CB LIVE! Courage to Leap and Lead with Derek Cabrera, Episode 108

Hello everybody, it's CB Bowman, and you know I keep it real. So I have to adjust my camera here because we're a little bit on an angle. There we go, that's much better. I'm so happy to see you guys today, and we have a guest that's a little bit offbeat for us, but you know, CB likes to take it offbeat. So As we go into Courage to Leap and Lead, I have a guest who's an expert in systems thinking. That's a mouthful in itself, right? And mapping and all those insane things that we hear about in the upper echelon of the academic world. And I have this, um, uh, desire to know all about these weird things. And I hope you'll go on the journey with me because I believe that this whole philosophy, all these areas really do relate to increasing our ability to be courageous. So that courageous is not this big elephant in the room, but small bites of things. You know that expression, how do you eat an elephant? It's bite by bite.

That's right.

So let's look at courage as a bite by bite. To get us to goal. So with that, today at Courage to Leap and Lead, we have Derrick to talk to us about it. Derrick, welcome.

Thank you. Thanks for having me.

And so I would love to know about you as a young kid. How do you get involved in such high-level thinking work?

Ah, well, it, it was a bit of a— what I might— what you might think of as kind of a Forrest Gumpian trajectory. It wasn't very straight line. I was a— I was born to a Colombian father and a Scottish Bostonian mother and grew up in a kind of Latino household and No wonder why you're so handsome. It was definitely a place of deep learning. My father was raised by Jesuits in Colombia. So the Jesuits, you know, are all about learning, and our house was about learning. But for whatever reason, I struggled mightily in school. So I had real trouble in school. Later, I'd find out that I had things that I didn't even know existed and today are very popular, like ADHD and smaller forms of autism and things like that. But—

Well, can we talk? I'm highly dyslexic. And I didn't find that out until I was in grad school.

Right. Yeah, it took me until pretty close to my 30s to understand that I had some of these things. And then I was able to do something about it. But until I understood myself, It was very hard. So I struggled with school, uh, really.

Tell us which of these things you have.

I'm sorry?

Tell us which of these things you have.

Well, I'm, uh, I'm ADD and, and a little, you know, there's a spectrum of autism. So there's a lot of different, uh, sort of, you can be a lot of places and, uh, have a little bit on, on the spectrum, uh, and get very hyper-focused, uh, but also have not so much control over what I focus on. So a lot of people think attention deficit means that you have a deficit of attention, which is actually a bad name for it. Uh, it actually means that you don't have total control over where your attention goes. But ADHD people, um, actually have a thing called hyper-focus where they can focus almost to their own detriment sometimes on things. And, um, and so, you know, once you learn that about yourself, then you can kind of work with it. But, uh, I— at the time, I didn't know, you know, any of these things existed. I don't think my parents knew that they existed. So, um, took a while to figure it out.

You know, it's so true because, um, when I grew up, I— because they didn't really know about dyslexia And I suffered terribly in school, terribly. And I'd always get punished by my parents, but for not succeeding in a class or whatever reason. And I just grew to hate school, right?

Yeah.

And it wasn't until I was in graduate school that I found out I was dyslexic.

Wow.

And it was purely by accident. I was taking a course on account— in accounting because I figured I would get the difficult math things out of the way. And I had a tutor. I hired my own tutor because I thought, I'm never going to be able to get through this, right? And she was giving me a test and she And one question I got wrong, and she said to me, how come you got this question wrong? We just went over this and you got it right. And I said, what are you talking about? She said, this question here. And I said to her, I've never saw that question. And then she started really paying attention as she was tutoring me. And she said, CB, I believe that you're dyslexic, which is why math—

Wow.

in, you never saw that question.

Yeah.

And just at that time, there was an episode of a television show, Bill Cosby, where he talks about his son being dyslexic. And so I said to her, well, where can I go for help? And she said, well, you can go to the Orton Institute. And I went and I said, I don't want to be with all these people that are complaining about this and that. So I'm just gonna fix this myself. But fixing it actually meant admitting to it and then figuring out ways to get through it. So I'm completely in your camp. I get it totally.

Birds of a feather.

Yes.

Well, and ironically, that admitting to it, that self-awareness, and also the sort of then working to fix it is part of— it's sort of part and parcel of both systems thinking and courage. That's part of the process.

Exactly. And in fact, when I started my association, I had a colleague who would constantly send me emails, you spelled this wrong, this doesn't look good for the association. And of course it would be after it was already released. So finally I had the courage to say, You're not helping. If you wanna help, then you edit everything I send out before, and I need it within 5 minutes.

Wow.

And otherwise, silence. 'Cause what— I can't withdraw it, right?

Yeah.

This is not an internal system in a company. And then I said, you know what? I'm just gonna put a disclaimer on my email. And so now I have this whole disclaimer on my emails. I don't know if you saw it. It says, you know what, I'm dyslexic. There are some famous people that were dyslexic, right? Like Cher, etc., Einstein, you know, Charles Schwab. So if you have a problem with dyslexia, it's your problem. And that's what my email says.

That's great. I have a family member who actually is dyslexic and, and, you know, caused lots of problems for him growing up and things like that. And it turned out that he would kind of reverse words. He'd see backwards.

Yeah.

Um, today he's a, he's a fantastic dentist. And one of the things that dentists do is, you know, it's good for a dentist to be able to sort of see things backwards because they're constantly looking in mirrors.

Yeah.

You know, so he's, you know, it, it, if, if you can sort of see what's going on and understand yourself and your system Then you can utilize it to your advantage. It doesn't have to be a disorder. And I don't think ADHD or ADD is a disorder. I call it boredom intolerance disorder because it really, it really has to do with just being intolerant of boredom.

Well, I welcome it being called a disorder because I would like to have it listed in the, the manual for defining these things. But as a therapist said to me once, we can't because it affects so many people so differently, right? We can't put it in a pigeonhole. I'm like, uh, recreate the pigeonhole.

Yeah.

That's what smart-ass dyslexics say.

Exactly.

Put it out. It's your problem. So I interrupted you on a fabulous story. I love this. So, so, okay, so you figured that out and—

Yeah, so, uh, well, I, I struggled in school. I actually ended up dropping out or failing out of high school. And, um, you know, you got to find a job and things like that. And the one thing, the one skill that I had was actually mountain climbing or mountaineering. And so for 20 years I was a mountain guide, uh, and I took people up and down mountains all over the world and guided people of all different ages and populations, everything from executives to a gang intervention to drug addiction to, you know, what we called victims of wealth, people that, you know, wealthy kids, poor kids, all different kinds of kids and adults for over 20 years. So that was really where I kind of grew up and, um, and was able to see people in challenging situations, challenging environments, uh, and, and see their response and see group dynamics. And, uh, and all of that combined with all of the different systems that are in the mountains, like weather and, you know, geology and geography and all these different systems. started getting me thinking about, well, how do you see all these things together? Because they're not existing separately, right? They, they exist kind of together as a whole. And didn't even know that there was this thing called systems thinking. And of course, never, as a high school dropout, I never imagined that I would be a, a, an academic at Cornell University or, or anything like that. So, And then worked, worked with the Civilian Conservation Corps, similar thing, lots of challenges, lots of community service and service to others, and developing people in, in very intensive experiential environments. Worked with the restorative justice movement on criminal and juvenile justice projects, and then became— decided that again, it's very strange, but kind of heard about these things called theorists, and I didn't know what a theorist was, but that you could use like something as simple as mathematics to theorize something about the universe, whatever it might be, that— and then maybe find out that it could be true through experiment and things like that.

Well, I love See, to me, this whole area of thinking has great interest to me. I don't know why, but, you know, so for example, the movie A Beautiful Mind.

Mm-hmm.

I was mesmerized by that. I mean, I couldn't think of anything else for years after seeing that movie. And so the idea of being able to Control— it's probably not the right word, but it's the word I'm going to use— where things will end by studying where they began and where they are in the middle. Um, I don't know if that's systems thinking, but things like synchronicity, Mm-hmm. um, a beautiful mind, those kind of things, I, I think Wow, there's something greater here. I don't know what it is, but it's fascinating to me.

Yeah.

And I look at things like, how was Stonehenge actually built? What's the deal with Easter Island? You know, and I was talking to an astronaut about this whole concept. And he said to me, oh, it's all fake. People designed it and built it because You know, there's no other evidence. I'm like, no, I'd rather think that there's evidence that we haven't discovered.

Haven't discovered yet. Yeah.

So, okay. So tell, tell me, tell us, what is mapping? What is systems thinking? Simple definition.

Simple definition. Yeah. So systems thinking is kind of just a combination, a synthesis, a grouping of all the different kinds of thinking that we have. So if you think about critical thinking or creative thinking, or what sometimes is called prosocial or emotional intelligence, having, you know, regulation over your emotions and awareness of your emotions, and scientific thinking. So, you know, finding evidence to support your, your thoughts or something like that. It really is just no different than kind of a combination of all those things. And what the goal of systems thinking is really important— we sometimes call this the systems thinking loop, which is to make sure that your mental models are in alignment with reality. And a lot of people don't even realize they have mental models, but mental models are kind of our thought process, the thinking that we're doing. And a lot of folks just sort of think that they experience the world directly, but we're actually always experiencing the world through what we think and what our mental models are. And we're constantly creating mental models, and the goal of systems thinking is to try to realize, A, that we have mental models, B, that those mental models are really just kind of approximations of the reality that we're looking at. And it doesn't matter what reality that is. It could be how you're seeing your friend or how you're seeing your, your teenager or how you're seeing your work. Um, it doesn't have to be how you're seeing, you know, the, the interstellar universe or anything like that. Um, but how do we match those mental models in such a way that they get closer and closer to reality? And one way of thinking about systems thinking is it's the opposite of a thing we call confirmation bias, which is when we match reality to our mental models. Systems thinking is about matching mental models to reality. So it really is the opposite of confirmation bias, which is when we have a bias that we, when we see something, we confirm the thing we already think. So we only look for the things that confirm our belief and we don't look for anything else. And it's very dangerous and it's happening all around us all the time. All of us are doing confirmation bias quite a bit.

Okay, so you're going way too fast for me.

Okay, sorry.

Let's just take this step by step.

Yeah.

So an example of a mental model is, for example, When I was young, my mom insisted that we addressed anybody who was older than us by their last name. It showed respect.

Respect. Yeah.

So when I got into the workforce, I was calling everybody Mr. and Miss. Now, is that a mental model that my parents had put in place. So I have that as a referral.

Yep. Yeah, that's a mental model.

So mental models are something that has developed that you use as a referral for how you're going to behave now or in the future.

Yeah, in fact, all of your behavior is based on some mental model. Every behavior you do is based on a mental model. Some of those mental models you're aware of, and some of them you're not even aware of. You're, you're creating them without, you know, kind of in your subconscious, or they become implicit.

So the commercials that we're seeing on TV, not your father's car, not your— that, that's all based upon mental modeling of what you thought your father would select or your mother would select. So therefore, or a good example is this, what used to be Commitment to brand. Yeah, my mother used Ivory soap, my grandmother used Ivory soap, I need to use Ivory soap.

Yeah, I mean, that's, that's one form of mental models. But I mean, just pretty much everything you're experiencing is a mental model. Like, you know, maybe somebody's building a mental model right now about our conversation. And, uh, what does it mean? And what are they saying? And all that kind of stuff. So that too is also a mental model. It's not just things that have been passed down generation to generation or something.

Okay. So current actions or behavior, it's current experiences.

Yes, absolutely.

Immediately form a mental model.

Sure. You might see somebody on the bus that looks angry or, you know, looks a certain way, and you might build a mental model that that person's mean or that person's angry or, you know, whatever. And, you know, you might not know, for example, that they just had something terrible happen in their life, or maybe they're, you know, deep in thought or— and not realizing that they're not smiling or something like that. So your mental model will determine kind of how you interact with that person. And that mental model may or may not be true and often isn't.

So, you know, that's a great point because I remember a time I was— I don't remember how it happened, but I saw this guy and he was frowning and had this angry look. And I said to him, you look so upset, what happened? And he looked at me and he smiled and he said, I was? Oh my goodness, I didn't realize I was. And he was the nicest guy. We had this great conversation, right? But also I'm thinking like, If we see something like, I'll, I might see somebody has a great pair of eyeglasses on. Oh, I've got to figure out where to get those eyeglasses so I can look as cool as them.

Right.

Okay. So we got that.

And you have a mental model of what coolness is because somebody else might not like those sunglasses. So your mental model of what looks cool and what is cool is different than somebody else's mental model of what looks cool and is cool.

Gotcha. Okay. Confirmation bias.

Yeah.

Um, I have this thought, and then I meet somebody else that has the same thought. That's confirming my thinking. That's confirmation bias.

Uh, confirmation bias is when you kind of look for only the confirmation of what your mental model is, right? So all these echo chambers that we're talking about with social media, those are all kind of confirmation bias creators. They're, they're things that reinforce only what we believe, and we don't very often venture outside of those echo chambers to get information that's different than what we believe.

Is that Due to comfort? You're in your comfort zone?

Yeah, sometimes it's about comfort zone, um, and, and what, you know, conflict avoidance. And that, you know, it could be about a lot of different things, but right now it's actually about the, the algorithm of these networks, right? Like when you like something, when you click on something in, in social media land, they're gonna say, oh, this person likes that thing, so let's serve them more of things like that. So it's just literally an algorithm that, that we don't realize we're a part of. And every time you like or even just look at something, these algorithms of all these different social media companies will just give you more of that thing, which means you're seeing less of things that are unlike that thing.

Yeah.

So that's how echo chambers get created. And then pretty soon you think, oh, well, the whole world kind of agrees with me.

Have you had a chance to read Rita McGrath's book, Seeing Around Corners?

I haven't, no.

You would love it. It will help develop your paranoia. But I'm reading this book and I'm going, okay, all right, I'm not going on, on my internet anymore.

Right.

So, so then you see, I heard this for the first time the other day, that there seems to be a law firm that's building a class action suit against, let's see, Twitter or Instagram, that has to do with defining the behavior, the feel-good, not feel-good experience of children who are involved in it.

Dopamine response. Yeah, they're actually eliciting dopamine.

So how does this fit into confirmation bias, or doesn't it?

Uh, it— I mean, it fits in in the same way that I just said, which is, uh, it— in that the things you like, the things, uh, the— and getting likes, getting, uh, clicks, getting all that stuff gives you a— an instant kind of little squirt of dopamine, um, and, and can become in many ways addictive, especially if you're a young mind who, like a child who isn't very metacognitive or aware of their thinking and why they're doing what they're doing. And, and this is where, you know, I tell my own kids, you have this very powerful tool in your pocket called a phone. It's a very powerful tool, but it also has the power to make you a tool of it. And, and we want to be very careful of that. of that difference, right? That you use it instead of letting it use you. And a lot of these companies are, whether purposeful or not, just as part of the algorithms, are causing these tools to sort of use our children.

So I understand that. But what I, what I don't get is, so if using it, Assuming dopamine is used to make one happy, Mm-hmm. then how do these social media echo chambers affect you in a negative way? It seems to me that if it's affecting my self-esteem, then I'm not gonna tune into that. I'm gonna go someplace else. So where's the addiction and where is the confirmation? But I'm, I'm getting a little confused on how that all mixes together.

Yeah, it's not, it's not always about, um, simply making us happy. A lot of it's about, uh, about sort of when we press a button and we get some kind of reaction, or we get some kind of, uh, some response, some kind of cause and effect. So, uh, you know, an example would be like, um, Uh, with the clicks, you know, you get enough clicks and, and you, uh, are happy, but then you compare your clicks to other kids' clicks, and then you're constantly comparing yourself to other people. So you, you're getting a little bit of dopamine for each click, but you're also comparing yourself constantly based on clicks, which is a pretty superficial path to, you know, self— Yeah.

Now, yeah, I get it because I'm thinking back to Clubhouse and how addicted I became. And finally I said, hey, hey, timeout, stop, self. This is not, this is not a good use of your time.

That's right.

Uh, for those things to be a good use of your time, you really have to be in at the startup, right?

Yeah.

And then move forward.

And not to mention that that's also taking you away from experiencing Real relationships and all kinds of other things. In the case of social media, um, you know, so every, every second that you're on, you're not paying attention to the person sitting in the room next to you and things like that.

But I think you fool yourself in the fact that you actually think you have wider exposure and more in-depth exposure because you have access to people you would normally not meet.

That's right.

And so you get a glimpse into their eyes. And true at the same time, you're not paying attention to the here and now.

Right. Yeah, it's a bit of a— it's a bit of a kind of cognitive dissonance, because in one sense, we have more connections than we've ever had before. We're more connected. But in another sense, the quality of those connections has gone down. And so it feels like we're more interconnected and all that kind of stuff. But in many ways, We're the— we're, we're less connected at a quality level. And we, of course, see this when, you know, you would— the comment that you might get on Twitter, if that person was standing face to face with you, looking in your eyes, they would never say— they would never say it the way they say it on social media, because there's a human in front of you. And you can, like, you know, we, we have spent a lot of time together reading faces and all that kind of stuff. And When there's no face and there's no human and there's no real empathy or compassion, then you can just write off that note and say something, say something horrible.

Okay, now that I've got this all straight, my area is courage. And so, as I mentioned before, it's really important, I feel, at this time that we learn to pat ourselves on the shoulder for a job well done in terms of having courage.

Yeah.

And I don't think that we think of ourselves as courageous in this day and age when we really need to. And so I've coined the term microcourage, which really goes to daily acts of survival and recognizing that, that you have been successful in those daily acts of survival and stopping and saying, I did good.

Mm-hmm.

What I want to know is how can we use systems thinking to increase acts of courage and not macro— and not micro— I'm sorry, not macro acts of courage of running into a building and saving a life, In our daily life? How can we— not that you want to sit and process everything, which I have a tendency to do. But how can you get to courage quicker? Is really the question.

Yeah. Yeah, there's a, there's a— I've spent a lot of time, as I mentioned, in the, in the world of experiential learning. And one of the things that That used to be kind of on the fringe, right? The Outward Bound and those kinds of places were focused on experiential learning. Today, it's sort of come into the mainstream in K-12 education, talks about the importance of experience and that we learn from experience. And as someone that's spent their whole life, you know, in that area, it is, it is a misnomer. It's, it's incorrect to say that we learn from experience. We actually don't. We, we— and you can just to test this idea, you can sort of think of all the people you know, myself included, that can do something over and over and over again and never learn, right? Never learn the thing that needs to be learned.

Hold it. Timeout. Yeah, is that because we You know how women tease their husbands about selective hearing? They hear what they want to hear and then they don't hear the rest.

Yes.

So is this kind of like selective learning? Like, I will choose to learn what I need to learn to survive or to be happy, quote unquote, but that learning that's unimportant, I choose not to learn it.

Sometimes it— sometimes you could say that it's selective, but in other times it's, it's affecting your life so negatively that I don't think you could say that. Um, the, the idea is that there's something else that's needed other than just the experience itself. And it turns out that, that we know what's needed. It's experience plus reflection. So you, you, you can't just have the experience. You have to have experience, and then you have to have time to reflect on that experience and the ability to sort of think through what happened and, and have an accurate depiction of what happened. Um, what was my role in it, uh, positive or negative or neutral or whatever? Um, and what can I learn from this experience, and how can I move forward and, and, and do something different, or do more of the same, or, um, not do anything at all?

Does that reflection have to be tied to Maslow's theory of completeness or happiness?

No, it's just, it's, it's really, uh, that's where the connection to systems thinking and, and metacognition, which is a, I know, a big word, But it just means thinking about thinking. You know, meta and cognition. Cognition is kind of the science word for thinking. So metacognition is just thinking about thinking. So you're just thinking about your own, you know, what, what was I thinking? Why did I behave that way? Why did I react that way? Why did I, you know, or why did the other people behave or react the way they did? or understanding the system itself. So that reflection is just the desire to better understand the experience.

And why do we have that desire?

Well, sometimes we don't. And that's where experience alone won't lead to learning. So if you have the curiosity, to think about reflexively or reflectively the, the experience, um, or the desire to change your behavior or change your circumstances or whatever, then, um, then you'll take the time to think about that experience and, and reflect. So at Outward Bound, for example, we would do very challenging activities to, um, create stress that people could then be aware of what was going on during those periods so that they could develop the ability to be much more adaptive within those kinds of situations. And then afterward, we would sit and just, you know, we'd call it group processing, but you'd just sit around and talk about it. And from that reflection, people would learn, uh, what the meaning of the experience was, what they learned from the experience, how they might do it differently next time, that type of thing.

So the question then is, I remember the popularity of Outward Bound. And so you want to ask yourself, why didn't, in many cases, that experience continue to help you be more successful in other areas? So in other words, what I'm saying is, so if you look at— if you start reflecting back on jumping off of mountain, right? With the rope tied to you.

Right.

And you remember that experience of stress and relief that you didn't kill yourself. So you're reflecting back on that. Does that reflection only come into play the next time you jump off of a mountain? Or can it be used for a simple task like writing an article or Yeah, that, that's a fantastic question.

And that's actually kind of at the root of why, why sort of what's sometimes called adaptive training exists to create things like grit and resilience that lead to courage. And, um, the— so for example, you're not— it might sound sort of strange, but at Outward Bound, you're not climbing a mountain for the purpose of climbing a mountain. You're climbing a mountain for the purpose of self-discovery, teamwork, you know, integrity, things like that, right? Tenacity and pursuit, resilience, grit, all those kinds of things. And so if you don't reflect on that, most people will go away from the experience just saying, hey, I climbed a mountain, big deal. Or, hey, I climbed a mountain and it wasn't great. Or that was a terrible experience or whatever. So if you don't have that reflective time to be like, okay, what is the meaning of that experience? What can we pull away from that experience and take it back to our regular lives, take it back to something very, you know, specific to our personal or professional lives, then that— if you don't do that reflection, that learning won't happen. And it will always forever be, I went and climbed a mountain and had a terrible time. And that's not what we want to get out of our experiences. We want to get, you know, pull every literal figurative and metaphorical, squeeze all that juice out of that experience so that we can use it in our personal and professional lives to, you know, better, better our lives.

So I think this is really important because, you know, as I talk about courage, and I have a whole roadmap to it, one of the One of the pieces is, and I didn't have the word reflection, but one of the pieces is to sit and analyze what went wrong.

Exactly.

So that you can figure out what to do next that's different.

That's right.

And so you can expect a different outcome versus doing the same thing over again, not reflecting on it and saying, okay, how come the outcome wasn't different?

Right? That's right.

Well, what did you reflect on? And what did you put into action from that reflection?

Yep. Yeah. So it's really, we think oftentimes that we learn from experience, but we really learn from experience plus thinking about the experience.

I love that.

And, and that those 2 things together are a powerful combination. But without one or the other, you know, If you don't have the experience, you don't really have much to think about. And if you don't, if you don't think about it, then you're just gonna get a memory. You're just gonna get a memory of the experience, and you'll just say, oh, I did this then, and then this happened. And it really doesn't have very much robust meaning that can be transferred to other parts of your personal and professional life.

Do you feel that it's important or not, this reflection? Let's just dive into that.

Mm-hmm.

What's needed for really good reflection? Do you need another person? Is it something you can do yourself? How do you measure that the reflection that you've taken is something that's beneficial? I mean, so let's just take a look. Some people process forever and ever. And that's really interesting. And it just goes on and on and on. Yeah. Is that a good outcome for reflection?

I don't think so. I think, again, if you think about this systems thinking loop, which is just a circle, you're taking your mental model, then you're testing it in reality, then you're learning from that, and then building a better mental model, and then testing it. So it's an iterative loop. So you don't want to sit back and just think and think and think and overthink, as they say. What you want to do is think a little bit and come up with a slightly new mental model or hypothesis or whatever, and then test it in the real world, right? So even in the interaction that you said the guy was kind of not smiling or whatever, So you go, well, maybe he's, maybe he's not what I think he is. So you ask a question that's testing it in the real world, and you, and then you get a response and you go, oh, I'm going to adjust my mental model. This guy isn't grumpy or mean or whatever. He's, he's, uh, just in his own head and maybe not thinking about his facial expressions. So you're able to test it. And testing is a critical part of not overthinking, because if you go down in your basement and just think and think and think and think, you're just going to get yourself in circles. And the circle that you should be in is one with the real world, where you're testing against the real world.

How long do we give ourselves for this reflection period? Is there a time period?

I don't think it's a reflection period. It's reflection testing, reflection testing. It's iterative. And I don't really think of reflection— a lot of times when you hear the word reflection, that's why I call it thinking. Because thinking is a much more active kind of thing. Thinking is happening all the time. So this isn't some contemplative media meditation kind of reflection. It's a— it's an active, engaged, systemic thinking about it. And Laura and I in our research lab, what we focus on is the very specific mechanisms of how you do this thinking and how you can do it better. And there's, there's 4 basic mechanisms that drive the kinds of thinking that you're talking about.

And I've got my pen.

Okay. Oh, you want me to go over? Okay. So this gets a tiny bit more technical here, but they're just kind of the mechanisms that drive the thinking. So the first thing is we, we should reflect on the, the various distinctions that we're making. So, you know, if you make the distinction that somebody's mean or somebody's angry or somebody's sad or whatever, maybe challenge that distinction by asking a question or something like that, right? So it's very basic. Uh, in other words, don't just assume that the distinctions you're making Are true.

Mm-hmm.

Get— test them out in reality. Um, for example, if somebody tells you you have ADHD, don't just assume that that is a negative, right? That would be a— that would be a very wrong distinction, and you wouldn't get all the benefits of ADD, which are— which are manifold. There are some negatives, but you can actually— if you learn those negatives, you can turn them into positives oftentimes. Or dyslexia or whatever.

Yeah, dyslexia is a good one. Because, you know what, I'm brilliant at strategy.

Yep.

You know, so my weakness is dyslexia. My strength is strategy.

Exactly.

Yeah.

So that's the first one, distinctions. That's the D, distinctions. The second one is seeing the kind of action-reaction relationships between Things or events. So seeing how things are related, seeing how one thing acts upon another thing and how that other thing reacts to that first thing. And and that's all the relationships that are involved in the in whatever you're looking at, the experience or yourself or whatever system that you're interested in. So that's the R. So it's D. It's DSRP. Those are the four things to help you remember it. DSRP. So Distinctions, relationships. And then S is for system or sorting. And that's how, how are the things configured into part-whole groupings? So how are things grouped? And the way things are grouped are going to determine how they behave. So that's really important. And the final one is perspective. And that's look at the thing from multiple perspectives. So don't just see your own perspective, but see others' perspectives and that kind of thing. So it's, what are the distinctions that you're making? Let's test those. What are the relationships that you're seeing? How are things grouped, you know, into, into different groupings? And from what perspective are we looking at the thing? And they— and if you change your perspective, it might change the way things are grouped, or change the way things are related, or change even the way the distinctions that are being made. And so those 4 things, what the research shows is that those 4 things are really at the base of how we think about things. And we don't always know that we're thinking about them that way, but that's happening whether we like it or not. That's happening.

So it sounds like, I mean, this is very complex and, and hard to do. With self? It sounds to me that you need somebody else or a team to be able to do this. No?

Um, I think it's just practice, right? Just like anything, to get good at anything, it takes practice. And to— and anything that you can do without practice probably isn't worth getting good at.

So, um, I love that one.

So that practice can happen alone, but obviously we're great. Humans are great at learning in social groups cuz we like social stuff. So obviously doing things together, uh, can help, but it's not like you couldn't learn how to do it on your own. You, you just, it just literally takes practice. Um, and, and that's where I think adaptive training comes in. in any regard, adapt, whether you're talking about microcourage or even macrocourage, it's going to take adaptive training where you put yourself under some kind of stress or you want some kind of specific adaptation to an imposed demand so that you can get good at grit and resilience, which is going to give you kind of, you know, courage or the kinds of— the kind of setup that makes courage possible.

So the 4 principles that you gave me, are they specifically for systems thinking or for reflection? Experience plus reflection? How do— what can—

All of the above. Yeah, I mean, they're actually the way that your brain kind of organizes information, and it's not you don't really get to choose whether you organize information that way. That's the way you organize information. But the more aware we are of these processes, the better we can respond to situations and, uh, with, you know, with courage or with whatever, with reflection or that type of thing.

So let's take a really good example of And I know, I knew we're gonna run out of time, but let me just look at my calendar because this is just too fascinating for me. I love it. We might have to have part 2 of this.

Okay.

Okay, yes, we'll have to have part 2 because my question becomes, What can we specifically adapt to for courage for this? So I, what I'm gonna say here now, I want time to process what you've said to me.

Yeah.

And I wanna come back. I wanna invite you back for part 2.

Okay.

'Cause I have another interview right on top of this that I made by mistake. This is fascinating. Because then the next part of my question is, for example, you've launched a product that was a complete failure.

Yes.

Then how do we use the systems thinking to gain information from that so that we can relaunch it with success? And that will be my question.

Oh, good. Well, yeah, so there's a lot of things that we can talk about, about that, but the, the first one would be It's only a failure if you don't learn from it. So—

You're my man. You're my man.

Reflect on it.

You're my man. Okay, with that, we're gonna—

That will, will end and go to the next one.

Yeah, I love this. Hey, audience, this has been so exciting. I'm just like in seventh heaven with this conversation. Please tune in for part 2 of our meeting, our discussion, our interview with Derek, because it's mind-boggling. And you know what? While it sounds difficult, I bet with exercise, this is really easy and can unlock a lot of opportunity for courage and success.

That's right.

So with that, Derek, thank you. I'm going to be sending you a note now as soon as my next interview is over for part 2.

Okay, thanks, CB.

I hope the better half will join us.

Yeah, no, we'll get the smarter half of our group, Laura, who works with me, and we're also married on our research.

If not, we'll do part 3 with Laura to get her opinion.

That would be great.

Thank you so much for tuning in. I can't wait to part 2 of this. I'm super excited.

Oh, great.

Thank you so much. And audience, we'll see you next Tuesday. Bye for now.