked you or emailed you or texted you. Thanks for thinking of me. So it's a positive first response because us people pleasers will love that we can give a positive first response.

30:49Thanks for thinking of me. Let me check with my calendar or my partner or my schedule and I'll get back to you in 20 minutes by the end of the day, whatever it is. Three steps, right? Thanks for thinking of me. Let me check or confirm and I will get back to you by give them a deadline. And then your next step is to actually, you've just created space, ask yourself, do I want to be doing this? Is it out of a desire to serve? Or is it out of a desire to not let this person down because I want them to like me and I'm willing to sacrifice what I need? If it's a desire to serve, fantastic. That's a great thing.

31:26But if you're saying yes, because you don't want to let them down, you don't want them to disapprove of you, then perhaps it's not the right thing for you. And then your next step is to decline politely. Again, thanks for thinking of me. I'm not able to fit it in this time, but feel free to ask me again if it comes up. Now, a lot of people here will say, but I don't want to say no. I don't like saying no, it feels selfish. And the reason why it feels selfish is because you're focusing on a no. So what is really helpful to do is to think, okay, I'm not just saying no, I'm actually saying yes to something deeper for me.

32:01It's a deeper yes to you. Because every time you say yes to someone else, you're saying no to yourself in some way. It's a no to your time, to your peace of mind, to you being at home with your family, because you're prioritizing someone else. If you have a deeper yes, which could be honoring my values, being at home to tuck my kids into bed, investing in my well-being. No, I don't want to go out tonight because I want to have an early night because I know how important sleep is. Have a deeper yes burning inside so that it's not just a no, it's actually a yes to something that feels more important.

32:37And this is incredibly impactful when it comes to people who struggle with acceptance, because the more you do it, you realize I matter to, and what I need matters. And when I honor that, I can show up better for the people that I really care about. So that's that one. And then the third one for people who struggle with acceptance. If you ever go on a journey of growth. So, Sean, let me ask you this. Let's say that you've gone on a journey of growth and transformation, and then you're catching up with your family or your friends. What are they most likely to say when they see all this growth you've been on?

33:18There's one phrase that comes up a lot that doesn't make us feel great when we hear it. Any ideas what that is? You've changed. You've changed. And when they say you've changed, does it feel like a really positive thing? Hell no. Hell no. It doesn't at all. And it's generally because it's not. It's coming from a place of their own insecurity. As humans, we like predictability. We like familiarity. We like people to be how we've always known them to be. But the thing is, when you're growing, change is the point. And so if you are growing, it's going to shine a spotlight on people's insecurities and they will share that with you because subconsciously they want to keep you small because it makes them feel comfortable.

34:02And what do we do when we struggle with acceptance? No, I haven't changed. I'm the same. And then we try and prove to them that we're the same. And then we engage in the same old behaviors and the same ways of being. And we like devolve into an earlier version of ourselves, which is not doing us any favors. So the best response to you've changed is three words. thanks for noticing thanks for noticing and then you can follow it up with growth has been a priority for me and see how you've just taken something that would otherwise be a negative and you have turned it into an incredibly positive thing that you are taking ownership for but you're also giving them permission you're saying hey i've changed because i'm focusing on growth which allows them to think, oh, so if I focus on growth, I can change too.

34:53And it's a beautiful thing. And it's so simple. I love this. Thank you so much. Thank you. Again, I know that a lot of people listening, you know, have experienced something similar in their dedication to just being better, to being more of who they really are. And of course, you know, the people in our lives, they don't want to lose us. And also that certainty piece, we feel very comfortable with people being a certain way. And so you might even be frozen in somebody's mind in a certain state, a certain way of being, and maybe you see them, you know, they see you 10 years later and you're completely different to their, you know, to their experience.

35:31And so just keeping that in mind, this isn't something personal, you know, and oftentimes again, it's, it's, it's out of love and people wanting to stay connected to you, but I still have, I know where I come from and And I carry that with me. And I want to express and to model what's possible. Like our circumstances do not have to define us, right? And so being aware of those things and also, you know, intentionally finding a way to, as you just mentioned, expressing like I did this, there's change possible for you too. And I'm here to contribute and to support you in that if that's what you want.

36:11If you don't want that, then that's fine as well. So thank you so much for sharing that. So self-acceptance is really a part of this. It's one of these attributes, these four attributes, but it's really a superpower if you think about it. I agree. And as you mentioned, it's ironically the number one kryptonite for people as well. So let's move on from self-acceptance to what's next. What's next? So after the I'm not enough, what is another doubt people might have, especially if they're starting something new or trying to step into a new space? It's I can't do this. I cannot do this. And this relates to the attribute of agency.

36:53So agency relates to if we go back to the idea of traits, it's self-efficacy. Self-efficacy is the belief that I can set a goal and achieve the goal because either I have the skills or the existing competence or capability, or I can learn them or I can find other people to do them for me. So it's that element of resourcefulness. And when you don't have agency, you look at something and you say, I can't. I can't. What do you do? You shrink. Or alternatively, so let me share with you the ways that a lack of agency shows up. in people that have some degree of achievement behind them we see this as imposter syndrome where people feel like they don't deserve their success that they're faking it that at any moment someone will find out that they're a fraud and they don't they shouldn't be where they are and this does one of two things either it holds people back because it's safer to just not take the risk just in case they fail.

37:50Or what we see more commonly is it pushes people to overcompensate, to take on more, to keep doing bigger and better things to prove to people that, hey, I actually, I deserve this. I deserve to be here. What's super interesting about imposter syndrome, if anyone has ever felt like that, we often feel very alone in that. You need to have some degree of like a track record of achievement behind you in order for it to be imposter syndrome. If you're starting something new and you feel like you don't deserve to be there, that's not imposter syndrome. That's just you're starting something new and you've never done it before.

38:26Give yourself grace to learn. But if you have achieved something and you feel it, some studies have found up to 82 % of people have felt like an imposter. So you're in really good company. That's eight out of 10 people. Not only that, whenever we start to feel like we're the only ones who have felt this, it's called pluralistic ignorance because it's usually false. Humans have insecurities. Chances are someone has been in your position, experiencing similar things, feeling the same insecurities. So is it really a syndrome? And that's the next point. When we look at the term imposter syndrome and we look in the literature, it doesn't actually exist.

39:02It was discovered in the 80s by two researchers who determined that it was a behavioral phenomenon. It was a behavioral phenomenon. What's the difference between syndrome and phenomenon? A phenomenon is a naturally occurring behavior in a population of people. A syndrome pathologizes it and makes it feel like there's something wrong with us. And so they've referred to it as the phenomenon because it was so common. And then it has been studied as the phenomenon. and then somewhere along the way someone slapped on the term syndrome because suddenly that sells and that's great marketing and now people use that as an excuse and they think that something is wrong with them that they are broken because they have this syndrome.

39:43If you can just see it as something that I feel I have imposter thoughts it changes the way you see it and suddenly you realize okay maybe I'm not so alone maybe there's a way to move through this. Now if you feel like an imposter at any point in time. What's happening is because imagine that you have a spotlight shining right on you, right? So it's shining from above right on you. You don't see anything around you. It's just highlighting all of your perceived gaps and limitations and what you think you don't have. But if you take that spotlight, and usually when the spotlight's on us, we will say, I don't know how, and everyone will find out.

40:22That is the subconscious fear. I don't know how, and everyone will find out. You take that spotlight and flip it around, turn it into a flashlight moving ahead of you. It changes to, I don't know how, and I will find out. I will figure out how to do it. And that perspective shift can be hugely impactful because I always say that attention is a superpower. When you're not aware of what your attention is doing, that is when your thoughts are driven by default, default thinking patterns, default beliefs, and more often than not, they are rooted in self-doubt and insecurity because of our self-image, because of our lack of self-trust.

41:02If you can just consciously shift your attention in these moments, you're re-engaging the prefrontal regions in the brain, which reduces activity in the fear centers, the threat detection centers. You're less likely to notice all the things that could go wrong, and you're more likely to focus on, well, what can I do? What is my next step? So if you notice that thought of, I don't belong to be here, instantly shifted to, well, I'm here. What an amazing opportunity I have to learn and grow. Who can I learn from? What is the step I can take? What do I need to upskill in? Because we need to be pragmatic.

41:38Sometimes there is something you don't know how to do. That's okay. Learn how to do it or find someone else that can do it and get them to help you. There's incredible power when you develop your agency. Can you give an example, for example, if I just said, can you give an example, for example, what if somebody's saying, I don't have enough experience, how would you reframe that? Anyone who has done anything new has not had enough experience. That's the definition of doing something new. And you're never going to get the experience unless you lean into that discomfort. You see, when we experience discomfort, which happens when we experience self-doubt, if we can really stay with it and know that, hey, this is just my brain doing what it does.

42:19So if we look at the primary function of the brain, a lot of people will say it's to protect you and keep you alive. And that's true to an extent in a purely simplistic form. But there's another level to it, right? The function of the brain is to make sure that our body is doing what it needs to do to stay alive, using the least amount of metabolic energy. The brain wants to be lazy. It wants to use as little energy as possible. And so when it comes to discomfort, it's a lot more energy to lean into it and embrace it and take the step in spite of it than to just shrink and stay safe. So your brain's default is going to be to try to gear you to shrink and stay safe, because then it uses less energy and it has succeeded.

43:05That is what it's wired to do. If you know this, when you're facing the discomfort, you can then say to yourself, okay, my brain and body are just doing what it does. Great. I know that they're working. Good. but I don't have to listen to it. And then when you lean into that, what happens is discomfort can also activate neurotropic factors in the brain, specifically brain-derived neurotropic factor, BDNF. That is a protein responsible for learning and growth and neuroplasticity, neurogenesis. That is how you develop new habits, but you have to push through that discomfort. And so that might mean saying yes when you don't feel ready.

43:43That might mean still going and pushing and trying that new thing even if you don't have the experience. Now let me share with you one quick story that I love. It comes from Nike. So in the 1980s, I think it was 1985, the year my brother was born, Nike was going through a lot of challenge as a company. Stock price had declined, mass layoffs, they were struggling to enter the basketball market. So they needed fresh talent and they held a 24-hour shoe design competition for their internal staff. Tinker Hatfield was his name. He was a young corporate architect working in Nike and he decided to enter.

44:21He drew a design and then he won. And basically the next day he was approached and said or and told, OK, you're joining the design team. So suddenly this corporate architect who has zero experience in design is now in the design team in a space he has never been in. It would have been very easy for him in that state to say, I can't do this. I've never done this. I'm not a designer and then request to go back to his old job, which would have been safe. But instead, he asked himself, OK, I haven't had design experience. That's a given. I'm not going to pretend that I have. But what do I have? Well, I have architecture experience.

44:56And in architecture school, I remember learning about this building called the Centre Pompidou in Paris, which is basically an inside out building. So all of the structures, the mechanisms, the lifts, elevators that are usually inside and hidden. They're all on the outside by design. And he thought, what if we did that with a shoe? So he sat down and he started sketching this design. He did the Nike swish on the sneaker and a big visible air pocket in the heel. And that design was picked up and became the Nike Air Max One, the iconic shoe that Nike is known for. Phil Knight is recorded or reported as having said to him, Tinker Hatfield, he said, you single-handedly saved Nike in the 80s.

45:41And then, of course, there was the Michael Jordan deal and all the other things that came. But that story is a fantastic example of how, yes, you might be doing something you have no experience in, but if you allow the spotlight just to shine on you here and now, you forget that you have a huge track record of other things you've done, other experiences, other skills you've developed, other perspectives, other ways of looking at the world, other instincts, and they're transferable. You can bring them to what you're doing now. So never feel like you have nothing to offer when you're doing something new.

46:14You do, you just have to tap into it. And how you do that is by strengthening your agency. Wonderful. I love that story. Such a great story. And, you know, with that being said, instead of carrying this, I don't have the experience. I don't have enough experience to be doing this and just affirm it to yourself. I have capacity of agency. I get to make choices. I'm, I'm presenting with a great opportunity where I'm going to gain experience as I'm bringing an attitude of progressiveness and curiosity. And they're so fortunate that I'm participating in this because I want to learn. I want to get better, right?

46:53I can keep going with this, But it's just it's just a subtle reframe for whatever fits for you psychologically to give yourself to when I think of agency, I think of the ability to choose. Right. And to just realize that I have the capacity to make a choice regardless of the circumstance. And I can find a way to not just survive this, but to thrive and to get better. You know, so it's just thank you for that. Is there anything else here as far as like a strategy or tip to help us to gain more sense of agency? I'll share two more very quickly. So the first one relates to the next sign that someone struggles with agency, which is comparison.

47:34Now, comparison can be very healthy when you're using it as a force to motivate you and to keep moving forward. And when you see someone who has achieved something and you think, wow, if they've done it, I can do it, too. But when you lack self-trust, that's not what you hear. You think, wow, look at how far ahead they are. I could never do that. I will never catch up. Look at all the skills they have that I don't have. And that undermines self-trust related to agency, which then fuels self-doubt. So when it comes to this, there's two things you can do. I know a lot of people who constantly compare themselves to others.

48:10And then they constantly compare, which leads into the third attribute, which we'll get to. But if you're constantly comparing, what we encourage you to do is shift from comparison to emulation. What does that mean? Instead of comparing, you know, apples to oranges, they're two different things. You are different to everybody else. So don't compare your journey to theirs, but you can emulate. So look at where they are, look at how they got there and ask yourself, how do I emulate their journey and take that first step? So you use it as a pathway, as a guide point. Okay, they got there, I can do it, I'm going to.

48:46That's one thing, comparison to emulation. And then the second thing we see here a lot is when someone lacks agency, they distract themselves from taking action because again, they're waiting to feel like they are ready and they have the skills and the ability. So they procrastinate by preparing and planning and researching. And we know the more you research, the more you realize how much you don't know. And then you keep researching and then suddenly you never feel ready. But you feel really accomplished because, hey, you know a lot of stuff and you've got your whole document here of all the preparation you've done, but you're not taking the step.

49:20So a quick little story here about Elizabeth Gilbert. She's the author of Eat, Pray, Love. I've seen the movie. I haven't read the book, but some people have read the book. That's her memoir. Now, you'd expect, Sean, that if you're writing a memoir, it's your story. So it should just come to you naturally. But when she was writing this, she said that she had this mantra of this sucks in her head constantly. And so she'd write a sentence and she'd rip out the paper and throw it away. She'd type a paragraph and she'd delete the whole thing. She couldn't get herself to do it. And so she had to say to herself, OK, wait, wait, wait, hold on.

49:53I didn't promise the universe that I would write brilliantly. I just promised the universe that I would write. So I'm going to prioritize the act of writing and not writing brilliantly. And that's exactly what she did. Word after word, sentence after sentence, paragraph after paragraph. And she wrote this incredible memoir that became a movie that got her on Oprah and has just been incredible for her in terms of getting her message out there. And she's a phenomenal writer. But what this tells us, if you want to build your agency, lower your standards. And I don't mean that in a loose way. I mean, your standards are probably way too high.

50:31We want to be perfect at the start. Lower them. Make it doable. Make it the smallest possible step that you can take. Because when you do that, you get the proof point, hey, I can do this. This isn't as hard as I thought. And then you're more likely to take the next step. So instead of find my soulmate, make your goal, ask that person out for a coffee. Instead of build a billion dollar business, I'm going to create a website. Instead of go viral on social media, I'm going to post a video. Being detached from the outcome. That is one way to build your agency. It's actually just by showing up and doing the work.

51:08And that's also a fantastic way to build self-trust. Now, the very, very third step is coming down to what Tinker Hatfield did. He didn't have the solid skills or the capability or the competence in design. He'd never done it. But he focused on what we call his essence qualities. These are those transformable parts of ourselves that we have developed, that we've taken with us through every stage of life. Every single person has these and they have been developed not only professionally, but also in our personal lives. If you are a parent, you have incredible essence qualities around preparation, planning, patience, consideration, empathy, around scheduling, around managing competing stakeholders and priorities.

51:56You have to recognize these are really valuable. These are essence qualities. You can apply them no matter where you go and what you do and who you're interacting with. If you have set up a business in a different space and now you're transitioning, you have all sorts of qualities that you've developed there that you can bring. And this just reminds you, hey, okay, yes, I have not done this before, but I have been in situations where I haven't done it before and I was okay. And then you take the step. I've never heard somebody say that they want to have less energy. I just got so much energy. I don't know what to do with it.

52:29I don't know what to do. For most people today, they want to have more energy. Energy is the fuel of our lives and our experience of energy. if we're looking at it through the lens of biology, boils down, deep down to the role of our mitochondria, also known as our cellular power plants or cellular energy plants. But it's a dynamic exchange going on constantly with all of these trillions of mitochondria that we have within our bodies. Now, the question is, what is going to help our mitochondria to do what they do and to give us that energy that we're really looking for. Of course, we want to mind our mitochondria, eat some nutritious food, eat foods that are not creating derangement and all these abnormalities, blood sugar spikes and gumming up all of our cells and our tissues, making sure that we're getting adequate sleep, checking all those boxes.

53:24But if we're boiling things down to a category of nutrients that we really wanna look for, look no further than that category of electrolytes. Electrolytes are minerals that carry an electric charge, and they are critical for the function of your mitochondria. A recent study published in Free Radical Biology and Medicine determined that mitochondrial sodium levels are critical in contributing to changes in mitochondrial energy exchange and redux capacity. So this is about delivering energy to all of our cells and resisting the harmful impacts of oxidation and stress. Who knew sodium was so essential for life?

54:10Well, a lot of people have known this, including researchers at McGill University who found that not only does sodium help to maintain proper water balance for all of our cells, but also our most essential organ of energy and life period, which is the amazing human brain. They also found that sodium functions as a quote on off switch in our brains for specific neurotransmitters that support optimal function and protect our brain against numerous diseases. And so we want to make sure that we're targeting plenty of electrolytes in our diet is going to come in the form most often of whole organic fruits and vegetables.

54:52But this is also the reason that so many people feel and experience more energy and faster recovery when they're utilizing supplemental electrolytes. Now, if you're going to utilize an electrolyte supplement, the number one science-backed electrolyte supplement that supports active hydration, cognitive performance, and a healthy lifestyle overall, look no further than the incredible folks at Element. Element has the science-backed ratios of sodium, potassium, and magnesium to help you to feel and perform at your best. The best performers in the world utilize Element. I'm talking about Team USA weightlifting, NBA athletes, NFL teams, Navy SEALs, the list goes on and on and on.

55:40And right now you can try Element risk-free with their no questions asked refunds if you don't absolutely love the way that Element makes you feel. Head over right now to drinkelement.com forward slash model and you're going to get a free bonus pack of their most popular flavors with every single purchase. All right, go to drinkelement.com forward slash model. That's drinkelement.com forward slash model to take advantage of this right now. Head over there, check them out, drinkelement.com forward slash model. And now back to the show. This is such a great example. Just being able to take our life experience to be honest about, you know, just again, the quality of being, you know, a dad in a certain context to translate that over into my work.

56:33I just saw this morning, every morning I go out and I walk for a little bit and I saw this father and son and the dad, he's got this just outrageous, incredible mohawk. All right. And it's green, right? I don't know how he sleeps at night. I I don't know the story about taking down the Mohawk, but it's always pristine. And his son was already outside. He was getting in the car and the dad runs out and he drops what he was carrying by the car. And he basically, you know, like kind of tagged, I don't know what he's saying, but they end up going to the bottom of the street and then they take off and they race each other, right?

57:18And so I think that this might be a daily routine that they've started up since i've been going this today i went out at a different time this morning my wife had to go to an appointment or whatever but you know for him to be able to translate that over into the work that he's doing right i'm a dad who gets out here and i have this bar that i'm setting because i know that my son every day he's getting a little bit faster he's getting a little bit faster when i caught the race the son had actually crossed over in front of him and tried to beat him that way by getting in his way like a you know like a race car and to have those experiences and to be honest about it, like that's not a quote normal dad behavior.

57:56Like I'm creative. I'm thinking about my son and the experience that I'm giving him. How can I translate that over into my business, right? Or this project or another relationship. So take inventory of your life and be honest about the experience that you do have because you have so many different valuable skills and talents and capacities that you can use in any endeavor that you aspire to take on. And so I think we sell ourselves short and we don't have enough big trust. We don't. And so you're giving us this inroads for us to, because even for myself, I don't think about that. I don't think about translating that thing over into this other thing.

58:38It might happen unconsciously, but for us to wake up and realize like, wow, like, wait a minute, I have this incredible bank of life experiences. I know everybody listening has been through something very difficult, right? And just imagine that resilience that you have already. And you might not like, I wouldn't want to go through that again, but you have the capacity for more than you know. And if you didn't go through that thing, you wouldn't even understand how strong you are. And so thank you for helping us to guide us to more introspection. It's incredibly valuable in of itself. So we've got acceptance.

59:10We've got agency. What's the next one? The next one is my favorite because we don't realize that this is a facet of self-doubt. So, Sean, and everyone listening and watching, let me ask you this. Do you know someone in your life who complains constantly? They are resentful of other people who seem to have an easier life than they do. They blame other people. They don't take responsibility for things. and they tend to tell the same story of how they've been hurt in the past or someone double crossed them or life has just been so much more difficult than everyone else and you know the first few times you hear this story you have incredible compassion for them and empathy for them the second time you know yes you still have it by the 30th time you realize ah this person is keeping themselves stuck.

1:00:05And that's not to deny that some people have had objectively extremely difficult lives that are completely unfair. There is an element of unfairness and inequality that exists in the world. But the degree to which someone chooses to allow that to infiltrate their identity shapes the remainder of their life. And so we refer to this attribute as autonomy. Do people feel like they're in control of their lives. Now that doesn't mean that you can control every aspect of your life because we cannot. We can't control the weather. We can't control what people think of us. We can't control what other people think or do.

1:00:42But it's the degree to which you choose to focus on what you can control. Because here's what's so interesting. These people tend to focus on what is outside of their control because they have low autonomy. They do not feel personally powerful. But what happens when you're only focusing on things outside of your control? How do you feel?

1:01:03Lost, struggle bus, uncertain, a lot of uncertainty. A lot of uncertainty. And we know the brain loves certainty. And we also feel powerless. Why do we feel powerless? Because we literally are powerless. And so you're creating an environment where you are focusing on things that make you feel like you have no power. So then you don't take action because you do not have power in those areas. And this is what we see, this negative spiral of people who get stuck by their own psychology. And so it comes down to what's called locus of control. Locus coming from the Latin loci, which means location.

1:01:43And it's where do you place control in your life? Do you feel like you have some degree of control? Or do you feel like it's all out of your hands? Life is unfair. Other people call the shots. My boss, the economy, the government. granted a lot of things are outside of our control but the extent to which you focus on them shapes the quality of your life so what we see here is people who feel like they don't have control they stay in their comfort zone because it's much easier to stay safe not take action because you tell yourself what's the point even if i try nothing ever changes for me but that is a fallacy that's a lie and it's a lie that you keep creating in your reality because when you tell yourself that you don't take action to change things so nothing changes the other thing we see here is people who stay in jobs that are completely wrong for them but they say oh but i've already invested 10 years of my life into the 20 years of my life i can't move it would be a waste it's a sunk cost fallacy we see this in relationships of people who are genuinely in the wrong relationship but they say no but i've invested seven years married to this person i I can't throw it all away.

1:02:53And it comes down to this idea of hard. There's this term or this meme that's been going around, choose your hard. So the idea is, you know, marriage is hard. Divorce is hard. Choose your hard. Being fit is hard. Being unfit is hard. Choose your hard. It all comes down to what you prioritize. Something is inevitably going to be hard, whether you deal with the hard thing right now, or you put it off, put it off, put it off, and then have to deal with a life of regret or a life of missed opportunity. So autonomy is recognizing I can only control what's in my control and I'm going to focus here. I'm not going to complain about things because super interestingly what we know from the literature especially research on neuroscience looking at the brain when we complain about something that has happened to us we are reactivating the same parts of the brain that were active when we went through that initial experience.

1:03:47So we are reliving it in vivid detail, which means we are feeling the same negative emotions in vivid detail. And the more we do that, we are creating a default pattern in our brain that reminds us life is so hard for us. People have it out for us. And it makes complaining more default. And then you become a negativity magnet. Because we know what it's like when we're around someone who complains a lot. We suddenly stop wanting to spend time with them. Unless we also complain. and then it's like oh you think that's bad let me tell you about my life and then we see these people attracting other complainers and then they get a sense of satisfaction by validating how difficult each other's lives are does that give them any incentive to change nope and you're undermining your self-trust you're not taking the action that's going to change your life so what do you do the reason why we do this often because we lack the agent or the autonomy me, but also because we see discomfort as a sign that things are not working out for us.

1:04:50See, too hard. Never for me. Good things never come my way. But if we lean into that discomfort, recognize that's what the brain is doing. It's releasing those brain-derived neurotropic factors that feel uncomfortable, but that's how we learn. That's how we change our lives. So the simplest thing you could do here, if you feel like you're stuck in your comfort zone, is to practice what we call micro braveries. Micro braveries. So it's like micro dosing hard moments. You don't get better at anything unless you do that thing. You don't get stronger at the gym unless you do the reps. You don't get better at the guitar unless you actually practice the guitar.

1:05:27You don't get better at dealing with discomfort unless you practice dealing with discomfort. So you need to identify something in your life that you're holding back from. Let me use the example of social awkwardness, which surprisingly is really common. People feel very awkward in social situations, networking events, even barbecues, meeting new people. There are a lot of people who do not enjoy this. I wouldn't say you're one of them, Sean. You don't strike me as that kind of person. I feel like you love people and meeting new people. But this is something a lot of people resonate with, so they don't do it.

1:05:59They opt out of the networking event. they opt out of the social gathering, they stay safe. So what's really valuable is to go, okay, if I don't like talking to new people, I'm going to set the smallest possible goal to micro dose hard. What does that mean? Next time I get in an Uber, beyond just, hi, how are you? Good, thanks. How are you? I'm going to ask, how was your day? And then just have a little three minute conversation. When you do that, you show yourself, okay, that was uncomfortable, but I did it. Brilliant. The more times you do that, you become desensitized to it. This is how phobias are dealt with.

1:06:34So Pete, let's say you have a phobia of spiders. Do you like spiders? Arachnophobia. I saw the movie John Goodman, shout out to STL. I don't mess with spiders like that. No. Don't visit Australia. So let's say - I heard they're like people-sized out there. People-sized. No, thankfully not that big, but they are pretty gnarly and scary looking. So let's say you have a fear of spiders, which it seems like maybe you do. If it was a genuine fear that was preventing you from leaving your house, what psychologists would do, who are experts in this space, would go through a process of what's called systematic desensitization.

1:07:05They need to expose your brain to this thing in small doses until your brain starts to acknowledge, okay, I'm safe. I'm alive. This thing is not worth the fear that I'm giving it. So you'd come into a room, they'd show you a photo of a spider on the other side of the room. Just a photo. You might have that instant fear response, but then after five minutes, it dissipates. Okay, then you move to round two. The next day or the next week, you come in and it's a video of a spider. Fear response eventually dissipates. The next stage, it's a spider in a little plastic cage on the other side of the room.

1:07:39Next one, it's a little bit closer. By the time you've done this enough times, the spider's on your hand and you're desensitized to it. Systematic desensitization. We can do the same thing when it comes to anything that we're avoiding. You're making the choice to take the action, focusing on what you can control, starting small. So using that example in the Uber, that's your first step. The next one is, okay, well now I'm going to say hello to the guy at the, you know, the barista at the cafe and ask him how he's going, ask him about his weekend. Then I'm going to have a conversation with people in the office, in the kitchen.

1:08:10Then I'm going to say something in the meeting. Then I'm going to have a, you just slowly build. And it's incredibly powerful when you do this because you're showing yourself, hey, I can take ownership. I can take action. This thing that I'm afraid of is not happening. And it builds your autonomy. Now we move to the second part of autonomy. Sean, you touched on this earlier when we were talking about agency. The fact that everyone has experienced hard things in life. Hardships, challenge, genuine suffering. Everyone has experienced it. And some people have experienced a lot more than others. But there are also some people who choose to then identify themselves by those sufferings.

1:08:50It's called a contamination story, right? So there was a researcher by the name of Dan McAdams, Dr. Daniel McAdams, and he has spent over 40 years studying what's called narrative identity. What is that? When you speak to anybody, when you're alone with your thoughts, there is a kind of narrative that you are telling about yourself, about who you are, about your role in the world. And that's called your narrative identity. And there are two types of narrative identities. One of them is where you've had a lot of challenges in your life and you identify with those challenges. They are you. They reflect that you have no power.

1:09:31People always treat you poorly. My life is so much difficult, more difficult than other people. They have contaminated your identity and they don't make you feel powerful. They don't make you feel empowered and you stay stuck. The other type is called a redemptive story where it's like, yeah, okay, I've experienced a lot of hardship and it has made me stronger. It has taught me what not to do. It has given me an impetus to go and help other people who were in that same situation. You're redeeming yourself from that story, learning to grow from it. There is, you know, we've heard of PTSD, post-traumatic stress, which often happens after a highly traumatic experience.

1:10:11But what we don't talk about enough is its opposite, post-traumatic growth. 53 % of people who experience trauma in their lives experience post-traumatic growth. They don't suffer from it. They choose to grow from it. And what researchers have found is there is one quality they demonstrate that allows them to grow from it. Any idea what that one quality might be? It wasn't what I expected. It's actually curiosity. Curiosity. When you choose to be curious about your experience, what happened? Why did it happen? Where did it happen? What did I feel as a result of that happening? What was going on for that person?

1:10:50What was going on for me? How has it changed my life? Suddenly you're not in the experience. You're almost observing it. It's a form of metacognition where you start becoming aware of your thoughts. and it's incredibly powerful when you do this because one of the things that i talk about actually if i take a bigger view of all of this self-doubt insecurity you are not your thoughts and you don't have to believe everything your mind tells you to but the only way you can do that is to stop living in your thoughts and start observing your thoughts and this is one way to do it. So if anyone listening or watching feels like they have a little bit of a contamination story, something bad happened to them, unfairly, and they keep reliving that experience, and it's coming through in their interactions and they keep sharing that story, there's this powerful process called narrative.

1:11:43It's based on narrative therapy. It's narrative re-identification. You're retelling the story to yourself. You're editing your story. That doesn't mean you change the facts. You can't change history. What's happened has happened. But you can choose to focus on what you learned, how you grew and how you're using that to create a better life going forward. And it's again, it's so simple, but it comes down to some of the words that we use. A lot of people will say, this always happens to me. I always end up with a toxic partner or I'm always manipulated. That's a sign of a contamination story. you would flip it and you'd say there have been times in the past where I have been manipulated and treated poorly but I am learning to value myself and I know that I teach people how to treat me based on what I'm willing to tolerate so I'm not willing to tolerate that anymore and you see how you've taken something which is negative and victimizing yourself and flipped it into something where you are honoring your growth and your capacity to get better so that's one always and never are classic giveaways.

1:12:50The other one that comes through. So Sean, how do you feel if I were to say to you, oh, you should do this. You should do that. You should do that. Chill. Oh yeah? Yeah, yeah. Chill. Like, hey, hey, hey. Yeah. Leave me be. Yeah. I know that we can have some things lost in translation. It's like chill, like ease up off me. Totally. Exactly. Because we don't like being told what we should do. And we have a negative default reaction, which is called reactance, where we become really defensive. And sometimes we want to rebel against that. And it happens in relationships. It happens when we're telling our kids what they should do.

1:13:27They react, no, and they have a tantrum, whatever it is. And it happens when we're telling ourselves what we should do as well. People who struggle with autonomy will live in, I should have done this. I should do that. And it doesn't make them feel empowered. It strips away possibility. Researchers found there is one word you can flip. Instead of should, say to yourself, could. What could I do? And so what's helpful, I always encourage people to grab a piece of paper, divide it into two equal columns. On the left, write I could at the top, that's your heading, and you write your I could list. All the things that you could do in the current moment when you feel powerless, when you feel like things are out of your control.

1:14:09Well, I could do this, I could call that person. I guess I could do that. I could send that email. You're not committing to anything yet. You're just reminding yourself there are options here. And then you move to your I will list. What are the one, two or three things, the smallest possible things that you've listed that you will take action on? And what's incredible is that term could opens up divergent thinking, increases possibility and solution finding, and then I will re-engages the parts of the brain responsible for action. And you remind yourself, no matter how bad things get, there's always something I can do.

1:14:44Amazing. That's autonomy. Amazing. Amazing. We're at the fourth of these four attributes. We are. So acceptance, agency, autonomy. What's the fourth? The fourth one is entirely related to emotions. Because if you were to think about any kind of experience of self-doubt you've had, any kind, and you strip all the emotion out of that, suddenly all you're left with is some thoughts. But they have no emotional energy behind them, so you can rationally process them. You can ask, is this true? Do I need to believe this? What is evidence to the contrary? So emotion is actually what makes self-doubt damaging and makes it so incredibly powerful and have such a chokehold on us.

1:15:28So if we can get better at navigating and harnessing the emotions that come with life and with self-doubt, everything becomes easier. We call this attribute adaptability. So it's being able to adapt to your emotions. So I'm going to really quickly just share a few signs that you might be struggling here. one of them is that it's called low frustration tolerance where little things that ordinarily shouldn't bother you suddenly start really bothering you so you're you're in the middle of a tech or you're doing an audio this happens to me i'm doing voice to text to my husband and i finish the voice to text and i read it and all the words are wrong and i get really irritated it's not even a big deal but i have low frustration tolerance or you're having a conversation with someone on the phone and the phone line keeps cutting out and you get very, very irritated.

1:16:20You're in traffic. Someone cuts you off. They didn't see you, but you get very irritated. So your tolerance for little frustrations is very low. That's a sign you're struggling with adaptability. And that can fuel all of your self-doubt. The other one would be, we call it meta-emotions. So it's where you might feel anxious about something. And then suddenly you go, hold on, I'm Sean why am I feeling anxious about this this is ridiculous and then you start getting angry at your anxiety and then you feel guilty for getting angry at your anxiety because you've done so much work to develop your emotional self what's going on so it's an emotion related to an emotion related to an emotion and it doesn't help us and a lot of highly intelligent people experience this because we try to rationalize everything so there's a few signs there what we know though is that your body and your brain are intricately connected and they fuel your thoughts, which fuel your emotions.

1:17:17When you're feeling insecure, when you're feeling full of doubt, when you're questioning things, what does your body typically do, Sean? I mean, maybe not your body, because you've probably done so much work on this, but what would someone's body typically do? If they're feeling insecure, their self-doubt, they're doubting themselves, their ability, their worth. I think there'd be symptoms of like lethargy, fatigue. It depends on the person, but they might feel a certain part of their body, just kind of pressure or, you know, a sense of like, maybe it's in their chest. You know, maybe that's kind of feeling of anxiety or, you know, maybe tension.

1:17:58I can go on and on. I think it expresses different in different people. But yeah, we would feel it physically for sure. And what, in terms of physiology and posture, what often happens to our posture? Yep. We're going to be kind of slumped over. We're going to be, you know, kind of kyphotic and maybe our head is down. Yes. Yeah. These are all signals, cues that our body gives us because it's trying to keep us safe. It's trying to withdraw and be small because then we're protected. It can also happen when we don't feel like we're enough, and so we don't feel like we're worthy to take up space. So we try and take up less space.

1:18:37Now, because of the connection between brain and body, this reinforces that, yes, there is some kind of threat in our environment that we need to be protected from. So your body does it by default. It reinforces how you feel, which then reinforces what you're doing, and we become a self-fulfilling prophecy. So one of the simplest things you can do if you notice yourself experiencing doubt is ask, what is my posture doing? What is my posture? And sit a little bit more upright, stand a little bit more upright. Now, I was really fascinated because we've heard of this before, right? Expansive body posture.

1:19:09There is a behavioral feedback mechanism that happens. But I was really interested to understand what is it about posture that is affecting how we feel and making us feel more confident and more powerful when we stand upright. and I had a look at a lot of meta-analyses and I had a look at some research and there was a study that was published very recently and they identified there was one main mechanism. It's not your shoulders, it's not necessarily all of your spine, it's one part and it's called neck flexion. Sean, if you and everyone listening, if you put your chin down to your neck, sorry chin to chest and I want you to just feel that joint at the back of your neck, so put your chin down you're going to feel a bone sticking out and then bring it back up and then do it one more time this is actually a good stretch anyway bring your chin down to chest feel that bone bring it back up what you just did now that's called neck flexion and the distance between your chin and chest is the determining factor for how you feel when you withdraw the first thing to drop is not your shoulders it's your head and then everything follows so you don't even have to think about posture in those moments you just think what is the distance between my chin and my chest and how do I elongate?

1:20:21That doesn't mean looking at the ceiling. That's not going to help, but you want to have an elongated chin to chest ratio, right? That helps you feel more powerful in the moment. Second tip, if I were to grab a pen, which I don't have on me right now, and place it between my teeth like this, and I'm not going to, thank you for offering your pen, but I'm not going to put it between my teeth like this. All right. And if everyone listening, if you've got a pen, make sure it's clean do that stick it between your teeth what would happen in about 30 or 40 seconds is you would start to feel a little happier why is that it's because the shape you're making with your face is the same that you do when you're smiling and because of that feedback mechanism by activating the same parts of your face you're activating the same parts of your brain and because we have so many pathways linked to smiling and happiness you start to feel a little more calm, a little more at ease, a little happier.

1:21:15But what is often the first thing to go when we're insecure? It's our face. We frown, we drop, we become tense. So all this to say that thoughts are important, but also what your body is doing is important too. And so if you can remind yourself, okay, what are my thoughts doing? I don't have to believe everything I think. And then the next step, what is my body doing? How do I just have a little bit more of an expansive posture, no matter where I am, who I'm talking with, what stage I'm speaking on, you are going to feel a lot more composed. And it's, again, just a very simple thing we can do to help build our sense of big trust and our trust in ourselves.

1:21:53Fire. So good. So good. Thank you for that affirmation as well. Just, it's another reminder of how our psychology and our biology are intimately connected, right and sometimes having that outside in change really can make a difference and so just being able to have that cure for cue for all of us to just have the introspection when we're not feeling quite right what's my body doing right now and chances are you're gonna find like wait a minute and be able to adjust yes right so especially i mean how do we look on our devices oh right the pose that we're firstly it's terrible for your neck the amount of weight that you're carrying So many turtles out here.

1:22:34So many. And that pose of looking down, you are re-instilling within you a low power pose, which is going to influence how you feel. Even if you weren't feeling insecure to start with, if you sit like this for enough time, you'll probably start to feel a little bit less confident than you did to start. Amazing. This is just scratching the surface as well of what's in Big Trust. The book is available now everywhere books are sold. Pick up a copy. It's a delightful read. Incredibly insightful. I have half the book highlighted, by the way, incredible insights. And I love that you're affirming things with these various stories and studies as well.

1:23:11And you're not, as we even experienced today, you're not holding back at all on the tactical stuff too. So we have these big ideas, but then here's what we can do about them. And so it's like sprinkled throughout the entire book. So definitely pick up a copy. And also there's an assessment that I took in the book as well, but people can get access to that for free. How do people get access to that? So these four attributes, they combine in each of us to create almost like a Myers-Briggs or a DISC style archetype. We have a doubt profile. And once you know your doubt profile, you can determine where am I weak and what do I need to focus on?

1:23:47Because no matter what you do in life, if any one of these is weak, you are always going to struggle. So it's incredibly insightful. We have it in the beginning of the book, but we did make it available. and you can actually even if you have the book go and do it online because you get a pdf report that is personalized to you to help you determine okay where are my weaknesses what does this look like what does it sound like so you have your pathway to step forward in the right direction and know what to focus on if you go to doubtprofile.com that's doubtprofile.com you can do it there it's 12 questions it's based on a psychometrically validated tool So it's really robust and it will give you your breakdown across the four attributes.

1:24:28Highly recommend that. Amazing. Totally free. Totally free. Awesome. Yeah. Thank you for making that available. And thank you for doing this work. You know, just also, of course, you share more of your story as well, but just the journey that you've been on and to see, you're not just talking from aspirational things. Like you have firsthand experience of like pivoting and going into these new fields and like figuring stuff out and then sharing these delightful insights. So I appreciate you so much. This has been awesome. Thank you, Sean. I appreciate you. Thank you for the opportunity to come on.

1:24:58And I want to say thank you to everyone listening and watching for investing the time in yourself to be here, because that is a huge testament to the fact that you are on this journey of growth. And next time someone says to you, you've changed, respond with, thanks for noticing. I'm listening to Sean's podcast. Boom, let's go. Sade, thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you so much for tuning into this episode today. I hope that you got a lot of value out of this. If you did, you already know what to do. Share the inspiration, share the education with somebody that you care about. Make the good stuff go viral.

1:25:29All right, so share this out on social media. You can take a screenshot and share this with your community on social media. You can send this directly from the podcast app that you're listening on. Share your voice. If you're watching on Spotify, we got Spotify video now. Leave a comment below and share your voice. Share your biggest aha moment or biggest takeaway or your experience in this conversation around self-image. And of course, if you're listening on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, Google Play, wherever you're listening, again, you can send this directly to somebody that you care about. And as it said, sharing is caring.

1:26:06All right. So I appreciate you so much. And listen, we are just getting warmed up. We've got so many incredible masterclasses and world leading experts coming your way very, very soon. So make sure to stay tuned. Take care. Have an amazing day. And I'll talk with you soon.