72 Highest Potential: Role models

Hello and welcome to RxChill Pill for your top-down brain. Resilience is about bouncing back from setbacks by adapting and learning so you can thrive through life's challenges. Your time is precious, so I work to deliver research-backed tools to boost you and your family's resilience. Each of the episodes strive to leave you with an action or meditation prescription that you can apply immediately to your life. I'm Dr. Juna Bobby MD, a board-certified physician and mom of two amazing kids. And my purpose is to make the neuroscience of wellness accessible to you and your family's everyday life. Because when I became a mom, I wanted to do everything possible to empower my children with healthy mental and physical habits. This wasn't something that I had growing up, so I had to learn how to create a healthy and happy home life. I'm definitely not aiming for perfection. But I can honestly say that the mind-body skills I learned transformed my family's life. After years of training, I fully transitioned into teaching mind-body medicine, leaving one of the most prestigious private practices in New York City so I could dedicate my time to creating and teaching the science of resilience. My almost decade-long experience teaching high-performing students of all ages have now led me to the creation of my newest courses, Top Down Brain, a STEM-based digital course and planner, Plan to Soar, and Soar Under Pressure for K-12 and beyond. To make these tried and true courses widely accessible, I'm rolling them out with partnering schools, organizations, and online for individuals on mindbodyspace.com. A portion of all proceeds go to those students in need. Today is my monthly chat with Fiona Merton, my great friend, awesome mom, award-winning author, host of Dot to Dot podcast, and a chartered psychologist in London who coaches top performers and C-suite individuals in business, healthcare, sports, and politics to achieve optimal performance. We immediately hit it off because we're both endlessly curious about the science behind positively influencing our own brains. We're on a mission to widely share practical cognitive and motivational research tools with curious people who want to fulfill their potential and ultimately lead happier lives. In this episode, we talk about consciously finding mentors or guides for our behaviors and characteristics that we want to strengthen within ourselves. We talk about how to find them and how to know who's right for you. Hello, Fi, how are you today?

I am all the better for seeing you. Thanks, Juna. Oh yes, me too.

I'm so glad to see you. I'm getting a little lonely lately.

Ah, why is that? Something called COVID.

Yes, something called not seeing anybody except on Zoom or not going out much. And I'm so excited today to talk about finding mentors.

Yeah, yeah.

And we don't actually have to go out and actively hunt them down, maybe even. So when I teach my students, I talk to them about the importance of finding people to emulate and to mirror, like your book, Mirror Thinking. Always having that sort of person that you can look up to or just actually, you know, and I like to explain it to my kids because a lot of times they think, "Oh, I don't wanna be a copycat." They have this idea of that they're copying somebody and you know that whole buzzword with authenticity. They feel like, "Oh, it's not being authentic." And I try to explain to them about the neuroscience of how we actually can become what we want to become. That's what this book is about that you wrote, "Mirror Thinking." Can you speak to the young people or even older people who think that, you know, "I have to be authentic and I don't wanna copy other people," about the actual idea, the science behind why we wanna look for role models that we can actually copy.

Yeah, so I get the copying thing, and the irony is, so when I was a teenager, I hated it when people copied me. I absolutely despised it, and I never wanted to copy anyone else or to be seen to be copying anyone else. And here I am writing a book on mirror thinking. But I think we're brought up with a misunderstanding of what it means. So firstly, being— since I've been in my professional career as a psychologist and working with leaders, I would say absolutely we have to be authentic, absolutely have to be ourselves, and we have to own our own values and believe in our own personality. However, we're all mirroring other people all of the time, whether we intend to or not. So that can be anything from our mood through to our attitudes, through to our values, through to our behaviour. And yeah, so it makes sense to choose what we want to emulate and who from. And another point on the copying, it's not outright copying because it's not saying, oh, I want to be like— so one of my heroines is Maya Angelou. I don't want to be like all of who she is. I couldn't be, you know. I grew up in a different country, in a different time. I'm a different race. Um, but there are aspects of Maya Angelou that I can incorporate into who I am. For example, her writing style. I can pick up pointers on how she writes or how she communicates. Um, and I feel kind of funny saying that because to me she is a heroine, and I think there's no way I could do it like her. But the point is, it's looking for aspects of people that you respect You don't have to respect the whole person even, but it's aspects of a person that you respect and consciously observing, a bit like a detective, what it is they do, how they do it, and how you can incorporate that into you. Not copy it directly, but incorporate that.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, I want to reel back to what you said about, and like, you don't even have to admire the whole person. On the last episode, you and I talked about how I would emulate The Brady Bunch for like the idea of a happy childhood home. So I turned it on the other day with my teenage daughter and the first episode, I haven't watched it in like decades, right? So I turn it on, the first episode, they're talking about getting remarried 'cause it's like about two people who are getting remarried. And he says to her, "I'm really nervous about our wedding." And she says, "Well, why don't you just take a Xanax?" Or a tranquilizer. I can't remember what she said. Tranquilizer, Xanax. My jaw dropped because then he said, "I did already take one." And she said, "Oh, well, take another one." So this is— I mean, I'll send you the clip. That was the first episode where they get married. So obviously our culture was so different back then. You know, the Rolling Stones wrote about the little yellow pill, Mother's Helper. So Valium was just basically people are popping things.

Funny.

And it was something I didn't realize at the time, but obviously people have changed, cultures have changed, so things change. And when you look back at somebody and let's say they, part of them was chauvinistic or whatever they were doing at the time, it was like the context of what time they lived in, right? So if you look for historical figures which is what I'm trying to get at in this long roundabout way. When you look for historical figures, you might not admire everything about them, but that doesn't mean we have to ignore their teachings.

No, and I think that's so true. And I think that's one of the issues with social media is it becomes very black and white. So it's either all, all or nothing. So we cancel people because we don't like one aspect one aspect of their attitude, but no one's perfect. And so it's unrealistic.

Oh, far from it.

It's unrealistic. And there's something called the prestige effect, which is written about by an anthropologist in the UK, and it's basically saying with people who are famous, we evolved to look at them in the same way as we would look at someone successful in the tribe. So if we think about our ancient ancestors, So if you imagine that George was very good at hunting antelope, and you've been trying to hunt antelope for ages, and you go out and you try and copy what George is doing to enable you to kill an antelope. And you've been trying to do this for weeks and weeks and weeks, but you go out with George and you watch what he does, and the next time you go out, you manage to kill an antelope. But the thing is, before George goes out, he also does a rain dance. And so you don't know whether it's the rain dance or it's something about his hunting that makes him successful. So you copy all of his behaviour. And actually, that's what we do with famous people because we will say, without even realising it, well, they wear that cologne or they buy that brand or they do this or that or the other, and we don't separate it out. Our brain has sort of evolved to say, well, we take the whole thing, we'll take the whole package.

Yeah. Um, and so that's the commercialism, right? That's, that's how they sell things to us. When we see somebody having fun and drinking Pepsi, we generalize that if we have— drink Pepsi, we're gonna have fun too.

Yeah.

And look really good. Yeah.

And we'll also take, um, every behavior that— so if a If a movie star is disruptive, we take that behavior— we can, doesn't mean we do— but if we don't question, we could take that behavior as being okay because, well, I mean, they behave like that and they're successful. And so we don't know. And it says two factors. It's one, it's, you know, we now know more that the rain dance probably wasn't helping George with his hunting, so we can look at that.

Unless it made him more confident.

Well, there is that. There is that. You see, now we know that too. Yes. So we can look at all those aspects, but there's also the fact that a lot of stuff is misrepresented. So, yes, we're not even seeing the accurate picture of what's been a success, what's been a failure, what someone really believes. It's all a bit distorted when it comes to people who—

social media, just like the slogans. I love that you brought this up because this goes to something that I was actually writing and recording today for my course on Insight Timer. And I was talking about why am I talking about nitric oxide in our bloodstream when we elicit our relaxation response or anything that, you know, meditation or yoga or tai chi that elicits the relaxation response? Why do I need to talk about nitric oxide in our bloodstream? And I was trying to explain that it's because if we, like you said about the rain dance, if you go to any person and they teach you like, oh, First, you want to go run around in circles, then you close your eyes and keep your eyes really wide open, and then you try to focus on one thing. And you don't know, like, which parts actually work and which parts are actually doing what to your body and mind. Like you said, you would take the whole thing together and say, "Oh, I'm going to try this practice," right? Whatever they're going to name it. Picking apart things that we can measure, for example, the bio— a chemical like nitric oxide, which we know dilates our blood vessels and decreases blood pressure. That is a specific measure. And even that's an indirect measure, but I'm not going to go into the actual measuring of nitric oxide. But we can see that it, it does have an effect on blood pressure and that some of the research supports that the relaxation response, that is the pathway to how it decreases blood pressure. And so that's why I'm incorporating it into a mindfulness or meditation course, because it is important to know. What aspects does what, right?

Absolutely. Absolutely. And so it comes down to neurochemicals, physiology, right through to emotion, behavior. But the more we can understand and the more we can put evidence behind something, the more we can draw on to say, actually, I know that people who are very good communicators use storytelling. So we know that, we've sort of, we know there's a lot of science behind that as well now and why that happens. And funnily enough, that's about, you know, mirror neurons as well. But then we can say, okay, so I know that fact, so if I want to become a better communicator, then I should look at people who are not only considered good communicators, but those who are considered good communicators and use storytelling really, really well.

Mm-hmm.

And so we pick those aspects. If you're in your late teens and your early 20s, it's difficult to know exactly what you want to do or where you want to go. And so part of it's actually, which people do you respect? Who shares your values? Who shares your passions? Who shares your interests? And then actually using that type of role modelling to help you explore what your passions and your interests might be.

Or if you want to get to a specific place or a specific level of whatever you're practicing, then you can look at somebody who's ahead of you.

Absolutely. I mean, right? Yeah, I think it's so important. And I think—

but then don't emulate every single part of them. Like, if you want to be a tennis star, you don't want to emulate the tennis star who has tantrums on the court.

Exactly, that's actually right.

You don't have to copy everything.

No, but I mean, when— with sports, a really interesting example actually, because it's so, it's so easy to see how the mechanisms work. But actually, when you watch a tennis player, for example, play and you really concentrate and you're conscious— it's the consciousness that really matters as well, it's being conscious that you're watching them and you're observing how they play their shots— that will help you with your own tennis game.

So look, look attentively at exactly what you're trying to improve.

Absolutely.

Excellent. So we were talking about deliberately choosing people, right, to meet your needs. Maybe like you can actually plan that out.

Yeah. And I think they can be, they can be mentors. So they can be people you approach and you say, will you mentor me? But what I talk about are 3 different levels of role model. So you have personal, situational, and aspirational. So the sports stars, the movie stars, the people who may be even fictional characters, the people that we'll never actually meet, they're the aspirational.

Mm-hmm.

The people that actually have the most impact on us are the ones that are in our own environment. So parents, siblings, friends. And so it's then thinking, you know, if I want to get fitter and I want to do more exercise, it seems so obvious, but we might not really realize how powerful it is. You find friends to hang out with who are fitter and do more exercise. But what if you're stuck?

I mean, you're stuck with your family, and sometimes you feel stuck with your group of friends. So you can actually go out and, like you were talking about, about storytelling, so you can find somebody, like a biography of somebody.

Oh, absolutely. Yeah, and I think the situational role models are important. So those are people that may be in your community. So it may be a teacher, a priest or a rabbi, or it may be a fitness instructor, or it's someone that you can go and talk to if you want to, but you may not have a close relationship with. In the work environment, it may be the leader of a different area of the organisation, or when you're at college, it might be a lecturer. And you can— we can watch them. They're real. They're there. They're not sort of on a screen or something. You can watch them and pick out the bits of what they do in a way that resonates with you. I think that's a really important word. Things that resonate with you. So if I come— if I just say another thing on that. So everyone thinks I'm an extrovert. I do enjoy parties and I love people, but I get worn out if I'm around people for too long.

And I'm the same.

Are you?

Yes.

So one of the things is, so, you know, everyone says network, network, network, and I think, oh, do you know what? I really don't like networking, but I need to get better at it. There's no point me looking at an extrovert and how they network because it's not going to ever work for me. I need to find someone who's an introvert and who networks well. It comes back to your point, it has to be authentic to you. But how does someone do something in a way that resonates with you? They might do it a lot better than you, but it still resonates.

That's interesting. I know you and I had a discussion at one point that mentorship is actually also something where you don't actually pay somebody to mentor you. So aside from a coach, a coach you would pay to coach you, But a mentor is generally people in our lives who kind of take us under their wing, or we as a mentor take them under our wing. It's not like a transactional process.

Well, yeah, there are, I mean, there are organizations in the UK who will pair up chief executives of our equivalent of Fortune 500, so FTSE 100, with ex-chief executives and charge them extortionate amounts of money and call that mentoring.

Oh, wow. Okay. So you do mentor in charge.

Yes. However, I've got quite a few people I mentor, and I have a couple of mentors, um, and it's like you say, it's really about someone taking you under their wing. That relationship tends to be quite long-term, but it, it serves both of you. And that might sound weird.

I was just gonna say that because when I think back to the mentors that have really affected me They were people that I worked for, you know, like my mentor in medical school where I did research, or there was somebody like Peg Behm at Benson-Henry Institute. She was like my mentor in a way. I got a clinical certification from them, so I paid the institution, but I still think of her as my mentor.

There has to be a real connection. Trust is really important. I use the word exposure, which some people don't like because obviously that has— it's used in different contexts, but you have to be able to say that you are going to actually see and talk to that person. It can't be something that's like once a year. It has to have some level of frequency to it, even if it's once every 8 weeks or something. And really, you want someone who's empathic, and that doesn't— and that's— I mean, we can go into semantics about empathy as well, but it's not empathic in that they're all, "Oh, oh, well, that's a shame." But they're more empathic in that they can see things from your perspective. They can put themselves in your shoes.

But also, I think one of the main things that you want in a mentor is that they can actually see potential in you, maybe something that you don't even see in yourself. Absolutely. That they see beyond what you think of yourself to be able to be capable of.

Absolutely. And I mean, you think, about it, if you think about who has believed in you in your life, and when someone believes in you, it makes the difference between— particularly when you're younger— between you doing something and not doing it.

Yeah, totally.

Yourself and your self-belief can be so fragile, and if, if someone else really, really believes you can do something, it makes you so much more— well, you believe it more yourself, but you are so much more motivated then to actually go and fulfill that.

Absolutely. I think, I think all of my mentors fit that, that they always saw something in me that maybe I wasn't even confident about.

Oh, you might not even see in yourself. So mentors will see things in you that you don't see in yourself.

That's so cool. I was looking at your chapter in your book about choosing your mirrors. So if somebody took actionable steps— so we already discussed that it doesn't have to be when you're role modeling and you're trying to do something that you don't know how to do yet, you can choose this by looking through, let's say, biographies, or nowadays even like a TED Talk or YouTube. You can investigate these people who inspire you, and they're doing something parallel to what you want to be doing. You can look them up, see their work, read their books, watch their talks. And that's how I do most of informal kind of mirroring. So I will pick Let's say if I wanted to learn about meditation, I go straight to Dalai Lama, or, you know, or if I want to learn about the Westernization of mindfulness, I go straight to Jon Kabat-Zinn. He has tons of books. So I love listening to their books. I don't know them personally. And I mean, I did meet Jon Kabat-Zinn, but I don't know if I'll ever meet the Dalai Lama. And then the second way is to actually have somebody They don't even have to be real characters, they could actually be fictional.

Yeah, so there's a lot of stuff around Elon Musk, so Elon Musk, who's Tesla, and he read lots of comic books and you can see that in the way that he sees the world and the way he thinks that he can do anything. Nothing is beyond limits for him. He can get out there and create a— I think he's designed a Hyperloop that takes you around LA at 130 miles an hour or something like that.

Yeah, he has the tunnel.

Yes, yeah. But, you know, some of those things won't happen, but he's definitely hugely innovative and pushes the boundaries and believes that he can do things others might not. I think he's more of an example of someone who has chosen— well, he might not have— he has been influenced by fictional characters.

That's awesome.

Whereas Someone like Nelson Mandela, so when Nelson Mandela was incarcerated for 27 years, if you read through various different writings, the book full of letters that he wrote at that time, and he obviously reflected on it afterwards as well, but he used both situational and aspirational role models. So he read up about historical figures and leaders, and, but he also wrote letters to people in his own time who were leaders. And so he was basically looking at role models and shaping how he was thinking the whole time.

Deliberately.

Yeah, deliberately, and came out as a very strong leader at the end of that.

That's wonderful. I love those two examples. One would be like, just look for people who inspire you, whether they're fictional or real.

Yep. Look for people who inspire you and then try and work out why they inspire you as well. So what is it about them that you find inspirational, and is that something that you want to emulate? If so, why?

And then there can also be a goal-directed search for—

very much—

role modeling. So if you want to become an excellent speaker like we were talking about, you can watch a lot of TED Talks and look at the best— Steve Jobs, Talks, right?

Absolutely.

He always did threes.

He did do threes. Three stories, three. So I think, you know, you can look at different areas of focus. It might be your health, your work, learning, environment, social relationships, or it might be something very specific you've got coming up, and then think about who you can look at. For example, I've got to record my TEDx This week?

Yeah, I'm so excited for that to come out. And you're recording for London School of Economics TEDx.

Yeah.

Fantastic. We're all going to be looking forward to this.

But I've been watching Steve Jobs, Martin Luther King, Obama.

What about women? Any women?

J.K. Rowling. OK. Listening to Maya Angelou. Scarlett Johansson. So, and, and, you know, I watch them and I think, well, you know, Steve Jobs, he's probably a bit more buttoned up than I am, but, and you can tell that he's, he's rehearsed it over and over. And I'm more, a bit more fumbly, and I, but that's part of my personality. Or I look at, um, Sir Ken Robinson, who's got the most hits ever on, um, I think, well, you know, I'm, for a start, I can't do the funny thing because I'm not even going to have an audience, and I can't be funny to a screen, you know, that's just not going to work. But his style is much more bumbly, and it's a bit— I mean, he's English as well, but it's probably a bit more like me in that respect. But I can't— I couldn't come close to how he delivers his speech. But you see what I mean? There are things that you look at in different people and you think, well, I—

And then you take all of those things and it's going to merge into your brain and it's going to come out your unique way. No, that's fantastic. I love it. So you're watching all these great speakers and you are incorporating that, and then you're kind of spinning it back out into the world.

That's a good way to put it.

Hopefully.

It's a last-ditch attempt anyway.

So that's how we do it. That's— I mean, you know, nobody stands alone, and why reinvent the wheel? You know, I'm sure Steve Jobs listened to great talks before himself, or orators.

Orators, yeah. Another probably closer to home example was when I started my first job out of university, and I remember there was this guy I heard speaking in the office. So I was a management consultant, and I thought, wow, you know, he sounded like he was a partner. Who's, you know, the partners of the people that are up there, sounded really kind of, just had gravitas. And then, you know, I think we were sat with our backs to each other and then I saw him and I thought, my God, he looks about my age, but he sounded amazing. He was my age, but he had this amazing ability to just talk confidently and with loads of gravitas. I ended up working with him on projects, and I would listen to how he delivered things and what he said and how he said things, and I would use that to help me think about how I delivered things with more impact. And, you know, I'm as far away from him as I know him still in terms of personality as you can imagine, and I wasn't copying his behavior, but I was learning from him.

So give us 3 actionable steps to how to get yourself a role model, when and what you can— where you can look.

Yeah, I think first of all it's think about what you want, which we mentioned. If it's quite global, um, you need support, and that person, partly what you want from them would be a personal role model probably, and someone to help you explore where you're going and what that means. If you know where you're going and what that means, then look at breaking that down into different aspects. Not— don't go sort of crazy, you know, make it manageable. Say choose 3 different things. It might be 3 goals you've got over the next 6 months, might be writing, it might be running a discussion group, giving a speech, public speaking, yeah, socializing. Being more adept at socializing with friends and how you communicate. And then pick who are the people that you can look at and learn from. Who are the people who you know? Who are the people that you can see but you might not know so well in your environment? And who are the people that you don't know and you might never meet but you can look up? So you can look up biographies, TED Talks, um, documentaries, uh, read their work and make a little puzzle for each of those goals, map out who those people are and just plan how you're gonna do that. It might be just a list that you say, right, I want to become better at speaking, so I'm going to watch Steve Jobs, Martin Luther King, blah blah blah, and I'm going to read these books. And it's just like setting any other goals really then, but if you make it deliberate and you make it conscious, the impact it has will be much more significant And then look for even fictional characters if they fit the bill.

And then also look for real-life mentors who might— who you resonate with and you can trust. We can talk more about mentoring on another podcast because like, it's not like there's one set path to find a mentor. So I think that deserves a discussion. Yeah.

And I'm working with that charity now on mentoring with kids. So I'm, I'm really passionate about that.

Fantastic. Lots of exciting things coming up. And next time we're gonna talk to Fi about her TED Talk at London School of Economics.

As on the 20th of March. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Thank you so much for listening to my monthly chat with Fiona, where we focused on insights and practical actionable tips to help you reach your highest potential. Find out more about her at fionamurden.com. You can shape the content of this podcast by letting me know what topics or questions you'd like to have addressed. Just go to mindbodyspace.com/podcast to opt in. When you opt in, you'll get extras from episodes like cheat sheets, worksheets, and special tips just for our newsletter subscribers. You'll also get information on our neuroscience-powered planner and online courses, Plantasaur, And Soar Under Pressure for kids, parents, and educators. If you appreciate the content and want to help, the absolute best thing you can do is to share. Text or email your friends, share on social media a link to your favorite episode. Good old-fashioned talking works too. Please share this podcast with anyone who believes in the scientific method and are curious about natural ways to boost performance, health, mental and physical resilience for themselves or their kids. Thank you so much. And until next time, this is Dr. Juna Bobby MD wishing you and your family wellness.