Dr. Eugene Choi: How to Rewire Your Mind to Become a Higher Performance Leader #236

Hello, hello everyone. This is your host, Akhil Jabbar, and welcome back to another episode of SaaS District. In today's episode, we'll be talking about how to rewire your mind to become a high performer. Today we have our guest, Dr. Eugene K. Choi, joining us. Dr. Eugene Choi is a transformational leadership coach who helps leaders perform at their very best in high-pressure environments. So he created a science-based process that teaches entrepreneurs how to activate their executive brain for better clarity, focus, and results. He has expertise in clinical pharmacy, neuroscience, and business coaches, and he has helped support thousands of entrepreneurs and executives in improving their mindset and reducing toxic stress in order to perform better in their business. So we'll talk all about that today. So welcome, Dr. Eugene Choi, to the show. Super excited to have you.

Yeah, thank you so much for having me. Great to be here.

Yeah, so I, I loved your story. I know you're not the typical guest. We typically talk to SaaS founders, but, you know, myself as a petroleum engineer, I've made the shift to, you know, being an entrepreneur almost 10 years ago. Um, and I love these stories, right? Complete shifts in identities. Uh, your background, you went from being a pharmacist, uh, to now being coaching high-level entrepreneurs. So, you know, first of all, maybe you could just share a little bit what made you switch paths, um, and what problem did you see entrepreneurs facing that, you know, they needed to improve their They basically become, you know, more high performance in their mindsets.

Yeah, no, that's a great question. And I'm sure you understand too, as an entrepreneur, it wasn't just one shift. It was many, many transitions. You know, I went from being a pharmacist to a full-time filmmaker with a company called Jubilee Media. Uh, that taught me about marketing without realizing I was learning about marketing, creating multiple pieces of viral content. Uh, I eventually was in leadership as well. I was a supervisor as a pharmacist for 6 major hospitals and 250 clinics in the LA County area in California. And long story short, that's kind of what I realized. It's just like, hey, like, especially as I was in the leadership space, it was kind of like running a company too, right? Like as a founder, you know, you run into so many challenges and there's a lot of high pressure, high stakes. You're stressed out all the time. And I was thinking about that and there's a lot of drama, unnecessary politics, all that kind of stuff. So how do you really perform at your best when you're stressed out, when you're tired, when there's a lot of 10,000 things that you need to get done that day. And that's what led me down this path of learning about neuroscience. And that's what I've been sharing ever since with my leaders is like, how do you really perform at your best, especially in these high stress, high stakes environments? And that's what I've been sharing ever since. And that's kind of how I, my healthcare background came full circle is I can speak science and my filmmaking background helped me explain it in a simple way that's easy to understand so that it doesn't sound confusing.

Love it. So, we're gonna go deeper into some of the neuroscience and your background. We'd love to understand more. So, you talk a lot about how sometimes when we're stuck in our day-to-day, our brains get stuck into survival mode, right? When there's just so much going on, you're putting out fires, you're dealing with a lot of things in your business. As an entrepreneur working on your business, specifically here, we're talking with SaaS founders. What does that mean? And how can we shift out of it? How do we get into survival mode? How do we know we're in survival mode? And then how do we, you know, sit with it and get out of it?

Yeah, that's a great question. So the main thing to know about the brain, it's your brain is only, and your nervous system, whole nervous system is only in one of 2 states. It's what's called a survival state or what I call an executive state. Okay. So survival state is the part of your brain where basically it turns on when your life feels threatened. Imagine a hungry tiger in front of you about to eat you. The key thing to understand about survival mode though, is your brain can't think. Remember, it thinks it's about to die. So if there's a hungry tiger in front of you and you sit there and start thinking, it might be too late. So this is why it's a function of your brain not to think in those moments, and you're reacting without thinking. So then we do the same thing when it's not a physical threat, but it feels like an emotional threat, a deadline you have to meet, a hard conversation you have to have. So because our brains are not thinking in that moment, we don't make the best decisions in those moments. This is when we, you know, when people crash under pressure and things like that. Your executive state is the part of your brain that turns on where you can access a lot of your brain's higher functions. We're talking things like critical thinking skills, your creativity, your ability to have empathy, to connect with someone, to build that trust comes from this part of your brain. And the list goes on and on, your ability to make good decisions. But here's the thing, like you're asking, how do we know what it is? How do we get out of it? Your brain can only be in one or the other. It's either in survival state or in an executive state, you're accessing those higher functions of your brain or you're not. So but the research shows that for a majority of our adult lives, we're in the survival state. So we're not accessing our critical thinking skills. We're not accessing our creativity. We're not accessing our empathy. So the question becomes, why is that? The reason for this is the research shows that emotional pain can be just as painful as physical pain.

Hmm.

So what does this mean? How do you know you're in survival state? How often in your life do you feel not great? How often? Anything that doesn't feel good. anxiety, frustration, anger, depression, you're worrying about something, you're scared of something, it's— you're probably in a survival state when you're feeling that. So, that's the main thing is, and this is how we feel majority of our adult lives, don't we? We don't— a lot of us don't wake up in the morning going, I feel great. So, that's the thing to pay attention to first. So, how do you get out of it? The first thing is just we need to be very aware of what survival state actually looks like. Is this making sense so far?

Yeah, it makes perfect sense. Yep.

So then how do you know what survival state looks like? If you can do this really well, I can promise you, you will start experiencing the benefits over it. Like, it might be subtle in the beginning, and might— you might notice little differences in the beginning. But over time, you'll notice, whoa, I'm performing at a whole other level now. The stress isn't affecting me as much, the pressure is not affecting me as much. So, the first thing I train all of my leaders in is what a survival state actually looks like. So, your brain only knows how to do one of 3 things when it's in survival mode, okay? It's fight, flight, or freeze. And remember, these are things you're doing without thinking. You react without thinking.

Mm-hmm.

So, we need to understand what that looks like on a daily basis because it's affecting us every day of our lives and we're not accessing our brain's higher functions because of it. So, In a life-threatening situation, it's very obvious. You might pick up a weapon to fight, you might run for your life in flight, or you might play dead and freeze. Because, uh, possums, for example, the animal, they play dead because their predators like their food alive.

Exactly.

So, what does emotional survival look like? If you get really good at being able to pay attention to this on a daily basis, you're actually going to turn on the higher functions of your brain. So, what does fight look like? Fight can look like if you get into an argument. Someone said something, your feelings are hurt. Now your brain in survival mode is viewing that person as a threat. What do we do? We attack them, usually verbally, hopefully not physically. Unfortunately, that does happen for some people, but you're fighting. Your brain's going, this person is a threat. I need to fight and attack them. So the horrible part is, you know, we do that to people we love when we get angry, right? Our brain goes into fight mode and we verbally attack them a lot. So fight mode, that's what it looks like. Sometimes it's physical fights. A lot of people get into physical fights as well. But then where it gets more subtle is what about the fight to work harder to prove yourself? The fight to get acknowledged, the fight to get attention? That's still a fight response. Most people don't know they're in it.

Is that a fight with yourself?

People think, oh, I'm just— yeah, that's— your brain is going into fight mode. Because yeah, there's something about yourself that you carry that is causing you to go into this survival state. For a lot of us, it's a perspective we carry about ourselves, a belief we care about ourselves. Why would we feel the need to prove ourselves unless the way we view ourselves in that moment is already not a great perspective? Oh, I'm a loser. I don't have what it takes. You know what I mean? We have these beliefs we carry and we go into fight mode. So that's something to pay attention to because as founders, as entrepreneurs, we love the fight mode. And we think that's what's helping us be productive. But I can guarantee you, it's— you're only tapping into a small, a small percentage of your, your potential. So that's something to pay attention to. One story I often share is like, I had this, um, business owner, this leader, and he was sharing with me— he was in his 60s now— he's going, Eugene, why am I— even though he got everything he wanted, he had the beautiful home, the multi-million dollar business, the successful business, all that— why am I still feeling so anxious and stressed all And we're going over the fight response. And he's realizing, whoa, I've been in a fight mode my whole life. Because he's been trying to prove to people he's better than his older brother. His older brother was an NFL football player, right? A professional football player. And my client was telling me a memory that when he was in high school, his football coach said to him, don't even bother, like, you're not going to ever be as good as your brother.

Mm-hmm.

When you feel that pain, we go into fight mode, we work harder. So people think that if you know people who overwork, that's that could be a fight response going on, and it always leads to burnout, and it always leads to a lack of fulfillment. At some point you will crack. At some point you will burn out if you haven't already. So this is why it's important to be able to look at it, right? People who are impulsive can be in a fight mode. People who interrupt you a lot can be in a fight mode. The people who always have to have the last word, and people who fight to be. right all the time. You ever meet that kind of person?

Of course.

They always have to be right.

Of course.

They have some sort of insecurity about being wrong. You see what I'm saying? They have some sort of fight mode on. So the better we can spot this, the better you're able to tap into these higher functions of yourself. So, um, that's something to think about too, because when you're in a fight mode, your brain goes into tunnel vision. So remember, if a tiger's— imagine a tiger walks into your room right now. Are you going to look anywhere else but where the tiger is. So the problem with that is when we're in our fight mode as an entrepreneur, as a leader, as a business owner, what if— because of your tunnel vision that you go into, what if you're not able to see the opportunity, the idea that could have helped your business, the solution that you needed? So this is why— and this is why if you ever had that experience, you're in the shower and all of a sudden you had an aha moment, it's because your body is relaxing and you're getting out of your tunnel vision. Is this making sense? Right? So it does.

Yeah.

This, this is very, very important to pay attention to. Flight mode is also another one, right? Flight mode could be literally avoiding someone, right? You're fleeing from them, whether it's, I don't know, maybe it's an ex or someone you don't like, or a boss that you didn't like, whoever it is. One story I share too is just like, I grew up in New York City where I'm from. And my friend and I went to high school in New York City, we had to take the subway. I remember going towards the subway and you see one of these like Asian Korean ladies with a stack of Papers. They want to hand you pamphlets. Yeah, and we're trying to avoid her, but we see her coming towards us. We're already in a flight mode, right? And you know, she's handing out pamphlets because she wants to convince you to go to her church. And because we're Asian, she wants to talk to us too, and we're all Korean. So she asks us in Korean, "Oh, 한국분이에요," which means "Are you Korean?" And my friend, remember, in flight mode—we're in flight mode—we're reacting without thinking. So he responds to the lady, "안녕," which means "No." But he just responded in the same language. He just said no in Korean. So as founders, we can make stupid mistakes like that. When you're in a survival state, you react without thinking. We've all had these moments, right? Where we make a stupid mistake without thinking.

For sure.

So flight mode also gets very deep. Flight mode are things like when we numb ourselves. There's no judgment around this, but it's important to think about. We numb ourselves because there's a feeling we don't like and we're trying to get rid of that feeling. We're trying to avoid the feeling. So, some people numb ourselves by overeating food, overwatch, like binge-watching Netflix, whatever it is, TV, alcohol, sex, drugs, to the point where it even becomes an addiction.

Right.

And, there's no judgment around it, which judgment is a fight mode, by the way. I'm insecure about myself, so I'm fighting to try to put you down to try to make me feel better about myself. So, it's important to also look at our flight mode when we numb ourselves. It prevents us from accessing these higher functions of our brain. And that's the main thing, right? It's we need to be able to pay attention and understand what that is. Procrastination is also another flight response. You see, there's so many things, right? Freeze mode is when we just don't take action. You ever wake up in the morning, you didn't want to get out of bed?

You don't want to do anything.

It also happens when you hear— correct. You might hear some traumatic news, your body freezes. When you're in shock, you freeze. You know why? One interesting thing I learned about this, I was like, holy crap, there's— that means there's no such thing as laziness. People might judge someone saying that person's lazy, but in their brain, there's probably some sort of like big freeze response that's been going on in their life because of whatever it is, right? An experience they had or something happened to them. And we go into that freeze mode. And I think we do that as business owners too, right? When we just stop, we don't make decisions because we're afraid, we're scared, and we don't take action when we should take action. So that's the most important thing is how aware are you of your own fight, flight, freeze responses? The better you get at this, the more power you give yourself to be able to tap into your executive state. Because how do you have— imagine you have a piece of broccoli stuck between your teeth. How do you have the power to remove it unless it comes to your awareness? Right?

Exactly.

You need to be able to see it in the mirror or someone points it out. So awareness is the most important first step.

Right.

And this is the first recommendation I make to every single person that asks me, how do I tap into that higher level of performance? Take your awareness seriously, go deep down the rabbit hole, pay attention, figure out what your own fight, flight, freeze responses are.

Love it. So we'll go deeper into the awareness side and the steps that you mentioned. I want to understand a little bit more on the fight side, which you talk about getting into that tunnel vision. But isn't that what also drives us and what drives a lot of leads to that success, that gives us that adrenaline to get up in the morning and just gets us through to push through and, like I said, work those long hours. And, you know, a lot of people do get success from that. And maybe, like you said, it works, but it might not be sustainable. But I'm curious to know maybe why, you know, there's a negative side of that, because there's a positive to it.

Well, your fight response is really meant for short-term only. But a lot of us live in it long-term. It's going to damage your body. Because your body literally thinks it's about to die. What's happening when your body thinks it's about to die? Your heart's working faster, it's beating harder, your lungs are breathing more, and energy is being moved away from your digestive system and into your muscles so that it can try to survive from a physical threat. This is why a lot of people who are stressed all the time have digestion issues.

Right.

It's because your body's not digesting the food because it thinks it's about to die even though you're eating the food. So, it's very important to think about this. So, at a high level, Well, think about this for a second. I had a client that kind of like you're asking me right now, like you need this fight response sometimes, don't you? Right. And he was arguing with me because it's like, look, he hit rock bottom. His second wife was leaving him because his second wife was cheating on him and his first wife cheated on him too. He has little kids. The, the judge already ruled that he still has to pay child support, like over $2,000 a month of child support. Hmm. And he ran out of money. He had no money left. So he said, hey, I needed to keep my head down, put my shoulder up, bash through wall, brick wall after brick wall to get to where I did. He had to work really hard because he built a successful business. He's like, I needed that fight response. And my question to him, this is just a thought exercise because what happened happened, right? It makes sense. You know, sometimes you need to just power through. I get it. But what if, because we're better at being in our executive state, The question I was asking you, what if those concrete walls you said you had to bash through, if for one moment, even if it's for a moment, because you get into your executive state, you might be able to see something you didn't see, such as what if those concrete walls you said you had to bash through were only 3 feet wide, but because you're in your tunnel vision, it feels like it's the only option.

Hmm.

There would have been better options, faster ways to do things, easier ways. You ever meet those people? Like, why don't you do it this better way? They're like, no, I'm just used to doing it the way I do it. They're in their tunnel vision. When we get into our executive state, if you ever hear that saying, work smarter, not harder, you develop the ability to work smarter. Because otherwise, when you're in your fight mode, you're just working harder all the time. It's a recipe for burnout.

Yeah. Like, you know, yeah. Is, you know, you mentioned about, you know, having digestion issues, you have other, you know, your adrenaline spiking. Is that the cortisol kind of also spiking in your body? That's, you know, you're maintaining high cortisol.

Cortisol spiking.

Yeah.

You're maintaining high cortisol. Ask anyone, any medical professional, what's What does high level of steroid long-term exposure do to your body? It kills your immune system. You get sick. If you look at the word disease, I'm sure many people heard this before too. If you separate the words, it's dis-ease, right? Like you're feeling dis-ease. All of that stress and nervousness makes your body actually thinks it's a life-threatening thing. So, it goes into a state of survival immediately. Hmm.

And what, what about that last piece, which you talked about, which is freeze? You know, that one's a little bit, I'm, I'm less maybe familiar with. Why would, uh, you know, many smart, hardworking people, uh, you know, feel stuck? Is it because they feel overwhelmed? Is it because they're, they're blocked? Like what, what blocks them from, is it that they're just like not clear on how to move forward?

Yeah. When you feel overwhelmed, you freeze. Mm-hmm. So you, some, for some people it's, they freeze and they just stop. They just stop doing the thing and then, they might go into flight mode and then maybe turn on TV or whatever it is, right? Yeah, freeze is when we prevent, when we don't make the decisions that are important to make, we just stop, right? And then we might go into a different mode, like a flight mode, right? We procrastinate, or we look at something else, distract ourselves with something else. So a freeze response is still a survival response. If you ever see like the war movies, right? I know this is kind of like a grim picture, but like, you ever see the scenes where like, the person that's still alive, they see the enemy coming and they pretend to be one of the dead bodies. Yeah, that's a freeze response. You see what I'm saying? So, right. It's important to be aware of it too, because a lot of us just kind of freeze and we shut down, right? We don't make decisions. It happens a lot when we're depressed. We freeze, right? Just stop doing— we have no motivation, no inspiration anymore. And it's important to pay attention to that sometimes.

Absolutely. What's maybe one common thing that you see among entrepreneurs that they do every day that maybe holds them back from stepping into that, you know, executive, you know, mindset, executive function, higher, higher performing mindset, and they don't even realize it? Like you said, a lot of the time it's unawareness, but what's maybe a common thing that you see among, among entrepreneurs?

A lot of entrepreneurs have, tend to have a big fight response component to them. Without even realizing the reason they work so hard has nothing to do with the outside, has everything to do with their inside, their inner world. They have trouble believing in themselves. They doubt themselves. They have a low opinion about themselves, a lower self-esteem, without even knowing that that's what they have. They think they're just, you know, some people seem like they have an ego, but deep down they're actually afraid. Do you get what I'm saying? Right. So that's what I see a lot. Um, and a lot of them also flee. So working harder can also be a flight response, by the way. Right. If things aren't going well at home, I'll just go distract myself with work.

A distraction.

At least that's quote unquote productive.

Is it a healthier distraction? I mean, better than, you know, drinking, binge watching, et cetera?

Well, think about it long-term, right? Like, I get it. Like in terms of your, producing work, right? And you're putting your energy towards something. But what happens long term, right? Things break apart if they— it's not sustainable to stay in that survival state.

Hmm.

So that's the thing to think about a lot is when you get into an executive state more often, you really can transition your mind from founder, like busy founder to CEO. Like you're able to get yourself out of the tunnel. you're not just putting out fires right now, you're also giving yourself space to look. I mean, that's what CEOs really are supposed to do. So you're looking 1 year down the line, 5 years down the line, 10 years down the line.

Right.

And you're able to cast vision, you're able to— if you ever notice the best leaders out there and CEOs out there, they're not reactive. They tend to be calm. Like there could be a huge fire, a huge problem in the business. But they just stay calm because they understand having that skill, because it is a skill. When you stay that calm, you're able to maintain these higher functions of your brain. See, a lot of entrepreneurs think they're high performing, but they're not. They're just in a fight mode. They're just great at being in a fight mode.

Right. But they don't know what they're, what they're missing because they're so used to it.

Yeah. But they always burn out. They always burn out. Yeah.

Eventually. So, you know, if somebody's listening today, they're either in fight, flight, or freeze, you know, one of these situations, but they want to perform at the higher level. They want to tap into that executive thinking you mentioned, you know, first step is, you know, step into awareness. How do we actually start with that? How do we start building that skill of becoming aware? And how do we sit with that and understand it? And then what are the, maybe the next steps from there and how to, how to build that skillset?

Yeah, it's having the courage to pay attention to your inner world. That's step 1, right? Because what happens when we're in survival, your focus goes on the outer world. Think about this. You go into a dark forest, you hear a scary noise. Where does your brain pay attention to, your outer world or your inner world? You're going to pay attention to your outer world going, where is that sound? Where's the threat? We do the same thing when we're stressed. We do the same thing when we're angry. We do the same thing when we're anxious. Your brain keeps focusing on the outside. Oh, it's because of this thing with the business that's happening. That's why I'm anxious. That's why I'm stressed. That's not true. There's a reason why this feeling is coming up. When you get better at paying attention to that, because it's causing you to get into survival, get better at paying attention. Am I in survival state or an executive state right now? How do you know? What's the easiest way to tell? Does it feel comfortable? If it feels uncomfortable, you're probably in a survival state right now. You're stressed, you're anxious, you're worried. That's survival state. And then, uh, your awareness needs to go deeper. You pay attention.

Oh.

Is this a fight response? Is it a flight response or a freeze response that I tend to go into? Oh, I procrastinated. Oh, that's a flight response. So you get to know your programming really well. That's awareness is number one. Next, once you get better at being more aware, you can actually get training. You can learn how to handle your fight, flight, freeze responses. It doesn't mean it doesn't happen anymore. You just get better at dealing with it. Because it's always going to be there. We need this survival state, actually. It's what kept us alive all these years. Right, as a species. So that's the thing to think about. The better you get aware— the, the problem is we keep turning on survival state when we don't actually need it, which is, is your life in danger right now? Physical danger? If it's not, you don't need the survival state. But if you're in survival state, it's probably screwing you over in some way without you realizing it. I can pretty much guarantee that now. So the training part is understanding, well, look, by the time you're 35 years old, guess what? 90 to 95% of your brain it goes on autopilot. It goes subconscious.

Interesting.

So, you're thinking the same thoughts. We think about 70,000 thoughts a day. 90 to 95% of those thoughts are the same thoughts as the day before. A lot of these thoughts tend to be negative thoughts about ourselves. So, what state does that put us in? Survival or executive? Tends to put us in survival state.

Right.

So, all of these thoughts create feelings. So, your feelings can go on autopilot too. Because if you have a thought, there's electrical activity happening in your brain. Right? Like we can measure this. Your body conducts electricity, right? All of your all of your neurons, right? It's communicating with each other. It releases chemicals in between each of those cells. It makes its way. It's down those spinal cord. They're called neuropeptides, neurotransmitters for anyone who wants to know the terms. Makes its way down, hits one of your hormonal glands, and it releases the hormone, and that's the feeling you're feeling. So if you have an angry thought, eventually it communicates with your adrenal glands where. Your adrenaline starts coming out and you feel the anger when all that adrenaline is pumping out of your blood.

Hmm.

Because it thinks you're about to die. So, it needs that anger to try to survive. So, but your body can get used to those feelings, just like you can get addicted to a chemical drug. Your body gets addicted to feelings. So, imagine one morning you're like, hey, I don't feel my anger, because you're, you're, you're not thinking about things, right? That's making you angry. And your body's going, where's my anger? Because it's addicted to anger. So it pokes at your brain going, hey, can you give me some anger? So then you might think about something you feel angry about, right? Your situation, you're someone you don't like, and now you're feeling angry. And while you're feeling angry, your body's going, oh, that felt so good, I got my fix.

Hmm.

So we can get used to a feeling on autopilot too, right? If people like to complain a lot, you're used to the feeling of complaining. If you get— feel angry a lot, you're used to the— that's your normal. And then because of these feelings, if you're in survival, remember you're reacting.

Right.

You're not taking action. You're reacting without thinking to these things. And this is why people end up in this loop of like, why do I keep doing these things and I don't get out? Why can't— it's the programming. So, if you ever have that experience, I know I should do this. I know I should work out. I know I should eat healthier. I know I should probably look at my numbers for my business, right? But because I don't feel like doing it, I don't do it. That's your autopilot. Autopilot tends to win. So, as you get trained in understanding how to identify survival state, there's a lot of little tips and tricks on how to get yourself out of it in the moment. But, the training helps you also reprogram the long-term habits. What if you could change your autopilot so that you're not in survival state all the time?

Right.

And, you're in executive state more often. So, once you learn how to do that through— it starts with the awareness and learning a little bit more of the science like we're talking about today. Right? Helps you really get a grasp on that and you start being able to start changing some of that autopilot that happens in your brain.

And then from there, so, you know, you mentioned, okay, you get some kind of training. You know, I imagine when you get some training, you learn how to get out of it for a temporary period. But it's how do you maybe think about maybe rewiring? I don't know if it's rewiring your brain to achieve kind of the maximum mental performance. And then, you know, more importantly, how do you— is it okay? So you rewire your brain. It's like, okay, I want to maintain this, right? Because maybe I can feel it for one day. I know I'm angry. I'm upset about the situation. This happened. Okay. I just have to deal with it. I'm going to use my frustration, but like, I don't want to deal with this tomorrow because tomorrow something else is going to come up in my business or my life or my whatever. So I don't want to repeat this, this pattern of how I'm dealing with these problems. How do I, you know, build a, build my brain to be able to, I guess, rewire my brain to be able to maintain that consistently, no matter what happens. You know, I know meditation is, is maybe one skill that I've heard that helps. Meditation is huge. Yeah.

So there's, um, so basically that's the main work I do is now is showing people how do you rewire, right? So that it's not a short-term thing that you change. It becomes a long-term thing, right? So there's 3 research shows, there's 3 things that promote neuroplasticity, which is your brain's ability to rewire itself, right? Which it can till your dying breath. Uh, so meditation is a huge one. That's something I do with my, uh, recommended my clients a lot. There's actual technology. that can measure your brainwaves while you're meditating to show you if you're in survival state or executive state so that it teaches you what it feels like, right? So, meditation is one. Aerobic exercise is another one. Your heart rate— aerobic exercise, your heart rate needs to be at a certain rate.

Okay.

And lastly, it's novelty, which is new experiences. So, brush your teeth with your non-dominant hand today. Take a different road from work. Work from a different space today. Go travel. There's so many ideas you can do, right? Try something different today. it helps your brain continue changing because what our brains naturally do in survival, it wants to keep things the same.

Hmm.

It likes predictability. 'Cause if you go to uncertain territory, your brain's afraid it might die. Remember when we used to live in the caves, you go to uncertain territory, you might get killed by a wild animal. So that's something to pay attention to. Um, so the better you get at doing it, and one of the best ways to do it, this is why I've started to do the work I do is Community. If you surround yourself with the right type of people you want to learn from, you will naturally change your autopilot, right? If you hang out with a group that complains all the time, your autopilot eventually becomes to just focus on complaining.

Correct.

You see what I'm saying? Or if you're around the group of people that are practicing gratitude all the time, you eventually under— like, change. Um, so this is the power of community. When you change your environment, you can change your autopilot. So that's the name of the game is the better you get at changing your autopilot. Uh, there's a lot of deeper work that you have to do within yourself too, because you have all these perspectives, all these beliefs, all these thoughts you carry about yourself. Um, that's important to look at too, that to really change the autopilot that requires some, you know, intense, like one-on-one kind of work too. Um, but that's the name of the game. How do you change the autopilot? Yeah.

You know, if you're as an entrepreneur, I guess you're busy working on your day-to-day, you're putting out fires like we talked about, et cetera. Maybe you can try to do aerobic exercise. You mentioned some novelty. Maybe there isn't much space for novelty in what you've created at the time. But maybe is there other ways you can think about today if somebody's working at their office, how do you activate maybe flow state on demand? Is that possible? I mean, that's something we all try to achieve to get into that state and get out of that survival mode. And what would you suggest to them?

1,000% has to do with your relationship with yourself. You see what I'm saying? You know, I've coached hundreds of business owners now, and you, when you try to do a root cause analysis of the challenge, like the biggest bottleneck of your business, uh, one of the rules I've learned from the business world is if you ever find yourself saying that the problem for your business is that you don't have enough money and you don't have enough time, those are not the bottlenecks.

Hmm.

That is not the problem. There's always something beneath that. There's a layer below it. What's causing you not to have enough time? What choices are you making that's causing you to not have enough money? Right? For some founders, it might be, I have to do everything by myself. I have to prove the world that I can do this. So I'm not going to delegate. I'm not going to hire. But that's not how you grow a business, right?

Mm-hmm.

You can't do it by yourself. Like, if you ever want to get— I mean, you're in the VC world. A lot of startup Like the, you know, like, oh my God, I'm blanking on what those competitions are, right? To get the funding, right? A lot of them, the requirements is you can't be a sole business owner. You have to at least have one co-founder.

Right.

Right. Yeah. So this is the things to think about is when we look at that, we're working harder, not smarter. So if you're busy all the time, you have to think about how is your relationship with yourself? Because are you creating the boundaries for yourself to have the space for yourself to really think at a higher level so you can leverage your time better and do more higher-value activities with your time so that you produce bigger results?

Hmm.

If you really truly want to grow your business, yeah, in the beginning, yeah, you're doing a lot of grunt work and stuff like that. But if it's been 5 years, 3 years, 5 years, 10 years, it's probably not the business that's the problem. There's probably something going on inside of you that you need to look at. And are you willing to go there? Most people don't like going there. You know what I can describe personal growth feels like? Because you always see these, like, a lot of, like, mental health content has become popular, right? Nothing wrong with it, but it's a lot of like, oh, you should treat yourself well, take good care of yourself, take yourself out for a massage. But that's not what personal growth feels like.

Exactly.

Personal growth feels like, imagine you just over— you went on a shopping spree, you've bought all these things that you wanted, and you're not paying attention to how much it costs because you're just, you know, reacting impulsively, buying everything. Personal growth feels like that moment where you get the bill in the mail. Like, oh, I don't want to open that bill. That's what personal growth feels like, is how willing are you to look at what's inside of you? Oh, like, I don't want to look at my insecurity. Oh, I don't want to look at my, you know, limiting beliefs. I don't want to look at my trauma. I don't want to look at whatever it is. The courage to look at that— are you giving yourself time to do it? If you don't do this, you're just gonna stay busy. And at some point you will get burnt out. You see what I'm saying?

I see exactly what you're saying.

Yeah. Some people's default is if I don't feel busy, it doesn't feel normal.

Exactly.

Who likes feeling busy all the time? Do you wanna be happier or not? Do you wanna feel better or not? Do you wanna perform at a better— then it means it starts with understanding, whoa, me being busy all the time is not normal. Maybe you're just addicted to feeling busy. That's your fight response. It's your autopilot. It feels it feels like you're growing.

It feels like you're doing something, right? Feels like progress, but it feels like progress.

But are you using it as a distraction? Exactly.

You know, last question here, Dr. Eugene Choi, before we shift gears and go to the personal rapid-fire questions. Maybe if you can share maybe one challenge or tip for people who are listening today. They want to— they're ready to step into rebuilding that, you said, that relationship with themselves, let's say specifically with money, with time. They want to make better choices. What would you tell them to do today? Just one thing.

I would actually create space to spend time with yourself and just don't do anything.

Do nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Even if it's for 5 minutes. Notice how uncomfortable it gets for you. If it's uncomfortable, that means there's some sort of survival response going on inside of you on autopilot that maybe you weren't aware of. Right? You know, the one powerful question I remember a leader asking was, like, this guy was asking, how do I find the perfect partner? Like a romantic partner.

Right.

As if there's such a thing as this one person you can hold responsible for your happiness. That's the survival question, actually. How do I find the perfect partner? What your brain's really asking is, How do I find someone that I can hold responsible for my happiness? So whenever I'm unhappy, at least I have someone to blame, right? Rather than me taking responsibility for my own unhappiness, right? So, and he asked this question, which is, would you go out with yourself?

Mm-hmm.

And I remember that was such a powerful question because my first reaction was, no, I wouldn't go out with myself. Because we all have things about ourselves that we don't like. It's easy to point out things you don't like. But you know what the deeper realization was? Whoa, I can. If I don't have a healthy relationship with myself, I can tell my wife I love her and I do these things for I love her because I love her, but I'm not doing it for her. I'm doing it for me. If I do these things for my kids, oh, I'm doing these things because I love you. But if I don't have a healthy relationship with myself, I'm doing it for me, not for them. It's my brain going, hey, I don't matter. If I do nice things for my wife and my kids, maybe I will feel like I matter. I'm using my family. When we're in survival mode, we're not empathetic. You're using your. in a transactional relationship. And I get in the business world, business is business too. But the ones that thrive create great connection with their audience, great trust with their audience.

Right.

It's built on trust. So if you don't create the space for yourself, how can you ever even think that you'll grow as a business if you don't get into this space? And then the more time you— it's like any— it's a muscle. The more time you spend in executive state, that's when you know what it feels like and you can just turn it on when you need it. You don't react in those times where a challenge comes. It's easy to feel good when things are good.

Of course.

But where executive— the ability to get into your executive state matters is when things are challenging.

Which is almost every day. We just tend to react without thinking.

Almost every day. Majority. Some research suggests it's 70% of our adult lives.

70%. Wow.

We're in survival state. So even if it's a little bit more where you practice through awareness, Through education and training, learn a little bit more about the science, plug yourself into a community. And then actually, the third step is implement. Do the things you learn. Whether it's you want to try meditation, try it out. Oh, I don't know how to do it. Well, there's actual technology now that will literally show you your brainwaves, that you flexed your mental muscles to get into executive state. The better you get at it, the more you'll see a difference in your performance.

Love it.

And it starts with this relationship with yourself.

Yeah. Well, if you guys are listening, make sure to, you know, try this challenge. Sit with yourself today, create that space, just 5 minutes, sit alone, do nothing. And, uh, we'll love to hear what, what, what works and how you feel after it. So thank you for that tip. Uh, Dr. Eugene Joyce, we'll, we'll, we'll jump to the rapid-fire questions if you're, if you're ready for that.

Sure. Yeah.

All right. So from your side, what's, what's one activity you, you enjoy outside of work that gets you into a flow state?

Uh, it is meditation by far. Um, and a lot these days, uh, just being with my kids, doing a thought exercise of like, oh, I wonder what's— how their brain is growing right now. Uh, explore. Yeah. Try to explore the world in the way they view it.

What's one piece of advice you wish you had known? And if you can go back, you would tell, let's say, your 20 or 25-year-old self.

Everything you think you know is not the full picture. Don't be afraid to go out of your bubble.

Who or what are some of the best 3 resources? Maybe you can say books, mentors, or people you follow in the space who you'd say have been most instrumental to your success over these last few years.

From a performance side of things, there's a guy named Dr. Joe Dispenza. He's pretty out there. I don't know if he's everyone's cup of tea. He's one. He got to mentor me a little bit. I have a personal mentor of mine that I grew up with that spent the time with me and effort with me and held space with me. If you wanna learn more about like the brain stuff, there's something called Mindsight by a doctor named Dan Siegel.

Mm-hmm.

That's something that I often recommend too. He's a psychiatrist. If you wanna go really fast and deep into the science stuff, that's another one I recommend. Yeah. Those are the 3 that came top of mind for me. Sorry. Yeah.

Awesome. No, thank you. Dr. Siegel and Dispenza. We'll, we'll add those to the show notes if people wanna, wanna check them out as well. What does success mean to you today? You know, so whether it's personally, business, financial life, I guess there's no right answer, but how do you, how do you measure it today?

Success to me is to be able to tap into this space. That's what flow state is, right? It's you lose a sense of yourself. To be able to tap in that more often, right? You're not worried, you're not thinking about your problems, and you're creating, right? You tend to be very creative in that moment. Yeah.

Love it. Love it. Thank you for sharing all this. I think our listeners will get a lot of value of it. If there's any founders, CEOs, or executives listening today, they want to get in touch with you. They want to learn more about you, your company, and they want to develop this skill and work with somebody like yourself. Where's the best way to get in touch with you and learn more?

Yeah. If you ever want to have me do like a free demo or training, you can go to eugenekchoi.com. It's the same name on LinkedIn, Eugene K. Choi. I also have that community that I'm building. It's called Neurohacking School, and that's at neurohackingschool.com. That's where you get to learn the training. I have recorded modules, an online course, and a once-month live meeting virtually as well.

Love it. Neurohacking School. We'll add these, all those links to the show notes, guys, so make sure to check it out. And thank you for your time today. Really appreciated everything you shared and look forward to chatting soon.

Thanks so much for having me. Had a blast.

Thanks. Thank you all for watching this episode and joining SaaS District today. Don't forget to like, subscribe, and hit the bell for future episodes where we interview top leaders in the SaaS industry. If you're a SaaS company looking to grow and unlock the true value of your business, get in touch with us at Horizon Capital, and myself or one of our consultants will provide a free assessment to help you get there and hit your goals. If you have any feedback or suggestions for this podcast, please comment down below. and help us improve our content for you all. Thanks again, and see you on the next one. Bye.