Why Mental Calmness, Not Toughness, Creates Resilient Leaders with Brent Lang

If you enjoy the journey and less about the destination, you're in a much better state of mind. I think for a lot of people who focus only on the destination, you end up putting so much pressure on yourself to achieve the end goal that you actually end up shooting yourself in the foot and you end up diminishing your performance.

Welcome to the Happiness Squad Podcast. Your weekly dose of practical tips and inspirations to help you operate at your fullest potential by integrating the science of flourishing into how you live, work and lead. In each episode we will share insights, tips and stories from leading experts, company executives and flourishing solution providers that you can implement right away to make happiness your competitive edge and find more success, joy, health, love and meaning in everything you do.

Hello friends. Welcome to the Happiness Squad Podcast where we share practical tips to make flourishing your competitive edge and help you achieve stellar performance powered by well being, not at its expense. I'm on a mission to help a billion people not just experience happiness as an emotion, but use it as a tool to unlock their fullest potential. If you're interested in learning how to make happiness your competitive edge, please make sure to follow me on LinkedIn and subscribe to our newsletter@happinesssquad.com today I am thrilled to bring you a conversation with an incredible guest, Brent Lang. Brent's journey is nothing short of extraordinary. He's a former Olympian who clinched a gold medal for Team USA and then transitioned to a highly successful career as Chairman and CEO of Vocera Communications. He now serves on multiple boards including USA Gymnastics and thriveworks. In this episode, Brent shares how resilience, mentorship and a positive outlook have been cornerstones of his success across both sports and business. He opens up about the mindset needed to reach elite levels not just once, but repeatedly, and offers insights that are sure to resonate with anyone aiming to reach their own personal best. Stay tuned till the end, where Brent also shares several practices that help him personally build a solid foundation of well being and cultivate what he calls mental calmness through breathing, meditation, exercise and sleep. So let's dive in, dear friends, and learn from Brent's wisdom on how to embrace each challenge, celebrate the journey and stay grounded amidst life's highs and lows. Foreign. Hi dear Brent, it's so lovely to have you on this Happiness Squad podcast. Thank you for joining us.

My pleasure. I'm really looking forward to the conversation.

So friends, those who are listening, you know I got a chance to get to know Brent as part of some work that we were doing with USA Gymnastics and Brent is on the board. And, you know, I was so taken away by, you know, his presence, his critical thinking. But Brent actually has a really interesting. He's one of those very few people who I found who are, to borrow analogy for somebody onto their almost third mountain. So, you know, in most. In most lives, being an Olympian is really the top of the mountain when it comes to the sports life. And Brent was that. He was a gold medalist in the Seoul Olympics, if I have that right. Brent in relay swimming. And then he shifted into professional life post sport and became the CEO of Yocera and had an unbelievably successful professional career, which many people would consider the top of the professional mountain. And then post retirement, Brent is now still doing such amazing work through his work in the boards. He's on the board of Thrive Works, he's on the board of USC Gymnastics and so many others, continuing to shine his light, make an impact into making a better world. And so, you know, I think there is so much that we can learn from Brent and, and I hope you take a lot away from this, from this conversation with him. So my first place, where I want to go is onto the first mountain, Brent, and I want to tell, you know, I want to hear a little bit of a story. You won gold for the US Swim team, I mean, which is an incredible achievement. Tell me a little bit around the key factors that helped you get to that level of excellence, like what allowed you to really hone yourself into that Olympian.

Yeah, it's a great question. I tend to point to two or three different things that kind of came together. I think the first is just this idea of persistence or resilience. You know, I was a competitive swimmer for 14 years, swimming 30 to 40 hours a week. And that culminated in 1 52nd race. And, you know, there's no overnight successes. I like to say that life is a marathon, not a sprint. Even though I was a sprinter, life is a marathon, not a sprint. And it really takes that daily commitment to something to pay off. There's. There's no sort of shortcuts in. In life. And I think being able to deal with the ups and downs of that journey is a really important part of it. The second thing I would point to is coaching and mentorship. I had some amazing coaches. My college coach at the University of Michigan, John Urbanczik, was truly a huge influence on my life and really taught me a lot about myself and about how I wanted to live my life. He believed in me, and so I believed in myself. And that made all the difference in the world. I also had very supportive parents, and I think growing up in an environment where they made it really clear that their love for me was not tied to my success in the pool. In fact, they oftentimes were the ones who were saying, you know, you sure you don't want to take a day off? Are you sure you don't want to dial it down? And having that sort of support infrastructure of coaches and parents and friends who are going to support you regardless of the outcome was really critical. And then I think the third thing that's always worked really well for me, and we'll probably talk more about this as we go forward, is just having a positive outlook. You know, you have lots of setbacks, whether it's in sports or in life or in business, and you have to get through it. And by focusing on the positive aspects, you have a much better chance of getting through it and being more successful. So I've always really emphasized having kind of a positive outlook.

I love those three, and they so resonate with me, you know, all of them, right. This notion of. I loved how you phrased it. It was a 52nd race, but it's the, you know, it's the hours that you put all the way through it. Right. People always think about that and they forget that role of coaches. And I love your notion of also positive outlook. I think this has been a big one for me, too, Brent, in my life, you know. Yeah. I mean, we all face setbacks, but even in that moment when our brain, you know, makes it the biggest thing, right? Oh, my God, the world is ending. Because one thing didn't go well. I think being able to orient it in the context of the bigger whole that we have so much of, and then really orienting towards learning, right. Learning from it and keeping one foot in front of the others. I mean, it's such a critical lesson for entrepreneurs, too, right? Edison's famous quote of, you know, I didn't fail 10,000 times, I just learned 10,000 ways. An electric light bulb doesn't work. Right. So I'm just going to keep moving forward. Tell us a story around a moment in your Olympic journey where you maybe hit a low. And it was a key lesson in resilience. That moment of positive outlook and keep going really helped you.

Well, the memory that comes to mind for me was in 1989 at the NCAA Championships for swimming. I was the defending national champion. I had won the the 100 freestyle my sophomore year in college. And in the preliminaries of my Junior year, I got disqualified for a false start. I still don't know how I false started, but I got disqualified for a false start. And at that time, it was one false start and you were out. And suddenly I went from being the defending national champion and the number one seed to not even being able to participate in the event. And I remember getting out of the water and walking back across the deck to where my team was sitting and my coach started walking over towards me and, you know, rather than yelling at me or screaming at me or reminding me that I had just cost our team 40 points in the team competition, he just reached out his hand, gave me a big smile and said, you know, don't worry, buddy. I'm going to have you lead off the 400 freestyle relay and you're going to have another chance to prove to everybody here that you're still the fastest in the 100 freestyle at this meet. And I'll never forget that. Because his ability to allow me to fail with grace and with forgiveness and to create an opportunity for redemption, literally within a couple of hours, you know, I ended up leading off that relay later that same day with a time that would have won the event at the meet. And I've always carried that forward with me, whether it my personal life or my business career. This idea of giving people the opportunity to fail, fail gracefully, learn from the results, but not have it be the thing that hangs around their neck like an albatross for the rest of their lives. And I'm forever thankful to him for teaching me that lesson. And I've always tried to kind of roll that forward that, that, yeah, you're going to have setbacks, but you're not going to be defined by your setbacks. And the opportunity to kind of redeem yourself and move forward is absolutely critical for everyone.

Yeah. Wow. You know, this story, Brent, reminds me a bit of one of my favorite books. In a company does so much wellbeing work is Hinsa and Aki Hinsa, who was the founder, he was a doctor. And you know, he, he worked with a lot of. He was a surgeon and he worked with a lot of athletes. And I remember him sharing the story in this book about this one really amazing world class runner. And in the middle of, you know, one of the, one of the moments, he had to actually operate on this really in his Achilles tendon. Right. And if it didn't go well. Right. This would have ended that career. And, you know, he shares the story of, he's like, he was so nervous and this runner, you know, said to him, aki, it's. It's okay, right? It's just, you know, for him, sport. And the winning didn't define him. His why was something much bigger, right? He said, hey, it's just running. And this was like, what had brought him, you know, so much fame. So I think this. You know, so many of the Olympians I've met as part of our work have that notion that what I'm doing right now doesn't define me. And even if I stop, if I don't do well, you know, you pick yourself up and go forward. And it's such a valuable lesson because so many of us fixate over that setback and spend too much time in the Valley rather than kind of saying, okay, let's go. And so I'm. And what. What an amazing coach and. And what an amazing. You know, it's so wonderful to have that, because I can just imagine how much you were probably beating yourself in that moment. Right. Oh, wow. So tell me a bit. Look, I mean, you know, we are touching on this topic, but for sure, you know, mindsets play such a critical role in sport and in life, and mental toughness, in addition to physical preparation. Right. Often sets winners from those who are not able to get there. So, you know, what are some ways in which you cultivate that mindset, that positive outlook that can withstand a high level of pressure and yet still keep you focused right, on going and focusing on your goals?

Yeah, I think it comes down to having fun. You know, just to build on the point we were just talking about, if you. If you enjoy the journey and less about the destination, you're in a much better state of mind. I think for a lot of people who focus only on the destination, you end up putting so much pressure on yourself to achieve the end goal that you actually end up shooting yourself in the foot, and you end up diminishing your performance because you have the weight of the world on your shoulders when you finally walk up to the blocks and you're trying to perform at your best. Whereas if you figure out a way to enjoy every day, have fun every day with whatever you're doing, then the race at the end of the season or the final destination is a bonus. It's not the reason you're doing it. It's not this pressure that you have to achieve. Otherwise, you feel like the entire investment that you've made with your time is a waste. And so I always really focused on trying to enjoy it every day, whether it was the friendships the social interactions, the tiny steps along the way, the little wins along the way, that. That made it fun, and try to minimize the disappointment of the setbacks and focus on the process. And it's not always easy. I mean, you mentioned in your question this idea of mental toughness. And I think I actually might change the idea of mental toughness to mental calmness. Toughness implies that you're fighting against a situation, and calmness, to me, implies that you're kind of embracing the moment and you're remaining in the moment and you're keeping your mind still. And for me, getting ready for an Olympic race or even something in my business career wasn't a matter of getting tough or getting mean or getting psyched. It was actually the opposite. It was calming my mind down. It was breathing through it, keeping my mind still, and training my mind to be able to avoid those big spikes in emotion up and down. And we did a lot of visualization, visualizing the positive outcome that you were wanting to achieve as part of the preparation. And I think, you know, a combination of sort of breathing and. And meditation and visualization helped me be more ready to. To go into the moment. But it all started with enjoying the journey. My. My coach had a phrase which is kind of an inside swimming phrase, but he used to say, you can find lane four on your own. And the point is that the number one seed in a swimming final is in. Is in lane four. But his point was that he didn't need to hold your hand to get you to find lane four. If you'd put in the time during the course of the season, you could do it on your own. You had put in the work. He'd like to say you put the hay in the barn and you could get to lane four on your own. And he could just sit back and be very mindful and peaceful and watch the scene. And I think that mindset is something that permeated his athletes because his calmness translated to our calmness, and we were able to believe in ourselves because he believed in us in the same way.

Yeah. Wow. There is so much there. Right? I think this notion of joy and enjoying. And I'll actually almost start with. I think it requires us to be in the present moment as you're inviting us. So many in our life at work and play, you know, are so focused on the future or are focused on the past. Right. I messed up, or et cetera, et cetera, or, like, really anxious about where we're gonna go. And it's so pervasive. And your notion of like, hey, just that moment to moment, if you are here, only then can you actually enjoy the journey because only then are you aware of what's around you. Right. And this notion then also of really enjoying being in that moment, that stroke that hit that in the tennis court, et cetera. And I love it. Yeah, it's not about toughness, but calmness. I love that because often in moments which are high pressure, we are getting worked up and so minding and kind of calming that storm and so almost not creating that mental interference actually that's gonna get in the way.

I mean, I'll tell you a story. Yeah, I'll just tell you a quick story, please. When I made the Olympic, we had Olympic trials. You make the Olympic team at Olympic trials and then there's about a six week gap between Olympic trials on the actual Olympic. And there's a lot that goes on. You know, you, you get all your gear, you get outfitted, you, you know, you take, you literally go to Disneyland. I mean, it's, there's a whole bunch of pomp and circumstance associated with all the stuff that goes on between when you make the team and, and when you go to the actual Olympics and you don't go home, you pack your bag when you go to trials, ready to go on to Korea from what the trials were in, in Texas. And the amazing thing about that period of time is that I knew going into it that I had to figure out a way to calm my mind for a six week period of time through the training camps, the travel, through the press interviews, through all the activities and all the hype and the opening ceremonies. And so I came up with this mantra that I said to myself over and over again, which was just, it's just another race. It's just another race. And I probably said that mantra to myself a thousand, ten thousand times over that six week period of time. And it allowed me to stay calm and in the moment and not over obsess about the fact that I was actually going to the Olympics. To the point where when we marched out onto the deck behind the blocks to get ready for the race, I was still saying this mantra of it's just another race in my head. And I literally, I let off the relay and I got up on the blocks and I dove in and I took my first stroke. And not until I'd taken my first stroke that I let my mind say to me, oh my God, this is actually the Olympics. And at that point the adrenaline kicked in, but it was beautiful because in swimming, you want that first stroke to be long and relaxed and you don't want to over, over stroke the very beginning of the race. And so not only had I preserved my emotional energy and my physical energy, but the adrenaline was able to kick in at the right moment. A lot of times, I think scores who kind of obsess about, or athletes in general who obsess about the race, they actually drain their body of their energy, their emotional energy, their physical energy. So by the time you actually get into the game or the race, you're exhausted because you sort of, you've run the race or swum the race a thousand times already. And so I think, you know, just trying to stay calm for that was really, really important for me.

Absolutely right. It's one of the core. It's. I love that. I love that. And in that moment just then, like, you basically exploded at the right time, right? Not ahead, not after, but just in that moment through that practice and just saying, you know, it's just a race. It's funny, I used to coach a lot of MBA students who wanted to join McKinsey and they would be doing these case preps, right? And I always used to tell them, like, don't over prep and peak before your main case interview, right? And that's true in so many areas. Like sometimes people just, like I see that with students these days, I see that at work, right? People are just over and they're not because they're so focused on the future that when they arrive in that moment, or the future is the present, they're not at their best. So, Brent, you talked, you know, talk to us a little bit. And you know, you talked about so many things. Breathing, finding your center, meditation, visualization. Share with our listeners a little bit around the visualization technique. But I've heard that from so, so many athletes, you know, who use the power of visualization and as part of their preparation. So what did that look for you and how can leaders use that in their day to day life?

I think the key for me was visualizing how I wanted the race or the event to play out. Like, what was the ideal scenario? If I was watching it on TV and it just went exactly how I wanted it to go from the start to the turn. Visualizing that over and over reinforces in your mind that that's actually what's going to happen. You almost convince your body that that's the reality. And one of the techniques that I used to reinforce that was to add keywords to remind myself of each of the elements of the race I still still remember. Like in my 50 freestyle races, it was pop, snap, blast, finish, like those words. And the pop referred to popping up on the surface of the water after you dove off the block. The snap was the snap of my feet hitting the wall on the flip turn. The blast was the sensation pushing off the wall. The finish was this sensation of sort of hitting the last stroke perfectly on the wall. And so it was almost like a shorthand where you would visualize the entire race and you would reinforce the various elements that you were trying to reinforce, whether it was techniques or pacing or something. And each race had a different set of kind of keywords, remembering words that would kind of immediately conjure up exactly how I wanted that aspect of the race to occur. And they became almost silly because you didn't have to visualize the entire race. You could literally just go through pop, snap, blast, finish. And you were like, okay, yep, that's exactly how the race is going to play out. I think part of it for me also was allowing myself to train myself to be more focused and in the moment and more present. As we were talking about before, the visualization aspects allow you to learn to tune out some of the other distractions. I never, never heard the crowd, never saw anybody walking on this on the deck. All I could see and all I could feel when I was in the water was those key components of my feel for the water or my stroke or the way I wanted to finish the race.

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Wow.

Pop, snap, snap, blast, blast, finish, finish.

Love it. Pop, slap, blast, finish. You know, it reminds me. And what you're describing also right in your visualization is you're actually visualizing the race. It's interesting. You're not visualizing the end of the race, and, you know, I am the winner, and everything has happened. Like you're visualizing actually going through it over and over, the movements. And it reminds me of this research that I was reading in this new book that James Dottie, he's a neuroscientist, wrote, called Mind Magic. And it talks about, you know, how through visualization we can actually rewire our brains, right? For our brains, we close our eyes and what if we go through that? In that structure that you're talking about, it's the equivalent almost of Doing real labs, because our brain doesn't know, and we build neurons and it becomes part our body. Then all of a sudden starts acting that way when you actually hit it. And this notion of reps, it just reminds me a bit of that, what you just described. If you did it so many times, that's what it becomes.

Yep. Yep.

So let's switch gears a bit, Brent. There are not many, you know, who are able to so seamlessly get to the top, finish and then start their journey, shift into a professional career, and again climb to the top. There's lots of Olympians who actually do get into professional careers. Right. They. They do well. But you reached the next peak as the CEO of Vocera. So what were some things, the lessons that you learned in your Olympic journey that you carried into that professional life that helped you reach that peak?

Yeah, I think the first thing I would start with is that even when I was a swimmer, I never viewed myself as just a swimmer, and that was really, really critical. I viewed myself as a student athlete, and so I was able to define that transition from being an athlete to being a businessman as a natural progression of the same person. It wasn't like I had to reinvent myself. You described it as multiple mountains. I tried to think of it as one life, and the skills were directly transferable, and I wasn't having to start from scratch. I think one of the things that makes it really frightening for athletes to quit the sport and move on to their second mountain is because they have this fear that they are going to be starting literally from the bottom again. And think about how you translate those lessons. So that's, I guess, the first thing I think I would go back to where I started with. You know, life is a marathon, not a sprint. There. There are tremendous amounts of ups and downs running a business. I mean, we had moments when we were building Vocera where we could have gone out of business, we could have run out of money. We had customer issues. We had people, you know, key employees who left. And a friend of mine used to say, it's never as good as it seems, and it's never as bad as it seems. And I think this idea of trying to level out the peaks and valleys in life and in. In a journey is. Is really, really critical and not letting your emotions get carried away, either at the. At the peak or the valley, because it. It actually is counterproductive to the. To the overall journey. So I. That's my. My baseline, I guess. The second thing I would say, I really believe in this Idea of giving people a chance to prove themselves. My coach, you know, he gave me the chance when I was a sophomore in college to swim on a relay in a stroke that I hadn't really spent a lot of time swimming. I hadn't been a sprint freestyler growing up. My brother was a sprint freestyler, and he actually gave me the opportunity to lead off a relay in freestyle. And I swam a time that actually would have placed me higher in the sprint freestyler than I had placed in the events that I'd actually trained for. And that transition from being a butterflyer to being a sprint freestyler is what actually led me to making the Olympic team and being on the national team and doing all these other things. And so I, I look back at that and I say, wow, what would have happened if he hadn't taken a chance on me and given me the opportunity to maybe stretch myself outside of my, my comfort zone? And so in my business career, I was always looking for opportunities to give people a chance to prove something that maybe they didn't even believe they could, they could do. And when you give people a chance like that, a, they really appreciate the opportunity, and B, they may surprise you, they may surprise themselves, and it may actually have a tremendous impact on, on their future trajectory. So look for those opportunities and take advantage of them. Back to the balanced life thing. My, My dad used to have a saying that life is like the individual medley. And in swimming, the individual medley is where you have to swim all four strokes. You couldn't just be good at butterfly or just breaststroke or just freestyle. And as a student athlete, I remember thinking about this idea of life is the individual medal. You couldn't just be a swimmer. You had to be a good student, you had to be a good friend, you had to be a good family member. You had to be a balanced individual. And as a CEO, learning how to strike that balance between being a CEO and being a husband and being a dad and taking care of myself with, you know, whether it was sleep or exercise or whatever else, that balance in life and not getting so singularly focused on one thing, I think really worked well for me and allowed me to navigate through kind of the ups and downs, the hills and valleys that every opportunity is going to throw you. There's no such thing that I'm aware of, of something that's just easy and straight up and to the right all the time. You know, you got to get used to the fact that there's going to be setbacks. And the question is, how do you Deal with those setbacks, how do you recover from those setbacks? And having more of a broad base of diversity in your life allows you to have a foundation to fall back on.

Yeah. You know, how do you build that foundation? And that's where I want to go next. So Brent, what are some of those practices, rituals that you do? They're part of your life and have always been that allow you to make sure you have a solid foundation that allows you to bounce forward, you know, because if our foundation is weak, you know, those blows can cripple us. Right. It takes us a long time. And so making sure you are increasing. We always talk about, we have a program around making stress an ally. I always talk about increasing the size of your battery. Right. Truly through day to day, what you're doing, how you're kind of nourishing yourself. And I'm curious, what are those non negotiables for you that you do consistently during the day or in the weeks to make sure you are building that strength, that foundation that allows you to bounce forward?

It may sound strange, but for me it starts with sleep. I have always really believed in the importance of sleep. I remember in high school I was still going to bed at 8:30, 9:00 clock at night, which is crazy. Most kids are out much later than that. But I was getting up at 5 to go to practice and so making sure that I got enough sleep. I've always been a good napper also. In fact, even when I was a CEO, I would occasionally just take a nap in my, in my office, just close the door and lay on the floor for 10, 15 minutes. So if you're not well rested, then everything else is harder to do. Your stress level increases, your ability to stay in the moment, your ability to react to other people is negatively influenced. And so I think sleep is really underrated. So that's kind of the foundation of it. The second thing I would point to is exercise. You know, I still swim three or four times a week. Being in the water is my happy place. It's where I do my best thinking, I get my best ideas. It's amazing how many times I've been struggling with something at work or, you know, in a relationship and I'll go for a swim and suddenly the idea just comes to me in the process of being in the water. Something about being supported in the water and getting my head out of my head and allowing me to sort of be in the, in the moment while I'm exercising in the water has really been beneficial. I more recently added yoga. I'm not good. I'm not a yogi, so to speak, but I, I think yoga and lifting has helped me continue to maintain flexibility. So sleep and exercise is really the start of the foundation. Third thing I would point to is the team. You know, I saw in swimming how you could perform so much better when you were part of a relay or part of a team that was focused on a common goal. And the relationships you build with your team are really your superpower. And ironically, one of the hardest things for me about transitioning into sort of pseudo retirement or whatever I'm calling what I'm doing now is adapting after we sold the business, adapting to the fact that I was not going to have those daily interactions with my management team who, you know, after we sold the business, I sort of realized that they were some of my best friends. Like, I always viewed them as my work colleagues and we certainly supported each other in a work setting. But they were also some of my closest relationships and some of my closest friends. And I think sometimes people underestimate the value and the power of that social support infrastructure and the power of a team pulling towards a common goal. And then again, for me, it's the finish. The wrap up for me is don't dwell on the past. Try to not overly worry about the future or the past is. And stay present. And if you can stay present and in the moment, then, then great things will happen. Those are kind of the daily practices that I try to focus on.

Yeah, no, I love those. Are you a meditator, Brent?

I am. I'm not a good meditator. It's funny, I think I was better at meditation and visualization when I was 20 than I am now. I did a lot, you know, as we talked about, I did a lot of it for the sport and I got away from it after I stopped swimming. And I'm trying to reintroduce it to my, my mind. My best meditation now happens actually when I'm exercising, which is a slightly different form of meditation, but it has the same effect. I've gotten back into breathing. I think breathing for me is, is really monitoring my breath. Thinking about my breath. I can remember when I would be getting ready to do an earnings call. You know, you've got the nerves. You're about to go live in front of all your investors and analysts. And I would just sort of focus on my breath a little bit before we start. And if I was breathing too fast or my heart was pounding too much, just trying to slow that down. A little bit before we started. The call was really helpful. Yeah.

It really is such a powerful way to activate a parasympathetic system, isn't it? It's incredible to calm that fight flight, freeze. You get so much mental clarity if you are present. I almost define it, you know, akin to a tree. Right. There can be lots of storms, but if you've got a solid base at the, you know, supporting you, you can hold it. Right. But if that is not strong, I think wins will take trees now. Yep. Right. By the way, I have a, I have a recommendation for you. There are two different programs depending on, you know, timing and passion. I'll recommend the first one even though it's, it's extreme. You know, about a year and a half ago I did a vipassana, ten day silent meditation. They're around the country, they're offered all over. And you know, you mentioned you were into meditation and then you kind of stepped away from it and now exercises it. But it is unbelievable, you know, the mental cleanse that you get, the clarity that you get. And it's just a way to kind of give yourself the gift of 10 days. And you meditate 12 hours a day in those 10 days. And you don't have paper and you don't have pencils and you don't talk to anybody. You're just practicing meditation. But it's one of those moments, right. If you're able to. Most people make it and they get through just grounds that practice and you start to see clarity. I have never felt clearer in my life and I had so much amazing breakthroughs. But if not that, I think there is another one that is very proven. It's actually by, it's by a group called the Art of Living. Sri Sri Ravi Shankar. Emma Sepla, one of the preeminent researchers in happiness, you know, validated that particular form of meditation. It's called sky and its effect on ptsd. You know, those and stress anxiety in so many situations. And that's a much lighter three day, three half days. And they teach you the meditation and you can do it on your own. But two really powerful ways that you could consider also. I wanted to share that with our listeners here.

Those sound fascinating. Yeah, thank you for that.

Yeah, it's very powerful. I mean, you know, it's. For me, meditation is something like there is no day that go by without me meditating because it just allows me to just cultivate that center. Which is especially relevant as you're, as you're building your own company, as you can imagine we're in the throes of it. Right. Every day there's lots of highs and then there's lots of lows. And you're always kind of just, you know, how do you navigate and enjoy the journey rather than chase the highs and the lows? Right.

Yep.

I love that you started with sleep rent. I love, I love that because I think sleep is one of those underappreciated superpowers in our world. We actually had an episode on sleep about six weeks ago with a sleep neuroscientist, ELS and it's amazing, right? Like, if people don't sleep, oftentimes sleep is what people give up in terms of achieving the goals. And it's like literally contrary the effects of not sleeping on our cognitive performance, on our long term health and frankly on our inability to regulate our emotions. Like there's so much research on sleep deprivation and its effect and on the rising incivility in the workplace. Right. So I loved that you actually started with sleep. I agree with you. I think like just giving ourselves seven plus hours of sleep and not, not compromising on it is such, such a big deal. And then I loved your team. Right. Oftentimes you're right. You know, when you look at those who retire and kind of leave kind of active, I think those networks phrase. So like this notion of cultivating a rich network while you're, you know, at the at work. But even beyond the study from Harvard that highlighted, you know, 60% of individual flourishing is the quality of relationships. So yeah, I mean it's, I love, I love these four that you highlighted. Now you practice them. Brent. But you know, our workplaces are not, this is not like, these are not, these are like, you know, these things are not as common. So how are some ways in which, as an Olympian CEO, right. Who knows and appreciates the power of well being and filling your cup and that strong foundation. What are some ways in which you try to role model or what are some ways in which you try to influence the team and the organization to make sure that well being and work well being was a key part of the success of the company that you led?

Yeah, it's a great question and it's something that I think evolved for me over time. You know, when I first came into the working world, I was still a hyper competitive, fairly immature person. You know, it was all about winning and leading and winning are two very different things. And I had to grow through that. I had to raise my EQ a little bit because it wasn't just about individual performance, it was about figuring out, you know, how to empower the team and how to. How to lead people. And I think for me, the biggest lesson was that it all starts with empathy. Trying to understand where the other person is coming from, what is their perspective? How are they coming to the conversation? What is it in their background or their experience that's driving their emotion and their perspective on a particular problem. And really, that becomes the foundation for all the interactions that you have with. With other people. And from empathy leads to trust. Trust really comes directly from empathy and assuming the best intentions of someone you're interacting with, even if you're disagreeing with them. Starting by trying to understand why they might have a different perspective on something, rather than just labeling them or assuming that they're just, you know, an idiot or something that really taking the time to. From an empathetic perspective to deep dive into. Okay, I'm going to assume you're coming at this with the best intentions. The fact that you have a different perspective on this must mean you've got either a different experience set than I do or a different set of facts or something. So let's dig in and really understand what's driving that. And I found some of the most interesting conversations came from those situations where you started out having completely different perspectives on a problem or the answer to a problem, and by understanding the why behind it, you actually had this much richer conversation than if you had just simply written them off. The third thing that I found as a leader was you got to keep it real. I actually struggle with this idea of charismatic leadership and, you know, leaders that are often held up as being the greatest leaders in the world, the Steve Jobs of the world or whatever, I struggle with that because I think that they are the exception rather than the rule. And I think authentic leadership, in my experience, has been much more effective than charismatic leadership. This idea of, are you vulnerable? Are you real? Are you exposing your strengths and your weaknesses? Are you letting people get to know you? Is it okay for you to not be the most polished speaker or not to have all the answers or not to feel like you've got everything figured out? And that's what in many cases is inspires your team to come up with answers, inspires your team to lean in and own the solution. And that was a big learning for me because I was a shy kid. I think before my swimming career, I was not someone who felt at all comfortable getting up on stage. I would have died if I had to run for student body president. In middle school or something, the idea of giving a speech in front of my peers would have just chilled me. And through swimming I was sort of forced to learn how to react when somebody put a microphone in front of me because I had to talk to the press and I had to talk to my teammates and I had to talk to large groups of people that I would have probably never been exposed to. So I'm very thankful that I had that experience. But I learned over time that it wasn't about being the perfect public speaker or the most charismatic leader. It was about being real and connecting with your, your team and your, your colleagues and your coworkers in a way that was, was meaningful and authentic.

Wow. Yeah. This notion of empathy, perspective, right. Really exploring. So you're almost talking around, like listening beyond the words and, and really it takes a lot of humility and it takes a lot of emotional regulation and presence, especially when somebody is so counter to where you are. Right. But this invitation for you to say, listen, especially if you have more power in the relationship. Right? Especially I think if you have more power because then they feel comfortable sharing versus just like, oh my God, he doesn't like it. So I'm just going to shut up. And a great idea might be there. Right. It might be a blind spot we've got and they might know the detail. And then the third. I'm with you. Right. The more vulnerable leaders can be. You know, we talk a lot around psychological safety and I think people want to learn the hack to make their workplaces more psychologically safe. And I think it's, you know, if there was a hack, the hack is like, show all of your imperfections, things that you're good at and those you're not. I think in our world that we are living. Any leader who thinks they need to know all the answers and they need to provide it from the mountaintop, I think they're on something that is so far from reality. And yes, it might work for some visionary one offs like Steve Jobs and Bezos and you know, and others, but I think for, for most other people, I think the power of the team, the power of the collective sensing together, discovering. I'm with you. I think those leaders, if we, if we emulate ourselves on those qualities of empathy, perspective and truly, as you mentioned, leaning in and showing people we are. I'm not perfect. I don't expect you to be perfect. You know, we learn through this together, can create such a powerful fabric. Thank you, Brent. Super, super powerful. Look, I mean this has been an amazing Conversation. You know, as we bring this to a close, wall might be three pieces of advice. This has been filled with so many. But if there are three pieces of advice that you would give to our listeners, some things that they would. You would say, you know what, don't overthink it. Just start doing this tomorrow.

Yeah.

What would that be?

I think for me, it all comes down to staying positive. The power of positive attitude is really unbelievable. I used to have this game I would play with my swim coach where I said to him one time that I could come up with two positives for every negative idea he could throw at me. And in retrospect, I think he was actually playing game with me. I think he was very positive. And he sort of reminded me of this challenge that I gave to him one time. And he always reminded me that I had this superpower of coming up with two positives for every negative that he could come out with me. And I actually developed almost a visual imagery to remind myself of this. So imagine for a moment that option one is you're sort of walking through life and you've got your head up, you're kind of looking out at the horizon, you've got both arms stretched out in front of you, and you're. You're kind of ready to catch a giant beach ball if it just kind of happened to fall out of the sky and comes their way. Right? That's sort of the optimistic, positive view. And the. The converse is the person who's kind of walking with their head down and their shoulders slumped, and, you know, something good might fall out of the sky and it would literally hit them on the back of the head and it would just kind of bounce off and they might never know. Was that actually ever there? And so I think I always try to remember this idea of sort of walking head up, arms out, ready to just take something, because I'll be the first to acknowledge that I have been unbelievably lucky or fortunate or whatever word you like to use in my life. I. Yes, I've had some great successes, but I've. I mean, the. The difference between making the Olympic team and not making the Olympic team was literally hundreds of a second. And had I not made the Olympic team, you know, would I have been able to get into Stanford Business School? Would I. Would that have translated to my career? I mean, there's so many sort of what ifs you can play, but you have to sort of acknowledge the role that luck has. But at the same time, when my coach gave me that opportunity to swim on that relay in an event that I hadn't even trained for. I didn't just sort of say, oh, I don't want to do that and that's not who I am and I didn't train for it. And what if I fail? I just sort of leaned to and I said, great, let's give it a shot. Let's, let's see what happens. And when you approach life with this mindset of what's the art of the possible? Then amazing things happen to you. And I think the same thing goes with people, like if you assume positive intention from other people, if you, it'll improve your relationships with them. If you trust other people and assume that they're trusting with you and you trust in their ability, maybe take a chance on someone who hasn't proven themselves. You just never know. They might surprise you. And so I think a lot of my core philosophy and belief has come down to this idea of just kind of keeping an open mind and being positive and looking for opportunities to surprise yourself and surprise the people around you and giving other people an opportunity to surprise you and out exceed your expectations.

Thank you. That's beautiful. Stay positive. I can visualize, right? Just walk. Notice how you're walking, arms up, smile on your face and really keeping yourself open and keeping yourself present to everything that is happening around you. You know, one of my dear friends, Barry Shore, he has an amazing story, he has a beautiful definition of smile and he says smile are seeing miracles in life every day. And you can only smile and do that if you are able to be open. Right. Because what you pay attention to is what you will notice. So thank you for this beautiful conversation. Brent, thank you for. I'm so grateful to have a chance to meet you, work with you. Thanks for taking the time and sharing your wisdom with us.

My pleasure. I really enjoy the conversation and best of luck to you as well.

Thank you. That wraps up another, another episode of the Happiness Squad podcast.

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